three weeks later its time to write my weekly blog. Tried some stuff, made some things. some worked some didn’t. See you all next week.
What, you want more detail? oh all right:
After making the trivet for Mistress Lorelei, I decided to try and work on making some kitchen implements. I was planning on making a ladle, spatula, and fork combination . I was going to make each one from the same size of metal and work them the same way to make a set. I have been having problems with making spoons and they seem to stem from not having enough metal in the starting stock, so i began with a quite thick piece of steel.
Spatula:
working down such a large piece of steel to the handle was much more work then I thought it would be. I also was not able to get the head thin enough to have any flex. My wife says it needs to be longer as well.
Quick time out for one of the smallest snakes I have ever caught. Baby Ringneck Snake.
Not being happy with the way the spatula came out, I decided to back burner this project and work on something a little easier. I went back to the Mastermyr Find for inspiration. One of the things needed in camp was trivets for putting cooking vessels on to serve. As there were a few trivets in the find, I decided to try and reproduce one of them. Not a lot to say on this, but there will be documentation coming soon.
Mastermyr Trivet:
I also got into working, so did not do as much picture taking as I should have, but then again, not much to it either.
The next thing to catch my fancy was the hack saw found in the chest. With how similar to modern hacksaws it looked, i was intrigued to make it to scale and see how it compared to modern hacksaws. The answer is that it is much small then a full size hacksaw, but larger then a jewelers saw. The body of the saw was made with mild steel and the blade with spring steel. The handle was carved from a piece of oak from Grimmsfield.
Mastermyr Hack saw:
I went ahead and cut the saw blade to shape , tempered it, and mounted it to the frame before cutting the saw teeth into it. This left me with a better gripping surface for cutting the teeth. The saw blade edge is not one of my best jobs. I think if I were to make a few more, i would be able to get a more consistent spacing of the teeth.
While working on these 2 projects, my wife and I decided we needed a mug shelf in the kitchen above the doorway. I was hoping to make some fancy shelf brackets for this, but I was not happy with my first attempt. The support bar pulled the rest out of true and it interfered with the screw placement for mounting. Oh well, back to the drawing board
Shelf Bracket:
And now for something completely different:
I decided to get back into some spinning. Instead of just spinning, for the sake of spinning, I decided to do a little experiment. Starting with 12 ounces of raw Romney fleece, how much finished yarn and or finished product would I end up with. The wool was pulled from the bag with no preference for what part of the fleece it came from.
After washing, the new weight is 10.8 ounces. This was then processed using a set of English combs. once the entire batch was combed, I was left with 1.3 ounces of 2nd cuts and bad wool. This will be spun into a single ply yarn and then woven in a simple pattern on a ridged heddle loom. This is where we are so for on this experiment. More on this as I progress.
And as a final note, a praying mantis sitting on the car next to me while I waited for my wife at the doctors office.
That’s it for now, more to come next week, or a few weeks from now, or next month or whenever……