experimentation

Using up random materials and trying out a new weaving technique yielded this rug. 24x52 inches/ 61x132 cm.
Die Ausnutzungen verschiedene Materie und die Ausprobierung ein neuer Webtechnik ergab Dieser "Trasmatta". 61x132cm.

Out with the old.

The complaint was that this old wooden clothes drying rack was staining the white t-shirts and underwear. I'm not surprised, it has been around collecting dust and grime for years.
I was going to just build a new based on the old one but looked around and found these plans.
The wood dimensions seemed a bit flimsy to me though. I used 5/8" dowels and 3/4x1 1/2" supports. I also decided to not go to the all the trouble of shouldering the dowels and just did everything with 5/8" holes. I figure that if the supports slide along the dowels too much I can always pin them with 1/4 pegs later. I also used 4' rather than 3 foot dowels.

It was a little tricky getting all the parts in the right places. But I finally got it right.

Now I have a fresh new and much roomier drying rack for the laundry room.

I just need to wash some laundry now, hang it to dry instead of using the machine, and watch those energy savings pile up.

After weeks of sulking...

...because I was told that my projects were too messy to be worked on out in the garden because it made it too embarrassing to have freinds over, I finally went in to the woodshop and began a project. I have been using a chair piled with pillows and folded up blankets to sit on while weaving. It's time to actually build a taller chair. This chair will be based more on the welsh stick chair, images, instructions for the adventurous, than a windsor chair, the style just suits me, personally better.
Several weeks ago I went to the log yard and picked up some elm that Joolz had set aside for me.
He harvests trees in Portland, mills them and resells them to be used for building projects. Yet another Portland "green" company, and totally to my liking.
He also had a nice piece of oak cut off that I also took thinking it might be nice for making crest rails. I unloaded it off the top of the car and split it out on the sidewalk.
Today I used the draw knife and shaving horse to rough out the legs. It's definitely not as nice as working on the shaving horse out in the garden, but it's an age old tradition to suffer for one's art;-D

The seat will be some 26"/66cm above the floor, a good 9"/23cm higher than most chairs. I've already determined that I would like the leg tenons to be a full inch/3cm in diameter where they pierce the seat instead of the 5/8" /1.6cm of the previous 2 chairs, chair 1, chair 2. This means that I will need a new tenon shaver as well. Based on my Elia Bizzarri tenon rounder and using a scrap of maple from building the face plate for my bench vise,( for some reason I never did translate that particular entry into english, if you don't do german, just enjoy the pictures). The blade will be a Kunz spokeshave blade. I'll let you know how it turns out. Using a taper reamer in maple is a bit of a task, but didn't take as long as I feared.

More later as progress warrants.

sectional beam warping

I know some of are very unfamiliar with how my loom is warped. I found a video on the Leclrec loom site. Just scroll down the page to the sectional beam warping video and click to play. it is a 15 minute video, though only about the first 10-12 minutes deal with the warping on.

Cool pig

When it gets this hot I have to do something to cool off the Ollie pig.
I put a wet towel over her and periodically spritz her with more water. She doesn't mind at all.
I tried the "pigs like mud" theory, no go. This pig doesn't even like her feet to get wet. Much less be smeared with mud. She is used to having something on her back though. After she grew too big and too fast for me to keep knitting sweaters for her, I made her her own blanket to be covered in when she went outside in the cold.
She has still not shed all of her winter bristles, she prefers to sport a Mohawk for a few weeks before shedding all. Unfortunately, where she has shed she is subject to mosquito attacks.
She has been living full time outside for the past 2 or 3 years. Convincing a 200 pound pig to go outside in the rain got to be too much of a hassle. She would go up to 32 hours before I could convince her to go outside. I decided it would be healthier for her to live outside and go potty whenever she decided than to live in the house and go only when I could force her to go outside.
She never peed in her bed when she lived in the house, but now that she has an outside piggy shelter.....

I have actually been doing stuff, even though I have not been posting.

I finally used up all the warp that I had wound onto the loom. I had a lot of problems though with the warp tension going more and more uneven as I progressed. Rather than saying that it was the inexperienced weavers fault, I decided that the 90 year old worn out loom parts were to blame and decided to replace this particular piece. The sectional warping beam.
I did not want to pay the price for Maple as was probably used for the original, so I bought Poplar. Milled it to size and nailed and glued it up.

I really wanted to do something more like the metal section dividers of the Lerclerc loom, but could not find anything readily available to make that happen, something along the lines of a large stainless steel fence staple.

I decided to go along with the original design until I find what I would rather have, retrofitting shouldn't be too much of a problem. So, 3/8" dowel sharpened in the pencil sharpener and then cut to length, x76. When was the last tiome one of you sharpened 76 pencils in a row?

A light sanding with 22o grit sandpaper, x 76.

And now it's time to quit and drink beer for the rest of the evening.

I did contact Clayton Boyer though, an incredible designer and builder of wooden gear clocks.
His wife is a fiber artist and he has designed some items for her. I challenged him to design plans for a specific piece that I would dearly love to have, but don't have the mechanical abilities necessary to design myself. A geared device that can twist 2 strands of rags together and, in the same operation, with the use of only one crank, then wind it into a ball. We'll see if he can come up with such a plan. If anyone can, it's him. He's a wooden gear and device genius.

That then leaves me with the question; "can I follow his plans"?