Among my students last semester was one of the worlds best turners, and arguably the best turning teacher I have met. During this term Andy was more my teacher than my student. Before meeting Andy I thought I knew how to turn; now I know that I was merely a beginner. Andy teaches a turning class in Purchase College and everybody can join this class, not just Purchase students. He is a gifted teacher and his techniques work every single time. He is also a writer on Wood-turning and has contributed many articles in the field.

Andy's idea for the Lamp Assignment  was a light brush. He turned a brush body and mounted it with an LED light cupolaed with some light transmuting thin plastic hairs – to carry the light wave down from the LED source to the brush tips. Andy is going to embark on a more ambitious task, and harness this method for building a furniture..

Andy's Brush:

Andy splitting a Cherry slab for a turning project:

 

 

 

 

The third assignment I gave to my students at Purchase, was to design and make a lamp. We had great success here with lamps ranging from artistic and beautiful to enigmatic, humoristic and topsy-turvy. I intend to show you the lamps in a future posting and, by the way, all are made primarily or partially from wood. One of my students, Robert Snyder, made two lamps. One of them was a clever Halloween prank.... but we are not cutting any slack (or corners) here: he used the best wood-joinery possible.... believe me.

 

 

And as you can see here, the dovetail construction is very meticulous.

 

Perhaps the most interested toys that Itsik builds, are the cars, motorcycles, and trucks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Few of them have a moving mechanism, such as a pivoting crane arm. And one particular tow truck has even a ratcheted mechanism that allow you to lock the hook in position and keep the load in mid air!

 

 

 

Than there is the "real" scooter he built for his nephew Ron.....

 

 

At the end of the day Itsik offered me a great organic mango that he picked for the tree out side the shop.  He made a series of cross cuts, and then push the mango's flesh upward.... it was delicious.......

 

 

 

 

 

I visited Itsik's shop for two reasons: to see his creations and help him sharpen some old chisels he bought on the Israeli Craigslist-like website. Itsik does not own any diamond stones Japanese stones or India stones. The little sharpening he used to do was done using sand paper. Consequently, non of his chisels were honed nor did they had flat backs. Yet he manages to build beautiful toys that are creative and inspiring. The toys have great details and are nicely finished. At some point Itsik decided that he  would like to learn how to sharpen tools in a professional way, so he asked me to to tutor him and show him some of the techniques I discussed in my Hebrew blog.

 

 

The challenges associated with improvising are always exiting. And in this case I had to come up with a plan to teach, build jigs, sharpen and hone tools which were in really bad conditions. Itsik puled a bitten up rusty chisel form the pile of tools he bought, this tool was our guinea pig. We started by finding a flat piece of glass and mounted on it with wet-dry sand paper – to flatten the chisel's back. After this we turned to make and attache a wooden tool-support to the grinder's fixed support (Itsik has a high speed grinder, 3400 rpm) we aimed for a 25 degrees hollow grind. The grinding wheels where in o.k. condition, so we did not have to true or dress them.

 

 

 

After hollow grinding we used the glass and paper technique to flatten an old oil stone he got with the tools he that purchased.

 

 

When we finished flattening the stone to reasonable but not great condition, we used it to hone the edge.  Then we put some polishing compound on a piece of leather Itsik has, and did the final honing. The chisel where put the test immediately and manged to sheer pine end grain with very little effort.

 

 

 

One of the remarkable artists who demonstrated her unique talent and skills at the open house, was Stefanie Rocknak. Steff is not just an amazing carver and sculpture, she is also a David Hume scholar, serving as a Professor of Philosophy at Hartwick College.

http://www.steffrocknak.net/

 

 

 

I met Michel Auriou the rasp maker form France, whose four people company makes the best hand made rasps in the world. He brought with him a tooling device which helps the worker to hold down the rasp’s blank while the teeth are formed – one by one... http://www.forge-de-saint-juery.com/

 

 

I had a very interesting conversation with Kevin Glen Drake, the maker of some of the most exquisite hand tools in the market, and the innovator of the Tite-Mark Marking Gauges. http://www.glen-drake.com/

 

I met Peter Follansbee a master carver form Plymouth plantation historic village in Massachusetts. Peter has a great blog about traditional woodworking.. from ...

http://pfollansbee.wordpress.com/

 

And I met many more interesting people form across the Nation and form Canada who came over to see, to smell, and to work wood.