Author Topic: 2024 What did you do today  (Read 40676 times)

Offline Bryan Adolphe

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Re: 2024 What did you do today
« Reply #380 on: July 02, 2024, 12:14:21 AM »
Ha ! I was ready to spray this pecan & blk limba for tomorrow so today I decided to darken the maple limb edges with Tru oil  :laughing:

Offline Jon Lipovac

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Re: 2024 What did you do today
« Reply #381 on: July 02, 2024, 03:24:46 AM »
Kirk. What ‘stuff’ did you use to stain your bow with? Ive had really good luck with powdered dye stains mixed with acetone.

Offline Kirkll

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Re: 2024 What did you do today
« Reply #382 on: July 02, 2024, 02:20:33 PM »
Kirk. What ‘stuff’ did you use to stain your bow with? Ive had really good luck with powdered dye stains mixed with acetone.

It was a high quality "Varathane premium wood stain" that i've used before. Where i screwed up was using this stuff first, and trying to sand it off before putting the Varathane product on it. Turned into a science experiment real quickly. the first stuff sealed it deep, and the stain i applied would dry properly....    You guys can have the stain nightmares... I'm back to just saying NO again...

https://photos.app.goo.gl/YedQRmN5F9GACeJ49

Btw.... This curly maple juice DOES pop the the grain dramatically, and can be darkened using heat. I used it before and had good luck on a maple riser. But this time i had the rosewood too, and i didnt like what it did to that..., What a mess... :banghead: :banghead: :banghead:
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Offline Longtoke

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Re: 2024 What did you do today
« Reply #383 on: July 03, 2024, 03:02:03 AM »
I think the bowyers and luthiers should get together and share their secretes for dying maple.  I know a little dye rubbed on then sanded back can really make a maple top guitar pop. 

Kirk, :shaka:  your day is giving me an idea or a burst stained bow.....  might be classy. might be trashy,  but would sure be unique.
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Bear Polar 56” 40#
Black Hunter 60" 40#

Offline Kirkll

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Re: 2024 What did you do today
« Reply #384 on: July 03, 2024, 11:39:53 AM »
Years ago, but not long before I started into bow building, I and an opportunity to work with an amazing group of craftsmen for a couple years building large motor yachts. These boats were 112’ to 145’ in length, had fiberglass hulls , and were loaded with some crazy amounts of exotic hardwoods. The crews were broken down into 3 groups. The fiberglass guys, the framing carpenters, or shipwrights perhaps?
The 3rd group were the master craftsmen consisting of luthiers, furniture specialists, and master custom cabinet builders…. Now this was back in the late 80’s, and all the woodworking on the boats was done by hand. Of course they had a cabinet shop to die for, with some pretty wild milling machines, pin routers, shapers, planers, and incredible table saws or panel saws with power feed set ups….  But…. It wasn’t huge like a factory size place. There were only 7 work benches in the cabinet shop surrounded by all these lovely toys, and only the top craftsmen had their own work bench.

I started out with the boat carpenters that did the framing on board for the first 6 months I worked there, and is not to be confused with any wood framing you see in the construction industry. The biggest challenge was everything was radius shaped or elliptical. Even all the cabin doors were radius topped, and all the framing material was Honduras mahogany, using stainless steel screws and 5200 marine adhesive to assemble. Very few nails used on these boats at all.

It was interesting work that I dove into big time head first…. I loved it. They had 3 yachts going at the same time and were finished differently with different kinds of exotic woods. After the framing was completed the masters came on board to do all the cabin paneling, build the furniture, and install the custom built cabinets. In many cases the cabinets were built in place….. All the joinery was S scarfed joints with very few exceptions. All the laminations and wood bending techniques they used were amazing to behold…. It didn’t take me long to figure out that that was where I wanted to be. I wanted my own work bench in the cabinet shop working with these master craftsmen….

Well one day I was doing some touch up work in one of the main cabins on one of the boats and framing a custom shoe rack in a closet. The main cabin had a beautiful teak paneling installed. Not to be confused with your standard sheet goods either… this stuff was grain matched from one sheet to the next coming off the stack so when installed properly the wall looked like one piece of solid wood. And the owners expected this to be installed seamlessly…. Well I could hear the boat Forman and the cabinet shop Forman arguing about what the hell they were going to do with this mess… the carpenter who installed the paneling pretty much just threw it in and didn’t fit the seems well at all, and the whole cabin was almost complete. Keep in mind this book matched teak paneling cost a bloody fortune, and would take months to replace. The foremen were pretty upset by the poor workmanship.

 So I spoke up ….  I told them that with special care and a bit of time this joinery could be repaired  with veneer inlays rather than tearing it out. They both stoped and looked at me kind of funny, and said, “ You could actual do this?”  I told them I wouldn’t recommend it if I didn’t think I could do it myself, but…. It’s going to probably take a week or so to pull it off with all these full floor to overhead inlays, and I’d need access to the cabinet shop to make my inlay jigs, and some razor sharp router bits and a trim router….. The cabinet shop foreman told me if you can pull this off, you can have your own bench in the cabinet shop and a bump up in pay grade too….

I did indeed pull it off, and spent two more years in that shop working with some incredibly talented craftsmen. It was like getting my doctorate in woodworking. The combined knowledge in that shop was unheard of…. 

Of course it’s all done by CNC machines now, and very little of the stuff is done by hand anymore. I went back up there years later after I moved on to talk with a friend that had taken over the shop, and it just wasn’t the same at all… operators running machines instead of master craftsmen…lts enough to make a grown man  cry.


Thought ya might enjoy that story. I sincerely appreciate luthiers and master craftmen.       Kirk

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Offline Kirkll

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Re: 2024 What did you do today
« Reply #385 on: July 03, 2024, 03:10:08 PM »
I took some photos of my latest bow build this morning.
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Online garyschuler

Re: 2024 What did you do today
« Reply #386 on: July 03, 2024, 08:19:14 PM »
Nice Kirk. !!!!’
Gary Schuler

Online garyschuler

Re: 2024 What did you do today
« Reply #387 on: July 03, 2024, 08:29:16 PM »
And a great story. I worked with a guy at the Wind Generator place in Ephrata Wa. Very knowledgeable guy snd we set up the shot booth for cleaning the tower sections for painting and built the jig tables for welding clips for ladders and wiring every weld was mag tested and the guy was a perfectionist in every way. I learned a lot when he wasn’t screaming at me. Paid off in my Millwright career !! 
Gary Schuler

Offline Mad Max

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Re: 2024 What did you do today
« Reply #388 on: July 03, 2024, 10:49:31 PM »
[quote

Kirk, :shaka:  your day is giving me an idea or a burst stained bow.....  might be classy. might be trashy,  but would sure be unique.
[/quote]

Star burst ??









I used J.E.Moser Aniline dye--water base on this one.
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Online onetone

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Re: 2024 What did you do today
« Reply #389 on: July 03, 2024, 11:30:46 PM »
Fine looking bows guys!

Offline Pat B

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Re: 2024 What did you do today
« Reply #390 on: July 04, 2024, 10:47:31 PM »
That looks great, Mark. It would look good on your snaky glass bow too.
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Offline Longtoke

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Re: 2024 What did you do today
« Reply #391 on: July 05, 2024, 04:35:58 AM »
That is a great story Kirk!  I did tile work on big cruise ships for a few years. usually they would dry dock and remodel the whole ship.  sometimes they were pressed for time and we would try and do the work while at sea. those big boats are a world of their own.

It looks like your maple turned out top notch. Beautiful bow!  I have a soft spot for contrasting I beams. 


That burst bow is really neat!  The back of it reminds me of a snake.
Toelke Pika t/d 54" 52#
Bear Polar 56” 40#
Black Hunter 60" 40#

Offline Longtoke

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Re: 2024 What did you do today
« Reply #392 on: July 05, 2024, 04:38:57 AM »
Mad max, how did you keep the lam wood stain free?  tape or scrape  or some other method?
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Black Hunter 60" 40#

Offline Mad Max

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Re: 2024 What did you do today
« Reply #393 on: July 05, 2024, 07:22:48 AM »
I had to mask off the riser lams
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Offline Kirkll

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Re: 2024 What did you do today
« Reply #394 on: July 05, 2024, 10:57:34 AM »
That one came out cool looking Max.  :thumbsup:   Reminds me of some of my air brush adventures. I had a ball learning how to do realistic flames, and using translucent paints……but I went through a couple cheap air brushes while doing it.

Kirk
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Offline Mad Max

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Re: 2024 What did you do today
« Reply #395 on: July 05, 2024, 08:57:27 PM »
Nice looking riser wood there Kirk :o
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Offline Bryan Adolphe

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Re: 2024 What did you do today
« Reply #396 on: July 05, 2024, 09:28:51 PM »
Both of those bows look very nice ! Well done.

Offline Kirkll

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Re: 2024 What did you do today
« Reply #397 on: July 06, 2024, 09:55:00 AM »
Here is an example of some of the translucent air brush paint I was playing with…it was pretty cool stuff.

I cant find my flame bow right now on my I pad.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/sXYhGGJQ3UfGM8MJ6
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Offline Mad Max

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Re: 2024 What did you do today
« Reply #398 on: July 06, 2024, 08:13:08 PM »
 :o :scared:
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Offline Bryan Adolphe

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Re: 2024 What did you do today
« Reply #399 on: July 18, 2024, 04:28:33 PM »
I decided to cut into a piece of padauk i have had for a long time ….. and the wenga and walnut iam building for a dear friend that gave me this walnut that was his fathers that passed away recently, he has helped me alot in the last two years since my back injury so I thought I would surprise him with a bow and a little memory of his father.

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