Finished product first!

This is a knife that my brother and I made this summer, and it’s the first knife either of us has ever made. I think it’s too different to count as a puukko knife, but it was inspired the the traditional Finish puukko knives like these: https://nordiskaknivar.wordpress.com/2013/07/13/tuohipaa-stacked-birch-bark-puukkos/

O1 Steel – 1/8 x 1 1/2

We started with O1 steel from Amazon. The steel is 1/8 inch thick and 1 1/2 inches wide. We ordered 36 inches and cut three 12 inch blanks.

I started by sketching different design ideas in my notebook. I came up with 3 or 4 decent designs before settling on this one.

The main pocket is sized to fit a laptop and a couple of notebooks. I believe the cut dimensions were 14×10. I knew I’d lose some width to seams and that I wanted it to be easy to slide my computer in and out.

I also wanted some front pockets so I could carry my charger and a few other things I need at school. I didn’t have a long enough piece of leather to cut a single-piece strap. Although I did end up sewing it together, I have put some thought into maybe making it resizable at some point.

The next step was to determine all the stitching areas and poke holes where the stitches would go. For this I used my 4-prong diamond chisel. Doing this makes stitching about moving thread and securing pieces instead of trying to stab through leather.

I stitched this all by hand using an old Awl for All that belonged to Caroline’s grandpa. This thing must be 60+ years old. It has been fixed and is held together with glue and a screw clamp but it still works. Here’s a link to a video that shows how to use it, if you’re curious.

While I was working on this project I had scraps of leather sitting out and Hannah really wanted to get in on the action. Here she is stamping letters into what became a bracelet.

I hadn’t figured out how to keep it closed yet. I was thinking a button, probably, but other things like magnets were considered too.

I ended up asking a friend of mine if he had any bone or antler scraps that he didn’t need and as luck would have it, he had a whole box of cut off pieces. I chose the tip of a deer antler to use.

The front pockets ended up a bit bigger than I was imagining, but they’ll be great. They do fit my charger which is the single bulkiest thing I’ll carry in a pocket. There’s plenty of room for the laptop and notebook, and I could fit a few more notebooks in there easily.

The front pockets being bigger and floppier than I planned does mean that it’s easier to get stuff out of them. If they end up being too floppy I’ll put a stitch in the outside corners of each pocket to give them a bit more structure. I thought I’d just try it like this for a few weeks though and see if they cause any problems.

I think it looks pretty good! This is my first big leather project. Mostly the other things I’ve done have been small things like wallets.

I enjoyed making this and I like the bag, but I’m not sure that I want to make leather-working a hobby. I think it’s one of those things I’m glad I know a little bit about, but not something I want to really dive deep into.

I also wanted to make it easy to have friends come over and be able to make a spoon (or something!) in a couple of hours.

So, I made a template for a spoon, then made three (and a half — one’s not done yet) and will probably make a bunch more.

This was the first one. I had a nice long 1×4 in maple, with some really nice figure. I tried doing some carving on the handle to make it more interesting.

The next one I made was better. I cut the next a little thicker which made it stronger. I think spoon #1 will be fine, but it won’t be good for scraping dried oatmeal from a pan.

I also liked the pattern I ended up with a lot. I drew it during classes at school, and it actually turned out nice on the wood.

I tried using paprika for kolrosing. It worked, in that the lines turned dark red, but a yellow color leached out when I oiled it. I won’t try it again.

The last spoon was one that a friend of mine made, using the same template. This one was in made from Apple wood. I absolutely love apple wood. The figure and rich tones are so great, and it smells nice while working it!

My friend hadn’t used tools much, which resulted in a very organic shape in the handle. I think it really adds to the spoon, and makes it more unique.

And with that, I think I’m all caught up with projects I’ve done. Time to get back into the garage and start on some new stuff!

We were given this nice Dyson Max vacuum for Christmas and needed a place to store it when it’s not in use.

I figured some sort of cradle would work well for the vacuum itself. I was going to make it from wood initially, but then I remembered that I still had some aluminum bar stock scraps in my junk bin.

I cut the vacuum cradle at angles so that you could just slide the vacuum down and have it nest in the right place. The attachment holders are just angled strips that keep the pieces on in a roughly vertical position.

The vacuum needs to be plugged in when not in use. I briefly considered making it auto-connect to the charger when you slide it down into the rack, but that seemed like more work than it was worth, so I installed some eyelets along the bottom of the rack, and ran the power cord through them.

And yeah, the closet is all dingy and needs to be painted. It’s on the todo list!

This is my favorite project I’ve done in a while. It’s a dice tower I made for my sister & brother-in-law for Christmas. You drop dice in the top of the tower and they bounce through the tower and into the tray, ensuring a fair dice roll, and keeping dice from rolling all over the table and floor. 

My sister & brother-in-law are very into gaming, so when I saw some examples of dice towers online, I knew I had to make one for them. 

I follow and admire the work of Peter Follansbe, and have been wanting to try carving some oak panels. This seemed like the perfect excuse to tackle that. 

I cut some panels, then sketched out some designs and got to work. I really haven’t done much carving like this before and it turns out that it’s hard! Figuring out how to sharpen the carving tools correctly, how to hold the tools, how to hold the wood to carve…and then there’s the whole “making it look good and artistic” part of it all (that’s where I really struggle). 

A lot of the carving was slow going. The oak I used was from a big-box hardware store, so it was bone dry. I think that it would’ve been easier with green wood, but I didn’t have that luxury this time around. 

After carving I assembled the tower. My intention was to just use brass rods to hold it all together, by peening both ends of the rods. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out quite right. I had cut 45 degree miter joints on all the corners, so that the seams would be at the corners of the box. This mean that as I peened the rods going one way, it was pushing the other sides out from where they needed to go. Then the rods bent as I was peening them. Then when I got it nearly tight enough I realized that the smooth mitered joints would still slip vertically.

I think I could’ve made it work if I had had a keyed piece that prevented the slipping, but when it’s the week before Christmas and you have family in town, you make sacrifices to your vision and use glue.

The oak was finished with shellac. It brought out the oak’s natural color nicely, it dries quickly and is nice and shiny. I love using shellac on things that don’t need to be waterproof.

Before putting the rods through I figured out how I wanted to make the dice bounce. I cut strips of leather and sewed loops at the bottom of them. The loops hang at different lengths, so the dice will bounce off of both of them, and there’s a big enough gap to the side for the dice to get through.

I got to learn how to use a leather stitching awl, and how to do a lock stitch for this part. That was pretty fun, and I expect I’ll do more leather projects at some point.

With the tower complete, I created a lid, which meant I could finally see how long the thing would be, and make the dice tray for it. I wanted it to be leather lined, so I took that into account when fitting everything.

The 3/4 inch thick boards I had seemed too chunky for this tray, so I ran them through the jointer until they felt right. Since it was the week before Christmas at this point I just went with a simple butt joint and glue.

The timing also meant that I just tapped in patterns using my gouges, instead of actually doing relief carving.

With the dice tray all carved, glued and shellacked, I cut a piece of leather to fit into the tray, used Shoe-Goo to glue it in place and then trimmed the top flush with a sharp knife.

Finally, I got to test it a few times before wrapping it up!

It’s made out of a nice piece of 2×3/4 pine, nothing too fancy. It had to be a fast project since her attention span is shorter than she is.

Here’s her design. The thing on the head is a pony tail. I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it, so I proposed an alternative design that was more feasible.

It’s no fancy design, but at least I could envision it.

Here’s the blank for the arms, the torso and head. The legs are already on the lathe.

I really just drew these to get an idea of how long of blanks to cut. I kept them fairly short because they were going to be thin, and they’d bow out on the lathe. And then I’d break them before I was ready, because that’s what I do.

On the arms I made the forearms thinner than the upper arms.

And I carved the body and head to approximately humanoid shapes. I left her in charge of sanding.

Then I drilled holes through the arms and legs, through the torso and drilled a hole for the neck to go into. I just put a thin bit in the drill press on low speed and pushed the wooden pieces onto it by hand. Not as safe as some options, but it’s pine so it didn’t require much force.

I ran tough string through all the holes and tied thick knots at the hands and feet so it wouldn’t come undone. Hannah put the dot of glue in the head hole and it was done!

She was extremely pleased with it and has big plans to paint it with mom, and to ask her sister to make some clothes for it.

I was able to turn the bowl on the lathe today, and will have to carve the other one some other weekend.

I started by using a compass to draw two circles of the same size on the flat side of the log. I then cut the two pieces apart  on the bandsaw so that I had two chunks like this.

Next I attached the wood to my faceplate. I used six screws – three around the outside and three on the inside.

Since the wood wasn’t round yet, I pushed it up against the tailstock and got it round. Once it’s round it doesn’t bounce around as much. I like having the support of the tailstock when I’m starting out; it lets me use shorter screws. If it’s really out of round, short screws can work loose.

Next I turned down the bowl, but left just over an inch and a half of wood next to the faceplate. I made the outside profile of the bowl like this, and then hollowed out the inside. I left the extra wood next to the faceplate because the outer screws extended that far. I wanted those screws in place while I was pushing and cutting most of the bowl.

Once most of the bowl was shaped, I took out the outer ring of screws. There wasn’t as much wood to spin any more, and my final cuts were going to be light passes anyways. The middle three screws had plenty of holding power for the rest of the job.  I finished cutting the bowl, sanded it and applied mineral oil and paraffin wax.

I then cut away most of the wood near the faceplate, and undercut the bottom of the bowl. If you cut the bowl flat and later it warps, then you’ll end up with a bowl that rocks. Making the bottom concave helps prevent that.

I cut down through the tenon and it snapped off when there was about 3/4 of an inch left. I used my gouges to cut the stub off the bottom of the bowl, sanded it smooth and applied oil.

My phone died, and I couldn’t remember how to adjust the white balance settings on my camera at first, so you get to see several settings. This one is the closest to the color in real life. A pleasant blond color, with minor contrast differences in the grain pattern.

The next two pictures aren’t very good. It’s not actually this dark. The bowl is about the size of a typical cereal bowl.

It does have some good grain inside, but it’s not as dramatic as this photo suggests.

Overall I was very happy with this bowl. It probably had the thinest sides I’ve done yet in a bowl. I don’t do turning very often, but I do enjoy it and it was good to get back to it.

Stay tuned for my next project when I hand carve a bowl from the other half of this log!

The scoop was mostly shaped, but the walls were too thick. Most of my work this weekend was just using the hook knife to thin those out, and then to smooth everything out.

For smoothing the back I used a spoke shave, and for the handle I used my swiss army knife. Finaly I scraped the whole thing with the swiss army knife to remove remaining high spots and uncooperative grain.

I didn’t have much time tonight so I used the bandsaw to cut out the shape of the spoon.

I then used the drawknife to round out the back of the bowl of the spoon, and the spokeshave to smooth everything out.

Turned out pretty well I think. I’m still trying to decide if I like the handle plain or if I want to carve some sort of decoration on it. I’m leaning towards plain at the moment.

This was a quick project, and actually spent most of the time helping my 12 year old learn to use a bowl gouge and spokeshave. He did a great job and his spoon is looking pretty good so far!

This one is part of the big cherry logs I milled up in Minnesota last year.

I cut a piece out on the bandsaw from one of my rough boards. The smell of cherry wood is delightful.

I sketched out roughly what I wanted and started in on the bowl of the spoon. I do the bowl first because it’s easy to clamp the spoon in place while it’s still square. If you do the outside of the spoon first then you have to secure it somehow while carving the bowl, and that’s tougher.

That’s pretty good. I still need to get better at getting it right to where I want it, but I’m slowly improving.

Other than cutting the blank out with the bandsaw, I decided to do everything with hand tools today. So after the bowl I moved on to shaping with the hatchet. The hatchet is sharp enough to shave your arm hair.

I’m getting better with the hatchet. I miss my mark less often, and I’m getting a better feel for how the wood is going to split off. I was able to get a lot closer to the final shape this time than I have been before.

One thing I learned from Instagram (or maybe YouTube…) is to cut these stop cuts. Then when you’re using the hatchet it doesn’t split the handle or bowl right off. The hatchet split gets to the cut and stops.

I thought I was ready for the spokeshave here, but then I went back to the hatchet for a while.

See – too blocky still.

One I’d finished with the hatchet for real, I attacked it with the spokeshave. I used it for rounding off the back of the bowl, and for shaping the handle.

I need to work on making both sides symmetrical, or learn to start using templates or something. Still, I was pretty happy with how it turned out to this point. I was able to get the bowl to have a sharp edge instead of the wide lip I’ve done in the past.

The back of the bowl turned out nice and smooth and is pretty thin. The thickness is also nice and even throughout.

I carved my initials and the year on the flat spot on the back.

I didn’t have an exact plan for the front side when I started, but knew I wanted to do some pattern carving. I broke it up into two parts. The skinny stem of the handle, and the wider top part.

The bottom has a double tooth kind of pattern done with a small v-gouge, with a line of small football shaped divots running up the middle.

The top half started with a run of recessed 1/2 circles around the edge – I liked those a lot. Then something I tried didn’t work out and I ended up with a pattern of circle holes. I don’t love the circles, but when mistakes happen you do what you can to recover.

Overall it was very satisfying to get back in the garage and do something fun. It’ll probably be another month before I get out there again because of school and other stuff.