Woodworking

8/11/2007 - It's been a while since I've updated anything here. I've been extremely busy getting a new data center up and running for work the past few months. It's been fun, but it's sure cut into my family & shop time. I haven't been completely avoiding the shop, though. I've made a few bowls and pens, but a lot of my time out there has been spent getting the walls taped, building a bench, and starting work at some rudimentary tool storage other than the top of every machine with a flat table.

I have also made a couple knives. The first was from knifekits.com, and was a small 3 blade jackknife for my dad, who had lost his. I didn't take any pictures of it. The cocobolo handles turned out great, but I was less than happy with the kit. The back springs for it were not even remotely close to the shape they needed to be, and were so stiff that even after a lot of workout, the knife still almost requires a vice grip to open it. The finger grooves were also a bit poorly thought out. Some of them were well within the handle of the knife once the blade was closed and were pretty much impossible to get at, and some of them were cut on the wrong side of the blade. It's almost like they had recently modified the design of the knife and had sent me parts from two different versions. I'm not sure if he's using it, but I'd be surprised if he is. It looks nice enough, but with all the problems its pretty much unusable.

Even with the problems with the jackknife, I found that I really enjoyed making it. After using files, planes, and chisels to roughly shape the handle, I started up with my 2" disk sanding system that I use for bowls. With 80 grit paper on it, you can really quickly shape complex surfaces, even in hard exotics. If you have any need for that type of thing, I get my stuff from TurningWood.com. His prices are great, and all the claims about how good his merchandise was turned out to be pretty accurate. Heat isn't an issue (the velcro doesn't melt off), and they really do last much better than most other brands I've used, at least the cheaper ones.

Anyways, I really had fun making the first one, but I was a bit hesitant to order from knifekits again right away, so I tried out Ebay. It turns out there some guys out there making 440c Stainless knife blanks for pretty reasonable prices. I bought a "Raptor" skinner blade for just over $10 shipped, and decided to try it out. I had a really pretty piece of canarywood to use for the handle. It had all sorts of pink striping to it. Being a non-folding knife with a full tang, this was a very simple kit, but overall, I was very happy with the level of finish on it. The knifekit.com kit had lots of spots where the steel was pretty much fresh from forging. While I didn't at all mind cleaning it up, there were spots where the knife would no longer fit together properly by the time I had cleaned up the surface. The ebay knife had none of this. The blade was mirror polished much better than I was able to do with my equipment, and even the non-critical spots on the handle were at least rough sanded/ground.

With a sparkle in my eye, I roughed out my canarywood handle and glued and pinned them the first night I got the knife. Shaping the handle went very well, although my design is probably more suited to looks than functionality. I'm sure the ring around the fingerhole will break eventually. I was a little dissapointed by the handle. The pink stripes that were very prominent on the outside of the piece didn't go very deep, and I lost most of them by the time I got the wood to size. The blade has a much better polish that the pictures would make you think, although I'll be the first to admit it's not perfect.

As I mentioned, I've been spending most of my time in the shop cleaning, taping, and getting some storage options set up. I put some large brackets on the tall wall of my shop to serve as lumber racks. I think these will be temporary, as they're just not quite working as well as I'd hoped, but at least it got a lot of my bigger stuff up off the floor and onto racks. I've pretty much finished taping the short wall of my shop, and have begun texturing and painting it in small sections. I went for an almost white paint for the walls, I believe it was called "White Clay". It's almost white with just a hint of grey/tan. You might be able to see in the pictures that it's almost whiter than the drywall mud on the next wall. In the one section I have completely painted, I hung up some white melamine storage shelves I built. I'm going to put doors on these eventually, but wanted to get by as inexpensively as possible to start with. This one is going to primary house all of my finishing products, both for the lathe and general usage. For now, it's getting finishing stuff plus anything else it can hold until I get more built. I'm going to do a few of this style of cabinet along the short wall of my shop. Also visible in the pictures is my new belt/disk sander which I got for a song at Lowes a few weekends ago.

One of my next steps will be to take down lights in half of the room and finish taping under them, then texture and paint that half the ceiling at a time.Other than the ceiling, the taping is pretty much complete except for one small section of a side wall that I can't get to until I find something to do with the extra sheets of sheetrock I currently have stashed there. It will be nice to have everything finished, it's taken me entirely too long to get to this point. I wouldn't trade it for the world, but don't let anyone tell you that a kid doesn't take much of your free time. Now that I'm finally getting things a bit more finished up out there, I've been able to (read: had ambition to) clean the place up a bit more. I'm going to buy a cheap texture gun off ebay, and as soon as I get that and can texture and paint another wall, I'm going to move my tools around a bit so that the center of the shop is more open and usable.

1/18/2007 - A mallet for Sam. I was going to make myself a carving style mallet for in my shop, and got thinking about my brother, who is getting into carving ducks. I decided to make one for him as well. This one is his, it's around 1.5 to 2 pounds and is made of some spalted bubinga sapwood I had around. There's a streak of the heartwood on one side, and a purpleheart band between the body and the cap. The center has a cavity filled with birdshot, but honestly, it probably didn't need it. This is one of the heaviest woods I've ever worked with.


1/5/2007 - I've been searching over the past year or two for a decent set of old hand planes to restore and use. Finding the right combination of cheap yet not completely junked or missing parts has been a bit tough, but I finally lucked out at a consignment sales place here in Sioux Falls and found the remainders of the set I was working towards. My main goal was to get a large jointer, one or two jack planes, and a decent smoother, as well as a couple block planes. The only thing I'm really missing at this point is a block plane with an adjustable throat, but I think I may just buy one of them from veritas if I don't find something old soon.

In any case, here's some before pictures of the new crew.
Stanley #7 Jointer:

Stanley #5 Jack:

Stanley #4 Smoother (I also picked up his twin brother from the same place today):

Stanley #220 Block:

Stanley Unidentified Block (I just need to sit down and look at this a bit more closely to figure out which of a couple models it is):


I know this might be blasphemy to some folks, but I'm going to turn and carve all new handles and knobs to replace the originals. I made a replacement knob and handle for the #4 last night from some scrap African Paduak I had lying around, and really like the looks of it. I'd never tried carving a handle before, but found it much easier than I expected. I may rebuilt it just a little larger, as the original sizing is a bit small for my hands. For anyone looking to do something like this, I bandsawed out a rough blank of the rear handle, then used a rasp, round file, and a standard flat file to rough form the curves, and then used a sanding device I use for my bowls. It's a shaft for a drill that has a rubber flange that attaches to assorted types of foam backing pads, and then to small round sanding disks, all using hook & loop (essentially velcro) to attack to each other. I had some 60 and 80 grit disks, and these worked really well to fine tune the shape, and as I worked up towards the 600 grit disks, it was very easy to blend the curves seamlessly.

I also picked up an old Fulton Special 3/4" socket chisel. I like old tools, and this looked like it would be fun to shine up a bit, so I grabbed it as well:

I started turning a new handle for it immediately, and it now looks like this:

The next step for it will be to get a nice copper or brass ferrule at the end of the handle (The part that looks unfinished) so that the handle doesn't split when hammered on.


12/26/2006 - These are a couple pictures of a decorative rolling pin I made for a friend to give as a gift to his mother. Its definitely a project that I would make a couple specific jigs for next time.


12/9/2006 - These pictures are actually from a couple days ago. This is the first of the set of large (approximately 15") bowls I'm going to be turning from a black walnut that was taken down at my grandmother's place. This is from the same tree pictured in the sawmill section up top.


12/7/2006 - I picked up this piece of redheart from the son of a exotic lumber vendor that I frequently search out for odd pieces I might be looking for. I can't wait to see how it turns out once it dries a bit and I finish turning it. Keeping the beautiful color may be a bit of a challenge, as redheart likes to fade as it is exposed to UV rays. It sure looks like a keeper at the moment, though!
And yes, the colors are actually pretty accurate in these pictures. The center picture on the bottom row is probably the most accurate.




12/7/2006 - A couple pictures of a small (~7") walnut bowl fresh out of a denatured alcohol bath.