Christmas Project

A variation I find suits me is to use cotter keys as hanger loops. Since the hangers themselves are normally steel wire, doesn't make much difference what color the loop is. 1/16" hole, some medium CA and a tuck is all you need. Cheaper, too.

"Darrell Feltmate" wrote in news:tE8_i.42336$XF6.34466@edtnps90:

Darrell, I have a faint memory of straight chisels from my trade school days (55-57). We also had scrapers, but didn't call them that. All tools were chisels or gouges. Most chisels were used in a planing manner to the best of my recollection. Fifty years ago, I was considered an accomplished turner (even at the age of 16). Today I am a beginner (but I do remember planing with a square chisel). Regards, Hank

SNIP

Darrell - great work as always, and thanks for posting it for us. I personally love offset turning, and do a lot of mushrooms and treenware handles offset, like that offset, but hadn't really thought about an icicle.

Here's a thought on the hangers. A few years ago I had a bunch of knotty little burls that were not too solid, and a little punky. I used them as caps on other ornaments I was making. My problem was that almost every one split when trying to put in an eye, even a tiny one. And the small ones couldn't get enough bite in the punky wood to be reliable as they just chewed the wood out. A trip to Big Lots presented a solution when I wasn't looking for one.

I bought a fishing kit there that had a ton of gold colored fish hooks in it. I clipped off the hook end leaving the straight shaft at the desired length, put a kink in the shaft and inserted that into my little hole with a drop of thick CA on it. Problem solved and the tiny gold eyes look great on small ornaments.

Another fellow in my club showed me his trick for all his ornaments. He drills a hole in the top of the ornament with a dentist's burr (any tiny bit would do) and he puts dot of thick CA over the hole. He makes a small loop of fishing line and puts a small dot of CA on the ends. He inserts the ends into the hole, works it up and down a couple of times and he is done. This type of hanger really looks great as it doesn't show up at all when the ornament is hung, and you couldn't get any cheaper.

Robert

They do, but they tend to be a lot softer than steel, and sometimes you find yourself opening them up if you're careless pulling string through or sort of half-yanking them off the tree, even with softer hanger wire.

If you go to a craft store or maybe even the craft section at Wally World, they should have little bags of eye pins. These are straight pins with an eye on one end. Probably made out of brass coated steel, and they sometimes come in different lengths, although they are easily cut to length with a pair dykes. If you ask for them, and they say they don't have, or never heard of them, look around the beads and jewelry findings. I once went into a Michaels, which is a craft store chain, and asked for them, and they said that they never heard of them. I figured that a craft store that big had to have them, so I looked around a bit, and found them. I showed them to the clerk, and she said I didn't know we had them.