Sticky situation

Not everything is about sharpening stones.


 Rice glue. Made some? Used any? Me either,but it has been in my mind to try it out for, ohhh, maybe 3 decades now. No time like the present, right ;-)?

This is NOT glue!

This is more of the recycled pine/larch material that I have been trying to use up before the winter rains hit and get everything in my under-deck lumber storage soaking wet. I am turning it into closet lining material, as I wrote about earlier. I am also turning it into...

Wood shavings!

I have been generating huge amounts of shavings lately. It gets mentioned by pretty much anyone who does a lot of woodwork using hand tools, but like so many things, it just never really sunk in. Working with hand tools generates VERY little dust! Instead, you just get progressively smaller units of wood.....like wood shavings. I don't have a wood stove in the shop (Whaaaaatt?), so if i don't conduct the occasional hygienic conflagration, I am swiftly overwhelmed by these wooden ribbons.

Hmmm, these look familiar. POCedar, walnut, white pine, african mahogany and pine/hemlock....I think. Blades are getting dull, too.

 By themselves, these are really quite beautiful and it seems a shame to burn/chuck them, but what are they good for? Depending on what I am working on, they range in width from 3/4" to 2-1/4". They are of differing thicknesses, gossamer thin and translucent, almost transparent, to as thick as a sheet of paper. Color, texture, shimmering surfaces, smooth and flat or undulate waves, each is different according to the species of wood and the tune of the plane itself. Surely (DON'T call me SHIRLEY!) there are people doing beautiful things with wood shavings. Google to the rescue!

Or not. Undoubtedly this is due to a lack of search sophistication on my part, but when I search for images of wood shavings, I get images of.....wood shavings. The thick, woody kind that work best as tinder for starting a campfire sort of shavings. So.....find me some images of wood shaving art. We'll open a gallery, serve wine, all of the important people will be there. The event of the year....

My thought is that these shavings are a perfect fit for paper (wood!) mache and it would be even cooler if we could use a glue that we make ourselves. Rice or wheat paste glues are about as simple as adhesives get.

That's good because here is where things get a bit vague, both in the reference material and in the photo documentation. This is intended to be a starting point for me and I just wanted to get it out there before I forget everything. So, this is going to suck, I know. Imagine that you are reading about something equally as simple, like, oh, making oatmeal. Except substitute the rolled oats with rice flour, and there you go. Rice glue! Yep, it is pretty much the same thing. There are a few points to be improved upon, but this actually works well. Just think oatmeal or, better yet, gravy!


So I look for recipes and I guess that this is one of those things that is sooo simple, it is just assumed that you have been making this stuff all of your life. Just like mom's! I, of course, want to find the ,most difficult and obscure recipe, deciphered from ages old scrolls.....but no love. I checked out...

 http://www.followingtheironbrush.org/index.php

If anyone will have a sophisticated and obscure recipe or procedure, these folks will. I just LOVE stuff like this. It really is helpful to see what is possible with skill and commitment. There is a rice paste recipe, but again, it is essentially a refinement of....

Take day old cooked rice.
Smash into paste.
Simmer.

Anyone who has had to scrub out a pan that wasn't adequately rinsed the night before will know how effective this simple recipe can be. There are a few improvements to be made, almost none of which I implemented.

Use sticky/sweet rice variety.
Simmer juuuuust until the paste transitions from opaque to translucent.
Add salt as a preservative.
Actually I did do MOST of this. Here is what I did do...

1. Heat 1 shy cup water to simmer
2. Put 1 T. regular rice flour in a jar with a lid, add a splash of water and shake.
3. Add rice slurry to simmering water and stir. It will only take a minute or so to thicken.
4. Keep stirring till the paste turns from opaque to aaaalmost translucent. This is tricky till you have done it a few times! 
5. Add salt (I used about 1 T.).
6. Will store at room temperature for 3-7 days, then stinks. Make more. Actually, it smells kinda strong right away when you make it. Weird, huh? I mean, it's just rice and water.

This took longer to write than it took to make. This WORKS! Want to make the best rice paste that the world has ever seen? Me too! Tell me when you figure it out...

The oldest recipes that I found say that the paste is strongest when the rice that is used is either cooked and allowed to sit overnight, or placed dry in water, and soaked for 3 days, THEN cooked. The paste should be removed from heat when it is about 60-70% translucent. Use sweet rice. Something to do with lower protein/gluten content...I am working on a Magnum Opus. Check back later.

How important is it to get it right?

Nerdtime! 

CONCENTRATION: 1 T. --Or-- 2 T. Rice flour

SALT: yes --or-- no

COOKING TIME: cooked --or-- not.
And
Barely translucent --or-- cooked for 5 minutes.

The point of translucency is hard to judge, so I first made a batch and just cooked and cooked.....do this yourself, if you are fussy and/or care. Think of it as acquiring a new skill. The sauce, I mean paste, will thicken within a minute. The transition point for translucency takes maybe 2 more minutes on med/low heat electric stove.  Once it goes translucent, that's it. No other perceptible changes aside from reduction/evaporation. I am easily bored and even I can sit and watch this one.

TYPE OF RICE: rice flour--or-- real rice........I used regular sushi rice, I didn't have sweet rice. That's for another day. I did make a batch the other day using old, pre-cooked rice. It WAS stickier!

SPECIES: rice --or-- wheat

So, time to answer the question "How important?"

For me and my quick-and-dirty testing.......not very. They ALL worked to stick paper samples together. Very well, I might add.

1 or2?

This is 2. I'm going with 1.

Cream of wheat or rice? Wheat was more full bodied, possibly more flexible and applied and dried thicker and slightly visible. Got too thick quickly , as it sat and the water evaporated, just like porridge. Good for paper mache.

Rice had better thin film characteristics, was very sticky and dried transparent but shiny. Worked well thin, but thick and gloppy was....awkward. Maintained its working characteristics pretty well. Rice paste is mixed with pigment and used like a tempura paint. Good glue for tight fitting joints.

Salt. Salt is said to increase the life of the glue by retarding bacterial growth. I felt that the salt had a positive effect on the workability and body of the glue. It seemed to make it easier to spread thinly and made it more "liquid". The "salt added" glues stayed fluid better than the "unsalted". I wonder how the salt affects the glue over time. Does it attract moisture, promoting degradation? Help maintain flexibility by absorbing atmospheric moisture....? Hmmmmm.

Real rice, a few days old, cooked and puree'd in the blender, 1 T. to 1 c. water, cooked for about 3 minutes, with 1 T. salt added at the end was my favorite. Just like mom's. You can whip some up in about 5 minutes, start to finish if you use flour. Flour works fine.

Why so few pictures? I had one picture showing the table covered with about 100 cups, with shreds of paper everywhere, and the cats running for their lives....yeah, they don't need to see that.

 PVA glue works well, is cheap and convenient. It is also hard to repair when it does break (all glue joints break), makes finishing difficult if you're sloppy and is plastic. There is soooo much plastic in our lives....This rice paste WILL NOT replace all of the other glues that I use, but it is fun and does work well.  You can eat it, so it's great for kids and projects, heck, it IS project.

Happiness is a sharp chisel -or- "Why it takes me so long to fix the porch"

I have been working on  what WOULD be a definite improvement for our house, if only I could just get the work done. This is how it goes (and a familiar story for any long suffering spouse. I love you, Renee!).


We need to improve the storage in our front porch, build shelves and the like. Simple, no?
No.
I got a good start but began to develop the sense of dis-satisfaction that comes from doing less than your best work. Even though it will be the inside of the closet and will be seen by only ourselves, and briefly at that, part of the fun of building for yourself is that you can afford to do what would cost a fortune the have built by others. AND I can do a better job anyway...we are soon to be buried under all of our cheap, throw away junk. We seem to work SOOOO hard to surround ourselves with ugliness that lessens our lives. I would much rather have the beautiful few things that bring me joy.

Staaaart over....

Empty closet.

Pebble finish concrete for wet boots.

Lined with recycled hemlock/pine. So here is what happened. I began lining the space and this old, recycled tongue and groove looks sooo nice when it is planed...

Ignore that glue bottle. In homage to Chris Hall-http://thecarpentryway.blogspot.com I made this WITHOUT glue (but did use screws. Shhhh.....). I made each surface an individual panel with rails and stiles, using splines to keep things aligned. This way, the horizontal slats can expand and contract with changes in humidity. Also, this material was nice enough to recycle once, so in the hopes that someday someone else might reuse this wood again, I made the panels easily demountable. Remove a couple of screws and the whole assembly breaks down into it's constituent components. I was going to just leave the slats bare, but they will stay nice longer with a quick shellac and wax finish....so it goes.

Nice, though. You can still see the occasional old nail hole. Ironic, I suppose. To get this nicely planed surface, you need to do this....

So. Two weeks of playing with new sharpening stones and we are all caught up.

I am so interested in using the new sharpening stones, particularly the ODC nagura, that I am testing edge durability using my favorite chisel. This has been sharpened using the Jnats with the ODC nagura and finishing with an ODC slurry on a granite tile. Full steel mirror and easy, IF you use the ODC nagura.

I like to round off the backs of my kanna so I have a nice large target to hit with the mallet. You hit the chiseled areas, NOT the semi-circle. Most of the old kanna that you see get all battered and split in these areas. This looks kinda frou-frou (namby-pamby, eh Renee?), and I am moderately embarrassed. It seems a bit like making your dog wear a sweater. I mean, I like scars as much as the next guy, and they are tools, right?

You make your plane all pretty, you put the sharp blade back where it belongs, then you adjust the iron. Make a test cut. And another. Adjust the gap.....shavings are hanging up....now they are curling forward instead of flying out behind....old redwood is only making strings, well, we'll try some port orford cedar, just to be sure....ok, good enough! Gee, there goes another hour!

Nice shavings, though. Not tooooo bad for using the chip breaker.....I bet I could get a better cut if I just used a single blade.....hmmmmm.

Ok, enough playing. Back to work. For real, this time.

Tool haul...or "An early christmas"

Today was a cold and rainy day, the first of many, being winter and all. My daughter Eliana stayed home with a cold and I didn't really feel like doing much.....how about having a little Christmas celebration?

I buy almost all of my tools from Ebay seller yusui (Buy from him, but don't bid against me ;-) and he is a really great guy. Far and away, he is the best that I have dealt with. Hi Junji!!!

I buy things, Junji puts them in the "Jason" box until they reach 2 kg., then he sends them on their way. He ships SAL at cost so a 2 kg package is under $30 with insurance and tracking, takes about 10 days and is a REAL bargain. Sometimes the packages have items that I bought months ago, so when I open them up, it really is like a Christmas surprise! I often stash the package in the basement for days like today when I need a bit more light in my day. Pictures will be EXTRA poor today because the light is so dim.

This lot of tools was better than most. I had forgotten about almost all of the items, which is fun. Even the best of pictures don't convey the true "substance", the tactile feel and heft if the tool. The color, figure and depth of the wood used, the shimmer of the grain, even the blemishes, paint splatters and "whoops!" marks that all used tools have....all tell a story. When I buy from a picture, I only have a very minimal sense of what I may receive. You get some stinkers, but more often I have been pleasantly surprised. I have been VERY fortunate, though.


Ai-jakuri kiwa-ganna (moving fillister plane for us westerners). Hida tool has one, but they call it a Jyogiai kiwa-kanna. I am sure one of these names is right, right?

Used to cut a recessed field or rebate on the edge of a board, the vertical knife blade cuts the wood fibers right before the horizontal blade clears the waste. Nowadays people use a router "The Screeching Beast".

Wow, these pictures are dim. This plane has seen very light use by someone who knew what they were doing. Most Ebay planes have been ridden hard and put away wet, as they used to say in Montana. The body of this kanna is of Japanese red oak which has a  very fine grain compared to American red oak. White oak is a bit nicer, but this is clean and well made.

The bottom of the plane has an inset piece of brass plate to reduce wear to the sole of the plane. The wing nuts are to adjust the fence, setting the width of the cut.

While not a REALLY high end plane, this is at the upper end of the quality ladder as evidenced by the more expensive ren-tetsu (wrought iron) used for the main blade. The black specks (goma) are spots of carbon that get trapped in between the layers of iron as it gets folded, again and again in the forging process. If you bend a piece of wrought iron to it's breaking point, you will see the fibrous structure that develops and gives wrought iron it's resiliency. 

Stolen shamelessly from http://www.dowsingarchaeology.org.uk

The wrought iron lends strength by absorbing shock to the brittle hard steel used for the cutting edge of the blade. Even better, it is soft and easy to sharpen! I wouldn't even THINK about using natural stones for sharpening a solid blade this thick, if it was all hardened to Rc 64!

Only a slight bit of hammer deformation at the top of the blade. Most of my kanna are hammered all to hell and I have to grind them back into shape. The manufacturers stamp matches some other planes that I have and are of a similar quality. Most of the Japanese tools that I see are actually made by small family owned blacksmiths under contract to a larger wholesaler. This is probably about the professional equivalent  of a Bosch or Delta. NOT a Black and Decker!

This kanna is pretty much ready to put to work, just needs a quick sharpening. Not that it is dull, by any means. That is another thing that I have been surprised by, when buying these old tools. Almost exclusively, the blades have been reasonably sharp. I suspect that it is indicative of a more traditional respect that the craftsman has for his tools than we usually see. If I go into an antique or used/junk shop here, I will pretty much guarantee that there won't be a sharp tool in the whole building. Don't even get me started! With too many Ebay sellers, it is clear that there is no pride.

Next tool.......

Sakuri-kanna 21 mm in width.

This plane too is in really great, used condition. 

Twin laminated blade design

Like a chisel, the hard steel is wrapped around the softer iron. 21 mm wide is just what you want for cutting a groove for a sliding door, one made from standard 3/4 inch materials. Hand forged. REALLY hand forged, not that cheap a** crap marketing speak that you see on the tools at Walmart.

For me, buying these tools are all about the details. This is a good quality plane, but again, not a super high-end tool. This is meant to be used by a professional carpenter. A standard shelf item, but still made by hand. The escapement for the wood shavings is hand cut, you can see the distinctive marks left by a curved knife. Both blades are laminated steel construction. The groove that cradles and supports the cutting blade is again, cut by hand tools. BTW, this is not some antique....you can still buy these, made the same way now as they were 100 years ago.

This is how the blades fit together. The upper blade is curved, or in this case bent, to provide positive contact at the cutting edge and also to create a wedging action.

The bend was formed by whacking it with a big hammer, haha! See the hammer/cold chisel marks on the upper secondary blade?

The blades both slide in from the bottom, secondary first, then the primary. You can barely see the primary peeking out of it's groove. These are a weee bit tight.

Yeah, that's a nail. When the carpenter bought the tool, either he or the owner of the store where he bought it, put this nail in to act as a stop for the blade. You see this on similar styles of plane.

 So, this tool is used for cutting grooves and that is it. You can get the blade set at the depth that you like, then carefully hammer a nail in, just behind the primary blade and it will act as a registration stop. That way, each time that you remove the blade for sharpening, you can just pop the blade back in and not have to spend too much time fiddling around getting the depth set juuuust right. As the blade wears due to sharpening, you just give the nail a little tap and...back to work. Simple, practical, not too pretty, but then this isn't some bookend or wall hanging. It is a TOOL!

You can also see in the photo above that the edges of the plane body were beveled using a hand plane. Anyone who has used a block plane to cut a chamfer on a curved corner will recognize the marks on the rounded front of the tool, just under the nail. The mouth of the block plane was wide (as they often are) and the blade dug in, causing that faceted appearance. It's the details that make life interesting.

Sometimes a dragon will study math, as it's father meditates with tools.