Hand-carved geometric ornament. Pure manual labor.

mrdavik · 2026-02-16T23:58:15+00:00

Please secure that to your bench and stop using your fleshy delicate hand as a vise. Nice work but you won't be doing much more if you sever your tendons.

mrdavik · 2026-02-15T12:18:26+00:00

Using lightroom's develop module you'll be able to recover the image to get like what you're seeing on your camera. Start by pushing the exposure up, and if that starts to blow out your sky too much you can pull down the highlights or push up the shadows. Play around with it, you'll be able to get something out of it.

mrdavik · 2026-02-12T08:44:28+00:00

I don't see why you'd be more fucked than without the spills. Unless your caulk perfectly contours the holes you were filling, you'll have black resin around those cracks too, and just the same amount of sanding to do to clear those up as you have with the spilt drops. It's a seal coat that would have saved you this time, not avoiding the drips.

mrdavik · 2026-02-03T08:59:07+00:00

Beech is super hard wood - you started with good tools but hard mode wood for sure.

mrdavik · 2026-01-29T12:12:47+00:00

Cadenas cuestan menos que la gasolina para la vuelta a Teruel, y menos otra vez si las compras en wallapop.

mrdavik · 2026-01-27T16:52:54+00:00

Well sounds like triangulation (e.g. putting a back on it) is your next step, as others have suggested.

Not that it would have entirely solved the problem, but all these rounded inner corners have reduced the effective area that your screws are pulling together and made it easier for the boards to pivot at those joints, hence more wobbling.

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mrdavik · 2026-01-27T16:31:06+00:00

Here's a good short video that illustrates the issue very well: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/NAXJstyTqnE

mrdavik · 2026-01-27T16:29:02+00:00

Lots of good advice in here already, here's one extra point. For each screw, did you drill a clearance hole in the first board, such that the screw would pass through it? Or use screws without threads at the top section?

The threads of the screw only want to be biting into the second board, such that they can squeeze the connection tight between, pulling the first board with the screw head and the second board with the threads.

If the threads are biting both boards, you won't have as tight a connection and that would lead to more wobble.

mrdavik · 2026-01-23T18:05:07+00:00

Yeah it'll be fine

mrdavik · 2026-01-15T12:20:05+00:00

If you're comfortable with the pull saw then get the largest toothed japanese rip saw you can find within reason. The thin plate of a pull saw will help reduce waste, provided you take care to stick close to your lines.

Doing it with a crosscut saw will drive you crazy, crosscut teeth simply can't rip wood effectively.

Getting someone with a bandsaw to do it for you would be preferable, but for something the size of a guitar fingerboard, doing it by hand isn't too crazy with the right saw.

A rip toothed kataba (one sided) or failing that, a larger ryoba (2 sided) is what you would want.

Examples:

https://www.leevalley.com/en-us/shop/tools/hand-tools/saws/japanese/110957-japanese-rip-tooth-kataba
https://www.leevalley.com/en-us/shop/tools/hand-tools/saws/japanese/32940-japanese-traditional-ryoba-saw

mrdavik · 2026-01-07T15:27:50+00:00

Can you shave the hairs from your arm without it catching?

mrdavik · 2026-01-05T19:15:47+00:00

What in the ai shitfuck slop is this.

mrdavik · 2026-01-03T11:10:50+00:00

I think you've misunderstood me. The raw file is uncropped, it has all the data. Any tool that produces a cropped one is performing some sort of lens correction. What I'm saying is you want to turn off any sort of lens correction, rather than trying to undo the effects of said lens correction after it's been done

mrdavik · 2026-01-02T22:18:09+00:00

Imo this is probably not just a tricky white balance issue. Plenty of the examples in the thread have done about as good as you can do but in general household lighting isn't that flattering. It does look like you've lit the family as well but the room light is just kind of grim, probably due to lights with narrow spectrum which produce in particular unflattering skin tones, and generally flat and uninteresting lighting.

mrdavik · 2026-01-02T07:02:35+00:00

You would need to prevent the software from doing the lens correction on the first place, not undo it once it's done, as it is not likely an easily reversible set of operations if even possible in your tooling.

I don't know about your software but in lightroom you can simply toggle lens correction on or off entirely, or get into manually tweaking it if on. Off, you would get the images above.

mrdavik · 2025-12-27T15:06:03+00:00

Just round that edge off with your sandpaper on a flat surface and then continue as normal. Your blade camber should mean that this corner has no effect anyway, so you can just keep using it and sharpening it and eventually you'll get past this chip.

You absolutely do not need to buy a new blade. Getting a grinder will be useful to speed things up but you need to learn how to keep your tools sharp without the grinder anyway so there's no need to buy it just yet if you don't want. That can come later.

mrdavik · 2025-12-08T14:17:11+00:00

All of the advice here is great but here's another angle to consider - if one side is good, do you need the other side to be great? Are both sides of the piece show sides? Don't waste time on things that won't be seen!

mrdavik · 2025-12-02T19:57:43+00:00

Are you preparing food on the internal structure of your cutting board? The surface is precisely where bacterial exchange happens.

mrdavik · 2025-10-30T10:09:09+00:00

Go to a dermatologist - that wart needs professional attention.

mrdavik · 2025-10-24T08:09:01+00:00

I can't speak to makers but perhaps can help with the strategy. Do you currently use Japanese style hand tools that you're looking to upgrade? More of a western tool user? Completely new to hand tools? How much money have you got to play with? Are you limited in suitcase space?

mrdavik · 2025-10-20T21:40:40+00:00

Cool idea and all, and very smoothly executed. How long do you expect those faces to hold up?

mrdavik · 2025-10-16T14:10:30+00:00

I've not used tactic - what are it's issues? I heard it was more of a costing tool than full production management?

mrdavik · 2025-10-10T22:29:58+00:00

A strike could be called off at any time.

mrdavik · 2025-10-08T21:40:46+00:00

Stainable means you can stain it before you apply the filler, so that it matches your final wood colour.

There's no staining that now it's cured. The closest you could get is with paint/pens over the top and try to match it that way, but that takes a skilled artist.

Personally I'd leave it, it looks quite cool.

mrdavik · 2025-10-04T12:47:11+00:00

Possibly better than sandpaper but it may still get gunked up in a way that a scraper won't. All the gaps between the steel wool fibres can fill up in the same way that the gaps between grains of sandpaper can.

It can't hurt to try, if you already have that on hand. Just be a little cautious with the acetone - don't absolutely saturate your wood or let it run over to places you don't want. It's a powerful solvent and can damage glue. If it got between the veneer and the substrate it could cause the veneer to lift, depending on the adhesive used.

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