100 yr old chestnut older technique

[Jjartwood]

when I was a young man (approx 8-10) my grandfather thought it time that I learned something about working with wood.The lessons were not fun as he was teaching me to work not play with wood,The thinking was later I found out that if things went bad on any level I could always build cabinets or something.
(He did quite well making liquor cabinets that looked like record player cabinets of the prohibition days)
Here are some of his techniques.
to get the blank round,find a heavy glass jar with alot of curves in it,smash it!
look thru the larger pieces of glass for a piece that closes matches the radius that you are looking for,start scraping.
*note.I did cheat and drill and tube blanks prior to this step.
When the shape is about as far as the "glass plane" can get it either find a tighter radius in the pile or break a smaller jar.
Once the desired shape is approximated than a dowel is inserted in the blank and a sponge (old time sanding block I would guess )is wrapped in sand paper I started at a buck and went up to 1000.
shaping the top and bottom are tricky so I wrapped a piece of masking tape around the blank to try and keep the dome and tail as uniform as possible
finishing was a matter of BLO and Butchers floor wax.
I know by today's standards the "glass plane technique" sounds crazy but I have run across some old timers that were very as a matter of fact about it and thought only an idiot didn't know about it.
Grab some gloves(which was unheard of when I learned it ) the type that won't let the glass slip in your hand and give it a try,if nothing else your concentrating so hard on not cutting yourself you don't even think about the days problems
Mark

 

[Drstrangefart]

I am impressed, sir. You win OVER 9,000 internets. That's really cool. Seriously.

 

[biednick]

Wow. Thats impressive.

 

[Jjartwood]

** It should be noted that the above technique was a way to round over edges on
your work in a time when every tool box didn't have a router in it
Mark

 

[firewhatfire]

way to help a fella learn something new....I commend you.

Phil

 

[azamiryou]

What a great technique! And now we're all "in the know" and can start thinking only an idiot wouldn't know this technique.

 

[robutacion]

Oh yeah, I remember that technique well, and have plenty of scars on my hands (fingers) that, will never do away...!

My father was a house painter, in the days they would make their own paints and stuff, and one of the jobs he had all the time was furniture that has been painted or stained/varnish before and that, need to have that top surfaced removed totally so allow, re-coating so, get it to bare wood was a matter of using sharp scrappers, that in those days you make yourself.

One of the most common techniques was making a scrapping tool out of a piece on blade from the big bandsaws from the local timber mill, this would be a blade about 2" to 3" wide, cut about 2" long and have the teeth grind off. Then, we used a block of wood about the same width as the blade and about 4" to 5" long, and about 1" thick then we would make a cut with a handsaw through one end of this block to insert the blade in (sandwich type) tight and then wrap it around with painters masking tape to make the wood close more and hold tight that blade that would have about 1 1/2" poking out as the cutting blade.

The front edge would be could with a fair radius and then, filled on one side only to chamfer it. When done, a piece of hard steal rood would "bend/roll" the edge" and we were ready to scrape line a hand planner planner however, the edge wouldn't last long and it had to be re-sharpen and re-edged all the time, and this is when the glass technique would come in as a replacement but this time, we would select straight grass (windows, etc...!) to scrape away...!

The problem was that, as a very young kid (7 or 8) I started to get all these nasty jobs to do and while I learnt all the techniques, safety gloves were not acceptable (according to my father) as you would loose the "touch"...! damn a$$#Ole...!
So, the glass was a much easier "thing" to use as we had plenty already smashed for these jobs and wasn't easy for me to sharpen that blade scraper all the time so, my little hands into a box of smashed glass to select a good piece and most times big enough where I could use both hands to scrape away, without taking any good wood away, more than the absolutely necessary and that was the rule and reason why, the "touch" was so important...!

Unnecessary would be, to guess how may fingers cuts (bleeding) was involved in such process, that mind you, you could not allow the blood to stain the wood so, and after those cruel years, I didn't wanted to hear about "grass scrapping technique" for years afterwards...! no wonder why...!:redface:

However, as a mature man, I used it a few times but with the best gloves I could afford, even then, some minor cuts were a fact, is like those razor sharp edges have a magna to the fingers, regardless...!

So, curved/straight glass use as scrapers, is a very, very old technique, use still in ours days, by some people. While cheap and readily available, is deadly...!

PS: So, is that a pen you made by glass scraping...??? That is a lot a fine scraping in there, well done.

Cheers
George

 

[Jjartwood]

Yes George it is,
and I must say ( with a certain grin ) that the BLO/floor wax combo finish was chosen
as a result of your last critique. I was taught at a young age that simple finishes are
are the easiest to repair.I had forgotten that simple rule,(WOW THAT HURT )
I chose the chestnut because it is quite workable with this technique.
Can you imagine the looks you would get today handing a young boy a razor
sharp piece of anything and telling him "here scrape the devil out of that and don't get blood on it"
Hope all is wel
Mark

 

[juteck]

I remember as a young teenager, my grandfather had to replace a claw foot on their pedestal dining room table, and used this technique to shape the entire foot. Even though he had full access to my dad's workshop and tools, and full access to the wood shop at the senior citizen's center, he still opted for this method. To this day I am impressed with what he could do with so few tools.

Nice pen BTW, using this "old-aged" technique!

 

[Jjartwood]

glass plane pen

Thanks
Just gave the pen to the teacher that lives across the street,
I built the pen to try an old technique that I had not used in over 30 years and put it on a lesser quality kit.( I did up grade the refill for her).

 

[biednick]

So... How would one drill the hole? I know you said you used a drill, but how would you do it back then?

 

[Jjartwood]

I'm not sure,I have not heard of it being used on a pen before,I would in the absence of a
drill press and having only a hand drill(like I said I cheated) drill the hole first and cut
the blank on line with the hole,I'm sure that a dowel inserted in the hole will give you the
truest or closest alignment of the hole to square up the blank with,

 

[biednick]

Okay, wasnt sure if there was a trick for that too.

 

[Jjartwood]

The only real "trick if you will" is to cut the blank as close to the finished size as you are expecting to end up with it will save on the scraping, that includes different sizes for body and cap, also the tendency will be to try to almost finish the project with the glass
Don't, use the sand paper it goes pretty quickly.

 

[biednick]

Okay, thank you. I might have to try this.