New bowlette

 

This small bowl (roughly 110 mm in diameter) is something I turned from a slab of some mystery wood.

Whatever it is, it's not all that easy to turn. It's very soft and clingy, and it tears out very easily. However, it does have good colour, and a nice chatoyance  once it's waxed and polished — it's not terribly visible in the photograph, as it's much more apparent when it moves under the light.

I have three more blanks the same size, so I expect they'll also turn into little bowls over time. 

 Next day....

Mystery Wood Bowl #2 — I did this one with a straight conical exterior and a curved dished interior. Again, it's about 110 - 120 mm in diameter. 

 Mystery Wood Bowl #3 — this time in the form of a flared cylinder, like a child's porridge bowl.

 A few days later

And finally, the last of the blanks from that particular piece of wood.  This one is a bowl-shaped bowl, with a fairly tall foot.

It could have done with a bit more sanding of the interior — the lines from the coarse paper are still fairly apparent.  Maybe one day I'll slap it back on the lathe and take care of that, but probably not unless it ends up going to somebody else.

Accidental Art

 

Look! ART! 

Actually this is just a bit of cardboard I used to spray paint various things on.

I like the way the layers build up on things like this; I have a calico cover that was stripped off one of the screen-printing tables at polytech when the tables were being renewed that is covered in little (and not so little) images and patterns from several years of student printing. I wonder where it is these days? Somewhere safe, no doubt.

Workroom Floor

 

The floor of my work room is just coarse-grain particle board, which is notoriously terrible to get wet.

There was a patch that had been left unpainted — probably because there was something standing there when I originally painted the floor. I thought, since I was doing nothing else, that I might as well slap a bit of paint on it to seal it.

I may have got a bit carried away with the test-pots. 

 2026-06-03

And so it grows. 

I've pretty much reached the limit of how far I can doodle without a major moving of furniture, so this is probably about as far as it will go. 

Sorby Re-Handle

 

I've re-handled this old Sorby mortise chisel that has been reground as a square-end scraper. Sorby make good quality chisels, but this was never intended for woodturning. 

The chisel was originally designed to be pounded on, with the handle being driven into its socket, and the tenon is fairly puny. That means that I can only use it for light-duty scraping, as any catch would probably just snap it.

Ideally, I should get a proper long tang welded into that socket to make it reliably strong enough for woodturning.

Awl

 

This morning I made this little four-sided awl out of a tiny scrap of something, red gum maybe, and a 4mm Allen key.

 

The tiny scrap was actually a bit too tiny; it made turning it trickier than it otherwise would have. However, it got done.

 

Awls are handy things.

Wood Chopping

 

We had the ash at the end of our driveway severely pruned a few days ago -- it had some dead or dying limbs -- and so today I've started splitting the remains. The larger trunk rounds take a bit of work with the log-splitter, but it's all pretty straight-grained, and the medium to small bits split fairly easily.

It'll take a while before it's dry enough to burn cleanly, but it should be ready by next winter. Plus, I have no doubt a few bits will end up on the lathe.

I'm coming up on half way through, and how much more I'll do today I don't know. We've got a dry firewood top-up arriving this afternoon, so I'll have to reserve enough energy to get that cleared off the driveway ASAP.

Red Sky

 

This is a smallish (450 x 300 mm) oil that I began without any clear idea where I was going, except to repeat a composition I'd done in acrylics and oil pastels quite a few years ago.

Now I've stalled on it. I feel that it needs something more, but what that is I don't really know. 

I'll put it aside for a year or tow, and perhaps revisit it then. Or maybe not. 

New Old #4 Plane

 

My friend Bob gave me an old Stanley #4 smoothing plane to revive.

I do have another #4, but it's some Aussie brand that I've never heard of, and though it's not terrible, it's not great either.

 I spent a few hours to bring the Stanley back to life, and here it is, all clean and rust-free and sharp, and with freshly refinished woodwork.

It will doubtless need a wee bit more tuning as I use it, but it's already working well. I can foresee it becoming something of a workhorse. 

Hallway Buddha Flowers

 

New Old Car

 

My trusty, but increasingly creaky old '96 Pulsar was stolen last week. There has been not a peep from the cops, which to be honest I'm not at all surprised by.

Now I have replaced it with a less old, but still fairly old car: a 2006 Nissan Wingroad wagon, from Turner's Cars. This was a buy-and-drive-away deal; I didn't go through the auction process, although if I could have been bothered with all that hassle it would probably have been a bit cheaper. Not to worry though, at least it didn't completely wipe out every last bean of my savings, which is what I was expecting.

Although I did love my old Pulsar, and I wouldn't have willingly parted with it, I think this car is definitely an upgrade. It's a decent bit more powerful, and there are fewer things broken on it, like the air conditioning for example. Plus, it's modern enough that I only have to get it warranted every twelve months instead of six. And being a wagon, there's oodles of space in the back when the seats are dropped down, and it has a tow-bar too (though I've never towed a trailer in my life and couldn't back one to save myself). No spare wheel though, which is apparently common with more recent vehicles, but it does make me a little bit uncomfortable. I guess I'll have to invest in one of those squirty-foam things for emergencies.

Turns out it does have a spare wheel after all, just cunningly hidden away in a disguised cavity in the back. So, hoorah. 

I do miss my old sound system though. This one has a tuner / CD player, which sounds pretty good and which does read MP3 files off the CD, but commercial radio is almost all utter shite and a CD is only about 800MB, a far cry from the 64GB shuffling of music I'm accustomed to. On the plus side, I'd kind of lost the habit of listening to a whole album all at once, and it turns out that's actually kind of a good way of listening to music.

Portable Jigsaw Table

 

Fairly often, I have a need to cut small pieces of copper or brass for various projects. I could cut them with a hacksaw, but that's a slow, arduous and boring process.

Instead of that, I use an old jigsaw with a metal-cutting blade. This DeWalt I've had for quite a few years, but it seldom gets used any more for woodwork because I have a cordless Ryobi that is much more convenient for that. 

While it's possible to use the jigsaw in the usual way on metal, for the small pieces I'm concerned with, I find I get much better control and accuracy if I guide the metal through the blade, rather than steering the whole tool over the metal. So to that end I've mounted the jigsaw on a little MDF table, which I can secure in the vise, with the blade poking through, and  manoeuvre the metal more or less as I please.

This system isn't all that well suited to making steep curving cuts because of the width of the blade, but straight lines and gentle curves are easy enough to do accurately. 

The metal does get hot with the friction of the saw, so finger protection is necessary. Reasonably close-fitting gloves are a must, so that they don't get in the way of my eye-line when I'm following a mark on the metal. 

Yet Another Box

 

Here's another box, made from salvaged rimu. The body of the box is 300 x 180 x 120 mm, and the lid overhangs that by 10mm all round. Inside it has a squishy cushioned insert on the bottom; that's not fixed, so it can be removed at will.

I'm not sure what timber the splines are — some kind of tropical hardwood is as much as I can guess. 

The copper plaques are the ones I used the Press-n-Peel PCB masking film on, and I'm pretty happy with the way that stuff performed — I'll definitely be using it in the future.

The dedication plaque on the front is a first for me, again etched via the P-n-P film. I wish I'd known about this stuff before. 

Iron-on PCB Etching Film

 

For the first time, I'm trying out some iron-on-peel-off PCB film for etching copper plaques.

As with any new thing, there are hiccups -- sorting out how to get it through my laser printer without jamming, for a start. And also, I forgot to reverse the text, so I'll have to do that one over.

Apart from those issues though, it looks like a useful tool. Now I just have to research how to get it off after the etching is finished.

Note: Acetone. Acetone whips it off easy-peasy. 

Rimu Tray Bowl Thing

 

Small rimu tray, 120mm diameter, intended for keeping gaming chits and things under control.

I didn't realise when I picked out the scrap of wood that it had been jointed, but as it turned out I quite like the way the seam shows up across the face of the tray. 

 

Painting

 

Acrylic on stretched canvas, 500 x 500 mm.

Just messing about with shapes and colours.

Knife Rebuild - again

Here's yet another knife rebuild.

When these old casein knife handles get too cracked and warped from our abuse and lack of care, I'll break off the old handle and give it a new one, usually wood, and I'll generally regrind the shape of the blade and sharpen it too.

I don't know for sure what timber this knife handle is, but it works easily and takes a nice polish. It looks like some kind of tropical hardwood.

Dojo Rock Plinth

 

I've spent the last couple of days putting together this low plinth for a rock at our dojo.

The timber is most likely rimu, though I'm not 100% sure about that — it's cut down from some old demolition beams I got a few years ago. Here it's seen getting the first of several coats of oil.

 

And here we have the rock in place, on a bed of river pebbles.

It's a bit nicer than the ratty old bit of black-painted MDF we had it sitting on before. 

Wood Stackin' Time Again

Nearly full

Empty

---

Wood nook: empty and (nearly) full.One more layer to go here, and then I move on to the next firewood stacking space.

There is so much wood left to stack. And the day is set to be very hot and sunny. Woe is me.

This load of wood is very green and wet, which I wouldn't mind at this time of year since it will have six months or so to dry out, but I didn't pay for green wood. I shall have to see if some accommodation can be made. 

Ripple Plate

 

Here's another piece, turned from timber out of the scrap pile. The plate is about 200mm in diameter.

 It has a bead, or step, around the rim, and another in from the rim, just before the ripples start.

Once again, this is stained pine, but this time it's untreated timber, so it could conceivably be used for food. The rippled surface would make eating from it inconvenient though. 

Scrap Pine Bowl

Yet another little bowl, 125mm diameter by 70mm tall.

This is turned from an offcut of a treated pine fence post, which explains its horrible knottiness. Stained with Feast-Watson walnut spirit stain, my favourite, and polished with my own home-made paste wax.

It won't hold liquid, owing to the nasty knot-holes in one side, but even if it did, the H3 treatment would make bringing it into contact with food highly undesirable.

Quiz Trophy Chalice

 

This is a chalice I made for A, as a trophy for her weekly work quiz competition.

It's designed to be sturdy rather than delicate, as the last (oak) one got busted in the violent hurley-burley of office life.

This one is just scrap pine, stained and waxed, and I think it doesn't look too shabby. It's about 170mm tall.

Bamboo Platters

 

These two little platters were turned from off-cuts of a laminated bamboo cutting board that I had cut down to a more manageable size. They're about 120mm in diameter, and 20mm thick.

Bamboo works very nicely, and it takes a good finish too. These have both just been sanded to 240 grit with no other finish applied, and they've come up to a nice smooth satin polish. 

Little Pot

 

I don't know for sure what this wood is.

It's demolition timber, and probably a floor or ceiling joist, so possibly rimu but more likely, around here, black maire.

It's 70mm tall. 

Peonies

 

Peonies by our hallway Buddha.

They blow themselves up and up and up, and then one day, you walk near them and all their petals just fall off at once.

Sapele Gouge Rack

 

I have a few very small Hwahong linocut gouges that I like to use, and their slightly bulbous forms don't fit in any of my other gouge racks.

So I got a sapele off-cut out of the rubbish pile, cut it up and whacked it on the lathe. 

It's in four bits: the top and bottom discs, the pillar, and the finial, all glued together. 

Nosey

 

This is my latest linocut, printed on Hosho Select washi in Flint water-based ink.

I ran the brayer down the edges of the plate just to give the image a visual boundary. 

Chit Bowls

 

When I have ten minutes or so to spare, I'll knock out another one of these little pine bowls -- they're all roughly 70mm-ish in diameter. There are another four or five blanks left from the bit of 3x2, so that's how many there will eventually be.

When we're playing board games, very often there are lots of little piles of chits or pieces that could do with being ordered and restrained from scattering all over the place. That's what these are intended for.

Each one is different from all the others, because production-line manufacture of identical pieces bores me rigid.

Focus Stacking

 

Something I've just tried out for the first time is focus stacking in Affinity Photo.

This is a process that is used a lot in macro photography, as the focal plane tends to be very shallow, both because the lens is very close to the subject, and also to keep exposures manageable.

The way it works is by taking several photos, with the focus set to a different point on the subject for each one.

Affinity Photo automates the process almost entirely. It's not exactly idiot-proof, but it's pretty easy. And it also provides tools for fixing errors that may arise due to subject movement or what-not.

This is a plastic Reaper Remorrhaz, photographed with a Canon EOS 50D and 28-135mm macro lens.

Below are the three source images I used, focused on the front, middle and back of the model. To the right is the image  combined in Affinity Photo.

 In retrospect, this was not the ideal model to try this out on. The metallic finish makes finding crisp focus more difficult than it might otherwise be, and my eyes are not as precise these days as they... well, they never really were.

Juggler Mime

 

This little canvas (about 150mm square) I painted quite a few years ago, mainly because A wanted something in these colours for her office, but also to try out a craquelure medium I'd bought.

Acrylics on pre-stretched canvas .

Lyttelton Coffee Company

 

Some photos taken while waiting for my Sunday coffee and muffin to arrive.

Firewood Mountain

 

I picked this lump of wood out of the firewood stash, and thought it looked just like one of the limestone mountains you see in some Chinese ink paintings.

Conical Bowl

Stuff I Made Today: a conical ebonized oak bowl. It's about 180mm in diameter and 80mm tall. It sits on a fairly small foot, but there's a fair mass of oak down low in the base so it should be reasonably stable.

 

Lathe Doodling Again

This little oak pot is about 100mm in diameter, and about 70mm tall.

Only barely visible in this photo, the bit of oak is just beginning to spalt — it's more visible under the base.

Ancient Work

 

I did this years ago, 2006, in crappy hard crumbly old brown lino.

I thought that was all that lino was, and couldn't understand why people seemed to like working with it. I thought it was horrible stuff. These days I use grey marmoleum, and it's a thousand times better.

Image are is about 150mm square. Printed in black oil-based ink, brand unknown, on newsprint.