I've been cutting myself again, got a whole collection of razors to do it with.
Now consider that I use them by putting my thumb across the slot in the middle of the blade, resting the blade almost perpendicularly on the wood, and scraping towards or away from myself. Odd spots on the curves can get tricky and a couple of slips while developing my technique were quick reminders that "yes, these are still razor blades" and another chance to make an awkward fumble to apply a bandaid mostly one handed.
I did realize why people seem so alarmed about nicks and scrapes which I'm generally unconcerned about: we live in an era where woodworking is mostly done with machines and 99% of the time spent learning how to use them involves safety and absolute avoidance of any injuries because you go from "unhurt" to "oh god I need an ambulance" rapidly when dealing with bandsaws and drill presses.
I'd have to be really determined and keep going long after drawing blood to even approach the kind of stuff you can do with a power tool. Instead most of my time learning is spent feeling out the blade>surface interface and predicting how it will react as I move. Avoiding obvious things like carving directly towards your finger or bracing a piece along the line you're sawing is pretty simple, but being able to tell when a blade angle will go from smoothly slicing grain to skipping out in a weird direction and hitting your thumb is less obvious. So yeah, nicks and scrapes happen sometimes when you're working out how to cleanly shear off a surface layer of wood on the inside of a complex curve with a razor.
The handle in the first three pics there? That's my favorite thing I've ever made and I have no way of properly expressing how it feels to hold it, it's smooth but not slippery which makes it incredibly satisfying to use, while the clean almost matte finish of scraped grain invites you to turn the saw around so you can hold the handle up to a light and look at how it plays across the wood.
Oh and that handle I was worried about breaking because I got carried away drawing the swoopy curves? It broke exactly where I figured while I was cutting a pair of long side pieces to make a loom for the missus.
Glued it back together so I could trace the parts of it I liked without the weakness on a new handle which is where the two in the above pics came from after tweaking the shapes.
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Topic: [MILK] There were 12 eggs here what did you do with them? (Happy thread?!) (Read 16308376 times)