Hobby - Wood Work - Some More

Did I say I'd never being doing wood work again last time?  I'll have to check.  If so, then clearly I was wrong.  [ed: I didn't strictly swear off doing more, I just didn't think that I would. Sigh...]

Made a weekend trip up to Sydney to find some wood.  As much as the range at the usual place is better than everywhere else in terms of 'specialty wood', I'd be remiss to say that the quality is particularly good.  Finding clean pieces of anything exotic can be difficult, and most of the fancy Australian wood is all but unavailable due to ever growing logging bans.  Which is pretty stupid because trees ARE renewable if anyone actually bothers doing things correctly and long term.... which they don't.

Anyways, for starters I got a plank of rock maple.  Was 10mm thick which was perfect for my project.  I'd already whipped up a plywood template for senban shuriken.

Roughed them out on the bandsaw...

Finalized the outline, added edge detail and started smoothing with the belt sander...

Hand sanding to get the surfaces smooth and 'nice (...enough)', then burnished all over...

Ending up with six pieces all up. There were initially seven, but I experimented putting a 'traditional' hole in the centre. The piece snapped in half, so I left the remaining pieces all solid.  Makes them sturdier and the hole provided a very obviously (in hindsight) weak point to the grain.

Next up I got a piece of Blackbutt and some Spotted Gum.  The Blackbutt is not allocated to a project yet, but it was a (rare) nice piece of wood with relatively few flaws, and decent weight, so I picked it up 'just in case'.

The Spotted Gum was cut down into a 'jo' length (approx 120cm), and a 'tanbo' length (approx 50cm).

I then used the electric plane to 'octagon' them down from square...

And from them I've just started using the belt sander to smooth the octagon into effectively a round dowel.  The diameter (of both) is about 40mm - the tanbo needs to be about 30mm, and the jo needs to be about 25mm.

Once the piece is 'round enough' I'll start scraping it down to parallel and round.  that's going to take a while and is the more 'traditional' aspect to the work I do.

I'm definitely abandoning the 'everything by hand' approach.  My hands already hurt, and at this stage I'd rather get a result quicker, while conversely there's no thrill in it being done with nothing but hand tools anymore.  It's still going to hurt :)

2024-07-12

Got some linseed oil so I can get things finished off 'proper'.

Have given my poor old bashed up original bokken a taste, and the new senban shuriken too.

Work continued on the bo shuriken (just 4 in this batch) which were off cuts from the tanbo/jo project.

Lefty;  a plywood sizing template for copying the size of the old ones to the new ones... more or less.

Middley;  new pieces now ground to rough shape.

Righty;  my old Bo shuriken. Geez I'm annoyed that ironwood isn't available anymore. Fuck you hypocritical greenies!

Fine shaping, 280grit, 400grit, burnishing and a splash of linseed oil.  Doneski.

I really don't mind the colour they come out, it's pretty and interesting in its own way.

Anyways, these turned out ok.  The surface layer smoothness/sheen and weight is definitely acceptable.

And with that done I have no further procrastination pieces to do before getting back on the tanbo/jo... hahaha.

2024-07-14

Ok, next up, roughing out the jo.

For those not familiar with japanese martial arts...   a 'jo' is a 4 foot stick,  a 'bo' is 6 foot stick,  a 'hanbo' is a 3 foot stick, and a 'tanbo' is a 2 foot stick... more or less.

I started by planing away more stock from the piece (again), then sanded it back to round (again), as below...

I then found a scrap beam and drilled a 30mm hole through it to make a sizing template. I needed the depth within the beam in order to help keep the jo 'aligned' or at least straight(er) within the template hole.

From here I started alternating between carefully machine sanding (80grit) and also hand sanding (240grit), getting the stick to just fit through the template. When the stick binds in the template hole it leaves a shiny patch which makes it easy to see where the high points are that need reduction. Not rocket science.

Had to switch the template to vertical as the stick bottomed out on the floor. And this is the piece done, with a maximum of 30mm diameter all the way along.

From here cleaning up any ugly grind marks or divots as best as possible. It's not a perfectly symmetrical cylinder, but if you want a machine-made dowel then go to bunnings.

This is a (more or less) before and after the processing...

At this stage the entire piece has been hand sanded to 240grit.  I can feel imperfections along the length which isn't really a problem as far as I'm concerned.  I will probably review it to get it as straight and consistent as I can by eyeball, but it's effectively at final shape.  The original spec was for 25mm diameter and it's probably about 27-28mm on average now - I won't be taking it all the way down to 25mm, this diameter is where the wood said it wanted to go.  Swinging it around, it already feels very smooth and manoeuvrable in the hands.

The shaping stage is the most time consuming.

2024-07-15

Repeated the shaping process for the tanbo.  Drilled a 35mm template hole and removed the excess stock from the piece.

Worked on the more obviously ugly scratch blemishes on both pieces but at this stage there's still some minor imperfections, which adds texture or 'rustic-ness' or 'authenticity'... which is obviously a cope cos I'm lazy hahaha.

The tanbo finished at about a 32mm diameter.

Both then got a sand over with 240grit and down to 400grit.  Really liking the results.

Later

Did a little more surface work but there wasn't that much required. Once over with 240grit, then a couple of parses with 400grit, then a sand with 600grit.

Burnished both of them, put my mark on them, touched up with 600grit and reburnish.  Then a thin coat of linseed oil.

And they're done.  A lot of fuss over a stick... yep, maybe.

I do have a couple of other small projects in the works but this is it for the immediate future.

The process has been enjoyable - the fun is working out how to get the result as much as getting the result.

Until next time...