Gramercy Tools Bow Saw Kit: Sort of a Review

A couple of years ago I used the Lee Valley gift cards I got for Christmas to purchase a Gramercy Tools Bow Saw Kit.  I wanted it partly because of the limitations of my band saw (3" max. cutting height) and partly because I am a sucker for anything that I can use to build a tool at home (See plane, spokeshave).

The kit hardware consists of two handles, brass pins that go into the handles, and three blades.  There are measured and full scale drawings along with some construction notes that offer helpful advice but no step by step instructions.  The lack of instructions may take this out of the 'beginner' class, but it is still a pretty straightforward project.  I didn't see any drawback to not having detailed instructions.

Even so, I did go online and check out other bow saw builds and it did yield some useful information. The most significant item was actually a note that I had planned to ignore.  In the drawings the spot where the crossbar and the arms meet is curved.  In the notes it says "Since our saws are made on automated production machinery it's pretty easy for us to do.  If you are working by hand, squared up mortises, tenons, and faces are the way to go."  I, of course, took this as a challenge.  I could curve my shoulders as well (almost) as any machine.  What I saw online changed my mind.  A couple of people had tried it and got the curve wrong.  It didn't wreck the saw but it just looked wrong.  I decided to leave mine flat.

The handles that came with the kit were hickory but I didn't have any of that so I went with beech instead.  In order to make the cross bar as strong as possible I wanted it to be quartersawn. Fortunately my flatsawn beech was thick enough that I could get the crossbar out of it.  I marked the quartersawn grain on the board and cut along one line to avoid runout as much as possible.

Did I mention that I ran the bottom side of the board over my jointer first?  I did that so I would have a reference surface.  After that, I could do the rest of the squaring up with a hand plane.  Eventually I wound up with a very nice stick.  This may not seem like a big deal to you but I am still kind of new at using hand tools and making something flat and square is a big deal to me.

I followed the same procedures and made two more sticks for the arms, except I had to leave them flatsawn because of their width.  Then I glued photocopies of the full scale drawings on to them as a guide for cutting the rough shape.  Before actually cutting them out though I drilled the holes for the pins and made the mortises for the tenons on the cross bar.

  It was a lot easier to do this while everything was still square.  This was another thing I learned from the internet.  I like to think that I would have thought of this on my own, but...

The next step was to cut the tenons on the crossbar and check it for length.  I did this by putting the pins in the arms and installing a blade, then putting the crossbar in place and squaring one side.

If the length was right then the other side would be square as well.

Of course it wasn't.  If you've read my blog before you would expect that.  At least it was still too long.  A couple more tries and it came out right.

Once the crossbar was right I cut the arms out with my wife's scroll saw.  If I had already had a bow saw I would have used that, but then there would be no need to build a bow saw.

If you are good with a scroll saw you can get a pretty good finish from it but I need a lot more practice before I can do that consistently.  Fortunately I cut a little off the line which left me some room to smooth things out.

The next step was to taper the upper part of the arms.  I had expected difficulty in getting a nice, consistent taper but I used my block plane an was surprised how easy it was.  I just started near the top end and worked my way back, and was able to adjust the angle easily by changing where I started my stroke.

When it was time to move to the other side I put a wedge under the back end so that the first side had  support for the whole length.  After that it was just a matter of chamfering the edges and shaping the bottom end to finish the arm.

There is something about the process of shaping wood that I find to be deeply satisfying,  I can't really explain it, but using rasps and files to soften a corner or create a cove simply feeds my soul in some way.

The chamfers on the crossbar were not quite as straightforward because they were wider in the middle and tapered away as they approached the ends.  I made a template for the curve by marking a straight line on a piece of cardboard and then putting nails in separated by the length of the chamfer.  I then bent a strip of wood so that the bend matched the bend of the chamferand marked the curve.

I then cut along the curve and bent the cardboard along the line and marked the chamfers.

Then it was just a matter of chamfering to meet the lines.

The last part to make was the toggle for tightening the string.  The instructions were to turn a toggle and taper opposite sides, but I just made mine from a square piece of beech.

At this point all that was left was to assemble the saw and tension it.  Wait, where's the string?  If you remember the start of this post, there was no mention of any string in the kit contents.  Actually, part of the reason it took me two years to start building this kit was that there was no string with it.  For what I paid for this kit I really think I should have gotten some string.  You can buy the string separately on their website, but it still doesn't come with the kit.  As a woodworker, I think I would have rather had string than the handles.  I can make wooden handles.  By the time I was done building this saw I was pretty worked up up about the whole matter.   I was ready to trash Gramercy and the saw and everyone associated with it.

So what stopped me?  Well I went out and bought some string and actually tried the saw.  It was, to put it simply, a delight.  The saw is surprisingly light and nimble.  It cuts great.  It feels good in the hand.  All my angst about the string melted away as I made the first cut through some 2" thick beech.

It also gave me a chance to try out the new branding iron that I got for Christmas.

So, overall, I'm pretty happy with the saw.  I still think it should come with string, though.

Time to Do What You Do When You Don't Get Off the Pot

For some years now I have been, well, 'obsessed' may be a strong word, but very curious about building an infill plane.  It morphed from 'Can I do that?' to 'I want to do that' to 'I'm going to do that.'  It has morphed from a casual eye out for old, well seasoned wood to finding a source for O1 tool steel to a frantic search for anyone who would sell me C220 bronze.

Now that I have the materials that I need, the work can begin.  It's not going to happen overnight, though.  I have set a goal of 2 years to finish this thing.  There will be lots of other projects during that time as well, I hope, maybe even a couple of wooden planes.  There are a lot of things I have to learn before I can finish this, but there are no more excuses.

Some Stuff from the Holidays

When I took this picture the camera told me that the stormtrooper blinked.

I actually spent a fair amount of time at the lathe in December and I even have some things to show for it.  I suspect that most woodworkers have the same experience at least one December in their lives as they prepare gifts for friends and family.

I started the month by demonstrating turning at the Guild booth at the Sundog Arts & Entertainment Faire.  I  found myself with 5 hours of time to fill and I was determined to make the most of it.

The first thing I made was this little bowl from a leftover piece of Manitoba Maple.  It is finished with mineral oil and bees wax and measures just over 3 1/2 " across.

Next was this pen made from padauk and finished with Hutt Perfect Pen Polish.  After the pen I moved on to a small natural edge bowl.  I was almost done when there was a 'tick-BANG' and there were pieces all over the floor.  Fortunately there was no one watching at the time except for a couple of Guild members.  On to another pen.

This one was made from Alumilite casting resin, the 5 minute stuff, mixed with yellow dye and swirled with black.

With time winding down I moved on to what I thought was going to be a lidded box,  As I was roughing it out I stopped the piece of mountain ash I was turning to check my progress.

What I saw was this cool swirl of bark and the grain around it.  I was so taken with it that I decided to leave it the way it was.

When I took it home I drilled some holes in the top and stuck some tea lights in them.

After that I turned my attention to making my wife some Christmas presents.  I wanted to do something to help her out with her sewing habit, so I ordered some seam ripper kits from William Wood-Write,

Single ripper, closed, in Alumalite

Double ripper, open, Kingwood

Ripper & stiletto, open, unknown burl

If you've never seen one of these things before, let me warn you that they are nasty little weapons that would never be allowed on an airplane.  If your wife is mad at you, do not make one of these as a suck up gift.  If she's not in a good mood when you hand it to her you are taking a risk.

On the safer side, I also made her this bracelet.

It is made from maple and Indonesian rosewood.  I should have taken pictures while I was doing it because this thing was a struggle from start to finish, and I could have made a long blog post on this alone.  One thing I will talk about though, is the first of the problems I encountered.  Of course, when I cut the segments, I didn't get the angle right.  Fortunately I made my angle a little too narrow instead of too wide, so when I went to glue the two halves together I had to sand the inside corners, not the outside, to make them fit.

If you look at the maple piece that is vertical at the front, it looks the same as the others, but the one opposite on the inside is quite a bit narrower.  The tricky part was to stop sanding at the right point.  I guess I lucked out.

My wife was happy with the bracelet and and the seam rippers, although she did have a little constructive criticism about the rippers.  I will definitely make use of her advice when I make some more.

This is Why I Will Never Turn Pro

Okay, maybe not because of this box exactly, but it is one good example of why it would be a bad idea.

A lot of people dream about making a living their hobby.  Some, like my wife, actually give it a shot. Most do not.  Few really try, and few of those that do succeed.  I am not one of those.  Not that I have never thought about it.  There is a certain allure to the idea that I could make money doing what I love.  It would also be untrue to say that I have never sold any of my work.  So why am I so sure I will never make the leap?

Part of it is knowing my own limitations.  I do not work quickly.  That box above, along with a pen & pencil set I turned, was a thank you gift for a friend who did me a very generous favor.  It took me almost 2 years to get it done.  Paying customers would never be so patient.

Another reason is that I believe that working for yourself is really just an illusion.  If you want to make money you have to make what people will buy.  This means that you are making what they want, not necessarily what you want.  Right now I have made 3 of these pen boxes, although none of them are exactly the same.  If I had to make 10 the same it would become work.  If I had to make 50 the same it would be drudgery.

Freedom, to me, means being able to do what you want when you want.  Right now I don't have total control over the when, but I do control the what.  I am free to follow wherever my curiosity leads me and test my skills in whatever way I see fit.  If the price of that is that I don't get to spend all day every day in the shop, it is balanced by being able to enjoy the time that I do spend there.

Down the Rabbit Hole

So on my last post I airbrushed that vase and I kind of got caught up in the whole airbrushing thing for a while.  Although it has nothing to do with woodworking, I'm going to show you what I was up to for the summer.  Some of it anyway.  Just the stuff that sort of looks like it was supposed to.

A couple of bags that I did for my wife.

The background was done by spraying onto a scrunched up plastic grocery bag and dabbing it onto the cloth.

Okay, so I do a lot of flowers.  I can because I'm secure in my masculinity.

These next two were copied from this video from YouTube.  The top one was first, the bottom one second.

I leave it up to you to decide which one was better or more accurate.

The fish scale effect was achieved by putting on an orange base coat and then airbrushing yellow through one of those mesh bags that onions come in.

Experimenting with neon effects.

This is kind of my grand opus.  There are still a lot of mistakes, large and small, but overall it came out pretty good for my skill level.

Airbrushing can be a lot of fun.  It also makes you look at things a little differently.  I find I pay more attention to the way light hits things now. The other day, for example, I was cleaning the bathroom and it took a lot longer than usual because I was spending a lot of time staring at the toilet.  It's all white, all the same colour, but the way light hits each surface allows the eye to tell them apart.  It's just not something I had ever noticed before.

I will be doing more airbrushing.  I'm definitely not done with it.  I'm going to keep experimenting and more of it will turn up on future pieces.   

Another Trip Outside the Comfort Zone

OK, I'm way behind in my blogging responsibilities, but I'm working to catch up.  Considering that I started working on this vase about... well... less than ten years ago (but more than seven), four months to blog about it isn't too bad.

This vase is the result of some more recent influences, especially from the Saskatoon 2014 Woodturning Symposium.  The emphasis there was more on surface decoration rather than turning techniques, and initially I was kind of disappointed with it because I thought that I would never use any of what I was learning.  I did check out Binh Pho's airbrush demo though because I had done some airbrush tattoos before and it is a lot of fun.

I started the vase itself all those years ago as a natural edge project.  It is made from birch and was originally turned wet to about 3/4" thick and left to dry for a while.  When I went back to it I found it had cracked so I filled the cracks with epoxy and thinned the walls a bit more, then let it dry a while longer.  When I came back to it again  the cracks were larger and more numerous.  More epoxy and I started to turn it again but this time it flew off the lathe when the base snapped.  I set it aside for a few  more years.

Fast forward to the 2015 Matisho Memorial.  I decided that I wanted to try some air brushing on something but I didn't want to spend a lot of time starting a turning from scratch, and I especially didn't want to cover a good piece of wood with paint.  This vase, sitting in the 'corner where projects go to die', was the obvious choice.

Even more epoxy, and this is what I started with when I got to Waldheim.  The first thing I needed to do was to put it between centres and turn the foot so I could grab it with the chuck.  In order to do this I needed a centre at the top end of the vase.  Fortunately I had a piece left over from a face plate turning (I am not a hoarder, I swear) that fit nicely inside and gave me a centre for the top end.

After I turned the foot I turned the bowl around and knocked off the natural edge.  I kept turning until I had this.

The next step was to cover it in sanding sealer and let it dry for a while.  While I waited I sketched out some flowers.

The numbers are there to show the stages in which the masking is removed from the vase.  When  the overlapping edges are outlined with black this helps to give the petals some depth and separation.  Once the sanding sealer had dried it was time to transfer the flowers to the vase.  For this, I used wax free transfer paper.  It won't interfere with the paint and comes in multiple colors so I can remember which color I was going to paint each flower.

I did my best to erase the parts of the flowers that were 'under' the other flowers but I wasn't 100% successful.  It didn't matter in the end anyway other than helping to keep my layers straight.

Before I started painting I had to make sure that the paint went where it was supposed to.  I covered the vase with frisket, a thin, clear, sticky backed film that cuts easily.  Because the vase tapered as it went I cut it into tapered strips and stuck them on.  Later I realized that, because I was painting the background in this step, I could have just covered the flowers alone and I would have saved a lot of frisket.

I painted the inside yellow to start.  It took a few coats to hide the epoxy.   I had been concerned that the epoxy would simply repel the paint but using lots of light coats eventually colored it over.  You can still see where it was if you look but it doesn't jump out at you as badly as it might have with other finishes.   After painting the interior I used a scalpel to cut the frisket around the flowers and peel away everything that covered the background.

The background consists of three layers.  The first layer is a translucent blue-green (viridian according to the bottle) followed by a thin layer of opaque yellow and finally another layer of viridian.  If you think it looks a little blotchy, it was deliberate.  The intention was to simulate an out-of -focus background of grass.  To be honest though, I really didn't pull it off.  The other thing I should have done before I painted the green was outline the top and bottom of the flowers with black.  This would have helped them to stand out from the background.  One thing I have learned about airbrushing is that everything looks like crap until you remove the masking.

  Once the paint had dried I re-applied the Frisket so I could paint the individual flowers.  At this point I got carried away (once again) and forgot to take any pictures.  If there is anyone who reads this blog, they must get frustrated by this habit of mine.  This time though, because the painting is the biggest part of this project, and because I don't need to make another vase to show how it was done, I'm going to recreate the process for you.

It starts with a drawing of a flower.  In this case I laid the frisket on top of the paper and drew the flower on top.  Then I used an X-acto knife to cut along all the lines.  Make sure to cut through the intersections slightly.  The numbers show the order in which the pieces of frisket are removed.

Remove the sections with the number 1 on them and paint lightly along the edges where they border other sections but not the outer edges.

Repeat the process for the number 2 sections, followed by the number 3(s) and 4's.  When you remove the 4's the only place you need to paint is right at the base where they meet the centre.

Now you can see some separation, some of the petals look like they are 'under' the others. The frisket is still over the centre and all around the outside.

The next step is to add some colour.  I'm not painting individual petals at this point, just trying to get a semi-even coat over the whole thing,

Now I have cut a piece of paper with a curve that starts with a large radius and tightens as it goes.  I lay it on the flower and try to line it up with a low spot in the top of the petal, then paint along the edge.  The goal is to get paint on both the paper and the flower.  Repeat the process all around the flower, changing the part of the curve that you use, or flipping it over, to add some variation.

When I did the vase this is the point where I stopped.  Since then though I have tried to get things to look a little more realistic by shading things to give them the appearance of light hitting the high spots.

Here is the finished product with the centre painted an the frisket removed from the outside.

I think I went a little overboard with the shading and the centre isn't as sharp as it should have been, but at least it still looks like a flower.  Here is a closer look at the flowers on the vase.

As you can see it didn't come out looking like a professional job but, like a lot of my stuff, it looks good from a distance.  The airbrushing was fun and there are lots of techniques to try.  It has kind of sucked me in for a while, and I will share more later.