snake gourd, wooden cutlery, wet sandng

Yesterday, we had visitors and a mall reunion
party, why no logging was conducted.

Take a look at the following image. This is
the third stage in my wet sanding of the current lot
and as you can see water is no longer murky.



A series of photos to follow, showing you the
result of today's first C coating.



They are all getting glossy.





My spatulas, as bellow.



I have a big issue at the moment. Take a look at the next image.



Those large leeves, very deep green, are of the
snake gourd. How do I know? Well, snake gourd has
been at this particular place, where this image

was recorded. On top of that, I am familiar with
the shape of them, by now. They will carry these little
flowers towards the end of next month.

However, they never did carry fruits. I happen to
be very much fond of them. So, this year, in March, I think,
I did a survey and consequently, found out that

you need a female member of the same sort to expect
the fuits. So, I bought them and planted the roots
at various places in my garden.

Something is worng. Either none of them succeeded
in coming out (unlikely), or alternatively the females
bear differently shaped leeves.



In the above, can you see two whitish large leeves?
I am hoping that they are the female leeves. Why,
should they look different?

Should they not look the same? I am no longer sure
what is going on! All I want to see in the autumn
is their fruits. They are lovely, aren't they!

Needelss to say, I paired the male and female roots and
planted them together. In fact, this last image is
from a place where there had not been any of the snake gourd.

Am I on my way there? The problem is that they look pretty
similar, but if you look at them closely enough you beging to
think they are of completely different kinds...




I had, in addition to kamakura business, my coating
session in tbe morning, and the rest of today was
spent on completing part of the next lot.

All of these are now ready for coating, as soon as
the currelot goes off the drying beds.

パエ－リャ ３９

Conchita, come estas?
Que tiempo hace en tu pais?

Aqui, estaba lloviendo esta manana.
Como llueve!, como llueve! Con esta lluvia
no puedo hacer nada!

Sin embargo, ahora hace sol, un poquito!
Ahora entonces, vamos!

ウルウルしそうになっちゃうわ！
Touching, isn't it!?

この一回だけ、お願い！
Just this once, please!?

（電話の話）
分ったわ、切らないでね！
All right, just hold the line!

全然、分らないわ！
I have not got a clue!

何かそれについて意見はあるの？
Would you like to say anything about it?

そんな風にはならないわ、そんな事にはならないわよ！
It does not quite work that way!

それって、現実的な話なの？
How close is it to reality?

まだ学校終わって休みに入ってないの？
Have you not yet broken up for the holiday?

信じられない！
Magic!

One of my classmates at Imperial College, London, Ash, kept
saying this...

ＯＫ，始めて、（あるいは）出かけて！
OK, off you go!

前は電気かみそりなんか、使わなかったよ！
I used to be a dedicated wet shaver.

何もいう事ないわ！みんな言われちゃったもの！
There is nothing to say. It has all been said!

この本、読んでみて！
Have a look through this book!

来て、自分で見なさいよ！
Come and see for yourself!

手で、タマゴの殻をむく
to shell an egg by hand

Conchita, es bastante para hoy, no?
Ya me voy! Vaya con Dios!

Belt sander taken apart, wooden cutlery

Today started with retrieving yestrday's pieces
from the coating shed, then I spent a few hours
removing the polyps.

This is inevitable, because saturation, or near
saturation means surfaces were runny, anyway.
So, instead of going for type C coating,

I simply type A coated the two baby feeders and
the chopstics I had repaired yesterday. Baby feeders to
catch up with the rest of the pieces, waiting to be

coated with C. I do not know what to do with the
chopstics, but I will see...

Imagewise, I have not got many today. Take a look at the
first of those below.



This is the belt sander I use everyday, being looked at
sideways. Can you see a small oval shaped dark piece,
two thirds of the way up the orange coloured grip?

This is a piece you have to press down for continous
operation of the sander. If continuous operation is
underway, then this bit is kept depressed.

Well today, it was not to be, and I had to take the
whole thing apart to remove the dusts inside the machine,
preventing the normal operation. That is why it was
removed from the bed.

During the course of this I noticed something. And,
I will try and show you the same opening with the next
image, but, actually, this image shows what I am talking

about better. At the top of the grip, see a horizontal
opening? This opening is normally covered with a small sack,
which is not shown here and will be seen, sitting atop

the machine, placed on the bench. This outlet is a mystery to me.
I have taken the whole thing apart, completely, several times
in the recent past.

There is no fan, inside the sander. And yet, once operated,
quite a strong air current with dusts bursts out from this opening.

Dusts are accumulated in the sack, to be got rid of from time to
time. Now, going back to the mulfunction of my belt
sander, I am convinced that the culplit is the fine dusts.

I am inclined to think that if those fine dusts are released
into free space, with much reduced exhaust resistance, of the
sack, they might not end up in those important contacts points

in the system. It is only a guess and may well be a wishful
thinking. In any event, I have removed the sack.



Above, just showing you the flat area of the sander, along which
belts run over at speeds which I want, with my latest
aquistion of the speed controller.

See, there are two rollers at either end of the flat. The gap between
the smaller roller and the flat is very useful, and I may talk about
it later, essentially, the gap between them can dip and

may be used for delicate sanding operations.




With above, the dark thing sitting on top of the
orange thing is the sack.



Above?, this is merely a new gap sweeper I made today,
for cleaning up the mess created by the gap forming operation
for my picker knife forks.

So, where do I stand at the end of the day?

Well, edge rounding by the machine is complete,
60%?, perhaps. Tommorrow, coating apart, all of my time
will be spent on hand sanding the machine sanded

edges, of my picker knife forks. After that, how the hell
would I know!

パエ－リャ ３８

Conchita, como estas?

El otro dia en el telediario decian que el ano pasado
el telefono movil fue el regalo mas popular en Europa
entre los ninos!

Para que necesitan los ninos un movil!?
Lo mismo que aqui? No se!

Ahora entonces, vamos!

そんな事って、普通は深く考えないわよね！
It is something you do not think too deeply about!

（病気とか）
彼女、今具合が悪いのよ！
She is at the moment in a rather poor way!

それって、国内的でもあるし、国際的でもあるわ！
It is national as much as international!

恐らく記憶にある時よりも、もっとそうかもよ！
（地震とかの被害とか）
possibly more so than at any time in livig memory!

はっきり分って欲しい点はね、どうのこうのよ！
The point to be clear about is dounokouno!

馬鹿しかそんな話、信じないわ！
Only a fool could believe that!

同じことはチャ－チルにも言えるわよ！
The same can be said of Churchill!
You can say the same of Churchill!

後少し我慢して話を聞いて下さい。。。
if you can bear with me for a few more minutes...

彼の言い分を聞きましょうよ！
Let us hear what he has to say!

彼、私達のために何を準備してるのかしら！？
Let us find out what he has in store for us!

４０個の質問を考えて（最初は、最初に）、で、
（それを整理して）１０個に減らしてね！
Make 40 questions and whittle them down to 10!

兎に角、それをやってみようよ！
Anyway, let us give it a try!

彼女って、手紙書きまくる人なのよ！
She is a compulsive letter writer!

さて、さっき私が言っていた事なんだけど、ドウノコウノ。。。
now going back to what I was saying, dounokouno...

Conchita, es bastante, no?, para hoy?
I go now! Take care and vaya con Dios!

Natural mutation of picker knife forks

Today being Friday there was no Kamakura business.

All morning was spent on A coating 3, A coating being
penetration coating with polyurethane. You can see the
result in the following pic.



Can you see that surfaces look shining? This is
because after three applications of polyurethane
they are reaching the saturation point.

That is to say that they can no longer, into them, absorb
any more of the type A polyurethane. So, after tomorrow,
coating with type C polyurethane will start.

Type C is really for protective surfaces, building up, and
this process will be repeated 6 times!, 6 times!

All of the afternoon was spent on picker knife forks.
First, I sorted out the side profiles of more than 60
pieces.

Problem here was this. All of these pieces had been transcribed
from the very first template. The result of which is shown
bellow in terms of the current lot.



Most of these are oak picker knife forks. See their stems?
They are very thin, but they are resilliant enough. This is
the problem.

Structural stiffness of these thin stems depends very
much on materials from which they are pulled out. Not true
with other materials.

I normally work with half a dozen different ones and
I am confronted with issues.

You must strike a delicate balance between aethetic
appearance and stiffness. How would I do that?
What is bellow was my approach.



These were all created out of the thin stem template.
However, in the course of jigsawing them I deliberately
strayed out from the original transcription lines.

In a way, I caused natural mutation among them all,
hoping to identify the best profile I want.

Take a look at this.



Those two I finally picked up are shown on the left.
Those two on the right are templates, and the one at the
bottom was used for natural mutation.

One above has not been used even once.

It is not probably ironic that these I picked up
are actually identical to the template I did not use.

However, this is not the end of this story and I will
talk more about it tommorrow. In the meantime, two
images to follow.

First one, pieces rounded around the edges, and the next,
simply left unattended after profiling.





Shown bellow is my protective wear, during my sanding
operations, mostly, protective in the sense of
my clothes not affected very much by the dusts.

パエ－リャ ３７

Conchita, I like your alias!

Como estas? Aqui, ya empieza el verano,
y hace mucho sol!, y ademas por todas partes
hay flores muy bonitas!

Ahora entonces, vamos!

凄いよいアイデアよ！
What a splendid idea, that is!

それ、丘を越えて、向こうに飛んでいったの！
It flew away over the hills!

何でそんなに可笑しいのか見に行ったの！
I went to see what is so funny about it!

止めてよ！
Come off it!

それって、大金よね！、それって、そんなに高いの！？
That is a lot of money!

法的にどうなっているか、分らないわ！
Where we stand legally, I do not know!

そんなの、ヒマな時にしなさいよ！
Do it in your spare time!

今にして思うと　（副詞句）
looking back on it now, ...

こんな状況じゃ、当然だと思うわ！
a reasonable thing to do under the circumstances!

ドウノコウノだからって言う訳じゃ、全然ないわよ！
not in the least because dounokouno!

（相手の声）
よく聞こえるわ！
I can hear you loud and clear!

そんなの、こんなの、見たこともないわ！
It is like nothing I have ever seen!

（害虫とか）
最近、増えているわよ！
They are on the increase lately!

ねえ、タッド、今日の電磁気学の授業で
眠くなってしまったのよ！
I say, Tad (my own alias), I went to sleep during the
electromagnetics lecture this morning!

(This is what Ash told me when I was at Imperial College, London)

そうすれば、注意を引くわよ！
It will get you noticed!
（例えば、授業中に後ろの上のほうからトイレット・ロ－ル
を投げるとか！）

Conchita, pienso que esto es bastante para hoy!
Take care!

Wooden cutlery, picker knife forks

If asked if I know what I want to do, in terms of
working out cutleries, I would say I do not!

I have run out of ideas, and keep fabricating more or less
the same things, for my friends, that is...

Take a look at the following. This is the result of
yesterday's coating, just before 2nd wet sanding.



They have all undergone 2 stages of penetration
coating and are getting glossy, except the baby
feeder in the middle of these.

2nd wet sanding resulting in much less murky water,
as shown below. The water will be clear with tommorrow's
session.



I did not do the 3rd penetration coating, because of
the humidity of today. See?, they are drying and some
look shining, already, because polyurethene coating,

with some of them is getting saturated on the surfaces,
depending on the types of the materials used. Oak pieces
are getting there before others!



There was this Kamakura business, first thing in the morning,
and the whole morning was taken up by post processing of
my earlier coatings. In the meantime, a pair of damaged

chopsticks arrived by post, shown bellow.



I was asked to repair them, but I would give away, free of charge,
a new pair. That would be less time consuming...

So, what did I do with the rest of my time?

Without thinking too much, I went for my picker knife
forks, trying to make a lot of them, partly because
I still have a lot of thin redundances. I simply

wanted to make he best use of them.

One of the following templates was the first one
I made and has a very thin stem profile. I was asking myself
if the stem profile might be changed, as shown.



Problem is this. While my picker knife forks are not
supposed to be used for heavy duty cuttings the stems
do pose potential hazzards.

As a matter of fact, those undergoing coatings at the
moment are all oak pieces and stems are very thin, but
when I hold them to check their structural strength,

they seem OK.

With different materials with different strengths
I may have problems. The only way to find ot is to
produce lots and lots of them.

What follows is showing you what I did today.
I probably produce (not completed) nearly 70
of them.



These are partly treated ones and what follows, not yet.



I will be working on them, on all of them, thinning the knife
protion of them with my belt sander. The best profile I am
looking for might emerge out of that operation.

パエ－リャ ３６

Conchita, a mi me parece, que todo el mundo depende
demasiado de los ordenadores y los moviles!
Yo tambien! Bueno, vamos!

飛行機、裏向きになって、地面に落ちた！
The plane flipped over and plunged into the ground!

そっとポケットに入れられるのよ！
It will be quietly pocketted!
（賄賂とか）

今まで気がついていなかった才能とか、見つかるかもよ！
You might find a talent you never knew you had!

渋滞が始まりかけているわ！
Traffic is starting to build up!

彼、自殺しようとしたけど、怖くなって止めたの！
He tried to kill himself, but lost his nerve and gave up!

彼、つまずいて倒れたのよ！
He tripped and fell over!

ドウノオウノしたくなるわね！
It is very tempting to dounokouno!

パイプが破裂したのよ！
A pipe ruptured!

（空気を読む話）
何かおかしかったのよ！
There was something definitely in the air!

ああ、それじゃないの！そういうのって、
凄くうれしいわよね！
So, there it is! That is something to be
delighted about!

水を飲んだらどうなの！？
Have a drink of water!

池から棒が突き出しているの見えるわよね！
See a stick out of the pond!?

Conchita, ya me voy. Hasta manana!

Domestic and north American walnuts

Today really started with this murky water, as shown below.
There was no Kamakura business.



What you are seeing is the result of hard wet sanding of
the current lot. Wet sanding is carried out in water and
bits and pieces from the surface of my items float around

in the water, making it very murky. The dark shadow you see is
the sanding paper I was using, with the granular level at
500.

They are then dried, as shown below, and this a lot depends
on the humidity of the day. It was something like one hour,
today.



Once large scale coatings start, it will take up,
virtually all morning of yout time, which might be just
as well, to kill your time, or my time...

4 images to follow, to reflect on today's operation,
yet another day has gone...



These are the last remaining pieces in my long forks. Ready
to be coated on my next session. They are walnuts, domestic.



These are spatulas, from my earlier work, edges are rounded,
and sanded for coating. Dark walnuts, north American.

What follows is what I was talking about yesterday, not liking
them very much sort of thing.



Top profiles are more or less the same, but side profiles
vary greatly. Some are like daggers, with straight stems!
I should imagine all of these will have to be used at home.

You cannot easily form a set of 5 pieces from these.



These? They are simple picker kives, again, it is not
realistic to think I can give them away as gifts.

There are not that many, anyway, to be given away and
I have not got, reason unknown, short and flat pieces
left any more.

The root of my current problem is this. My wife wanted to
get rid of one of the tables her father had produced,
years ago, and he is deseased by now.

So, her request was to make the best use of the material
used for the table. This, I have been doing over the last
one month or so.

My gut feeling is that the table in question has been
turnd into something like 200 spoons and forks, and the
residuals will be made into chopsticks, I think.

For your information, I will be staying at our mountain cottage
in Yatsugatake, with my mother, as soon as the rainy season
is over, for something like two weeks.

During that lengthy period my logging will be completely
stopped.

パエ－リャ ３５

Conchita, hace mucho tiempo, no?, que nos vimos en la
Inglaterra. Como estas? Estoy muy bien!

Aqui, ahora, vamos? Como no!

（テレビ出演とか）
彼女、幾つかの番組でチョイ出してたわ！
She had parts in a few programmes!

それはもう必要ないわ！
That can go now!

パッと直ぐにわからなければ、そういう事よ！
If you do not click, then you do not!

それって、エロスの像の近くよね！
That is up near the statue of Erros!

そんな機会なんて、ほとんどないわよ！
That chance is just about non-existent!

それって、無理ないよ、当然だわ！
As well you might!

その気になれば、ドウノコウノ
If you really put your mind to it, then dounokouno...

彼女、何となくボ－っとしてたわ！
She had a bit of a faraway look in her eyes!

あまり信じない方がいいよ！眉唾物
You'd better take it with a pinch of salt!

汚れた手で触ったから新聞が汚れたわ！
Your sooy hand smudged the paper!

このインクって、直ぐににじむのね！
This ink smdges easily!

大部分羽、その通りよ！
To a large part of it, yes!

Conchita, es bastante, no? Ya me voy!
Take care! Your baby thing is being done!