Guitars

Stupid mac stopped loading pictures for some weird reason, so it's been a while without updates.

Stuff has been going on here, we have a communal workshop going on, three guys into guitar making and one into cajones peruanos and just playing around. Feels cool.

Beatnik woodworkers if you fancy.

So here a small review of what's been going on the last weeks here, it's just pictures since my mind is busy trying to conceptualise what's going on here on valparaiso. As america sinks into a nightmare worse than neoliberalism, we dance to live music in small bars, talk till early in the morning and drink life like if it were sangria, and we vote for a leftwing mayor of 31 years old while making guitars by hand with tools made by hand and eat food made by hand:

That was yesterday night. Before rice and saturday's short night.

The woods I want for my first acoustic guitar. 

Japanese style clamping. Spanish cedar for the neck, I have a mahogany too on the making, perhaps for a steel string guitar.

 That's the black locust bridge pitu ate the other night. Will try to get rosewood for the next one.

Japanese tools, english tools, chilean tools and tea. The body was made and routed by Juan Manuel, I'm refinishing the sides to smooth things out and give a better flow to the curves

that's Antoine, french like the beginning of the world that finally found it's place in the centre of the workshop. Some people like mao in their workshops, I rather grab 'em by the pussy.

That's the neck taking shape. Ca. 2 hours job to shape it with a paring chisel, a gouge and a knife. Really really loved the experience.

And the last one for today. That lamp was brought by Diego, our in house musician and luthier apprentice. As you can see, the workshop has changed a bit. More people require more space and I had to re-organise for ease of work. It's flowing quite well and the workshop is usually cleaner now that I have to share it.

We are building a roubo bench for Juan Manuel soonish that will go there on the left, perhaps we move the bandsaw and lathes to the next room to have more working space for people.

I was reading some time ago pedagogy of the oppressed, I like to think we implement that here as we are teaching each other to build something. I also like to think of power as the experience of being able to do something, as its etymology implies. Being able to make your own guitars, to play them in your own parties, dance to your own music in bars with people you don't really know but see more often than your own family. And that experience of sovereignty, which is overall a sovereignty of the experience, which starts by the mere technique but touches us as humans in contact with each other is what creates the conditions of possibility for a leftwing kid to take power at the local level in this crazy but beautiful city. And perhaps that is what's lacking in the north to fight against populism, hatred and stupidity.

The shit is starting to look real.

Why I need a mill

Today visited the workshop of the university.

Ricardo, the workshop maister, asked me why I didn't study mechanics. Cause I didn't know I liked so much this shit till my third year in physics.

I needed to groove my blade so I could use the adjuster to move the blade, it worked perfectly:

there were also some random pieces that took home with me.

A small little future anvil, and a 1/2" chisel.

and this is why I need a mill. Doing this by hand is a bit beyond me.

We didn't have a T-slot bit so had to improvise, that's why the groove is so wide, at least wider than the original.

Blade upgrade

A quick one. 

The end result:

 As you can see the edge is a bit slanted. I didn't want to grind too much of the steel since still need to make the ura nice and flat I rather have some room to spare.

The small contraption for thicknessing filing. Tape helps to keep the bastard in place. On the background is another handle model, just wax and oil tho, larger than the previous but still a tad too small for that monstrous file. The best was to draw file it to get a nice even texture on teh back:

There you can see the slant. And the lamination, and the wrought iron.

Before you scream for me butchering a japanese blade into fitting a lie nielsen, let me show you the mirror side. (Still need to work a bit on it, but will be done in subsequent sharpenings.)

I had to grind pretty much 5mm on each side of the blade, it was left on the body and rust ate all the hagane where it was making contact with the wood, and on other places, still didn't manage to take away all the pit. The good thing of working with a japanese blade is that you can grind only the hagane holding the blade at 45 degrees from the stone and then simply file or saw the wrought iron, making for a faster job. 

I still need to make the groove where the adjuster fits, but I'm thinking that maybe that's a job for a milling machine. At the moment I just retreat the adjuster and push the blade if I need to. This is plane that mostly works in one setting only though.

That's it. 5 usd rusty blade turned into state of the art upgrade for western planes. (You may wonder why I own a brass plane? Well, small japanese planes are a tad too light for my taste, so in contrast to bench planes, here I do want metal in the body.)

 

Far too long

The drawback of being mildly active in Instagram is that I feel like I posted something when in fact the only thing I'm doing is to take pictures. The whole meat of thinking, critical philosophy and bacon are missing from there.

So I will try to take this again as the favored means of expression for all things wood.

So, first things first, my new handles:

I'm getting more and more friend of french polish. Very thin shellac, a rag and patience is all you need. And sand a bit if you want at the end. Micromesh is your friend if you want mirror finish.

(That's how far 10usd will take you in files in a Chilean flea market. Old Nicholson, Erizo and a Swedish one. )

The handles... I've spent quite a long time thinking about them. Or rather thinking on them, as Roubo would say. The sharpness of the lines doesn't come that easy. You need to gouge carefully and make scrapers that fit nicely on the curves. The one on the right is my favourite atm.

On the japanese department I rehandled a chisel and re-ura it on the grinder.

Making the ura was simpler than what I thought on the electric grinder but not as reliable as to do it with all my chisels. I'm thinking of a jig to help with this. I like skinny uras. Ideally though on should have different grinding wheels for different chisels. My wheel is 8" and anything larger than 15mm is not possible to make in one pass.

So, why did I end up handling my chisels? I was making a new blade for my small brass lie nielsen plane with A2 steel. What a piece of crap is the steel. It's like eating european meat when you have lived all your life in chile. A hard rubber without taste, it takes ages to sharpen and scratches super easy.

What else? Got kidney stones. First time in July for my birthday and then last week again. Not fun. That got me into bed for longer I'd like and implied that I had to spend more time working in front of the computer to catch up after that. But now summer is around the corner and we need to prepare for the summer school 2017, where we will finish the roof of the Kincho in puerto varas.

one for monsieur du Bois

After seeing that I decided to make this

I have a glass in my room that gives to the kitchen, and haven't finished it yet (what a surprise) since I wanted to make a moulding but didn't really know how, or what to put. Inspiration grows slow on me. The other problem was that I didn't have any cheap wood to use. (I'm repairing the house only with wood I've found on the streets of valparaiso, don't like to spend money on a house I'll leave sooner than later, and it's more fun also to tell people this piece comes from there, this one Keiran found, etc.)

So, my plan was to save enough wood to make a laminate and then mould it. Too many steps to accomplish it though. After seeing the video I found a 2"x3" piece of poplar that I had laying around and since poplar is the cheapest wood in chile, I just gave it a try. I liked the round and hollow mix and on the bottom used a 3/8th beading plane I got from UK before brexit.

I ploughed two channels where the flats are. Since I only have a small record plough plane I needed to make a big rebate before making the second channel. Then a lot of jack work to finally use the japanese round plane. I found that using them on a horizontal surface was easier than at 45 degrees, you only turn the plane on the final passes. It took like an hour for the 1m piece I was working on.

It's surprisingly accurate considering that everything was free-handed save the plough plane. That gives you the only references you need. The finish is straight from the plane, and I love to see those little flames of the poplar running through the moulding while in bed.

The profile was just sketched on the endgrain but I let the planes decided where they wanted to be. It's funny to see, how the proportions start to look right, just like the finish on the wood, it becomes a second nature, a way of living in the world. It starts to become difficult for me to leave a less shiny surface because my planes are well set and ready to use, and pretty much any one I take will work fine. The thing, then, is just a mere reflection of a deeper order, of a way of organising life, of what and who you are. I guess that's what really turns me on.

Impossible joint and instagram

I'm still alive.

I got sucked into the sub-world of instagram to connect with fellow chilean woodworkers and that made me lazy to write and gave me lots of input to practice. I see a joint I haven't tried, and go to the bench to make one similar.

Today saw the "impossible" joint in the column and could not figure out the drawing, so went ahead and cut a test joint:

This is the drawing:

I cannot see the numbers. After lots of thought and the aforementioned fucked up test cut, I discovered the numbers. The dovetails  on the big side have sizes of 240-188 and 188-134. The slope of the dovetails are not the same (as I was expecting since the mitres are at 45 degrees), one is 52/200 and the other 54/200. I guess that's allowance so they can slip into each other.

The test I made had the upper dovetail going inwards instead of outwards, so it doesn't work. But I think I know how it works so I will try it again tomorrow or the day after.

Furthermore, I've came to realise that working only with handtools is a lot of physical work. I'm making a "small" 1.5 meters box for julia for 2 months already, and I doubt it will be finished any time soon. The thing is too heavy and the wood is to hard to handplane it to thickness.

So I've been doing more smallish stuff.

I brought some bows with me last time I came from Germany, and I've started to play with them. Broke the head of one while trying to re-camber it, and I'm working on a frog of Curupay since don't have ebony at the moment. I'm practicing the movements, procedures and tools you need to make the bow hoping that I can spend some time at a bow maker next year if I go to europe for summer.

I've also done some work in Cumala, something like mahogany but softer and oily, a pleasure to work with. Here is a poorly designed stool that falls of you touch it on the wrong place. Should have kept the 3/10 slope of the japanese.

The tools for violin making are slowly arriving, have new small planes and japanese scroll gouges. The cheap chinese planes are kind of nice, if you like to file your tools before use. These are the ebay ones, thing of them as rough casting and you won't be too disappointed.

The pin on the left one was bent, so I complained and they sent another pair of planes.  Still waiting for those though. For 15usd each you cannot complain.

Got also a new kiridashi real thin and fragile, perfect for f-holes

and that's pretty much it, the things in Chile with the woodworking community are moving albeit slowly, but have met a few really nice people interested in learning the dark arts.

Finally, I think the next course will be a week long class making a small stool, sharpening and eating. People have complained about not having enough time and doing only exercises without a final result. my idea was that people didn't want to pay for repeating the same joint several times in a project but seems that the joints in abstracto are not so interesting as for me. This class will be far more expensive than previous ones and will require a basic toolset and sharpening gear. I will provide dimensioned wood for the project. Lunch will still be a community thing.

a map for the territory

When I came to chile last year I didn't know what I was going to do with my life. I had applied for the postdoc a few days before and had to wait still 6 more months to know anything for certain.

I visited one of my best friends who lives in Valdivia, one of the cities I was tempted to move to but I found out it's far too polluted. Too many humans already, and they all want to be warm but don't want to wait for their wood to get dry. Anyway.

He's a Reichian psychologist, and gives lectures on Reich here in Santiago twice a month. I asked him back then how do you teach people, and his answer was quite straightforward: you just go and do it. "Go and do it?" I said. He nodded.

Then and there I made the ad for the carpentry classes I was going to give in June to Keiran and Jose. And the other that came. And then more.

Today, I don't have Gaspar to ask him how do I make a school. But I bet he would say you just go and do it. So that's what I'm doing.

Now, what's a school? A way to organise a person's time according to certain principles, ideas and expectations, in order to effect a transformation in the person such that they become another. So why people go to school? to be enslaved to other people's will and move their body according to some else's ideas.

In a very lacanian situation, the students submits themselves to the will of the master since he knows what the student doesn't. However, the truth that Socrates already showed is that the master doesn't have what the slave wants, and nevertheless they get it. They will even pay for it, and be in debt for the rest of their lives to pay for this slavement.

That's, of course, not my idea of a school.

Let's go back a bit on time and take a look at my own random walk through the gardens of woodworking. Or not, if you are long enough here you already know me and if not you can use the index on the side. But let's say that I've been mapping the territory. The sloppy lands of handrailing, the mountains of saw sharpening, the valleys of violin tops and the nothingness of what sharp is. What for? my mother would ask if she would be alive. Where are the cabinets, the drawers, the tables? Where is the money? my brother would add.

Well, I would answer them, what's the point of making a few tables, a bed, and three cutting boards when the whole world is going to hell real fast? What I want is to live in a beautiful world, and for that I need people. I need hundred, if not thousands, of carpenters working on their neat workshops and having fun. Earning a fair salary. Eating good food and drinking good wine. So I better be off thinking how to teach people and doing it fast, I'm not gonna be forever here.

And today I saw it. To make a school you just make a program. You choose some principles. You dream of a future where the students of today will be necessary. Then you keep track of peoples' advance and make them spend time at it. You establish traditions that will help constructing a certain world. You are hopefully smart enough to not perpetuate exploitation, racism and stupidity. Meaning, if you go to the university of Chicago is quite difficult you leave without being a neoliberal wanker, or if you go to Standford not to be a rapist. Fascism is in its fabric, in its being. Like colonialism is in what we understand as university nowadays. So you cook for each other, you care for each other, you help each other (and help others too), till you get used to it and it becomes natural. All this while learning to cut tenons, shape handrails and make hoppers.

...

And some days passed by.

I keep on thinking about the program, and see examples online and most of them are project based classes. But I don't really like this. For example, Opa always says that you need 3 years to learn violin making, and he teaches his students to make violins by making violins. This is very slow as you are generally bad at making violins at the beginning, mostly because you are bad at planing, cutting, chiseling and mostly sharpening. You can learn to make a neck with rasps and chisels, and they are not trivial to use either, but with only a knife is quite slower. But the latter teaches you more about the grain of the wood than the former, and thus is better. This way learning about knives and wood teaches you the basic to undertake the construction of a violin.

By isolating the techniques that show you principles instead of learning by doing projects I think you get more bang for your money.

But by making projects you give a complete new sense to what the student is making, a different kind of joy. The joy of poiesis, of giving being to something that didn't have it before.

...

And more days passed.

I see a white room with large windows, in a falling-into-pieces-old building. We have just moved in and there are only a few benches, so the first task of the new students is to make some more. Japanese planes decor one of the walls but seem overwhelmed by the emptiness of the place. There is an open kitchen and couches, and water steaming ready for tea and hide-glue. Maybe someone is playing a new guitar, the last french polish job we did at the workshop. Tap tap, brass hits metal and then the sweet sound of shavings flying. You are there.

Human beings make a strange fauna and flora. From a distance they appear negligible; close up they are apt to appear ugly and malicious. More than anything they need to be surrounded with sufficient space -- space even more than time.

More socrates

Well, my art of midwifery is in most respects like theirs but differs, in that I attend men and not women, and I look after their souls when they are in labor, and not after their bodies and the triumph of my art is in thoroughly examining whether the thought which the mind of the young man brings forth is a false idol or a noble and true birth.

Well, mine differs from his in that I look after the way they use their body and the triumph of my art is in seeing a new truth taking shape under my eyes. A truth made out of wood, time and spirit.

Matias' new "pisito"

Holds with ease a cup of tea and a glass of wine. Rauli and wax finish. 

snobbism turning technique

Sharpened the knife the boy broke back in puerto varas and the thing works nicely:

I had the idea the old kids didn't have enough money to buy rasps and shit, so they needed to make do.

There is a moment, as you work your way through the fiber, that you mind starts to be those fibers, and you know in your fingers which way to cut

and it's fun. Your forearm gets a bit tired though.

cutting edge snobbism

Nico came today and since I was planing some coigue panels we stuck to wood instead of brass as it was last time. We are trying to fix that coffee machine of mine but the sleeves in the group are a bit stuck and need some acid.

Anyway, so we went back to the mould and cut it closer to the lines plus made the cuts for the corner blocks.

Now comes the snobbery.

I don't like to use rasps or files for wood. They are slow and cannot be sharpened. I like them fast and sharpenable. And since Tanaka can, why shouldn't I try it at least.

The inner curves are a bit difficult, so you should cut the block holes first. Like that you can get quite close to the line with the chisel. For leveling use a spokeshave and finally a sharp low angle kiridashi

 The outer curves are easy, just keep the spokeshave level and spit often on the wood to keep it wet.

Or you can use camellia oil but last time I checked spit was for free. A free standing vise would be nice here, something like they use for leatherwork in japan where you can sit and hold the piece between your legs. The working asymmetrically makes for a not perfect position. If I had to make a few more I would totally build one, but since this just took 30min of work it's ok for a one timer.

a post I don't know how to write — il faut faire avec

It started with a simple plot on the news:

Last 7 months or so have been the hottest month in the earth in the last few millennia. The nice thing of the plot is that shows how we are leaving the stability zone at an alarming rate. We have this thing in physics called phase diagrams where you can see movement of dynamical systems "from above" and stable systems orbit around a point. This points are stable if a small perturbation bring you back on track. That's the weather. The problem is that if the perturbation is too large things just stop working as we knew them and a new equilibrium is found or another trajectory is followed. Think of moving a book over a table, you can have part of it over the edge, but once the centre of mass is outside the edge, the book will invariably fall. And now think of a glass book that will explode in million pieces once it crashes. That's our earth.

What's the problem then?

Our world, from the matches to the roads to the universities and governments are built assuming that the stable point of the weather will continue for ever. And it's a system that kinda works and we discover things and people get rich and others die poor and things more or less get better. Or worse, I don't know. But we solved some problems, malaria for example.

Or maybe we "think" we solved problems when in truth we just used an incredible amount of energy in a short period of time and that what happens when you do that. We didn't get particularly smarter or nicer, we just found some black gold under and sold the future for a present full of cars.

But that's not the point. The point is that trying to foretell the future is a waste of time. It doesn't really matter when we cross the 1.5 degrees, or the two. It will be sooner than most people think. The question is what are we going to do when NASA publish its monthly report about the weather and it will be confirmed that we are falling from the table. We will say, oh shit, what the fuck do we do now? But our institutions, as our cars and our notions of family, friendship, property and life will be outdated. They will simply not work anymore. They were built for literally another world.

Which reminds me of the other day I was in Julio's cafe in Santiago and a professor whose daughter I used to date was there. It was maybe 7 years or so since last time we talked and I did a short summary of my life during that time... some failed coffee making business, critical philosophy with Zizek in london, marrying a violin-maker's granddaughter and starting to learn the craft to end up sharpening japanese saws and using the nice wooden spokeshaves to carve handrails and start giving classes of woodworking here and there. He says "I see you a bit disperse".

I should have answered "well, your fucking retarded world of specialization, isolation and progress has the world at the edge of collapse. Maybe it's time to try something else?"

Sometimes I feel like living in 1800. The smell of pee on the streets and the drunkards screaming about something nobody knows well on the stairs. The fact that you cannot buy any decent machine in the country so you either make it or do without (or import it, of course). Essentially, that amazon doesn't reach here. But more than a drawback it looks like an opportunity.

What's happening today in the world is consequence of centuries of technological, political and social "development", understood development as the direction people with power wanted for the world. What those idiots were creating in manchester were not only steam machines, but a whole new way of relating to themselves and to each other. A way of maintaining exploitation and expand it around the globe.

Which reminds me of Miyazaki's last movie. I read it as the failure of a human to come to terms with a technology that has the possibilities of good but engenders death.  You remember that dream scene where the whole town (with characters of several of Miyazaki's movies) going in a plane with the guy and having fun? That's what he wanted airplanes for, to make more human the human. The movie doesn't resolve anything, and this post neither will do, for this is a game that's played on the real world and that we will have to play. We as in people in their 30s, the new adults who are going to inherit an endless warmed up dump.

So here I am, in the past (there is a reason they call it underdeveloped world) wanting to take the technological path again but do it correctly this time. What do I mean by that? For starters without the protestant fascism of anglo-saxon culture. (Another parentheses. The guys who made those machines were friends and classmates with those other guys who moved through africa raping and killing whatever crossed their roads, so I don't think they were very happy lot in fact, those colonialists.)

We need hand cranked grinders, and smithies and plane makers, and make that in a way that still works the day that we reach the 2degrees mark. Make things in a way that is inviting, communal, inclusive. And we need to teach that to ourselves, and to each other, and device those ways of teaching because what you tried didn't really work.

You see, I told you I didn't know how to write this post. This will have to do. Il faut faire avec.

a tad too posh?

Well, I've been busy making small repairs for the house and fixing the closet we bought together with the mahogany desk last week. It's a 3 drawers closet with a shoe compartment that broke and somebody replaced with particle board that exploded inside the closet and served the two spiders who lived in there to decorate their houses.

So I had to change it, and since it's not an exposed surface, I could use the chance to practice more french polish, a la chilensis of course.

 I used cedar since had a wild grain part laying around that I could happily resaw for a bookmatched piece.

As you see in the background, the splayed legs bench is still not finished, nor have I finished planing it either. I brought the piece so julia could check the finish and see if she likes it for the bench. She does.

So it seems I'm getting a helper, I reckon that you need ca. 10hours per m^2 of french polish.

Oh, why chilean way? No sandpaper, no pumice no nada. I'm filling the grain with the same shellac and it's taking long. I should have watered the surface before the last planing since the grain raised a tad with the alcohol. I first gave it a few coats of pure shellac with the brush. Spiriting off every 2 coats or so to keep things uniform. Then switched to shellac with sandarac and benzoe and a cotton pad. The same, apply two coats then spirit off.

This is the closet btw.

That panel was in the trash and a neighbour called me to pick it up. Maybe a guitar top? The panels are pretty much perfectly quartersawn.

This is the hole my shellac-ed board will cover.

Some marks, I like to leave marks too

and a broken door being repaired.

 more cedar

 and the bookmatched pattern.

Need to glue some drawers, clean more, and nail everything back together. Then julia can paint it and we move it downstairs for our bedroom.

mahogany

So I went to pick up this rauli chilean made small closet because we need something to leave our shoes and umbrellas and whatever not since at the moment we are bit short on drawers in the house. Anyway, I'm loading the thing into the guy's truck when I see something that looks like a mahogany desk. With brass ends on the legs and dovetailed drawers. I look closely to the drawers waiting for pine or another cheap secondary wood, but what I find? more mahogany. The full thing is made from wide and beautiful wood. How much I ask, cheaper than the rauli thing. I take both, I said, 300usd or so. At chilean prices that pretty much the price you pay for wood only on the cover 90x145x2.7cm of clean mahogany.

The best thing is this small notch all the drawers have at one side. I thought it was a cut somebody made by mistake when I saw the first, but after further inspection it's a closing mechanism. Inside the desk there is a spring mechanism that closes the drawers if the front drawer is closed. Beautiful.

It seems, sadly, that julia is keeping it.

Addendum:

After around 3 hours of work with alcohol, oil and a pad, the top is starting to look nice:

Compare with the fist picture:

I estimated that 10 hours will suffice for the top.

Most of the lines are gone and I have some shellac with benzoe diluting there to fill some annoying gaps on the surface. That will be a thick drop of shellac directly onto the holes, maybe applied with syringe. Then more spiriting (I think that's the name anyways, saw a guitar maker doing that).

Julia decided that it was to nice wood for her and I can keep it. I will plane all the no-show surfaces that the maker left rough just for the sake of planing this beautiful wood. The other show surfaces will be only cleaned and patched where needed, I don't want to make it look any newer than what it is.

Now it's at 5 hours:

no need for japanese mambo jambo

Somewhere I read that all the info you need to become a good woodworker was free. I totally agree with that. And I think it's morally reprehensible to put knowledge behind paywalls of any kind. One doesn't have money because one is smart or worked hard. It's mostly related to the special skill of choosing one's own parents. Born white and with money in a first world country sets you on top of a few million people, if not billions. Make it even 20cents dearer for them to know what you know seems like a crime to me. Mostly when you, your parents, and your grandparents have profited of the exploitation of those people be it by slavery, economic dependence or simply by producing far more of your share of pollution to have the life you have and don't give a shit.

So when my friend Gabe speaks in japanese mambo jambo about triangles I go back to my old friend pitagoras and start from there to splay legs. Pitagoras theorem is free, like the concept of wheels and diesel engine. Google's algorithms are not. Neither several life saving medicaments or technologies. Without been boring about the whole story of the concept of copyright, it stems from the same place as capitalism, colonialism and the like: england 1600s. And as every reactionary idea, it attempts to present as natural what was once imposed.

That's why there is a little sign at the end of my blog that says something like all this crap is creative commons. Ya know, it's supposed to help the common good.

So today I used the spare leg for one side, and then made another one for the remaining one.

The first leg is "just" 3mm undersized, well, in fact the mortice is oversized. The others are quite decent. We needed to have dinner tonight so the bench was moved down before I could finish plane it. Once I put shellac on it I show some close ups.

It's much easier than what I feared, and you can solve this with simple geometry and pitagoras theorem. In the case of this 50x50mm legs I needed to cut 3mm from each side to make the diamond shape.

A few tips: cut the bottom of the legs at the end. If you already cut one bottom, you can use it as a paring block. Make a paring block if you haven't cut a leg's bottom. And not only use it for paring but also for holding the chisel at an angle when you hammer it.

 The bench sounds like crazy when we sit. Well, mostly when I sit, it holds julia without complain. The dog sleeps under it. I hope it doesn't break.