Our planing forms are often getting chewed up by the corner of the plane blade. This is a super sharp dangerous intersection. The sharp corner is almost never used to cut bamboo so soften that corner with some gentle filing and round both those corners off. It does not affect the performance of your blade and will save the deck of your planing forms. Be very careful in general handling these blades, if you drop one on your foot you could end up in a hospital, so go ahead and cut some corners, your forms will thank you.
0 Comments
I was talking about famous left handers and my favorite has always been Michaelangelo Buonarotti (1475-1564) Michaelangelo is best known for his frescoe painting in the Sistine Chapel, Vatican City, Rome, Italy. Oddly Buonarotti was a sculpter from Florence, not known as a painter. His David in Florence is perhaps the best known sculpture in the world but it is the Sistine Chapel that we mostly think of when we think of M.B.
Consider this, the marble statue of David took four years to finish and the Sistine Chapel took seven years to complete. People always are impressed when we tell them it takes up 50-60 hours to make a rod, that would be a light work week for Michaelangelo. When you are struggling with a rod go lie on your back on some scaffolding and have a friend drop paint in your face and you will cheer up in a hurry. Much of the frescoe in the Chapel was damaged and dirty from centuries of candle smoke and other environmental issues. It was restored to it's original splendor in 1994 after 10 years of painstaking work. There was plenty of contoversy as most of the original work was redone and the maestros original strokes are now gone. It was restore it or let it fade into obscurity. The original water based paint was lais into fresh plaster and the result lasted 500 years, not bad in my books. As we restore rods made by their original makers, some valuable, some not so, let's make sure we go that extra mile to find the correct thread and findings. Sure it is more work and cost but we owe a debt to these makers and their work deserves as much respect as possible. Most of these rods are nearing the Century mark and without us they won't make it to their Bi-centennial. Are they as holy as the Vatican contents? To many of us they are................... So there I was standing in front of the myriad of prepackaged croutons in our local grocery store. I remember saying to my wife that it is crazy to spend $3.49 for a small bag of dried bread. "I can make great croutons and we can save money too" What the hell was I thinking, after spending $2.49 on a decent baguette and then seasoning them with olive oil, fresh rosemary, salt and pepper and cooking then at 375 F. I ended up with small bag of croutons, didn't save any money and spent the better part of an hour making them. I will say they were quite tasty but now I always have a few packs of ready made croutons in the pantry and it is a time saver.
I often have students planning to "make" a lot of the tools needed for making bamboo rods. Sure, there are a few things you can make but planing forms, indicator bases, measuring standards and the like are available from some good guys like Chet at Bellinger, Jeff Wagner, Dave LeClair and others. They are properly constructed, well made and built by and for bamboo rodmakers. Do yourself a favour and buy the right tool and focus on making a better rod, it's tough enough . The block plane is an essential tool for rodbuilders. It not only determines the finshed size of your rod it also is a major factor in the quality of the rod. Block planes are different from most hand planes as the bevel is facing up. Larger planes like a jointer plane or jack plane operate with the bevel down and the iron supported with a chipbreaker assembly. Most of these planes do not have an adjustable mouth opening.
When planing the difficult node sections the blade often tries to dig deeper due to the irregular figure present in a nodal area. If the mouth opening is too great you can ruin a section very quickly. After you align the blade and are ready to start planing, close the mouth to about .020" retract the blade then test plane slowly moving the blade forward until you get the size of shaving you desire. Your first test pass should not remove any cane. Having the small opening allows the plane to support the fibers ahead of the blade and to keep the shaving to a minimal size. So keep your mouth shut and make better rods. Things often get a little blurry between reality and perception. For anyone who saw the movie "Ghandi" (1982) it was difficult to not think of Ben Kingsley as Bapu himself. He was a dead ringer for Mahatma in his trademark doti and shawl. You're probably thinking that if Ghandi was assassinated in 1948 meeting him fishing would be quite a trick. In reality it was Ben Kingsley who I met. I speak to most people I see on the river and it was a few minutes before I actually figured out I was speaking to a screen legend. Uncertain if I should invade his privacy by doing the "ah gee shucks" thing I elected to let him pass unbothered as the sanctity of angling must be upheld.
Britian decided to colonize India for itself in the early 1800's to feed their Industrial Revolution, as Canadians we know how that feels and Ghandi became a thorn in their side with his non violent protests. As a Hindu he was very sympathetic to the Muslims and fought for civil rights for all. He would have been a handy guy to have around now, that's for sure. I will always think of Ben Kingsley as Ghandi as I do Edmund Gwenn as Kris Kringle (Miracle on 34th Street, 1947) or Gary Cooper as Lou Gehrig (Pride of the Yankees, 1942) . You never know who you may meet on the river, Harrison Ford is a steelhead guy so if you are up on the Babine and you see someone with a rakish fedora, you never know, it just might be Indiana Jones. |
AuthorI am a cane rod builder and co-founder of Canadian Cane Archives
February 2019
Categories |