Conchita, this time I am not going to loose my
article for today! I will keep my title short enough!
Anyway, the first image for today is the hole positioning
jig I made today. The issue here is this. You wnat to make a hole,
but always at the (more or less) same distance from
the end of the pieces you are working with. You do not
want to measure these distances. It is simply too time
consuming and above all inaccurate and not reproducible!
What is seen below is designed to simplify the positioning.
Tale a look at the following schematic. The jig
has two different layers of alminium pieces. These
differing layer heights are desinged to draw two
lines (dotted and in red) and the pointing drill bit
falls halfway between these two lines. Why not a single line?
Yes, I did want a single line drawing jig...
But, things are not that easy in life...
I went to a DIY shop today, as I seem to be doing all the
time! One good outcome is the next photo. The grain 40
sander belt for my smaller machines (I have two of the
same sanders!). The idea is to employ these very
abrasive sanding surfaces to shorten the time for my
sanding operation.
Once roughly sanded, yes, I will switch over to milder
grains, of course.
You can see underneath these belts three pieces of
birch. These will turn into 6 small chopstics cases
as my gifts.
Below here, beech pieces cut into the width I wanted,
all done at the DIY shop. This really makes me think...
The most time consuming operation of my work is to get
these regular pieces, ready for grooving and for other works.
I got all these pieces cut from the starting material and
all I paid was something like JPY 1900.
From these, I will be able to make 20 chopstics cases, each
selling at JPY 2000, say. That is a lot!, and that is a lot
if I can sell them, and if not I will be giving them away as gifts
to my frineds! So, it is not a big deal if I cannot make profits from these.
The next image is not exactly convincing. Darker pieces
are walnut, and the lighter pieces are of today's. Put
in a nutshell, I failed to achieve my objective, of
turing out 40 chopstics cases from the same JPY 2000
materials. Now, the thing is down to 20, but I still
can live with it...
What is wrong is that the depth is too shallow for
the
chopstics.
Whta is seen next is something that is seriously affecting
my work, groove making.
Suffice to say that I should now aim for making grooves first,
then sand down thicker walls, and then make the holes,
not the other way around!
You know?, these are all operational know-hows,
lerant the hard way, wasting your materials to cost!
I hope that the schematics will be self-explanetory!
Here below, strings of neosium magnets. These do not
look like magnets, but they are all connected end to end!
For one chopstics cases, I need two of these pieces, plus
soft iron counterparts.
At the back of these magnets is seen my favourite,
made from birch, and the smallest of the kind I can make.
Am I becoming a wood artist?
Anyway, I encounter problems to be solved and I endeavour
to find solutions. I take pleasure in these processes, I think.
