In My "Spare" Time: Year 19, Week 02, Day One (week 992)

Year 19, Week 02, Day One (week 992)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
01-19-19 Saturday

61 degrees early morning 71 late afternoon. Herds of clouds marched across the sky in the morning, getting closer together mid day and merging into one big cloud in the late evening as a front approached. A light breeze felt good. This weather report is brought to you by the City Of Pompano Beach Department Of Tourism.

DURING THE WEEK

I painted the ornaments I made on the weekend and finished them up. I took my dremmel and put on a grinding disk. I had a groove in the bottom of the flute of the bowl gouge and that bothered me. The gouge could not be sharpened properly like that.
Like the metal cutting disk I used, I ran the grinding disk parallel with the flute, then tipped on an angle it so it ground on both sides, rounding the bottom. I removed the groove and the bowl was a bit bigger on the bottom which is good. I was by mom’s so I sharpened the gouge again and there was an improvement in the edge. I am not satisfied with it, but it is a whole lot better than what it was.

THURSDAY

The turning club was in a brand new location. I put the address into my tracker I ended up not where the destination was supposed to be. I had looked at the site on the tax site. In some counties, you put in the address for a property and it will show the tax information on the property and you can see a areal view of the site and you can also zoom out and see what roads are around it and where it is located. I did that for t he club site and also put the address into my tracker. I traveled around where I thought it was once I gave up on my tracker. I searched where I thought it might be, drove on some of the back roads not seeing it. It was getting close to the meeting time and I found a pizza place and asked where it was. It was the next light west. I later figured out that I had transposed the address. I put in 89 instead of 98. Makes a bit of a difference.
The demonstration was on sharpening. He showed a number of things about sharpening and about tools, with jigs and by hand. He passed around some tools showing how they were sharpened.
You can buy just the machined rods (with the proper shape cut into them) of the turning tools, which is cheaper than with the handle attached. He said that when a hand drill dies, save the chuck out of it. His was quick release chucks that you don’t need keys for. Attach them to a handle that you make yourself and you can swap the tools real quick. Being just the rods, they are easier to handle on the grinders than with the really long handles we use. He said that system of separate rods is really good if you take your turning stuff to other locations. Grab several rods of cutting tools and just a couple handles and you have all you need, with little space involved. Ten tools with handles takes a whole lot more room than ten rods and two handles. .
He showed different jigs and fixtures, some he purchased, some he made himself. I have forgotten a lot of what he said as it was quick and you cannot really see what he was doing with his hands as he worked. We did not have the camera at the club (shows a view we cannot see and shown on a TV set) this time so we could not see exactly what he was doing on the grinders. One thing I learned is I have NEVER made a tool sharp!!!. Compared to what he passed around, my tools are not sharp enough. I think I am going to have to make some jigs to sharpen my tools properly.
I talked to several of the experts in our club about my bowl gouge and the main one said it was pretty good. I told him how I did it and he liked the idea. I decided I needed to make the base wider and rounder.
This, by the way, is the anniversary day of my starting wood working.

SATURDAY

After breakfast, we stopped at a sale at a church. I picked up two joke books. these are big ones, both are near 500 pages each. There were a few other things I considered but talked myself out of. I had no use for them and no place to put them.
When we got back, I then headed out on my own. A woman, last week, said she was going to have a sale all week and into the weekend, then donate the stuff to get rid of it. She said she had another of the cabinets with drawers on the door. She did not have her yard sale today.
I did stop at one yard sale and picked up three very large flower pots, two at about two feet in diameter), and then another I picked up one super big pot which was about three feet in diameter [best used for small trees]. I had my hands on a few other things and talked myself out of them. I only did half the yard sale run.
I went out back of mom’s house with the urge to do something with wood. I took a plate I had started several years ago when I was practicing with the idea to demonstrate the making of them for the turning club and carefully did a clean up with my turning tools on mainly the center part of the plate, removing some of the thickness on the posts, and then rough sanded it. There are some little digs by the tool when making it that won't sand out without removing a whole lot of wood. It looks pretty good, though.
The 2" thick Yellow Pine boards I was practicing with, would warp as I was removing wood. Stresses are released and the remaining lumber relaxes. Wood warping when working with wet wood is one thing. It is another thing when it is dry wood.
The gouge hit the warp on this plate hard and dug in. I could remove it with loads of sanding, or could add some filler there. The plates will likely receive a food safe varnish when done (or possibly an oil) I will likely not bother with the effort.
I then decided to make some more balloon ornaments. I cut the stick of white wood about six inches long and can make two balloons from each stick. When I was done, I had made four of balloons (I already had a stick of wood cut), and then sat and did some of the day-lighting between the basket and the balloon. I have more to do on the gaps but I have a good start.
On these, I did not score the divisions between the colors like I did on the first ones I had made. I decided it actually made painting them tougher...
My last project was to work on that tool I've been modifying. The flute (the groove in the rod) needs to be more rounded and wider on the bottom. I did some more grinding but will have to see how I feel about it tomorrow as to whether I need to add more or not. The grind stone disk I was using on the dremmel is just about used up. I have another if I decide to do more grinding on it.
I sort of hoped to do a lot more than I did out back, but I did get something done and that was nice.

Year 19, Week 02, Day One (week 992)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
01-20-19 Sunday

75 degrees early morning, showers rushed in and the temperature dropped to 66 degrees. The front had a serious shock wave over the Gulf, but that spread out to a green blob on the radar with only a couple small dots of yellow. We did not get any of the yellow. By 10, it was just a few dots on the windshield and was gone by noon. The sun came out with blue skies and it got back up to about 75 by three. The breeze was strong in the morning but faded out to a light breath after the front past. We are supposed to get down into the 40s tonight. I am thinking about skipping going to work tomorrow and drive over to the Bahamas on the great ice sheet that will form. I will have to go out onto it on the way to work because a glacier always forms on the highest natural point in the county (29 feet above sea level, surrounded by 17 feet above sea level land) and the glacier rushes to the ocean to give birth to icebergs. Being that cold tonight, it might actually make it. This weather report is brought to you by The City Of Pompano Beach Department Of Tourism.

Before lunch, I got out back and set up the lathe. I decided to round the corners of a blank I had made for platters. This was from a 2 by ten board cut square, then the corners were cut off. I was going to cut more of the corners off, but realized that turning the corners off would be faster as I still have the wrong blade in the bandsaw.
I had gotten a meat cutting blade years ago. Most saws have a SET to the teeth. That is where the teeth are tipped out from center. Most blades are left, then right, then left then right, all the way around. What this does is it removes a little more wood to the sides of the cut so the blade will not bind. With really big teeth, they might have a third tooth straight, between each left and right to clear out sawdust.
Anyway, in butcher departments of grocery stores, they use a bandsaw to create steaks and other cuts of meat from the big blocks of meat. To keep from losing too much meat, the blades have no set to the teeth. They have to replace the blades every day. A friend in the turning club gave me several of these blades. He had a jig to set the teeth, I never bothered.
Anyway, the meat cutting blade I have in the bandsaw has no set and the sides are slightly corroded so it does not slide through the wood easily. It needs to be replaced, but I am too lazy. The only other blades I have are “scrolling” blades. The blade I have in there now is about half an inch wide. The ones I have for replacement are like an eighth or 16th of an inch wide. These go around corners really well but don’t go straight well, not that the big blade goes straight either.......
I decided it would be faster to turn off the eight corners to make the board round. I started with the bowl gouge I/ve been modifying. It did all right, but is not sharp. I then switched to my newest gouge and that ate the wood nice. I ended up with a round disk, though the edges are not clean.
After lunch, I mostly sat around and talked. I showed my brother some things I got and that I did, and cleaned up the mess.

Mom is unloading a bunch of travel picture-books that she had collected for copying for painting classes and such. She used to put her wet paintings in a pizza box to take it home. She was about to toss one of them out when she just decided to look inside. There was a painting she did on leather, of an Indian warrior. My niece said she wanted it so they developed a way to hang it and look really nice. When I first saw it a couple days ago, my thought was to frame in and I could make use of the excess leather for projects, but what they did was much better than putting it in a frame. A rod held by twine, the rod going through holes in the leather, and twine tassels on each end. Looks really good.

My brother and I mostly talked about lathes, machining, and engineering. He sees a lot of videos about people doing projects. So do I. It has given him ideas and knowledge on how to do things. He said one guy makes watch parts on his lathe by hand and makes a video every three months because he spends so much time sanding and polishing the tiny parts he makes.
My brother is trying to solve some problems with his SMITHY when using it to machine stuff (moving the project back and forth against a vertical bit. He said he is working on his fifth design to solve the problems. In spite of that, he is doing a whole lot more with it than he used to be able to do. He said that increasing the tolerances of the parts you are making, creates who whole bunch of problems that you did not have before.

I traced the curves of the two halves of the broken plate on each other and cut them. I ended up cutting them a couple more times to get them to match fairly close. I cut a whole lot more than I wanted to, to get them to fit together. It will have to do.
I glued them and let them set. I later gobbed glue on the inside, then worked sawdust into the gap from the outside, then worked glue in onto the sawdust to fill it in. The sawdust was not from the same wood so it would stand out, but I was out to get this done. The filled space had to sit and dry. It will need more work before I can consider adding any finish on it.
This will be an “amphitheater” for some small figures I will have to carve. I could have tossed it but decided I might as well play with it, anyway. Small figures can be carved while relaxing.
In remodeling, when they have ornate molding to cut for a corner to match, they set it up at a 45 degree angle backwards and upside down and slice through it. When they put them together, they match beautifully. Now if the corners arn’t an exact 90, they will undercut one edge so it fits with no gap. I should have set the bandsaw table at a 45 degree and cut it that way. Instead, I drew a line following the other piece, and then cut it by hand on the bandsaw. That was why I ended up cutting it more than once, and then did not get it exact. I also was not working carefully on my lines either.

What I have always done on my weekends, is work on the project that excites me the most at the moment. One day I might want to turn wood, another day I would like to carve, another day I might build something. Then I might tear something apart. It is all according to what I happen to feel like doing that day.
If I am able to work a total of 8 hours on a weekend, I am doing fantastic. Usually not, though. I am thinking I need to make a couple jigs for sharpening, and then work on cleaning up another plate. Since I have them, it is worth getting them fixed up. A set of those could be a nice gift.

I will see what I do next weekend.
2676

The ornaments I brought to the turning club meeting, the bowl gouge and the "bits" I used to grind out the flute in the bowl gouge. I had the bowl gouge turned the wrong way for the picture..