In My "Spare" Time: Year 19, Week 10, Day One (week 1000)

Year 19, Week 10, Day One (week 1000)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
03-16-19 Saturday

heavy overcast that broke up some in the afternoon. 75 in the early morning, 79 in the afternoon. I felt driplets of mist every now and then during the day. I drove to pick up some lunch and when I came back, that fine mist came down hard enough to wet the road and was gone as fast as it came. It was dry the rest of the day until after the sun set. This weather report is brought to you by The Pompano Beach department Of Tourism.

We went to Granny’s Attic, which is a indoor collector yard sale. There was lots of jewelry and stuffies. A couple people had crochet. One was doing it there. She had some sheep with long threads sticking out as the wool. Cute but not what I was after. One woman in another section had the nerve to display a cloth bag filled with yarn, with like six or seven skeins of yarn. No, I did not buy it. The thought, though, crossed my mind for a moment... They were nice colors. We found one guy was sitting at an empty table and both mom and I, at different times, asked how much he was selling his wares. He had a couple specials which sounded good. He got a kick out of it and played along with us.
Somehow, I got out of there without anything. There was a doll with a really nice dress I considered for a moment. There was an popcorn air popper in the box. I forced myself to ignore that as I have two of them of that style. There was a crank egg beater. I came up with a great marketing strategy for the millennials. Attach a cheap phone on top of one of those crank egg beater. Tell them that they now have a high-tech crank-device. Old and new technologies together.

When I got home, I napped for about half an hour. I really needed it and that did help, though I could have stayed longer.

I went out back and pulled all sorts of stuff out, having a look at them. I decided to work on a bunch of platters I had made. Back years ago, I was practicing making platters so I could do a demonstration. These are the roughed out results of that practice. I mounted them on the lathe and sanded them more than they were. This wood warps really bad when you remove the excess wood. Part of what I was doing was trying to hide the places where the tool dug in after bouncing on a high warp.
After I sanded them, I knocked off the center posts with a chisel, and then did some grinding and sanding. All need more finer sanding, but quite a few made good headway. I think I did like 8 of the 13 I have. Not bad.

It is bad when you know you have something but cannot figure out where it is. You are not about to buy more but cannot do a project without it.
Something I’ve been needing but not sure where it was, was I have a box of shop towels. These are disposable towels. What I want to do is what is called a wipe-on finish on some items. This is where you add varnish to the piece and rub it continuously until it is dry. No streaks, no drips and the finish is clean and even. These shop towels are just right for that. I found them after looking in the shed for a while. I had seen the box early on and read the word “Rags” as “Bags” and ignored it.

Mom picked up a Boston Butt roast and I sliced it up for her. It had a big bone in it so I have that in the freezer for stock some other time. I really need to take time and sharpen kitchen knives. Both mine and Mom’s. They have false teeth and basically gum things apart.

I will see what I do tomorrow.

Year 19, Week 10, Day Two (week 1000)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
03-17-19 Sunday

Ground was wet early morning, solid clouds in the morning and sunny and clear all the rest of the day. 70 early morning 82 as the high. Light breeze some humidity. This weather report is brought to you by The Pompano Beach Department Of Tourism.

I had a file in the package for a lot of years. Every time I saw it, It said to me that it wanted to be a knife. I decided today would be the day. It was still in the package but the package to wet so there was a tiny bit of rust on the surface in a couple places.
I first ground the teeth off the edges. Then worked on removing the teeth from the surfaces. Removing the teeth is the first thing to do. A clean piece of metal is easier to work with. The whole blade should be smooth all over. One is not dealing with them when trying to sharpen or shape the blade. The problem with the grinder is the curve of the stone only really touches a small area of the metal. I got the worst of the teeth off but you could still see some impression on the surface.
Now is when I was glad I made that sanding disk for the lathe. I put the tool rest almost touching the sandpaper and used the handle of a small turning tool to push against the blade as I sanded the surface of the blade. That did the job of cleaning the blade nice and flat.
I returned to the grinder and started shaping the blade . I measured for the main blade and used the grinder to make a tang in the middle of the file for the small blade so I would get two blades out of it. The end blade was to be shorter than the other with the file-tang.
I used the grinder to start tapering the blades, work one side, flip it around and work the other one. I had the end blade quite good then started on the blade with the tang. I had to put on a glove because it was getting hot. I know I am supposed to quench the blade each time but I was being lazy.
With the more common steel, if you get bluing from over heating, you have lost the temper of the blade. It becomes softer. Now with a lot of the modern files, they case harden them, which is some form of chemical bath, that makes the surface hard but the metal below the surface is still soft. This makes them hard but flexible. Not likely to crack or shatter. If I really wanted to do things right, I should re-temper the blade. That is not worth the trouble.
Metal is heat-treated to give it the rigidity and hardness needed for a project . They can control how hard the metal is or how flexible it is. If you heat the metal really hot and quench it, it will have maximum hardness, but will be exceedingly brittle. If you don’t harden the metal, it will be really flexible, and even bend instead of breaking, but the surfaces can be deflected or worn away easily because it is soft. The usual heat treating method is to get the metal really hot and quench if quickly. Then reheat it to a certain point and stop the heating where the metal has the hardness needed. One can do this by setting it in an oven for that exact temperature, or you can heat the thick part of the blade and quench it when the edge reaches a certain temperature. Steel changes color according to the temperature so they aim for the edges to be golden or straw colored. Bringing a steel to blue, take out all the temper from the metal so it will be really soft.
There are steel compounds that make them heat tolerant so that if you blue the metal, the temper stays with in the metal. In wood turning, these are usually referred to high speed steel. They can be used at speeds that create a lot of heat and hold their edge nicely.
I got both blades close to what they needed to be, then turned to my sanding disk again so I could get the angle even and the surfaces clean.
Years ago, I used to make knives with fine points like my dad taught me. They go through gloves with ease. I accidentally made a knife with a square end and found I loved it. I have made my knives like that ever since. I also make my blades so the back of the blade is about the same thickness as the originating file, if I use a small file. This allows me to apply pressure on the blade if I need control near the edge.

I then started making handles for them. Previously, I had a wood called BISHOPS WOOD that is strong and hard. They made good handles. I decided to use BLACK WALNUT this time. The black walnut I have is old and have suffered a lot of weather. Some parts of the wood shows decay. I cut some pieces and made handles in the shape I like. Most of the commercial handles are narrow like a regular knife’s blade. My dad taught me to make them wide so that the pressure pushing down is spread out over a larger area. I made a pair of handles roughly in the shape I like and cut a slot with the band saw for the blade, then drilled out the handle for the tang. Then I became a combination of Laurel and Hardy plus the Three Stooges.
I cracked one handle badly and the other had problems too. I pried the blade with the long tang out using a hammer and then made another pair of handles. I was driving the blade in and it was going in wrong. I tried to pry the blade out again and broke the blade, I ground another tang on the broken end and after a couple more tries, I finally got handles for the two actual blades. The one in the handle that broke, I left that in there, and decided I could use it like a utility knife.

There is a turning club meeting this week. I hope to have some things to show.

I will see what I do next weekend.

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