Sunday, October 26, 2014

Sellers review

Jason asked for more detail on the new cheap stone I got.

Your wishes are order dear readers. I will also review my new hammer buying experience at samurai pro shop.

First, the hammer:

I love the skin from the forge.


And the subtle variations it has.


But what I love most, is the finish near the sticking surfaces. Beautiful details.


This are the details of the guy who answered my mail.

*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*==*=*=*=*=*=
Hitoshi Yoshino.
PRO SHOP HOKUTO(SAMURAI Tool)
1469-3 Saijyou
Gyouda-city
Saitama 361-0005
Japan
Phone81-48-557-0878
E-mail  proshophokuto@mth.biglobe.ne.jp
URL  http://www5e.biglobe.ne.jp/~ttoishi/sumurai.index.html
=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*==*=*=

He's really a kind person. We sent about 20 mails to each other. This is the hammer I got: NO.Gļ¼‘ļ¼’ Hisikan hiiro Square hammer 40匁 1pc JPY3.250 With shipping and handling, it came to 36 euros or 10 cappuccinos from tribeka. I'm looking forward to get another one.

Oh, and I realised I needed a square japanese hammer when looking on of David Barron's videos. It was pure lust.

Now the stone, together with ruler and Charnley Forest. (Does anyone know what do they put in the wood? Is black and smells bad, under it is the wood. Looks like teak)



The japanese stone came rough.  Spent around 1 minute in my 240 diamond stone and it was kinda ok. Then 600, and I gave it a go.

It's not so thick, but who cares. For less than 15 euros included shipping.


The surface with a bit of water:


Now, Jason asked if this was a hard stone. The answer is, I don't know. My experience with japanese stones is quite limited. I bought last year this one from dictum http://www.mehr-als-werkzeug.de/product/711303/Quarry-Stones-Honyama.htm

That one was really hard, difficult to use, or I was too stupid. It's anyway in Chile so I cannot compare.

This is the slurry it makes after 30 seconds or so on the back side of the chisel.



It doesn't cut that much. But when you go to the soft iron, is a complete different story. It leaves immediately a black stripe of iron.

I tried with my japanese kitchen knife (more on that later) and I could shave as never before. A different kind of sharpness.

About the seller, 330mate, there is no much to say. The guy is quite professional and focused on business. He answers promptly and ships fast. I like the prices he has, and must probably, I will get a bigger stone before next year. In particular, I've been looking at this one. Maybe I also get other small ones, this is the "hard", he also has a "soft".  They make beautiful paper weights anyway.

In case you ask yourself, I glued the stone to the wood with "Moltofill", this paste that comes in a tube to fix the holes in your wall. I had it, so I tried. It hasn't break.

Hope this answers some of your questions Jason. I feel a bit dumb describing stones... there are so many subtle differences that I don't know yet how to explain. But I like the experience, I can see why people spend shits loads of money on them. There is a certain dance between the steel and the stone, it's nice to be there to see it happen.

Edit: Pictures with slurry form the 600 diamond stone







Saturday, October 25, 2014

Austro-Chilean teeth

It took me 4 times what I spend sharpening the front and back facet, but it's done.

I did it free hand because I didn't want to make one of the edges of the file safe...



Definitely not western style.  Not sure if japanese either. For the sake of reckless nationalism, let's call it Austro-Chilean style.

Here some of the rusty parts:


More rust.


It cuts really fast. Probably, my fastest saw at the moment. Not as smooth as a 210mm saw, but way better than my 295mm.

How do you do it?

From the situation pictured in the past post, I just touched the teeth that had a flat too large and then I started to file the third facet free hand. For the first side, I just gave it 3 passes. Nothing special and it didn't seem to work.

Then I understood.

There is plenty of feedback available when you file if you pay attention. The sounds and the friction on the file are not constant. When you start, the shape of the tooth is "against" the third facet. So you need to overcome this pointy point and define a plane there. It needed more passes. In some places 4 in other 6. But eventually, you can feel (and hear and see) that you are filing a plane. It flows. Then you stop when you see the triangle or when the filling becomes too easy. It's really like if the saw were telling you: "yo man, that's enough, go to the next one." (And you literally see a triangle of light appear on the top telling you that it's the last stroke, I wish I had a camera man to record this.) Once I understood that, it was really really straightforward. I finished the second side, came back to the first side looking for those triangles, and done.  A fast diamond on the back and ready to cut.

That's it.  Now go and try it yourself.





A summary

So, I'm back from Krakow and wife, files, stone and hammer head were waiting for me:


Japanese corner of the kitchen table. From left to right, Just Enough by Azby Brow, the same guy from the genius of japanese carpentry. The latter is really boring while the former is my bible to re build Chile after the zombi invasion. A matcha cup with matcha. New handle for the small saw from Gary. Started and finished today. New file from sakura pink. Hammer from samurai pro tool and stone from 330mate. The guys from samurai tool are really kind. I just got the hammer head, it came in a box:



Look what the box had inside:

This is the new file. They don't lie, it's sharp and hard.


And lastly the small stone. Finally I see differential finish in the soft iron and the steel of my chisels. I feel like a pro.


But, let's focus.

Two weeks ago or so I jointed the teeth of small one. I was waiting for the new file to sharpen it.

The condition was pretty poor. A few spots very rusty and a few teeth broken near the end. The saw is straight, which right now is the most important thing for me, I still don't know how to straighten them.

I filed first the front facet, turned the saw, front facet, back facet, turned the saw, back facet. I gave them just 2 passes each facet. It was on the conservative side of the filing.


Western saws, so goes the myth, are jointed and then sharpened till the flats on top are gone. I am not convinced  yet of doing the same with the japanese.

This is how it looks right now:


If I were to file till the flat is gone, I should go for a few mm more.

Look at this diagram. The lines represent the size of teeth you need to achieve before cutting the third facet.

Seems lots of steel lost to me.

I will give one more pass to the teeth and then will try again to cut the third facet. 

Here's the summary of how I understand saw filling at the moment. 

1. Get some wood and make a japanese saw vice. 
2. Get a sharp and hard feather file. 
3. Make some tea, put a light over the saw vice and sit on the ground. In this position, your eyes are 30cm above the saw teeth. From this angle the japanese saw pattern doesn't look so impossible. 
4. Find the angle of the front face. Use you eyes, the file and your hand to find what angle the file must go. Once you find it, it will be easy. Remember that angle in your hands, you need to repeat it along the whole saw. 
5. Move the file along that angle. Don't cut yet. 
6. While moving the file, bring it to touch the tooth from the top. Don't stop, don't force, don't stress. Don't think of a white elephant. Don't even think of rotating the file. If everything goes well, you will cut a single plane on the facet. Check with the light that the scattering is homogeneous. 
7. One hand on top of the saw (you may want to use gloves) holds the tip of the file, the other hand holds the file. They both move together and they both follow your body. A bit like in aikido, the movement comes from your centre, not form the hands. I'm not trying to new-age-bullshit with this, it's just physics: you need to be stable. 
8. File along one side. Don't stop till finished. Once finished, you thank me for that tea that's waiting next to you. 
9. Turn the saw and file the same facet you filed before. The front facet I start by the side next to the handle, while the back facet I start by the end of the saw. I don't know if there is a particular reason for this. 
10. Repeat 8 and 9 on the back facet. 
11. File the third facet without touching other teeth and always at the same angle. It's easier said than done. I safe edge on the file helps you. A piece of metal or wood between the teeth too. 
12. Leave the vice, give a small touch with a small diamond stone (fine) on the back of the teeth. Done.
13. Cut some wood. 

If and when everything goes well, you should look like this

 

Sunday, October 12, 2014

eggs and apples

That's the idiom, isn't it?

No saw vice:


With the saw vice. Same wanky chilean doing the filling. 



And a real japanese one.


I need a steadier hand to get Japanese. But I'm slowly but surely getting rid of my lazy chileaness.

Now I am filling FAST. Like real fast, 1,2,3 next teeth. It flows. Turn the saw. 123 next tooth.

I still have 2 cross cut sides to fix before going back to Nicesteel. Now, for a test ride.


How to make a japanese saw vise

I hope that puts me directly into a google first hit. I even used american spelling. Shame on me.

I cannot convey with words how much easier is to file with a japanese saw vice. Everything is perfectly put, and you work with the whole body. It's crazy shit.

Anyway, straightforward tutorial:

Make  a drawing


Get some wood. 



140x75mm, no idea how many inches.  Cut two pieces of length L, joint and glue them.



Japanese clamps help but are not mandatory.  Green tea was used as well.

Plane one side. just to show off the grain and your charnley forest honing stone. Think of making a table instead.


Cut in half. That's L/2. About 30cm if you are picky.  You end up with something squarish. Try that your largest saw fits there. Mine does.


Plane the end grain and think about making an end grain marquetry table instead of a saw vice.


Once everything is square and nice, transfer the drawing from Fig. 1 onto the wood. Cut away with the saw and finish with a block plane.


I saw many different variations on the web concerning the inside. I just took off a bit in one side and that works fine for the moment, but I may cut away the other side too to reduce the weight of it. You need the cut to put the saw from the bottom.

Now, since I don't have any screws, bolts or wire, bring your Moxon vise or the like. This one comes from Opa's workshop.


Finish the top to a nice curvy shape. Man, I bet that with LSD this vice would look MENTAL.

And tell me about serendipity. The angle that the Moxon vice does when put in the middle of the vice is just right.  Now bring your saw and your file and let the fun begin.



That's it. A nice sunday project.

I don't remember what I said about sharpening without a vice, I am completely sold. Wood gives you such a damped clamping action, it is genius. I guess also the orientation of the grain has to do with it, You want the grain to run up-down and not sideways.

In german they have a saying, the right tool is half of the job. In this case, I'd say is  80%. It is seriously easy to keep the file straight and at the proper angle when you are in the position that the vice asks for.

So, whatever you may think of sharpening japanese style, you cannot do it properly without a japanese saw vice. Make yourself a favour and build one for you.


Friday, October 10, 2014

First walks

I took her for a ride. Nice steel, I mean. (I need to name the saws otherwise we will have a complete mess. They are, from left to right from previous post Fig. 1, Smallone, Oneside, Crapy and Nicesteel.) Nice steel is the large lovely one.


2in thick ash. Not so soft. I tried with my universal kataba last week but to no luck. The wood was closing the gap as I was cutting and god it was slow.

I cleaned nice steel first, a bit of sand paper 1000 and soapy water. 5 min max. Nothing fancy. No handle yet.

At first, it was slightly difficult to cut. Not so smooth. I remembered the feeling from my other saw and the solution is a small touch on the top eye or third facet. It took one minute each side, and BUM!

The only problem cutting it was to hold the piece of wood since it's so heavy. The saw ate the ash in less than 5 minutes, and left a better finish than the kataba.


The reason? I guess the tooth pattern. Our old friend ChuMasaru


I also corrected the set of a few teeth that were over bent.

I'm seriously looking forward to put a handle on this beauty.  I realised that this blade is one piece: you feel it in the sound of it. When saws are welded the vibrations are reflected at the interface, think of water and light rays. Same thing. I guess that the advantage of this method is that once you put the blade in a handle, the wood will damp those vibrations better than in a welded blade. But I'm just speculating, thinking at loud — that's what I do, as ghospoet would say.

I also tried to photograph the hammer marks on Smallone. Not an easy task.

First, there is this large area hammered that looks like this:

Hammer marks in two directions making a kind of grid. I guess you hammer from one side and move the blade, then you turn the blade and hammer again. My guess is that this was a bump on the blade.

Now, the "lines":


I hope you can see hammer marks in a line parallel to the blade direction. Those are four of five hammer marks separated by roughly constant intervals. The blade has several of those. No idea what those were for. 

I found something very very interesting in Oneside. But I want to see if in the scanner it's clearer. 

And I'm sorry I'm such a mess and contradict myself every 35 seconds, but that's just me. Once I'm done with all the "research" I will put together a clear and concise tutorial on how to do this thing, but for the moment, sketches will have to do. 

Bis morgen jongen.

Four steps forward


There they are. Directly to my door in a week or so from japan. Very much speechless I am. 

The largest is slightly over 30cm, while the small is 24cm. The single edged one I guess it used to be a Ryoba, but they ran out of steel and decided to do a cut-orientation reassignment surgery. 


Drops of a hammer. The small one also has but in that one is lines, not triangles.



 Welded blades. I like them


This one sounds like a tuning fork. It's the large one Gary was selling under the description of "really good steel." We need to be honest, Gary knows a good steel from a poor one.




 Any idea who or where sakou is? Google wants to make me think the saw was made by a gay anime character. I'm not yet convinced.

There is plenty to look at here. The teeth geometry (mostly ChuMasaru), the marks of the hammer on the blade. The shape of the gullets. They all give you hints of how they were made, what shape of hammer was used, the beat, the angle of fleam and rake... It feel like when you find this lovely book you've been looking for years in a lost bookshop in central London, or even, better, in a busy street of Quito. You smell it, preparing your senses for all the beauty you know you'll find inside. If poetry is the evocation of meanings by means of language, then this is definitely saw poetry.



Thursday, October 9, 2014

Root Canal Workshop Organization


The legs of my bench are crap. Poor craftsmanship and eaten by bugs. I am building new legs for it and I'm using it as excuse to clean the top and sort my stuff.

In the meantime, these last weeks I've been undergoing root canal treatment and I'm amazed at, a) the pain and b) the finesse of my dentist. She's an old woman and has 2 chairs, and goes from one to the other extremely fast. Looks at the x-ray, at the teeth, and says something in german I don't get. And starts to work. FAST. I, in the meantime, look at her glasses that have two magnifying glasses in the middle and think that they would be awesome for saw filing, and pay attention to the way she works. Everything she needs is at hand, and if not, it will be at hand when she needs it. If the assistant is too slow she get's really pissed off because the workflow is interrupted. Then she goes into the teeth, fast, hard, one, two, three, check, soft, soft soft, check, fill, done. Her hands have such a precision... and I think they look similar to mine when I am paring. I wish I would be half assertive as she is.

Anyway, looking at my naked bench... I like it. It's hygienic. In a mental way at least. But think of it. When you work, you have several different tasks. You are not carving while truing and finishing with shellac the same piece. I hope so. And each task needs different tools. (Think of Tanaka and his videos for example.) Some tools you need always. A plane, a saw, a square and a hammer. A knife. Honing stone. Brush. And that's it, just like the dentist: bring things to the workspace only when (and while) you are using them. Then they go back wherever they live.

As you can see, I cut the front vice of my bench (otherwise we could not comfortably go into the toilet) so I work mostly on the right side with the tail vice. The saws are in front, the hammer in the side (data not shown) and the chisel I most use (double scoop 30mm from Gary) is between the hammers and the saws. The marking knife, those two planes, and the honing stone stay on the bench.

Now, I just need to make boxes and organise their contents by task. E.g. carving box with gouges, joinery box with chisels and gauges, filing box with files, and so forth and so weider.

So, you come to the bench. Observe what you need to do. You make a plan of the things you need. Bring your tools. Work. Clean. Put everything back.

Done.

Next patient.

If everything is always in the same place, eventually, you learn it by heart. Like the chords of a guitar. You start looking at the frets, thinking where to put your fingers, then you practice and practice and eventually you are playing music.

Woodplaying... I like  the way it sounds.

Wednesday, October 8, 2014

But these intimacies are (not yet) over

Editorial note: This is the first post from a long article / short book I am working on. Or rather I was working on till I realised my woodworking skills were to poor to talk confidently about them. Now it's time to give it another try. If you thought this blog was not weird enough, here you have a treat: I want to study crafts in phenomenological way and obtain the political consequences of it. In an image, it's like a dream where you are sitting in Alicia's tea party with the rabbit, Bill Gates, Stalin and Tyler Durden. Then Marx comes with something in his hand and hits you with it in the head, while telling you as if you were a retard: "it's the means of production, stupid!". Then you see that in his hand he has the bone of the 2001, space odyssey.  

As machines stared to take the place of man in the production of commodities, men felt that their place in the world was disappearing. Somebody invented a machine to create a product. The machine needed several operators, each one with his own particular task and ignorant of the full process. Cogs in the machine, metaphor and normative rule for men in factories. Furthermore, since the task required no skill, the work was poorly paid and the previous knowledge on how to make things, accumulated over centuries, constantly extended, refined and adapted to new tasks, was allowed to die away. We can find a beautiful and emotive recount of this tragic period in the memories of George Sturt, wheelwright.

I take extracts form (Kleinberg-Levin, 2005) since I still need to buy Sturt's book and his introduction is worth quoting at length:

I would like to register, here, the memories of George Sturt, wheelwright, recorded and published in 1923, soon after the end of the First World War, lamenting the devastating sacrifice of the fir-woods required by the war, lamenting, in that loss and its consequences, nothing less than “the death of Old England”. The trees might grow again. “But what would never be recovered”, he says, “because in fact War had found it already all but dead, was the earlier English understanding of timber, the local knowledge of it, the patriarchal traditions of handling it.” Anxious to bear witness to these traditions, to ensure the handing down, if not of the skills he inherited, at least the testimony and celebration of a way of life the passing of which he can only regard with immeasurable sadness, Sturt writes:
I have known old-fashioned workmen refuse to use likely-looking timber because they held it to be unfit for the job.... Under the plane (it is little used now) or under the axe (it is all but obsolete) timber disclosed qualities hardly to be found otherwise. My own eyes know because my own hands have felt, but I cannot teach an outsider, the difference between ash that is “tough as a whip cord” and ash that is “frow as a carrot” or “doaty” or “biscuity”. (WS 24)
Referring to an old wheelwright he once knew, Sturt says: “He knew, not by theory, but more delicately, in his eyes and fingers...” (WS 54).

“He knew in his eyes and fingers.” Let’s listen once again to what this sentence says. He knew in his eyes and fingers. Knowledge is not something that one possesses, but rather something inhabiting us, in our eyes and fingers, part of our flesh. My fingers know something I cannot talk about. The implicit understanding of what knowledge is that we see here is something completely different to what we (or I should say maybe mainstream cognitive sciences?) understand today. Knowledge not as a formula, not as a computer program, not as something to learn in front of a computer for later vomit it into a multiple choice test as Bologna reforms understands it, but as something that inhabits our body, something that we are not necessarily conscious of.

(We need, then, a theory of knowledge that puts knowledge not in abstract definitions or mathematical formulae, but in a body; that considers knowledge an embodied action: "My own eyes know because my own hands have felt." A theory that understands cognition as something inherently related to, and not separable from, motor action. Several authors have worked along this direction. Francisco Varela and his coworkers in neurobiology and cognitive sciences, and the philosophical work of Evan Thompson and Andy Clark in the last years,  rooted on the work of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty and Jonas, form the conceptual framework for this theory.)

The old wheelwrights knew what they knew because of what Sturt describes as a certain “intimacy” with their materials and tools: they “were friends, as only a craftsman can be, with timber and iron. The grain of the wood told secrets to them” (WS 55). Such was the nature of the wheelwright’s marvellous transpersonal wisdom, a wisdom transcending the identity of its subjects, handed down in and by their hands from one generation to the next:
In farm-yard, in tap-room, at market, the details were discussed over and over again; they were gathered together for remembrance in village workshops; carters, smiths, farmers, wheel-makers, in thousands handed on each his own little bit of understanding, passing it to his son or to the wheelwright of the day, linking up the centuries. But for the most part, the details were but dimly understood; the whole body of knowledge was a mystery.... (WS 74)
The old-timers “knew,” he says, “better than any other may do, the answer of the elm when the keen blade goes searching between its molecules”. Then, with modesty and self-effacement, he adds that, “This was, this is, forever out of my reach” (WS 101). Today, he declares, the craftsman has become nothing but “a cog in the industrial machine”, a worker-employee struggling to make ends meet within an economy driven by capital and mar- ket demands. “But”, he states,
... no higher wage, no income, will buy for men that satisfaction which of old – until machinery made drudges of them – streamed into their muscles all day long from close contact with iron, timber, clay, wind and wave, horse-strength. It tingled up in the niceties of touch, sight, scent.... But these intimacies are over. (WS 202)

How to explain this sense of intimacy that the craftsman has with the material world? Why is Sturt so sad about such a loss? Why no higher wage, no income, can fulfil the lack? The answer seems obvious to me: it is an act of love to work with your hands in close contact with iron and timber. But not only that, there is also the social consciousness of doing something greater than yourself and not only for yourself, you are fulfilling a duty.

And this duty, were I to become more ontological, fulfils a need of Being. Following Heidegger, we can listen Holderin’s claim: “But the rock needs engraving/ And the earth needs its furrows;/ If not, an endless desolation; (Es brauchet aber Stiche der Fels/ Und Furchen die Erd,/ Unwirtbar waer es, ohne Weile;)” And endless desolation of a being without scratches, the perfectly dreadful calm of nothingness. “Es brauchet aber Stiche der Fels” But it needs – engravings – the rock.

Varela, in an interview appeared in the documentary “Monte Grande”, explains how the flower dreams of the bee, and the bee dreams of the flower. And how biologically, if you take one out of the environment, both die. What if we take this notion further to include humans in the dreams of stones?

Freud has a most beautiful yet mysterious sentence: “Happiness is the deferred fulfilment of a prehistoric wish. That is why wealth brings so little happiness; money is not an infantile wish.” Mysterious for its ambiguity, whose prehistory is he talking about? The first sentence has an almost ontological weight, in that it may refer to humanity as such: man will be happy when the wishes of his past are finally fulfilled. But then he links it to one particular life: money is not an infantile wish.

The deferred fulfilment of the stone's dreams are its engravings, and of the earth are its furrows.  And fulfilling those prehistoric, and also prehuman, dreams is what makes man and the world happy. Look at the plane from yesterday, hanging there next to her japanese sisters, she has found a place and has created a world for herself.

Malarkey! I hear someone yelling at the bottom. A british lad I guess. But I rather have my fellows dreaming of imaginary beings than eating themselves to death in mcdonals or advocating unlimited growth in a finite planet.

References:

David Michael Kleinberg-Levin. The invisible hands of capital and labour: Using merleau-pontys phenomenology to understand the meaning of alienation in marx's theory of manual labour. Philosophy & Social Criticism, 31(1):53–67, 2005.

Further reading:

Varela, Thompson & Rosh, The Embodied Mind
Andy Clarck, Out Of Our Heads
Hans Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life
Thompson, Mind in Life


Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Sotomaru Kanna — part II

Finally done.

Learnt a lot and feel like a plane maker. Dai maker, pardon me.


So recap from yesterday which I forgot completely already.

Make 3 sides square, mark your lines, make a hole connecting the lines.  As usual, I marked the mouth on the other side and took 2mm off to avoid tear out when coming from the top side. But once the hole was made I realised, oh great genius, that the mouth needs to be curved as the blade and not straight.

I looked at the geometry, and it seemed that the round escapement I had made was actually also useful to define the geometry of the mouth. These japanese guys are really clever, it would have take at least 5 planes to me to realise that.

So, after a few hammers, grinding and more hammering the blade was straight enough to try to fit it, then 2 hours millimetre by millimetre hammering in the blade, paring the bed, hammering the blade, paring the bed, hammering the bed and paring the blade, the blade was deep enough. How much is deep enough? deep enough is more than not yet there. I didn't take pictures of the process mainly because it's really boring and tiresome and you can find it all over the inet. So, blade was deep enough and I turned the dai and the fun begun:



I like the recursiveness of planing a plane. I used my beloved 60 1/2 for this. I had not the slightest idea of what curvature give to the sole. I mean, I know the blade has a given radius, but when you intersect that with a plane an angle different from 90 degrees you get some complex mathematics as they say in my job and I was far too hungry for trying trigonometry tonight. Anyway, as you plane off the bed, keep on looking to the blade (which is just 1mm off from the edge of plane) and try to make the distance between the sole and the blade constant along the width of the blade. That ensures that you have the right curvature. And not really the whole width, you want the sides the be a bit off. 

Anyway, just try it and you will understand.

(Thanks to Jason from mypeculiarnature we have a picture to express what I mean


Look closely at the middle one. Only the central part of the blade is actually cutting, the sides are covered by the lateral recesses so they cannot cut. If you don't do this, your plane will jam on the sides.)

A quick touch on the stones, and the blade looks sexy and ready to use. 



Did I say already that with all the hammering the bed and paring the blade I broke a piece of the side?

And here it is, waxed, on top of the new shooting board and next to the sexy little starrett for scale.



Oh, I forgot to say that I didn't measure anything. I'm training myself on the forgotten art of doing things by feel rather than by numbers. The angle of the bed was taken from another plane with a bevel gauge, the position of the blade is by the look of it and the thickness of the dai just comes from when the blade was deep enough.  All in all, it has a really nice feel this little fellow —for a trashy blade, a piece of fire wood and two nights of work, not bad at all.


EDIT: I got a book today in the mail I forgot I have bought. The Forgotten Arts by John Seymour. I open a page at random and I see the cooper dressing a stave on these large coopering planes. It reads: "The physical process of dressing  a stave to the correct shape is wondrous, because no prior measurement is made. The cooper selects exactly the right number of stave blanks, considering variations in width, and shapes them all to fit one another by eye only." What Seymour doesn't know is that plenty of measurements were made prior to the first shaving. Density, length, humidity... they all are measured by the experience the cooper has, even if no number is ever written down. Our bodies are extremely sensitive machines that can collapse hundreds of variables into one single feeling. But to achieve that, you need a certain intimacy, an intimacy with both the world and your own experience. “He knew, not by theory, but more delicately, in his eyes and fingers...” would Sturt say about the wheel right. To then add in sadness that those intimacies are over. Far from that, I would say, those intimacies are just beginning...