Mmmmm. Rotted willow smoke!
It is Thanksgiving, and I am giving thanks.
At one time I planted several hundred willows.
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I have been making pens to give to all the members of my family. Here is the starting pile of blanks with one example.
The blanks were glued up from mesquite and kauri. Click on the image if you want a better view. Kauri is pretty nifty wood. If the end grain is exposed on the side when turning, it will brighten and darken to your eye as you rotate the pen in the sun. Very pretty, but this wood is a softwood so working endgrain is rough. The tree this wood came from, fell into a salt bog 40,000 to 50,000 years ago and my source for this wood has dried up. So if there is a flaw in the wood, I work around it and incorporate it into the design. I have had quite a few failures and destroyed a lot of precious wood on the way to making these and learning how to work this wood to it’s best advantage. Here they are with about half of them made. Click on the image to get a better view, if you are so inclined!
Now that I have a feel for the wood, and know how to work it, I have, of course, ran out of it. In any case, this wood is a bit more pricy than I can usually afford, so I doubt I will have much more occasion to use it. Still it fun to use a wood that grew before what we would recognize as a man, walked this earth. I will warn you, this walk-through is a big one! The results, however, will let a woodworker without a lathe or mad shaping skills to have a reasonably high chance of turning a small chunk of wood into a lovely handle that can be held with comfort and pride! I have been researching and experimenting with tool grips for quite some time. Recently I have begun to solidify my research and decided it was time to figure out how to make the perfect tool handle, make it well and make it consistently. Part of my goal here is to provide a handle form that does not need a lathe to turn. I wanted to make this something that would inspire and allow budding craftsmen to use, make and repair hand tools.
Continue reading How to Make an Octagonal Handle, Shell Auger and Straight Drilling Guide I need some glue, lots of glue, epoxy preferably. I have looked around, I have lots of glue, a couple of boxes of glue, all of them are now strange hazardous waste. They are all well over a year old. Glues, most glues are dead in a year. Some may go a few more [...] The previous discussion of grips is far from over!
One method I have used to compare grips, is to have them face off. Then I can see, as I swap hands and grips, which grip applies more force with less effort. Continue reading Battle of the Grips |
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