Larry | December 7, 2009
Last week, on Twitter, Kari Hultman of the Village Carpenter posed a question about carving really small areas. The ensuing discussion was a good one and you can see Kari’s solution in her excellent blog post.
I thought, with the interest raised, I would talk a bit about some of my “tiny tools.” I create miniature [...]
Larry | November 2, 2009
I’m a sucker for things miniature so when Lee Valley announced the release of a new, miniature shoulder plane, I ordered one. The surprising thing was the price as they give this plane away, along with a great dual marking gauge for $41 CDN.
And are these tools KEWL! The photo above is the miniature plane [...]
Larry | October 16, 2009
If you create small things from wood, whether they be miniature furniture or small boxes, you are faced with the need to scrape and/or sand the surfaces of the small pieces you’ve cut. So much miniature furniture is ruined by well-meaning miniaturists who hold the piece in their hand and try to sand it either [...]
Larry | September 14, 2009
I’ve talked about how I use hide glue when building miniature furniture and I’ve discussed the reasons why it is superior to the typical yellow or white glues most use. More recently I’ve talked about Stephen Shepherd’s new book that is a complete treatise on all aspects of animal (hide) glues.
I hope this helped at [...]
Larry | September 7, 2009
We woodworkers are pathetic when faced with nice wood. We can’t help it. It’s in our genes. We caress it, we make loving sounds and we’ve never got enough of it. As a miniaturist as well as a full-size woodworker, I have a real twisted view in addition to my love of wood. I can’t [...]
Larry | August 22, 2009
What would we hobbyists do without Dremel? Yes, there are cheap knock-off products that, I guess, could take their place. But in my limited experience, we’d be buying our tools over and over again. By contrast, I’ve got an old Dremel 261 moto-tool that I’ve used since the 70s and while it’s not as nice [...]
Larry | July 19, 2009
Cyberspace dialog can teach us much. One of the things it can teach us is what concepts some people think they understand but don’t. The third encounter with discussions of measuring devices and such have convinced me that a quick post about accuracy vs precision might be useful.
The typical way these two concepts are presented [...]
Larry | July 16, 2009
I don’t know if I should admit this but what are you if you can’t laugh at yourself? You know you’re a woodworker when you’re more interested in the platter the dessert sits on than the dessert itself. And maybe, just maybe you know you’re a woodworker when you’ve just gotten out of [...]
Larry | June 26, 2009
I was discussing roomboxes with one of my miniatures buddies and I mentioned seed magnets as a useful way of holding things in place. Her response was “What be seed magnets” and since I don’t often see miniaturists using them I thought I’d mention them here.
Here you see six of them sticking to the [...]
Larry | June 19, 2009
It’s probably heresy to say so but if there was one thing a miniaturist could learn that would improve many aspects of their craft it would be that home building centers and mass-market craft outlets are often NOT the best place to buy the tools and materials they use. I know, I know… how could [...]
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