My First Movie!

     Well, I guess movie is too broad of a term but this was pretty cool.  I've started to work on the semicircular piece that I plan on carving and putting above the range in the kitchen.  Since my carving skills are just developing the best wood to use for it is Basswood.  It is pretty even grained so carves quite easily.  Since I had some in the shop that I use for picture frames decided it was best to laminate some pieces together to form the blank.  As I started to plane the edges, the shavings were so cool looking as they exited the plane I called Diane out to see them.  If you've never checked out her website click on this link and see how she's been using various media to showcase her talents.

     To get to the point, I wondered if she could do a video clip and here's what she did:

     Kind of look like the creature from the Blue Lagoon at the end of the plane strokes as I peer at the camera in my safety glasses!  She showed me how to edit it and slow it down towards the end of the stroke so you can really see that shaving curling out of the plane -- see why hand work excites me?

     There's a few ways to check your planing for squareness.  In a previous entry you saw how you can stack the boards together and use a straight edge on the sides to make sure they're parallel and will glue up squarely.  Another quick way is to use your plane as a guide:

     You can also use a straight edge for this but since you have the plane in your hand anyway this makes for a quick, interim way to check your progress.

     The other way the edge needs to be checked is that it's 90 degrees to the face:

     I carry this small machinists square in my pocket for just this use.  I still feel the best way is to stack your boards together to double check how they will glue up together.  If you have a table saw you can also set the board on edge, then hold the try-square on the saw to check it.  What ever works for you is the way to go!

     This morning, after the blank stayed glued and clamped over night, the arch was cut out with the bandsaw.  To smooth out the cut, once again a hand tool came into play.  Check out what a spokeshave can accomplish on end grain of wood, I just had to try to capture that for the blog.     See the transition from the spokeshaved edge to the band sawn edge at the bottom?  Beautiful, so much nicer to my eye than an abraded and sanded edge.  Laying on the spokeshave is a shaving from the cut and you can see the smoother part at the top as the cut was made to the bottom part that was only band sawn.  Now comes the design process, thankfully Diane has a better eye for that and, after all, she has been giving me drawing lessons!