(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
04-22-17 Saturday
Cloudy all day, 73 early morning, 79 late afternoon. The weather looked threatening early morning but that disappeared before we finished breakfast. Late evening, a front was approaching so tomorrow is expected to be filled with singing plants that have been thirsty for a long time. This weather report is brought to you by the City Of Pompano Beach Department Of Tourism.
THURSDAY
We had a good turnout with the club, though the instant gallery was light in the number of things on display. I had nothing to show for the month.
The main demonstration was on carving grooves in your turned vases, or making swirls as he called it. He showed a simple layout method. He simply rotated the piece on the lathe and drew a line at about the center, and one near the top and bottom of the piece. He said that pieces get weak if you go to the very top. He then drew two or three lines between those lines.
He had taken a piece of cereal box and cut a circle and marked it with evenly spaced lines. He found that twelve lines was way too much work. He found five lines works nice at least for the size of piece he was working. The linens radiated from the center. He then cut a hole in the center to fit over the shaft of your lathe and he simply screwed the chuck on and that held the cardboard in place. He matched the line to something on the lathe and used his tool rest to draw a line down the length of the piece at each mark on the cardboard.
Finally, he decided, usually on the spot, to plot lines between the places two lines met. He aimed to have the beginning and the end of the groove to not be seen at the same time.
The great way he was doing it, was accuracy is not essential because of the style of the swirls he made. He could make each groove different, some of the spaces in between were concave, some convex, some would flare out in some places, some have pointed edges on one side. We tend to try to make engineered accurate grooves that match all the way around. With this, method, a mistake disappears into a design opportunity.
He would sometimes use a power tool to get the groove started, but a lot of his work is simply with a set of varying shaped open rasps. One can get a lot of work done quickly. We tend to want to use power to do this kind of work, but the way the rasp sweeps and follows, it is a powerful design tool.
One thing he had that was useful was an artist’s mount where he can attach his chuck onto it and the mount would allow him to turn it in any direction and angle needed for the cut he was after.
He suggested that you should buy your tools from artists, rather than the big corporations. They need your money more.
One guy makes a lot of bottle stoppers that have an insert on the top end. The inserts come in different sizes, both metric and standard diameters. What he did was to use forsner bits to drill metic holes on one side, and standard on the other side. When he gets an insert, he simply finds the hole that it fits into and that is the size he works with.
Another guy showed a piece he had pierced. He said that he paints the inside with black acrylic paint. That way when he adds dyes on the outside, it won’t bleed through the interior paint and not be seen. He said he learned that adding dye to the inside of the piece sometimes bleeds through the wood to be seen on the outside. The black also highlights the piercing.
We have one more meeting before our meeting sight will be closed for several months.
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A few weeks ago, I went to the dentist. I have only one cavity, and I keep filling it three times a day plus snacks. They give you floss, tooth paste, tooth brush and a few other items. I finally decided to replace my old tooth brush and dug out the one they gave me. I got excited. The tooth brush has the clear plastic neck.
I have made many crochet hooks from tooth brush handles. They work pretty good and are referred to as having “comfort handles”. Most tooth brushes is made with a rubbery white plastic. That does not make good crochet hooks as the rubbery plastic does not sand well and is hard to work with. It is also a little sticky to the yarn.
When I saw the tooth brush from the dentist, I got excited as it is the hard clear plastic neck. That plastic sand well, shapes well, and is relatively slick to the yarn. I can’t wait to wear this tooth brush out so I can make it into a crochet hook....
SATURDAY
Right after breakfast, we headed to a church that has regular sales. It was pretty good this time. It is hard to avoid items you really like. They had a meat grinder there for a pittance. I had it in my hands three times, before I forced myself to forget about it. I have two really good ones. This one was smaller than my two and I considered it as being in “Antique condition” where it needed a lot of clean-up to make it useable. About five minutes later, it was gone.
Those meat grinders are actually a good thing. Pork is usually about $1.50 a pound. Beef is usually around $3.20 a pound. Hamburger is usually $2.20 a pound but ground pork is about $3.50 a pound. Making your own ground pork ends up being a good deal. The same with ground chicken or turkey. Food processors and blenders will also do it, but there is something about the old methods that are kind of nice.
I grabbed a large roaster pan, with thoughts that while it can be used for roasting, there are other things it can be used for both within the kitchen and without. I grabbed some fabric folding storage containers. Space tends to be important. I like these as when stored flat, they take no space, but they make more space when opened up. A couple other items joined what I had.
At another yard sale, I found platters are about sixteen inches in diameter. Two are made of wood, the other is plastic. The wood platter are one of those things I have the skills to make, but never will, and never this good. They might not get much use, but I will have them when I need them. If I get tired of them, they could go beneath a potted plant outside, but I much doubt that.
One yard sale had little I was interested in, but ran across a file and a metal compass. I have several of each but decided they can still be useful. The compass is well made. Actually it is a divider as it does not take pencils. You use it for measuring. Being solid metal makes it durable.
One guy had a bunch of furniture and appliances. He had a fire a the house. Since he had insurance, he was replacing everything and decided not to spend the money to store the stuff. He showed me how the fire started in one of those lights that come on with movement that caught fire to his shed, and apparently, a nearby motorcycle caught fire and the tank set the house on fire. Most of the interior damage was from water.
I considered his refrigerator for the house, but there is no place to put it until some work is completed there.
Three were at the end of a cul-de-sac with a fourth at the start of the street. One of the yard sales at the cul-de-sac was something about sending some group to Jamaica. I picked up some Jelly molds at the second of the yard sale and an easel at the first. The yard sale at the entrance had nothing I had to have.
I ended up finding ten yard sales, two more I could not find by the signs and two more I skipped because I knew exactly what they had and the last time they had nothing I needed.
I was wore out and uncomfortable when I got home. I almost immediately laid down and slept. It was only later that I got up and took care and photographing of my finds.
I also sorted my carry bag that has my tablet and check book and crochet supplies. I had forgotten about some of the stuff that was in there. I found a project I had been working on early this year and, after setting it to the side, forgot completely about it. This was to be a roll to hold my crochet hooks. It is about two fifths done. I will have to see if I get back to it. It was stitched with a fine hook and tight and that takes a long time to see any headway. I have learned long ago that I like projects where the beginning and end are close together. If I can do it in one session, even better. I will eventually pick this project up again, but not this minute. I decided to take it out of my carry bag as it was near busting at the seams.
I messed with a couple in-house projects before it was time to get ready to go.
A front, or some other storm system, is coming from the south looks like it is big enough to be a multi day event, so I don’t see doing anything tomorrow. I figure I will take the day easy and get ready for the week.
I really need to get some wood working done. Something has to give.
I will see what I do next weekend.
1530
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