Traditional knives and tools

[mbkr]

Hang in there, David! It sounds like you've been getting some poor cards dealt to you lately, but it also sounds like you're getting the most you can out of 'em!

About a week ago, a big limb fell out of the neighbor's oak tree and landed in our front yard (between the sidewalk and the street, so no property damage, thankfully). I spent some time early last week trying to clean up the mess. One day, I spent a couple of hours using the yellow handled pruning shears in the following photo to pick up all the leaves, cut them from their branches, then cut the branches into small lengths, and put everything into our yard waste bin due for pick-up last Tuesday morning.
View attachment 2240157

Another day, I used my 24" bow saw to cut the larger branches off the main limb, and then cut those into 2'-3' sections that I stacked at the curb, intending to put a sign out offering the wood for free to anyone interested in taking it.
View attachment 2240170

What remained was the main limb, probably close to 8' long, with a couple of large side branches. I feared I'd need to find someone with a chain saw to cut up the rest, because my bow saw (and my right arm) were starting to struggle trying to cut off the last couple of branches (and I could only do that by rolling the limb around so I could cut through from various directions.
View attachment 2240177

But as I came out to take a couple of photos and decide what else I might do, my neighbor (on the other side from the guy whose tree dropped the limb) came by and said he'd take all the wood, including the big uncut limb! So I got my little red wagon from the garage and we wrestled the big limb onto that and rolled it back behind his garage, and then loaded the wagon a few more times to move all the rest of the wood over there. I was grateful and happy!

Here's a close up of the previous pic so you can see the knife that's in the photo, even though it played no role in the wood processing.
View attachment 2240184

- GT

Good story, Gary
A few years back, I had a dead persimmon down in the back yard. I couldn't get my chainsaw to run, so every morning I went out and cut a few branches off with a bow saw, then went about my other business. A friend of mine happened to stop by and saw what I was doing and asked if I wanted him to come and cut it up with his chainsaw. I told him, nah, it was good exercise and I wasn't in any big hurry.
A few days go by and the branches were done and I started on the trunk. Eventually I got to the point where the trunk was big enough the bow saw wasn't going to work so good. I was sitting on a pile of wood, drinking a cup of coffee, contemplating the situation, when the same friend I had talked to several days earlier showed up with his chainsaw and made short work of it

 

[Prester John]

Redundant thread title.

 

[RickHuf]

I got a bug to try turning some lanyard beads in my old Rivett watchmakers lathe.

The gravers worked well enough, but this Rough Ryder whittler actually did most of the work. It just worked better than the tiny gravers on this Walnut.

The lathe did fine on the walnut but it was slow going on the much harder purple heart. It just doesn't have the power.

In the photo it has a little buffing wheel in the chuck. The high rpms work very well for polishing small stuff.



It was a success BTW. The beads look pretty neat.

 

[Hickory n steel]

Redundant thread title.

If only every politician on the planet was smart enough to know this we wouldn't have places that ban the carry of even the smallest little utilitarian cutting tool.

 

[Just Tom.]

You might think carving a canoe paddle out of a single solid piece of wood, using only hand tools, is a really bad idea and huge waste of effort - I will let you know if you’re right when I’m done

 

[Just Tom.]

You might think carving a canoe paddle out of a single solid piece of wood, using only hand tools, is a really bad idea and huge waste of effort - I will let you know if you’re right when I’m done

It seems this project may take a while. The drawknife is wonderfully efficient, but finding time to work with it is going to prove challenging. It seems I have about half an hour each evening between the time my outdoor experience is measured in GPH (gallons of perspiration per hour), and MBS (mosquito bites per second).

 

[Misplaced Hillbilly]

Guess which of these tools gets used most.

 

[John A. Larsen]

It seems this project may take a while. The drawknife is wonderfully efficient, but finding time to work with it is going to prove challenging. It seems I have about half an hour each evening between the time my outdoor experience is measured in GPH (gallons of perspiration per hour), and MBS (mosquito bites per second).

I watched a video of a Canadian First Nations man, carving a canoe paddle with what looked like just a linoleum knife. John

 

[315]

 

[5K Qs]

This optical tool gives me better vision than I have with my naked eyes.


- GT

 

[Frank.K]

Both of these are great tools

 

[5K Qs]

Here's a tool I used last week while on vacation to mass-produce a dozen charred hot dogs at my wife's request.


To load this "frankfurter fryer", you slide the ring on the handles back until it clears the shorter handle, and can then lift that shorter handle up to open the top part of the "basket". (There are a couple of wire split rings at the front of the device that serve as "hinges" for top and bottom parts.) The basket has 3 sections from left to right. The center section will hold 4 regular hot dogs, and each side section can hold at least 5 hot dogs. Once loaded, you close the top and slide the ring back over both handles to keep them together. Then it's just a matter of sticking the contraption into a convenient open flame, turning it occasionally, and arguing about the best condiment combo!

Here's a closer shot of the basket itself:


- GT

 

[Misplaced Hillbilly]

 

[Hickory n steel]

 

[Just Tom.]

90% done with my canoe paddle. I used only hand tools as promised, but I’m considering busting out the belt sander to finish it. That’s not cheating, is it?

The Opinel 10 proved useful around the grip area, as did the modified secondary blade on the Ideal, otherwise there was not a lot of knife use on this project.

 

[5K Qs]

90% done with my canoe paddle. I used only hand tools as promised, but I’m considering busting out the belt sander to finish it. That’s not cheating, is it?

The Opinel 10 proved useful around the grip area, as did the modified secondary blade on the Ideal, otherwise there was not a lot of knife use on this project.

Pretty dang impressive to me, Tom!
How did you "sketch it out" on the board with which you started to get it so symmetrical?

- GT

 

[Just Tom.]

Pretty dang impressive to me, Tom!
How did you "sketch it out" on the board with which you started to get it so symmetrical?

- GT

Thanks!
I have a broken one that was made out of laminated wood of some sort - I traced the outline of that one. It’s not perfectly symmetrical, and I still have a little shaping to do. For the cross-section, I just eyeballed it.

 

[5K Qs]

Thanks!
I have a broken one that was made out of laminated wood of some sort - I traced the outline of that one. It’s not perfectly symmetrical, and I still have a little shaping to do. For the cross-section, I just eyeballed it.

Nice! I thought maybe you had "free-handed" the right half on a folded sheet of paper, then cut it out and unfolded to get the symmetry, then transferred to the "wood blank."

- GT

 

[Hickory n steel]

Looks great.
if you've gone this far with just hand tools, why not sand it by hand with a sanding belt ?

 

[Just Tom.]

Nice! I thought maybe you had "free-handed" the right half on a folded sheet of paper, then cut it out and unfolded to get the symmetry, then transferred to the "wood blank."

- GT

I suppose I could have drawn it in CAD, sent it to the large-format printer at the office, then cut it out and traced it on the wood…
I may have to try that sometime…

Looks great.
if you've gone this far with just hand tools, why not sand it by hand with a sanding belt ?

I think you are giving me credit for having more patience than I actually do .
I may still try that though, and if it gets too tedious I can always switch to the belt sander. I bought the sander to even out the bevel at the bottom of the 1x12 planks that make up the sides of my boat (after first planing them), so I have a leakproof joint where it meets the plywood bottom.