Robert Narracci's blog

A long time ago I saw a funny logo about bike riding in San Fran and, given the rustic state of our own city's road infrastructure, it inspired me to rework the logo for New Haven. I've always been fond of the New Haven Railroad logo designed by Herbert Matter and used that as the basis of the design. I then merged in a human figure ala Saul Bass (Hitchcock's "Vertigo" logo) and a touch of Milton Glasier's "I Love New York" logo.

Do you wuv puppies? 

Do you wish to allow them the dignity of eating at a wittle table?

Do you hate the unsightliness of dog dishes sitting on your floor?

So on July 4th I did an epic barbecue involving dry rubbed, apple smoked pulled pork served on Hawaiian Malasadas (Portuguese deep fried donuts) with fresh cabbage slaw and mango/jalapeno sauce...but that’s not what this blog entry is about. A byproduct of that effort was me not wanting to waste the half inch of fatback (skin and fat layer) that I cut off of the two pork shoulders.

So I finished my first bowl. In truth the past few months have been mostly waiting for the wood to dry and stabilize. One has to do that by slowly opening a bigger and bigger aperture in the plastic bag the bowl is stored in. At first it literally sweats and then slows down over time. Near the end of drying I had to mitigate some splitting with butterfly keys (a.k.a. bow ties or dutchmen) and then do some filling with cyanoacrylate glue (crazy glue or zap-a-gap) mixed with sawdust.

Really I've only been jumping on this project for about 20 minute spurts one or two nights a week. Today I did a good 3-4 hour burst and made some good headway. Neverheless, its oak and relatively uncomprimising. Spoke a little too soon about not annoying Gina with chopping noise from the basement but the upside is that she's retreated to the farthest upper corner of our house, stumbled upon and restarted a quilt project. We're both contemplating submitting these to the Durham Fair. Theres $6 to be made and a sweet-ass blue ribbon.

Being snowed in is a perfect excuse to do more bowl carving. After  smoothing the exterior with a draw knife I decided to take a whack (pun intended) at the bowl interior. This is about 15 minutes of hewing with an adze.  Bowl carving is done  with super green (freshly cut) wood and the block is stored in a sealed plastic bag to avoid too much water loss prior to the finished shape. I try to work symmetrically so that between sessions the bowl will perspire evenly and hopefully avoid warpage. The work is usually done on a tree stump to avoid tool damage.

I got a beautiful old French clamp at a yard sale for 10 bucks and Jerry rigged it to my workbench (it's supposed to be plumb but doesn't matter much for my purpose. Unlike the now ubiquitous parallel jaw bench vice, this has a pinned connection at bottom allowing one to clamp oblong objects as one would do with a Jorgenson clamp. Using a razor sharp draw knife to smooth (that's paint on my chair, not blood); along the grain is easy; across the end grains is not so easy.

Right now I only have a curved adze. Its hooked inward and elliptical in cross-section and typically it would be used for hollowing out an interior (a hooked adze with a flat crossection seems to be typically use for bowl exteriors but what do I know…I’m a beginner and I only have one tool.) I seem to be spending 1-2 hours to rough out each side and it seems like another hour to smooth.

Beginning : As a sort of regression therapy I've decided to try my hand at stone age (updated to iron age) technology and do some wood bowl carving with an adze. Got a great deal from a fellow in Bulgaria that calls his company "Happy Tools" on Etsy. He sells really nice quality hand forged adzes and my experience so far (on oak which is a surly wood)  is that it holds it razor edge well. Sculptor Susan Clinard kind enough to donate a green stump to me and I roughed it out in my backyard with a chainsaw (so far my only 20th century indulgence).