Handmade valentines gift...

I've strung together some of the steps I used to make this gift for my wife, it's made in the same way as the hanging Christmas decorations, just slightly more elaborate.

I used Cherry, Pear and copper to make it and each material has a meaning or symbolism attached to it which varies from culture to culture, as an example Cherry trees in Japanese culture symbolise good fortune, new beginnings and revival and in old Buddhist stories the Cherry represents femininity, Pear wood has similar meanings as Cherry, and the shape of the fruit has long been associated with the female form and Pear trees usually live for a long time and Chinese culture associates this with immortality.

The Copper elements also have similar meanings, the metal represented Venus the goddess and the planet in Roman beliefs and copper has long been used by the Celts for making jewellery, it was in ancient times a highly regarded material, which is why it's often found in burials along with other metals such as Bronze, which is a Copper alloy.

Here's the video -

Thanks for visiting.

Homemade sanding stick...

Now that the garden and allotment are starting to wind down a bit I've had more time to get round to a few projects, one of which is making a tool to hold sheets of sand paper so I don't have to put my hand inside things I'm turning on the lathe.

I've made a couple of video's, one is of it being made and the other is of me using it, but basically it's a round handle that you can attach a sheet of sandpaper to, there's a coupe of pictures below and the video's as well, all I've really done is to turn a round piece of wood and then cut a slit into it, it's into this slit that the sandpaper slides, it's very simple, but saves catching your fingers on fast spinning bits of wood.

Pictures - 

Really should've made one sooner

Check out the video's, there's a couple of pictures of the brush pot I made for my daughter at the end of the shorter one, onto the next project.

Making the sanding stick - 

Using the sanding stick - 

Thanks for reading.

Handmade buttons ... ...

Buttons are great, and you'd be surprised how easy it is to make your own, I'm not talking about the plastic ones, I'm talking chunky wood buttons, great as a feature on a knitted hat or some other item.

It's easy to do, you need a saw (a hack saw is easy to use)

Bit battered, but works okay

 You'll also need a drill of some kind and a drill bit (I normally use a 3mm bit)

My post drill.

I use a post drill for making the holes in my buttons, but if you don't have one a cordless drill will work just as well, but be careful when drilling, and if you don't have an electric drill then a hand drill is just as good, but you will need a vice or some way to hold the button still whilst drilling.

Hand drill -

You can buy these quite cheaply.

And obviously you need some kind of wood, sticks are easiest to work with, but if they are freshly cut it's best to leave them in the house some where to dry out a bit first.

Then all you need to do is slice your stick up into sections as thick or thin as you want, although the thinner the sections the harder it is to grip them for sanding.

Ready for slicing -

Gripped tightly.

Now if you don't have a vice you could use a strong clamp to hold the wood, but I'd recommend a vice of some kind, it doesn't have to be expensive, I have a hobby vice I use in my work room at the back of the house, it was less than £10 and is great for small jobs like this.

Once you have some slices of wood it's on to the next step, and this is where things get personal, it's up to you how many holes you drill, where they are and such like, I tend to drill 2 holes in each button.

Ready for drilling -

They look a little rough, but they will turn out nice.

With holes drilled -

4 or 2 ? it's up to you.

You don't have to drill the holes first, I do things this way because if the holes are a little rough they'll get sorted out when I finish the buttons, saves time and extra sanding.
 
The next bit depends on what sort of equipment you have, if like me you have a variety of power tools then you may well have a belt sander or orbital sander, these will do for finishing the buttons as long as you use a fine grit (like 180) sanding sheet/belt if not then you can use a sheet of sand paper (again use a fine grit) and a wooden block, this will take longer, and probably make your arms ache a little, I use my lathe sander to finish the buttons, takes about 2 minutes (give or take) to finish a button.

I built a sanding wheel for my lathe, I made a short video of me using it, please remember to watch your fingers if your using a power sander of some kind, gloves might be an idea, and a mask as things will get dusty.

Sanding video -

Mind your fingers !

As you can see it doesn't take long, and apologies for the video quality, it wasn't as easy as I thought sanding and filming at the same time.

So once all the sanding is done you should have some nice smooth wooden buttons, they might be different sizes and thicknesses, but that just makes them more unique.

I tend to either give my buttons a coat of beeswax to protect them without affecting the colour, or I use linseed oil, which brings out the grain quite well, but you could wax them,varnish them, or paint them.

Finished buttons -

All done, 5 cypress & 2 pear wood.

Here's a picture of a cypress button and a pear wood button coated with linseed oil -

The pear wood is the darker one.

You can see from the picture above that you can make the buttons as round as you like, or leave them a little less finished for a slightly more rustic look, and if this all seems a little like hard work then I know a chap who sells them in his shop ;-) which you can find here (opens in new window) I'm also working on a lathe jig that will allow me to make sets of buttons the same size and decorate the buttons with simple designs.

Thanks for reading.

Homemade peg loom ... ...

The other day I figured I'd make a wooden peg loom, and after a little research I set about finding materials and tools.

I have to be honest I'm not sure what else you can make on a peg loom apart from long rectangle / square type things, so rugs and scarf's :-) but I do know it's pretty easy to make one.

All you need to make a peg loom is a length of wood, it needs to be wide enough to accommodate your pegs, and you'll need something to make the pegs from, lengths of dowel are ideal and all these things can be picked up from any diy shop.

Here's the loom -

Load of holes.

I decided that if I made a couple of rows of holes I could use different sized pegs, which in turn means I can weave different sized things and of different thicknesses, so I guess it's a multi function loom ?

To make the holes all you need is a drill and some drill bits roughly the size of of the dowel you plan to use, you can also use spade bits, again roughly the size of the dowel, spade bits are better for larger dowel sizes.

In case you're wondering, this is a spade bit - 

Bit old and rusty, but it works.

 I made a grid on my piece of wood, I put a mark every half an inch, be sure to leave enough space between each hole as you'll need room to remove the pegs, and you'll also need room for your yarn / wool etc.

The wood ready marked - 

Ready for drilling.

Close up.

So onto the drilling, basically you just need to drill a load of holes evenly (ish) spaced, I should have used a slightly larger piece of wood for my loom as getting all the holes on it was a little bit of a squeeze.

To drill the holes I used my power drill and a drill guide, I would have used my drill stand but it broke, but you don't need to use a guide, just try and keep each hole as straight as possible.

My drill guide ready to go - 

Drill guide not essential.

The other good thing about the drill guide is you can set the depth you want to drill to, but you can just wrap a bit of tape round your spade bit or drill bit.

Using tape for depth guide - 

Insulation tape works well.

I also have a depth guide for drill bits that's a little more secure than tape, I'm pretty sure you can buy depth guides for drill bits in most diy shops.

Drill bit depth guide -

These fix on very securely.

Once you have you drill set up get drilling, try and make the holes deep enough so that the peg won't pull out easily, saves everything falling apart if the loom gets knocked over.

Once you have the holes drilled you then need to sort your dowel out, I used 3 different thicknesses and I cut them to lengths of between 3 inches and 5 inches, 3 inches for the smallest dowel, 4 inches for the next sized up and 5 inches for the largest.

The dowel - 

Ready for cutting.

3 different sizes.

You can use a hack saw to cut the dowel or any type of saw really, it's best to make sure you have enough pegs to fill every hole, even if you don't plan to use loads of pegs, you might later on.

Dowel all cut to length - 

I use rubber bands to hold them in bundles.

Now you need to sand both ends of each dowel (which may take some time) this will make sure the wool / yarn doesn't get snagged on the pegs, if your pegs are a little too tight in their holes you can sand the ends, or use a sharp knife to trim them a little.

Sanding them like this is okay - 

Nice and smooth, sort of.

The last thing you need to do is drill holes in each peg, this is to thread the yarn  you will be using to hold it all together (don't worry I have some pictures of me using it to give you an idea of what I'm on about :-)

I found that having the pegs in the loom was the easiest way to drill the holes, you want each hole about 1cm above the length of wood, and you'll need to make sure that the holes in each peg aren't too big as this will weaken the pegs, you can use larger holes in the larger sized pegs.

Holes drilled in the pegs, nearly ready to weave - 

Ready to weave.

 It's really easy to use a loom like this, and it's easy to build it as well, so it would make a great project for kids to try themselves, although smaller children may need supervising when doing some parts of the build, like the drilling for instance, it's also cheap, I had most of the stuff, and the dowels cost about £4 for all of them.

 You can use all sorts of things to weave with, wool, rope, t-shirt material, you can find some great how to's online and by searching for weaving on a peg loom.

Now here's a few pictures of me weaving on the loom so you have half an idea of what to do with it.

To start get some wool and thread it through each peg - 

Use a needle to help with threading.

Just using 6 pegs for now.

Once you have your pegs threaded you can then start weaving, this is basically a case of winding the thread round the pegs, remember to tie the ends of the thread together, otherwise it'll all slide off the end.

Weaving begins -

Tie your yarn to the starting peg.

Then start winding between each peg.

And this is how you continue, once you reach the top of your pegs you can then pull them out and slide your work down, then put them back into their holes and start winding your yarn again.

About half way.

Carefully slide each peg out.

Don't worry about the gap as you can slide it altogether.

And once you've got to your desired size you can just pull all the pegs out and then all you need to do is cut the threads from the pegs and either tie them off of stitch them back into your work, again watching a few how to's will be an idea (I plan to watch some as well as I quite enjoyed weaving on the loom)

My finished piece, all be it a tester and very small :-)

Not bad ?

I found you can adjust the piece once you've finished it (before you tie it all off) you can bunch it all up or spread it out, it's quite flexible.

And there you have it, now the nights are drawing in and things are getting colder this might be an ideal thing to keep you busy at night and you can make yourself a nice rug :-)

It would also be possible to tie the threads to a piece of dowel and weave through each thread in much the same way you would with a traditional loom, and by looping the wool over the pegs instead of going through them you'll only need to tie off one end, and it has to be said there is a lot of satisfaction to be had in making your own equipment and then making something with it.

Thanks for reading.