Public Displays of Disaffection

Trunky

A5, ball-point pen.

Push-Pull

Here's a little kitchen tool I whipped up today from a scrap of oak I had lying around — a push-pull stick for getting hot racks in and out of the oven. It's a simple thing, and a lot more convenient than having to find tea towels or oven gloves all the time to avoid finger-burns.

New bowlette

This small bowl (roughly 110 mm in diameter) is something I turned from a slab of some mystery wood. Whatever it is, it's not all that easy to turn. It's very soft and clingy, and it tears out very easily. However, it does have good colour, and a nice chatoyance once it's waxed and polished — it's not terribly visible in the photograph, as it's much more apparent when it moves under the light. I…

Accidental Art

Look! ART! Actually this is just a bit of cardboard I used to spray paint various things on. I like the way the layers build up on things like this; I have a calico cover that was stripped off one of the screen-printing tables at polytech when the tables were being renewed that is covered in little (and not so little) images and patterns from several years of student printing. I wonder where it is…

Workroom Floor

The floor of my work room is just coarse-grain particle board, which is notoriously terrible to get wet. There was a patch that had been left unpainted — probably because there was something standing there when I originally painted the floor. I thought, since I was doing nothing else, that I might as well slap a bit of paint on it to seal it. I may have got a bit carried away with the test-pots.…

Sorby Re-Handle

I've re-handled this old Sorby mortise chisel that has been reground as a square-end scraper. Sorby make good quality chisels, but this was never intended for woodturning. The chisel was originally designed to be pounded on, with the handle being driven into its socket, and the tenon is fairly puny. That means that I can only use it for light-duty scraping, as any catch would probably just snap…

Awl

This morning I made this little four-sided awl out of a tiny scrap of something, red gum maybe, and a 4mm Allen key. The tiny scrap was actually a bit too tiny; it made turning it trickier than it otherwise would have. However, it got done. Awls are handy things.

Wood Chopping

We had the ash at the end of our driveway severely pruned a few days ago -- it had some dead or dying limbs -- and so today I've started splitting the remains. The larger trunk rounds take a bit of work with the log-splitter, but it's all pretty straight-grained, and the medium to small bits split fairly easily. It'll take a while before it's dry enough to burn cleanly, but it should be ready by…

Red Sky

This is a smallish (450 x 300 mm) oil that I began without any clear idea where I was going, except to repeat a composition I'd done in acrylics and oil pastels quite a few years ago. Now I've stalled on it. I feel that it needs something more, but what that is I don't really know. I'll put it aside for a year or tow, and perhaps revisit it then. Or maybe not.

New Old #4 Plane

My friend Bob gave me an old Stanley #4 smoothing plane to revive. I do have another #4, but it's some Aussie brand that I've never heard of, and though it's not terrible, it's not great either. I spent a few hours to bring the Stanley back to life, and here it is, all clean and rust-free and sharp, and with freshly refinished woodwork. It will doubtless need a wee bit more tuning as I use it, but…

Hallway Buddha Flowers

New Old Car

My trusty, but increasingly creaky old '96 Pulsar was stolen last week. There has been not a peep from the cops, which to be honest I'm not at all surprised by. Now I have replaced it with a less old, but still fairly old car: a 2006 Nissan Wingroad wagon, from Turner's Cars. This was a buy-and-drive-away deal; I didn't go through the auction process, although if I could have been bothered with…

Portable Jigsaw Table

Fairly often, I have a need to cut small pieces of copper or brass for various projects. I could cut them with a hacksaw, but that's a slow, arduous and boring process. Instead of that, I use an old jigsaw with a metal-cutting blade. This DeWalt I've had for quite a few years, but it seldom gets used any more for woodwork because I have a cordless Ryobi that is much more convenient for that. While…

Yet Another Box

Here's another box, made from salvaged rimu. The body of the box is 300 x 180 x 120 mm, and the lid overhangs that by 10mm all round. Inside it has a squishy cushioned insert on the bottom; that's not fixed, so it can be removed at will. I'm not sure what timber the splines are — some kind of tropical hardwood is as much as I can guess. The copper plaques are the ones I used the Press-n-Peel PCB…

Iron-on PCB Etching Film

For the first time, I'm trying out some iron-on-peel-off PCB film for etching copper plaques. As with any new thing, there are hiccups -- sorting out how to get it through my laser printer without jamming, for a start. And also, I forgot to reverse the text, so I'll have to do that one over. Apart from those issues though, it looks like a useful tool. Now I just have to research how to get it off…

Rimu Tray Bowl Thing

Small rimu tray, 120mm diameter, intended for keeping gaming chits and things under control. I didn't realise when I picked out the scrap of wood that it had been jointed, but as it turned out I quite like the way the seam shows up across the face of the tray.

Painting

Acrylic on stretched canvas, 500 x 500 mm. Just messing about with shapes and colours.

Knife Rebuild - again

Here's yet another knife rebuild. When these old casein knife handles get too cracked and warped from our abuse and lack of care, I'll break off the old handle and give it a new one, usually wood, and I'll generally regrind the shape of the blade and sharpen it too. I don't know for sure what timber this knife handle is, but it works easily and takes a nice polish. It looks like some kind of…

Dojo Rock Plinth

I've spent the last couple of days putting together this low plinth for a rock at our dojo. The timber is most likely rimu, though I'm not 100% sure about that — it's cut down from some old demolition beams I got a few years ago. Here it's seen getting the first of several coats of oil. And here we have the rock in place, on a bed of river pebbles. It's a bit nicer than the ratty old bit of…

Wood Stackin' Time Again

Nearly full Empty Wood nook: empty and (nearly) full.One more layer to go here, and then I move on to the next firewood stacking space. There is so much wood left to stack. And the day is set to be very hot and sunny. Woe is me. This load of wood is very green and wet, which I wouldn't mind at this time of year since it will have six months or so to dry out, but I didn't pay for green wood. I…

Ripple Plate

Here's another piece, turned from timber out of the scrap pile. The plate is about 200mm in diameter. It has a bead, or step, around the rim, and another in from the rim, just before the ripples start. Once again, this is stained pine, but this time it's untreated timber, so it could conceivably be used for food. The rippled surface would make eating from it inconvenient though.

Scrap Pine Bowl

Yet another little bowl, 125mm diameter by 70mm tall. This is turned from an offcut of a treated pine fence post, which explains its horrible knottiness. Stained with Feast-Watson walnut spirit stain, my favourite, and polished with my own home-made paste wax. It won't hold liquid, owing to the nasty knot-holes in one side, but even if it did, the H3 treatment would make bringing it into contact…

Quiz Trophy Chalice

This is a chalice I made for A, as a trophy for her weekly work quiz competition. It's designed to be sturdy rather than delicate, as the last (oak) one got busted in the violent hurley-burley of office life. This one is just scrap pine, stained and waxed, and I think it doesn't look too shabby. It's about 170mm tall.

Bamboo Platters

These two little platters were turned from off-cuts of a laminated bamboo cutting board that I had cut down to a more manageable size. They're about 120mm in diameter, and 20mm thick. Bamboo works very nicely, and it takes a good finish too. These have both just been sanded to 240 grit with no other finish applied, and they've come up to a nice smooth satin polish.

Little Pot

I don't know for sure what this wood is. It's demolition timber, and probably a floor or ceiling joist, so possibly rimu but more likely, around here, black maire. It's 70mm tall.