An Etsy Adventure

We have started an Etsy page, where we plan to sell the items that we have been making. We are starting out by posting some of the brushes we featured in an earlier post, the black bamboo ones. We will soon be adding some pottery and hopefully some knitting will be coming soon as well (she says probably not). Also, we have linked our Etsy page to this blog so that it is easy to locate our shop. So please take a look and let us know what you think, and any suggestions will be appreciated.

A Treadle Darkly

Working on this treadle wheel feels like I take one step forward and two leaps back. The last post I said that it was finished and I was getting ready to actually make some pottery on it. Well the next day we head into the studio to find that some time since we left the day before and arrived that morning someone had taken it upon themselves to break it (probably not on purpose, they probably stepped on the flywheel which broke my “awesome” JB Weld job). Anyway, today I go in hoping to catch our friend Maki so she can mig weld the “weld” that broke. Which we do and she does weld it for us, although after she has finished and left for Alaska I realize that the other JB Weld has broken (from the heat or something else I don’t know) and now I’m stuck with an almost finished treadle wheel. It seems that the driveshaft has been giving me the most problems, when I thought it would be the easiest part. That will show me to think something is easy before even trying to do it once. I think the hardest part for me is knowing that I have to rely on other people to weld these parts for me, if I could and had the equipment to do it I don’t think I would be as upset. Well, I guess welding gear is a good investment for the future if I plan on building my own equipment. I’m going to try another approach to the driveshaft, I’m going to use pipe instead of solid steel. This way I can use pipe elbows to make the ninety degree turns that I need for it to be a treadle wheel. I think I might try to do that tomorrow, I’m already feeling better about going back to work on this rollercoaster of a project.

And the Treadle Marches On

The treadle wheel will be finished this week (I have to keep reminding myself this, because I need to move on to other projects). Truthfully I am looking at finishing this project tomorrow; I just have to glue one more piece of metal into the frame and then make the seat (which I don’t see as taking that long (he says knowing he will regret it later)). So today I attached the drive shaft to the wheel head and to the flywheel, and it all spins nicely.



Here is a photo of the driveshaft; the part that is offset is what makes this a treadle wheel as opposed to a kick wheel.



I also made the piece that attaches to the foot peddle and to the driveshaft, I have used an old leather belt, some screws, a piece of two by four (cut in half and laminated together). In this picture there is a piece of metal bar sticking out of one side, I have since removed it because it was too long, I have replaced it with a hinge that I had lying around.



I also have cut the board for the foot peddle, attached the piece that attaches to the foot peddle to the foot peddle and to the driveshaft as well. I will have this project finished and will post pictures of the first pots that I will throw on this treadle wheel by Friday (I promise).

Post #12

I just wanted to give an update on the T.A.R.D.I.S. and the treadle wheel, since it’s been a while since we talked about them. The T.A.R.D.I.S. first, the mission has been scrapped at least for a little while. We got a little busy with the end of the semester and accidentally let the slabs dry out to much. This is okay with us because we have come up with another way to make it that will involve much less carving, and will (hopefully) make it look better. For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of knowing who Doctor Who is here is a link to Wikipedia’s Doctor Who page.
Now something completely different (the treadle wheel). We ran into a little problem with welding the drive shaft together, meaning we didn’t realize that we didn’t have the gas to weld with. Although we were able to get our friend Maki to weld part of it, we had to resort to J.B. Weld (a type of epoxy for those not in the know) for the rest of the “welding”. I think it will be strong enough to take the strain of treadling. This means that I will finally (this time I really mean it) get to put the whole thing together this week (I’m hoping tomorrow) and give the wheel a spin (or treadle...).
I will post some pictures of the finished wheel and the start of the new T.A.R.D.I.S. within the coming week. In the mean time please in joy this drawing done by my wife of the future me and our two hypothetical children:

Table for Two

We have finished our low Japanese style dining table (it look’s kind of like a coffee table I know).




In the last table update we had just finished staining the table, when I realized that I needed to fill in the holes with wood filler. Since then we have sanded the whole thing over again (because the wood filler we used didn’t take the stain that well), re-stained the table, and put a couple of coats of paste wax on it to seal and give it a slight gloss. We also made the legs for it, as you can see from the photo we have two curved legs. The first idea was to have a complete oval for the support the idea being that it would mimic the table top. This idea was flawed in a couple ways the first being that we didn’t have the wood to finish a complete oval, and the second was that when I set up the two ends we liked it much better than the oval idea. So on Monday I glued and screwed the legs together, Tuesday I sanded them down to get the curved look to them, and yesterday we stained, sanded, waxed, and put the whole thing together. Today we got to bring the table home, here is a photo of the table in our living room (we don’t have a dining area because we currently live in a small apartment). The final dimensions are sixteen inches tall by thirty inches wide by forty-eight inches long. And as promised here are some photos of the table in our small apartment (please ignore the mess...).

Where the Red Table Grows...

I have roughed out the shape of the table (as you can see from the photo below), and my other half has cut out the place for the star and place the star in the table. It’s really starting to look like a table now, very exciting for us.



. I have also sanded and smoothed out the corners of the table, and stained the top of it, which you can see in this photo.



Only to realize after I stained it that I needed to fill in all of the big gaps that were left after my shoddy construction (not really, the two by fours were not all the same size, which I thought was weird). So I will now go back and fill in the gaps, and give the whole table a good sanding once again. I am hoping to get this table finished and put into use next week some time. I will post some pictures of it in our home when we get it finished.

A Star is Born

We’ve (I say we, I really mean me) have started on a new dining table. We’re building it out of reclaimed two by fours and will have a Baha’i star inlaid (using a piece burl wood we had laying around) in the center(ish) of the table. Here is a photo of the table after we (I) assembled it but before we placed the star into the table top.



You can see the star sitting on top of the table; it’s about eight inches across (the star not the table). The table is roughly fifty inches by thirty inches, and will be about seventeen inches tall when finished. We are planning on sitting on the floor with a zafu as a cushion, that’s why the table is so low. The table has sharp corners in this photo, but we are planning on curving the sides and rounding everything out before we are finished.