While this year has been a downer for some and a good year for a few… We have survived comfortably.

The isolation has been an added weight to my mind, yet I always spend most of my time alone any how… (wife at work, kid at school, friends far away)

I have done a lot too: learned 2 new chairs, got the shingle making at Ft Mifflin off the ground, still looking for more white oak of course, re organized my work area at least twice, still not happy with it… , made some tools, should have made more, Didn’t start Tai Chi, didn’t pick up the banjo, didn’t get enough exercise…

It’s been a rough year, but rougher for other people.

I am grateful that most of my friends are well or have otherwise survived the year. I am grateful for Judy and for Greg. And for having a dry an warm place to live and work.

I’m sort of feeling “I love you all” drunk, but I haven’t been drinking…

stay safe, stay well, and please wear your masks in public.

Karl

Hi: so I have a long abiding fondness for making and repairing the tools that other crafts-persons use to make their crafts. I have made 4 pottery wheels, repaired at least 6 spinning wheels, repaired one “barn loom”, etc…

So recently I started looking at other crafts that extensively use wooden tools… I came across Broom Making…

There is a variety of tools or “machinery” that broom makers might use. And while I can readily find plans online for pottery wheels, woodworking benches, shaving horses, looms, spinning wheels, glassblowing bats, etc. I find NO plans or instructions for new broom makers to make their equipment (nor for me to do it for them 😉 ).

I Did find some really good sketches though, and I contacted the artist/broom maker to ask for dimensions so that I can draw them up proper! He said he would get them to me…

But for preliminary sketches I now have these waiting on accurate measurements to refine them:

And So soon I hope to be able to post plans to make some of these to the internet!

I’ll keep updating this: so stay tuned 😉

be well

stay well

About 35 years ago getting a new inshave was… Not impossible, but expensive and hard to find.

So I took this old damaged drawknife, stuck it in my forge. And I bent it… I pulled it out and let it cool… And the blade was too hard to file to adjust the bevel…

So I’ve never hardened or heat treated it. It holds an edge well, so I expect I never will…

Be well