2. Intro to Fab

Astro Lee
Feb 7, 2024
2 min read

I started out brainstorming this week's assignment by researching for what I want to make. Then, I came across these reference images.

I wanted to create a wooden Mail Knife, a Letter Opener.

So with the wood I had last week, I tried making a knife. I.. broke the band saw twice on Saturday. Yes, that was me.

But it was already kind of loose & weird T..T

But yes, I did kinda break it too. I had a hard time cutting a straight line in this bad wood.

So as an alternative route, I marked parts I want to split and got started with the hand saw.

I was very sweaty at the end of this process.

A lot of sawing & more sawing

Then I made a single mail knife, using a lot of sand tools. I sanded a bit of my finger along the way too. That was fun.

But I was quite happy with my knife result. So I decided to make a hair stick. which I would really use a lot.

TA-DAA--!

My Avadacabra hair stick and my mail knife.

Steve let me borrow linseed oil and I tried them on for these.

It seemed all nice and well-finished, but I was a little disappointed that the color changed with the finishing process with the oil. I did enjoy the pink tone on these pieces.

Then, after making these two pieces, I realized how hard it would be to make 5 of these, exactly the same -product grade-

So I switched direction.

I decided to move on to spoon / chopstick / pen rests. Thought the wood pattern would also compliment the look. (Which it did!)

So out of the hand-sawed long pieces of wood, I chose the most tidy one and took this to the saw machine (before it really broke).

Then spent a day on grinding and grinding the wood. I used the round sanding machine and also the flat one. The flat one's the one that got my finger.

(A lil close up of the rests)