sentimental about wood – saving every scrap……..

Flat Pane Carving

I have taken small steps into the world of flat pane carving. This is essentially relief carving on a flat surface and according to some this has been around since the times of the ancient Egyptians. I have been reading a book called A Norwegian Woodcarving Textbook by Odd Fauske. This is a translation of 1973 textbook from a course teaching traditional woodcarving in Norway. The book has been translated into English by Iain and Evaline Whittington. The layout of the book encompasses the original Norwegian text with English on the adjoining page. There are lots of plans that have been copied from the original which would require photocopying and the joining together. When looking for a link to the book I found that Iain Whittington has publishes another book on carving so I bought that as well. The other volume is called Amateur Woodcarving: A Guide. I decided to tackle a flat pane scene which dates back to teh 18th century. Unfortunately there is no photo of the original so some interpretation will be required. I have done this as part of a carving workshop I attended so I had some expert advice from a sculptor on how to proceed. I may do a post on the carving workshop at a later date. The plans in the book are for the most part spread over several pages. The design in the pictures below were spread over many pages and would have made a very large carving. Rather than trying to patch the various pages together I scanned the overview page and then imported it into photoshop elements and cleaned the image up. Following this the cleaned up image was imported into Inkscape a vector [...]

By Bernie Stefan-Rasmus|November 25th, 2023|Categories: Carving|0 Comments

Welcome to my Short Journey Pickling Olives

Welcome to my short journey on pickling or curing olives. I watched a YouTube video from a guy in Australia that was very helpful in setting me up to pickle olives. The ingredients are relatively simple, water, salt, and of course olives. The other key ingredient is time. This isn't an overnight job. You need a few weeks to produce your olives. I sourced the olives from a friend's place that has quite a few olive trees. However, she is not inclined to use them. So I went over with some buckets and a ladder and picked a couple of half buckets of olives. The aforementioned YouTube video made me an expert because some of the olives would appear from his description to be Kalamata olives. The other olives were round. Ladder and Bucket Olives that were pitted Olives in Brine Pitted olives in Brine Sterilised Flavouring , Salt, Mixed Herbs & White Wine Vinegar Packed Jars Sealed and Ready I decided for better or worse to stone the round olives. I did this manually and it took me about an hour or so to do about half a9 l bucket. They were then rinsed and then put in a bucket with about half a cup of salt. The other olives, the so-called Kalamata olives I just washed and then put them in another bucket with about the same amount of salt and waited. Judging when the olives have been soaking in the brine for long enough is a matter of taste. The YouTube guy recommended simply tasting them and when they are no longer bitter, they're ready to be put in jars. In the case of the pitted olives this took about 3 weeks. [...]

By Bernie Stefan-Rasmus|August 17th, 2023|Categories: News|Tags: preserving|0 Comments

Ancient Wood Carving

This article talks about the discovery of the oldest wood carving found in Britain, aged at around 6000 years old. The carving, which is believed to have been made by Neolithic or Early Bronze Age people, was found in a pile of rubble during construction work on a housing development in eastern England. The carving, which appears to represent an anthropomorphic figure, is a significant find as it sheds light on the life and beliefs of the people who lived in Britain during the Neolithic and Bronze Age periods. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/jun/07/oldest-carved-piece-of-wood-to-be-found-in-britain-dates-back-6000-years

By Bernie Stefan-Rasmus|June 9th, 2023|Categories: Carving|Tags: carving|0 Comments

The Storage Shed

I've erected a new garden shed in the backyard. This is so that we can get rid of our paid storage.The shed we selected comes from a company called ABSCO and is fully engineered and ready to assemble. I've already assembled one of these sheds so a second one really wasn't a big challenge. I didn't even need to look at the videos on YouTube. When completed the shed measures 2.26 m by 1.52 m. It's 1.8 m at the front and slopes backwards. This means that if it is raining, at least water won't drip on your head as you open the door. The shed has one door which is hinged. We found a space in the backyard surrounded by some low retaining walls which fitted the shed perfectly. I had to raise the height of the retaining walls to ensure that leaf litter won't accumulate around the sides of the shed. Luckily, this was simply the matter of adding another permapine sleeper. The existing retaining walls uses a modular system which was easy to add more sleepers to. The area where the shed will go has pavers on the ground. I've actually used the supplied brackets and dynabolts (10x 50 mm ) to attach the shed to the pavers. To reduce water intrusion on the floor, I have decided to lay down some plastic sheeting on top of the pavers. I then paver over with some 40mm pavers and thereby raise the level of the floor. The shed is primarily to store stuff that we have in a storage unit currently and to do this I'm putting in some cheap metal shelving to store the stuff. Since I've erected the shed. The weather [...]

By Bernie Stefan-Rasmus|April 3rd, 2023|Categories: News|0 Comments

The 3D Printed Morse Taper Cleaner

So yet another adventure in the world of 3D printing. This time I have coupled my woodturning hobby and 3D printing in one little item. This item is a cleaner for a Morse number two taper. Rather than designing one myself, I scoured the internet and eventually discovered some items on thingiverse.com. The details can be found here. The most type of cleaner that I settled on took about 2 1/2 hours to print. I was a little disappointed in the print this time as the handle had embossed writing. In the end, the writing appeared as an artefact on the handle. So what I'm missing is something that actually says Morse number two. I of course know what this item is for so it's not really a problem. Because of the artefacts on the handle, I had to spend some time cleaning the handle up with some sandpaper. The taper itself was fairly clean, although I did run a knife over it just to get some small bumps off. The cleaner works really well in the Morse taper. I've included a link to a short YouTube video of the Morse taper cleaner in action. Cleaning the taper is an ongoing issue with wood turning lathes because the Morse tapers tend to get clogged up with sawdust. So now I have a nice little tool that sits in the drawer under my lathe ready for the next time I need to quickly clean the Morse taper. The tool in the lathe handle sticking out The cleaning portion pf the tool being inserted in the tailstock https://youtu.be/1T7BCVlZGxI

By Bernie Stefan-Rasmus|February 1st, 2023|Categories: 3D Printing, Woodturning|Tags: woodturning|0 Comments

The Ongoing Saga of the Workshop

The ongoing saga of me trying to establish a new workshop at the new house. I've written about it previously on this blog. It's been nearly 10 months since we moved into the house and I thought that I would have been up and running long before this. I finally finished the rear wall. The rear wall is now both insulated and painted. The interior wall is lined with plywood as I did with the sidewall. I will varnish the wall before starting to hang things on it. All the wiring has been run for an excessive amount of power outlets, one of the outlets will have USB charging inbuilt. I've also pre-wired for a light above the bench with a switch just inside the door. The next phase will be painting the wall with varnish or should I say varnishing the wall. then I will commence building a bench across the back wall. I am thinking about putting some drawers under the bench to store things but making sure that the bench top overhangs so I can clamp things to the edge. I will also be fitting a bench vice. I'm hoping that this will be a practical and useful space because I don't really feel like rebuilding it after this. As always there are some photos attached to this post showing the progress so far. I'm hoping when I get the workshop up and running that I will do a collage of all the photos I've taken through the build. It's been too hard to try to video the progress because I've got too much stuff in the way. Every time I work in the shop I have to play a massive game [...]

By Bernie Stefan-Rasmus|January 20th, 2023|Categories: Around the home, Renovating|Tags: building, Workshop|0 Comments

More Adventures in 3D Printing

I've been having trouble with my 3D printer, mostly the filament gets blocked in the extruder. I initially thought that it was a problem with the STL file that I downloaded from Thingiverse. tried printing the file several times but there was no filament coming out of the extruder. I went through all the usual problem solving thinking including theBowden tube being blocked or indeed the nozzle. I replaced the Bowden tube with a better quality one supplied by my son in law.This didn't resolve the problem. I still had no filament coming out of the extruder. I wondered if the filament may have been the problem but since it's a new role I just counted that. I disassembled the new Bowden tube and took the nozzle off which I just replaced to stop the nozzle was blocked and it seemed that the extruder itself was blocked so I heated the extruder up. and pulled the filament out and discovered that there was a whole lot of melted filament sitting between the end of the Bowden tube and the extruding nozzle. Having got this far I decided to check on the Creality website to see if they had a solution to this problem. What I have failed to do was preheat the extruder prior to fiddling with it. I ended up with some melted filament inside the extruder and also in the thread wherenozzle goes. I picked this out with a dental tool. I realised that you have to put the nozzle into the extruder prior to fitting the Bowden tube. This means that you can seat the Bowden tube right down to the top of the extruder nozzle. Having done this and fitting a [...]

By Bernie Stefan-Rasmus|January 4th, 2023|Categories: 3D Printing|Tags: 3DPrinting, Ender3V2|0 Comments

Adventures in 3D Printing

In a departure from wood working I have bought a 3D printer. I decided to buy an Ender 3D V2 based on a combination of price and performance . The printer has good reviews and there are lots of upgrades readily available. The machine was partially assembled which also appealed to me. I spent quite some time levelling the bed which is quite important on a 3D printer to ensure good quality prints. After some frustrating attempts to get the printer going and lots of YouTube videos I was able to perform a successful test print. I found the "teaching tech" YouTube channel and associated website particularly helpful. Certainly worth a look if you are new to 3D printing. After printing a test cat and some accessories for the printer itself I wanted to actually make something. There are of course lots models available online but not everything you want or need is online. In order to accomplish making something software is required. I ended up finding Onshape which is a web based 3d modelling program. Being web based is does not rely on the processing power of you pc or laptop. The program is available to use free of charge fully featured the only caveat is that any files created are publicly available within the Onshape online world. The learning curve was steep for me but more on that later but not insurmountable. Tool Holder Test Cat Improved Filament Feeder Stronger Bed Springs Test Print

By Bernie Stefan-Rasmus|December 13th, 2022|Categories: 3D Printing|0 Comments

The ongoing workshop build

We have now been in our new house for eight months. I had been hoping to sort out the workshop in a matter of weeks! Progress has been slow. The most recent progress has been the rear wall which had a roller door installed. This was completely useless for my purposes. The roller door was removed with the help of a a beam lift. This made it easy and safe for two people to remove. I sold it quickly for $200 it was off my hands in two days. I managed to source a second hand window for the rear wall of the workshop. It had been subjected to lots of paint in various colours. Paint stripper and some scrubbing revealed an original brown. I painted the window with some etch primer and a topcoat of enamel in a grey colour called monument. The window now matches the other windows on the house. I purchased a solid wood as an access door for the rear wall of the workshop. The door I bought was apparently from a hospital and needs some fettling to make it fit the door is about the right width but is nearly 2500 mm high. The most common door size in Australia is 820 wide and 2040 high. Nothing a track can handle. I was lucky with the cladding as my brother had some lying around his property doesn't exactly match the house but will end up the same colour so all is good. I think that the whole wall will blend in once it has nice coat of paint. Then there is wiring and cladding on the inside.. https://youtube.com/shorts/BbN_9nskg3o?feature=share

By Bernie Stefan-Rasmus|November 3rd, 2022|Categories: Renovating, Woodworking|0 Comments

Back Bench

I have been thinking about the bench that will go against the back wall. Luckily I have a reasonable supply of timber that I can construct a solid wok bench with a vice for woodworking. I will be using some hardware salvaged from the old workshop. At this stage the plan is to have three powerpoints across the wall just above the bench. One of the powerpoints will incorporate a couple of USB ports for charging things. I also have the idea to put a powerpoint under the bench for a shop vac. The main light in the garage has a switch located at the other end of the workshop. It is too much hassle to rewire it as a two way switch. The simpler solution is to put a light over the work bench with a switch just inside the back door. I have drawn a simple mud map of my thinking which is as close as I get to construction diagrams. The Back Wall

By Bernie Stefan-Rasmus|November 1st, 2022|Categories: Renovating, Woodworking|Tags: building|0 Comments

Blog