Book in Clamps

wood working clamps can be used in many ways

  This little fire truck book has been read to Kieran dozens of times in the past year, and, he sometimes reads it to himself. (he version is an artistic interpretation of the printed text)  Unfortunately the wear and tear that a book experiences at the hands of a small boy can be fatal. 


  There has been a previous attempt at repair using tape, but the most recent repair called for serious tools.  The spine of the book is paper and so the pages, which are quite thick card stock were pulling away from the spine.  My solution, and we'll see how long it lasts, was carpenter's glue, serious clamping and a full 24 hours for the glue to set.  At this point the glue is solid, I don't know how solid the spine will be.  It is that old story, the glue is only as good as what it is gluing. 

  The clamps are two of my "go to" clamps.  The old speed clamp is great and has seen years of heavy action in my shop.  The aluminium bar clamp is light and easy to use, and it means I don't have to tie up my Bessey Clamps up on little jobs. 

Little Boot

What do you do when you are waiting for the paint to dry?  I had already cleaned my shop and put my tools away. So, I carved a wee boot.

coffee cup is usual size, the boot is for hard stomping pixies.

  First I cut out the basic shape on the band saw, then I whittled away the parts that didn't look like a boot. Next I wrapped some sand paper around pencil to do the finish sanding then used my home made walnut stain for the colour.


 The boot is scrap pine that was laying around and I wanted it to have some colour when done but was tired of painting.  Besides craft paint does cover anything interesting in the wood's grain. 


  I make the walnut stain by soaking black walnuts, in their green casing in water for a year or so.  Do it out side because it gets pretty stinky. After the long soaking time I strain the liquid ( which is pretty lumpy) through  coffee filters and add a   couple of eye dropper drops of alcohol, to kill the rotten smell and to kill anything growing in the water/stain.  If the object is small, like this I soak the thing and brush off the excess and let it dry.  Once the finish is dry I put a clear oil or wax over top to seal the stain in.


  If you are interested in trying this you will need a couple of gallons of walnuts to get a couple of cups of stain. Walnuts are everywhere here so I don't spend much time trying to mechanically break them down to get the maximum amount of stain.  I am sure that if the nuts were pealed and soaked and mashed and mashed and maybe ground up there would be more colour extracted per gallon of nuts.  Also if the husks were ground up the colour could be extracted with less soaking time, I just haven't bothered to stream line my methods.