Spring 2021

 

This time of year, when it's sunny and the cherry blossoms and new toon foliage bloom together, our rather shabby back yard starts looking almost pretty. Though it would still set any proper gardener's teeth on edge.

Camera Stand

 

I had a spare Beike tripod head hanging around, so I whipped up this little wooden base for it and put my old Lumix bridge camera on it. It's a lot less adjustable and flexible than a proper tripod, but for copy work or the like, it's actually a lot more convenient.

The Lumix is a decent camera of its type, with a nice Leica lens of reasonable speed and quite a wide zoom range, but it only uses a motorized zoom, and it doesn't take interchangeable lenses. It'll do auto-bracketing, which can be very handy for miniatures photography. I was actually trying to sell it a while ago, but got no interest at all, so I figured I might as well get some more use out of it.

Art Appreciation

Many years ago, I went to a travelling exhibition of Modern Art from the collection of some stupendously rich person, I forget exactly who.

There was a wide range of stuff there, from the late C19th impressionists up to the action-painters of the 1950s.

In almost every case, seeing the works in the real, rather than in a photograph, was absolutely stunning — the colours and textures shone out, effects that a photograph simply could not catch.

The exceptions were the action-painters like Pollock and De Kooning. I understand the ideas, the concepts behind the movement, but to me, in real life, the works themselves were just... meh. There was nothing about them that moved me any more than a photograph, except maybe their scale — they were pretty big. But they affected me no more than wallpaper in a hotel lobby.

This interests me, because I haven't been able to pinpoint exactly why it is that they don't affect me. It's not because of their extreme abstraction — Rothko's work, for example, is profoundly abstract, but I absolutely love it.

It's a puzzle.

Table Saw Stand

 

I have a little old Ryobi table saw that, until very recently, has been attached to the end of Workbench #02. That's mostly been fine, but my workshop is very crowded, and if I wanted to rip anything more than about a metre long, I had to do a lot of moving and shuffling of other equipment to make room.

It seemed to me that it would be easier if I could just move one thing, the saw, so I made this little wheeled stand for it. The wheels are n the right of the saw; they're not really visible in this photo. The wheels are unbraked, but the legs on the other side seem to serve to keep everything pretty stable, and if need be I can always whip up some chocks or something.

The joinery is pretty simple; it's all bridle joints and half-laps, with a lot of glue and screws. It's all pretty solid, nevertheless.

Because my workshop floor is very far from flat, I've added a levelling foot to one of the legs. I'll probably need to put one on the other leg as well, but I'll wait and see.

Another possible accessory would be a hinged flap at the back, so I can extend the table if I want to. That should be pretty straightforward. I'd really like to replace the platen entirely, but all the guts of the saw are bolted directly to it, so that would not be straightforward.

It's not a very good table saw, but it's better than nothing, and now it will be easier to use for ripping long stock, which is what it's mainly designed for.

Squatty Bloke

 

Photoshop doodling.

Stanley Folding Knives

Top: Stanley 0-10-598
Bottom: Stanley 10-049

I have a couple of Stanley folding pocket knives. They're both roughly the same size when folded, about 110mm long and about 8mm thick. I use them primarily as marking knives, for woodwork.

Of the two, the 10-049 (the bottom knife in the photo) is the better utility knife. It has a slightly thicker, sturdier blade, and it folds much more easily, so it's a lot more convenient as a pocket-knife.

The 0-10-598 is more suitable as a woodworking knife because of its narrower, more sharply pointed blade, which will get into the inside corners of dovetails and what-not better. The ergonomics of the unlocking tab at the end of the handle, for folding the blade, are not as good as that on the 10-049, but it does work.

The blades on both knives are, in theory, expendable. However, they sharpen easily with the little EZ-Lap diamond paddles, and will last for many years before they need replacement.

Flash! (ah-ah-aaaah...)

 

Freshly arrived today from far, far away, I now have a TTL zoom flash that will work on my Nikon DSLR. It's a Yongnuo YN568EX, and it has many features that I don't yet know how to work, and a fat little instruction manual that I haven't yet read.

Many years ago, about 1990 I think, I bought a genuine Nikon Speedlight for my Nikon film camera, and managed to buy the exact model that won't work with any modern Nikon. If I'd bought the model immediately before, or the model after, either of those will work with a new(ish) DSLR, but not my one. It cost me about $800 then. This one appears to be just as capable, if not more so, and cost less than a fifth of what the Nikon flash cost me all those years ago — which is good, because I've got a lot less money now than I had then.

Marking Gauge

 

When you're making things out of wood (or out of anything really) you're going to be doing a lot of measuring and marking. This is a very simple tool, yet very useful for that sort of thing.

The bar is laminated from a couple of bits of oak, with a channel carved through for the steel rule to slide in. Any hard wood would do the trick; softwoods like pine would wear very quickly and get sloppy. The knob is 3d printed, and is glued to a bolt which screws through its nut, captive in a socket carved into the oak and epoxied in place, and the whole screws on to a presser plate that presses against the ruler to lock it in place.

The channel for the steel rule is square and tight, but not tight enough that the rule is guaranteed to be perfectly square to the bar; fortunately, for this tool, absolute squareness is not a necessity. If need be, one could reduce the play in the steel rule by increasing the width of the bar and channel, and still more by lining the edges of the channel with brass or something, but I doubt very much that I'll need to go to such lengths for the tolerances I work with.

The function of the tool is for making marks at a consistent distance from the edge of a piece of wood; I can slide it along an edge with a pencil held at the end of the ruler to make a continuous parallel mark. This is something that can be done with a combination square, of course, but this is lighter and handier, and the oak slides more easily than the metal frame of a combination square.

Stool

I have a sad case of Finish Regret.

I made this macrocarpa stool, and decided at the last minute to use polyurethane to finish it, instead of tung oil. I figured that polyurethane would be better for a piece of indoor-outdoor furniture; the finish wouldn't last forever out in the weather, but it would be a lot more resistant to occasional raining-upon than would an oil finish.

The theory is fine and dandy, but I failed to take into account the temperature. The coolness means that the polyurethane's curing was retarded, and it has slumped in places on the vertical surfaces. I'm going to have to sand it back and reapply, probably in several very thin rubbing applications, with about 24 hours between each.

So, poo bum wees.

Ye Newe Olde Sewinge Machyne of Far Cathay

 

I bought this machine a couple of years ago, and have only just got around to setting it up into a usable condition. I love its bare mechanical aesthetic, free of any sort pandering to convenience or fashion or manufacturing quality.

It tends to be labelled on Youtube and AliExpress and the like as "Chinese Shoe Patcher", and the same basic machine is marketed by a whole bunch of vendors, with variations in colour and quality of finish. I don't recall exactly who sold me this one; I got it via AliExpress, and it cost me a couple of hundred Kiwibucks including postage.

It came with three spindly little pipe-legs that are supposed to screw into its base, but frankly I don't see how it would be possible to use it on them. They'd be wobbling all over the place, and the pressure on the hand-crank is sufficient to move the whole shebang around even with the solid block of macrocarpa I've got it screwed to. It really needs to be clamped solidly to the bench or table I'm working at.

As well as a decent base, I also had to make a bobbin stand because the little rod sticking out of the frame provided for the task is entirely inadequate.

It came with a few spare bottom bobbins and a spare bobbin-shuttle; the bobbins are a non-standard size, but spares are available on Amazon and elsewhere if you know where to look — I don't, but various Youtube dudes do, and have provided appropriate links. There is no way that I can find to wind the bobbins automatically, as I could do on my Pfaff sewing machine, but my usage is light enough that winding them by hand isn't overly onerous. It only takes five minutes or so, and would be quicker still if I rigged up something less intrusive than my sausage-fingers to hold the bobbin while I'm winding. (There's a mysterious sprung rubber wheel on the back of the machine that doesn't seem to do anything, and maybe it's part of a bobbin-winding system? If so, I can't see how it would work.)

The instruction pamphlet that came with it is laughably bad. Even taking into account the problems of translating from Chinese to English, the content is both irrelevant and obscure. It doesn't even include a threading diagram or guide. Fortunately, the machine is popular enough with American leatherworkers that there's a decent amount of instructional content about it available on Youtube.

It creates a decent seam through three or four layers of fairly soft furnishing leather; I haven't tried it yet on anything more resistant than that, but it should be okay I think. It is a bit difficult to control, as one hand is always engaged in turning the crank, while the other has to manipulate the work piece under the presser foot. However, that should be just a matter of practice. I won't be using it on anything that needs neat, straight seams just yet, though there's no reason why it couldn't produce them if I knew more about what I was doing.

It's certainly a lot faster (though as yet, less precise) than hand-stitching, though not as fast as an electrical machine. I have seen modifications to this machine that add an electric motor and foot control, and they seem to work well, though at the price of portability.

Apparently it will handle fairly heavy thread, though the nylon thread provided with it is quite light. It's adequate to my needs for the moment; I don't foresee having to sew draught-horse harness or anything any time soon.

Bandsaw Upgrade

 

I have a cheap, small bandsaw. It's not the greatest bandsaw ever made, but it's not the worst either.

The worst thing about it has always been its platen.

It came with a cast aluminium platen (which you can see in this photo discarded on the shelf beneath the saw) which was never even remotely flat. Nor was the surface very slippery, so it resisted pushing the work through the blade a bit. Not much, but perceptibly.

I've replaced that cast aluminium piece with a piece of nice smooth, slippery, and most importantly, FLAT melamine. It's also a tad bigger than the old platen, which is all to the good — though that's not saying much; there's only about 250mm between the blade and the pillar anyway.

It wasn't quite as straightforward as cutting a bit of melamine and slapping it on the bracket — it needed a couple of packers to fit. But it wasn't a difficult upgrade at all, and it will make the bandsaw so much better and easier to use.

There's a possibility that it might need a joist underneath to help keep the front-right corner from flexing under the weight of a wide work piece, but I'll wait and see about that. It may well not be necessary.

Book Stand Double-Stacked

 

I made this little bed-side book stand some years ago, but I recently conceived a desire to be able to stack two things on it, not just one.

The main body of the thing is made from pink birch. The added tabs on the front, allowing for double-stacking, are some spalted beech I've had hanging around forever.

It's a handy thing. It keeps my Kobo ready to hand when I'm in bed, and the legs mean that I can keep the charging cable in the Kobo and still have the book the right way up for reading. Now I can also keep a sketchbook there as well.

NOTE TO KOBO: put the charging port in the top or side edge of the device, not the bottom where it just gets in the way.

Smile Sketch

 

This is a sketch taken from a photograph of some guy that I found somewhere on the internet years ago and kept because I liked his smile. I don't know his name, nor that of the photographer.

Drawing is all done in Photoshop.

Plane Till

 

I may not have achieved much progress on the project I'm actually supposed to be working on today, but on the other hand I do now have a till to keep all my working planes in safely on my workbench, and that I can pick up and move as required.

I've been meaning to make one of these for ages, and though it's not very pretty (it's just cobbled together out of whatever scrap was lying around) it should do the job perfectly well.

Dusk Over the Fence

 

Dusk over the fence

Art or Trash?

 

If you can sell it, it must be Art.

If you can't sell it, it must be Art That People Just Don't Understand.

The Cicadas Are Out In Force

 

Router Lift Redesign

 

I've redesigned and rebuilt my vice-held benchtop router table to use an old scissor-jack for the lift, rather than the big bolt I had coming up from below (that's what's sitting on the platen in this photo). I've kept most of the old frame and just added some bits to increase the height enough to cater to the jack.

The scissor-jack is superior to the base screw in that there's little or no lateral pressure on the frame while the router is being raised or lowered, so there's less need for lateral bracing. I will probably add some anyway, just to make the whole assembly a bit sturdier, but there's not really any great need for it.

I cut down an 8mm screw-eye to use with an electric drill to turn the jack-screw, but I have no need to be raising or lowering the router that quickly, and it's a bit of a faff hooking up the drill every time I want to change the height. Besides, I'd need to do the final adjustment manually in any case, for accuracy.

So instead, I've just mounted the old hand-wheel to the jack's hook-tab with a couple of small steel brackets. I can raise or lower the router to its full extent with just six or eight turns, and maintain very fine control over the bit height as well. I've done a little bit of testing, and the screw doesn't seem to shift at all under vibration from the router as it runs; if it ever does, I guess I'll have to rig some kind of clamp to the hand-wheel, which shouldn't be difficult.

All in all, I'm very pleased with the way it's turned out. It all looks a bit shonky, but it works well. Now I should replace the MDF top plate with a nice slippy piece of laminate, or maybe even a sheet of stainless steel.

Busy Busy Spiders

 

The spiders that live in our firewood storage lean-to by the carport have been very busy indeed since we used up the last of the wood some months ago.

There will be more firewood going in there in the not too distant future, but I think I'll leave them and their webs alone until then.

I really don't mind spiders at all, as long as they're not crawling unexpectedly up my arm. Or as long as they're not White Tails; I hate those disgusting little fuckers.

New Year Booty

 

Some new stuff arrived in the mail for me today.

The book is by Paul Sellers, my favourite online woodworking tutor, and it's a cracker. The information in there is probably largely available from him on Youtube or his own website if you're prepared to hunt it down, but it's nice to have it all in one place, in a format that remains readable when I don't have internet access. I do like books.

The other new arrival is a set of small HSS push-graver blades from China. They were very cheap, though I don't recall the exact price, and they'll go into the little beech mushroom handles (also cheap, also from China) that I bought for that purpose.

I've mounted one of the gravers already, and given the handle a few coats of shellac — it looks like a toffee apple.

I've never done any hand engraving before, and I strongly suspect that it's not as easy as people like Uri Tuchman make it look. However, there's no time like the present for learning a new skill, and I'm always interested in finding new ways of making intaglio plates that doesn't involve messing about with acids.

Shoe Shine Box

 

Yesterday, I went to use our shoe-cleaning stuff, and finally got fed up with the ratty old cardboard box that we've been keeping it all in for the last thirty years or so.

So I whacked together this box out of scraps of 12mm pine plywood I had lying around, and a handle cut down from an old broomstick.

The little shelf is there to rest your foot on while you're brushing away at your shoe. It's supported underneath by a fairly hefty pine bracket, so it's a lot sturdier than it looks from above. The little curved cutout in the top edge of the divider serves no real function; it's just there because I think it looks nicer than a straight line.

If I had any self-respect, I'd fill all those screw holes. Maybe in another thirty years.

New (Old) Door Handles

 

I replaced the old knob-style door handles on the door between our kitchen and lounge with these brass lever-style handles.

I wanted levers so that I could open the door with my elbow, when my hands are laden with plates or whatever.

I think, though I'm not sure, that the handles are reproduction, not genuine antique. However, they're solid brass, not plated, and if they are reproductions they're good ones.

Unfortunately, the lock-plates from the old handles had marked the varnish and wood enough that I had to scrape them away. And that means that some time soon I'm going to have to dismount the door, scrape down the whole thing, and re-varnish it.

And so goes the creep of renovation.

Press Trolley

 

I've been pottering about the last few days making this trolley for my little etching press. It's mostly plywood, though the legs are salvaged from some pine framing timber from the scrap pile. I may, eventually, stain and varnish it, when I get up the gumption to do so.

It has lockable castors on one end only; whether it will need them all round is yet to be seen.

I'll use it to store all my printing clobber as well as the press — inks, brayers, barens, mixing plates and so on. And being on wheels, I can shunt it out of the way when it's not being used, which will be a blessing. Hopefully it won't get so heavy that I have to upgrade the castors; I think these ones are only rated for about 30kg  50kg.

Plywood Block

 

I thought I would give an ordinary old scrap of 18mm pine plywood a go as a printing block. Results were mixed.

Shown here are scans of the block itself (left) and a print taken from it (right). The print has been reversed horizontally so that it matches the image on the block.

You can see dark bands running from top to bottom of the block; these are from the growth rings in the timber the plywood was made from.

The density of the wood varies quite markedly between summer and winter growth, and that causes problems when cutting from one to the other, as the gouge can unexpectedly dive deeper into the surface, or skip up out of the wood.

Also, the variable density creates variable absorbency when the ink is rolled on to the block, and it swells unevenly across its surface. The effect is miniscule, invisible to the naked eye, but you can see the results in the right-hand side of print. I was using quite a hard brayer to roll on the ink, so it was quite unforgiving of any hollows. The printing issues are exacerbated by the uneven cutting caused by the density variations too.

Apart from the issues created by the growth rings, actually cutting the pine plywood was really quite easy. It was definitely more pleasant than cutting MDF, as there was no dust, and my gouges stayed sharper for longer. For simple prints without any complex line work, I think it would probably be fine. However, for anything other than that, plywood faced with a more homogenous, fine-grained timber would be much better — cherry, for example, or pear.

New Woodcut, But Old

 

I started this woodcut quite some time ago, and the key block has been sitting around all that time (since 2017). Now I've also cut a bunch of colour blocks, and I don't think I'll be doing any more cutting, but I have to do some more playing around with the colours because these ones are pretty shite and I'm getting a little bit disheartened.

<< This is the original ballpoint pen drawing I did even longer ago, in 2012 I think.

Warm colour scheme

And this (right) is the latest colour scheme, which I like a lot better than the earlier one.

It needs a certain something, but I haven't quite figured out what.

Topical Woodblock Print

 

Colour mock-up
— will probably change a bit

Let's start from the end. This is the completed woodcut in three colours (four if you count the seal stamp). It was printed in "Flint" water-based relief inks on a registration stage, using one of my glass-bead barens.

Process

The design is drawn on to 3mm MDF in Indian ink. That orangy-yellow is just there to make it easy for me to see where I have and haven't cut the MDF away.

MDF has its pluses and minuses as a woodcut medium. It has no grain, and it's easy to cut with sharp tools. It's like very hard lino in that respect, except that you can manage finer detail than you can in lino. On the other hand, it's a bit fibrous and fragile, and it's very easy for small details to be torn away by the pressure of the gouge. Also, the silica in it is pretty hard on edges, and you need to be sharpening a lot more than you would with proper wood or lino.

The wooden handled gouges in the stand (to the right) are all very cheap, and the steel is, frankly, not great. The blue ones in the foreground I got when I was at polytech; they were more expensive, though not desperately so — I think a set cost about thirty bucks — and their steel is much better, taking and keeping a much better edge.

Here's the first test print, to see if or where any more cutting needs to be done. Overall, I'm reasonably happy with it so far.

This is not, I should note, a good print, and it's intended solely for informative purposes. It hasn't been inked up evenly, and it should have more ink on it, but inking up will get more consistent as the old ink seals the rather absorbent surface of the MDF.

Once the key block — the main detail block, usually containing all or most of the outlines — is done, the colour blocks are created by means of an offset printing process.

The blocks are all placed in exactly the same position, kept in place by the black cardboard tabs you can see surrounding it, and the key block is printed on to (in this case) a piece of clear plastic, also locked into position with masking tape. Acetate is better, as it takes the ink better and is more dimensionally stable. Paper is usable, but because it is absorbent it makes the transfer on to the other blocks less reliable.

Once the plastic is printed, key block is removed, and another block is placed into the printing position. The plastic, with its printed image, is lowered on to the new block and the ink rubbed on to its surface. I use a rubber brayer for this.

The process is repeated as many times as is necessary, and now I have a reference image on the colour blocks, exactly the same as the key block, that I can use to exactly register the cutting for each new colour.

I'll do as many blocks as I think I'll need, plus one or two more in case of fuck-ups.

In this case, I'm expecting to want two colours in addition to the key block, and I've done three colour blocks. 

Plane Repair

Stanley Part No. 12-005-8_3-1-03
Blade adjustment thumbscrew bolt

Thanks to my friend, Bob Bain, who provided the necessary bit from an old plane that was getting binned, my beloved Stanley #3 is back in action.

It's one of my favourites, being very light and handy: though too short and narrow for straightening boards, its diminutive size makes it great for getting into slight hollows, and being so small and light it's not very tiring to use.

It was the very first plane I bought myself, and it needed quite a bit of reconditioning then — it had obviously been pretty roughly handled at one time, and both handles had bits smashed out of them, which I patched.

Also, the blade adjustment screw bolt had had its threads munched up, and the brass adjustment thumb-screw itself was very stiff and difficult to use. I used it in this state for years before deciding I really should do something about it.

Stanley use a weird semi-proprietary format for this bolt: it's a left-hand 9/32" 24 TPI American unified form, for those who need to know that sort of thing. Good luck laying your hands on one of those at your local hardware shop, or a tap/die to make your own. Stanley do still sell them as a kit with the knurled brass knob, but they're not cheap, and by the time postage from the USA is taken into account, they're way too expensive. 

Fortunately, they're interchangeable between all Stanley (and Record, I believe) Bailey-pattern planes, and they're so common you're very likely to be able to pick up a junker second-hand for less than the price of the bolt/screw kit and cannibalize its parts. Which is essentially what I did, except that Bob provided the bits for free. Good man.

For what it's worth, I got the new (old) screw out of its housing by cutting a slot in its end with a hacksaw and just unscrewing it with a screwdriver. You could probably do it by grabbing it with vice-grips or something, with some kind of padding on the jaws, but I didn't want to risk damaging the threads.

Box

320 x 260 x 160 mm

I made a box for keeping some gaming stuff in out of some bits of scrap pine tongue & groove and a couple of bits of 4mm plywood.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. It's more of a utility box than a piece of heirloom furniture, but it will do the job I want it to do without looking too much like an old beer crate or something.

I used a piano hinge for this box. I'd bought the hinge quite some time ago for another project; I don't even remember what any more, but whatever it was, I didn't use it then.

It should make for a good, long-lasting lid that can take a bit of abuse. Not that abuse is very likely, but you never know.

[NOTE]....... I ended up using the box for my relief printing stuff (inks, brayers, baren, palette knife etc.) instead of gaming doo-dads. So I suppose I'll have to make another one.

Bath View

 

Sketchbook

Here are some bits and pieces from one of my most recent sketchbooks.

I like to write little notes to myself, aides-memoire, about new tools or media or whatever, and my impressions of them.

I also write quite a lot of absolute bullshit.

Brush, fibre and ball-point pens

Parker ball-point

6B graphite pencil

Ball-point birds (mostly)

Another Dresser

 

On to the next project, another dresser restoration.

I've stripped the old varnish off the cupboard door on the right, and the little top curved-faced drawer, and given them a coat of finishing oil. It brings up the colour of the rosewood veneer beautifully, and the whole thing will look pretty luscious, I think, when it's all done. The old varnish is pretty faded and stained, so good riddance to it.

It's going to be a bit trickier than the last restoration though, as there are quite a few fragments of veneer missing, and I'm not sure where to go for replacement stuff. The handles will need attention too; there's only one of the drawer handles that hasn't been broken in the lifetime of this piece, and there's absolutely no chance of being able to buy exact replacements. I'll probably have to make something.

The mirror from this dresser has been transferred to the one I just finished. Whether it gets transferred back again is an issue for a future time.

Recent Productivity

 

I inherited this old rimu duchess from my friend Sarah. It had had a pretty hard life; the old finish was pretty beaten up, and there were quite a few stains and things that penetrated quite deeply into the wood, but the fundamental structure is still sound. I stripped it down with card scrapers and re-stained it dark to hide as much of the crap as possible, and I replaced the old handles with these ones that I found in amongst my clutter. They're nothing fancy, but I think they suit the form of the thing quite well.

I also scraped down this little side table, also rimu, that Annette found. She has plans for it, I don't know precisely what, so this is as far as I will take it, and the rest is up to her.

I put together this cradle for my Makita electric planer, so that I could lock it into the vice and use it after the fashion of a jointer. It's too small for real accuracy in that respect, but with the addition of a fence I'll be able to use it to get board edges square and that sort of thing. I've used it very seldom, so maybe this will make it a bit more useful.

Planes in Order

 

I've finally got around to organising a permanent home for my planes, in an old filing cabinet at the end of my workbench.

Most of them are sitting on some soft squishy foam tiles in the bottom of the drawer, and there's a plywood sliding till above the #6 and #7 holding my beech rebate plane and a couple of little block planes. I use te #6 and #7 very infrequently, so the till is unlikely to be much of an impediment.

I still have to find a proper home for my #78 rebate and my #45 plough planes — I'll probably end up putting them (and a bunch of other special-purpose tools) in the bottom drawer of the cabinet, which at the moment is full of circular saws.

It's not the perfect position for the cabinet; if I leave the drawer open for easy access, shavings from anything held in the vice will fall straight into it, and when the drawer is fully extended it interferes with turning the vice handle. However, that last is something I can probably address.

I really want a bigger workshop.

Graphite Stick Holder Thingummy

 

I'm a sucker for new tools. This one is a mechanical pencil for holding big, fat, greasy, black graphite sticks (or charcoal, or sanguine, or whatever). It came with a raw wood barrel; I gave it a few coats of shellac so that my finger-grease won't make it look too disgusting too fast.

I have another one somewhere that I bought decades ago, but exactly where it is I'm not sure. I was using it as a scraper/burnisher holder for doing mezzotints, but it's not with my printmaking stuff — no doubt I've put it somewhere very safe.