New Forest Shaving Brushes

Yes: it's a Karesuando blade if memory serves. Here's another, this time with the infamously fiddly Lauri blade:

lauri.jpg


That's some sort of ornamental cherry harvested from a windfall, with boxwood and green Lakeland slate.

Didn't this start out about shaving brushes or some such? :oops:
 
Andy do you make sheaths? (Is that the word? Thing you slide the blade into, I guess best made of leather?)

Do you sell the knives you make? I have a brother who is a keen fisherman and was wondering if one of these would make a good present.

As children in Norway we always used to carry sheath knives on our belt buckles, but we were always out on boats and in the middle of nowhere so it's not like these days of "knife crime" and all that.
 
No, Ollie, making sheaths for Scandinavian type knives seems to me something of an artform in itself, so I've never tried it. I do know a chap who can do that sort of thing though.

I've never sought to sell any of my knives, but there's no reason why not, and I have a fair stock of blades and handle blanks in. The current brouhaha about knife crime doesn't make it a very socially acceptable hobby, so I've been leaning towards razor restoration lately. As I understand it the Scandinavian attitude towards knives is much more mature, where they're rightly regarded as tools rather than weapons, and kids get introduced to whittling very early in life. The second picture in this link says it all:

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.britishblades.com/forums/showthread.php?76554-My-daughter%E2%80%99s-new-whittler" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.britishblades.com/forums/sho ... w-whittler</a><!-- m -->
 
How did I miss this thread until now... :S

Arrowhead - those knives are fantastic, it's always something I wanted to try making but have just added to that long list of things I'll never get round to.

Henk - Have to agree with your earlier post about working with Olive, although what would you say is your favourite wood for making shaving brushes overall? I've just turned a couple of wenge brushes and found the combination of dense wood and open pore/grain a pain to get as smooth as I like. The blank I was working with had lovely figuring between the dark and light stripes, but I found that the lighter stripes were so much softer that it encouraged chipping whilst being turned.

In regards to oak - I'd much rather turn box wood any day!
 
neocaligatio said:
How did I miss this thread until now... :S

Arrowhead - those knives are fantastic, it's always something I wanted to try making but have just added to that long list of things I'll never get round to.

Henk - Have to agree with your earlier post about working with Olive, although what would you say is your favourite wood for making shaving brushes overall?
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Olive. No contest. Beautiful wood, excellent turning wood (if you happen to have a piece without shakes or defects...), great smell while turning, reasonable innate water resistance, no pores, so easy to get a smooth finish, and no intrinsic incompatibilities with varnish-type finishes (like e.g. cocobolo or lignum vitae).

I've just turned a couple of wenge brushes and found the combination of dense wood and open pore/grain a pain to get as smooth as I like.
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Hah. I'm working on a wenge brush for Fido, and find the same. He asked me, when I asked him about the poriness of wenge, to leave it as is, since that is the nature of the wood, but with enough layers of varnish on I still don't like the finish. I do varnish finishes on Padauk, which also has open pores, but the poriness is such that the finish is OK without sanding sealing.

With this wenge brush handle, I'm still contemplating sanding the finish down to smoothness and then refinishing. I haven't decided yet.

The blank I was working with had lovely figuring between the dark and light stripes, but I found that the lighter stripes were so much softer that it encouraged chipping whilst being turned.
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Oooh, that kind of smoothness. Haven't had that problem yet -- I would suggest that the real answer to that is razor-sharp tools, more precisely, finishing with a razor-sharp skew. However, there is another trick. Using an on-the-lathe sanding sealer. But not just any sanding sealer, but

tada

crazy glue (super glue; CA glue; cyanoacrylate glue)

turn to final dimensions, do some rough sanding if needed, then take a sheet of 80 or 120 grit sandpaper, and a bottle of CA glue, coat (a section of) the wood with it and wet sand it, moving along so the entire surface gets covered in a CA-dust slurry. Keep sanding until the CA glue appears cured (no longer tacky to the touch. Sand all the way to final smoothness, take off the lathe and immediately cover with boiled linseed oil. The CA appears cured, but isn't yet, there are still reactive species available. Coating it with linseed oil now will have these reactive species reacting with the linseed oil, so you will get some of the benefits of a 'standard' CA-BLO finish (being a more flexible, less brittle finish).

In regards to oak - I'd much rather turn box wood any day!
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Yeah, no contest there. Or maple. Maple turns as if you're peeling (?) apples...
 
I'm interested in using CA finishes as I'm seen some fantastic examples on some of the more difficult to coat woods. Thanks Henk :D

That said, I've been impressed by the lack of effort when finishing acrylic/imitation handles.
 
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