Toolmaking Art

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I had a kind of 3D idea for the handle from combining different pictures of them in my head. After getting the basic shape, I grabbed the handles and started removing what felt wrong.

Here it is held, and the Cedar shavings below were indeed made by the tool:

Any uneven qualities are in my hands, because this was shaped to fit. Oddly the fit is good so the grip feels kind of soft. Even though I have secure grip and control.

Here are two more picture to get the feel of the rams horn kind of twist I made.

Here is a slightly fuzzy close up of the mouth.

The finish is the paraffin/safflower/turpentine mix I am fond of. The working areas are sanded to 400 grit, the handle is sanded to 220 to leave a touch more grip.

The plate is osage, the rest is brass and ash. This should hold up rattling around in the tool box, for a long time.

This one has worked out really well, Usually you use a chair devil or spokeshave type tool on narrow sections of wood. This means you don’t have to worry much about clearance. One of the advantages of the form is, once the knack for finding and holding the angle is learned, you can adjust angle on the fly. The rather large flat plane on the body helps me to find that angle initially, but then I can adjust it a bit as the wood grain shifts angle.

I wanted a tool that I could use as a spoke shave, but on a wide section of wood. I thought about it, and I decided that while I wanted the actual grip higher so it would be clear of the surface, I also thought it would be best if the handle was directly centered over the blade. Since the normal forces are indeed going to push backward and try to rotate the tool as you pull it towards you, I made sure that my thumbs would be right there to prevent the spin.

In practice, I can use this tool in one hand. It has great control. I am not taking a huge shaving with it, but it seems to work every bit as well as I envisioned it to.

I don’t have much call to use a tool of this form, in fact one of the projects I that I made it for has turned out to be a failure.

Such is life when you imagine things and try to build them. Even though I don’t use this sort of tool much, if I lost it, I would try to make another one just like it. I think it will be perfect for it’s intended purpose, to make a track for a marble to follow.

Bob

Some plants raise themselves. These make the garden a dream.

Here is some Chinese celery that have naturalized and decided they can do alright next to the pond.

Here are some wild onions that crossed with one of the members of my domestic onion collection.

I don’t know if I will get another cross with them however because they are now, viviparous.

Instead of making seeds, this guy now makes little bulbs.

The dewberry is a native treat.  I would be hard put to not have it grow here.

This lovely flower is borage. The taste of the flower is like sweet cucumber. Quite nice really. I planted some years ago, and a few plants have come up each year, ever since.

Bob

My Darling Wife decided I needed to learn a new skill for some stuff she wants me to make.
So of course I had to make some new tools.

Sadly the wonderful book only had two tools. So I of course made three!!

Then again it did show a compass.

In this case I decided to go cheap, quick and simple. I used pretempered M2 HSS.

I am careful not to over heat even the M2 HSS steel. It is too much work to shape it, and the steel is not at all flexible, but the stuff will seriously hold an edge and work flawlessly for a small knife.

These are really simple to make, I saw a notch in the wood, scrape some carbon deposits off my large tea kettle and then mix some epoxy in with the carbon for the black look. I coat the blade, smear epoxy into the notch, and tap the blade into place. the I fill the notch with epoxy, wait for it to set and then shape the handle.

If you are looking for some good supplies for making basic knives:

I like this one for Screw Posts

Screw Posts look good and are a good backup if the blade comes loose from the glue. I use the unfinished aluminum ones, so I can grind them down and keep the same color. I avoid brass on cooking tools entirely as it may well contain lead.

If you are thinking of tempering your own steel, then O1 is a great intro, and there is almost too much data online telling you how to do it.

This is my source for O1

By the way, if you are going to make blades, get a good belt sander and some good belts.

Bob

Nature has made me a hypocrite. And I am a better person for it. We often take stands that on the surface seem right, but with understanding, are fairly weak.

My ideal was to have no toxic plants in my yard and garden. Ignore the fact that that would mean eliminating and fighting a huge number of naturally occurring plants. Ignore the fact that many edible plants are toxic in one stage or another. Ignore a lot of things, such as balance of nature, and It might be possible.

The one on the left is a pepper, the one next to it with the big leaves is tobacco. The one behind and in the middle is an elderberry. The one on the right is a tomato. To the far right, behind the pots is a 4:00.

The tomato, tobacco and pepper are all quite bad for you depending on how you abuse it. All of them can be quite good for you if used correctly and perhaps with moderation. The elderberry is for some a complete cure for arthritis. The 4:00 has the wonderful property of killing grasshoppers. Note that these plants all look pest free and healthy. There is a reason. A bug that has adapted to chew on one of these still won’t survive the rest. I don’t spray or apply pesticides, I plant them.

Here are a few more 4:00 pictures so you can see the other reason for growing them. Just don’t eat them.

A occasional flower in the garden is rarely amiss.

Bob

Chisel comes with the hoop on, but not right. It is on tight, first I need to take it off.

Lots of ways you could take it off, I am using a big hammer, a wooden wedge, and a socket wrench socket a bit smaller than the ring. The socket is held in a vise.

With the chisel on the socket, and the wedge at a 45 degree angle, I can hit the ring and loosen it, without marring the steel or the handle. I had to rotate and pound a few times to get it off.

It came off nicely, and did not roll away because of the socket.

Since the plan is to hammer the wood and compress it for the ring, I had to come up with a neat way to do it. The tape is so I can be sure to pound the wood neatly.

I am using a lighter hammer to pound the handle. The anvil is doing the real shaping. I am only tapering the edge with the hammer. The hammer never gets near the tape.

Now I am using a larger socket wrench socket to set the ring. The socket is large enough for the wood part of the handle to fit inside. A few good taps on the back of the socket with my bigger hammer and the ring will be in place.

The ring is on and a rounded, 45 degree bevel is on the back of the wood. This is a sneaky trick I figured out. Does great, looks better, soaks faster.

Now I soak the end to make it swell up. This also softens the wood so it can be shaped a bit without it splitting as much. Since there is a bevel at the base, more endgrain is exposed to absorb water faster.

The wood is showing damp just above the ring now, so it is wet enough for me to work it.

After pounding the end a bit, the wood is flared, but not split. The chamfer allows this to happen.

Up close you can see the flare, This hoop is not going anywhere.

Here it is mostly done, after making some nice deep chisel marks, the end still looks pretty nice!

One final touch. Don’t know how well this mark will hold up. but it is nice to know the size of the chisel I am reaching for.

Here is a frog!

Now It is ready to be tuned. The chisel that is.

The chisels shown are all Kakuri. They hold a wicked edge, and hone pretty easy. Getting them tuned up did not take a lot, and they do quite well. They seem to keep their prime sharpness about half again as long as well tempered O1, however a hard knot in Osage will consistently put a ding in a 30 degree edge. The osage I used is the cruelest test I could come up with. The knot will dull the O1 quickly but no ding is made.

For pine, these chisels will take end grain off and keep going sharp well after the O1 is dull. So for softer woods, these guys rock, For extreme hard woods, like I often use, these guys don’t hack it. Since I mangle a lot of cedar, and these guys are gems when It comes to cedar, I will be using them quite a bit. Cedar can make the occasional hard as rock knot, so I will be careful.

Getting a few Japanese Chisels has opened my eyes. I used to think that there might be a generally perfect chisel, but now I am not so sure. For an all around chisel, O1 is I think better than this example of a laminate chisel. However for some applications, this beats the O1 hands down.

Bob

Big, tasty, and quite pretty to grow!

Butterflies like it to!

Such an amazing flower bundle!

Tall and graceful!

Even the fig tree likes them:

Bob

The one on the right is the Mesquite Panel Gauge. On the left is the Pecan Marking Gauge.

The pecan guide will not lock onto the smaller mesquite bar, apart from that, the tools are interchangeable. The pencil and blade work with either.

Here is the panel gauge in use. If you look close you can see the line it cuts.

Here is the pecan marking gauge with the pencil in use.

Because the knife sticks out a bit, I have to hold it down with my finger, as I cut, or it will not make a good cut. On the plus side, it is comfortable, stable, and quite controlled. It also ignores grain!!!!

Here it is taken apart. This is the third wedge that I turned for it, the first two were failures. Getting a wedge to consistently grip well can be a challenge.

Here is the panel gauge with the pencil in place. you can see the slot at the bottom of the gauge for the edge of the board.

Here it is lifted slightly to show how the slot at the bottom edge works. Not so stealthy grain gloat included.

Here it is ready to mark, without the edge lifted.

Here are the markers. They can both be used without the gauge! When the knife is set with the curved side toward the fence, the curve tends to push the blade away from the fence. This helps keep a straight line. And it works that way in either direction!