yunika.dk » Tools

Upgrades to my Japanese tool collection and making knifes

tmk — Mon, 10 Feb 2014 21:39:03 +0000

It has been quite a whiles since my last post. I've started working again so I have less time (and desire) to sit in front of the computer when I get home. But I've been doing a lot of projects over christmas and before - I think I have 10+ projects that I would like to show you! My latest thing are making knife handles for damascus steel blades that I've found on eBay and the likes. This particular example is currently in process and the images are from last Friday. I recently broke the blade for my "cut straight" japanese saw so I have ordered new supplies from my friend with japanese connections. So instead of just getting a new blade I also got a coping saw (which I used for this project), two chisels and a new marking knife. The funny thing is that the blade arrived from India on the same day - and then I just felt like playing around with the new tools. What I have basically done is to take a piece of ebony and cut it through in arcs and gluing it back together with veneer inside each cut. Interresting and clearly hand made - looking forward to showing you the final result.

Fixing up the knife that i got from my grandfather as a teenager

tmk — Mon, 20 Jan 2014 22:35:04 +0000

When I was a teenager I remember me and one of my school friends being fascinated with knives and we even started making our own ones (of cause never finalized). My mother was extremely affraid of my with tools and knifes so I wasn't even allowed to have it anyway. When I became a "boy scout" and got the "knife certificate" I was allowed anyway and when my grandfather found an already old knife in a dumbster and gave it to me as a gift. I was thrilled! Of cause it wasn't really sharp and the blade was almost black already then. Then a month ago in my workshop I realized that was missing a real knife - simply for cutting wood and shaping edges - and started considering buying one. Then I remembered my grandfathers old knife and crazily enough I even knew which old box to look in to find it. I'm sorry to say that in my eager to work on it I forgot to take a picture of the old knife - but I'm very pleased with how it looks today! I replaced the old broken blade with new one made of mahagony and then i sanded and polished the blade until I could see my own reflection in it. I re-found my childhood fascination with "knives" and has started looking for damascus steel blades on eBay. Making the handles are small managable projects that can be completed quickly and can be done even when you are tired. My next problem though is getting it razor sharp - even if the guys on YouTube says it's easy - I do not agree - its hard and another fresh challenge. Original blade after a little polishing - the blade looked like the bottom before I started. Gluing the handle. A little more shape. Finished handle close up - quality German steel. Finished knife and blade.

Collection of old hand drills

tmk — Sat, 23 Nov 2013 13:15:32 +0000

Another recent purchase (which was almost a give-away): a large collection of old hand drills. They are quite hard to come by and these are actually sharp. As do most of my woodworking entirely by hand (I love music and hate the noise of power tools) I use these a lot.

A box of chocolates, a box of old hand planes

tmk — Sat, 23 Nov 2013 10:50:47 +0000

Planning to do a new dinning table made me realize that I didn't have jointers plane (a very long and heavy plane for make straight edges for gluing tables and doors). So I started looking at the local Danish version of eBay and found a very kind person who had an entire box of old planes for sale. I've been using time on restoring some of the planes and they get really beautiful and not least efficient. Additionally there were a lot more blades than planes which has given me the oppertunity to build my own planes too. Very happy about this :-)

Softening the edges

tmk — Thu, 09 May 2013 09:25:55 +0000

One of my central ideas for the "Touch Me One" furniture series are the contrast between hard edges on the inside and very soft and smooth edges on the outside. I want the pieces to be tactile, delicious, beautiful and loveable. When I worked on the chair I chose to complete it as raw prototype without softened edges. Its main purpose was to let me see how the proportions work in real life. For the footrest the purpose has been to test shaping the soft edges and making a piece much closer to something real and finished. Soft meets hard In the process of planing the edges. One side A finished raw side of the footrest. The raw pieces All the raw finished pieces almost ready for glue and assembly. A little helper I made this little helper when I was cutting the dovetails - an adjustable ruler with screews allowing me to set it to a specific depth and just mark a line. I think it took 45 minutes to make and literally saved me more than 2 hours of measuring. Tool construction is an essential part of woodworking!

How it all started

tmk — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 20:14:45 +0000

I love music and have been into HI-FI stuff since my father gave me my first B&O transistor radio when I was six years old. I've been getting more and more into LP records and analog sound - and around May last year I purchased a "The Fisher" tube amplifier. It's a beauty from around 1959 and it really sounds great! The orinal wooden cabinet had been lost and only the raw amplifier exists. My DIY thinking: I'll just build one - thats the image on top - and even if it looks ok, its skewed everywhere and it looks like - well - a plywood box around a fine piece of musical equipment. At my girlfriends' brothers house I saw that he had a workbench in their small cellar and I though - "ohh, they come in smaller sizes". A couple of days later while reconsidering my cabinet, I realized that was what I needed - a workbench - and searching the local version of eBay I found a small one almost for free and I picket it up the next day. I set it up on a shelf in our newly finished kitchen and then I started practising (I knew I wasn't capable of doing the beautiful cabinet yet). Youtube really is great - there are a lot of videos on how to do different stuff including woodworking. I ended up searching for "workbench" and stumpled on an incredible amount of (mostly american) videos of people building their own workbenches ... It is fascinating what the love of music and a simple set of tools can lead to - we have a lot of saw dust in our kitchen... Getting back to the amplifier - I've picked up some merbau wood from the trash on a building site and I'm planning to build it sometime this year.