Opa und Oma are on vacations in Turkey so I can squat the front bench and play there. I continue fixing planes for the class/demonstration next month, I want to have 4 planes working as perfect as possible, I will even do a proper sole conditioning of them, to see if I can reach 10 microns (my minimum is 20-25 at the moment).
This are the 3 girls I'm working with at the moment. The one on the left is NOS and arrived today in the mail. Middle you saw yesterday and the right is a cheapo plane I got from Junji. Has a crap chipbreaker but the steel and wrought iron are quite sweet.
I bought the plane for this picture:
A big chip like I like em. Big chips = hard steel, small chips = western cutlery.
What I wanted to highlight today of the other two nice planes is the amount of work it goes to them. The NOS has a beautiful (hand made?) ura, I'm assuming those are sen marks. They go vertical and horizontal but I guess you cannot see those well in the picture.
Then the finish of the soft iron. Lovely chisel work on the surface.
The blade from yesterday also seems to have sen marks on the ura.
Why I tell you this? So you can get a nice blade and enjoy life as much as I do.
Now the other side. I spent a good 5 hours making the bed of the new plane and arrived at this:
I love this dai. Seems lighter than the other planes albeit is larger. Murakami told me that the weight of the dai depends on how you dry the wood, but he didn't say which one is lighter, if the kiln dried or the air dried. Anyway, this dai is light and has a beautiful straight grain.
So my other planes don't feel jealous I closed their mouths.
With a piece of rosewood and lots of 5 seconds glue. The other plane didn't have such a perfect match so I put more glue on the gap and later I sand it. (Yes, I do use a grinder on japanese blades. I needed to do a lot of uradashi on this blade and grind off the chip.)
here you can see it better
This is the glue Julia's mother uses, can you get this in Holland Don? Way better than the epoxy we tried last time.
The mouth is not as tight as in the new plane but it works nice enough.
Another thing to note: the convex sharpening of the blade. This one comes from the blacksmith I think, you can still see marks of maybe a belt sander on the bevel but at the edge becomes highly polished and a tad convex. I haven't sharpened this one yet, first I'm fixing the dai.
And finally, this came together with the new plane I got:
It's a line holder with two nails. One in the pin and one in the holder. I used a line to check for straightness of the long beams in Valparaiso and I was missing something like this, now just to get an ink marker, the square, and good to go.
I think you can better give a course on how you get your grubby hands on such fine old tools.
ReplyDeleteEpoxy is in the trash, I won't use it again. I have had this cyanac stuff but in order to sleep well at night I'm sticking to wood glue or beenderlijm. Buying glue in Holland is like buying peanuts, mostly it is long outdated - so strange.
well, that's what all this is supposedly about. What details to look to get a cheap deal. You need some time too, I was looking today and nothing cheap around. I love this one though http://buyee.jp/item/yahoo/auction/p490650903
DeleteWe should try with beenderlijm. Or be less lazy and make a proper dovetailed insert on the sole.
The beenderlijm, I got here also huidlijm, vleeslijm en parellijm, I guess opa does as well for violins and stuff. We give it a go, very nice glue and can be stored indefinitely. Then you will truly feel like Gepetto.
DeleteNow I simply must get a good kanna to enjoy life like you do. Finally, purpose to my life, haha, something to get up in the morning and work for. How long will you be in Europe?
ReplyDeleteIt's funny, I have this awesome small cheapo plane that works perfectly but the nice blades are just next level thing. They are faster to sharpen and seem to get a better edge. I'm till the 3rd of nov. here btw.
DeleteAnd started making videos, following your steps. I need to loose weight though if I want to become a youtube start.
You need to get good, hipster music! :D
DeleteSeriously, though. Although the "Unplugged" guy uses some pretty 'meh' music, good videos seem to be able to inform while still entertaining. Look at Neeman Tool videos, excellent, very artsy, and the music is a great choice. They inspire craftsmanship. Of course, they also serve as advertisements for the company.
However, sometimes, the best way is to just make a video; and let the actions speak for themselves. I guess it really depends on your audience and your intentions.
Great kanna, though! Hopefully their will be some deals left for me, when I finally get a proper workshop and a house.
So where are these videos of which you speak? Am I missing something obvious? I've watched your 3 on tool stuff, of course.
DeleteAnd my vote......
A resounding "NO" for any music at all, unless you are only trying to sell product. If the intent is educational, the sound of the tools is of critical importance. It nearly brings me to tears when I find some video with amazing potential, but some fool made the decision to add his crappy music to show how cool he is, or maybe worse, try to explain what's going on in an effort to educate. That's great when you REALLY know your s**t, but usually they don't.
Let the tools speak.....please!
You already know how I feel though, as you've suffered this rant before, haha.
exactly, music is for hipster wankers :P
DeleteIf I can take the videos out of the ipad they should be inline in a bit, nothing fancy just to show a bit my set up and how slowly I do uradashi. I'm actually not yet done with the blade, doing it slow to let the dai acclimatise too.
Haha....people tell me that I've been an old, grouchy guy since I was a child. Hmmmmm......might be some truth there.....
DeleteThese are all my opinions, but I started woodworking by watching Woodworking for Mere Mortals. He's fun, but now I barely watch or read his blog...now his videos are more like 2 minutes of a project and 8 minutes of advertising... His old videos were great though, when all you have is a drill and a jig saw.
DeleteI am at the point where I can't really learn a ton just from watching the tools. I'm a beginner, I'm still working on making boxes...I need someone to hold my hand, essentially. So, I watch Paul Sellers on occasion, Matthew Cremona is really good, Mattias Wandel is fun to watch just to see how complicated things can get. For blacksmithing, I like Trollsky, he has nice videos. I also watch Samurai Carpenter on occasion, though he can be a little too much.
These are all channels that are fun. Informative, but mainly entertainment and inspiration, which is what I mainly look through Youtube for. Kind of like how my Uncles and cousins would always get ready for skiing by watching trick videos, to get you all excited and inspired for the trip.
I will admit that I probably have a very different mindset, and also different expectations of a video. Don't get me wrong though, if there is music it should fit the atmosphere of the video. And 'music' isn't always a song, sometimes the music is just carefully edited audio, such as singling out the sounds of an axe when felling a tree. Our band director once had us listen to a song that was around six minutes of silence.
4 minutes 33 seconds most probably, by John Cage.
DeleteI'm not really into making videos, just glue shots together and add some captions. That's all. I managed that, now I just need to wait to upload and youtube to process the files. 30 min or so.
It amazed me not to have tried video sooner. My cell phone tripod mount involved spring clamps, a stick, and duck tape.
ReplyDeleteHaha, sure am glad I didn't use any music. I hear you on the Neeman videos, the music is great, and theyre doing a great job selling.
clamps, I should have thought of that.
Deletedone! I let you know here guys since I know the updating of the blog takes a day or so.
ReplyDelete