On the principle that there can never be too many spoons, I made another spoon, out of a bit of rimu this time.
It's quite a long spoon at 420mm, but probably still not long enough to safely sup with the devil. However, my experience in that area is pretty limited.
It's the essence of doodling.
It's about 170mm long and 70mm wide.
One of these days I must get around to making myself a round-ended scraper for smoothing out the bowls of things like this. But it is not this day.
I turned this little oak handle from a scrap fished out of the rubbish for no particular reason but to experiment with using some 15mm copper tube as a ferrule. It works pretty well for small pieces like this.
I might find a use for it some day, but it would be no good as a general purpose chisel handle or the like — the piece of oak has some pretty serious checking going on, so it probably wouldn't survive much mallet work. It might be okay for a paring chisel that wouldn't get much walloping. I don't have a suitable blade right now, but you never know what might turn up.
It's about 140mm long.
I put a chainsaw file in it.
Maybe it would have been a better idea to get a file that fits my actual chainsaw blade, but I'm not one to truckle to The Man like that.
Today I made myself a square awl from an old drill bit (4.4mm, probably some weird archaic Imperial size*), a bit of 9mm brass tube, and a bit of white oak.
I planed a facet on its base so that it will stand upright, as seen here, and another on one side so that it will rest on the workbench without rolling around.
The whole thing is about 110mm long.
I might sharpen it with a more acute point, but I'll see how it goes as it is for a while first.
* I'm told that 4.4mm is a #16 drill bit.
I did this mainly as an experiment in deep hollowing, and though it's not totally successful, it has shown me several things that I needed to know.
I don't know how food-safe or water-tight this would be, but that's not likely to be much of an issue.
The goblet is 160mm tall, and 70mm in diameter.
Walking home from the Richmond Working Mens Club after a pint of beer and a few games of pool, and we were treated to this as a dusk sky.
This is another bell jar base. I'm not sure what the timber is; I think it might be black maire.
If the first oak base was teetering on the edge of the envelope for my little lathe, this one is definitely over it. It can be done, but the vibration when spinning something this heavy is slightly terrifying.
If I ever win Lotto, I'll probably buy myself a bigger, meatier lathe. And also a new workshop to put it in.
And here we are with the bell jar in place.
The monkey is a very old, fragile doll that belonged (I think) to my great great grandmother. It's Victorian, though I don't know precisely how old it is.
They came without bases of any kind, so today I turned one out of some laminated oak.
This is about the largest diameter my little lathe will handle, both because of the distance between the head and the bed of the lathe, and because the lathe's motor is pretty puny. The turned oak base is about 230mm in diameter, and roughly 40mm thick.
For that reason, I made this little footstool out of some very raggedy bits of gnarly, knotty oak off-cuts.
It's about 300mm (12") tall, so not too high to easily step up on to, but high enough to get me within reach of the top shelves in the kitchen.
It's pictured here on the hearth, in the warm, so that its coat of linseed oil will cure within my lifetime. The weather is starting to cool down a bit now, and out in my workshop the oil would probably take about three days to go off.
I really should do something about cleaning up that hearth a bit too.
I turned this little plinth from a piece of cherry that I chopped off one of our trees in the back yard, and stained and waxed it.
While the timber was drying out it became infested with borer, so it's not a great piece of wood, but I was interested to see how this cherry would respond to my manipulations. I rather like it; it looks rather like a piece of lignum vitae I once had.
I edited the video down from its original 250 megabyte size using Windows 10's internal video editor, which was pretty simple to use for my very basic requirements. Unfortunately I couldn't find any way to crop the frame, so all the background clutter on the photo stage is still in shot. Blogger's video handling is pretty basic.
Up until now I've been using them in a graphite-stick holder, but I thought I might as well get on to making some permanent handles for them.
The scraper is the first out of the gate. I turned the handle out of a bit of beech dowel; it was once a broom handle I think.
This one is a burnisher, for polishing the scraped copper. The smoother the metal, the less ink it holds, and the whiter the resulting tone in the print.
Another burnisher, with a curved blade (that needs a bit of polishing, by the look of it). This time the handle is ash.
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I ordered this mortise gauge maybe a month or so ago, and it just arrived. I got it via AliExpress from https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003389703825.html and it was pretty cheap; about thirty bucks including postage.
It's well made with no slop in the bars. The circular blades need a bit of sharpening, but that's easily done. The bars are graduated, though I think that's likely to be of limited use as the fence has a cut-out to house the blades, which means that the graduations will only ever be an estimate as there's no hard-cut-off to read them against.
The blades don't roll on their shafts, so the blades act just like a normal knife.
It's a decent enough piece of kit, but I don't like it as much as my traditional pointy beech mortise gauge. The lines left by the rollers aren't as definite or easy to see as those left by scratch-points or blades.
It is oak, coloured with a walnut spirit stain. It's had its first coat of oil, and it will need a couple more and then some wax to finish.
I could do with some better tape for the sageo (the binding around the scabbard). The stuff I've used is just flat lanyard tape, and it's okay, but it's a bit narrow. I could do with something about half an inch wide, and neither too flimsy (like ribbon) nor too stiff (like nylon webbing). The genuine silk article from Japan is fairly pricey, and I'm not keen enough to spend that much money.
I reshaped the tip of my el-cheapo iaito to give it a more curved profile, rather than the fairly angular pointy-stabby tip it had before, as can be seen in the shot of the sword on the bricks.
It could probably do with a bit more polishing, which I might get around to one of these days. But the blade is just stainless steel (440 I think) so there's not much point in getting too precious about it.
These ones have a much thicker nib than I'm accustomed to though, and I'm not sure I like them.
Still, they were cheap.
This quickie sketch is about A5 (210 mm tall).
It's very fine toothed (42 teeth per inch) and with a very thin plate. It would be quite impossible to resharpen, I should think.
I don't recall how much it cost, but it was not expensive.
They're perfectly functional, but they do have several issues: the jaw pads were never much good, and have all fallen off and been lost. I've replaced the screw-jaw pad with bits of plywood, and I'll have to do something similar with the fixed jaw as well.
The main thing that dissuades me from using them is the handles, which are both thin and smooth. They're difficult to get a good grip on, especially for me now that my hands are becoming more decrepit.
I've modified them by planing the grips down square(ish) and glueing ribs of scrap wood to the facets. Just making the handles square would be a great improvement, but adding the ribs increases the diameter of the handle as well, which will make them easier to turn.
The amount of work required to make these clamps usable means that even though they're cheap to buy, they're really not cost-effective. Still, since I've got them, I might as well be able to make use of them.
Some day, hopefully, I'll be able to sort out a pair of hand-screws to provide the clamping force instead of the bar clamps. The clamps do a decent job, but they're more awkward to manipulate.
A Moxon vise is excellent for furniture making, as there's no obstruction to the work piece in the middle of the vise, allowing it to accommodate quite long bits of timber vertically for dovetailing and the like. Also, because the front face is more or less free-floating, it can clamp as evenly on tapered stock as on straight, and there's no risk of racking the jaws. This one has a gap between the clamp bars of about 600mm, which is quite a lot for my purposes.
This is a portable version, and it's just attached to the bench by a pair of clamps on tabs extending out the ends of the rear jaw. I'd normally mount the clamps with the handles downward, to keep them out of the way, but it is easier to mount them as shown here. If need be, I guess I could use a pair of long carriage bolts with hand-screws, for the lowest-profile attachment: it would be easy enough to arrange, since it's unlikely to be mounted anywhere but where it is right now.
The back jaw has a sturdy brace out the back to resist force pushing against the vise; it's probably not necessary, but it makes me feel happier.
The woodwork of the vise is essentially complete, and I've given all the non-meeting faces a few coats of shellac.
The photo demonstrates how it holds a tapered work piece; this would be about its limit in that respect while it's being held together with clamps. A proper screw system could probably manage a little more.
The threaded rods, when I get around to mounting them, need to be able to move a bit laterally to enable this tapered-thing-holding, but not vertically, so that they hold the jaws in the right position relative to each others' top edges. I have some ideas about how that might be able to be managed.
I think the holes in the wooden jaws through which the screws pass will need some sort of bushing, as otherwise the screws will chew the crap out of them.
The inside is lined with cedar, and in the bottom is black suede leather.
Dimensions are 240 x 135 x 70 mm.
What I'm going to keep in it I have no idea, but no doubt something will arise.
It's made out of really terrible cheap 7mm and 9mm plywood that had become badly water-stained at some point, so I decided to paint it rather than staining it as I normally would.
It's large enough for A4 paper in the bottom, and its external dimensions are 345 x 255 x 90 mm.
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| Inside |
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| Inside the inside |
I included a partitioned tray, about 30mm deep.
The floors are all lined with self-adhesive 1mm thick foam. I had no pieces large enough to cover the whole floor of the box, so I cobbled it together out of pieces of whatever colours I had available.
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| Black & Decker BES720-XE |
My terrible old Ryobi table saw shat itself fatally a few weeks ago, so today I replaced it with this — an 1800w Black & Decker from Mitre10 for a measly $299. (That's all my spending money for the next couple of weeks, but still pretty cheap for a tool like this).
Black & Decker have not really had a very good reputation over the last few decades, but the reviews on this saw are pretty good (for its place in the table saw hierarchy) and the B&D router I got for my birthday more than 20 years ago has run without issue, so maybe the sneers and jibes were all just snobbishness. I dunno.
It has no bells, nor any whistles, but it has good fences and a good cast bed, and it cuts in a straight line. The rip-fence gauge is pretty accurate, according to my initial tests: not sub-millimetre accurate, but certainly good enough for my needs. It has a much deeper bed than the Ryobi did, which will be helpful for getting the initial cut aligned.
The angling of the blade has no screw adjustment; you just have to push it over to the angle you want and lock it off. That will make cutting at precise angles a bit trickier. Also, the mitre sled's reported angle is unreliable, and will need to be set manually with a square or protractor, but to be fair I've almost never encountered a mitre sled that is properly accurate. I have a mitre saw for that sort of thing in any case.
It is much, much better than the saw it replaces, which was never much better than a hand-held circular saw.
It comes with a dust bag that sticks out the back, or you can use a vacuum on the dust ejection port, but I used some 40mm PVC waste pipe and connectors to redirect it into a plastic bin that sits underneath the saw on the trolly I made for my last one. It doesn't capture all of the dust, but certainly takes care of most of it.
The saw blade will not set to 45°, the closest it will come is 46°. I think there is sufficient travel on the bearers to get that crucial last degree, but the dust collection shroud appears to be coming up against the shell of the machine somewhere.
I may be able to ameliorate the issue with a bit of surgery, but this is a major failing of quality control.
I may not be able to get the blade to 45°, but I can get it to 90°. So I whipped up this mitre sled out of scraps of MDF.
It works okay, though it's one more jig I'll have to find somewhere to store.
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| Mitre cut successfully |
As it turns out, the backing board on the sled is more of a nuisance than anything, but I can't be bothered disassembling it to take it off now.
After poking around in the guts of the machine, I think I've identified the block point that is preventing the blade tilting right over to 45°. Unfortunately, I can't come at it to try some surgery without disassembling pretty much the whole thing, so there's no easy fix.
I don't know if this is a design flaw integral to the model in general, or whether I just got a lemon. I've contacted Black & Decker NZ about it, but whether anything concrete will come of that I have no idea. I guess for the moment I'll just have to wait and see.
I mounted it on a wooden base a while ago, and now I've shellacked it so it's all smooth and shiny.
I added a wire thread guide to the spool stand — at the moment it's just held in place with superglue, and at some stage it will probably need some support at its base to keep it from twisting. Maybe not though; it's not as if it's ever under much strain.
I added a base to the small spool stand; just a nut and washer, again stuck in place with superglue. Without those, the cotton spool would just fall wonkily on to the cast frame, and would not turn freely as the thread is drawn out.
Finally (so far) I replaced the fairly terrible little plastic crank handle with a more substantial one that I turned down from a scrap of pine. Hopefully that should make turning the crank a bit easier.
The manufacturing quality of these machines is not high, but it does work. No doubt there's a lot more fettling that could be done, but we shall just have to see.
It's made from a good heavy canvas, with shoulder pads and a crossover at the back, so there's no pressure on the neck at all and it's very comfortable to wear. The stitching and everything seems, at first sight, to be good and sturdy, and I think it should see me out.
It has a bunch of pockets and a couple of hammer-loops. It could do with a 300mm ruler pocket, and I might add one if the need becomes pressing: it would be easy enough to do. There's a narrow little pocket on the chest (there's a pencil in it in the photo) that is a good size for a 150mm steel rule though, which may be enough. The larger chest pocket has a retainer strap with a couple of snap-clips, which would be good for keeping your phone in so it doesn't fall out and smash itself to smithereens.
I don't think, being canvas, that it would be a permanent replacement for a proper leather apron for welding. It would do the job in a pinch, but it's likely that hot embers could burn their way right through if left unnoticed.
I got it from TradeTested, and with postage it cost me about $90.
In this picture it's just propped up on the end of a shinai, to hold it in place for fitting. I discover that I have not taken into account a notch in the lower shelf to accommodate the paneling batten, and I also need to make and inset a couple of hanging plates on the back of the stretcher. And looking at it now, I think it could do with some titivating of the leading edges of the uprights... maybe a relief bevel on the outside edges or something, though being at this stage of assembly I've made that sort of thing a lot more difficult for myself.
Also, before I finalize everything, I should probably make sure that it's not going to catch people in the back of the head, who are sitting on the sofa immediately below — if so, they'll probably have to go on the other side of the room. The shelves, that is, not the people.
Hopefully, having worked out all the quirks on this first one, the second should go more smoothly.
As I suspected, it hangs a bit low over the sofa for head safety. It could go right up above the dado, but that's lath & plaster under there, and trying to find studs to hang it from would be a nightmare and would inevitably leave so many holes the wall would look like the site of a machine-gun massacre.
I'll just put it on the other side of the room, over the telly.
This is a digital chalk drawing I did in 2009 in Krita.
I like the idea, in my AD&D campaign, of the darkness of the Underdark being an almost sentient thing that resents the intrusion of light-bearers into its domain.The picture was published in Knockspell, S&W fan-mag of lamented memory.
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| Fancy-schmancy thumb rests at the back |
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| Oak, all oak. Except the steel bits. |
This is a more compact tool than the first two, and probably the last one I'll make (for a while, anyway). I have the hardware for three routers, and three routers are what I've made.
I wouldn't have thought I'd ever say this, but I think I now have more routers than I really need.
Another couple of knobs for another router plane, turned from oak this time.
I just cannot turn consistent, repeatable shapes to save my life. Fortunately, for this particular project it doesn't really matter that much. If it did, I think I'd have to make a couple of profile scrapers to get myself into the ballpark, and then finish them off with a shameful amount of sandpaper.
For what it's worth, the one on the right is the shape I actually wanted, and it was the first one I turned. The other one is its hideous misshapen sibling that is kept in the basement chained to a radiator.
I've made some changes with this one after the experience of the first, the main being that I've lowered the cutter angle to 40° instead of 50° — as a result, it cuts much more easily than Router #01.
To accommodate the lower blade angle, I've let the superstructure down into the body of the plane by about 7mm, to keep the blade tip at a manageable distance. With my elongated hole, I've got plenty of room to see what's going on down in there.
I've made this one out of some Southland red beech. It's not as dense or close-grained as English beech, but it is a very nice timber to work.
At the moment I've only got one set of knurled elevated nuts to hold everything together, so I can't use Router #02 and Router #01 simultaneously. Hopefully I'll be able to get another set fairly shortly.
I've finished building a new router plane, following along with the instructions on a couple of videos by Paul Sellers: Part one, and part two on Youtube.
Yesterday I finished shaping a pair of cutters with the help of my friend Nick Turner. I had to leave his workshop early, so he offered to take care of heat-treating them, and will drop them off here sometime. Then I can give them their final sharpening and try the whole thing out.
I don't really need another router plane, but I like the idea of using tools that I can make myself. And I also like the idea of sticking it to the bottom-feeding speculators who have driven the price of second-hand router planes sky-high over the last few years.
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| Knobs turned from beech |
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| Knobs stained and polished, oak baseplate begun |
That excellent Mister Bain has given me a bunch of router plane bits, sufficient to put together one complete one, using one of my Veritas cutters.
As well as this, there are another two baseplates (another Marples and a Record 071), and another collar and thumbscrew. I seem to recall that the thread for the post and thumb-nut on these things tends to be some weird archaic type, but parts are still available for them if I want to build up another one.
I've tidied it up a bit. It didn't need a whole lot of work: mainly scrubbing everything down with steel wool, respraying the baseplate, and stripping down and repolishing the handles.
I'll hunt out a bit of ash or something and resaw it down to 10-12mm for a base. Wood-on-wood works better than steel-on-wood; it slides better, and it doesn't leave nasty black marks on the work.
At the moment it has a 5mm Veritas cutter in it; that's a bit narrow for day-to-day work, and I might see if I can rustle up a 10mm blade. It's not a high priority though.
We've been getting this nasty black scale on our little lemon tree for a while now, and I am informed by the Garden Centre Lady that it is caused by some little bastards of insects doing their bastardly little insect thing.
She sold us some oily goop to spray on it, on top and bottom of the leaves, to put a stop to their shenanigans. Hopefully that will mean the tree will start producing a decent amount of decently-sized fruit again, rather than the few rather pathetic specimens it's making right now. I might have to set up some sort of drip-watering system for it though; I don't think it's getting enough water in the fairly sheltered spot it's in.
I like lemons, and I use them a lot. It would be good to be able to get back to using our own rather than buying them from Australia.
The long one is an Archimedes Screwdriver, something I've long wanted. It rotates by pressure on the helical lands you can see in the shaft, against spring tension that keeps it extended. It can be latched closed so it doesn't take up so much room in the toolbag. It takes interchangeable heads, though it came with only one, and finding more these days might be a bit difficult. It's in very good condition apart from the finish on the handle; its obviously been kept well lubricated and not been used as a hammer.
They've been largely superseded these days by electric drill-drivers.
The smaller one is a little screw-awl, excellent for creating the tapering holes you want for old-style wood screws. It has a nice boxwood handle.
The two of them together cost me about $25, so a steal really.
This was a painting I did back in 2004 for a CD cover for my friend Peter Gatonyi's band, Blue Folk Revival. Or maybe the CD was called Blue Folk Revival. I don't remember.
Anyway, I just found some photos I took of it at the time on the fairly shitty digital camera I had at the time.
If I recall correctly, it was about 800-900mm square. Acrylic on unstretched canvas.
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.