BEL #824
Brought out the shaving horse today (thanks again,
Mike Haasl! ) and decided that we would fix the broken foot. I also decided that we'd not use any metal fasteners.
Shown here are the old and the replacement piece. In the bottom right is the old foot - I suppose that's what it's called: the part that presses
down on the piece of wood you're carving - while the new foot has the green markings on it. We'll carve out a hole that matches the post in the upper left: the part the green arrow is pointing towards.
We used the drill press to start the hollowing-out process, then fellow Boot
Matthew transferred the new foot to the vice and began chiseling and rasping the remaining material out of the hole we needed.
I figured that my current favorite wood joint would be perfect here: a draw bore. You put the two pieces together, then drill a hole straight through them both. Finally, you add a dowel rod in the hole you've made.
Looking back, I think that drilling completely through both pieces of material was a mistake. To add the dowel rod snugly into this hole, we had to stick another dowel rod in the bottom to hold-in-place the dowel rod that would be used for the joint. Next time, we'll try to have at least some material remaining at the bottom.
We cut a wedge into the top of the dowel rod we would insert into the draw-bore joint, intending to force a wedge in there and assure a snug fit.
It may have been a bit of overkill, but we used the grind wheel to shave down this splint to the wedge shape we wanted.
Our first attempt let us know rather quickly that our wedge-slot was too small. We had to take it back into the shop and cut the slot just a bit deeper.
Matthew hammered the wedge in completely, and at this point we were both satisfied that it would hold as snug as possible.
We used a tiny hacksaw to trim the unused portion of the wedge off the top. Looks done to me...! We'll stress-test this new joint this week as we prepare some felled green wood for this winter's roundwood furniture projects.
And now for something completely different. Yesterday I was in the backyard garden, looking for tomatoes for our
Taco Tuesday dinner. A trio of ripe, lovely tomatoes were protected by this absolutely
massive spider...! I decided to look elsewhere. Maybe later in the week they'll have moved on and I can have a tomato sandwich or two.
That's all for now. Thanks for reading, and enjoy your day...!
