Yesterday's busy day began Thursday evening gluing the face plate to a maple board. My plan was a shallow bowl.
To be able to turn the dish/bowl on a face plate I needed to attach the board to the face plate without screws. I choose this method, instead of using my three jaw chuck. The face plate is screwed to a piece of wood (oak) which is rounded but more importantly flattened. I next glue paper, (cereal box) to the oak face and the bottom of the bowl blank. LET THE GLUE DRY, I give the wood glue overnight in the clamps to dry completely.
To begin I turn the blank between centres until it is round and turning smoothly. After that I remove the tail stock and hollow it as I would any other bowl. This project has three burned lines as details.The lines are made by holding a wire against the bowl as it turns until the friction burns the wood. After sanding I waxed the bowl and took the whole thing off the lathe, face plate and all. The bowl is separated using a chisel and I sand the paper off with a random orbital sander.
Then I left the mess to be cleaned up today.
The messy lathe work station was just one of today's messy spots.
Yesterday before I began work in my shop I had another of those none wood working things to do that keeps a wood working shop going. I had to sew the seam on the left index finger of my shop gloves.
Actually I pretty pleased with my work. You can't see the repair. These gloves have saved many skinned knuckles.
I talked about making my own knife.
I had two blades from which to choose::
The blade on the left is a Morakniv blank and the one on the right is one of several I bought 25+ years ago with big plans. Over time a couple of these blades have been used to make some tools for my shop so I know the steel is good.
I guess because I like to make life difficult, or because it doesn't look as though I will be in Sweden anytime soon I opted to reshape the blade on the right. Now it is not just fitting a wooden handle it is almost like knife making.
I used a stainless steel cutting wheel on my angle grinder to cut the rough shape of the blade. Then using my bench grinder I refined the shape some more. Tip: keep a bowl of water handy when using either grinder and cool the steel frequently.
Once I got the blade shaped to more or less its final form I began working on the blade with sand paper on a marble slab. This is a slow process but slow is better, if like me you are not experienced. It is easy to burn and/or mess up the final stages of forming and sharpening a blade with a machine.
The blade here is sandwiched between pieces of Brazilian Cherry (Jatoba). Wooden sides are pinned with dowel and the whole thing is clamped and glued over night. In the past I have found that two part epoxy glues the wood to the steel permanently.
So this morning I went into my shop, knowing I had left it in total chaos. Generally I don't like to do that but by the time I'd ground and shaped and sanded and worked on the lathe I just didn't feel like cleaning up.
First thing was un-clamping the knife. It looks as though it will turn out Okay.
Then....
work bench
work table
Everything was just left where is was used last. Once I finished with the bowl and this stage with the knife I lost my mind and really went to cleaning town.
Everything does have a place, and I did get it all put away, and vacuumed the whole place, top to bottom.All the floor mats were taken up and seriously vacuumed. I even got on my knees and vacuumed under the work benches. It was amazing what I found hidden amongst the dust bunnies. ( hex keys and small hardware mostly)
Everything does have a place, and I did get it all put away, and vacuumed the whole place, top to bottom.
In the next blog I will show the layout of my shop space, the way it is organised and what it looks like clean.
cheers ianw
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