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Burlington Mini Maker Faire 2012 coming up

Burlington Mini Maker Faire

I thought I would plug a little event I will be taking part in. This Saturday, April 28, the first Burlington Mini Maker Faire will be taking place. If you live near the central North Carolina area, come check us out. It is at the Holly Hill Mall on Huffman Mill Road, and we will be there all day, from 10am to 9pm.

What is a Maker Faire? For regular readers of this blog, you may remember my trips to the New York City Maker Faire in 2011 and 2010. I described them as a mix of a science fair and a craft fair (with a bit of Burning Man thrown in). The fairs themselves grew out of Make Magazine, and are basically a chance for DIY enthusiasts of all kinds to show off the projects they work on in their spare time.

The members exhibiting in the Burlington Mini Maker Faire should make for a fairly diverse display. This is the group I was with on my trip to Roy Underhill’s Woodwright shop, as well as the group that organized the blacksmithing lesson and demonstration I took part in. A full list of exhibitors who will be at Saturday’s event is on their website; highlights include a homemade Tesla coil, a wood lathe demonstration, some quad-copters, steampunk props and ham radio demonstrations. You can also learn to solder and watch some 3D printers and CNC machines in action.

The local Times-News paper did a story on the group, which talked with Bennett Harris, the founder, about the goals of the fair and the group in general. If you’re in the area, come check us out!

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Blacksmithing

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This past Saturday, I headed out to Efland, NC, where Dick Snow was teaching blacksmithing. It was another meeting with the Alamance Makers Guild (the same group that visited Roy Underhill’s shop last week). I’ve done various metalworking projects before, but never straight-up blacksmithing.

Dick tends the fire
Dick tends the fire

Dick had his coal forge fired up that morning. He also has a propane forge. He was telling us that while a propane forge does not need tending like a coal forge, a coal forge can get much hotter. You need that extra heat if you ever want to forge weld. We weren’t doing any of that, though; our lesson that day was making nails.

Cutting the rod on a hot-cut hardy
Cutting the rod on a hot-cut hardy

Dick teaches nail-making to new blacksmithers because it encompasses three of the basic techniques used in almost every blacksmithing project; drawing the steel out into a taper, cutting it to length and hammering it to give it a head. In the photograph above, you can see him cutting a red-hot rod on a hot-cut hardy. Sometimes called just the “hardy”, this tool is basically a wide cold chisel that sits in the anvil’s hardy hole. The tool sitting on the left of the anvil is the nail header. Because the nail is tapered, it only fits through that square hole to a certain point. You cut the rod a little above that point, then smash it down with the hammer into a mushroom-shaped head.

Dick teaches Ben proper hammer technique
Dick teaches Ben proper hammer technique

I would say the trickiest part of blacksmithing is all of it. I usually think of metal as the material you use for precision machining, and other materials are used for more organic and artistic construction. Blacksmithing, on the other hand, is where metal is used like a fluid, sculptural material. Even something as simple as making a nail is difficult to do consistently, at least at the beginning. I made about 6 or 8 nails, and none of them matched each other.

Refreshing the fire
Refreshing the fire

I’ve often thought it would be cool to use hand-forged nails in the furniture I build. You can find plenty of plans to make your own forges online, all the way down to a tiny brick-sized forge which can only make nails.

Hammering out a taper
Hammering out a taper
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A Visit to the Woodwright’s School

Last Saturday, I went with The Alamance Makers Guild to the Woodwright’s School in Pittsboro, NC. The Makers Guild is a group I discovered down here which is interested in many of the same things I am; woodworking, sculpting, fabrication, blacksmithing, science and art. Some of the members have begun designing a human-powered lathe, so the trip to the Woodwright’s School was kind of a research trip to see some of the antique human-powered tools which they have refurbished.

 

Roy and Nim look at tools
Roy and Nim look at tools

For those who don’t know, the School is run by Roy Underhill, host of the Woodwright’s Shop on PBS, which has been on the air since 1981. He showed us some of the original catalogs of these various treadle and pedal powered machines.

Roy Underhill using a foot-powered spindle cutter
Roy Underhill using a foot-powered spindle cutter

In the photo above, Roy is using a foot-pedal-powered spindle cutter. We might recognize the modern-day equivalent of a router table or shaper; the tool has a rotating blade which cuts a shaped profile along the edge of a board of wood. The blade in the machine was a bit dull, so the end of the cut got a little wonky.

Natalie on a human-powered lathe
Natalie on a human-powered lathe

My wife tried out the foot-pedal-powered lathe. She just bought her own lathe at school a few days prior to this. The foot-powered one was tricky for both of us because you have to sit down to pedal. We are used to standing up and using our hips to brace the tools and our whole body to move it along the cut. This one requires you to do all the bracing and moving with just your hands, which feels awkward at first. Nonetheless, it makes some nice cuts, and it is a lot quieter than any electrically-powered machine.

Foot-powered mortising machine
Foot-powered mortising machine

We also watched Roy demonstrate this foot-powered mortising machine. It essentially has a sharp chisel connected to a lever which you push down with your foot; several linkages give it quite a bit of mechanical advantage so the chisel just plows right through the wood like butter.

I am boring
I am boring

Roy set up a boring machine outside that we all tried out. Though it was a large auger and a fairly thick plank of wood, boring through it was no problem. All of these hand and human-powered tools reminded me that if your bits and blades are sharp, it does not actually take that much effort to cut and bore. You get a good workout as well.

Planes all in a row
Planes all in a row

Above the school is the antique tool shop where all the tools which they find and refurbish are offered for sale. Planes, saws, calipers, folding rules, router planes, augers, mallets and many more varieties of tools known and unknown were on display.