Given my possession of a full case (~3 gallons) of 151 proof grain alcohol, useless for much of anything but cleaning brushes, I decided to try to salvage it if possible.
Mixing some varnish with pure 151 was the obvious place to start. I mixed up a pint of the shellac lemon resin as normal for a 190 mix, then let it sit for several days to see if it would go into solution.
It did not.
I next added some 190 to the pseudosolution, estimating that a proportional addition would result in a roughly proportional increase in the proof/solubility parameter. By that metric I was able to achieve complete solvation around the 170 proof level. A couple days at that level and I had a container of shellac varnish.
I brushed it onto a sample panel with vaguely successful results. The first application, in particular, had simply horrible brush-feel, and the result was not promising.
But, with stubborn determination I applied another half dozen coats in a two hour period, and two days later it had fused into something resembling a finish. It would not have been an acceptable surface for a typical finishing project, but I charged ahead to see what, if anything, could be resultant from taking the exercise to completion.
With the brushed out surface cured for a few days, I scraped it over half of the panel surface, then detailed it with my “go to” step of rubbing it with Liberon 0000 steel wool and paste wax, then buffing the surface after a couple hours.
The end result was not awful. It doesn’t mean that I’ll be using much 151 proof grain alcohol in varnish making, but its’s good to know that I could use it if I really needed to.
With my final teaching for the year now completed (more about that in a coming post) and the yardwork slowly tapering off, I am very much looking forward to returning to the shop pretty much full-time in the near future.
One of the targeted activities is prepping for Handworks in Amana, Iowa, over the Labor Day weekend. If you have any interest in handtool woodworking, you would find it sorta like a cross between Woodstock and a San Fransisco open air drug market, but for tools.
Weighing and packaging 2-lb bags of #1 Lemon shellac flour. Ask me the story about this some time.
A tub o’ “gold dust.”
Yesterday while putting away my supplies and workpieces from the Introduction to Historic Woodworking workshop I soon pivoted to packaging up a quantity of my #1 Lemon Shellac flour for resale there. I’d had a bag on the bench to get some packaged for the workshop, and it was easier just to repackage the rest rather than haul it back downstairs. I will ask Mrs. Barn to do her thing with melting and casting the beeswax bars, I’ll make another several batches of shellac wax and my Blend 31 bars, my polissoir-maker is working diligently to get me enough inventory for Amana…
For the past three weeks I’ve been spending all my available shop time preparing for next week’s Introduction to Historic Woodfinishing workshop over the mountains at Joshua Farnsworth’s Wood and Shop school. If you have ever traveled to teach a workshop you know how involved it can be to assemble and pack all the requisite supplies and syllabus exercises for each student, all the more complicated since you won’t be “at home” and could go into the next room for anything you forgot to have set out.
Workpieces for a dozen exercises, brushes, resins, waxes, polissoirs, solvents, abrasives, scrapers, rags of a dozen different types, cases of jars, etc,, etc., etc. I have not counted them precisely but at this point I would guess I am closing in on 20 bins of materials. Were I so inclined I could create a giant artistic collage in the driveway and crank up Set The Controls For The Heart of The Sun. Unless you are of a certain vintage that last reference is probably just gibberish.
While I have made headway in my battles to find acceptable and affordable plywood to use as exercise workpieces, not great but better (good plywood for class exercises would raise the per-pupil materials cost to well over $200 instead of the ~$75 it is now) so instead this time I grabbed some pieces of mahogany and cherry from my stashes of “pieces too small to really make stuff from” and resawed and planed them so each student could have at least some of each. Pad polishing on inferior plywood just doesn’t cut it.
Tomorrow after church I will load my pickup to the gunwales and head back into civilization to set up, then begin teaching at 9AM Monday.
This is the most astounding demonstration of tortoiseshell welding I’ve ever seen.
Oh, and I want a pair of these spectacles, notwithstanding the cost (gotta be at least a couple grand) or legality (proscribed within the USA).
This one is cool, too.
I see these videos have been around for a while, so apparently the YouTube algorithm is getting to be more on my wavelength. I’m not sure if that is encouraging or horrifying.
Since my first post, 10-1/2 years ago, I’ve managed to create and upload 1,733 offerings to the blogosphere. For almost all of those entries I have allowed comments to be made by you the readers. Unfortunately, the robots and well-wishers from around the globe also post comments, mostly about how great the blog is, how great their counterfeit Gucci handbags, watches, sports jerseys, etc., are, and oh by the way, do I want a Russian/Ukranian/ Cambodian/ Malaysian mail-order bride? Now, I love the people of Russia, Ukraine, Cambodia, and Malaysia as much as the next guy, but…
The number of these heartfelt and generous offers in the aggregate is well in excess of 100,000. It warms my heart as you can imagine. Admittedly, I cannot dispositively confirm the content of many/most of these offers because they are in Cyrillic, Arabic, Cambodian, Korean, or Greek alphabets, none of which I read, or in the standard Western alphabet but composed in a language I do not understand. My filter works pretty well but since a couple of my commenters’ contributions always end up in the Junk/Spam file regardless of how I make the settings, so I always have to scan the Junk/Spam folders to make sure there are no legit comments there.
But my post about grain alcohol garnered several real replies, which brings the total number of honest-to-goodness comments to 800 over the life of Donsbarn.com.
Last spring while visiting my brother in The Free State of Florida, where liquor stores sell 190 proof grain alcohol (locally even West Virginia[!] has become a nanny state that will not sell 190 at retail stores), we moseyed up to the corner liquor store so I could get a case. I grabbed a 1.75L jug of Everclear 190 and told the clerk I wanted, along with another whole case, which he dutifully loaded up for me.
During the recent Historic Woodfinishing workshop at the barn I opened the case and to my very great distress discovered that the knucklead clerk and the inattentive customer provided me with 7 liters of 151 proof of grain alcohol, useful for nothing much at all. At best it is really expensive brush cleaner, although a recent trip to the hardware store revealed that denatured solvent alcohol is running $25+ per gallon. That stuff really is suitable only for cleaning brushes.
Maybe I can figure out how to use this stuff for some varnish making,
Six weeks ago I had, according to Blue Cross/Blue Shield, my 23rd eye operation. Fortunately, like a few of them this one was laser work, as the doc was opening up the pressure port on the rear wall of my eyeball, to facilitate lower intraocular pressures made necessary by my advanced glaucoma. (They say you cannot feel ocular laser oblation. “They” do not tell the truth.)
Yesterday was my follow-up appointment. Unfortunately one of the other doctors in the clinic was sick so my waiting time was four hours. I didn’t really have an option as we were 2-1/2 hours from Shangri-la. Anyway, the particulars of the post-op evaluation were exceedingly good. My eye pressure was reduced by more than 20% (this was the second iteration of this procedure, so the benefit was compounded), and even more remarkable, my vision had improved by one full line on the chart. Still, while the acuity was increased the clarity did not. The best analogy I can make is that in my dominant eye the vision is like looking at a scoreboard after evening fog moves in. I can still make out the numbers but the overall effect is pretty hazy.
I am a sucker for anything to do with artisanal brush-making, and this one on fabricating urushi lacquering brushes had me from the get-go.
The only way it coulda been better if there was another one. Oh wait, there is.
And another…
In fact, in the year-plus since I really browsed deep into urushi videos on youtube there is a whole new inventory of them, including these really cool ones about lacquer brushes.
Some version of this post is presented annually at this time, revised a bit from time to time. Despite dozens of recitations, I can never read the last line of The Declaration out loud because I am overcome with emotion.- DCW
Tomorrow my fellow Patriots and I, however many of us there are, will commemorate and celebrate the 247th anniversary of the most profound statement of human aspiration ever known. We have already endured two violent wars of secession, the first from 1775-1783 and the second from 1861-1865, and I pray that our third one can be avoided by a peaceful segregation of a populace that no longer shares a common vision.
As our nation is seemingly rife with incurious, gullible and servile inhabitants, we would be well-served to reflect seriously on the document encapsulating the mission statement for the greatest nation ever known to man, the only nation ever founded on a creed rather than geography or lineage. It was and is of course imperfect, no institution created by fallen and sinful men and women can be anything else.
I am unabashedly proud to be a partisan in the cause of Life, Liberty, and Property (the original wording) and find The Declaration of Independence to be the most noble civil document ever created by mankind. I pray you will read and reflect on the ideas expressed by men who pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to pursue the path of liberty. Reading it is much like reading the Minor Prophets of the Old Testament; more up-to-date regarding the human condition than tomorrow’s headlines.
God Bless America, and may righteousness flourish and wickedness be overcome.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within. He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands. He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers. He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance. He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures. He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation: For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States: For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world: For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent: For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury: For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies: For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments: For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation. He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands. He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
Button Gwinnett
Lyman Hall
George Walton
William Hooper
Joseph Hewes
John Penn
Edward Rutledge
Thomas Heyward, Jr.
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Arthur Middleton
John Hancock
Samuel Chase
William Paca
Thomas Stone
Charles Carroll of Carrollton
George Wythe
Richard Henry Lee
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Harrison
Thomas Nelson, Jr.
Francis Lightfoot Lee
Carter Braxton
Robert Morris
Benjamin Rush
Benjamin Franklin
John Morton
George Clymer
James Smith
George Taylor
James Wilson
George Ross
Caesar Rodney
George Read
Thomas McKean
William Floyd
Philip Livingston
Francis Lewis
Lewis Morris
Richard Stockton
John Witherspoon
Francis Hopkinson
John Hart
Abraham Clark
Josiah Bartlett
William Whipple
Samuel Adams
John Adams
Robert Treat Paine
Elbridge Gerry
Stephen Hopkins
William Ellery
Roger Sherman
Samuel Huntington
William Williams
Oliver Wolcott
One of the aspects of creating the Roentgen-inspired parquetry surface for my dream tool cabinet is that making the trapezoidal units is something I can do a few minutes or couple hours at a time, in between all the other stuff filling my plate; yard work, the new greenhouse, workshop planning and prep (with the requisite housekeeping), writing and editing, playing with tordonshell, noodling all manner of creativity, etc.
Using this rough “proof of concept” exercise panel I was ready to chare forward beginning to create the individual elements and begin assembling them into the final diamond shapes.
My hope is to have the necessary elements finished so that I can begin laying the parquetry some time this fall, going through the winter.
Once I had a sufficient quantity of sawn white oak veneers, roughly a shy 1/8″ thick, I bound several layers together and laid out as many of the triangles as I could on the surface layer.
Since “precision” was an irrelevant component of the composition at this point I was completely comfortable with sawing them out on the bandsaw. Somehow I failed to get a picture of the filled boxes of cut triangles, but when I had them I moved on to the next step – fitting half- and whole-trapezoids together.
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