Tuesday 29 March 2011

Potter

I've been doing a bit of experimenting and working on a prototype similar to the Nimbus 2000 and come up with this. So far I've only taken it around the garden at an altitude of a couple of metres for health and safety reasons. It's fairly easy to gain or lose altitude by lifting or dipping the nose, but trickier to alter direction; you have to bank your weight over to the side you want to turn to. I'd be interested to hear from anyone else who's built one and of course would appreciate flying tips. Cheers John

Sunday 13 March 2011

Recent work

Here are a few bits and bobs I've made recently. First of all a kitchen roll holder made from a few scraps of Yew. I was tired of the kitchen roll dropping into the washing up bowl so I bobbled this together. Sorry the picture quality isn't very good.




A few spoons made very quickly for some friends in my local pub. I don't normally sand them but I was in a hurry to get finished. They are in Elm and Sycamore.



Here's a caddy I made in Elm with a matching Elm caddy spoon.

And finally some Kuksas I have made over recent months.Hawthorn, Sycamore and Field Maple.

Cheers John.









Friday 4 March 2011

Shave Horse

Well I managed to progress a little with my shave horse in between work on my bedroom suite. I rived out some oak legs before Christmas from a log I found on the forest floor. I have had them drying for a few weeks so hopefully they will be pretty stable now.I had shaved them to just over 1 1/2" at the top to allow for shrinkage. I used the corresponding Tenon cutter to form the round tenon- 1 1/2" should be strong enough.

Boring out the mortise with a scotch eye auger-giving a nice splay to make the horse stable in use.

Well that's the legs done now to hew away some material to make it comfortable to use. I love using this old Kent Pattern Hatchet I re handled- It's about 6lb so it has plenty of heft without having to swing it much.

I ground the Hatchet with a central bevel so I could swing it both sides of me without constantly having to change position. Here it is at the side of my right handed carving axe.

As with removing material with an axe, first make small chopping cuts at a wider angle to weaken the waste:


Then slice it off with the hatchet attacking at the same angle as the bevel:

A quick tidy up with the Drawknife.

Progress so far.