Ik ben terug

So... I made it to Amsterdam in once piece and around 75 kilos of luggage. By train. Alone. Thanks god for the invention of the small hand trolleys.

I got a few bows to sell in Chile from Julia's mother, need to fix two of those so we will be adding yet another side of woodworking to the blog. It was weird, but as I was looking at the bows and working with them, I had to think of saws. It's pretty much the same activity. You observe the reflection of the bow and that tells you how straight it is, and if it's not straight you heat it and bend it so it becomes straighter. And then you observe again.

Or if it's broken you make a joint and glue another piece of wood to it.

Like if they were not many atomic activities in the world and making something is just a particular enunciation of a handful of techniques. Thanks Borges for explaining us that.

Anyway, I will be staying in the netherlands for 2 more weeks before taking the plane to Chile. Today I took a kanna and a saw to a the workshop of the Rijksakademie and ended up talking with one of the technicians about stool building. They were splitting ginkgo for some chairs somewhere around here, maybe I can take a glimpse, I would like to see some ginkgo wood. There is no much real wood here but let's see what we can do, definitively something to hang my friend's paints.

I leave you with a sample of how the study looks. I lived with artists almost the whole time I was living in the netherlands so I really miss the ambient. Hopefully next time we see some tools in action over here, all this prattle is making me nervous.

Study for a tree

Amongst the things I want to learn in life is shoemaking. Not fancy dandy shoes but old wood leather boots, those that last for several years.

I got a pair in Holland, many winters ago, and they are still going strong. The problem is the tip, that it kinda kinked and developed some wrinkles, and it touched the top of my toes.

This week I decided to make something about it: trees.

Now, if you are wondering why I haven't touched a saw this week the answer is family and packing. Man we've been busy, and gosh there is shit to do before you can move. Still have two days here and everything should be done by saturday but it definitely hasn't been vacations over here.

When I was looking for info I stumbled with this video. I really like the way the guy works.

I used a piece from the scrap bin, I just wanted the top so I could spoon out the wrinkles, besides they are going to the bin before flying.

It took me like 2 hours the first, and 1 hour the second the following day. Since I wanted a good fit I had to go slowly trying to fill out the gaps in the shoe, and I didn't find any way to mark the wood... I thought of putting camelia oil and pencil but then maybe my socks will look a bit dark.

Next time I will start by the lasts though. Anyway, the kink is gone and I have shoes for 6 more years.

Dovetail excersices

I'm a very lucky guy. I get to experience things that I never imagined and was not waiting for at all...

Yesterday I was trying several french bows, some really really nice shit that you either need lots of money to get or luck and knowledge to recognise. It's so unbelievable weird that one of those sticks can be worth 10k, but when you grab it and it feels like air, perfectly balanced and all, you start thinking about it...

Anyway, I'm not going to take pictures of bows, since I really don't know what I'm looking at. But this morning, when I was picking up some of my stuff (tools and a bike frame) from the house of one of Julia's friend, I found this little truck in the living room while having a cup of coffee with Lukas, Julia's friend.

Marie, the girl who made it, was not there, so I could not ask her if it's part of her apprenticeship or it was her own idea, but anyway I find cool that professional carpenters in germany still do things by hand.

Tomorrow will meet the other carpenter living in the house for learning to make holznagel, I think they are called treenails in english. (There was a nice timber framing in the kitchen of the house and the guy was just leaving when I came and we talked a bit about wood.) Also, I need to pick up my wide chisels that got stuck in customs.

Anyway, enjoy the truck and give it a try.

Tage des Kanna

Just a quickie today. 

It's almost 7pm and we are going with Opa und Oma for dinner in half an hour but I since I'm officially on vacations for at least 5 months I want start documenting as things happen... have a small routine. 

We arrived yesterday absolutely dead after 12 hours of train and shit loads of bags moving. Lesson learnt, I need wheels in my tool bag. 

Here a few more kanna were waiting for me so I spent the day, from 9am till now, setting them up. And they look like this now:

The day started more messy though. 

While I was sharpening this one (it's new and I'm going real slow with the uradashi to keep it thin and sexy) an old man came to play some violins, Bach and Mozart. I still love the good old europe.

Part of the very edge is pointing downwards but I rather sharpen the bevel more as I use it than increasing the ura, If anyone has any idea of how to fix this, please let me know.

 This was around 5pm and I could see some reflection on this maple. Mostly due to the naniwa 12000 that anyway I think it's too much, I should have tried the 8000 before this one.

 It's not completely reflective, but it has some channels on it... like if my sharpening is not very homogeneous along the length of the blade. Need more work.

Anyway I managed to cut myself...

with the edge of the wood... now that's a new one.

That's it. One country closer to Chile and finally having some wood fun. See you later, now shower and then beer.

Convex saws

I was cutting a dovetail the other day. No pictures of that because I was in a hurry and the day was nice and I was outside in the street doing some street carpentry and busy answering the questions of sexy chicks. Well, just one stopped to ask but several peopled looked perplexed at my japanese tools and the fact that someone was actually “making” something there in the street. Not selling, not asking, just making.

Anyway.

My favourite saw — that is in due of a proper sharpening and some teeth setting after the last sanding — is slightly concave. Just to set the reference frame, when you put the edge on a flat surface, there is a gap in the middle of the saw where you can barely can put a piece of paper. This made a bit difficult cutting the female part of the dovetail without marking the edge of the piece. It was a cross cut dovetail, and the vertical piece is on top of that so you anyway don’t see it but it got me thinking.

Jason once commented that some japaguys un-set one side of the saw slightly so it undercuts the joint. I didn’t understand what he meant back then but now I think I’m starting to see it.

Let’s start with a straight saw, as they come from factory and let’s try to cut a dado in a piece. It should look something like this:

You try to reach the horizontal dashed line with your saw and not to pass your marked line on the side of the piece, so the saw is always at an angle. (In mathematical terms one would say that having the saw at the perfect horizontal position has measure nil, that is you never nail it: computational error will fuck up your cut.) In this way, the resulting cut instead of being horizontal is bowed and higher in the middle of the piece.

Now, if instead of a straight saw you would have a gentle curve on the edge, you would have the following situation (the curve is exaggerated for the sake of illustration, as Presidente Correa likes to say):

Note that I show just one position for the saw: horizontal, and not two angled ones as before. This is because you can check at the same time if you are not under your deep mark. The resulting cut will be hollow in the middle. This is perfect to have beautiful sides and be sure you are right on the money in the middle. Which in turn implies that you can chisel the waste away faster, ie, this is better. Furthermore, you have a finite interval of angles around the horizontal that will give you a good result, so it also easier to saw with a convex saw.

That’s it for today.

Soon in the store we will have Convex Chumaruri Saws. That is, chumasaru pattern saws made in Maruri, the street where I was born and where my mom’s house is.

One last thing:

I’m leaving Graz this friday. Besides some planes, chisels, a bike and 50kilos of books (that will go to a friend’s in Leipzig) waiting for me in Germany, those are all the material possessions that I have accumulated this 6 years in Europe. In chile I have another bike, a small japanese lathe, more books and perhaps some clothes. I usually go in summer so I’m most of the time wearing just a sari. Hopefully I will manage to inherit some of the furniture of my mother. It would be nice to have a couch again. Last time I had one was in 2012, I think.

The bags are mostly tools. The small one it’s only tools whereas the others have a few clothes, a comforter and shoes inside too. My diploma. A few cups and tea caddies (I like tea and tea caddies, metal ones).

All in all, I think I spent around 2 or 3k usd in tools during this last year. If somebody steals my bags and I had to start again collecting tools I think I would go to Japan and buy from fleamarkets and buyee auctions, these ones that sell a complete carpenter set for 20k yen, around 200usd. You can flight easily 50kilos of tools with you in the plane, that should be enough to get you started anywhere in the world. And I guess it would be slightly cheaper than buying the tools one by one. Plus the sushi and gardens.

If everything goes well tomorrow with the taxes and the bank, I will be finally done with all the paperwork, moving, packing, shipping, fixing, burning and arranging shit that has been these last two (or three? or ten?) weeks. We have a small todo list for the week in Germany (move bike, ship books, visit Julia’s father and use the lathe for making dolls for the game...) but I should be able to manage at least 3 or 4 full workshop days and nights. My new naniwa 12000 will be waiting there and a Tamahagane plane from Junji. Also the anvil, so I will definitely try to straighten some metal. Perhaps even a saw. I want to file into a more convex shape my favourite saw, select the mortice chisels I take to Chile, sleep... plenty of stuff to do.

When we left Europe 2 years ago we didn’t have any idea of what the future was going to look like. I didn’t have any idea of what I was going to do next. I still don’t have an “idea” of what to do. But I know I can make.

In spanish, there is only one verb for doing and making, “hacer”. So when you are bored you say you don’t have anything to do, nada que hacer. But also means that there is nothing you can make. I realised about this when living at my brother’s house in Chile a few years back when I was finishing my PhD thesis and needed a quiet place to write. There was nothing to do there, since there was nothing that needed to be made. Even the food was made by the “nana” and packed in plastic boxes. Dreadful.

Now I go, with no contract, no definitive plan, no idea of what will happen, but knowing that whatever it is, it will have solid wood, will be hand made, have nice joinery and will use tools made by other humans like me. And that’s perfect. I don’t need to know in advance what I will do if I know the way I want to make it.

The tools in those bags are not only sharp steel pieces with wooden handles, they are a metaphor for something deeper, for something very human, and it gives me the confidence that it lays in me the power to shape my world, the world, even if it’s in the small little scale of a few tables — but a few tables make a cafe, and cafes are good ground for breeding revolutions. And this confidence doesn’t come from my degree in physics, or my bank account or my time in Celle with Opa and his eleven generations of violin makers. It is born solely from the close contact with the material world and the opportunity to talk about it with other people who are also close to it. And like that, talking about a world that is the same here in Graz, in Japan or Hawaii, we can educate ourselves and each other. And that’s all there is to it.

Bed lessons

We have finally returned the crap flat to the landlord who kicked us out for an open window. I had to cut the bed into pieces so I could transport it to the community garden of a friend of us for firewood. I also had to unglue a mirror that Julia glued to the bathroom’s walls with shit lots of double sided tape. The flat was pretty much empty so I had a leatherman, a thickness gauge and my favorite Ryoba to try to unglue the mirror. The Ryoba of course was the only one able to finish the task. Sad thing was that the blade got full of rubber and glue. There was a bit of ethanol I took from the office last week and tried to clean the glue with it. It didn’t really work for the glue but man the teeth where clean after that, they got more “bite”.

First lesson: clean your saw with ethanol/acetone once in a while. Then oil it again with camellia oil.

I guess some organic compounds are stick to the teeth bevels as you cut and dissolving them with alcohol is a good idea. Somehow I have never heard of it, the doxa goes something like you oil and sharpen your saws, but there is not a word on cleaning them, less on cleaning them in a regular basis.

Go and try it and let me know what ya think, it takes 2 minutes. I have adopted it already as a workshop good practice. A clean saw is a happy saw.

Now for the pictures.

After moving the firewood by tram yesterday, I went today to take a look at it.

That was my bed.

Best thing to do with an old bed is pizza:

 There was no table in the garden so I went for several small pizzas that I could make in my hands

Just the usual: bacon, parmesan cheese, garlic, mushrooms and pepper burnt in the oven and pesto instead of tomato sauce, since Julia doesn’t like it.

And that’s the second lesson of the bed: clay ovens are good things.

We were there, in the sun between the green of the garden, woman reading and man making fire with a beer in his hand. And god saw it was good.

If you are wondering if I left my favorite saw full of glue the answer is no. When we were back home after our late lunch today, I followed Mark’s advice and used coarse sandpaper to give a general cleaning to my saw, so the glue is gone and also most of its rust. After that, more alcohol wiping and I called it a day.

Vakmanschap is Meesterschap

It's time to celebrate, so a few scans from a dutch book I have called Craftsmanship is Mastery for all of you. 

(Today is my last day at work, it's sunny outside, and we have moved to a new flat with Julia, a proper one with real wood for the floor and real stone for the columns and no retarded landlord complaining for an open window. Will try to take some pics of the stonework.)

The title of the book is very enigmatic, and makes me think of Hegel's master-slave dialectic. Who is the master in the pictures? At first sight one would say the guy handling the tools and creating with them something beautiful. But then you start looking at the background of the pictures and the hands are only a little part of the whole picture. The craftsman is a slave of the material and tradition. A workshop that looks the same for 400 years, with tools old as humanity itself. The shapes he carves are transmitted generation by generation, and the gothic tracery emanates from the oak planks like out of its own vegetal will. The turnings follow the tools the turner uses and the carver is just another tool that the gauges need in order to attack the wood with their own shapes and create the carving. 

The concentrated look, the humble body position, looking down in almost a prayer, has been learnt in a lifetime of close contact with their materials. They bend in front of a master infinitely greater than themselves: the world.

But that slavering gives you freedom. And a certain mastery of the world.  For you know its workings, you can act wilfully on it. The greatest freedom emanating from total submission, as one of Dostoievski's characters says in The Karamazov Brothers. 

I'm looking forward to grow old.