Sciencing Sharpness – Part 4 – Failing to Improve the Measurements

My mother was ordering some things from an online drugstore and I jokingly said if she could order me a nylon thread too. And surprisingly, the shop did carry a 0.25 mm nylon thread. It arrived today. I have immediately run an experiment to evaluate if it delivers better results than my old, PVA glue-impregnated thread. And sadly, it does not.

I made 25 measurements with both threads with a razor and then with the testing knife sharpened at 10°. And the results are interesting, but not good.

The nylon thread performed statistically significantly better for the razor – the values were less spread out. But when it came to the knife they were both about the same, with no statistical significance whatsoever. And there were outliers in both sets. A disappointment, really. A lower spread would allow me in the future to get useful results with fewer measurements per each test, this way I am somewhat stuck with making at least ten measurements.

At least all four sets had normal distribution which means that averaging multiple measurements should give precise-ish results.

I think that the biggest problem is the scale’s lack of a Hold function and the frequency at which it renews the display. Well, it is still useful and the thread did not cost too much. And it is easier to span.

Women Crafter on Youtube – Knitter – Engineering Knits

My mother used to knit and we still have two straight knitting machines of a solid metal build. I did learn how to knit as a child but I already forgot it all and it is unlikely that I will ever need it. My mother-made sweaters have served me well for years by now and I expect them to continue to serve well for enough years to not need a replacement.

She has also knitted several pairs of thick socks that come in handy on winter travels when I need to sleep in some poorly heated room. Or when the winter is so cold that despite heating, sitting at the PC gives me cold feet. But we do not have a circular knitting machine, all the socks she has made had to be made by hand. Thus I have enjoyed watching a circular knitting machine in action because that was the first time I saw it.

Pity the machine seems to be made of cheap 3D printed plastic. It won’t have the durability that my mother’s knitting machines have – those are still fully functional after decades of intensive use.

If you are interested in knitting and its history, Engineering Knits has a lot of videos on that topic.

Jewellery meets Art: Hokusai’s Great Wave off Kanagawa

Hokusai’s Great Wave off Kanagawa is one of my all times favourite pictures. The churning water, the two tiny boats struggling in the waves, Mount Fuji in the background, almost an afterthought.

IHokusai's famous print showing a wave crashing down on two boats.

Source: Wikimedia

Also, it is blue. In short, a perfect image to use for trying an image transfer on polymer clay. If you have a laser printer, image transfers are pretty straight forward: print, put upside down on clay, add nail polish remover to the back, wait. Trying this with my cheap toner wasn’t very satisfactory, though. The printouts are always rather pale, and since only part of the toner transfers, the result on clay was visible, but not brilliant. I dared to add two tiny versions of the image to a bunch of things I had to print at work anyway and tried again, this time with high quality print outs. The results were much better, but still not as brilliant as I would have liked. But since I never found a crafting problem I didn’t want to beat into submission, I decided to use the first weak transfer clay and paint in the details with acrylic paint, and while I’m not usually good at painting, I’m quite happy with the results:

Round earrings showingt the crashing wave

Yes, of course I forgot to mirror the image. Both times. But I love how this has a look like ceramics now.

And here’s the version made from the quality printout:

Round earrings showing the central wave in great detail but mute colours

You can see that it’s lacking contrast and brilliance, even though it is rich in detail. I’m thinking about using the transfer plus acylics method with other paintings as well, I think van Gogh would be a good candidate for these projects.

Project Phoenix – Part 5 – The Tail Finished

Here you can see most of the tail with most feathers finished.

The tail is completely finished now. Each feather, whether big or small, took me over two hours to make, so with all the prep work, etc. about twenty hours for the whole tail. The reason why small feathers took nearly as much time as the big ones is that what I wrote previously – the narrow long straight-ish part starts with eight bobbins but the ends are 16 bobbins of different colors so it is not exactly easy to keep track of them.

I started doing the wings too, but I had to stop the works for a few days again because I am depressed as hell and it is difficult enough to get out of bed and heat the house, let alone do something on top of that. I started the wings in red, did not like it, and had to undo it. So here is a picture of undoing the lace. It is the same as doing it, except going in the opposite direction.

I did not like the red color directly near the red body and I also did not like the weave being so tight. I have used a very tight weave on the head and neck, but I won’t be using it on the wings because I think the wings will look better with the thread pattern being more obvious. If I won’t like the result, I will have to undo it again.

Jewelry: Tales of the Raksura

The author Martha Wells has risen to fame during the last years for her Murderbot novels, but actually I discovered her long before when stumbling upon the Books of the Raksura, which have the richest worldbuilding I ever saw. It never feels like The Other Mother’s house in Coraline, just enough for a superficial layer, but you always get the impression that you could go deeper and deeper and find more.

For those of you who have not read the books (mild spoilers ahead), the Raksura are dragonish shapeshifters that live in courts, ruled by the reigning Queen, who has one or more male consorts. The books revolve around Moon, a very unusual consort and the adventures of him and his court. The courts are always named after a queen and a consort, often the founding couple of a court.

I’ve always admired fan art, but I’m useless with a pen, so I decided to put my other talents to use and make some earrings. Malicious rumours claim that I have a pair for every day of the year, but those are absolutely not true. I counted them and I will have to repeat them after June 20th. Though, seriously, if any of you fancies a pair, just let me know. Unless it’s my favourite pair, I’m happy to send it to you, since polymer clay always yields several pairs for one design. Anyway, let’s get started.

First, Indigo Cloud, the primary court in the novels

I did a classic swirl here to get the idea of clouds in a blue summer sky. Look at that blue… [Read more…]

Project Phoenix – Part 4 – The Tail

Originally, I intended to make the wings first but all those bobbins prepared for the tail feathers would be in the way so I am making the tail feathers first. Each feather starts with 8 bobbins – 4 golden for the edges, 2 red for the central line, and 2 very light yellow for the weave.

Towards the end broad section of the feather I ad 2 red, 2 yellow, and 4 orange bobbins. I had to use different knotting techniques for that part to get the pattern right.

I was a bit worried that I won’t know how to make the lace since it is two years since the last time I did it. My mother told me that it will come to me instantly and indeed it did and I seem to be a bit better at it than I was last time although that is not saying much. But I am using more advanced techniques for these feathers than I have used so far.

I finished two tail feathers today and they took me about 6 hours. I had to take a long pause after every two hours of work because my shoulders hurt something awful and my trapezoid muscle was stiff and on the verge of cramping. At this rate, it should take me approx three more days to finish the whole tail. I do hope that I have enough of the various colors, it is quite difficult to gauge upfront.

Project Phoenix – Part 3 – Beginning the Work

I printed the outline on two A4 sheets, glued it onto a thicker paper and pinned it onto the lace pillow (I think that’s how its called in Eenglush).

I started with the head and immediately made a mistake despite checking the sketch several times before starting. The head was supposed to be orange, not red. But it is red now, I am not starting all over – I only noticed the mistake today when the neck and body are finished too.

The body was fairly difficult to make. This is the first time that I have incorporated a golden thread – on the outlines of each segment. I think the golden sparkle should work perfectly with a firebird. However the golden thread is a bit fiddly – it is rougher than normal thread and more brittle, thus it is prone to breaking and difficult to pull through a hole with a crochet hook when attaching new bobbins to existing structures.

I will show you the progress next time too. I got a small commission to sharpen about twenty knives so I have spent two days in the Worskhop sharpening and today I have been mostly resting and thinking about how to make the tail feathers. I have made the torso with eight pairs of red-thread bobbins. That way when I transitioned over to the triangular-ish tail segment, I put aside two bobbins whenever I reached the base of a tail feather and I only added one more red pair at the end (there are 9 tail feathers). I want to make the tail feathers from several colors with red lines running through the center. There are several ways to do this and I am mulling over which one to use.

This Year’s Gingerbreads

I almost forgot to publish my mother’s creations for this Christmas season.

Project Phoenix – Part 2 – Outline

Slowly (veeery slooowly) I have managed to draw the outlines in Photoshop, clean them up a bit, and arrive at something that I think is doable as a bobbin lace. I would probably mark even the positions for at least some pins in a symmetrical design, but since this design is not symmetrical anywhere, I won’t bother. My mother actually never marks the pin positions.

Now I will print it on two A4 sheets, and glue it onto thicker paper. However, I still need to do some work in Photoshop – to sketch some color schemes. For that I will also need to look into my thread drawer so I do not run out of some important color halfway through the work.

Project Phoenix – Part 1 – Beginning

It s fucking freezing outside and barely any daylight. When trying to work in the workshop, I spend more time heating it to a manageable temperature than actually working. And I am starting to feel mightily depressed.

So I am starting a new project to keep me somewhat occupied when indoors. I want to make a bobbin lace picture of a phoenix. It will probably progress very slowly and I will make short posts about the whole process. Today the very beginning – a rough sketch.

My mother would iterate and refine this sketch on paper until she would get one she is satisfied with and that one she would trace on thicker paper. I am going about the business a bit differently – I will now refine the outines in photoshop. We shall see what comes out of it (if).

An Experimentental Knife Set

A friend gave me in the spring some cherry wood from a tree that died and dried standing up in their garden. That means the wood has many cracks, some fungus damage, and discolorations. And she asked for a kitchen knife for herself as her primary cooking knife. The type of blade that she requested would be more of a fish-gutting knife for me, but she has her own cutting style and I am not a knife snob to sneer at someone’s cutting technique. If one is not cutting their fingers off, the main thing is that they get the ingredients down to size and to each their own I say.

I got to work but I got distracted several times. Firstly, when I was cutting the steel, I got a small offcut that just lent itself to be made into a small peeling knife matching the one ordered. Secondly, when I was selecting the wood for the handles, I found one piece that was big enough for both handles and a bloc. And thirdly, when I was pondering making legs for the bloc I got an idea to try to make a foldable leg, so I tested it. Having a lot of problems to deal with makes me extremely prone to such distractions. It is a bad habit.

The knives have very simple rectangular handles that are nevertheless comfortable to hold. The blades are N690 steel, without ricasso, tumbled. The numbering on the smaller knife is a bit unreadable, but such is life. Bolsters and end caps are from buffalo horn. I made them thin because she expressed a wish for the wood to be the dominant design feature.

The wood grain and cracks in the handles match that in the bloc. This is exactly why I have used this particular piece of wood, it had just the right size for this. The wood has fairly small pores and is not overly decomposed so trying to infuse it with resin would be an exercise in futility, thus I only coated it with three layers of resin, sanded it with 800 grit, and then I buffed it with home-made silica-based buffing compound.

The foldable leg is bent from an old knitting needle. The holes in the sides of the bloc are offset so the leg has two stable-ish positions. It is just a gimmick that won’t probably see much use but it would make packing the knives for travel easier if one were inclined or in need of to take their cooking knives with them on travels. But mainly I wanted to try to make it.

If she accepts these, I will actually only charge for the bigger knife since that is all that was agreed upon. The small knife and the bloc she will get together with her husband as a belated wedding gift.

Another Overabladeance

I was spending way too little time actually making knives this year since I spend two-three days a week carting my parents to and from various doctor appointments. And when finishing this batch, my new tumbling receptacles did not work with this particular type of blades and I had to modify them significantly. However, I do have now thirteen finished blades, eleven tumbled from N690, and two from spring steel, mirror-polished with hamon.

Four kitchen knife sets three three-piece and one two-piece. You might notice that this time I went for blades without ricasso. The reasons are several but the main one is that such blades are significantly easier to make. Really significantly easier. They turned out well and I must say there is something satisfying about getting two chef-knife blades so flat that they stick together when wet. They are probably flat to within a few hundredths of a mm.

The two-piece set in the lower left corner is actually a half-commission. A friend of mine has ordered the bigger blade and I have decided to make the smaller one from an offcut to accompany it. I will also make a bloc as a belated wedding gift. To be fair, I could not give them a proper wedding gift on time since they kept the wedding secret, so it is not that I was inconsiderate, just ignorant.

From now on, I will for several months only dress blades. I still did not finish all of last year’s Overabladeance. The two Puuko I made still have no sheaths. I only started to make these blades because of the commissioned machete in the summer and the commissioned kitchen knife from my friend – I needed a sufficient amount of blades to fill the tumbler and not waste the forge heat. For both things, ten blades is a minimum. So actually I might make some blades again – if I get a commission.

A Commision With a Point

I hope the customer will accept this, I am not completely happy with the result. An acquaintance of mine has given me some deer antlers for crafting and she also commissioned a knife made out of one of them. The antlers are from her father, who is a gamekeeper and she wants to have something to remember him by. She requested a small letter opener with a stand that can also work as a paperweight. Lenticular grind and not fully sharpened edges. Oak wood for the stand because her office has oaken furniture.

From the manufacturing point of view, there were not very many interesting things – I ground and polished the blade and blackened it with oak bark, then I fixed it to half of the antler with the burr at the pommel end. Because the antler is old, scratched, and irregular – as antlers are – I have hammered the pakfong pommel into an irregular shape. I also hammered the bolster and I only wire-brushed and polished them over the hammer marks. A bit interesting was the making of the stand.

To weigh it down, I chiseled holes in the bigger piece of wood before gluing it together and I poured molten solder into it.

I learned this technique from my maternal grandfather. I have never met him – he died long before my parents even met – but he made for my grandmother a top for winding the thread on bobbins and the top has been weighed this way on its circumference. Molten solder cools in wood quite quickly and it does not char the wood on the edges all that much, especially if it is hard and dense wood. I was itching to try this out for years.

The pakfong throat on the stand for the blade was a bit difficult to make and there I had to use a creative solution to make it hopefully solid enough so it does not become undone in a breeze. I did not want to rely only on epoxy, so I soldered two pieces of copper wire onto the pakfong piece, and I glued those into tight-fitting holes. This way it should hopefully withstand even some mild abuse like falling on the ground.

The full finished set weighs about 860 g, I have possibly overdone the weighing a bit. The stand is slightly decorated with pokerwork and the underside is covered with brown natural felt so it does not click when put on a table. The finish is tung oil and beeswax, which are more pleasant to the touch than lacquer or epoxy.

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Sciencing Sharpness – Part 4 – Failing to Improve the Measurements

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Women Crafter on Youtube – Knitter – Engineering Knits

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Jewellery meets Art: Hokusai’s Great Wave off Kanagawa

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Project Phoenix – Part 5 – The Tail Finished

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Jewelry: Tales of the Raksura

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Project Phoenix – Part 4 – The Tail

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Project Phoenix – Part 3 – Beginning the Work

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This Year’s Gingerbreads

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Project Phoenix – Part 2 – Outline

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Project Phoenix – Part 1 – Beginning

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An Experimentental Knife Set

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Another Overabladeance

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A Commision With a Point

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