Year 16, Week 05, Day One (week 751)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
02-21-15 Saturday
62 degrees early morning, 74 in afternoon, broken clouds early morning, light puffs here and there in the afternoon. A strong breeze with good gusts periodically to blow lightly filled bags around. We had a couple days the coldest this winter. Traffic was tied up everywhere with a combination of icy roads and Wooly Mammoths walking along the roads. Luckily, the canals were all frozen solid and they were used by a lot of people to get around the traffic jams, lessening the extent of the jams.I slipped out one day a week to go Ice fishing. I caught four whopper pieces of ice. This weather report is brought to you by the City Of Pompano Beach Department of Tourism.
Thursday
The wood turning club meeting was a lot of fun this week. The demonstration was on how to make threaded lids on your work. In wood turning, anything with a lid is considered a box. The first key is to have a lathe that will work at a slow enough speed. He was working between 300 and 400 rpm (rotations per minute). My lathe has the lowest speed of a thousand rpm. A bit too fast.
Tools are available to cut in the threads. Basically they are set of two metal tools with a saw tooth. There is a slight angle to the teeth that aids in causing the spiral of the cut. The one for working the outside is on the end of the tool, while the one for the inside is on the side of the tool. Threads for these are generally different than used for metal.
The wood you are adding threads to have to be absolutely dry. Wet wood moves as it dries and becomes out of round, messing up fit of the threads. He makes his pieces so the threads are a loose fit because even when dry, wood will move. Some wood workers make lids that are a suction fit, where it takes a little effort to pull the lid off (I have never been that accurate a wood turner). If you threaded that, the threads would bind if the wood moved at all. I have seen suction fit lids suddenly get stuck in place.
After making sure the shoulder of the thread surface is square and there is a slight groove at the base of the shoulder, He would have the piece of wood spinning and then, with the tool moving ever-so-slightly first, he touched the work with the tool sliding across it. He was always light with this. He would then do it again. The spiral he created the first time, catches on the teeth and carries him across it again, this time a little deeper. He does this until he has several threads going around. For his work, he only needs two or three good threads. The ones on the end tend to be kind of bad. Once he had a some good threads, He cut the end, removing the damaged threads. He only needs a turn or two to hold the lid on. He said some people would make a dozen threads and one has to stand there, turning and turning the lid to get it off.
I did not have any turnings to show, but I put my first and half-finished second teddy bears out to be seen, saying that they were made with a metal hook that had a turned handle on it.
There were a lot of beginner works on display. One guy recently got a dental drill and was piercing some of his bowls in decorative designs. One guy is experimenting with cast resin, making turned jewelry. One cool piece was a pendant. He said that it was a palm seed and when he had leftover resin, he would dribble it onto the palm seed. It was a cool effect, a drip texture over the entire thing. I would never have guessed that was what he did.
Saturday
After breakfast, we stopped at a few yard sales. One couple was moving to California. In a basket of kitchen utensils, I found some folding diamond sharpening stones, a kitchen knife sharpener (you run your knife across a set of steel wheels set to form a V). I have never seen the diamond stone sharpeners of that design. They are thin, with a different grit on each side, and the plastic covers unfold and form a handle. These are going into my glove box.
At another yard sale, she did not have much, but I found three Quilting books and a cook book. I wasn’t going to take the cook book, but the four books were the only books on display. The Quilting books is going to be a birthday present for one of my sisters. She has dabbled in quilting over the years.
We went to a Condo yard sale. The stuff was interesting, but not exactly what I was after. I met a fellow artist from the Light House Point Yacht Club there. We talked for a bit about art while mom kept looking.
We were going to go to a church yard sale, but we were out of time and headed home instead.
We went to a meeting where the speaker discussed the history of some of the Mediterranean peoples. Off and on over my life I have read historical works of the periods he covered. His discussion filled in some gaps in my knowledge and brought to memory other things I had not given thought to in years. This speaker is one we love to see whenever possible, no matter what subject it might be.
We got home and had lunch. I considered taking a nap, but since the day was almost gone, I went outside. A plastic fitting on my heater line of my truck had developed a leak this week. A repair shop said it would be $350 for them to replace it. I was told of a patch that might work at least until I am ready to replace the hose.
I experimented with the patch, basically adding sand (as a binder) to some goop (a sealant not intended for this purpose) and apply it over the hole. I would add some, then go do something else after cleaning my hands. I figured out that it was best to mix the goop on a plastic zipper bag (I accumulated some used ones just for this kind of purpose. No longer food safe but good for something else.) with a skewer and then apply it with the plastic bag. I will know tomorrow morning if it works as planned or more has to be applied.
I removed the loose stitching I had on the head of the second teddy bear, removed all the head filling, took a little bit of stuffing out of the body as it was over-stuffed. I sewed the eyes, nose and mouth in place, then stitched it so the ears were formed, stuffed the head and sewed it up. Finishing up the ears. I crocheted a tie that made it look good. I can still see mistakes, but this teddy bear came out pretty good.
I unstitched the first teddy bear I made, did some more work on the eyes and nose, tried to stuff it even more, then stitched it up using some things I learned on the second teddy bear.
The first teddy bear was made in Acrylic yarn, and did not stretch much. The second teddy bear was in wool yarn and stretched out to allow it to become a more pleasing design.
It was getting late and time to close up shop. The cat was irritated at me that I did not give her the attention she thought she deserved.
I do plan to do some wood working tomorrow. I will see how my repair worked on the heater hose fitting.
I will see what I actually do tomorrow.
Year 16, Week 05, Day Two (week 751)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
02-22-15 Sunday
64 degrees early morning, 85 in the afternoon, Some low puffs over the Everglades but blue sky overhead all day long. After the week we had, this was a perfect day. A brisk breeze, not as bad as yesterday kept the air fresh. There was no humidity to speak of so this was a perfect day to be out. This weather report is brought to you by the City Of Pompano Beach Department of Tourism.
I have a couple of cheap steak knives where plastic handles broke. The blades came out of the handles. I tossed the handles and kept the blades. I decided to try making new handles for the knives.
I had a piece of old oak barrel-staves that I had cut thin sometime back. I am sure I had a plan for this piece of wood but could not remember what it was. When my dad was alive, we had a rule that whatever material was around, it was first-come first-serve on the wood. If you came up with a project for that kind of wood, we would use it. We always had more wood than we needed so it was never a problem. No piece of wood was just for a specific project. This slat was thin enough for the handles I needed and I had it at my finger tips within moments of looking for wood. I mainly selected oak because it was available. Other woods would have been prettier.
I should have sanded the wood before I cut it, to make it square and smooth, but I simply measured with my hand for how long each handle was going to need to be. I needed to have a piece on each side of the blade to make up the handle I decided that I should cut the width in thirds rather than quarters like I planned. I rough measured thirds along the end, and then cut. I cut length ways first, then cut the two sections, coming up with six pieces. I only need four, two for each blade.
I measured with the blades where a rivet hole would be, since the blades were designed so they could have one, and drilled the holes in the pieces.
It was only then that I decided I should sand the wood. I basically lightly-touched the wood to the sanding disk to even them out a little. It would have been easier to do this with the whole wood rather than the pieces.
The tang of the blades have a slight shape ot them to give them a little more hold. I used my knife on one half of the handle, to cut a little recess for the tang of the blades. I used a shaft of a dremmel bit that happened to be the right size to hold the pieces in place and glued the handles together.
We once had a damaged jumper cable. We cut the cord off and kept the jaws for clamps. I used them this time as they were handy. The surfaces of the handles will be ground away quite a bit to shape them so the teeth of these clamps were not a problem for this kind of work. They are not “finish work” clamps.
The patch I did on the fitting in the truck was not good. I had a feeling I did it wrong. I smeared the patch on. It needed to be applied as a glob instead. I added a glob to the fitting. I will have to add another glob, but the dribble I had when the truck was hot, is now a drip.
I packed up my tools with the idea of changing to a different type of project. Mom then suggested that we go out for lunch with a friend. I liked the idea. I was almost completely cleaned up. The knives would have to sit and dry anyway.
After lunch, I finished packing up. My not sanding properly showed in the handles. Next week I likely will pop them in half and do it right. Surfaces have to be absolutely flat for them to glue properly and basically become one wood. My inset for the blades were not deep enough either. I am sure I could do better at cutting them in so they will catch the blades better. I fell into the bad habit of just doing something, rather than doing it right. Doing it right would take only a bit longer, but I was remembering what I was supposed to do, AFTER I did it.
At least I had a nice time today and did mess a little with wood. Undoing what I did won’t take long and the results will be better.
I will see what I do next week.
Cook book and one of the quilt books.
two quilt books
Sharpeners and box cutter.
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