A Cornucopia of Convergence.
All the juggling balls in the air all at once. How many hands do I have again?
Dear Good Hours.
This will be a miss-mash of a letter. Fair warning. The proverbial “candle from both ends” is more like a Roman Candle than a simple flame, but all combustion is pushing in desired directions.
Exhausted, painful, and satisfied, is a stupid bizarre Ven Diagram to occupy the center of. Not the first time, not the last.
I was up early this morning and decided to just fuck off in the shop. I’d made plans to start a big project at the new house with my oldest, but I was up way to early for her,
So I drank my breakfast protein shake and played some music in the shop, finishing a couple small tasks that I’ve been putting off. First, I had some carving chisel chip their edges while I was carving these panels in some kiln dried red oak.
It required some re-grinding to re-shape the edges. I have a power grinder across the shop but I dislike using it on delicate edges like carving chisels. It’s far too easy to burn the low angle bevels. Instead I use a little hand crank grinder with a super friable wheel. (No idea the brand or origin, it was on the grinder when I bought it at an Amish second hand store…. Driftless Wisconsin is weird and awesome!)
I decided I was unhappy with how I was using the grinder so I built a stand for it.
It comes off the shelf maybe twice a year. In the past, I would clamp it to the 1X board you see is the top of the stand and attach that board to the workbench with a holdfast or two. It worked but it meant the wheel ran parallel in orientation to the benchtop. Ok in a pinch. Sucks ass for body mechanics.
I slapped together the stand with scraps, glue and drywall screws. The holy trinity that is destined to last forever in the shop. Because why wouldn’t it?
I ground the edges square or cambered based on the chisel. Then I re-established a bevel. I did this freehand, not shooting for a specific angle, just something that “felt” like a carving angle depth…
Ok… I’m guilty.
I am not a slave to bevel angles. If it cuts I’m on board! 20* - 25* - a variation based on “The Pyramid Inch” (Google it fuckers!)
If it feels right and it cuts, for things like carving chisels I’m on board!
If you’re interested. Like 5 years ago I gave up and wrote about my sharpening routine. You can read the archived post here:
The only addition to my sharpening arsenal in the last decade is the sharpening dowels Chris Schwarz spoke about for sharpening his “divider cutting loops” (I don’t know why people can’t learn to use a “v” tool carving gouge or a small carving gouge and a mallet… I’m usually right on board with Chris so it’s weird to wonder why a carving chisel isn’t more normalized than a simple gouge and some time in the learning curve…
But I haven’t bought or tried the compass cutting gouge. I’ve been Cutting arcs using gouges and V tools for a long time. (Hat Top to Peter Follansbee’s inspiration and instructions).
I know what I think Chris is up to. I imagine it’s difficult to invent an easy entry point to perfectly carved arcs and circles. I will absolutely admit it’s been a longtime since I paged through “Woodworking in Estonia” maybe I should again.
As I see it (no hate, no shade, theres 100 ways to do a thing!) A little time with a small carving gouge will achieve everything a $26 plus shipping part of a tool (dividers found separately) will achieve.
Really Chris. I don’t mean any serious criticism. It had a lot to do with my unusual resistance to buying a tool from you that will fit a dividers I don’t own… I do appreciate you trying to open the door and open access to simple geometric carving. I do. Really man, no shade!
And my soapbox disintegrates beneath my unworthy feet.
After grinding, I started polishing the bevels using dry emery cloths (course, medium, and fine). Then I worked on my Arkansas oil stones, hard and fine textures, I worked off the inside canal burr with a light touch of the “TOPINCN Sharpening Stones” (search for them on Amazon!)
If you ask me the hero is the SlipStrop honing board. Maybe my best ever Woodcraft store purchase.
At 5 AM I had 5 carving chisels with chipped and mutilated cutting edges. By 7:30 I had five rehabilitated chisels, each capable of carving their profile in a sacrificial piece of pine…. Cross grain…
******
Fast forward a few hours and I was working on a very different, far less meditative project. The first big renovation at the new house.
One bedroom had a weird drop ceiling and some very ugly white colored faux wood paneling on the walls. Very 1960”s vomit chic. Pulling it all down revealed some cracks and repairs needed to the ceiling, which I expected, but it also revealed a massive hole in the corner.
At first I thought a chimney had been removed, but looking closer, it appears the wall had continued into the other room at one point, and had been removed up to this corner. The original part of the house was built in 1899, and it’s been added on to several times. Even looking at the joists in the basement it’s difficult to tell chicken from egg on a timeline.
Not content to just slap drywall on top the plaster, I’m just not a half ass repair kind of guy, I decided we had to strip the two walls down to the studs to hang the drywall right, and update the wiring if we can. My oldest and I donned respirator masks and set to peeling away the plaster and lathe boards with a couple of flat bars, and a lot of garbage bags.
The first wall went fine. The second wall, well that’s where we ran into problems. Halfway across the wall the plaster changed, the consistency was more cement like, and it had large sections of metal mesh reinforcement were embedded into it
I’ve done this demolition/renovation a half dozen times before on a variety of houses and I have yet to encounter this stuff. I understand why it’s a thing, but I had to call defeat for the rest of the day. Tomorrow I’ll grab my circular saw from the shop, something I can control the depth of cut with, buy a couple of “demolition” blades meant to cut multiple materials…
… and Mr.Gorbachev… do your thing…
Love Derek
Ratione et Passionis