"Put your heart, mind, and soul into even your smallest acts. This is the secret of success." — Swami Sivananda
Drivel Starved Nation;
I have been busy, so busy in fact I just remembered that the Drivel Starved Nation needs food more drivel so here ya go…
On the top of our request list is the CS-12v2 Combination Square and I am pleased to announce that we will open pre-orders in the next week or so. That said, I always wanted to make the 6″ version, so we will piggy back the 6″ and the 12″ runs and make both a brass and stainless steel versions of the 6″ combination square.
Dear Drivel Starved Nation;
For those of you that follow this Totally Awesome and Worthless Blog, you know that one, you need to get a life – you should be in your shop making something. Oh wait, you are at work… Continue reading
"You'll never find a better sparring partner than adversity." — Golda Meir
Drivel Starved Nation; It’s Friday and I am about to take the afternoon off to meet some old friends. But, I thought you might like to see the first pics of the CT-18 Dual Angle Smoothing plane…
We still have about 4-5 weeks of work before we ship. All the bodies get their soles ground beginning next week, and this is slow, each has to be put into a special fixture. Stainless steel does not like heat so in order to flatten the soles, the grinder is set to cut 0.0002″ per pass. That’s two ten thousands of an inch.
The irons are all out being sharpened and the scrub irons have yet to arrive, but beginning next week, we will start assembly of the bodies as they trickle in from the grinding house.
Oh, all of the aluminum TB-2v2’s are done and are being shipped starting Monday. And so are the stainless versions. These are crummy cell phone pics, but you get the idea;
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Drivel Starved Nation-
As mentioned earlier, we are short-staffed here until sometime in March due to my travel schedule. Tomorrow I leave for my annual work retreat and I have so many ideas to persue…can’t wait to get started!
First, we are shipping the final 25% of the TS-2v2 Try Squares and here are a couple of answers to the most asked questions;
1) The inserts (either orange or black) float in the handle, they wiggle by design. Besides the cool decorative element, they serve as a flange to help in dis-assembly.
“People forget how fast you did a job – but they remember how well you did it.” — Howard Newton
Drivel Starved Nation!
I know all of you out there in DSN land are wondering, why has John’s Blog been one big void for the past six weeks?
Well, I had a doctor’s appointment and it has taken me this long to chew through the leather straps… Actually, we did a little blog makeover and it took longer than we thought.
Bridge City News Dept.:
Michael Berg, who has basically been running this place for the past nine years has moved on. We wish him well. Because of my travel schedule in early 2014, I will not be seeking a replacement until March. Until then you are stuck with me for production updates.
Production Update Dept.:
I will see the first milled body of the CT-18 Plane within the next week or so. What a complex process.
We have begun shipping the TS-2v2 in both aluminum and stainless. The metric versions will ship last. I anticipate all will be shipped no later than the first week of Jan.
The FC-1v2 Flushing Chisels will also ship in Jan.
"Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time."— Marthe Troly-Curtin
Drivel Starved Nation;
Our Skunk Lab is full of tool parts that are being boxed and will soon be on their way to our fulfillment facility. Soon, you will be able to make sliding dovetails completely by hand. Bunch of other stuff too!
I spent last week and four days this week putting our HP-6 Tapered Sliding Dovetail Kit through its paces. The results are stunning – the image below is 3/4″ thick Ash and the joint is 7″ long.
Normal perception depends on ignoring, but the appreciation of beauty and the creation, so called, of art, depends not on ignoring. It depends on looking, and the more you look, the more you see. What you see, in anything beautiful, is not only all the features of it but also the visible relations between them. — David Pye
The nutcracker pictured below is currently on display at the Museum of Contemporary Craft. I designed it in the winter of 1975 and made several to give away as holiday gifts – we had no money to buy anything. In 1977 it was photographed by Joe Felzman and was ultimately acquired by the Renwick Gallery in Washington DC. I have made several hundred over the decades and it is a fun project. Since the holidays are quickly approaching, I thought it would be fun to take you through this project so you can make it yourself.
Conformity Breeds Mediocrity — Unknown
This weekend Michael and I attended Maker Faire in Portland. What a blast that thing is. I am going to the big Kahuna next year in San Francisco, it is that cool. I think it should be a DSN field trip of epic proportions. And I can tell you this, this was way more fun than any woodworking show I have ever attended. Virtually every single booth had something in it that was of interest to me. Way cool.
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In heaven, all the interesting people are missing.— Friedrich Nietzsche
Last April I taught two classes at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking on how to make my “Fog of War”, which is a metaphorical sculpture posing as a chess set.
There was not enough time in the week to make both the players and the board and I promised to make this post available for those who wanted to complete the piece. So here ya go!
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