Thursday, March 3, 2016

Some toolmaking

Yeah, been busy. Now I'm also doing some brain wave data analysis since the postdoc, the house, the dog and the workshop didn't ask for enough.

Anyway, today before lunch and after dinner had some time to cut a new blade for this:


I bought a set of 10 spoke shaves from japan and half of them were really crappy. The other half was nice and ready to use, almost.


The protruding blade is one I changed from one of the ones I have, that still needs some work.  The other 5 are usable already and the sixth was my "old" spokeshave. (Why somebody needs 10? Well, stair-making is your answer.)

So, the day started with going down to Christian to buy a cutting disk. And figuring out a way to put it in my grinder.


Christian is my new friend, owner of the hardware store (the only hardware stone with beer and electronic music of the world I guess). I will invite his place to the blog next week.

Cutting was really easy, a stiffer disk would have been nice. But it worked not half as bad as I was expecting and after some 30 min work with the saw, I had 3 pieces.


The hand cranked grinder was awesome, way slower than a dremel so the steel didn't get hot at any point. 

A comparison with the original blade. Seems like carbide welded into steel. Not sure what it is but it's laminated. 


 Then we went for lunch at a stupid vegan restaurant with a french girl Julia met in Argentina when she went to extend her visa... cool girl, new rule of my life: never again go to vegan restaurants.

We spent a few hours out, then Julia did some yoga and I had to be silent, so I napped.  Around 9pm this was were I was... I thought about a kanji but decided against it and mark it with a dot. One dot, first blade, and so on.


I need to uradashi a bit more the centre... there are some small rust spots there.


 and the spoke shave wasn't used before. so I had to open the mouth a bit.


I like the square-ish shape


Ohhh... I almost forget. Spent like 1 hour filing the back of the blade, it was like 3 times the thickness of the original blade, which didn't look to tapered to be honest.


Need to find a use for the remaining 2 parts of the old blade. And I have a few other old blades that may visit the cutting disk... I'm really into small kanna at the moment. I also found a wood that's the chilean equivalent of hard maple, lenga it's called. Looks more springy than the other woods I've seen here and with a purple heart insert in the may just do it.


(and before you say anything, no, it's not real sharp. I was just busy today setting the bevel angle, there is still some work to do to call it done.)

6 comments:

  1. Might use that disc mounted hand crank myself some day if you don't mind it.

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    1. took me a while to take the disk downstairs. it's a pferd ps-forte eth 115,1.0 A 60 P PSF-INOX

      leaves a really thin cut, barely larger than the saw.

      You are coming here to try it out?

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  2. Your grinder is WAY cooler than mine! I never thought to mount a cutting wheel to it though. Good idea, and might work for cutting madonoko saw tooth gullets.....save some wear on your files?

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    1. it works so well that I'm thinking getting a cheap chinese one and leave it for that only. Now, the problem would be that you can hit your hand with the saw when turning it. I will come with something up, maybe an old singer if I find one. But yeah, it's totally the way to go. With a thicker disk maybe, and shape the edge to a nice curve with the diamond dresser.

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  3. I'm jealous of all of the spoke shaves! I saw a cool video last night of a Japanese cooper making small tubs:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzZCw1kPJWE

    He uses a shave with a pronounce concave sole to trim the edge of the bottom board to fit. Check, need one of those. And they're hard to beat for shaping tool curved tool handles. Must be fun having all that steel to work with, I hope its good stuff!

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    1. Nice one. I have seen the video but didn't pay attention to that. Seems like a normal kanna blade.

      Btw, I have 2 leftover blades to make violin planes :)

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