30/6/2014

A post on an interesting winding stick design on the Lost Art Press website, got me as far as to finally build a proper set. It has been on my list of things to do for quite some time, but given that my major project for 2014 is a 18th century workbench, there are a host of shop made tools waiting patiently to be designed and made. The first picture below shows the design that Chris Schwarz discussed in his blog last week. I liked the idea of the holes that helps to see the high corners when using the sticks looking into a light source. I have found that it becomes a bit of a challenge to see the far stick while looking towards a light source. I used a combination of the designs in the pictures below, which I found on the net.

 

I used beech and Kershout for contrast purposes. This piece of Kershout is incredibly hard to the point were I had a hard time to plane it, even with very sharp irons. I made two beech dowels which were glued and tapped through the centre of both sticks (pictured) to make it easier to located the sticks in the middle of the board being checked for wind.

Here I chiseled out small triangular areas to be filled with epoxy mixed with black acrylic paint. The idea is for the two triangles to make it easy to line up your sight down the centre of the sticks while using it.

I used the setup below to mark out the shape of the sticks on the end grain to provide me with a guide while shaping it by means of the table saw, hand planes and sanding planes.

Sticks after a confrontation involving my table saw.

The various gadgetry I have made over the years that attach to my assembly table amde it fairly easy to shape the sticks using a #5 Bailey Jack plane and a Nie-Nielsen small block plane (based on the Stanley #102).

Here I used the mentioned concoction to inlay the small triangles.

The final surface preparation were done with shop made sanding planes and sandpaper on glass.

 

A few coats of Tung oil followed by Wooddock and we have a set of je ne sais quoi-esque winding sticks. In the final picture you can see it hibernating in a custom made (by moi) leather sleeping bag.