Week 259 Wood Working

year 10, Week 7, Day One (week 529)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
02-27-10 Saturday

49 degrees when I woke at four, 60 degrees when I got outside to work at eight, 72 degrees as a high by noon. High ripples and blue sky early morning, and they thickened as the day went on, followed by heavier lower clouds in the afternoon. A light mist happened around lunch time when I was packing up. showered from a front arrived at about three, after I had gotten home.
Cold again, in the high 40s, tonight again. This weather report is brought to you by the City Of Pompano Beach Department Of Tourism.

The beast acted like a tame cat today, well as tame as he is ever going to be. He faked nipping me when he did not like what I was doing, but let me continue doing it anyway. I gave him a lot of time, but not as much time as he really wanted. he was in the mood where I should have just sat and read while petting him. Instead, I needed to do some work.

I put my hands on some boxes of stuff that I need to go through for the upcoming art show. one bag had a platter in it, so I set that out to take with me today, without even looking in it. The platter was really the only thing I needed. I was out to see what all I had.
The platter was as bad as I expected it to be. When I made it, I was lazy and did not sand the platter well, not going through the proper sanding grits. It was full of scratches from course sand paper.
I sat and sanded on it, knocking down a lot of the scratches on the bottom. I have a whole lot more corrective work to do just where I did my sanding before I apply myself to bringing it up to a good finish. I still have the center of the back, and then the whole inside of the platter. I will use it for my fruit plate.

Since it was cool, I decided to do some wood turning first. I am on my feet, moving around so I am less likely to get cold. I cut a piece if oak I got from the club and mounted it in the lathe. I turned two small pears with it. They are smaller than I liked so I then hunted for another piece of wood.
I had planned on shaping multiple pears, then parting them off, but instead I made the two pears, one at a time, remounting the wood on the lathe after I had removed the pear. oak has a great look, with rays and veins all on display.

I cut, then rejected a piece of orange a couple times. This piece was rippled, not round. There was a shrinkage crack in it. I took it back to the band saw that I cut the piece off with, and cut the ripples off length wise so I would not have to turn that wood off the piece. One has to be careful when cutting a log length wise in the band saw. If the log is round, it will want to roll. There was some problems with the shape of this piece, and because this is really hard wood, the blade talked to me a bit about how hard it was. I cut the worst of the pleats off the trunk.
I then mounted it on the lathe between centers and round the entire piece. While I was doing this, I let the gouge slip off the end of the tool rest, it caught on the wood and thwacked the end of my little finger. Very slight purpleness, a very slight more puffy than the other little finger, and a bit more tender. Not bad otherwise. Little moments of distraction like that can result in some serious injuries.
Citrus is hard wood. I should have sharpened my bowl gouge but did not. The wood came off the gouge, following the flute of the gouge, and was hitting the top of my index finger painfully. Also bigger chunks came off and hit my finger when I was first removing the remaining corners from the cuts. Quite bothersome. I changed how I was using the gouge, scraping rather than cutting and that solved that problem.
I made a tenon on one end and then mounted it in the chuck. that made working with the wood a whole lot easier.

I started rounding the end of the wood. I quickly determined that this first piece of the orange wood, wanted to be an apple. I made the apple, sanding it while it was still on the lathe. I then parted it off.
I then made a pear the same way I made the apple. Because of the crack in the wood. I cleaned up the crack which I later filled with wood filler with close to the right color.

One of the first things I did with the pears and apples, was to drill for the stem and blossom. I will carve a stem out of scrap wood, and use a clove, popping the bulb, for the blossom on the bottom of the fruit. I needed the holes to attach them to the wooden fruit.
I then did some clean up on the fruit with the disk sander and the dremmel.
With the apple, the two ends are set below the top and above the bottom of the fruit. I had cut in for the top of the apple, but it still had a nub that the tail stock held it in place with. The bottom was rough cut straight across. I used the dremmel to clean up and shape the top and bottom so they look a bit more real.
The pear ends are not set in so I just cleaned up the ends on the disk sander.

I took my four bananas to the disk sander. I had eight sides to the bananas. I decided six would look better. That meant that I needed to change the angle of the top and bottom shoulders to eliminate the side. I have some touch ups on these. I will use the strip sander to clean them up and then will have some hand sanding to do to bring the bananas up to a finished level.

I have several colors of filler. Of course, I never have the exact color. Last week, I tossed out a filler color I really needed because it went hard on me, dried out. I took walnut colored filler and filled in some nail holes and bad spots on some cedar apples I made previously. I had used "natural" filler to fill the cracks in the apple and pear made from the Orange trunk. I had done some sanding, but had to add more filler to fill in where I had left some gaps caused by not shoving enough filler into the crack.

I did a little bit of hand sanding on the flower vase, but no one would ever notice it. I had intended to do some carving, but when I packed up for lunch, putting everything away just in case of rain I never went back out to work.

Tomorrow I plan to do some carving and also some sanding. If I apply myself, I can get a lot of work done. I don't need to do any new projects.

Will see what I actually do tomorrow.


year 10, Week 7, Day Two (week 529)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
02-28-10 Sunday

46 degrees this morning before sunrise, 56 when I arrived at Mom's house at nine, 68 degrees as the high. Pure blue sky all day long, horizon to horizon, from dawn to dusk. breeze from the north cooled things down a little in the morning but ignorable completely later in the day. This weather report was brought to you by the City Of Pompano Beach Department Of Tourism.

I think someone swapped the backyard beast for a cat. I hope they like what they got. Beggar was, for him, a sweet little kitty and soaked up all the attention I gave him. When I did something he did not like, he simply gnashed his teeth at me, slowly, and I took the message. Otherwise, he accepted whatever I did to him.

We went to a yard sale that a guy was setting up. He was 82 years old and going back home to Argentina to retire. All he had to sell was tools and parts. We picked up a bunch of stuff from him at a really good price. A bit later, I helped him set up, moving stuff out. I left with a bunch more stuff. Later in the evening, I took my brother with me and we came home with even more stuff.
My brother and I sorted all the tools and stuff we got. In the process, I ended up emptying the back of the cub cab of my truck, going through all the tools for the truck I had, then putting all the stuff back in. I ended up with finding a bunch of stuff I had lost or forgot about. I re-packed the back of the truck but have more stuff to take out of the truck Monday.

On the wood working front, I did not get anywhere near as much as I hoped I would do. I actually wanted to sit out in the sun and sleep, but chose not to.

I advanced on the light house plate. It is fighting me tooth and nail. I am considering removing every sign of the carving and painting the lighthouse on. I have time to make that choice so I will continue carving it to see if I can save it. I hate projects like that.

I also worked on the flower vase, undercutting the leaves and getting closer to undercut the stems. the flowers is where I really need to concentrate, to make them look right, as they are the hardest part. I went around the vase about twice, working on various points that needed it, but have a lot to do. I sort of got tired and frustrated on that project.

I took the strip sander and sanded on the bananas. I cleaned up the six sides I have, that was once eight. They look better. Now they need to be sanded to a fine finish. Once I have a good finish on them, I will add the black marks of a real banana that is not green, and that will make them look real.
I also hand sanded a tiny bit, not much, on the apples and pears. I still have a lot of work to do to bring them up to a finished level. I see that the apple and pear made of orange wood is going to be tough. It is a really hard wood that resists my clean up of tool marks.

I sanded a lot more on the platter I started sanding yesterday. I still have a long ways to go. The worst part is that I have a good number of pieces that need the same kind of sanding. It is strictly time consuming and labor intensive.

The better your work is when you take it off the machine, the less effort it will take to bring it to a presentable level. I had always been sloppy and even now, my work is not good. I depend heavily on hand work to finish a piece. It is a habit I need to get out of. Part of the problem is that I am working outside. Also I only work on weekends. I cannot let a piece sit on the lathe or on the bench for my next session. Everything has to be put away so they don't get damaged by the weather.
My work time is limited so getting pieces made is more important than getting them finished. Because of this, I have to spend time with sand paper, and other tools, at a later date to make a piece right.

I spent more time playing with our yard sale purchases than wood working. Some of the tools will help my wood working later.

During this week, I have two quick projects to finish, then I will start my sanding and varnishing my collected work. I will pick out what pieces are well designed and well executed and see what needs the most work of them, and work my way up until I get everything a step higher in quality than they are. this week will be the start and I will go up to time to pack for the art show.

Next Friday, I will be going to the antique shop to see how my stuff had done there, and to collect them for the art show. I will be checking over the finish of all those pieces and upgrading them if needed. I know I can do better than I have, so I just need to do it.

Next week, I must get farther along on the light house carving, and get the flower vase closer to being finished. I would like to be able to spend several weeks sanding and finishing it so it will be worthy of the effort I am adding to it.

I will see what I actually do next week.