03
Mar 19

Chop, chop, swear, pare, swear more, stamp, stamp…

The title is annoyingly descriptive of the process, but on we go. Unwrapped the boards, and discovered silicone will stick to CA glue and oak…

Chopped the last line of the outline with a third gouge (this one was in-canel, so I chipped out waaaaay too many pieces on the back of the box before getting to grips with it).

It looks a bit confused because you have a few lines crossing but those areas are going away so that’s okay. Now out with a shallow gouge to remove the backdrop and I know it’s what Follansbee’s tutorials say is the right tool but it was next to useless for this design for me. I don’t know if it was because the design is small compared to his norm and it’d be better on a larger pattern, but I stopped using it almost immediately and resorted to two smaller gouges with tighter sweeps. I think I need to start stalking ebay for gouges and V-tools again, this shouldn’t be this hard.

Chip, chip chip. The surface keeps chipping with even the slightest slip. I get the feeling this is down to material as well – Follansbee rives out green oak and lets it dry for only a week or four; I’m using flatsawn kiln-dried oak.

One of these days, when I have a bigger shed and a way to handle forty pounds of wood shavings, I’ll find a source for oak logs and then we’ll see how badly I can muck this up…

I thought taking down the background would be the simple part of this, and that the V-tool and outline would be far harder. Not that I got either of those right, but they were a lot less work. Three hours, I got the front and back boards done, but not the sides. I figured I’d do those on Sunday and I dug out the punches for stippling the background because that should be simple enough…

And actually, this part wasn’t too bad. Before I do the stippling for the other sides I want to refile the teeth on the end of the punches though, they’re getting a little dull (not from this, they’re just old).

It does make a difference. The chipping and the colour (which isn’t great, the oak looks kinda grubby, I think it’s picking up sweat from my hands, and I need to clean that up at the end) did give me a neat idea for something to do with this and I might carve another scrap piece of oak to test that idea out, more on that later.

The idea was to finish all this up on Sunday, after doing the weekly shopping run, but Freya had other ideas…


Yeah, nope. I’ll get to it later…


03
Mar 18

Excavation

Very calm and quiet last night thanks to the snow (and funky lighting too from streetlights reflecting off the snowclouds)

Terribly pretty but that’s all due to thaw and melt in the next day or four and the stuff that’s right up against the shed door will melt and then run down the door, find nowhere to go because of the snow and may wind up flowing over the lip and into the shed (and they didn’t leave a corner uncut when making the shed – they never treated the floorboards for water, so that’d lead to trouble even if it didn’t destroy stuff sitting on the floor in there).
So this morning….

Right. Shouldn’t be too bad…

Jaysus. Okay, that sucked. I remember this from when I used to grow vegetables thirty years ago – every spring, you dig up the garden and it’s the only time you use the shovel a lot in the year so your muscles never get used to it. Ow. But!

All clear. About 18″ of snow at the deepest point up against the wall (maybe three feet over in the corner on the far right out of frame). And no water damage inside, happily.

Even the robin’s looking happier now.

2.2C in the shed today. Might give it another day or so before going back out there again. Cold fingers and edged tools are a bad mix… plus I need to leave the kitchen door open for the power to the shed, and that’s divorce territory you’re talking in this weather.


02
Mar 18

Getting deeper…

Drifting up to about three feet or so deep in the back yard at the moment. I think perhaps any shed time is getting deferred to when it wouldn’t be a slow form of suicide by exposure.

That said, off for a walk now. Just going out, might be some time…