And there’s the bell!
Day one of WIA 2011 is done and dusted. The final session of the day was Roy Underhill talking about cutting and carving wooden screws. Roy is always a good closer since he keeps the energy up after a long day, and is always good for a laugh or thirty.
I’ll say this for him, he may portray a Luddite on TV, but he is as tech savvy as anybody. His presentation started with a PowerPoint type slide show, but it did things that PP cannot do (I must ask him what software he used.) It covered the history of screw making to the 18th century, and the various methods that have been used. Then he demonstrated three of those methods: hand carving, using a screw box and tap (also showing how to make the tap yourself), and finally chasing threads at the lathe. (Apparently OSHA had gotten to him so, before he began at the lathe, he mounted a pair of safety gargoyles.) I was relieved to see all of the methods; I had seen the episode of The Woodwright’s Shop where he cut threads using a screw box and tap and feared this would just be the same. But today’s session went far beyond the bits that had been aired on PBS.
I finished up my day checking in on Mark at Badaxe tools. He looked over my No. 16 and started hammering out the bow, which he said had been caused by the last sharpening oversetting the teeth. Just goes to show that some people DO know just enough to get into trouble. (And NO, it wasn’t me. This was the condition that I acquired it in.) He said the steel had plenty of spring in it, and would continue to be a VERY nice saw for years to come. The closing bell in the Marketplace rang before he could get to sharpening, so I’ll pick it up tomorrow.
Time to rest up for tomorrow’s sessions (and drive home!)
Acornhouseworkshop 
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