A couple of months ago I was very kindly given a Moughton Whetstone, which made me rather happy. Especially as it was a funny shape:
I've always rather liked the boxes or holders people sometimes make for koppa or bouts, cos they look cool. This kind of thing (not my picture):
And something as beautiful as a Moughton deserves something like that. So here I've sawn the ends off to create two slurry stones, and a main one. the piece of wood I'm going to use is Callitris, a rather beautiful, quite hard, Australian softwood that I quite like working with. I'll be sawing it to a better size later:
Here after a bit of tidying up, the main stone is 165mm long by 50 - 90mm wide:
Now the bottom of the main bit of the Moughton looks like this:
And you can, if you're particularly clever with woodworking, carve the holder to fit that part precisely. But f me is that a lot of intricate work! So I'm not going to do that...
I'm going to chisel or rout the wood to fit the stone quite well, and then I'm going to fill it with epoxy and cast the stone in it. which should create a perfect mould around the bottom. I've not done this before, but it should work. Epoxy won't bond to something that's been oiled or waxed, so if I oil the bottom of the stone I should be able just to lift it out once the epoxy's set.
First though I'm going to seal the stone on the bottom and the sides. This will help with the casting, and also I like to use the Moughton with a bit of a soak, and it might help there too. Two or three coats of clear, oil-based wood varnish will do nicely:
TBC...
I've always rather liked the boxes or holders people sometimes make for koppa or bouts, cos they look cool. This kind of thing (not my picture):
And something as beautiful as a Moughton deserves something like that. So here I've sawn the ends off to create two slurry stones, and a main one. the piece of wood I'm going to use is Callitris, a rather beautiful, quite hard, Australian softwood that I quite like working with. I'll be sawing it to a better size later:
Here after a bit of tidying up, the main stone is 165mm long by 50 - 90mm wide:
Now the bottom of the main bit of the Moughton looks like this:
And you can, if you're particularly clever with woodworking, carve the holder to fit that part precisely. But f me is that a lot of intricate work! So I'm not going to do that...
I'm going to chisel or rout the wood to fit the stone quite well, and then I'm going to fill it with epoxy and cast the stone in it. which should create a perfect mould around the bottom. I've not done this before, but it should work. Epoxy won't bond to something that's been oiled or waxed, so if I oil the bottom of the stone I should be able just to lift it out once the epoxy's set.
First though I'm going to seal the stone on the bottom and the sides. This will help with the casting, and also I like to use the Moughton with a bit of a soak, and it might help there too. Two or three coats of clear, oil-based wood varnish will do nicely:
TBC...