Barefoot Made Woodworking Tools

 Made of beautiful rare and exotic woods, these are handmade tools that I created for my own use.

Sometimes when you've got to have the right tool...you've got to make it yourself!

The handles are all my own work.  The darker, richer woods are Jatoba.  The lighter, creamy flecked wood is Fiddle back Maple.

I even work on the blades as well.

The Real Last Step in Woodworking

So you've toiled away on this project for weeks.  You've gone through design, buying the materials, building and finishing it.  But you aren't really done yet.

If a project is built and no one has seen it, does it really exist?

You want to share your work of course.  So you snap a quick picture of it like these.

And it's just doesn't look like you see it. 

Here's the truth of it.  The camera can do a lot. . but it's just not as good as the human eye.  It needs some work for that lens to pick up exactly what you see.  So help it out.  Give it some more light to start with.  Both of the pictures above were taken with a flash and you'll notice all it did was give a spotlight effect centered on the piece.  With more light on the whole thing, the flash won't be needed and lighting will be even.Each of this pictures also had a second problem.  The one on the left was too close.  You can't really make out the whole piece because the edges are lost.  Try to include the whole piece.  Now sometimes, like in the case of that piece, there isn't anywhere to back up enough to get it, but do you best.

The picture on the right should be cropped on the sides - something that will have to happen afterward as the whole piece is so tall.  But I'd also recommend that it be taken on an angle.  Because it was taken head on like this, it's hard to tell the real size and shape of the piece.  We only see a flat front.  While an angle is much more appealing and will show the sides/ depth of the piece.  

Here's the improvement for this one: 

It didn't take much of an angle to show the piece better.  And better lighting helped - though we still have a slight hot-spot from the flash. You'll also note that showing the piece in use helps the look of it a lot.  We get a better sense of the size and shape of it with the trophies inside.

These beginning tips will help, but I recommend that you take the time to learn a little bit about photography to make your photos even better. 

For more help check out this blog:
http://www.photo101tips.blogspot.com/

It IS easy being GREEN!

Ok people here we go….I am so tired of hearing about ‘going green’ what about simply sound practices?

Most shops buy cups to mix stain in….I save my soda cans, cut off the bottom and have a cup.  After I’m done using it, I send it to the recycling plant.  

Most shops buy bottles to properly store stains after mixing them.

 Did you know that soda bottles (the plastic ones) are resistant to acetone, lacquer, thinner and basically every other chemical used In the common wood shop?   I’ve known this for years and use them all to store these items.  This saves money for the shop and reuses (recycles) these ‘throw away’ products giving them a second life before I send them to the recycling plant.  I pay for them once and use them twice.

Lumber.  I have a ‘firewood pile’ in the shop.  It’s all the scraps from projects worked on.  I even draw from it all the time in the shop if I need a small piece for a moulding , test piece, peg or dowel etc, etc. Then, as a last use, when the pile gets too big I take it out camping with me and…firewood it is (cherry makes some fine tasting marshmallows btw).  I’m currently using the sawdust in the shop to store my olive tree slabs to dry them for my Master’s Project.  Said and done right now only about 3% of all lumber coming into the shop ends up in a landfill.   Judging from the 17 other woodshops outside my door, other shops seem to average about 10-15%.

Rags come from friends, neighbors and old work clothes.  I haven’t bought a rag in the entire history of my shop.

Glass/aluminum are used whenever and wherever I can.  10yrs ago I bought aluminum bottles for my water out camping (the kind you can see in every environmentally friendly hand today)….all my friends said I was crazy and bought lexan bottles.  Mine are all still in use and all of theirs are now in landfills.

GLASS! The miracle product!  It needs no recycling! Hey people…it’s a ROCK it started a ROCK and it’s still a ROCK and it will return to being a ROCK when humans are all dead and gone from this planet!  There is even an entire beach in northern California, known for its beauty, that’s totally made of glass shards due to a now defunct glass factory located nearby.  It’s all been rounded by the sea and re-deposited on the beach.  And study after study cannot find any detrimental effects to the environment…it’s a ROCK people!

Am I an eco nut?...not on your life.  However common sense and a general care of where and how I live goes a long way towards being green.

Musical Grade Fiddleback Maple for a Music Box

A board with this kind of figuring is a rare piece.  You can either pay a lot of money for it or search through piles of lumber and hope to get lucky.

I found this beautiful piece a while back . . and I keep it for special uses only.  But a project like that great Heart-Shaped Wedding Ring Music box is perfect to show this off.


Painfully, I had to cut into it.

A Woodworking Tip:  When you're working on a piece that you are going to turn as a whole, but that will be in two pieces again when done (as with a heart that will open in half), glue two blocks together with a piece of paper in-between.




This will let you turn them together so they match up, but will also let you separate them easier on that seam after they've been shaped on the lathe.  If you don't have paper/ cardboard in the middle, the glue will seep into each half and it will be difficult to separate them in a straight line down the middle.  This way you are mostly having to take away paper when you are separating them again.

Warning: When gluing together this way, if a tool grabs onto that seam it can tear it off of the lathe sending wooden blocks flying.  Turn cautiously with light cuts.




It's such a special project, even my glue bear is all dressed up!

You'll see I cut enough to make 4 of the heart portion of this box.  This allows me some room for difficulties in turning or hollowing the piece out.  Things happen and you don't want to have to start over.   So instead I'll bring each one up to the same level together and hope to have 4 when I'm done.

Peanut butter and cheese whiz jars

For me the repurposing is as follows: I will be making an old time tool box tote, sized to hold 10 large peanut butter jars (2 rows of 5).  These will be used to hold all of my various sized dowels.  Maybe even some biscuits, if I ever decide to get that technologically advanced. 

I use aniline dyes.  In my opinion there’s nothing better, but that’s for another blog.  My problem is, that they keep changing the packaging.  Making it impossible to make one storage device to hold all of the dyes.  So my fix is Cheez Whiz jars.   I’m glad I love the stuff.  They come with a rubber gasket and are made of glass, making them both clear and air tight. 

Where do ideas like this come from?
My grandfather used to have hundreds of baby food jars nailed to the underside of 2x4s all over the garage.  They were filled with nuts, bolts, this and thats.  Why is it that our grandfolks would repurpose everything and never throw anything away.  But we seem to think that I would have to go buy special jars to hold all of these things, instead of simply using what the grocery store was kind enough to give me along with the food I paid for.  This is one of the many lessons I learned from my grandfolks.  Hopefully some of you out there are young enough to learn the lesson from me.  Yeah trash is trash, but there’ s no reason to throw away perfectly good stuff just because “it has the wrong name painted on it”.  

How to distinguish Red Oak vs. White Oak?

#1 Way to do this: read the sign over the stack in the store

#2 Color: Red Oak is red, with some white streaks.  White Oak has a yellowish grey tinge to it, with white streaks. 

#3 White Oak is heavier

#4 Now that we have all of the “DUH” answer out of the way, here is a neat trick.

Find a smoker.  They can blow smoke into the end grain of White Oak and it will travel down the veins and arteries of the wood.  I have had it travel up to 3 feet through White Oak.  Red Oak, the veins and arteries tend to be more clogged and I’ve never had it travel more than 5 inches.  So when you find the squirrely piece that really could be a little too heavy be Red or maybe too dark to be White, find a smoker.  This is a sure fire way to tell.