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.)