Post a photo of the last thing you made

[--Tom--]

It started off as four square pieces of EN45, at a guess they were about 60 mm square and 6 mm thick. They were heated up and hammered together (with a power hammer, although I'd guess a fly press could to the same job), with the scale scrubbed off and lots of borax poured on the joins every time to stop impurities & oxidisation of the joint. Once they were properly welded together, the shape was drawn out into a long cuboid and the central portion had the corners hit to turn it into an octagon and then a hexadecagon. The square sections at the end were then held in a leg vice and a clamp and it was twisted round and round and round (about 20 times I think).

After that, it was gradually shaped to form a knife shape (mostly with a hand hammer this time), then left to cool very slowly in some vermiculite overnight. Then it was ground to roughly the right shape (leaving the bevel a millimetre or two thick to stop distortion) & heat treated. There was then about 3 hours of hand sanding before it went into a bath of ferric chloride for 1/2 hour to bring out the pattern. That's the point when I brought it home.

At home, I ground the bevel (with a water cooled grinder), redrilled two of the holes in the handle (as I wasn't happy with the position) and dunked it in some very cheap and very strongly brewed instant coffee. That was a bit acidic and brought the colour back into the ground bevel.

Final job was fitting the handle, sharpening and oiling the handle.

Hope that all makes sense.

Probably a bit of 15n20 as alternating layers with the en45, the nickel content helps it remains bright in the etch whereas the en45 darkens

 

[Adam W.]

Oak lath and lime plaster ceilings & Leca blocks in lime mortar. 1st. coat of three coat work.

Shonky lath.....I blame the bloke who made it and nailed it up.

 

[Jmontc]

making a bunch of Christmas stars out of old bed slats for our Men’s shed stall at a craft fair

Here I am using the original jig to cut the second angle on the petals and connectping them with pocket hole screws

 

[rafezetter]

Today I finished making a knife. It started out as a two day course at Oldfield Forge in Herefordshire, then a few days at home adding the final bevel, redrilling two of the handle holes, giving it a bath in cheap & nasty (and hence acidic) coffee to bring out the grain, then shaping and fitting (with epoxy and stainless steel pins) a walnut handle. A very satisfying project, but a lot of sanding!

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Curious grain to the "damascus" (but not really) steel - how was the billet formed and drawn and from what? Cannister or sections of different steels? It's quite unusual to have such a marked delineation of grain, normally far more "uniform", limited as that gets in damascus steel.

It looks likes the billet was just twisted, if so I think the billet was formed the wrong way, the tang will probably have a lot of the twist so that section should have been drawn as the blade with the non twisted section used as the handle to make the twist, should have been the tang.

"Tang" not handle

"Scales" not handles

Very nice heirloom meat carver otherwise, you should make a box for it, but don't line it with velvet, I'm sure I read somewhere that it is mildly acidic in nature from the manufacturing.

 

[rafezetter]

Still looking for projects that I can add kumiko work. So this is a mirror frame as a birthday present for my partner.

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The frame is from a lump of beech that's been sitting in the store for ages. I quite like the plainness of the beech against the kumiko.

This is a closer look at one of the sides

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Now to get on with the Christmas presents ( yes, they do involve kumiko )

You need to watch YT channel "Pask Makes".

 

[BillStan01]

Made this love spoon for my wife’s 65th from a solid piece of oak.

 

[rob1693]

Making some utensil sets for Christmas presents, made from mystery hardwood from the crate my indian stone paving came on

 

[Dr Al]

Curious grain to the "damascus" (but not really) steel - how was the billet formed and drawn and from what? Cannister or sections of different steels? It's quite unusual to have such a marked delineation of grain, normally far more "uniform", limited as that gets in damascus steel.

It was made from four pieces of flat bar.

It looks likes the billet was just twisted, if so I think the billet was formed the wrong way, the tang will probably have a lot of the twist so that section should have been drawn as the blade with the non twisted section used as the handle to make the twist, should have been the tang.

The flat bar pieces were combined into a single piece and then drawn out into a long cuboid. The middle section of that cuboid was flattened into a hexadecagon (16 sides) by flattening each corner in turn. The bits that stayed square-profile at either end were used to hold the hot length while twisting it and the middle bit got twisted lots and lots of times. The handle section was drawn out of the square (untwisted) bit at one end; the blade is partly twisted (where the lines are perpendicular to the blade) but as you move towards the tip you're seeing it transition into the bit that was used as a handle for twisting and hence isn't twisted. The grain in the tang bit runs parallel with the knife, just like near the tip of the blade.

 

[Gbobo]

Birchply handrail for the stairs. I stacked x2 layers of ply, pre-cut at the angles, to create the joints between the spindles and the frame.
A fair bit of sanding but happy with the result.

 

[DerekJohn]

I bought an old Clarke lathe for £50 about a year ago and am slowly getting better and having so much fun. The two main things I learned were 1) to secure the lathe very tightly and to spend quite a few hours on spindle turning techniques. Practice, practice and practice ...

Grand daughters asked for a couple of Harry Potter wands. The first were pretty rough but I am getting better, so here are a few of the latest ones.

Four turned and two hand carved.

 

[wallace]

Nice job. she's got to many handbags.

I collect huge lumps of wadkin machinery with them overflowing into the garden, everyone has there obsession. She has started taking over the loft room now.

 

[Adam W.]

More plastering.....

Gauge coat on the left to even out the country cut oak lath, scratch coat on the right to level our the gauge plaster. In a couple of days I'll skim the finish coat and limewash once it's dry.

 

[Stigmorgan]

Churned out some more small Christmas trees and baubles in prep for the school Xmas fair in a couple of weeks, nothing special just basic shapes that I can turn quickly, using up some lengths of 2x2 pine and anything else I can find that's too small for anything else, sanded with 120g paper and left unfinished, once I have a heap of them I'll go through and clean up the ends from being parted off.

 

[kinverkid]

Mike Peace Woodturning Often posts around this time of year with quick and easy Christmassy ornament ideas. Great for what you're doing with your off-cuts.

Churned out some more small Christmas trees and baubles in prep for the school Xmas fair in a couple of weeks, nothing special just basic shapes that I can turn quickly, using up some lengths of 2x2 pine and anything else I can find that's too small for anything else, sanded with 120g paper and left unfinished, once I have a heap of them I'll go through and clean up the ends from being parted off.

 

[Stigmorgan]

Mike Peace Woodturning Often posts around this time of year with quick and easy Christmassy ornament ideas. Great for what you're doing with your off-cuts.

Yup, love his videos, just the right amount of talking to turning and the videos are a good length, 10 to 20 minutes is good, more than that and I lose interest.

 

[morten_1]

I made a new comb the other day, a few more in the making, although I messed up the precutting of the fine teeth on one of them and I found some cracks in the wood on another. The part with the teeth are made from birch, the inlay in the back is ash (except for the second one where I used cherry)

 

[Fred48]

View attachment 146789I made a new comb the other day, a few more in the making, although I messed up the precutting of the fine teeth on one of them and I found some cracks in the wood on another. The part with the teeth are made from birch, the inlay in the back is ash (except for the second one where I used cherry)

Hi morten_1
In what direction is the grain running in the fine teeth part of the comb? It appears that it may be at 90 degrees to the to the direction of the teeth. If that is the case, that could be the cause of the teeth breaking.
Cheers
Fred

 

[morten_1]

Hi morten_1
In what direction is the grain running in the fine teeth part of the comb? It appears that it may be at 90 degrees to the to the direction of the teeth. If that is the case, that could be the cause of the teeth breaking.
Cheers
Fred

Hi Fred, the grains in the wood is always running along the theeth, the broken one I mentioned had some cracks that made some of the teeth to split.

 

[Morag Jones]

Just some fence posts and pallet wood but did

the job. The ‘slates’ actually fell off a lorry - yes really! Saw 5 packs lying by a roundabout on my way home so pulled off and picked them up. A few corners crushed but for a log store just the job. Anthracite barn paint was an exact match for toning down cut edges.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

You obviously don't get the horizontal rain we get.