(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
02-19-11 Saturday
59 degrees early morning,70 when I got out back to work and a high of 79. Blue sky with a light breeze. Perfect working weather. This weather report is brought to you by the City Of Pompano Beach Department Of Tourism.
THURSDAY
I took my fairy to work and got a lot of comments. One of my bosses that tends to ignore my woodworking, looked the fairy over for quite a while. I felt good about her after that.
I went to the turning club meeting, showed my fairy off at the carving club and then at the turning club. I also had a sea urchin ornament I made.
I told the club that I am turning the mushrooms and other scenery elements for her.
A few people had some wood we could take. I got a mango branch and a few pieces commercial wood.
SATURDAY
After breakfast, we stopped at a couple yard sales. I got a few items at one. I got two pair of ice tongs, some old fashion pump screw drivers, a old screwdriver kit where the bits are held in a wood body, and some nut picks. No, I don't need any of it. I will offer some of them to the antique shop if he wants them. I also got a item used in machining. I will discuss with my brother what it is, but I think it is used to make sure something is centered on the lathe by measuring bounce.
My hard sale finds
I sanded more on my cannon, fixing some things. I decided to assemble the carriage. I have some more work and it is not as good as I hoped it would be, but it looks all right. I now have to run dowels into it to hold it together. Right now, just some glue is holding it together and it is not going to be strong enough to handle play.
I have to add the barrel and wheels and will have my brother help me with them. Darn! I just remembered that my brother told me how to get the axles square. I have to disassemble the carriage to do it. Oh Well. He told me to put the two sides together and drill through both of them. I guess that will be an early project tomorrow. It won't be too hard.
Glued up cannon carriage
Last week, I was given a Tababula (golden shower tree) log. I decided to cut a piece off and make something.
I took the log and stuck it in the band saw. I started cutting and found a bit of bark sticking up a bit too high to cut. I started backing the blade back out and accidentally twisted it and the blade came off the wheels in the bandsaw.
Bandsaw blades use tension to move them. There are two wheels inside the housing one wheel is powered by the motor, The blade, which is a loop, is held in tension against it and turns a second wheel. The instant the blade loses contact with the wheels, it stops. Well, as I backed the blade out, it caught in the wood and the blade stopped.
To slide the blade into place or slip it out, it goes through a thin slot in the table. Trying to get the blade out of the slot and out of the wood, it ended up getting well kinked up.
I had to take the electric chain saw and cut the log from the other side to finish the cut to free the blade.
Since I had the chain saw in my hands, I cut a second chunk off the log.
I tried to straighten the blade without removing the "set on the teeth. Saws work by having teeth tipped one side and the next to the another. This causes the channel cut by the blade to be wider than the blade itself so it does not bind. There is a couple places where the blade is bent front to back. That was beyond what I wanted to deal with at the time so I set the blade to the side. The only other blade I had was a half inch diameter blade. the one I bent up was a quarter inch blade which does scroll cuts quite well. It is not designed for cutting well straight and not really good for cutting green logs.
I took one section of the log and mounted it on the lathe. The bark on this wood is thick and soft. I wanted to keep the bark on the edge at least. I mounted it between centers to make a tenon for the chuck to hang onto. I then started turning it. I decided quickly to make it a hollow bark container. I hollowed it until I had it deep enough, I was going to part it off, then changed my mind as I was cutting in. I decided it would have a pedestal. I coved in and made the base. I got the stem where I felt it would look good. I removed the piece, turned it around with the chuck against the bottom on the inside, and finished the bottom.
I did some grinding on the inside with a grinder and with my knife to fix a few problems which I made a little worse, and got some stuff inside and it darkened the wood a little.
My bark bowl
My bark saucer
I have a crochet project that I have to undo a lot of the yarn. I had decided I needed a something to gather up the yarn as I pulled it off. I took a piece of Cedar and sanded it on the disk sander, then drilled two holes and glued in some dowels. I will wrap the yarn on it as I remove the yarn from the crochet project.
My yarn holder
I took the other section of the tababula and sliced it up into disks. I mounted one in the lathe. I opened the chuck as wide as possible and just used the tail stock pressure to hold it against the chuck. I gently cut a saucer inside on the tail stock, then turned it around and closed the chuck so it fit inside and did the bottom. I used a grinder to remove the posts that I used for holding the piece in place.
I started a second one and got a catch and broke the post holding tail stock I have ways to work around that and will do so tomorrow. I had cut eight of these disks and will try again tomorrow most likely.
The backyard beast acted so much like a cat that It was impressive. He came to get attention and food six times during the day. It is hard to believe that he has tamed down this much. It has been over a year since I last tried to pick him up and don't plan to do so. He does well enough as it is.
I did not do any carving, and should really get onto the face vase. I also need to spend more time making mushrooms and base for the rain fairy.
I really need to get some clay to form a king frog for my other fairy. I need to have something to go by to the shape right. I have not seen anything that fits my image of a king frog I like.
I really need to carve some ornaments. The ones I made this year are all but gone. I want a few more of them for the art show. I might not have room for them, but would like to have them on display.
I have loads of work to do between now and April and really do not know if I can get it all done in time.
I will see what I actually do tomorrow.
Year 11, Week 06, Day two (week 580)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
02-20-11 Sunday
78 degrees as a high, sunshine, blue sky above, some clouds around the horizon. there were some gusts of wind to move sawdust but mostly it was quite calm. This weather report is brought to you by the City Of Pompano Beach Department of Tourism.
The beast of the back yard has picked up a new trait. He will meow like a kitten sometimes. He is just letting me know he is waiting again.
Mom had me scrape some sand along side the road for her garden. I got her nine buckets of dirt, but had to take a break and never got back to it.
I had started making saucers yesterday with the bark on the edges. I had cracked the post the tail stock stuck into and set that to the side. Today, I decided that was going to be a mushroom. I remounted it and shaped the outside first, then flipped it around and did the inside. I handled the post a bit differently and that solved the problem.
I glued some yellow pine boards together after measuring carefully how the fairy would sit on them, and set that for the glue to dry. I then sat down with the dremmel with a grinding bit and started shaping it for the base of the rain fairy. I have a long ways to go to make sure it does not look like a board.
I also shaped the stem of the mushroom. It might need more work but is a good start.
My brother arrived and called me out front. They are putting in sewer and water lines and the road is dirt right now. it has been this way for a while. My brother came in with his company truck and it sunk into the dirt on the side of the road. When he tried to back out, his bumper hit dirt and he was stuck. He would not have gotten stuck but the tire in the"road" dug in too. He knows how to handle such situations and the road was compacted poorly other than in the center. I got out boards and he jacked the truck up and we put the boards in place. He then was able to get out of the hole. We filled the pits but it is still soft. We did not plan on starting that way but that was how it went.
We dug out the little metal lathe and played around. We took out an aluminum dangle from a wind chime and machined the end of that. We then took a bolt and removed the head. I dug out some cutting bits I had and my brother made a special bit for parting metal off. It worked nicely.
We then figured out how to do angles, It requires turning the lathe head on an angle. It worked pretty well.
I tried machining some wood with the grain going across it. I broke one and was doing well on the other, but because I had the lathe at high speed, we had to stop it as one of the bearings was talking to us.
The lathe needs to be cleaned and lubed, but works pretty good especially at slower levels.
I brought home the cannon barrel. I will "paint" it with boiled linseed oil. We regularly soak Norfolk Island Pine in linseed oil to bring out hidden colors in the wood. Because of the thickness of this cannon, the oil will not go all the way in and it is not necessary. I will add the oil to the surface of the cannon over several days to get the colors I am after.
Next weekend, I will work on the cannon, the rain fairy base, the saucers I started. I will also likely do some new projects. I should carve on the face vase and I have some ornaments I need to carve. I have a lot of projects to do. I do not know if it will be next week or the week after, but I do want to go to the Renaissance fair.
I will see what I actually do next week.
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