294 days ago
by HalDougherty |
11 comments »
This weekend, I spent my time bringing home some walnut and maple logs. The limbs don’t make good lumber, even if they are big enough to make a saw log. Limbs are reaction wood and when you remove the weight from them they move, sometimes a lot! Saw a horizontal limb into lumber and you can make some nice pretzels and you won’t have to do anything… Just saw ‘em and watch ‘em curl. Same deal with leaner logs. I use some of the limbs to make bowls, rolling pins and...
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296 days ago
by HalDougherty |
13 comments »
I’ve spent the entire day cutting trees into logs and bringing them home… They aren’t lumber yet and all of them are not here yet, but it won’t be long now. Here’s a couple of shots of the maple. It’s a little over 30’ long and the big end is 36”. It’s been down a year and it’s spalded, but not punky. I cut into it to see what it’s going to look like after it’s sawn. It’s also tiger striped through and through. I...
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330 days ago
by Todd A. Clippinger |
19 comments »
De’ja’ vu
Last year I built a Shaker Bench for one of our favorite local charities. I was not going to make the deadline and Brian Havens flew out at a moment’s notice to help me build & deliver the bench just in time to be fashionably late rather than just late. (See blog entry here at LJ.)
This year I started my project a couple of weeks early but things did not go as smoothly as I would have liked on the project nor my schedule. As a professional contractor my s...
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398 days ago
by Brett |
0 comments »
Here are some images of the neck with the clamps removed. The fingerboard is glued on with some titebond II. One thing that I didn’t do that was on the example on the website that I am following is a spar in the neck. The 2024 aluminum that I found was $50 for a 3’ piece. Too much for me. So I left that piece out and we will see what becomes of it. If there is a noticable problem for me, I can always make another neck or just make a 2nd version of the banjo with the necessa...
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398 days ago
by Brett |
3 comments »
After building my gas can guitar, I thought that I would build a canjo, or “banjo out of a gas can”. Basically, the guitar with a 5th string. After doing some research, (web surfing), I ran across this plan for making a “real” banjo.
Here is my weekend progress on the neck of the banjo. It is made from three pieces of madrone laminated together with black walnut for the finger board, and quarter sawn sycamore for the peg head. I will use either ebony or a bone ...
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415 days ago
by Metrotek |
7 comments »
This is the machine I used to build, ‘Toy Crane’; they’re phenomenal machines. I cut circles and everything else on it. It was the first time I ever used one; in fact ever saw one. That veneer is hard to work without machines made for maching it that have small advance scoring saws; it tears right off of the core. It’s best to score it with a utility knife and use masking tape to prevent tear out.The patterns were covered with a perimeter of elastomer and an ejector created a partia...
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736 days ago
by Paul Sellers |
10 comments »
Oak leaves have a unique and distinctive leaf shape
Oak trees grow on each of the five continents and cultures at every level have relied on the wood and acorn, the tannic acid and the bark throughout the millennia. Great ships with oak bows and rudders crisscrossed the globe.
Massive barns and manorial homes came from the stems and crooks of full-grown oaks in every county. It would be impossible to catalogue the provision we have from the ancestry of the common oak.
Oak works...
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767 days ago
by HalDougherty |
11 comments »
I picked up a great looking walnut log today. The widest place was over 29” at the crotch and it just fit my TimberKing 1220 sawmill. I had to cut the limbs slightly shorter so I could slice it into flitches.
I don’t have a bobcat or a backhoe to load logs… so, I had to wrestle them on the trailer. One item I did get to help load logs was a 3000 lb electric winch. Only one problem with it today. The battery was discharged! I had to use my back up plan. A manual w...
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769 days ago
by David Craig |
7 comments »
I haven’t had much time to devote to shop projects for a couple weeks. Work and life still a little too chaotic for the moment. I did, however, have a bit of good fortune with an unexpected gift of wood. I had a childhood friend contact me on facebook and let me know that he had some “branches” he had pruned off of his Black Walnut tree and I could have what I wanted. Not one to turn down free wood, I investigated and found the branches were 3 12-15 foot sections that were a...
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