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2008?5?1-6?
10-17?
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tel 0742-26-3476

Our annual exhibition is taking place in Nara from 1st to 6th May.

Craft and Furniture Exhibition of Gifu Academy of Forest Science and Culture
1-6 May, 2oo8
10:00-17:00
Nara-machi Monogatari Kan
2-1 Nakashin-ya Machi, Nara, Japan


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Last week the second year students finished their works for the exhibition and presented them in front of the teachers.
They are requested to make their original products according to what they learned during their first year.
They need to produce them in a batch within a limited shedule, calculate the cost and assess their productivity.
This 'merchandising' lesson is a part of our curriculum.

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The venue, Nara-machi Monogatari Kan is in the city centre of the old capital Nara. Hundreds of people come and see our exhibition every day. Students show their works to the public for the first time and receive many comments from them.
Please come and see our exhibition. Students are waiting for your compliments!

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Unique oval floor lamps by Ken-ichi Matsuoka


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Plates by Hajime Hoshino. Designed for his grand child.


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Stools by Atsushi Yokoi. He was commissioned them from an adult education centre in Gifu.


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Stools for backache patients by Yosuke Ueda. Easy to stand up with handles.


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Hand mirrors by Keiichi Fukushima. Inspired by details of architecture in Hida.


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Hairpins by Mako Taniyama. An image of cherry blossom falling.


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Parquetry butter knives by Hiroshi Okabe.

ABOUT US

Okecrafts is a company specializing in making handicrafts made from natural materials such as bamboo, wood, stone, terracotta, stone, etc.

We are also production and export of Table Lamps, Wooden Photo Frames, Wooden Mirror Frames, Natural Stone, Candle Holder and decorative Bowls and modern-living pine wood furniture.

All products are purely handcrafted, making them unique and have artistic value. Since they are made of natural materials, they are environmentally friendly.

We have just finished shooting the 'Precision Plane Tuning' DVD, after three days of hard work. This concentrates ...

I finally got my hands on the tool accessories needed to turn a pen(cil). So using a scrap cutoff of padauk, I went to town and made this beautiful padauk mechanical pencil, with gold plated trim and a black stripe on the clip.

Wait, what accessories were needed?

Aside from the obvious (lathe, turning chisels, drill press, wood), the following are absolutely necessary:

1. Pen mandrel to fit your lathe.
2. Pen kit.

Yep. That's it. The mandrel is $9.99 at Woodcraft Item 141469. Pen kits are around $5 at all the usual vendors. I got a pencil kit at Woodcraft.

Another thing you may find useful is a barrel trimmer. this squares the end of the turning blank to the newly inserted brass tube. Keeps things neat and tidy. Mine was $20 at Woodcraft. All that is left is to make the pencil!

I took a scrap piece of padauk and cut it into 4" sections. Two of those sections I put into the drill press and put a 7mm hole through them to hold the brass tubes. I then pressed the tubes into the wood with a drop of CA glue ("super glue") to hold it together.

Then I mounted the whole thing on the turning mandrel with a bushing on either end, and one in the middle between the blanks.

After tightening things up and mounting the mandrel to the lathe I was ready to turn.

Too bad my craptastic Harbor Freight lathe wasn't compatible with the mandrel! I knew it had a "morse taper #2" fitting. But it didn't occur to me to check that the fitting was in the headstock... The part that turns. The fitting is only in the tailstock in the cheap 40" lathe. The tailstock doesn't turn, so the mandrel wouldn't turn. I had to find a way to get the mandrel MT2 base into the headstock.

I had a faceplate that was separated from a mug I made that I hadn't cleaned up yet. There was enough meat on the wood there to carve out a MT2 hole for my mandrel to rest in.

Once it was carved out, the arbor fit nicely. My live tailstock (a MT2 spinner) was tightened snugly into the dimple on the end of the mandrel and I fired up the lathe.

It worked perfectly!

All that was left was to start cutting the wood! I started off gently removing wood because of the thin diameter of the mandrel. I was afraid it would start bowing under any pressure. It turns out that my fears were unfounded. It's very rigid and does not bow under normal cutting pressure.

The pen blanks were turned with a 5/8" spindle gouge and finished with a 3/4" skew chisel. I got such a great finish I was able to sand starting at 600 grit! A pass at 600 and a pass at 2000 got me a nearly mirror finish all by themselves. I then applied some thick CA glue for a finish.

If you're applying super glue for a finish, don't worry about slopping it on the bushings and such. The pieces will pop right apart and the CA glue will be removed the next turning session.

I got the blanks out and started assembling the pencil. The package for the pencil kit didn't explain what parts went where. It took some trial and error to get things where they belonged. I'm sure once I've done a few of these the positioning will make sense. Until then, I'll have to pay extra attention to the order the pieces are assembled.

As you can see, the results were awesome! I'm really happy and want to make more! Lots more! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

... of starting the kitchen (by 2 weeks!). I guess technically - it is not quite done - the pulls are not finished - but... it feels pretty great to have it to this point. The above photo is made up of 3 shots spliced together in photoshop - it was the only way I could get the whole thing in.

The doors themselves went together quite well - and were easier and faster than the drawers. I used a Zona saw to cut the shoulders for the hinge mortises - and a small router plane to clean them out. I was a little worried about cutting the mortises in the cabinets, but it worked quite well. I am still a little bitter that I did not have the foresight to pre-cut mortises for knife hinges like I used in the mudroom cabinets... but I will get over it. These are oil rubbed bronze hinges and worked quite well with the walnut (and the future African Blackwood pulls).



I need to thank Jim Shaver for reminding me of a great technique for keeping doors closed. I used 3/8" rare earth magnets buried in the bottom of the door rail and another in the face frame. They are epoxied in and covered with a piece of walnut veneer (planed flush with an XSNo.4 of course:). It worked perfectly.




In hindsight, there are a few things I have learned.

Firstly - building your own kitchen cabinets is not for the faint of heart. I underestimated the size of this project by at least 200%. It was totally worthwhile, I learned a tremendous amount and I would do it again (if I had to), but I was nuts to think I could do it in a year.

2. Taking the time to find quarter sawn wood for door frames is the right thing to do. In the grand scheme of the project and the immense time it requires - the extra expense of quarter sawn is a drop in the bucket, and you will thank yourself repeatedly because everything is so stable and is visually harmonious.



3. Hand cutting the dovetails in the drawers is extremely time consuming... but worth it if for no other reason than the the learning experience. It took several months of “spare time” to get them done, but my confidence in cutting them has really improved and has positive implications for a lot of other woodworking skills. And - they just look wicked.

4. Door panels that are 7/16" thick are flexible enough to be persuaded into a frame.

5. Air dried walnut is a wonderful wood to work.

6. Sanding sucks. There were a few places where I was not able to plane a surface so I hauled out my ROS. It was a perfect reminder of why I make planes.




The doors around the sink window have beveled glass in them to mirror the side lites of our front door (see below). The doors worked out very well - but the beveled glass on the top 4 doors is a little tough to see given the dark interiors.



The kitchen island was made several years ago - it was installed Christmas day 2005. The boxed dishwasher was the island with a tablecloth thrown over it. What prompted the island construction was a phone call from Sears (where we bought the dishwasher). They were calling to suggest that we might want to consider extending our coverage because the one year warranty was about to expire. Jill just laughed and told them we would pass - the dishwasher was still in the box.

My wife and I have 4 cars, but one of them is my baby. However, like any baby…it requires a lot attention. It's my Mercedes SLK 320 (with AMG Sport Package).

I don't want to discuss performance; otherwise I will get carried away talking about mine being the fastest time of the day at our MBCA (Mercedes Benz Club of America) Autocross event three weeks ago. (Note the trophy plaque in the photo below....braggin in your own blog...how pathetic.)

Instead, I want to finally clear the air about how much work it is to operate the radio while driving with the top down. I live just off of US31. US31 is a 55 mph 4 lane highway, but it has crossroads and stoplights. That means that each time I stop at a light, invariably someone pulls up next to me, causing me to scramble to change the radio to something far more hip than what I was really listening to.

While passing long lines of cars at very high speeds, I can be belting out "Looks Like We Made It" right along with Barry Manilow. However, at the next light I have to quickly punch up a station that is playing something more along the lines of Van Halen's "Hot For Teacher." 5 seconds after the light turns green, with the car back up to 60 mph, I can jump back to Barry for a strong finish to our duet.

This morning, though, something different happened when I switched to Sirius Radio's Classic Rewind while stopped at a red light. I hit the radio preset and found Night Ranger. Immediately an entirely different set of obsessive compulsive activities started. Sister Christian is a trigger song for me. Like the folks who would act out The Rocky Horror Picture Show down in front of the screen on Friday nights back in college…I do a one man production of Boogie Nights every time I hear Night Ranger's Sister Christian. Here is how today's show went.

I immediately went to the glove box, grabbed the firecrackers, started lighting them off, and tossing them in the air.

Next I grabbed my long-hair wig and bathrobe from under the seat and started doing air keyboard, transitioning into air drums, followed by full-blown windmill air guitar each time the song would crescendo toward "MOOOOTTTTTTOOOOORRRRRRIIIIIIINNNNNNGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!"

I suppose that I should mention that even though my one man show starts with the Sister Christian scene, once the song is over I actually turn the radio off and play out the full film from there. (We've established it's obsessive compulsive behavior, folks…I cannot control it.)

Normally, it goes pretty well, but today was different. Because just as I got ready to roll the credits, having given myself a pep talk in the mirror as I vainly tried to convince myself that I am still a star…I looked up to find my only audience member was an Ottawa County Sheriff.

If anyone in West Michigan knows a good bail bondsman, please have him give me a call. I am currently in the Fillmore Detention Facility under the name of D. Diggler.