monophoto
Member
Many years ago, wife and I got into a tradition of having periodic dinners with two other couples - the women used to teach elementary school together. We would rotate between homes, and occasionally break from the norm by meeting at a restaurant. Obviously, we all got older, and there are now only five of us. But we still enjoy our occasional gatherings.
Last Sunday, when we met at a nearby hibachi place, Marv pulled out an old serving fork with a cheap, broken plastic handle, and asked if I could refurbish it. Well, why not! I had a scrap of canary wood in the shop that was large enough to split in half to make the two scales, and after removing the old plastic and cleaning up the stainless steel, I glued the wood to the steel. The original plastic handle had been attached using oversized metal rivets. I didn't have suitable rivets, and it didn't make sense to order a bunch of them for this small project, so I opted to use pins instead of rivets. I thought about making the pins from brass, but again it didn't make sense to buy a 3' rod (the shortest length available at the hardware store) when I only needed a couple of inches, so I chose to make the pins from wood instead. I had a couple of 3/4" scraps of the canary wood that I turned down to make 3/16" pins, and glue them through the holes in the scales and through the stainless steel tang of the fork with epoxy. Final shaping was done using a sanding disk mounted on the lathe. Finish was six coats of pure Tung oil - the first two thinned 1:1 with turpentine, and the remaining four applied straight from the bottle, buffing between coats with a gray scotchbrite pad.
Fun project for a friend.
Last Sunday, when we met at a nearby hibachi place, Marv pulled out an old serving fork with a cheap, broken plastic handle, and asked if I could refurbish it. Well, why not! I had a scrap of canary wood in the shop that was large enough to split in half to make the two scales, and after removing the old plastic and cleaning up the stainless steel, I glued the wood to the steel. The original plastic handle had been attached using oversized metal rivets. I didn't have suitable rivets, and it didn't make sense to order a bunch of them for this small project, so I opted to use pins instead of rivets. I thought about making the pins from brass, but again it didn't make sense to buy a 3' rod (the shortest length available at the hardware store) when I only needed a couple of inches, so I chose to make the pins from wood instead. I had a couple of 3/4" scraps of the canary wood that I turned down to make 3/16" pins, and glue them through the holes in the scales and through the stainless steel tang of the fork with epoxy. Final shaping was done using a sanding disk mounted on the lathe. Finish was six coats of pure Tung oil - the first two thinned 1:1 with turpentine, and the remaining four applied straight from the bottle, buffing between coats with a gray scotchbrite pad.
Fun project for a friend.
