Jane got out and ran the Mantis. I stayed in and wrote. Then we headed for the rink. I felt way much better than I have…3-turn is effortless again and I’m not having the dizziness issues. Then we got the notion how to cut those pesky bridge supports that have been hanging fire for a year. We went to Lowe’s and got a packet of wood chisels. I needed to get a ‘blue stone’ or whetstone, but forgot it.
But in the meanwhile, Lowe’s had an amazing special on small shrubs.
2.80 per shrub, for several varieties of exotic juniper, bearberry (they had barberry, too, but we’re not crazy) dwarf cypress, blue spruce, and so on. Well, we had been going to buy some juniper to line the new terracing and to grow between us and the street. Couldn’t resist that. So we picked up a significant number of small shrubs, about 10″ high.
Then Jane hauled out the Mantis again, but only ran it a short distance: she’s exhausted. Meanwhile I tested the new method for cutting a 12′ curve with a wood chisel.
It sounds crazy, but in the absence of power tools we don’t want to buy, there is this method copied from traditional woodworkers.
Draw pattern onto the wood in such a fashion and with adequate markers that you are able to get it exact on both sides of the wood.
With wood chisel and mallet, score the entire line 1/4 inch deep. Go along with wood chisel and carve down to the bottom of the impression, a quick mallet-tap being sufficient to do a cut toward the severed wood fibers. Repeat ad nauseam until you have about 1/3 to 1/2 of an inch deep groove on each side of the 12×2.
Then with a small handsaw, begin the cut into the groove, taking care to let the chiseled edge guide the saw blade smoothly. Viola! 12 foot arch, inside and out—a $1800.00 long arched bridge done for the cost of lumber, which, let me tell you, is far less than $1800.00. Slower than power tools, but it produces a nice edge. [Power tools tend to go off-true and produce a ‘dish’ or slanted cut, and all sorts of misfortunes.] We may actually get that bridge built before summer. Give our take our campaign against grass. I promised Jane I’d weed-whack the side, before it gets out of hand. And frankly, I’m beginning to think we can do without yucca. We have scads of yucca, liberally entwined with grass. I may set the active plants by the roadside with ‘Free Yucca’ on them and hope they go away.
The deal is, under the ground, any fragment of yucca root will grow if watered. And we have a lot of yucca root under the ground.
I’m doing outline expansion now, and got a page done, but it’s an area I’ve been over before, so it doesn’t puff up as readily.
Awesome!
I grew up in a log house, with old fashioned hand tools in the living room as decoration. We had a wagon wheel chandelier held up by rope and ancient ice tongs, a six foot two-man saw, a planer and a two-foot hand awl. My little brother discovered that the hand awl was perfectly capable of cutting nice round holes in the log walls…
Amazing how that works!
Isn’t it, though? If you want fine craftwork, it doesn’t come with a power tool (chainsaw “art” included).
Isn’t it, though? If you want fine craftwork, it doesn’t come with a power tool (chainsaw “art” included).
I’d argue that. I’m currently-well, as soon as my thumb and eye heal-paneling a stairway in oak, rails, stiles,raised panells, the works, with power tools with the exceptions of a small dovetail saw and a curved Japanese chisel. If I could post a picture I would and you’d retract your statement. It’s not the tool, it’s the craftsman.
Phil Brown
@philbrown……most power tool users have little or no idea of how to use them…..and do not know their tools’ or their own limitations. Many time I use hand tools because I know I do not have the skill for power tools. I could go on at length about dumb acts I have seen committed with chain saws. But then I saw a young woman almost lose her finger on a pottery wheel because she refused to remove her rings.
I use power tools with fair confidence, including a jigsaw, chop saw, table saw, Skil saw or chainsaw, even one of those reciprocating saws that look like an over-sized light saber and are mostly good for destruction, but band saws are where I draw the line. The penchant of big lumber to buck if fed improperly into a table saw makes me a bit nervous with a long piece,—any long piece can shift while being worked, and cause an accident if you don’t plan ahead; but I’m careful and I know what to do to keep that from happening.
But band saws…I leave to people who do a lot of woodworking. And even then I don’t want to know somebody I care about is using one.
Sounds real nice! I’d love to see a pic of your handiwork.