Green wood, sharp tools, pole lathe

This guy Robin Fawcett makes me wonder why we ever bothered hooking motors up at all. I assume part of the secret is using the right wood, and the other part is having tools sharp enough to shave with.

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Ballistol for Rust Removal

One of the many claims made on the back of the ballistol can is its ability to dissolve rust. Here are before and after photos of a rusted spanner head sprayed with a generous coat of ballistol and left for about an hour. The ballistol was then dried off using a paper towel. This product continues to give pleasing results and I think warrants use on many rusted tools where it may be tempting to apply a wire wheel (potentially disfiguring engraving you didn't realise was there in the first place).

Spear & Jackson oil free air compressor

A nice little compressor! The chief technical officer's latest acquisition is the very neat looking Spear and Jackson oil free compressor. Scoff you may - but it was purchased for a tidy $150 (ish) with the following considerations in mind: 1) A small unit is never going to be big enough Every online forum discussion about which is the right air compressor to buy leads inevitably to the conclusion that such and such a model is not big enough. Until you get into serious belt-drive models with enormous storage tanks you won't have enough air to run 500 air-tools simultaneously. 2) It is only required for small, intermittent jobs The air gun will be used for cleaning saw dust off tools, and blasting crud out of the crevices in the back deck. Once in a while, a little bit of nailing and framing, perhaps the odd car tyre or lilo inflation. If these take a few seconds extra while it catches its breathe, its acceptable. 3) We really really wanted one At this price point, we can satis...

Ebonizing Timber: Can you ebonize bamboo?

Apparently not, at least not with the rust+vinegar method. In both photos, the piece of bamboo on the left is the control sample (original state), the piece on the right has been soaked overnight in ebonizing solution - virtually no change took place. If you have had success with another method please share it via comments! One of the things I like about the ebonizing process is that you get a pretty fair indication of how reactive the timber is within a few minutes. Any timber that gets noticeably darker after a quick brush with ebonizing solution is going to go very dark with a thorough soaking or repeated brush applications. Wishing you a productive weekend...

Making your own lathe

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