Author Archive | Nic Westermann

Fishing

By Nic Westermann on September 6, 2015 in Tips

I started writing a long post explaining the minutiae of my working practices with regard to quantity production, a weighty tome provisionally titled ‘ Quantity v’s Quality’ however before it was finished Lee Stoffer posted a video I found truly uplifting, it reminded me why we chose to live in rural Wales. This seemed a much better model to base a post on; my unfinished one was largely a list of processes I didn’t approve of and at points seemed like a bit of a rant; it is so easy for a blog to morph into a series of tirades, especially when comments are disabled. So I have ditched it for something more positive.

I have been meaning to change my profile picture for ages, last one was a hangover from my old site when I sold ornamental ironwork, at shows dressing up to look rustic was more important then. I couldn’t find a photo I liked until my son Jude took this picture of me fishing.

This was taken on a rock mark I have fished for the last 25 years, the water is fairly shallow and the best fishing always seems to be on a rising tide just before you are pushed back off the ledges, in this photo there is about 5 minutes before it is time to move, in the video you see Ade a couple of minutes after he should have moved back. Try as I might to find a fitting metaphor to tie this in to my tool making, I can’t, but its a truly resonant experience for me.

Lee’s Video:

This is the sort of work life balance I aspire to. But more than that the fishing has a much deeper meaning for me than just a leisure activity. If you look at it as purely a means of gathering dinner it was a pretty poor use of time for three adults ( although we looking up the price of having a line caught Bass that size sent to us – £45!) If we wanted to maximise our catch we should have bought in the best bait possible, hired a boat to take us to more reliable marks, and fished multiple rods or baits. A still more efficient way to put food on the table would be to buy to not fish at all and buy it all in.

This mark was chosen largely because it is a hike to get there, which means that we get the beach to ourselves. The view from the cliffs as we arrived early at low tide made my heart race a little faster. I know this beach well and collecting bait is not difficult, there is always something suitable, but a bonus spider crab and a surplus of prawns meant we also had some food sorted out before we even started fishing. The tide turned and as the water rose the chances of a fish increased. This mark is not that consistent and however perfect the conditions seem you can never guarantee a fish, which made the bass Lee caught, his first ever fish, even more special. The hike back over the cliff is sometimes a bit daunting but the completely different view of the beach at high tide was again a joy. To a large extent this is the approach I have taken with my tool making; its not the easiest nor the most financially rewarding but is the most fulfilling.

Summer Plans

By Nic Westermann on August 12, 2015 in courses, Shows, Tools

This Spring I decided to have a quieter summer, a chance to spend more time with my Family, so no bookings were taken for any of my usual Summer shows, and it felt good to know I wouldn’t be spending the next few months on the road. Then an email from the States arrived inviting me to Maine to teach a course and put on an axe making demonstration at Lie Nielsen Toolworks. I went over with my daughter Jenn for the first two weeks in July. I would have put a blog post up about this but when we got home we promptly lost the memory card with all our photos on. We realised that a lot of what I had done had been duplicated, I forged an axe with Roy Underhill and images of that popped up all over the internet, but there were a lot of images that I thought would never been seen again so I was so pleased when the card finally turned up a few days ago.

I spent most of my time working in this shop when I was at Lie Nielsen- these two guys, referred to by everyone as the Georges were great, George Stevens on the right and Old (!) George on the left. This was the prototyping workshop, not production and was filled with wonderful old machines, lots of cast iron, hand cranks and exposed pulleys and gears. They were extremely welcoming and helpful, I was concerned as to how they would respond to me turning up and making lots of noise and mess in their workshop. Old George helped me with some cutting and welding and at first was a bit bemused by my seeming inability to measure anything – ‘ I need 10, or 12 at about…. this long ( wave of my hands)’ but after a week took in in his stride.

Another slightly stilted photo of me, this time with Peter Galbert, behind us is the smoking detritus of a Lobster bake, lobsters and clams steamed in seaweed over charcoal. A fabulous evening at the open house put on by Tom Lie Nielsen, more about that in another post. It was so informative meeting Peter, we talked tools and bevel angles and immediately clicked; it was great to speak to someone with the same mindset as to how tools work. When I finally got back into my workshop I applied some of the theory that he had described in the use of his Travisher to a Drawknifelike design I have been toying with for the last two years, I had to re-vist my A- Level physics and draw out forces diagrams but all was clear and a couple of bends with the Oxy Propane torch and the tool was transformed. And yet it flies directly in the face of what we discussed about Drawknife theory in Maine! I got a copy of his book Chairmaker’s Notebook and I highly recommend it, doubt I will ever make a chair, but now want to.

A couple of weeks after we returned I had another email from Deneb at Lie Nielsen. They needed, at pretty short notice, tooling for courses that Peter Follansbee and Jogge Sundqvist were teaching. These orders will take a lot of time, but it seemed churlish to refuse, I have met Jogge a few times and know that he uses my tools, and Peter has been very vocal in his praise for my work and was keen to have my gouges, twca cams and adzes for his bowl carving course, all these tools are handled. I make all my handles from green wood and it has been nice to spend some time in my workshop with clean hands.

I have a good stock pile of straight green ash and although it would be quicker to buy in copy lathe turned handles that is not the way I want to work. It also gives me a chance to use my tools in a production setting which tells me a lot about edge holding and handle design and comfort. By chance I had lent most of my tools to a friend and the only axe I had was the one pictured, it was kept really for historical reasons as my designs have moved on from this early example, but I was really pleased to get re acquainted with it. I would normally let them dry naturally before a final fit and finish, but time is extremely short and currently the micro wave is working at hard as I type this; every two minutes the machine pings and my youngest shouts out ‘Dad! Dinners ready!’ in a few weeks she might tire of this joke, but currently it is still fresh.

In light of this and other commitments I have- A course at Barns, a run of three shows in September and a Family holiday squeezed in I have taken the decision to shut my online shop for a while, it is no secret that I have difficulty keeping up with stock at the best of times but having a completely empty shop or turning up to shows with no stock to sell makes no sense at all. I have, I suppose technically left it open so you can view what is on it but have reduced the stock levels to zero, I did also put all the prices to zero to make it obvious that no purchase could be made but the site then said ‘ This item is free!’ so I reset everything to £999 as a further deterrent to people trying to make a purchase. On a positive note not having the shop open has brought home to us just how much time is spent packing and answering emails. Hopefully I plan on using this time to put up some more blog posts: My trip to the States, some thoughts on my current working practices and ethics, and plans for the future, including axes and adzes.

Twca Cam Handle

By Nic Westermann on April 24, 2015 in Handle making

I get asked about these often, they really are very easy so just a few pictures, as my spoon blades are are forged with a round tang as well this method is directly applicable.

Roughen the tang section that you want sunk into the handle with coarse paper. All the blades are left with the final polishing compound on as this protects against rust but a wipe down with some solvent will help to keep thing clean during the handling process.

Drill a hole that the tang will fit into. I get it as straight as possible but if it is slightly out of line would advise rotating the blade until you get an orientation that suits you , I have heard from some people that a leading edge is desirable, others have said trailing.

I always seal the handle with oil first that way any excess glue won’t stain the handle. Then mix up some epoxy and dribble it into the tang. let it settle to the bottom of the hole for a few minutes.

If you judge it perfectly when you push the handle in you will get a nice fillet of epoxy showing. Remember it does soak into the wood and shrink slightly on drying so if you wipe it off flush you will probably end up with a crater when it is set. if you have put to much in wipe it off with a tissue as it goes in.

Check you you are happy with the orientation, the put aside to set. Another coat of oil and you are done.

I am off about to leave for Barn’s Green Wood Guild to teach a course, hopefully there will be time to put together a quick video on how I sharpen and explain the edge geometry on these curved blades.

Harrogate Power Tool Show.

By Nic Westermann on November 25, 2014 in Shows

A few photos from the Harrogate Power Tool Show, it is a show I enjoy immensely. It often seems that Greenwood workers view power tool users with suspicion and vice versa and I don’t deny I get great pleasure from wheeling large logs into the event then spending three days reducing them to bowls with only hand tools. I was next to a CNC carving stand, you scan or program your design into a Laptool and the software drives a mill that does the carving for you. However there is never any hint of animosity or friction and I had a fantastic time, my only regret was that I did the three days by myself and didn’t have time to go around the show properly, not many photos either. Here is the poplar bowl I roughed out over the three days.

When I cut scalloped the ends of the bowl with an axe I was amazed to find the the chipping came away almost intact despite it being endgrain, here is a section.

Generally though all the work was done with adzes, I used a two handed one for the roughing it was surprisingly quick to do this way, and I had time to put a handle on a lighter adze that was then used for finer shaping although the finishing cuts will be done after it has dried. The one in the picture is a bit of a beast at 1.3kg ; I use much heavier hammers but for an adze this seems to be right at the limit of what I can use comfortably single handed.

I also had time to finish off and fit the handles on a set of Gouges that I have been wanting to make for a while, hopefully they will prove strong enough to be struck, although increasingly I am being won over by adzes, I can’t imaging using gouges to remove large quantities of material any more.

And finally, on the first day, before I had started the Sales director from the Robert Sorby stand came over, and said that I should really watch these great videos on carving that he has seen on you tube, apparently there is a guy in America that carves bowls and cups just with handtools, Alexander Yerks, it is a small world.

International Bowl Carving Conference ’14

By Nic Westermann on October 28, 2014 in Greenwood carving, Shows

A few weeks back I invited a few friends over to carve some bowls from the large poplar that I currently have access to, I had forged some tools that needed handling and then testing. We started with this log, it had the potential to give a bowl of 22″ across.

The first cut revealed some very interesting looking figuring.

This was then split and a circle drawn on; we made circular bowls, however on reflection I think one reason to carve rather than turn a bowl is the freedom to make a shape other than round.

We shaped the inside first, the weight of the blanks made clamping unnecessary, Steve had brought an specially ground axe that he used to great effect for both the inside and outside of he bowls, the technique at first seemed odd, as he was trying to break chips away; this looked like he was miss hitting and as I spend a lot of time in my forge trying to ensure accurate square strokes I have to say I found it slightly disturbing despite it being obviously effective. The clincher to my absolute condemnation of this technique is that the workshop is still sullied despite three sessions to clear up the chips he fired far and wide so effectively.

I put a longer handle on my heaviest adze head and this proved pretty effective at both the inside and outside of the bowl.

Obligatory fruit shot.

We also went trophy hunting.

Steve put a larger handle on his GB adze, I tidied up the bevels a bit on my linisher.

I didn’t get much bowl carving done, but did manage to fine tune these adzes.

So a great few days; I learnt a massive amount just watching; found out some very interesting things about adzes- which will be the subject of my next blog post. Didn’t have the time to try out the big axes, but the week after I did set aside the time to carve a large (round!) bowl, it is now drying and I will be forging and trying out new tools to finish the inside. Anja Sunberg sent me some images of Swedish style scorps that look intriguing, or maybe some specially shaped gouges, if I can justify the time, both.

Knife handle making – using dowel

By Nic Westermann on October 2, 2014 in Handle making, Tips

I have been trialling this method of knife handle making for a while now, the dowels will be for sale on the site soon but for the moment any Sloyd ( small/ standard/ laminated) blade will come with one for free. The straight edged blade is another pattern that I used to make that may well make an appearance on the site. I would advise taping up the blade for safety, I haven’t for clarity.

I make them in a couple of sizes, a smaller dowel still will be needed for my detail blades, still working on those. This is the sort of fit that we are after. It is possible that the slot might be a bit tight on some blades. My approach ion the workshop would be to grind the tang down to fit, but another option is to sand or carve down the inside of the slot until the blade goes in without spreading the arms of the dowel.

Drill a suitable hole, 10mm in this case, in an oversized piece of wood, I used cherry. You want a few mm protruding from the handle at this stage. If the dowel gets stuck you can put the blade in and rotate and whilst gently pulling. Check that the blade is roughly in line with the handle, if it isn’t try rotating the blade or dowel, if this doesn’t help then your hole isn’t straight and you need to start again. When you are happy with the alignment mark the blade and dowel so they will go back the same way ( I know that if the tang was perfectly straight and the slot centralised this wouldn’t be necessary, but it doesn’t hurt)

When you are happy with the fit, glue the dowel in place, use enough epoxy to get a good joint but not so much that it fills the slot for the blade. Wedge the end of the dowel open with a scrap of wood, best to make it narrower than the dowel or it might get glued to the sides of the hole.

Sand down the tang of the blade, this will make a better key for the epoxy. You can see that the shoulders on the blade are not aligned, the shoulder at the spine needs to be recessed into the handle, leaving the edge shoulder will be slightly proud.

When the glue is set the blade is held in a soft jawed vice ( or a standard vice and the blade wrapped in cardboard. The handle is hammered onto the tang, it should only be a tight fit as the shoulder is being driven in, if it is tight earlier on then it is possible some epoxy has got into the slot; heat the tang gently over a flame and try again the epoxy should soften enough to allow you to get the blade in, it will grab as it cools, so pull it out and and sand off any epoxy stuck to the blade. You should end up with a flush shoulder like this, the handle is left oversize to reduce the chance of it splitting, but if you are worried you could remove some of the wood with a needle file or alike.

Check the alignment of the tang, and mark the centre lines of the blade.

Pull the blade out, if it is stuck you can hammer carefully on the front face of the handle whilst holding the blade in the vice. I then roughed out with an axe, using the x as the centre for the butt of the handle.

I then shape finally with a knife including both ends of the handle, and give the handle a coat of oil to stop the glue staining the wood. Then run some epoxy into the slot, let it settle to the bottom , push the blade in and ideally you should see epoxy drive out of the slot just as the blade goes up to the shoulder, if glue comes out too early I pull the blade out and wipe some epoxy off the tang and try again. If there isn’t enough I either add more to the slot or if it is nearly there run a bit into the gaps down the sides. Wipe with a tissue to get a neat fillet. The woods don’t match that well in this case, but the joint is sound.

Carving The Diet Spoon

By Nic Westermann on September 21, 2014 in Greenwood carving

A little tongue in cheek photo story:

An unhealthy snack tempts the unwary.

Not a very good picture, but as most people know Potnoodles are better eaten after dark, the spoon is unused and you will have to take my word that although there is decoration in the bowl it is flat.

Add hot water, stir, leave two minutes then stir again.

better image in daylight.

Mouth feel is ruined, plus the spikes grip the ‘food’ , so eating is difficult and unpleasant- the perfect diet spoon!

Actually this is a spoon carving technique I first saw applied to a carved toad, the characteristic warts were formed in the same way, this is rather fun but not useful application. Plans are afoot for a more sensible version.

New Stock of Carving tools

By Nic Westermann on September 21, 2014 in Tools

With the last outdoor show of the season done and stock on my site built up I was able to make some tentative runs on the tools shown above , nothing really new but a few little tweaks and some older designs that customers have been consistently asking to be put back in production, hopefully I will be able to keep up, although I expect the run up to Christmas to be testing.

I spent some time today photographing these carving tools for adding to the website, something I find a real chore. They have just gone up on the site, it really has been a hectic summer, I even uncovered a small cache of skew chisels made in May that were never uploaded.

Planning on forging axes and adzes this coming week, a couple of larger ones for me to try out on some Poplar that looks like it could make superb bowls, then a concerted effort to make inroads into my axe and adze order list.

Cygnet handle

By Nic Westermann on July 6, 2014 in Handle making

Another tutorial on making and fitting a Cygnet handle, on my smallest bowl gouge, the Cygnet. This does not come with a ferule as the shorter length and handle means that extra reinforcement is not needed, it also means there is less chance of the tool bruising the wood you are working on.

My starting point was a gouge I forged as a demo at Bodgers Ball; not quite the same as my production ones ( on reflection this sounds rather grandiose to me, I still forge them all by hand and eye) however the principles are the same. I chose an oversized piece of dry cherry for the handle. I would recommend taping up the blade for safety and to protect the edge, but haven’t in this sequence for clarity.

I then measured the length of the tang and diagonally across the corners. I Drilled a hole in two stages ( diameters) that was fractionally longer than the tang and matched the taper on the tang; The tang dropped in this far:

Next the brutal bit; I held the gouge in the vice and hammered the tang flush to the shoulders. Padded vice jaws would have been preferable.

Then I marked the centre line of the gouge to be certain that the handle would line up with the gouge when it was finally fitted together.

The Cygnet handle was tapped off and roughed to size with an axe, using the cross as a reference for the butt of the handle. When driving the tang in for the first time I leave a lot of excess wood around the hole to reduce the likelihood of spitting, but once the shoulders of the tang have been set in it is safe to take it down quite fine.

I tend to rough to octagonal with the axe but finish to 12 sides with a knife, this seems like a nice balance between facets that are crisp but not too sharp. The butt should be left pretty smooth though to reduce the onset of blisters, I then oil the handle trying not to get any inside the hole.

Here you can see how the mismatched shoulders have been driven into the wood, this was not a very good forging, current gouges have much more even shoulders, however when it is all glued up it won’t show. Note the tang has been roughened with coarse paper.

Epoxy is run into the tang hole, allowed to settle at the bottom then the tang is inserted. A small amount of glue should be driven out of the hole, the amount shown is about right when the tang is pushed home fully- this is quite easy as the glue lubricates everything , if it looks like to much is going to come out, take out the tang, wipe the glue of it and reinsert. Wipe of the excess glue from the handle and when the glue is set apply another coat of oil. Pre oiling the handle ensures that the epoxy won’t stain the wood.

Bowl Knife Handle making

By Nic Westermann on May 6, 2014 in Handle making, Tips

A quick tutorial as to how I fit the handle on a bowl knife; there are lots of ways to do it and a couple of jubilee clips would do fine, but I like the finish this method gives. It is a bit over the top though, very much belts and braces.

Starting point in this case was cleft dry ash, I left facets on for better grip.

I draw around the blade.

I cut a rebate for so the blade is inlet flush with the handle. I found a chisel easiest for this job.

I then screwed the blade in place, notice proper slot head screws, I have a stash of these but they are increasingly hard to find.

I then took it apart, epoxied everything in place.

When it was set I gave it a quick sand to remove any high spots and started the whipping. First cut off 6″ of thread and put it to one side, you will need it later. It is a bit fiddly to get catch the loose end, you also don’t want to start to close to the end of the handle. Once you have got a good start of 4 or 5 wraps you can cut the tag end down.

I only had very fine cotton so it took a while to reach the end of the blade, I then whipped in a loop of the material I had put to one side earlier. after 4 or 5 wraps cut your thread and pass it through this loop, pull on the two ends and your whipping will pass under the earlier threads, cut the end flush with a knife between the wraps.

I then added a thin layer of epoxy as I was concerned that if the thread frayed it would all unravel. Also want to make sure the thread didn’t come of the front of the tool. The epoxy soaked in and didn’t leave a glossy finish. A coat of oil to seal the wood and it was ready to use.

What I do like about this method is that the fixing is very low profile and so less likely to foul on the inside of a bowl in use.

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