Aff Wood

Hi Everyone,

One of the enduring difficulties in turning unseasoned wood is the drying that occurs when a bowl or platter is turned. The turning exposes the grain of the wood and any water that is inside of the wood evaporates away. Sometimes, if the grain dries evenly, the bowl will retain its shape and not crack. But if the grain dries unevenly cracking and distortion of the sides of the bowl or the bottom of a plate can occur.

One way to get around this is to turn an unseasoned blank several times, each time removing a little more wood and then wrapping the bowl blank in heavy paper so it will dry slowly and hopefully evenly. And youve seen me do this many times. It can take 4-6 months for a large bowl to dry out this way and a long time for a project to come to completion.

Another way to dry out a bowl is to place it in a microwave oven and heat the wood up. This drives out the water in the wood and can speed up drying from months to 30 minutes. Thats the good news. The bad news is that it can cause the wood to rapidly dry out and distort, ruining the piece.

Ive never tried it before and since I have a small block of linden wood in the shop I decided to go down and turn the linden block into a natural edge bowl and to then take it into my kitchen and microwave it.

So heres what I did:

Here is a photo of the linden block. Its half of a large branch that Ive had for about 1 1/2 years or so and so Im going to turn it into a natural edge bowl. This is a bowl that still has some of its bark left on the edge:


This is about 90 minutes later. This type of turning produces a saddle-shaped bowl and you can see the shape beginning to form:


Here you can clearly see the saddle shape and the bark on the edge:


Here is the bowl after its had a session in the microwave. Its hot to the touch and very damp at this point but I dont see any cracking or obvious distortion. Ive placed it on my bread rack to dry and Im going to put it in front of an open window. Ill check back on it later today.


VW

Sometimes, working on the weekends feels good...

well, when its springtime in vermont, you cant expect tooooo  much writing from me ... i do have a couple of good posts coming up, but i havent quite gotten around to getting them together just yet.  soon, i suspect, like maybe tomorrow.  maybe.  if it rains or something.  maybe ... heres a sampler of what its like outside here now ... like i said.  spring.  click the pictures to enlarge them ...

The New Bench Chisels from Veritas
 
” The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price has been forgotten.”  Benjamin Franklin



Well in case you haven’t heard, Veritas has released their new line of Bench Chisels. I first laid my eyes (and hands) on them back in 2011,  while visiting the Lee Valley Tools head office in Ottawa, Ontario. After a year of anticipation, I finally have a set that I’ve been putting through their paces and wanted to finally share my thoughts with you. I’ve read a few reviews and comments already on the inter-webs and thought I’d throw my two cents into the mix. This review may seem a little late but I wanted to actually work with these things for a while before giving any opinions.  I think that’s a pretty important step to take before spewing opinions around the internet, don’t you?

The first thing you’ll notice when you pick up one of these chisels is the weight of them. For their size, they’re extremely light. A good thing in my book. The second thing you’ll notice is they’re balanced. Let me say that again, they’re really, really balanced! That point is probably the most important thing with any hand tool- how does it feel in hand? How does it feel while in use? These things simply put- feel great. From paring and chopping to fine tuning joinery, I find these chisels an absolute joy to use.
The standard set comes in O1 tool steel and that suites me just fine. I personally prefer O1 for it’s ease of sharpening. Some will argue that in laboratory tests, A2 steel will hold an edge longer. While that may be true, I don’t work in a laboratory! I’ve never found a noticeable difference in wear between the two except as mentioned, when it comes to sharpening. I prefer  O1 tool steel but if you often work with dense exotic timbers and need a tool that will hold up longer in the hardest woods, then  you’re in luck. Veritas will be producing these things in a ‘powdered-metallurgy steel known as PM-V11™ – a tough, wear-resistant alloy that retains its edge longer when used on dense, abrasive woods, yet sharpens as easily as A2 steel.‘
And speaking of the steel, the chisels come to you absolutely flat and when I say flat, I mean FLAT!
‘… flatness tolerance of ±0.0005″ (half of one thousandth of an inch!)
Half of one thousandth of an inch? Well then, that should do it, eh? In fact, these things are so flat they they’re actually a little sharp on the edges. If I could say anything negative about these chisels it would be just that. The outside edges should be ‘broken’ a little before use. Nothing more than a gentle rolling across a stone or a rub with some sand paper to ease the edges. Maybe this is something Veritas will address in the future? I asked about the sharp outside edges (or lands as they’re called in Galoot World) and was told it’s due to the extensive lapping process carried out during manufacturing to insure these things come to you absolutely flat. Fair enough.

The handles are made from hard maple that goes through a high temperature, kiln-baking process that eliminates almost all moisture content and caramelizes the sugars in the wood. Oh how Canadian, chisels with maple syrup handles~;) But seriously, the handles feel great in use and that’s the important part. Aesthetically,  they look fantastic and I for one was happy to see a Veritas tool made from a Domestic wood species instead of their instantly recognizable, Bubinga handles and totes. They have small flats on the handle sides that feel great in hand. The blade to handle connection is an innovative cross between a tang and a socket-like ferrule. This makes for a perfect union between the two and you won’t have to worry about loose chisel handles anymore. Something I couldn’t say about ANY of my other chisels.
So, if you’ve been thinking about purchasing a new set of chisels and want something that will last a few lifetimes then I think it would be hard to beat the new chisels from Veritas. The full set of five is priced at just under $300. That is an extremely reasonable price to pay for a set of premium hand tools that will no doubt become extensions of your arms.
Already, they’ve become my go-to chisels and I think they were well worth the wait.
Cheers!

Today is the first post on what I hope will be an interesting project. This blog will detail the goings-on in my workshop garage with a focus primarily on woodworking projects. Ive been working wood for about three years now and am starting to feel like I am turning a corner from pathetic novice to slightly-less-pathetic novice. I will try to bring to the table different topics that I encounter along the way and eventually hope to receive feedback later on.

Background:

Age: 27
Location: Tucker, Ga
Occupation: Grad Student at Ga Tech.
Song stuck in my head right now:

Here are some pictures of cabinets installed at a project in Oak Harbor, Ohio.  The counter top was extended to cover the trash receptacle.   I like the shape of the valance.

A few weeks ago the Tree House suffered a major setback when one of the main support bolts broke. After some immediate triage consisting of temporary supports to hold up the unsupported corner and supplement the two (2) bolts which hadnt broken yet, Ive finally managed to restore the sagging tree house deck to its original position.

Finally, a jack setup that works. The deck is going up.

By using a house jack (or two) and ultimately learning that I needed to brace the jack stand against the tree and screw it together to prevent it from toppling under the weight, I was able to raise the deck back to its proper height today. Its now held there with two (2) temporary supports.

These are some of the wood related businesses that are making a larger impact on the local scene at this time.

BRENT COMBER:
The web site gives you a pretty good idea of the history of this business, a profile of its founder and the products they make. In many ways this is an ingenious woodworking business in that they have overcome or avoided many of the challenges and pitfalls that many woodworking businesses face. The most significant of these would be joinery. Joinery, to a large extent is what defines furniture making, thus the term “Joinery”. Generally speaking, making the parts is the easy part of woodworking, especially if you are taking advantage of CNC technology. The hard part is putting those parts together. For that you need skilled trades people and or a highly sophisticated manufacturing facility. IKEA gets around this problem by passing on the job of putting the parts together to the consumer. Brent Comber takes it a step further and eliminates the need to put parts together by designing most of the pieces to consist of only a single part. Some of the pieces such as the Alder tables do consist of numerous pieces but do not involve complex joinery; rather the parts are fused together with a gob of construction adhesive.
Although brilliant in its simplicity, this method has its limitations, as we can see the Brent Comber product line is limited to objects providing horizontal surfaces to be used as tables or something to sit on and decorative wall pieces. There are no case goods.
Another great thing about this business is the material they use, commercially worthless cast off material.
With support from organizations such as BC WOOD Brent Comber markets their products internationally, this has been critical to their success.
One of the major, ongoing challenges they face is protecting their products from plagiarism, obviously, if the designs are cheap and easy to make for them, they would be for many others.

THE WOOD CO-OP GALLERY:
The Wood Co-op Gallery was established on Granville Island in Vancouver circa 2000. In January 2008 after part of the roof collapsed in a snow storm the gallery was given two weeks to move. As an interim measure the landlord provided the gallery with a temporary space in The Netloft building also on Granville Island. This space is approximately 1/10 the size of the original. This severely limited the ability of the gallery to show the work of many of its artists. After about ten months of searching, finding and renovating a new space the gallery has re-opened at 1554 West 6th Avenue in Vancouver, a short walk south of Granville Island. The Co-op has also retained the Netloft space. The Wood Co-op gallery carries an eclectic collection of work reflecting the diversity of the artisan / artist woodworking community in British Columbia and provides an indispensible venue for artists and the public to come together.

KOZAI:
Kozai is an importer / retailer of Japanese artisan furniture. As you can see from the website the work is fantastic. Obviously there is something good going on in Japan as far as woodworking is concerned. Ironically, if I am not mistaken, much of the choice hardwood we see used in these designs comes from North America. Kozai is located almost directly across the street from The Wood Co-op Gallery, each benefit from their close proximately to each other.

BOMBAST:
This company has been around in different forms since the early “80’s. They design and produce mostly upholstery with a few wood pieces such as side tables. A few years ago they opened a new showroom in Chinatown. This is a great Vancouver success story and Russell Baker, the founder has a good understanding of the local scene over the past several decades.

BENSEN:
This company was founded by its owner Niels Bendtsen and has grown enormously since its humble origin at 1000 Parker in the early ‘90’s. One of their first projects was to supply seating for the huge expansion of Starbucks into Canada. Mr Bendtsen is also the owner of INFORM INTERIORS and a large inventory of commercial real estate in Vancouver.