Later in the afternoon I did some shopping while mia_mcdavid took a nap. I then made one of the changes to the post drill that I had thought of last night. Then a shower, and off to work. Fortunately, that just meant a trip to the basement, where, with a cable modem and VPN, it is almost like going downtown.
A member of the Oldtools list found this classified ad in his local newspaper.
Ark welder. Older style.
The Woodwright’s Guide: Working Wood with Wedge and Edge
I have already ordered it.
Some of colgaffneyis members are at John O’s, down near Winona for a project weekend (“Johndevous”). John has a very impressive shop and invited anybody in the group to come down there to work on their own camp projects. I decided not to go. I have a shop of my own. John’s shop is better than mine, but not enough better to offset the hassle of driving to Winona and camping there. Also, here I do not have to share the tools.
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Spacewalkers resort to banging, pry bar
What an old friend calls “Engineering method #1: Brute force.”
A crew from the city came by a few weeks ago and trimmed our front yard tree–the branches were hanging way out over the street. We saved the branches to see if I could make anything out of them with green woodworking techniques using only hand (non-electric) tools. After a couple hours of hard work with saws, splitting wedges and a maul, and other tools, the answer is yes: Firewood (if we let it dry for a couple years). The branches were just too knotty and bent to get any useful length of straight-grained wood. Perhaps I will be able to carve a few spoons. This was about what I expected from the literature; you really need wood from the tree’s trunk, and from the trunk of the right tree. My selection here in a first ring suburb is limited.
I kept trying for quite a while, and it was with some difficulty I tore myself away from the effort. However, that was the right thing to do. I was tired, and might have made a mistake. So I quit while I still had ten fingers, and all of my blood was still inside my body. Well, I certainly got my exercise today.
This evening I made a cabinet scraper from a broken saw blade. I did not spend a lot of time preparing the edge, but I am already able to make pretty little shavings, leaving behind a nice smooth surface.
What I was trying to do was clean up the surface of a pair of traditional clogs that I had purchased last summer. A big problem was how to hold them in place so I could work on the surface. Because of the irregular shape and the hollow inside I was reluctant to use a vise. If I tightened the vise grip too much it would break the shoe. The solution was to use a hold fast to lock the shoe to the surface of my workbench.
This was a nice follow up to colgaffneyis meeting: I tried out two traditional woodworking tools, and even with my limited skills and experience, was quickly able to achieve satisfactory and satisfying results.
From Hilbert Space to Dilbert Space, and beyond 