Wednesday - sharpening and a shop tip.

  Many of the blogs have clever titles like; Wednesday Wonders, or What's Up Wednesday. I guess I could have called today wandering Wednesday, though technically my peregrinations were not aimless.  The day was a beautiful motorcycle riding day and so I zipped about  taking care of little businesses.

 I went to see my brother and he showed me two pocket knives that he had unearthed in an old suitcase/briefcase.  One of the knives was his Boy Scout knife, so you know it is old.  Both knives were dull, I suspect that they had seen hard service. Lucky for him I was there and said I would sharpen then for him.  I had a kitchen knife that needed work, but had not gotten around to it. His two knives motivated me to set aside some time to  do the job properly.

my basic knife sharpening set up

  You can see the three knives that needed attention.  All the blades were dulled to the point that a touch up with the strop or a steel wasn't enough.  I begin this rehabilitation process with a large 1000 grit water stone. This is an oil based sharpening system. 

 I don't take a position on water vs. oil when sharpening. I use water because that is the system with which I started, for no reason than a random purchase. I strongly support the position, pick a system and work with it until you get good at it. And, do not over look the contribution from a leather sharpening strop. 

  As well as taking some time to do some serious sharpening I added a detail to my music stand.

  I decided that I would make my music stand adjustable for height and so needed to drill come holes in black stained wood.  Needless to say an ordinary pencil is not going to mark worth a hoot.  Having encountered this situation before I had a solution on hand. I have a yellow water colour pencil crayon in my collection of markers and as you can see.....the marks really show up. 

  By the way, the wandering, my Mom's place, Costco, a $ Store, an office supply store, a bank, in three different cities. It was not efficient, or carefully planned but it was great morning's riding.

cheers, ianw

music stand

 Last week I returned to playing clarinet in our local community concert band. I stopped playing in bands about eight years ago for a variety of reasons, mostly because it wasn't much fun.  I am hoping playing will be fun again.

 When I gathered my gear up I discovered that I could not find my wire music stand, it could be anywhere.  I may have given it away or left it in a church some place or......I don't know, abducted my aliens!. Not a real issue, I hate those flimsy, folding wire music stands anyway.

  I have a wood working shop so I made myself a good sturdy, useful music stand.

  At this point the bottom section of the stand is not finished.  Probably I will stain it black too, but for this week I am going to leave it unfinished so that the wood is obvious.

  The whole project was made from re-claimed or left over wood. The body of the stand is re-claimed spruce 2 x 4. The section connected to the top is a bit of oak trim I had laying around, it is fairly thin and so I wanted oak's strength. The face is a bit of door skin.

 The stand is adjustable for angle with a bolt and wing nut. I had the threaded stock available to make the bolt.

  

 I cut a channel in the 2 x 4 using dado blades into which the oak stem fits. There is the possibility of adding adjustment for height later, currently it is made by me, for me, so it fits. 

  I would go with the hard wood/soft wood combination on the next music stand too. I soft wood base/body is not very heavy and the hard wood stem and legs are small yet strong.

Making a project from mixed wood pretty much means it needs to be darkly finished or painted to get a consistent looking finish.

  There is a sofa table lurking in the back ground but it involves some heavy machining, and my back it not allowing me much heavy lifting just now.  Later I the week, I hope.