Learning Bob in Lace

Since I could not work too much in the workshop and the garden, I have decided to learn how to make bobbin lace from my mother. It is a bit frustrating because as much as I love my mom, she is terrible at explaining things. But I have learned how to make lace as a kid, and once forgotten things are easier to learn again, so I have succeeded somewhat and I have learned two basic lace-making techniques.

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These are bookmarks. The green leaves are meant to stick out of the book. I have decided to learn by making these because they are a bit useful whilst being enough boring to learn the necessary muscle-memory. And the eleven curves were excellent exercise – that part took three times as long as the straight part.

The red and blue ones are made with technique “plátno” (canvas). I started with the red ones, that s why those have three different colors in them, so I can easier keep tracks of the various threads. On the blue ones, I was more confident so the body is made entirely of blue with just the outer line white. The yellow ones are made with technique “polohod” (half-throw) and are the last ones I have made. I already knew sort-of what to expect and the colors were chosen for the looks.

In order to keep my hands functioning, I will have to interrupt knife-making and gardening with easier tasks, and bobbin lace seems to be a good fit. It can be interrupted at almost any time, it is easier than drawing or painting, it can be done whilst watching a movie and once prepared it can be done either just a few minutes a day or a few hours a day, whatever one can fit into the schedule. And it does not strain fingers, which is why my mother could continue doing it even after having metacarpal bones in both thumbs destroyed by arthritis to the point they had to be replaced by plastic ones.

Only now I have nine bookmarks without actually needing more than one. Well, I have more knives than I need too…

Bonsai for Beginners – Part 5 – Last Bit of Tree Physiology (possibly)

Previous post.

You didnae thunk I was done, didya?

I talked about the influence of apical dominance on tree buds, I talked about types of growth, but I did not talk about tree buds themselves. So let’s do that now.

Not all tree buds are created equal. As written in the last article, in some trees the buds are just small leaf-precursors bunched up together, in some trees they are covered by modified leaves to protect them during winter and in some trees they contain thus hidden precursors to whole twigs. However, there is more, much more, to them than even that.

You have probably noted that most buds form at the base of leaves and needles, but that is not the only place where they form. They can occasionally also form on injuries, from the meristematic tissue, just like roots can in some plants. And while the buds that form at leaf bases, but do not develop because they are inhibited by apical dominance sometimes may lose their ability to grow altogether, but in many trees, they can be re-activated and start growing under the right conditions. In some trees, buds can even form on roots, and that is where suckers come from – and those can be pretty annoying.

As a beginner, you are best off with plants that have at least one of these two properties – either forming meristemic buds on injuries or waking inhibited buds. They are both godsent. Plants without these properties can be grown as bonsai, and indeed are grown as bonsai, but they require often specific approach and advanced techniques.

The reason for this is simple – contrary to what I found to be a popular belief, bonsai do not grow slowly and keep their shape. They do grow slower than they would normally, but this is achieved in part by cutting the roots and by cutting the twigs. When you stop pruning your bonsai, in a few years you get a huge mess (which many people find out when they buy the mass-produced little trees sold as bonsai in supermarkets). And when you plant it in free soil and stop pruning, in a few years you get a normal-sized tree. This means that bonsai get bigger each year, but you once they reach the size you want, you need to keep them near that size for a long time. And that means occasionally having to cut back to older wood, removing twigs and branches and growing new ones in their stead. In some plants, this can only be achieved by grafting.

That is, unfortunately, another strike against coniferous trees, especially pines and spruces. I have seen what seemed like a revived old-tree bud sprout from a spruce trunk, but it is a rare occurrence that I think happens only under very exceptional circumstances. On a pine that cannot happen at all.

That is still not all. There is more to tree buds than that.

Many trees are grown as bonsai not for the beauty of their foliage, but for their blossoms. But trees often require special conditions in order to form blossoming buds. Sometimes it is given by the age of the tree, sometimes by the position of a tree-bud on the twig, sometimes by both and some more like the temperature in winter etc. This issue is quite species-specific and cannot be summed up succinctly.

So for a beginner, the best option is trees that can grow back from older wood and that are not grown for their flowers but for their leaves/needles. That does not mean however that you should avoid other plants altogether, it only means that once you start seeing any success with those, you are no longer a beginner.

Next, I will write where to get your first tree and write a short list of species/genera suitable for beginners. Later on, I will write about each of those in more detail.

Bonsai Tree – Wake up Already Dammit!

Previous post.

The persimmon tree did not change leaves color at all in the fall, which is a bad sign, but eventually, they fell off and did not dry on the plant, which is a good sign. I have stored it together with my citruses and other subtropic plants at 10-15°C, but about a month ago I have re-potted it together with my Ulmus parvifolia bonsai because those both started to grow already due to the abnormally warm winter.

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

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

During that, the plant had very nice and healthy roots. The main root was not overly long and it was not carrot-like at all, which is the worst that can happen. As you can see, it had nice and bushy side-roots on the whole length, an ideal situation. So I have cut off half of the main root and the cut was, again healthy-looking, white and wet. I covered the cut with lots of charcoal and I planted the tree in a wider and shallower pot than it was before

Lastly, I moved it into my room to be able to better control the substrate humidity to avoid root rot. I have expected the tree to wake up in the warmer room and start growing, but so far nothing and it is making me anxious. After all, my Ulmus parvifolia grow like mad despite being in the coldest room in the house.

And today I realized that I need not try and cope with that anxiety alone, so here you have it, now you can be anxious too. Ain’t I grand?

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The terminal bud is still bright green and the top leaf is soft to touch and that is a good sign.

But it does not grow, dammit. Maybe this tree reacts to daytime length before it starts growth?

Bonsai for Beginners – Part 4 – Another Bit of Tree Physiology

Previous part.

This bit is, alas, often not discussed in bonsai literature as much in detail as it should too. Some books mention it in passing, some do not mention it at all. The talk is about types of tree growth. (note – the used terminology is my own, I have long since forgotten the official technical terms and anyway I am too lazy to search for them in foreign language)

There are three basic types that every bonsaist needs to be aware of, and it is vital to know which type each of your plants has because they determine what kind of care they require to get turned into a bonsai and survive the procedure.

1 – Continuous growth.

This does not mean that the plant grows continuously throughout the year, although usually when a plant does grow the whole year, it has this type of growth. But the growth might slow down or stop completely in certain conditions, like drought or cold or insufficient daylength. However, when the growth slows or stops, it does so without any apparent change in the plant’s physiology. No special structures develop, the plant just stops growing and when the conditions get right again, it continues. The “buds” are simply a bundle of small leaves/needles bunched up together.

In temperate regions, typical representatives of this type of growth are some evergreen conifers, like junipers or thujas. It is most typical for many subtropic trees – citruses, olives, and hibiscus. And of course tropical plants and succulents, like a ficus and money tree. This type of growth have mostly evergreens, although there are deciduous plants with it – for example, russian olive (Eleagnus angustifolia) and fig tree (Ficus carica), but they are the exception, not the rule.

2 – Continuous growth with a hibernating stage.

During the season, these plants just grow like the first type, adding leaves to their twigs continuously and growing in length. But when the conditions start to signal the end of the growing season, not only do they stop growing, they create specialized wintering buds. These buds then contain a relatively undifferentiated beginning of the next twig. When the hibernation ends, the buds shed their protective layers (modified leaves) and from them emerge twigs that again start to grow in length and adding leaves as much as they can manage.

This type of growth is typical for deciduous trees in temperate regions, like willows, poplars, maples, hazels and many more. I am not aware of any evergreen with this type, maybe holy (Illex sp.).

3 – Growth in spurts.

Some trees take the hibernation stage to the next level. The wintering buds do not contain just the beginning of a new twig, but a complete one with non-differentiated buds. At the beginning of the growing season these whole twigs emerge from the buds, they stretch in lengths and gain girth, but they do not add any new leaves or buds – the number of those has been determined previous year already.

This is typical for firs, pines, spruces and many other coniferous trees of temperate regions. From the top of my head, I only can remember one deciduous tree with this growth type – beech (Fagus sp.).

For a beginner, types 1 and 2 are the best option. Those are comparatively easy to manage, they mostly heal easily from pruning and the pruning itself can be often done at almost any time of the year or in wide enough window not to need to fuss about it too much.

Type 3 is difficult, and thus alas another point against pines. These types of trees cannot have twigs trimmed just anytime and anywhere, they often require being cut during very specific time otherwise the next year’s buds will form where you do not want them.

The worse in this regard are spruces, whose growth is nearly completely unmanageable. That is why you won’t see many very old spruce bonsai trees. More on that later.

From a File to a File Guide

I do not know where and when, but I have gotten a broken and rusty file that was too small to make a usable knife, but I thought I might find a use for it. Then, somehow, somewhere, I got another, very similar one. Almost as if I CTRL+C CTRL+V it.

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I even nearly forgot about both, but the learning batch of kitchen knives is giving me some grief and I realized that among other things I do need a file guide for making ricassos if I am to make knives reasonably fast and comfortably (all 12 knives have mistakes now, but their whole purpose was learning and it was to be expected – these will be given out for free anyway).

And since I have to heat my workshop nowadays to do anything, I have used that opportunity and I tossed them both into the fire. I got them nice red-glowing and I let them cool down very slowly in the stove.

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The next bit was pretty straightforward – I cut off the tangs with angle-grinder and I ground the rest flat-ish on the belt grinder with a pretty chewed-up 40 grid ceramics belt and nothing more. I do not have grinding attachment for flat surfaces yet, so I had to grind simply against the platen, but I have managed a flatness that I estimate about ~0,1 mm – there was a tiny bit of light coming through when I put them against each other and looked against a lightbulb – which is definitively good enough for its purpose.

Next, I have drilled two pairs of 5 mm holes down the center of one piece,  10 and 22 mm from each end, and I copied the holes into the other piece. To keep the holes reasonably aligned I have first drilled one hole, then used a 5 mm drill bit to keep the pieces aligned, drilled the opposing hole and so forth.

The four holes were not perfectly in line, but that does not matter that much and in the end, it has proven a bit of a blessing – the slight miss-positioning serves as a visible sort-of poka-yoke. However, I had to make temporary marks with a file on both pieces to keep their alignment in check without having to fumble each time I take them apart during the work.

With four 5 mm holes in both pieces, I have cut M6 threads in the inner pair on one piece and the outer pair on the other. The other four holes I have widened to 6 mm and chamfered the edges with an 8 mm bit.

I have found two M6 screws with wide-socket heads in my drawer, but I could not find any 6 mm steel stock. I thought I have one, but I thought wrong. I also could not find any M6 screws that had the non-threaded part thick enough for a good fit. So I had to make one. I started with a 6 mm thick old, bent and rusty nail and I cut out the approximately 100 mm straight part. Then I have ground it down to 5.8-5.9 mm using running slack-belt on my belt sander and spinning it with a cordless drill. And then I polished it a bit with old and used-up trizact A-65 belt.

Of course, staged, neither device was running for the photo-op. © Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

I cut the resulting round piece in half and then came the most challenging part – to cut about 4 mm of M6 thread into one end of each bit. I failed at this, both shafts have the thread a tiny bit at an angle. I guess one of my future projects will be making a jig for cutting precise concentric threads, cause I certainly cannot manage it by hand.

But I could assemble the whole thing after that and it worked, although I cannot fasten the leading-rods too much due to the badly cut threads. But when assembled, it had no sideway wobble and that is all I needed. So I have assembled it, tightened the screws and ground the outside-facets into perfect alignment. And here is the nearly finished thing, gleaming in my grubby hand.

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Now for hardening. I did not know whether the files were surface hardened or thorough-hardened, and of course, I had no knowledge of the carbon content of the nail I used for the leading rods, only that it was very, very soft. And even so, I wanted to make it as hard as I possibly can.

Therefore for the hardening, I did not go for simple heat-quench. I went for carbonitriding, which is the hardest I can make a steel surface in home-setting. For this, I took the whole thing apart again and I put the two flat-pieces and two rods into a steel tube together with a mixture that would, when heated, enrich the surface with both carbon and nitrogen.

Commercially this is usually done with various cyanide salts, but not only do I not have those. I don’t even want to have them. I have the training to handle cyanide properly, bot I do not have the means and the desire to do so. Luckily many ordinary things will do the same – leather scraps, bone and hoof dust, hide glue, soy flour etc. Anything organic that contains a mixture of carbon and nitrogen compounds. But I have not used any such improvised mixtures, I went for a 1:1 mixture of urea and dehydrated sodium carbonate. These two chemicals react together to produce sodium cyanate when heated. Despite the very similar name, this chemical is not nearly as toxic as sodium cyanide – its LD50 is about half of that of kitchen salt. And it works for carbonitriding.

I compacted the salt mix around the parts as well as I can.

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Next, I put a cap from an old pea-can on it – it need not be air-tight – put it in the forge and the whole assembly went into the fireplace, because the first circa 20 minutes it produces rather noxious smoke that I am not too keen on inhaling.

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It sat there for two hours with the burner on the lower setting. Temperature between 600-800 °C is enough for this and after two hours I should have a hardened layer of at least 0.2 mm.

When the time was up, I took the container out of the forge, took the lid off and dipped its contents into a bucket of cold water. A slight explosion took me a bit by surprise – either not all salt has evaporated yet or a piece of glowing hot fireclay dropped out of the forge (my forge, unfortunately, died in the process, the inner lining has finally disintegrated completely), but it was just a little bang and nothing dangerous.

All the pieces were successfully hardened, although one flat piece developed a very slight bend – a few tenths of an mm. But I could still assemble everything together, so I did that. I tightened the screws and tempered the whole thing for two half-hour cycles in boiling water – I wanted to relieve some of the stress so it is not as brittle as glass, but I also want it to retain as much hardness as possible.

A few passes with scotch-brite wheel cleaned all the crud off and buffing with abrasive pastes polished the scratches enough for a bit of protection against pitting corrosion.

And that is it, I now have a file guide. Despite my lax attitude to precision, it does not wobble but it opens/closes easily, the surfaces are hard enough for ordinary files not scratching them and it is from recycled materials, which is my favorite kind of material to use for such thing.

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New Forge Build – Watching the Cement Dry

As a mold for the inner chamber, I have used a piece of a paper tube of slightly bigger diameter than is my goal and a bottom made of plywood with supports that could hold the forge on its side like an impromptu bucket. I have covered the plywood and the tube with a plastic paper bag to make it waterproof. For the inlet-outlet channels, I have inserted into the orifices plastic tubes at an angle. Both tubes are at an identical angle, slightly inward and off-center. The idea is to create a rotating vortex of hot air in the forge since in the previous one I got the best results when I have managed to achieve this. Both channels should be approximately the same.

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

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

After that, I have mixed ordinary fireclay with pearlite at a ration 1:3 to the consistency of dry cement and stuffed the whole structure almost full, with only about 5-10 mm gap at the top (at the bottom the gap is taken care of by the thickness of the plywood. I think I have used too little binder (water glass) – I have used the amount recommended for the fireclay and I forgot that the dry pearlite will suck out most of it – so the result is not very strong and it is a bit crumbly. But I hope it won’t be a problem since it is not a load-bearing structure and I will make 5-10 mm hard coating on top after it dries. It did not crumble when I have carefully taken out the tubes and the plywood bottom after three days.

Now it will take its time to completely dry. Today it is over a week and still, it is very wet. I have added a fan to blow air through it to aid the process a bit, but even so, I suspect it will take at least a month to dry properly. Luckily I have twelve knife blades hardened and in work now, so I won’t need the forge for some time. Plus soon there will be more than enough work in the garden to keep me occupied for weeks.

So, in the meantime, we all can watch cement dry.

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Making Vice Jaws

I could not work on anything else much today. Outside it is still very windy and the workshop concrete floor was freezing cold even with the fire roaring in the stove. So I could not be there for more than two hours at a time and then I had to go inside to warm my feet for about the same. But I have managed to do something useful – three sets of jaws for my bench vice.

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

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

On the left aluminium, then beech wood and then spruce wood covered with an old carpet. I needed these for a long time and I had to do with impromptu padding the jaws of the vice with slabs of these three materials several times on each project. And impromptu padding leads to time loss each time you use it, not to mention the cussing. For a hobbyist making one – two knives per year it is not a big problem, but now…

The dark spots on the backside covered with masking tape are where a strong 6×3 mm neodymium magnets are hidden – they collect the magnetic dust in the shop very quickly. Thus the masking tape. I had eight these magnets for a long time and I had no use for them, so I have used them for this.

And the jaws work very well. The grooves on the alluminium ones might be a bit too shallow for stock thicker than 10 mm, but I am not going to do anything about them just yet, they do seem to work just fine as they are and I will probably need to hold even 3-4 mm stock in them more often than something bigger, so they cannot be too much deeper than they are.

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Working with aluminium is a bugger. Whenever I have an urge to file, cut or drill aluminium, I usually sit down quietly in the corner and wait until it passes. But sometimes there is no way around it.

Did I already mention that working aluminium is a bugger? It is worth repeating. It is soft but relatively strong in tension. It is an extremely good heat conductor. And it is also extremely prone to galling and cold-welding. The end result is that it blunts and overheats saws and drillbits and clogs-up files and abrasives.

A few years ago I got a useful tip from a machinist at my former workplace. I complained about how filing and cutting aluminium by hand is more difficult than steel because of the clogging of the tool teeth. I told him that I tried using powdered chalk to coat the file and clean it with a brass brush – a tip from another machinist – to prevent this, but it did not seem to work very well. And this machinist told me “wet your file with alcohol to keep it cool”.  And it does indeed help a lot. I still need to keep a brass brush at hand to clean the file from time to time, but the alcohol does prevent the shavings from sticking to it very strongly. And unlike oil, it dries off and does not make a mess, so I use it for drilling aluminium too.

Even so, it is worth repeating. Working aluminium is a bugger.

 

Bonsai for Beginners – Part 3 – Basics of Tree Physiology

Previous part.

Of those many books that I have read about the art of growing bonsai trees, only one goes sufficiently in-depth about this issue. Unfortunately, that one book is probably only available in Czech. I will not go too much into depth here, just the basics for your own research should you wish it.

The distinction between a tree and a bush/shrub is not clear-cut, but there are properties that some plants have that make them definitively shrubs – like roses – or definitively trees – like spruces. A rose, no matter how big and old will be unruly and bushy. Spruce, no matter how small, will be a tree, with a definitive main stem.

The most important factor in this is the absence or presence (and strength) of so-called apical dominance. In plants with strong apical dominance, the main stem produces hormones that regulate and/or inhibit the growth of secondary branches. That is the reason why spruces almost invariably have one upright stem with comparatively thin branches – they have very strong apical dominance like most conifers do. Roses, on the other hand, do not have apical dominance worth speaking of. They continuously sprout new twigs from the base of the stem near the roots. Common hazel is somewhere in between – at the start it has strong apical dominance, but the bigger the main stem gets the smaller inhibiting influence it has, it slows its growth and inevitably suckers start to sprout from the base even when the main stem is perfectly healthy and strong.

Apical dominance applies to roots too. Some plants tend to grow long, thing, non-branching roots, some have bushy ones.

It also changes during each season – in many plants with leaves the hormones are produced by the leaves, thus the more leaves there are on the branch/stem, the more it inhibits those below it. That can be used to your advantage for certain species – more on that when talking about them.

For a beginner, plants with strong apical dominance should be avoided, especially fast-growing ones. Many such plants when cut do not branch out but simply the bud nearest to the cut continues as the main stem. Some might even die. Best are plants with some apical dominance, but not a very strong one. But also not so weak as to tend to sprout suckers each season.

That, unfortunately, means that for a beginner or a small-scale grower, the most iconic of all bonsai trees – pines – are not suitable, as well as most of the coniferous trees overall. They are the most difficult to manage and to form, and some of them are downright snowflakes. Best suited are leafy plants, with moderate growth rate.

I will go into more detail when talking about specific species in due course.

New Forge Build – Start

The lining inside my portable mini forge is starting to fall apart, and instead of repairing it I have decided to build a completely new one. I have observed a few problems with the old one, how to achieve the best circulation of the hot gasses etc, and I think I can do a better job at it now than I did then.

I started with a rummage around my junk-pile. I thought about the hows and whats and I selected a few pieces of steel v-profile, a few treaded rods with matching nuts & washers and a long piece of stainless chimney duct. Then I made a sketch (sorry for the grime, it occurred to me to make the pictures only after  I have done all the work).

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

It is slightly bigger than the previous one, but it should still be easily portable. And the fireclay bricks fixed at the front and back will save me some time preparing for my work. I hope. I see no reason why it should not work as expected, but proof of the pudding is always in the eating. In my previous job, I have always reminded engineers that reality, not their expectations, is the ultimate arbiter of what works and how.

After I was done with the sketch, I started to make a list of parts. I have decided to not weld it together, but to use screws. Partly because my welding sucks big time, partly because the fireclay bricks are all miss-shapen and of different sizes and I wanted to have a bit of room to play and partly I reasoned that if it all goes south, I will be able to disassemble it easier. This has meant however that I had to ad a lot of nuts, screws, and washers and that has proved to be a bit of a problem. A lot of the M8 nuts and screws in my junkpile were rusty beyond rescue and I had trouble getting all I need.

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However, I have managed to get everything I need without having to go shopping. I cut the steel profiles to size, wire-brushed them, drilled holes, then filed some of the holes to an oval shape in order to be able to adjust the size of the holders for fireclay bricks and I assembled it to try it out. It seemed to work alright, so today I disassembled it all again. Then I degreased every profile thoroughly with acetone and I spray-painted them with silver stove paint (not the duct, since that is already stainless and the paint would probably not hold on it anyway). When the paint dried, I could finally assemble the whole thing together.

Here it is.

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Today I have made the mold for the inside – the actual chamber and the in- and outlet. This time with my old trusty method “just wing it, mate”. Tomorrow I hope to fill it with refractory cement.

I will post about how that went.

A Knife for my Brother

I did not manage to finish a knife for my brother’s 50 birthday last year, for I nearly hacked off my finger with a hatchet. So I am rectifying the issue this year.

This is the blade that was hardened when I was working on the rondel dagger. It is not a perfect blade, aesthetic-vise. I messed up the polish a few times and I had to eventually stop trying to correct it otherwise the knife would turn into a small razor. It is a good universal kitchen knife, very good cutter, I am just not happy with the surface finish. But it is either this or nothing and this year I want to give my brother a knife I know he wants. He is going to appreciate it even with the flaws.

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I tried to make up for the flaws with the handle, so I have used a piece of partially rotten lilac branch that I have harvested last fall. It is just stunningly beautiful wood and this is probably the prettiest knife handle I have made so far. The wood is rock-hard with tiny pores (lilac is one of those woods that can take 1000 grit polish without dirtying) and would probably hold up well even without the boat lacquer coating. But it was partially rotten, so the outlying regions were not only discolored, but also softer, so I soaked it in boat lacquer to stabilize it. With the coating, it should be near indestructible.

The lilac-colored heartwood will probably age into dark brown over the years, but it might take a really long time since the branch was already several years dead when I cut it off.

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

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

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

How to Make a Soft Buffing Brush Wheel

    1. Materials: Threaded rod or long screw, two matching nuts and at least two washers. The bigger the washers the better, to spread the load more evenly over a broader area. Further, you will need some sturdy paper and very sharp scissors or a razor. And the final ingredient is a lot of soft, thin string, at best some sort of linen or cotton.

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

    2. Cut several (in my case it was 24) identical semi-circles out of the sturdy paper, with the radius of the desired buffing wheel.

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

    3. Divide the semicircles into pairs and wrap each pair evenly with the thread so that approximately 60% of the paper is covered. It is good to wrap each pair in approximately the same amount of turns.

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

    4. Prepare one nut and one washer on the rod a few cms from the end.
    5. Pull string between the paper of one of the semicircles and tie it around the threaded rod as close to the washer as possible. You probably won’t be able to tighten it properly yet, but it is good to have it at least somewhat secured.

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    6. Cut the string at the outer rim of the semicircles, remove the paper and tighten the thread around the metal rod properly. Twist carefully the threaded rod to pull the whole thing close to the washer.

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    7. Repeat steps 5-6 for the rest, try to space the thread tassels around the rod as evenly as possible.
    8. Cap it with the second washer and nut and tighten the nuts. Be careful not to over-tighten them, it might shear the threads.
    9. Trim any threads exceeding the radius.
    10. Enjoy your soft buffing brush wheel.

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

I did not actually need to do this, but I had some rubbish thread that I have no better use for, I cannot spend too much time in my workshop yet for I would either freeze or burn through more wood than I can afford, and this was a fun way to spend an hour. It works a treat for buffing up lacquered or oiled handles, I will probably make several more to use with various grades of buffing compounds, but I need to buy or make the big washers, since I only had these two.