Snow shoes

During my trip to Canada I saw a lovely display at Lake Louise, capturing the past of pioneers mountaineering in the area. I was enticed by the old attributes. The skies were familiar to me but the pair of snow shoes really got me. It was right there and then I decided to make a pair in miniature. For various reasons I'd to do it quick, one of them being I'm currently working on a really neat book mill as well. 

So straight after getting back from Canada I did some research. It soon became clear various times and regions have their own shape of shoe and type of lacing, and after reading into the small hours, I opted for a type that's common in the North East of Northern America, called Huron. The weaving I choose for is a combination of modern day techniques and the 'old fashion way'. 

It started out with making a jig to bend the beech wood to shape. Normally the shoes are made of ash, but I didn't have that so beech it was. Which is perfect for bending too, by the way!

When the jig was set & done I could steam the 0.6 mm thick mm strips of beech. A simple set up in my frypan did the trick. I took the lid of for a photo, but of course they were steamed with the lid on. Less than10 minutes was more then enough to make them soft and pliable. Bigger pieces would take more time; you want all the lignin in the wood cells to become soft. But if you steam for too long the lignin will boil out and bending can then result in splits and breaking.

The thin strips cool off very quickly too, and then the lignin will harden up again so I'd to work fast. Placing the centre of a pair of strips at the tip of the shoe form, the sides were then gently bend down, till they touched at the back. I pressed the counter shapes tight to the strips and hammered them down. The four ends were held in place by a clamp. Then I let them dry over night. 

The next day I glued the strips together and put them back in the jig to dry.  Excess glue would surely bulge out under the pressure so to prevent the shoes from sticking to the jig I lined it with cling film. Simple and worked a treat. Meanwhile the braces were cut, predrilled and put into place when the shoe rims were dry.

Now it was on to the weave. Old shoes have holes drilled through the rim, to take a thread where the weave is connected to. The benefit is the thread will not wear when the shoes are worn. You don't see this method of weave as much anymore in modern day shoes, which makes sense being slightly more labour intensive. Hmmm... stuff isn't made as hard wearing any more so it seems... 

Neither was I confident enough to drill the holes in the narrow rim, and as these shoes won't get any wear anyway, I figured to simply weave (the more modern way) around the rim, instead of through it. 

I'd an option between all sorts of thread, thick and thinner... light colored, brown, beige... and after seeing some real shoes made in that color I decided on a brown, just cos I thought it looked good. Egyptian cotton, count # 30.

The edge of the weave was a challenge to figure out. Initially I thought of using a bobbin lace technique; the braid half stitch as seen here on the left. Turned out it wasn't as simple as I thought so it was back to the drawing board (computer) and just figure out and learn the way it has always been done.

Each time I'm amazed at how much you can learn from YouTube, like when I needed to learn how to cane a seat. And this time was no exception with tutorials on the net showing how to weave snow shoes! There where various methods and approaches shown but they all came down to the same triangular weave. But the best part were a few diagrams I'd found and with those I set myself down and started...

Here's the toe section finished and heel part done too. As you can see I worked both shoes at the same time, so I would be conscious, aware and remember how to tackle the particular portions I was working on. If I'd finished one shoe complete and then had to return to do the other i'd probably have had a really hard time remembering how i did it to keep them uniform.

Like I said, it was a tricky job. Mostly because it took some time to find the rhythm or structure in the weave. Sometimes it was over, over, over, and then the it was under, over, under, under... I'd to stay really focused while weaving, or a mistake was easily made... Turned out it was constantly 2 steps forward, 1 step back, taking out some and redo it again until it was right. But after a while I got it :-) Or so I thought... :-/

I'd made a start on the middle part, redid them a few times and then it went OK. When I was nearly done I encountered a big mistake in one and had to take out almost a 3th of the weave. Argh...

But I got there in the end, and here's how they looked at that stage.

Now it was on to the binding. Native shoes have simple leather strips without buckles, but now that this pair was sort of eclectic already, I figured to give them a more modern type of binding. 

On the left is a section of it; the toe part with the first of the straps. If you look close you can see they are not attached on the same side. Something I didn't found out (again!) until I was almost done so I'd to remake that... 

A few more pieces, buckles and finally a bit of leather polish/wax:

Now...

Who's up for a snow-shoe-obstacle-run?

Wow, this post turned out quite long. So thank you for reading all the way down.
Have fun,

under, over, under, over…

I finished the library chair the other day but before i can post about that i'll need some decent pictures. Perhaps later today after work, or if not, i can make them over the weekend? Anyway, here's how the seat was made. 

A few weeks ago I did a test piece on caning with dental floss, because it's flat and smooth properties resemble cain best. It's the one on the right. But it was really happy about it; still being out of scale & too big!

I figured i'd get back to it when i would start on the actual seat itself. But in the meantime I got some unexpected but much appreciated help! Many thanks to Fransisco from Miniarquitect, who makes the most stunning bistro chairs! He convinced me to use thread (which is thinner) and taught me how you can still make it look great. Because I was a bit apprehensive of the fibers showing but now I know there are ways to overcome that. And then it all made sense… It definitely out ways floss and you can go way smaller, making it more close to scale.

I have to say, not bad :) Not bad at all! And way better than floss! So thank you here too Fransisco :)

There are many great tutorials on the internet and if you're interested here's a really nice one on caning;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5IRBuwONnA

Have a great day,

taking the first few steps

Last week i've started on a new piece of furniture. The fun for me is always in the research and this time, again, no exception. I've read all i could find on this dynamic piece of furniture. Not a lot are left in the world, only around 400 they guess. And only made for a relatively short time. First patented in 1774, it became popular from the early 18 hundreds on, for about 20 years. Unfortunately, it turned out to be less practical then it first appeared to be. And rather unsafe too, which, you could say, contributed to its decline. Still it made a nice conversation object. And therefor pretty neat to go for in miniature.

Only 2 rather crude drawings exist from that era, making it a challenge to translate it to paper and draw out a plan. I spend a good deal of time studying similar pieces of furniture, sketching and calculating. Also useful was methodically examining the few pictures (and sparse measurements) of it, that antique dealers have put on the net. It all helped me to come up with a good woodworking plan.

I had to test a few things too, before building could start. Could i find the proper wood? Could i make hinges, that are really narrow yet strong enough? And could i get canning down to scale? And here's the test on the caning.

I've used dental floss (which is flat just like wicker) and gradually went down in hole distance to see what would work best, in combination with the floss. Ordinary thread just doesn't look right to be wicker but I was worried the floss would be too wide. And to me it feels it is, just a little. The smallest hole distance in this test comes closest to wicker in scale, but it could even be smaller, if i wasn't limited by the size of the floss. To prevent it from blocking all up i settled for what it looks like now:

I'm happy with the result, and it gave me the opportunity to learn from the little weaving mistakes i'd made on the first run. I rummaged my wood stock and found the perfect piece to represent mahogany too. And even the hinges turned out strong enough to hold.

The other day I've started on the actual build…  and above is the first piece of many more to come.

Hope you enjoyed reading. Maybe you wonder what it actually will going to be. Or perhaps you've figured it out already?

inkle weaving on a Greta

What you see here is a Greta Loom. It's a tinny weaving loom, you can hold between your legs, to make ribbons and all sorts of (narrow) trimmings.  It's one of the many things I've learned when I took the classes Bonni Backe taught last summer, at IGMA's Guild school in Castine.

Today it's warped with with 6 strands of cotton sewing thread; orange, blue and white.

So i can now weave a ribbon that is approximately 1,3 millimeter wide. The aim here is to make an orange band, with a blue and white stripe. Unfortunately it would become to wide if i'd do that. Cos then I need an extra thread of blue, next to the other blue, and the same goes for the white thread, making it become way over 1,7 mm wide.  I might even need an extra orange to set the stripes apart... making it almost 2 mm.......


It won't do... just won't do, so this band is a compromise between size and looks. It's width is now in proportion to the original and the human eye will hopefully presume that the blue and white "dots" are lines.


Cos this ribbon will be used to tie new pair(s) of old fashion Dutch skates. Just like has been done so oft in the past.

 

Have a great weekend,