On Mon, 12 Jan 2009 22:57:10 -0600, wrote
(in message
):

Hey Tom... if you are still out there...

oh, yeah... I'm here... lots of lurking

Liked you pics! Looks like you are doing a lot of different projects
- a man after my own heart. I was really impressed with three things,
in no particular order.

The shop-built molding cutter. Wow. That my friend is taking the
project pretty damn serious. No one I know would do that, and I do
this stuff for a living!

well, this is a kind of tool I have made and used before, but never this
wide. It turns out that a cutter nearly 3 inches wide takes a lot of weight
on top of it, to keep it cutting right. I will have to also re-make the
cutter itself, as I used mild steel (only thing I had at the time) instead of
some nice carbon tool steel. Sharpness issues. The varying degrees of
hardness in the wood grain resulted in a wavy surface. (see weight and
sharpness issues) I will try again, a little later.

Like the butter mold. I haven't ever seen one, but I like all the
features including the carvings, etc., that would give the butter
relief when cooled.

yeah. It is a traditional Scandinavian thing, and the molds can come in lots
of sizes, from single pat stamps, to about a pound of butter or more. The
butter looks pretty nice on a big smorgasbord table.

I thought the round boxes were pretty neat, too. I like the design,
but I have to say, when I saw them all I could think was dice cups.
At 3" in diameter, how perfect could they be? I liked the profiles -
I am tired looking at the plain, straight edged stuff.

my design sense is kinda stuck about a century behind times. A wooden dice
cup w2ould be awfully noisy, though. Dice cups sometimes get slammed down on
the bar pretty hard, too. More noise plus denting the bar top and maybe
busting the cup. Leather is best. I can do those, too.

A question though on the boxes. When I enlarged the the pics, it
looked like there was a white substance in the pores of the walnut.
Was that lighting? Was there something in there from finishing or
polishing?

yeah, I see it too. I think it is wax. I do not yet use a powered buffing
wheel, and that is one of my next things to get. This wood is really porous,
and not something I have been accustomed to working with. I generally work
with birch or pine or maple from the local forest.

I like the fact that your work is practical as well as quite nice to
look at. While I appreciate the effort from the woodturning
community, I am tired of looking at pieces of wood "art". I like
things that serve a purpose.

I do not have the skill or the muse to create art, so my thing is to try to
make something that is useful in some way. If a thing can be useful, it will
have appeal to the folks I hang out with. The design elements or themes I use
are my interpretations of what is familiar and pleasing to me.

Thank you for your commentary and your compliments. I appreciate both.

Thanks for the post.

You're welcome. I enjoy show and tell. More will be posted as the stuff is
made.

Robert

tom koehler





--
I will find a way or make one.