End of Project Sharpening....

I had to get to it sometime. and I have been putting it off for several days, but tonight I finally resharpened all my chisels and put them away. You might not find this as a big deal, but, you see, I hate sharpening! Its time consuming and frustrating from time to time. I only damaged two chisels seriously this project, so regrinding the was not too bad. Most of the other chisels I just had to touch up. Someone on WCI asked me about my sharpening set up so I took a few pics of what I usually do. I use a belt sander for the sharpening part. Assuming the chisels does not have to be reground, I just lightly touch it up on the bevel side. Then I strop it on a piece of leather to remove the burr. Then a quick buff with the wheel mounted on the drill. Quick and easy. I use a piece of scrap wood to test out the sharpness after. Now all the chisels are polished, and ready for the next big thing in their wall mounted case. Hope everyone has a great Friday!

Wood Elf Finish Finished!

Well, over the past couple of days I have been slowly finishing the wood elf and now she is done! We are planning on taking some "good" pics of her hopefully tomorrow. So here is what I did: Three coats of Danish oil ( sanding between coats) then I used Minwax wax for the wonderful luster that only wax seems to be able to bring out. Now I will admit here that I got a little zealous and kinda put too much wax on. You see, I melted it and painted her so that the wax could penetrate all those little nooks and Crannies. Imagine my horror when it cooled, hardened and made her look like a giant candle! I immediately set to trying to remove the bulk of the wax and two days later...if got most of it off. The good news is that she should now be pretty waterproof! ( for a while anyway, until the wax wears off) Another nice thing is that she remains touchable! Wood is so much better if you can touch it and feel the wood instead of a polyurethane finish. I spent the remainder of the night sharpening the chisels. A couple needed some serious work. But most just needed a little honing on the buff wheel. I'm probably bad for waiting until the project is over to completely resharpen the chisels, but what a pain to constantly having to drop everything just to regrind a chisel. Well, they are all nice and sharp once more. Ready for the next project!

Wood Nymph day three.. I think

Ok, I'm not really sure how long I have been working on her. But she is finally taking shape. In fact, I was working on her well past midnight tonight. It's not too hard with a head lamp and a ton of Bug repellent. So this is how far I got this morning. I didn't take any pictures in the dark. Now I'm off to sharpen the chisels once again. SMALL NEWS FLASH! Sam Maloof died . If you don't know him, you probably have never read a wood working magazine or book. He's a legend! And there is rarely a monthly publication without his smiling face or a piece of his work. It's a sad day for wood working around the world.

An exercise using wood Chisels

Well, I would have liked to head back out to the wood nymph, but it has been raining all day today. I can only imagine what the spongy wood must be like when it is soaked. ( maybe it would carve better!) I didn't want to get wet and my chisels needed a little touching up. So I sharpened up several of the work horses and decided to test them out on a small piece of scrap pine. Nothing fancy, it's just that pine is rather soft, similar to the semi-rotted wood outside. I kept it simple: just a basic feather. I could have cleaned up some of the edges or set the background down a Little better, but it was just to test the sharpness of the chisels. As I was walking around the woods with the cat tonight, I realized the usefulness of Chisels as opposed to Power carving ( chainsaws, dremels, etc...) I could not get an extension cord back that far from the house. And chainsaws are just noisy and perhaps a little overkill on some of the finer detail. Well, It took me a while to carve that simple feather, but with power tools I could have carved it up a little faster. Granted, I'm more familiar with the dremel than the chisels, But I'm trying to change that a little bit at a time. Maybe next time, I'll carve an acantheus leaf.