Shop is now live October 22, 2018 | Leave a comment I finally finished setting up my shop last night and posted the wallets I have been making recently. Let me talk about my goals with selling things here: I want to fund future projects. I spend a lot of my discretionary money on tools and supplies so that I can realize a vision. That gets… Read More
Coffee scoop proliferation October 18, 2018 | 3 Comments I have enjoyed making coffee scoops lately. These are short and sweet compared to many of my projects. They have a beginning, middle, and end without much extra anywhere. In short, they are fun. Left is walnut, the roundest of the scoops. The middle two are hawthorn that my dad cut from the woods in… Read More
Bitten by a crocodile October 8, 2018 | Leave a comment Perhaps one of the things I miss most from childhood is the deep-seated belief that everything can be fixed. This picture shows two girls, drawn by the 3-year-old. She tells me that the one on the right has been bitten by a crocodile. According to the story, the girl went into the crocodile’s ocean and… Read More
Small walnut coffee scoop September 13, 2018 | Leave a comment I’ve started making spoons recently. This is one of my most recent: a little walnut coffee scoop. I carved this with a hatchet and 2 knives: my homemade carving knife and a morakniv hook knife. The process goes like this: Draw shape Use hook knife to hollow bowl Use axe to cut away everything that… Read More
Greetings from Kepler-1229b (Story) September 13, 2018 | Leave a comment They say they come from the stars and many among us believe them. They landed in fire and splendor and claim to bring salvation for us poor fools living in the wreckage of a civilization we can barely remember. But let’s be honest; nobody comes from the stars. They come from a planet–probably like ours–and… Read More
A new favorite tool August 17, 2018 | Leave a comment Here’s a tool I’ve been meaning to make since I started woodworking. Now that I have it I’m kicking myself for not making it earlier. It would have made all of my other work more fun. What is it? The humble strop. Basically it is the final sharpening stone. This particularly fine example is a… Read More
A short stool for sitting on August 16, 2018 | 2 Comments As I was building the small Welsh stick chair there was a time when the undercarriage was finished but the top wasn’t attached. Wouldn’t you know it, we sat on that thing all the time. We put coffee mugs on it; we set laptops on it; we used it as an end table wherever we… Read More
The carving knife part 2 July 31, 2018 | 2 Comments In my previous post about my work on the carving knife I mentioned that I thought I had stumbled into a differential heat treat. But I wasn’t sure until I actually etched the blade. Well my ferric chloride arrived the other day. It comes with all kinds of fun tidbits on the bottle, like “caustic”… Read More
Fixing my improvements July 26, 2018 | Leave a comment In my last post I talked about upgrading my 3d printer to use a better hotend with interchangeable nozzles. Since then I have broken and fixed my printer again. First the break. The new hotend has one of those pipe fitting clamp things that grabs on to the bowden tube (the tube the filament runs… Read More
Faster 3D printing July 24, 2018 | Leave a comment Let’s get this out of the way: 3D printers are awesome. I have had mine for about a year and a half and it has let me build fun and crazy things like my homemade keyboard. But 3d printers are obnoxiously slow. It makes sense; it’s the world’s tiniest glue gun putting down layer after… Read More