TNET 44: Manscaped

I am not going to embed any of those or link to their site, but I have got an awful lot of ads on YouTube lately for the products in the title and I totally do not get it. Like, at all, on so, so many levels. It is a male-centered effort similar to the one that convinced women they should shave their legs.

At some time in our evolution, our species has decided for selecting for hair that grows almost indefinitely on our heads and to a very limited degree on other parts. It is a sad fact that cutting/trimming or excessively grooming head and facial hair is a necessity, otherwise it would get too big and entangled and would impede normal function. Those are our species’ equivalent of peacock’s tails or irish elk’s antlers. And I do get why someone would opt for regular shaving instead of regular trimming for whatever reasons – convenience, aesthetic preference etc. We have to chose there one of several options.

But I completely do not get why I should shave my chest or my groin. And I won’t. Regular hygiene is sufficient to keep me comfy and non-smelly and there is absolutely no health benefit to shaving body hair. In my case, there is even a downside which also the reason why I have a beard – I have sensitive skin and I react badly to shaving. However, that is not the point. We are the only species that is capable to alter or even downright mutilate perfectly healthy bodies for mere fashion. I will never understand why some people feel the need to inject pigment into healthy skin, or pierce and cut healthy functional organs in order to put pieces of metal in them. Oftentimes in a manner that impedes normal functioning and sometimes even endangers health.

I am not saying people should not be allowed to shave their balls, tatoo their faces, or pierce their tongues. Your body, your choice, just do not expect a compliment from me and we will get along just fine. But I find it ridiculous if it is a personal choice, doubly ridiculous if it is a fashion trend and several orders of magnitudes ridiculous if it is a concentrated effort of a company to sell me products that I neither need nor want. Unfortunately, they will probably succeed in convincing some, even though not me personally.

Open thread, you can talk whatever you want, under the condition of not being an asshole.

Previous thread.

Branding Stamp

I am finishing the kitchen-knives sets, and one of the tools that I was still missing in my toolbox was a branding stamp that could be used for wood and leather. For leather, I have used an impromptu one made from wood stabilized with epoxy, but that cannot be used to brand wood of course. But when making that I have figured out a process that could be also applied to making one out of steel, so after a lot of procrastinating the task, today I have finally bitten the bullet and took the two hours it needed.

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The handle is from an extremely old and out-of-shape potato peeler. Maybe even antique, but I know of no museum that would take it of my hands so I have recycled it. The screw is recycled from old furniture. The stamp itself is from tool steel, although I will not be hardening it.

I could not tap the hole in the stamp very deep and well without re-grinding and thus destroying the taps, because standard taps need to go through.  Thus I could not cut very good threads in there, just two turns of half-assed ones. But that should not be a problem, a few dents for the thread to latch on to should suffice, friction should take care of the rest. It is not supposed to come apart, and if it comes apart, I will braze it.

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The one advantage of having a logo consisting of only straight lines is that it made the job relatively easy. A bit of filing, a bit of grinding with an angle-grinder, and here we go. Up close there are some flaws and the width to height ratio is a tiny bit off, but that is just life. I have tossed one attempt due to flaws, but I think this one will do.

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Wood branding is not an exact science, there will always be some irregularities. But with some practice, I should get crisp and nice logos that can be placed even in visible areas. Which is my intention.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size

And there is absolutely no doubt that on leather, the results are way, way better than those I got with my wood-carved impromptu stamp.

I may give it a go one more time to get the proportions better, but in the meantime, I am going to use this one. I doubt anyone will complain about it.

 

Kitchen Knives Set – Part 7: Getting to Grips

These knives have full-width tangs, but no visible pins. As far as I can tell, nobody else is using this type of construction, so it might be somewhat unique

A few years ago Walter Sorrels made a video in which he tested various glues for fixing scales to tangs without pins. He made several mock-up knives from mild steel for this and they all have failed his stress test. Which consisted of tossing them in the air and letting them fall on the concrete pavement. As it turns out, the shearing forces during these impacts were too big for the glue to reliably stick to the steel and they all delaminated. But he gave me an idea on how to overcome this problem. I have tested the idea on one broken blade and it held out to several hammer blows before the scales delaminated  – and at that point, it was not only the glue that was failing but also the wood was starting to shatter and break. And since knife handles are not supposed to be hit with a hammer so I think it should be OK. I really hope it works out in the long term because I am going to make a lot of these. So if you want to know how this goes, read on. [Read more…]

Bramblings Whoosh

This year we have snowy winter. The snow came late, but it came in droves. And with plenty of snow also came bramblings, a flock of about 30 individuals. They returned multiple times, and I have managed to get some pictures, although the light was less than ideal.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

YouTube Video: 5 Biggest Lies of Knife Sharpening

In my opinion, every household should have at least one person who knows how to sharpen a knife and occasionally does so. Not that good knives need to be sharpened very often, but even the best knife will get a bit dull at some point and it will need to be sharpened.

But most of my friends do not know how to sharpen knives, some are even afraid of it. There is in my opinion absolutely no need to be afraid of sharpening knives, and you do not need any fancy or expensive equipment either. And when searching for knife sharpening info online, one can encounter some pretty wild stuff, sometimes stuff that is not true.

Two-three years ago during one of my yearly get-together with friends from university, I was (as usual) dismayed by the state of knives in the communal kitchen at our lodging, so I have decided to sharpen at least one knife to a state when it will cut and not squish. However, on this particular trip, I have forgotten to take a whetstone, so I had to do without it.

I went on a walk in the forest and I have checked the geology on the wayside, where the bare rock was exposed. It was granite, which is of no use. However, where is granite, there often are metamorphic shales nearby, so I went further – and it was indeed just a few km further (about a half-hour walk). This particular metamorphic shale was phyllite, which is suitable for making a whetstone. So I took two stones to a nearby stream and I ground them against each other until I got perfectly flat surfaces.

And thus obtained whetstone worked perfectly well. The knife did not have the best edge it could get, but it was good enough for cutting safely and comfortably. I have even managed to teach one of my friends how to sharpen with it, and I did recommend to him to buy a professionally made one afterward.

And what did I recommend to him to buy? A cheap two-layer whetstone for 10,-€, 100 and 300 grit. The same one with which my father was sharpening knives his whole life and which I sometimes take with me on my travels.

If you are interested in learning how to sharpen a knife, I do recommend the above mentioned Burrfection YouTube channel. He does explain the principles well, without exaggerating. And he supports his claims with empirical evidence. For example, I have said to my friend that sharpening angle more or less does not matter if it is between 10-20° and constant throughout the blade. That claim was based on nothing more than my subjective experience, which could be mistaken. But Burrfection did say the same and he has the equipment to test the said claim. So he did.

Do not be afraid of knife sharpening. The basics are easy and more than enough for a typical store-bought mass-produced western knife.

Goldifnches!

These were very welcome visitors – about 8 to 10 of them. Last year I have seen no goldfinches at all, the whole year. A small flock last week made me really happy.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

So, Does Homemade Honing Steel Work?

I think it does.

My mom’s knives needed to be sharpened. Normally I would sharpen the knives with the current manufactured batch, but since the honing steels, whilst not finished yet, got to a stage when they can be at least tested, I have decided to test them. So instead of sharpening the knives on my belt grinder and stropping them with the MDF wheel, I have sharpened them the old fashioned way on a whetstone and then honed the edge on steel.

First a picture of a “blunted edge” bevel.

Edge bevel before sharpening. © Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

You can see the perpendicular scratches right near the edge. Those were made by the belt sander. The angled scratches are from half-arsed maintenance with a whetstone that I have done last week when I did not have time to do the job properly. This is not, strictly speaking, a blunt knife. It would still take yer finger off in a jiffy and was perfectly fine for hard veggies like carrots and taters. But it did struggle with tomatoes a bit. Notice how the light reflects differently from the mirror-polished primary bevel, which thus appears nearly black.

As far as size goes. this bevel is very small – about 0,3 mm wide.

100 grit bevel re-established at ca 15 °
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First I have re-established nice regular bevels at 15° with the rough side of the whetstone, which has circa 100 grit. 15-20 passes were needed, even though the bevels are very small – the steel is very hard. It does not look very different from the first picture, except for the scratches being all angled all the way to the edge now. On carbon steel, this would establish a so-called “needle” which is a thin foil of steel on the edge that bends and cannot be ground away, but I have not seen this happen with N690. The needle here breaks usually off very easily, leaving behind a bit of jagged edge.

320 grit bevel smoothened
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Fine 320 grit side of the whetstone is used to slightly smooth the edges and eventually break off the needle on harder and brittle steels (like most stainless steels). However here it does not look that much different from the second picture, which I did not expect. The knife at this stage is perfectly capable of cutting tomatoes, but it does not shave hair yet. And this is where the test of the honing steels comes into play.

Bevel burnished by honing steel.
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Now the bevel looks significantly different from before. Note that the edge is now mirror-polished between some of the deeper scratches – the light reflects very differently from the bevel than it did before. The knife is now also shaving-sharp not only tomato-cutting-with-its-own-weight sharp.

So TLDR is –  Although this is not a scientific proof, I am convinced and I think the honing steel works as intended.

Kitchen Knives Set – Part 5: “Fun” with Resin

Somebody somewhere in the comment section (I think on Marcus’s blog) expressed dislike for resin stabilized wood along the lines that it is the same as making the handles out of plastic. I disagree. Stabilized wood is a pain to work because it behaves like plastic in that regard, but it does not look like plastic and neither does it feel like plastic in the hand – it feels like wood. And as I was working on this project, I found out that it even sounds like wood – stabilized pieces give out very nice clonk-clonk when hit against each other. I think it might be possible to make musical instruments out of it, but I won’t try.

However, before said wood reaches its desired stabilized state, I have to work with epoxy resin. Lots of it.

I hate it.

It is gluey, it sticks to absolutely everything and it is transparent, so when it drops somewhere it is difficult to see in time. Tools and surfaces need to be cleaned with paper towels soaked in denatured alcohol, which is not cheap and the fumes do not smell exactly delicious. And the work needs to be done fast, because if the epoxy gels, it won’t soak into the wood no more.

With my macgyered vacuum pump I have reached a vacuum of 0,2-0,3 bar, which was sufficient for extremely porous wood, but might not be sufficient for this. Applewood has very small pores and is very hard, even the very decomposed pieces were still harder than for example poplar or basswood. So I have decided to bite the bullet and buy a small, cheap vacuum pump in the hope that it will work better. And it does – and it does not.

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Even with my poorly sealed pickle jar, I have easily reached vacuum 0,6 bar within a minute. The wood released so many bubbles that the resin developed foam head like beer.

However, the pump also got very hot after a few minutes of running, which made me a bit worried. My macgyvered pump was a bit cumbersome and awkward, but overheating was completely a non-issue. I am not so sure about this one. I hope it does not burn out before I at least get to sell some knives.

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Overheating aside, the wood soaked up the resin very nicely and although I have only used clear resin, it developed very nice and pleasant colors. The resin would cure over time at room temperature, but it is possible to speed up the curing by heating it to 60-80°C. So I did that the next day and I baked the pieces for two hours, after which I could appreciate the nice clonk-clonk that I was talking about at the beginning.

I have also approached the issue a bit more scientifically this time and I have weighed all the pieces before and after. Here you can see the results.

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This made me very happy with the results. The relatively healthy wood has gained approx 30% in weight, the not-very-much rotten root wood doubled its weight and the more decomposed wood has almost tripled its weight. All pieces of similar size weighed approximately the same after the stabilizing process, irrespective of what wood they were made of. And finally, all pieces when put in water either sunk completely or just barely floated with 99% submerged. So even the relatively healthy wood should be soaked up with resin to sufficient depth.

Now that the wood is stabilized, the only thing that is left is to psych myself up to go into the freezing workshop and finish the knives. Which includes first a bit of grinding and drilling, and then a lot of gluing. Even more fun with epoxy awaits, hooray!

Doiling Away All the Time

My vacuum pump was delayed one more week but it should be due to arrive today afternoon. In the meantime, the weather was cold and I could not be arsed to heat the workshop and start another project. So I have decided to spend some time exercising my bobbin lace making skills again.

Last year I have taken my grandmother’s old blueprints and I scanned them. And now I took the scans to photoshop and I refined them into a form that can be printed out.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

As you can see, these are true antique blueprints, made with the technology that actually gave us the word.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

For the printable templates, I have refined the curves a bit but I have done my best to preserve the original placement of pins and knots as well as the type of weave. My intention was to reproduce the old work, not to reinterpret it.

Round doily, ca. 16 cm across. © Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

Round doily, ca. 20 cm across. © Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

Oval doily, ca 16×25 cm. © Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

Doilies are insidious. You make the inner circle first and that is quick and easy. Then the next inner circle takes a bit longer but it is fairly quick still. The next one then takes even longer. And the outermost one then drags on and on for what feels like forever.

Bobbin lace making shows itself to be a reasonable upper-back and shoulder exercise. The bobbins weigh next to nothing but holding your hands at breast height for hours is not easy. It is not exactly hard work, but it is not as easy as some might think.

Regarding my technique, I am not at my mother’s or my grandmother’s level yet. I am not able to hide the beginnings/ends as well as they do, neither can I make some types of lace (the diamond shapes on the last one are fugly) as neat and regular as they do. However they both were making bobbin lace since childhood and for decades, whereas I only learned it last year, so I am not losing any sleep over not being as good as they.