THE MASTER

For some time I have been thinking about selling the pieces that I carve. When I started working in wood I never thought about selling any of my pieces. Over the years, I have given away many pieces to friends and family. Actually, I have made specific pieces for friends and family that I would give to them. Now, I am at the point where I have no more room to store or display the carvings that I have done. I have more ideas for projects that I would like to start but I have no room to display the pieces once they are finished.

It has taken a lot of thought but the first piece that I would like to sell is one that I call The Master.The Master is a special piece for me because it was one of the first pieces that I carved out of reclaimed wood. The wood was reclaimed from a privet hedge that I had planned to move because a property survey revealed that my property line was seven feet past the privet hedge. When I started to dig up the privet hedge I realized that almost all of the bushes were diseased and infected with parasites. In the end, I dug up all of the hedges and threw them away except one. The one hedge that I kept I have carefully nursed it back to health and it sits in the south east corner of my property. I kept as much as the wood from the other hedges as I could. I kept some of the larger canes and made them into walking sticks. I also kept most of the bottom stock and the roots of most of the hedges. It is from one of those roots that i carved The Master.

Here are some pictures of the completed carving. If you turned The Master upside down you would have the orientation in which the hedge grew.

By and large I followed the natural flow of the wood. I wanted to use the flow of the wood to express the energy that emanates from The Master. As I mentioned, the hedges had been damaged by parasites so there were holes and tracks that had to dealt with and incorporated into the carving. When I carved the face I wound up opening one of the holes in the wood. I could have left it but it gave me a feeling of negative energy instead of positive energy. Instead a took a piece of ebony and carved a patch to fill in the hole. To me, it gives the carving a sense of yin and yang, light and dark, a balance of positive and negative energy.

In the back of The Master, there was a long fissure created by who know what. Instead of trying to remove it through carving, I incorporated it into the carving. The idea being that The Master has so much energy that it is fairly bursting out.

The object that The Master is holding is a glass marble that I found while walking in the ravine near my house. I find so many objects in the ravine that I consider it to be a legitimate source of material for my carvings. The glass marble is very old, I have not seen one like it since I was a very young boy and that was some time ago. So I consider it to be an antique glass marble. Like a ball of light emerging from a period of dormancy in the earth, it is now at the center of The Master's energy or qi.

The top of The Master's head is a series of waves that reach up into space. It is a suggestion of waves of energy or fire. The Master is rooted in the earth. The dark wood of The Master's stand represents the earth. When you look at the arrangement of the grain of the wood is looks like the sedimentary layers of the earth.
The Master is firmly rooted in the earth. The position of his feet is a classic martial arts position to make one rooted or immovable. He reaches into the air emanating energy and fire shoots up from his head. He epitomizes three of the four elements: earth, air and fire.

The Master needed a solid base to stand on. I used a piece of south east Asian mahogany that I recycled from a packing crate. I sanded and polished the mahogany to high luster. I drilled two holes in the base and attached The Master's stand to the base.

There are some Chinese characters on the stand. The character on the left hand side of the sign means 'master' and the character on the right means 'great'. I used Chinese script that predates the Han dynasty which means that the script was used over 2,000 years ago. I like the ancient script, it is closer to the ideographic origins of Chinese characters.

 
I will be posting The Master for sale on Etsy in the near future. For those who may be interested in purchasing The Master I will be posting the link once it is on Etsy.

Baby Cradle Update #5

It is a great feeling to be very close to the end of project that took much longer than you had originally thought it would take. I have finished all the parts of the cradle and put it together. It is interesting to note that the manufacture of the two simple wooden washers took almost as much time as some of the other aspects of the project.

 I decided to manufacture the washers out of a left over piece of ash that I had used to make a small table several years ago that now sits in my office. It is extremely hard wood and will stand up for many decades without any wear. I cut the wood to size then carved each piece into a rough circle. It did not matter that they were perfectly round because no one is ever going to see them once they are in place. I sanded the washers as smooth as possible then applied cabinet makers wax to reduce any friction that there might be on the surface. In the picture above you can see that the washers fit nicely on the doweling that I used to tie the cradle to the frame. The washers will sit on the dowel between the cradle and the frame. The idea is to make sure that the cradle never comes in contact with the frame.

Everything is nicely sanded. The next step was to drill the holes on each end through the frame and the cradle then attach the dowel, the washer and the cradle to the frame. It sounded easy but it was tricky holding all the pieces together while I lined up the dowel with the cradle, the washer and the frame. But I finally figures it out and got everything together in the right order. Here is what it looks like.

The cradle swings nicely in the frame. It was a good idea that I waxed the dowel and the washer. The cradle seems to swing back and forth without any resistance at all. To make sure the dowel did not move I drilled a hole through the frame and through the middle of the dowel to hold it in place. Afterwords, I covered up the hole with wood filler.

All that remains now is to paint the cradle and frame. That part of the project I am giving over to my wife who does a much better job of painting than I do. So, the next post that you will see on the baby cradle will be the last one showing the freshly painted and complete cradle. I have to say that I am happy with the end result. It has turned out better than I thought it would.

Baby Cradle : Update #4

The cradle is complete, at least the construction of the cradle is complete. It took a bit of thinking and a bit of trial and error to get the correct angle for the support of the bottom of the cradle. In the end, I used a protractor to measure the angle of the side of the cradle then I adjusted my table saw to that angle. I tried a few test cuts on some scrap wood and fine tuned the angle.

Once I got the angle right it was just a matter of cutting the supports to length and gluing them into place. I had to do it in two stages because I do not have enough clamps to glue all four sides at one time. So I glued the ends on Saturday morning then glued the sides on Saturday night after the glue on the ends had cured during the day.

Once the supports were fully cured I put two wood screws in each end and three wood screws along each side. The glue alone should be enough to hold the supports in place but I always feel better if there is mechanical attachment as well. All that remained was to cut the bottom of the cradle to size, glue in place then hold everything together with half inch finishing nails; to hold everything together until the glue dried and cured and to add a bit of mechanical attachment as well.

I thought it would be a good idea to see how the cradle looks in the actual nursery where it will be located so I took it to my daughter's house tonight and took these pictures in situ.I think it look pretty good. It will look even better when it is assembled to the stand and painted.

Impressions of Nanning, Guangxi, China

Nanning is a city located in Guangxi China. Nanning. I refer to it as the wild west of China. It is about as far west and as far south as you can go and still be in China. I have been told that it you get on a bus in Nanning you could be in Saigon, Vietnam inside of forty five minutes. This gives you an approximate idea of where Nanning is located.

I go to Nanning (via Hong Kong) at least once a year, sometimes more. There is a company in Nanning with which I have business ties. I am obliged to visit and meet with them periodically. some people might see this as a hardship, others might see it as a fascinating adventure.

During my recent trip to Nanning in March I was invited to dinner at the Gui Jing hotel which was not far from where I was staying. In fact, I have stayed at the Gui Jing hotel, Guijing hotel, during past trips to Nanning. During  the meal i could not help admiring the painting on the wall of the private room where we were eating. I was a picture portraying an entourage on horse back. I love horses and any art portraying horses draws my attention. at the end of the meal I went to study the painting more closely. On closer inspection I realized that it was actually composed of several wooden panels. the figures were carved in relief and then painted. It is one of the finest carved panels that I have ever seen.

Baby Cradle : Update #3

It is a great feeling when you get to a major milestone in a project. this afternoon I assembled the frame of the baby cradle. It was a momentous step for me. I have struggled with this project and getting the frame together was a major milestone.

I thought that it was trial to make sure that the stiles were straight and snug and they were. The biggest test was figuring out how I was going to drill the holes in the side of the ends of the cradle that were cut at 30 degrees. I could not use my drill press unless I made a jig to hold the ends at 90 degrees to the drill. I ruled that out because it would take longer to make the joi than it would to figure out another solution. In the end I used the holes that I drilled in the sides as pilot holes to drill the holes in the ends. It was tricky and difficult but I got everything drilled, glued and attached with wooden dowels. I clamped everything together even though I probably didn't need to. I just wanted all the joints to be as tight as possible.

The rest of the project will be relatively easy. I need to attach the bottom of the cradle then attach the cradle to the frame. There is still some final shaping and sanding of the sides and ends to make sure that there are no sharp edges anywhere but that is minor compared to the rest of the project. Oh, and I need to create a key to so that the cradle can be made stationary.

The end is near!

Baby's Cradle: Update #2

I find it interesting when I make something the second time. The learning that occurred the first time significantly decreases the amount of time that it takes to make the thing the second time. This is true of the second side of the baby cradle. I spent more time thinking about how I was going to make the first side then I actually did making it. No, that is not exactly true. The cutting and drilling and assembly did not take a long time. The sanding of the stiles that were on size for the holes seemed to take forever.

After completing the first side of the cradle I thought about how I could expedite the sanding process. My Manufacturing Engineering mentality kicked in. Sanding by hand is not efficient. I needed something that would speed up the turning of the spindle without causing me to suffer carpal tunnel pain! I thought of using my electric drill. This would be an improvement because it would spin the spindles much fast than I could by hand and I could simply hold the sand paper. The problem would be holding the drill . I would have to create a jig to hold it while I sanded each end. That seemed to be more trouble than it was worth.

I discussed the issue with my wife. She suggested that instead of using the drill, I could use my drill press. Brilliant idea! It goes to show that when someone looks at a problem with a fresh set of eyes and an unbiased point of view they can come up with a new and novel solution that was not obvious to me before because I constrained by the idea of a drill press as being something that just drill holes.

I tried out the drill press by marking the distance that goes into the hole,5/8 of and inch and inserted that length in the drill chuck and tightened it. When I took the spindle out of the chuck the marks that were left would be hidden inside the hole. I reinserted the spindle inside the chuck. When the spindle was held firmly inside the chuck I turned the machine on and held the 60 grit sandpaper against the marked out end of the spindle. I counted out 30 seconds and stopped. When I tried to put the spindle into the hole it slid down to the bottom of the hole with gentle pressure.

It was a good fit. It took me about two minutes to sand each spindle so that it would fit into the hole. That is less than half and hour for all twelve spindles. It took over half and hour to sand each spindle by hand, six hours in all to sand twelve spindles. That is over 90 percent improvement in efficiency!

With both sides done, it should be a relatively easy task to complete this project.

Baby's Cradle : Update

I have finished one side of the cradle. It seemed easy enough in concept. The cliche, "the devil is in the details" was true enough.

It just looks like four pieces of wood with a bunch of round sticks placed evenly inside which is exactly what it is. It was the details that spun it into a long labored process. Cutting the frame to length and cutting the lap joints with my mitre jig was not difficult and did not take a lot of time.

The problem started when I drilled the 3/8 inch holes for the the 3/8 inch stiles. The fact that this might be a problem did not occur to me until I tried to fit the stiles into  holes that that are the exact same diameter. They didn't fit. I had to sand each stile until I could just slide it into the drilled hole then assemble the entire frame and glue it all together. The sanding took hours.

Tomorrow I an going to start the other side of the cradle. I some ideas that might expedite the sanding but  will have to see how effective the are. We will just have to see.

Sometimes we just fail to see the forest for the trees, another cliche but in this case, true.