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About Bernie Stefan-Rasmus

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So far Bernie Stefan-Rasmus has created 110 blog entries.

Mastering Tool Sharpening Techniques

Sharpening sharpening sharpening. I'm in the middle of working on a flat panel carving and in doing so I'm having to master not only using carving chisels but also sharpening them. I have now undertaken two carving workshops run by Silvio Apponyi. There are about 10 participants in each of these workshops all working on a variety of individual projects. I am attempting to recreate a 17th century Norwegian flat pane panel. This comes from a design that was created in a book called Norwegian carving by Odd Fauske. This is an interesting book based on a training manual by Odd Fauske and published by Ian Whittington and translated by his wife Elaine. The book contains the original Norwegian text and the English translation on the facing page. In order to do this I copied the design out of the book which was spread over several pages. I converted it to an svg file in a program called Inkscape. This program has a n auto trace function which allows a jpg or other image to be made into an svg file. The advantage is that the image is scalable without losing resolution. It is  similar to Adobe's Illustrator but is an open source project and it seems to be regularly updated. The project has resulted in me buying some additional carving chisels both new and second hand. .At the workshops there is the opportunity to borrow tools from other carvers to see how they suit my needs. I only buy after attending thee workshops to see what I actually need. This brings me to the subject of this article which is sharpening. It's almost like some sort of dark art. No matter how much equipment you [...]

By |November 27th, 2024|Categories: Carving|Tags: |0 Comments
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Gouge Thoughts: Sharpening, Sweep, Size

In thirty years of teaching, I’ve learned (and sometimes failed to remember) the value of preparation beforehand and flexibility once things get started. I’ve been doing a lot of preparation for my upcoming class. Materials, logistics, and many other things. Much of it involves thinking through processes in detail with the student point-of-view in mind. […]Gouge Thoughts: Sharpening, Sweep, Size

By |July 30th, 2024|Categories: Carving|Tags: |1 Comment
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The Shed Saga

The ongoing saga of getting the shed set up. I'm just a month short of 2 years since we moved into our new house. During this time I put in a concrete floor in the shed and built a new rear wall. I've been slowly adding benches and storage. I think now the end is in sight. I'm gradually unpacking all my tools  and I can now find things. I managed to get a steel frame to put my drill press on. It is an open frame and I've been able to make a set of drawers to fit underneath. I have used melamine covered chipboard as It's a relatively cheap material and strong and easy to cut up on the table saw. I have connected it all with confirmat screws which hold the drawer and cupboard together much more strongly than chipboard screws. I had also built a 600 mm wide cupboard to fill a space in the shed but much to my horror the drawers would never run properly. I just assembled the drawers and discovered that I'd cut the base out of square. I have a Bosch GTS contractor saw which for the most part works well. But when you go beyond 33 cm width in cutting you have to rely on a secondary fence. I seem to be in the habit of forgetting to lock that secondary fence which means that the fence drifts while I'm cutting. This explained why I hadn't cut the basis of the two drawers very accurately. I was able to reuse the material from these two drawers in making the above mentioned cover to fit under the drill press stand. Along with remaking the out of [...]

By |February 15th, 2024|Categories: Renovating, Woodworking|Tags: , |0 Comments
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Never Ending Saga of 3D Printing

The never ending saga of my 3D printer. I have a Creality 3D v2 printer. I have modified it several times including changing the extruder, upgrading the z axis with an additional lead screw and stepper motor. I've also replaced the printing bed with a removable magnetic type. Additionally, I have added a probe which sets the level of the bed before each print. This creates a mesh which accounts for variations in the bed.  You'd think this would have been enough to get me out of trouble and have smooth and easy printing time after time. However, recently I could hear a strange noise as I was printing. To my horror the wires to the secondary z axis stepper motor were rubbing against the bed levelling screws. This resulted in the bed screws unwinding. The result left the bed  swinging side to side as it was printing. Started printing again and several times the filament got jammed. I then had a print that  was running very smoothly. However, it stopped or seemed to stop about halfway through the print and the printer just kept running. The problem seemed to be the extruder I upgraded. It was actually grinding through the filament or it was catching. I left it overnight and then came back to it the next day. Sleep helps with problems. I then noticed that nearly all the screws on the extruder were loose. e. In fact, the two halves of the guide driver bushes were not lined up. This meant that the filament was being effectively ground as it was going through and then it would catch and just keep spinning until the filament was nearly broken. Preventing the filament from going into [...]

By |January 17th, 2024|Categories: 3D Printing|0 Comments
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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 |November 25th, 2023|Categories: Carving|0 Comments
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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 |August 17th, 2023|Categories: News|Tags: |0 Comments
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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 |June 9th, 2023|Categories: Carving|Tags: |0 Comments
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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 |April 3rd, 2023|Categories: News|0 Comments
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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 |February 1st, 2023|Categories: 3D Printing, Woodturning|Tags: |0 Comments
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