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After last month’s tip you’ll be interested (hopefully!) to hear if the repair to my 1500 grit flexible diamond belt worked. The answer is yes, it did, not that I couldn’t do a better job next time if I need to (read on!). So how did I go about it? I went to my local hardware store and asked the solvents and adhesives expert there what to use. He suggested a product called “Goof Off” which cleaned up the tape and the belt nicely with a few applications and some firm rubbing. As directed by the safety instructions, I had plenty of ventilation whilst using it because of the acetone in the product and also used disposable rubber gloves as recommended by the manufacturers. Please read and follow the safety instructions for any and all chemical products!!
Once clean and dry, I used a product called “Fix All Crystal” which is both a sealant and adhesive, depending on how much you apply. I followed the instructions and then clamped the belt and tape between two pieces of thin plywood, having first wrapped the belt in a piece of paper kitchen towel to avoid things sticking to it. After 24 hours I opened everything up and cleaned off the stuck paper towel. I left it a further couple of days to harden before using.
The only problem was I didn’t push the fingers up into each other firmly enough, or else it slipped whilst clamping. But I then used the belt to finish a couple of jobs and it worked fine, so there must be a bit of latitude here.
Sometimes I feel like a guinea pig but the truth is we are all learning, and if you can learn off my efforts, then I’ve saved you some frustrations.
Happy polishing!
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It’s important to keep your equipment maintained and in good repair. Sure it’s inconvenient sometimes, but there’s no way around it in many cases. I was cutting the last slab of the day recently when I noticed there was a flood coming out of the splash box. I turned off the power and water and checked what was happening. I couldn’t find anything wrong except the drain hose was kinked slightly, and it went back to being like that after I straightened it. I got through the rest of the session by pinching it lightly the other way to keep it open. I cleaned the box after I’d finished, took it apart and thought about the problem. I don’t know why I drilled two holes in the box long ago! Maybe the one was too high, or I was thinking of adding a second hose if the first wasn’t sufficient for drainage? I don’t remember. But this is the first trouble I’ve had with it.
I thought about adding a snap-on hose fitting to the lower hole with strengthening washers either side of the box wall, and then clip on the hose whenever needed. That would stop the kinking in future. But having looked through various hardware stores, I couldn’t find any suitable fittings so I decided to simply cut-off the end of the hose, turn it around and fix it back into the box wall – it’s been fine for 19 years, so anything more elaborate is probably over-engineering the solution!
Whilst in the mood, I decided to fix the rubber splash-flap back as well – the glue had been going though it hasn’t been causing a problem, but I didn’t want it to get worse than it was. Again I had thoughts of making it more difficult to fix than necessary! After a while I came to the conclusion that the simplest way was to use my revolving head punch to cut the holes through the plastic box wall and rubber sheeting at the same time and then use a pop-rivet to secure them. It was the work of ten minutes to complete!
Unfortunately, as I was pre-polishing some slabs on a 1500 grit flexible diamond belt yesterday the glue gave way and the backing patch came off. With that the belt flew off the expandable drum, but at least the latter didn’t disintegrate as well!
Well, the glue has been good for many years so no complaints. I figure the best way to fix it is to clean off the glue and re-glue it – I’d be lucky to find a piece of fibrous backing tape that strong and thin anyway.
I’ve visited my local hardware shop and bought the materials I need to fix it and I’ll report on the outcome next month. Watch this space! Although it’s been some 10 years since I had the guide made for my slabbing saw, I became aware that my design was deficient in one area, brought home recently when the motor overheated whilst I was cutting some slabs. The problem was that any part of a slab which broke-off along a fracture during cutting anything thinner than about 6 mm could slip down the blade-slot recess in the base-plate and become wedged against the blade, increasing the drag and heating up the motor. On this occasion, I couldn’t see it as the remainder of the slab was still being cut. So a fix was necessary. I thought about it for a while and came up with the idea of a sliding plate, recessed into the guide base-plate, with transverse slots for the securing bolts, which had to be flush top and bottom to allow the slab thickness guide to slide across above, and the guide base plate itself to rest flush on the blade rest bed-plate below. Not knowing any local toolmakers or small engineering companies I approached the Men’s Shed which makes the lovely boxes I use for my work. They couldn’t help, but recommended another Men’s Shed with a metalworking capacity and a suitably qualified and experienced toolmaker. I visited by appointment and met the gentleman, John Kenney, and showed him the problem and the solution I’d come up with, and he set to work. The result is a beautiful job, and the attached pictures show it completed, but before I used it for the first time.
So after assembling the blade rest and slabbing guide, I can now slide the new plate across to close the gap between the edge of the blade slot and the blade itself to 1 mm or so, and know I’ll not lose any pieces of stone down the gap, or if I do they will be flung-off safely beneath the rest by the blade.
I hope the need for this modification with my equipment will alert anyone who is designing their own to use a narrower slot for the blade in the slabbing saw rest, which will then mean this modification isn’t necessary for them. And I now look forward to cutting many more, trouble-free, thin slabs in the future! Happy slabbing to you all!
This month I’m going to talk about having a reference model for your complicated carving subjects. It is always best to have a model to guide you. It can be a nice, full-sized model you have made up in Plasticine or modelling clay beforehand and ironed-out all the tricky parts, or it could be an accurate plastic model of about the correct size, if you can find one. Or, if all else fails, it could be a number of pictures of the proposed subject, but these are often problematic because you can’t find the correct angle of a suitable subject, or you are carving something original and there are no pictures of it on the web!
I’m sure everyone has tried to make something that didn’t quite go as planned and at some point you’ve decided to stop wasting your time and discarded the offending piece in the scrap box? I’ll gloss over my own! With a decent model you would have been less likely to have erred as far as that because you would have spotted any problems before they were terminal. So this month’s key words are: model, model, model! Happy carving! When talking about the eye of a piece it is not necessarily the same as discussing the hole by which it is hung. However, in much modern NZ carving the hole is often adorned by features reminiscent of an eye, and is located in the relevant place, but there are many instances where this is not true. I’ll give you some examples below. Firstly, where the piece does not have an eye …
And finally we get to making eyes in the stone …
So the ornamentation and variety of holes are almost limitless.
Just a quick item this month as I’m sure you all have plenty to do without spending too much time reading this, even with the COVID lockdowns in many parts of the world.
The question is: is it the best work you can do? Can you improve on the piece you have in your hand? You need to look from the whole piece to the tiniest aspect of it. And if yes (and you always can), how?
Why do I raise this question? Because if it’s not your best possible work then it’s second-rate. We all need to strive for perfection! Mind you, it’s often only you who can see the shortcomings! Maybe you had to modify the design early-on because of a slip with a tool or there was a fracture in the rock which became apparent only once you started grinding? In the production process, irregularities in the stone or just slight differences in the time spent grinding can cause curves which should be mirror images of each other to have different radii. They affect the harmony of the piece. Maybe you’re okay with that, maybe not. If not, act! These things happen to everybody. So it’s about how well you disguise or clean them up that marks the expert carver! So you think you have almost finished a piece? And bear in mind that many of the minor problems only become apparent as the piece nears completion. Life’s hard like that! Pick it up and roll it around in your hand. Really look at it! At the one time you need to be looking at the macroscopic aspects of the piece with your eyes/glasses, and also the microscopic aspects with your loupe/hand-lens. I gain much satisfaction from handling a piece at this stage and from cleaning it up and improving it. It might take 10 minutes or an hour, but at the end it will be better. The merging of two curves can be beautiful or it can look harsh. The relationship between a number of faces is important. So set-to if the piece doesn’t look right! Generally, you have the scope to grind things back a little to achieve this. So here’s to perfection! Keep on carving!! And keep safe in these uncertain times. As soon as SA reopened its border to NSW a few weeks ago I asked my wife if she was interested in a trip to Cowell to visit the yard belonging to Cowell Jade* as I needed to purchase some more nephrite for some pieces of work I have planned for the future (watch this space!). Happily she jumped at the idea! So that is my excuse as to why I didn’t do more carving this last month! The countryside from Cobar to Broken Hill was as green as I’ve ever seen it due to recent heavy rains. And it was wonderful to be away from the city! By the time we reached Cowell it was raining, but after the heart breaking drought of recent times (still ongoing in parts of WA), I’m not going to begrudge anyone a bit of rain.
In Cowell I met Peter, the yard manager, & Niel, who acts as a consultant (he’s been involved with the exploration for and production of jade there since it was discovered by his uncle, Harry Schiller, in 1965), and we had good conversations on all sorts of rock-related subjects! We looked around the yard and selected several suitable-looking pieces of stone to cut to see what they were like inside, and from these, I selected a few pieces to bring home. I also learnt a lot more about the lease and stone in general – the two are a mine of information if you’ll excuse the pun and I really appreciate the time they gave me – thanks to them both.
Whilst there my wife & I went looking for oysters and fresh seafood, and were told about a great place, past the Franklin Harbour Hotel, near the boom gates in the car park at the end of Main Street. Whilst we were there I couldn’t fail to notice a large block of interesting-looking stone with a couple of plaques mounted on it. It certainly looked like nephrite! And then I saw the name of Gemstone Corporation – yes, it was!
A few days later we left with the car just a bit heavier than when it arrived. I’m looking forward for a good excuse to use it - oh bliss!
* Please note, access is by arrangement only It’s been a while since I carved any Maori-inspired pieces, so I produced three designs I liked, headed to the stock box and pulled out three pieces to slab for them. I deliberately cut the slabs thickly (around 10 mm) because I wanted them to be masculine and “chunky”. Mark the outline in marker pen on one face of the slab and trim-off as much as you can - it is precious. Then grind off the remainder to get the pieces to approximate size and shape.
I’ll concentrate on the lefthand piece above since the techniques are the same for all:
Whilst this was happening I had some problems with my equipment and needed to spend time replacing my Dremel flexible extension drive. I also oiled/greased various pieces of equipment and replaced a splash guard on one of my splash boxes – do not skimp on maintenance or it will come back to haunt you. Having got everything working properly again, I continued with the carving:
In these difficult COVID-19 times I find it exceedingly therapeutic to lose myself in carving and recommend it to anyone. So over to you and good luck!
This will be brief because it’s becoming hard to tell you anything you don’t already know about animal carving! Following last month’s entry I decided to keep the koalas slightly rough and unpolished. This harks back to my “protest squirrel” mentioned elsewhere - whilst polishing shows off the quality of the stone and the abilities of the carver, I’m not one for glossy animals generally.
I ground off a few minor high points and rough patches on the first koala, found a few areas that needed some more attention and then ran the burr across the piece, leaving slight scratches in the direction the fur would have laid naturally. I made a final check that it was stable in its “tree” and adjusted the angle of the feet a little. I then attacked the block of stone (much harder than the first because it was completely recrystallized) to make the second koala, a very different design of a more mature animal (hence a smaller head in relation to the body size) and made sure it fitted in its tree one last time.
I then turned my attention to varnishing the pieces of wood and found it is difficult to find matt varnish these days. A pity – I’d have preferred to have finished them matt rather than with satin varnish. Oh well, you can’t have it all. I drilled a hole in the centre of the bottom of the wood to hang them upside-down whilst varnishing. And then it was time to consider the base: I’ve been carrying some offcuts of terrazzo floor tiles around since picking them out of a builder’s skip in Dublin more than ten years ago – I knew they’d be useful one day! The stone is very suitable for bases as it is squared-off and has a polished upper face. I rigged up my large blade and cut them as far as I could, but I didn’t have the side clearance in the splash box to cut the slab through completely, and was a little perplexed at what to do, until I thought, “Calcium carbonate is softer than steel!” So I used my hacksaw to finish off the cuts. Perfect! Next, I ground the three bases square on a coarse lap. I filed the bevels rather than grinding them on the lap – it is much easier to get the angle and regularity by hand for me than on a machine. It can look really shabby if the bevel is irregular and spoils the impression of a piece of work. I “drilled” out a central hole in each base using a range of burrs, cleaned them up and let the terrazzo dry before gluing on a piece of felt to each so the stone doesn’t scratch whatever it's placed on. It’s easier to glue on an oversized piece and then trim it afterwards than glue on a piece cut to size.
And with that, the first two koalas were finished, ready for dispatch to their future homes. I’m happy with the way they came together. I’ll complete the third, and almost certainly a fourth, in a little while – I’m “all koala’d out” at the moment and want to make some matau’s for a change!
So happy carving to you all! |
AuthorOn this page I intend to add monthly updates on aspects of jade carving. I also plan to invite more experienced carvers to offer a "master-class" on a particular subject of their choice. With this I hope to enthuse both the novice and the expert in this ancient and beautiful art-form/craft. And comments are welcome! Archives
June 2022
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