Conor looked after the blade carving
part most of the time.
We had the best view from this side of the building. Left hand
picture is
Miriam getting to grips with the draw knife. She really took to
it. Bernard adjusts his plane. Sharp tools are the key to
easy
carving. Adel takes a break from housework to try out the
drawknife too.
I confused everyone by making the blade design simpler - straightening
out the trailing edge, for example. The ideal shape is curved,
but it really makes very little difference if you straighten this out
and the carving is that much quicker.
My old drawknife is always the favourite. Here I am touching up
the edge with a diamond sharpening pad belonging to Rob.
the blades are coming along nicely. The front faces are finished,
and the one on the right is turned over ready to carve the
the thickness. We used pieces of Cedar supplied by Niall.
Beautiful to work with, but expensive.
We made 4 blades for the big machine, just for luck. They all
came out great, so now there is a spare.
Assembling the blades at the hub. Note the way the plywood disk
is clamped down, using a cross-piece of wood with a clamp each end.
We used Conor's larch for the smaller blade set. Here
Caoimhín is working on the thickness.
They did not get assembled while I was there, but they will make a
great rotor when they do. The larch was hard and shiny.
