Toolmaking Art » Husbandry

Testing For Lead

Bob Strawn — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 12:00:10 +0000

In my pursuit of toolmaking, I don’t want others to come to harm. I use a lot of odd bits and bobs to make things with. Brass and bronze have a special appeal. The problem is that these items can be full of lead. Leaded brass is easy to work and polishes up with ease.

As long as no one looks over your shoulder or cares about the dangers, there are a lot of good reasons for a business to use leaded materials. Since compassion is only allowed in publicly traded companies when it is dictated by law, or demonstrably more profitable, it is just not safe to assume the products we buy are safe.

10$ and free shipping for 8 test swabs is a bargain considering that what you don’t know can make you and your children stupid and irrational. (Free shipping on $25+ orders, so you will have to get a few other items. Getting this marshmallow gun with it will still leave you 2 cents short.)

You take a swab, shake it up, crunch up the little glass containers inside the plastic sleeve, shake it up again with the swab pointed up, to mix the tiny shards of glass, powder and liquid, and then point it down and squeeze juice into the swap.

There is enough juice to drip some of the test fluid on a few objects and then swab with the remainder. This way you can test a few things at once.

I gathered a bunch of stuff I wanted to test and cleaned or polished or sanded a few areas on these surfaces. I also put the stuff that I thought would be safe first on my list to test. Once you have rubbed the swab on grungy or lead, you can not do further testing with it. You can however as long as it is still damp, clean and testing negative, keep checking stuff.

It comes with a couple of cards with lead spots so you can be sure it is working if everything tests out lead free.

The high speed sprayer nozzle, a long discontinued item from Harbor Freight, tested positive. The brass hose connector also discontinued, from Harbor Freight also tested positive, but not strongly.

This is sad, because both of these items are used for gardens, pets, yards and even children. It is also sad, because they would make great ferrules for tools. The little Stanley insert for opening sliding cabinets tested negative as did several other nice brass fittings. The old air hose fitting tested negative so it will someday be a very pretty ferrule.

These three pieces of brass all show red. The one on the left I was planning to use to make a tool today. This is the reason I started the lead testing. Now it is trash. I am not going to use it. The middle piece is a tube from a pen turning kit. Since the user will never touch it, I don’t have a big issue with the lead content.

Since the dust and shavings will be in my work area after I work it, I am going to have to come up with another way to turn pens. Otherwise I will be increasing the ambient lead in my work area, yard and on the products I make. The tube on the far right is a typical brass tube like you can get at a lot of hobby stores. Yes it tested positive. I will not be buying anymore of these.

I pulled off the sleeve on one of the test swabs so you can see the two glass vials inside. Make sure to crunch them up well and mix the ingredients. Note the scarlet stain on the trammel below the vial. Sadly this trammel tested quite positive.

I was worried about the small brass fittings in these pictures but they seem O.K..

The beautiful, functional and well designed trammels that I got from Rockler will never be used again. I really did not want this tool to fail. I just lightly brushed a whisper of the test fluid on the inside flat of the trammel.

The picture does not do justice to the lovely scattering of scarlet that matches with the lead test included with the kit.

This is really sad as this is probably the prettiest tool that I have ever bought. This trammel is perfect apart from the fact that it is laden with lead. I cannot use it, nor will I pass it on to someone else for them to use. I have tested brass fittings on 12 other tools and none of them came close to as high a reading as this trammel. I really liked this trammel set.

I probably would have put a thin coating of epoxy and then hard wax on it and just been careful if it had a low level of lead in it. Foolish of me perhaps, but it really is a nice trammel. This is not just a touch of lead however.

I guess this is another good reason to make your own tools. It is also a good reason to drink Kombucha Tea.

Bob

Rotted Willow Smoke

Bob Strawn — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 13:00:41 +0000

Mmmmm. Rotted willow smoke!

It is Thanksgiving, and I am giving thanks.

At one time I planted several hundred willows.

These willows grew tall.

And they gave me lovely dappled garden shade.

This made for a very nice garden to work in!

Now, due to a shift in climate, all but a few are dead. In any case, when climate change gives you lemons …

Push over and dig up a few willow roots.

In it’s own way, a dead willow is still a treasure.

When you dig up a dead willow root, you get an amazing thing, Rotted willow root!

With some coals and a few scraps of willow root you can make the best smoked turkey in existence.

I don’t use petroleum to start my coals. The smell is horrid, and the taste is worse. Great barbeque does not start with petroleum distillates.

I like to use a starter tower. Since the handle broke on my old one, I quickly turned a new cedar handle. Nothing fancy, but better than the original.

In the foreground you can see a bunch of willow root chips. These will crumble about like weak cork.

I have lots of oak and it smokes really well. I have used hickory, and pecan and both of them do well too. I have mesquite growing in my yard, and prefer it to oak, hickory and pecan. But as long as I have rotted willow root, I have no interest in any other wood for smoking turkey, fish, lamb or whatever. Willow root makes for some yummy turkey.

Bob

Food Safe Glue

Bob Strawn — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:55:18 +0000

My next glue purchase is going to be a gallon of Ecopoxy.

I have been looking for a waterproof, food safe glue for quite a while. A lot of people advertise that their products are made with food safe glue, and a lot of people say that this or that glue is food safe, but when you research the final results, they don’t pan out. Some will talk about the safety of the product, but their web sites and literature don’t make the same claims. Just because a salesman has made a claim, and people believed it and repeated it, does not make it true. The only conclusive evidence of food safe glue, that I have found up until now is Tightbond III. It is rated for indirect contact with food. As a result a lot of people prefer it for making cutting boards.

Ecopoxy is currently not being marketed as a glue, but I think this will be just the thing. I have not tested it as a glue, but from the specs, it looks like it will be ideal. No glue is perfect, but this looks like a dream glue.

It has an unlimited shelf life. (heat may damage the resin) This by itself is amazing. An unlimited shelf life means you don’t have to replace it every year. You don’t have to worry that the glue you bought may already be three months old and only half as strong as it was. This is a big advantage. This puts it in the category with hide glue for longevity.

Probably using Knox Gelatin as hide glue is the safest glue you can get, but apart from peanut allergies possibly causing a problem while the glue is curing, or the BPA issue rearing it’s ugly head, this is as safe as any glue I have seen. It is rated for holding potable water, so food contact is not an issue. From the specifications I have read, I would trust this more than the plastic bottles or metal cans we drink from regularly. The metal cans are usually lined with this sort of epoxy anyway, and this looks to be the best of them.

The other advantages are reduced odor, VOC and environmental issues. Gluing up a boat in your garage would be quite a bit safer with this epoxy. This is made from soybeans, beans and peanuts, so the carbon footprint is much lower than most glues. The one downside is the curing time. It is typical for a glue to be fully set either overnight or a full day later. This will reach full strength in three to five days so for a rush job or impatient craftsman, this will not be ideal. A lot of the toxicity of finishes and glues comes from the materials used to speed the setting time, so I am not about to complain about the speed. I would much rather have safe materials.

Here are a few thoughts on usage. Cutting blocks come to mind immediately, but this product may allow for some really neat things to be made. Imagine taking 6 board feet of oak, and making a stackable one foot oak cube that holds five and a half gallons for brewing wine in. Or imagine gluing together three sections like the picture below and making a wooden flask. It would look really nice with a square cork. There is no reason at all that this flask is not triangular or round or whatever.

One neat application they list is using it with sand to make a non slip surface. A food safe, marine grade epoxy that is tough enough to use to as a floor coating sounds pretty wonderful to me. I want to make a cedar hot tub with it to put next to a small cedar swimming pool. Put that on a cedar deck, with a non-slip walking path and you have a pretty wonderful back yard. If you masked off a pathway, you could make a neat non slip path. This path could be intact or done as if stepping stones. I am sure you could do this with a lot of other epoxies, but I would feel much better soaking in a hot tub that was food safe!

I cannot give any advice based on personal use yet, but as soon as I can I will do an update on this. I have enough of a sample to do some quick testing, so I will be reporting on this as I go. In any case, this epoxy looks like a game changer.

Bob

My new Tomato Friends!

Bob Strawn — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:00:06 +0000

Here are the tomato varieties that I will be trying from seed gathered at the Tomato Festival!

#1 Tipsy and #2 Green Giant x Yellow Submarine F1

#3 Dice’s Mystery Black

#4 Jaune Flamme a wonderful French heirloom tomato

#5 Sungold

#6 Purple Haze F1

#7 OSU Blue

#8 Paul Robeson

#9 Tennessee Green

#10 Morovsky Div

#11 Golden Gem

#12 Redfield Beauty

#13 Tony’s Italian on the left and #14 Momotoro on the right

#15 Black Cherry

Bob

Texas Cedar

Bob Strawn — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 13:00:30 +0000

When I started out exploring and sharing experiences on woodworking using the web, I took the handle ‘Cedar Slayer.’ Between allergies and my enjoying the smell of the wood, I was cutting and using a reasonable quantity of the stuff. I grew to love this wood, and was surprised at the variability of it. As I researched and read up on the stuff, I found out how to cure cedar fever, and how valuable a tree cedar is. Mind you, I don’t want it everywhere, but am actually encouraging the plant to grow in a few places in my yard now. I found out that a lot of cedar we use is not even cedar. If it holds up in weather ok and smells cedary, we call it cedar. The ‘cedar’ used in cigar boxes is actually a hard wood. The cedar in my yard is juniper.

Lovely stuff juniper. in the middle of summer it grows pretty powder blue berries. In late fall, in my yard, the berries ripen. Most fall before you can pick them, but the ripe ones are actually quite sweet and tasty. if they are not ripe the taste pretty much like pine smells. The story is that if you eat five or so berries, you will be immune to cedar fever allergies. My family tried it this last year, and for us, it worked.

Here is a site with a lot of good information on cedar.

My current plan is to put a windbreak of cedar at the north end of my yard. The more I work with and learn about cedar, the more I love it. The trees can be real itchy though, and I am not fond of itchy.

Bob