I love your channel. I must say though that the company Harry's razors is the devil. All things woke must choke on it. I can only hope and pray you get multiple super awesome sponsors above and beyond Harry's which literally hates its own customers. I can't wait for the sign episode!
Thank you for this video you don't know how much this means ever since I was a young boy of around 11 I wondered how the ancients polished there intricate wooden items and weapons especially the people of Polynesia and other pacific islanders as they have incredibly hard wood! My curiosity led to me knowing that in some places where available they used the reeds that were course like the ones shown in your video and in other places they used coarse rocks didn't know about the sharks.
As a kid I would find old rusty railway spikes around the edges of the railway lines, and would polish them up using a variety of rocks I found! I found smooth round river rocks were good for getting quite a shiny final polish.
Thank goodness you are finially diving into abrasives! Try making your own sanding blocks (like the store bought knife sharpeners) out of fine clay and sifted sand that is baked just like a standard clay brick. These can be made into al sorts of shapes (including round rods and triangular bars) for different uses.
I hear that ground pumice on a damp rag works really well to polish metal. Allegedly that's what was used to power the death ray mirror of ancient times.
Note on scythe technique, the large blade tends to make you think that you’re supposed to take down a huge swath at once, but realistically, you’re only trying to take a couple of inches per stroke at most. If the blade stops in the grass, you’re trying to take too much.
It's pretty brave to address both sanding and sharpening in one video given how enthusiastic and varied people can be about those topics. Thanks for keeping on keeping on.
Straw polisher works best with wax or on projects/wood that warrant the polishing. A few counties used that and it definitely helps push finishes into the wood. Kind of like how you burnish the edge of leather with friction.
Polissoir is more for refining a wax finish on wood. It's supposed to build up friction Heat to melt and move the wax versus removing wood through abrasion
One thing to bear in mind about some polishing abrasives is that they aren’t dry - a lot of polishing sprays and such are *really* fine particulate matter (sometimes even crushed pumice) in suspension.
So glad to see the new shop up and running, I'm sure it's been a wild ride. I appreciate the effort and perseverance you've put in to make this channel what it is. Cheers!
I love seeing the progress. Y'all went from "Oh man, can we even forge something???" To "Let's just forge a scythe real quick so we can test some abrasives" lmao
My grandpa tells a story about his visit to the shrine of the pines, it's a tourist trap in Michigan, a log cabin that had some neato design and mechanisms. Anyways one of the ways the builder of that cabin polished wood was he would powderize glass and sprinkle it on deer pelts. No adhesives. Might be a thing you could try.
Seriously, this channel has so much potential for YT collaboration. You'd end up with a better understanding and better results with working with people who actually still do these things.
Well done for getting it all together again. Most of us would have been broken, and abandon this beautiful thing you and the team have created. It shows a real strength of will. 👍
You dont have to worry about shit like that. I work in steel works and have done alot of woodwork. Unless you are doing it in a enclosed room all day every day with no air flow there is no point in using a respirator
for the last few thousand years (until the late 19th century anyway) carding was the most common of these techniques, there's evidence of bronze shaving cards, although steel/iron is more often the material of choice. it's possible to achieve a fantastic finish although it does require a well worked surface beforehand, and seems to work better on harder woods with tight grain. I can't see sharkskin being a popular choice, although humans have tried rubbing just about everything together over the years! A note about scythe sharpening, they were usually sharpened (especially in the field) by hammer-peening over a small stake-anvil, it's a very fast way to get a razor-sharp edge and doesn't rely on removing lots of metal, It's worth remembering that for most of human history, a scythe represented a substantial investment for an ordinary peasant farmer, and was treated as such. Sometimes abrasives were used, but they were usually fine-grained stone and only used for honing an already pretty keen edge.
@@I.____.....__...__ Yes, it has sharp bits, that's why it's rough. but I'd still doubt that shark-skin saw widespread use as a finishing abrasive. My point is that the historical use of abrasives was much more limited than it is now. Sanding is such a common method nowadays, it's easy to think that it's always been that way, but in reality, only the very finest objects would have seen the kind of high finish that is commonplace now, and much of that was achieved with other methods (scraping, burnishing, french-polishing etc).
@@theafro It was something used in English Tradition Woodworking, originating in the 18th century as a replacement for crushed pumice and rottenstone, particularly in the North American Colonies. There's no indication that it was particularly widespread, nor a long-lasting practice. You are very correct.
This is what I watch your videos for! I know the big adventures and projects can be fun but just these little tid bits of research made real is brilliant!
I made it to 1:56 before I had to stop the video. I think it is amazing that you all have taken on these goals of figuring out for yourselves how many things have been done historically. Card scrapers, though... I know I can't be the only person to mention this: You're using them backwards and with the wrong arrisses. The best results come from using a burr on a long edge, both hands driving the scraper, and holding the scraper so it engages at greater than 90deg to the surface of the work. You'll also get a bigger "bite" by flexing the card a bit so the center of the card leads the cut. These things are too common in the modern hobby of woodworking to be so thoroughly lacking in research before recording.
Sharks use urea in their tissues as an osmoregulator (helps keep water in their bodies in the marine environment). That smell you are smelling is a combination of urea and whatever preservative Carolina uses (probably dilute formalin).
been a long journey to see the workshop get rebuilt, it was the youtube equivelant of the burning of alexandria library, but happy and exicted to see you ready to rock and roll !
A potentially interesting and useful project you might want to do in the near future would be case-hardening. The historical method would be taking the iron you want to harden and placing it inside a sealed box (usually made of clay) with a mixture of reagents (usually either carcoal and bonemeal or a mixture of leather, hooves, salt and urine) and then heating it for prolonged periods of time depending on the desired depth of the hardening. I'd recomend using a slurry of charcoal and urine as the hardening reagent, as both serve as sources of substances used in modern case hardening processes (carbon for the charcoal, ammonia and isocyanic acid produced by the pyrolysis of urea for the urine).
A really good technique is to get a granite sea/ river rock and use beeswax to seal the grain you can also warm the stone. The friction seals the cellulose staws in the wood.
The horsetails are quite variable, you'll find some species that are a good fine sandpaper, and others are essentially just a very fine polish, so it pays trying different species depending on what you need
The degree of polish on both the flat side and the edge of a card scraper before you turn the burr is the main factor relevant to its sharpness. If it's not cutting shavings like a plane, it's not been polished high enough before turning the burr.
Try dipping the straw in a bit of bentonite clay or fine silica sand as a rubbing compound. I don't imagine it would work super well as a sanding agent, but it'd probably give a good polish. And as for the scythe, weren't those sharpened using a peening hammer to flatten and thin the edge?
An alternate technique for sanding comes from using the cuttlebone of a cuttlefish - it was widely used in areas close to the sea, where cuttlebones are a common find while beach combing.
Something to note here is that the “late wood” in fir is significantly harder than the “early wood.” Because of this it is easy to produce a ribbed texture with these methods. You’ll find the exact same effect in drift wood.
The fire seems to have been a test and you seemed to have passed it now, you will be better equipped for future growth now then you were before the fire, great to see you have such a strong will and passion for what you do
I am still waiting for you to harvests sharpening stones. Roy underhill has a book called the “woodwrigts companion” with a chapter called the “Whetstone Quarry.” He has a list of municipalities where you can harvest your own whetstones.
From what I've seen on other videos, you're supposed to curve the scrapper when you use it, to better expose the burr. People usually do it by hand, but apparently there are also jigs to hold it slightly bent, so that must be a substantial improvement.
I understand that a lot of the time the craftsman's sanding limestone was some of his most valuable assets. Mind you thats for multiple different grits and hardness of polishing stones.
Dutch rush ? Woodwind players (especially double Reed players) use this to make or customize their reeds to their own needs and preferences. It is capable of very fine shaping and smoothing.
What about tanning the hide to get a more flexible "sandpaper" for inside corners, man was making leather long before bronze, still informative as always, and good luck in the new shop!
I wonder if you would try making polishing powder. It's the same as making paint pigment from ochre. A rock tumbler or a ball mill. Then you mill the pigment with a hand mill with some linseed oil until glossy smooth.
Using a strigel to sharpen the scythe is not enough, you need to Dengel it as well, i.e. using a hammer and specific metal anvils (they tend to be small and round) to hammer the scythe to a razors edge.
I once4 made a wooden spear and wanted to test how well i could throw it so i used square hay bales, after a little while i noticed the wood became shiny and smooth. Just wanted to recollect on that and help boost you in the algorithm
a good way to finish wooden projects like that is burnish them the best way is after you're satisfied its as smooth as you want it take a hard smooth stone or a piece of smooth bone or antler and aggressively rub it along your project with firm pressure and it will compress the outer layer of the wood and remove many small fibers that are left over from the sanding process. this method can be enhanced with beeswax fat or oil which will also protect the wood from the elements one other tip the wax fat or oil will absorb better into the wood if its lightly heated over something like a coal bed or equivalent het source.
I suspect that straw polisher would be better to knock down and finish up something that is lacquered or something similar with a finished coating on it.
9:06 Ouch, no. You should not be applying force. The blade should be cutting by a dragging motion across the grass. You want the sweep to come from your hips with your arms just guiding, like the rotation of turning your leg outwards. Well, you are learning various skills constantly so no point to harp on you. I just have used scythes before and have a bit more understanding of them. Might want to hammer down the edge more too.
That's the downfall of this channel's whole thesis. A single person can't progress from one advancement to the next, because people spent several lifetimes to master each part in between before they could move to the next step. All the difficulties that Andy has had using copper tools and eagerness to get past that is because he is using the very first and (no offense) shittiest copper tools made. By the time people were moving onto iron they had literal centuries of iterations and innovations, resulting in far better copper tools than what he is trying to work with.
Do remember that in ancient China, paper wasn't the weak white paper that we use today but a cloth-and-plant-fiber mashup, usually using old rags and similar.
I feel like a majority of the failure here is in technique and material. The straw one would likely be great at getting a fine polish on metal, such as a helmet or sword, without affecting shape or structure. I also feel like the pumice would work better in slower, single direction strokes or concentrated sanding, like making a divet or shallow channel for aesthetics
Thanks to Harry's for sponsoring today's episode! Redeem your Starter Set for just $3 when you go to harrys.com/HTME
remove the second "Can"
I love your channel. I must say though that the company Harry's razors is the devil. All things woke must choke on it. I can only hope and pray you get multiple super awesome sponsors above and beyond Harry's which literally hates its own customers.
I can't wait for the sign episode!
You mean Jeremy's razors. Don't give your money to people who hate you.
You got so good at forging and all of this that i honestly think you could survive in medieval times
Thank you for this video you don't know how much this means ever since I was a young boy of around 11 I wondered how the ancients polished there intricate wooden items and weapons especially the people of Polynesia and other pacific islanders as they have incredibly hard wood! My curiosity led to me knowing that in some places where available they used the reeds that were course like the ones shown in your video and in other places they used coarse rocks didn't know about the sharks.
As a kid I would find old rusty railway spikes around the edges of the railway lines, and would polish them up using a variety of rocks I found! I found smooth round river rocks were good for getting quite a shiny final polish.
Cool!
I used to polish stones with stones
River rocks would smooth the iron by pressing it flat. It doesn't actually work for removing material beyond a certain point.
Okay boomer
That’s cool, and all but railroad spikes still belong to the railroad company.😂you’re not supposed to take them
Thank goodness you are finially diving into abrasives!
Try making your own sanding blocks (like the store bought knife sharpeners) out of fine clay and sifted sand that is baked just like a standard clay brick.
These can be made into al sorts of shapes (including round rods and triangular bars) for different uses.
Please never dive into abrasives.
@@trogdor8764 hey, nothing scratches that itch like 60 grit.
I like the cigar-shaped ones for scythes and billhooks
I hear that ground pumice on a damp rag works really well to polish metal. Allegedly that's what was used to power the death ray mirror of ancient times.
Note on scythe technique, the large blade tends to make you think that you’re supposed to take down a huge swath at once, but realistically, you’re only trying to take a couple of inches per stroke at most. If the blade stops in the grass, you’re trying to take too much.
It's impressive you made an abrasive out of shark skin considering how smooth it is (in all directions)
It's pretty brave to address both sanding and sharpening in one video given how enthusiastic and varied people can be about those topics. Thanks for keeping on keeping on.
Straw polisher works best with wax or on projects/wood that warrant the polishing. A few counties used that and it definitely helps push finishes into the wood. Kind of like how you burnish the edge of leather with friction.
It can also be used with an abrasive slurry for different effect. Mostly on metals.
I love how dedicated Andy is to one of the best channels on RUclips!
Polissoir is more for refining a wax finish on wood. It's supposed to build up friction Heat to melt and move the wax versus removing wood through abrasion
I'd imagine that it would work well with leather too.
Really happy and glad you managed to finish everything around the new studio.
One thing to bear in mind about some polishing abrasives is that they aren’t dry - a lot of polishing sprays and such are *really* fine particulate matter (sometimes even crushed pumice) in suspension.
So glad to see the new shop up and running, I'm sure it's been a wild ride. I appreciate the effort and perseverance you've put in to make this channel what it is. Cheers!
I love seeing the progress. Y'all went from "Oh man, can we even forge something???" To "Let's just forge a scythe real quick so we can test some abrasives" lmao
My grandpa tells a story about his visit to the shrine of the pines, it's a tourist trap in Michigan, a log cabin that had some neato design and mechanisms. Anyways one of the ways the builder of that cabin polished wood was he would powderize glass and sprinkle it on deer pelts. No adhesives. Might be a thing you could try.
Watch breathing that stuff in!
@@EKA201-j7f you're not wrong, that would be nasty to inhale.
@@RFMongoose I actually had a young acquaintance do something like that after I warned him not to. Guys!
Seriously, this channel has so much potential for YT collaboration. You'd end up with a better understanding and better results with working with people who actually still do these things.
Well done for getting it all together again. Most of us would have been broken, and abandon this beautiful thing you and the team have created. It shows a real strength of will. 👍
Amazing episode as always. The progress on the workshop has been phenomenal! I'm looking forward to the future!
The traditional graters that Japanese chefs use for wasabi are also made from shark skin.
What a great video idea. Always neat to learn new stuff!
Oh, also. If you have to sand a bunch of wood or other stuff for projects, think of using a respirator. Those dusts are mean to our lungs.
You dont have to worry about shit like that. I work in steel works and have done alot of woodwork. Unless you are doing it in a enclosed room all day every day with no air flow there is no point in using a respirator
@@spyidr1892 it's still bad just being near it even if you don't feel like you are breathing it
for the last few thousand years (until the late 19th century anyway) carding was the most common of these techniques, there's evidence of bronze shaving cards, although steel/iron is more often the material of choice. it's possible to achieve a fantastic finish although it does require a well worked surface beforehand, and seems to work better on harder woods with tight grain. I can't see sharkskin being a popular choice, although humans have tried rubbing just about everything together over the years!
A note about scythe sharpening, they were usually sharpened (especially in the field) by hammer-peening over a small stake-anvil, it's a very fast way to get a razor-sharp edge and doesn't rely on removing lots of metal, It's worth remembering that for most of human history, a scythe represented a substantial investment for an ordinary peasant farmer, and was treated as such. Sometimes abrasives were used, but they were usually fine-grained stone and only used for honing an already pretty keen edge.
Shark-skin is covered in denticles, that's why.
@@I.____.....__...__ Yes, it has sharp bits, that's why it's rough. but I'd still doubt that shark-skin saw widespread use as a finishing abrasive. My point is that the historical use of abrasives was much more limited than it is now. Sanding is such a common method nowadays, it's easy to think that it's always been that way, but in reality, only the very finest objects would have seen the kind of high finish that is commonplace now, and much of that was achieved with other methods (scraping, burnishing, french-polishing etc).
@@theafro It was something used in English Tradition Woodworking, originating in the 18th century as a replacement for crushed pumice and rottenstone, particularly in the North American Colonies. There's no indication that it was particularly widespread, nor a long-lasting practice.
You are very correct.
This is what I watch your videos for! I know the big adventures and projects can be fun but just these little tid bits of research made real is brilliant!
I made it to 1:56 before I had to stop the video.
I think it is amazing that you all have taken on these goals of figuring out for yourselves how many things have been done historically.
Card scrapers, though... I know I can't be the only person to mention this: You're using them backwards and with the wrong arrisses. The best results come from using a burr on a long edge, both hands driving the scraper, and holding the scraper so it engages at greater than 90deg to the surface of the work. You'll also get a bigger "bite" by flexing the card a bit so the center of the card leads the cut.
These things are too common in the modern hobby of woodworking to be so thoroughly lacking in research before recording.
Sharks use urea in their tissues as an osmoregulator (helps keep water in their bodies in the marine environment). That smell you are smelling is a combination of urea and whatever preservative Carolina uses (probably dilute formalin).
Yeah you guys are back. Miss you guys!
I'm so glad you didn't give up after the fire
New shop is looking great. Looking forward to your bounceback from that fire.
been a long journey to see the workshop get rebuilt, it was the youtube equivelant of the burning of alexandria library, but happy and exicted to see you ready to rock and roll !
A potentially interesting and useful project you might want to do in the near future would be case-hardening. The historical method would be taking the iron you want to harden and placing it inside a sealed box (usually made of clay) with a mixture of reagents (usually either carcoal and bonemeal or a mixture of leather, hooves, salt and urine) and then heating it for prolonged periods of time depending on the desired depth of the hardening. I'd recomend using a slurry of charcoal and urine as the hardening reagent, as both serve as sources of substances used in modern case hardening processes (carbon for the charcoal, ammonia and isocyanic acid produced by the pyrolysis of urea for the urine).
A really good technique is to get a granite sea/ river rock and use beeswax to seal the grain you can also warm the stone. The friction seals the cellulose staws in the wood.
Sharkskin will give you a great fish finish polish.
The horsetails are quite variable, you'll find some species that are a good fine sandpaper, and others are essentially just a very fine polish, so it pays trying different species depending on what you need
The degree of polish on both the flat side and the edge of a card scraper before you turn the burr is the main factor relevant to its sharpness. If it's not cutting shavings like a plane, it's not been polished high enough before turning the burr.
I see u over here making a come back since the fire. Keep up these amazing videos. I could watch this channel all day.
The reed rush is still commonly used to fine tune reeds for musical instruments, especially oboe and bassoon reeds.
Hell yeah, love to see the workshop up and running
Try dipping the straw in a bit of bentonite clay or fine silica sand as a rubbing compound. I don't imagine it would work super well as a sanding agent, but it'd probably give a good polish. And as for the scythe, weren't those sharpened using a peening hammer to flatten and thin the edge?
Loving the new look of the studio. 🙂👍
This show must go on
An alternate technique for sanding comes from using the cuttlebone of a cuttlefish - it was widely used in areas close to the sea, where cuttlebones are a common find while beach combing.
Also sturgeon skin is worth a try. It has some irritating plating, but the skin inbetween is very rough, comparable to a shark.
Something to note here is that the “late wood” in fir is significantly harder than the “early wood.” Because of this it is easy to produce a ribbed texture with these methods.
You’ll find the exact same effect in drift wood.
would love to see a video about making charcoal, it was extremely helpful for fueling forges!
I’m so happy that this channel is predominantly Andy again
Looking forward to seeing the videos in the new building.
I get better results with the scraper if I take longer scrapes. You can pull really thin chips like a planer gives ya
The fire seems to have been a test and you seemed to have passed it now, you will be better equipped for future growth now then you were before the fire, great to see you have such a strong will and passion for what you do
I am still waiting for you to harvests sharpening stones. Roy underhill has a book called the “woodwrigts companion” with a chapter called the “Whetstone Quarry.” He has a list of municipalities where you can harvest your own whetstones.
That shark looks too adorable
Loved it guys
Awesome video thanks buddy hope you make more
Best video in a long time.
Super interesting.
Loved it.👍
From what I've seen on other videos, you're supposed to curve the scrapper when you use it, to better expose the burr. People usually do it by hand, but apparently there are also jigs to hold it slightly bent, so that must be a substantial improvement.
One moment, let me go to the local hardware store and get some sharks.
I understand that a lot of the time the craftsman's sanding limestone was some of his most valuable assets.
Mind you thats for multiple different grits and hardness of polishing stones.
the scrape is really for very fine finishing, not for taking out big gouges. Also, you need to keep bringing up the burr quite regularly.
for some reason i am not receiving notification even though i press the bell and this is like my #1 favorite D:
Missed you guys
Seeing that polisheer i would expect it needing some compound something with particles in it to really function but duno ^^
I see this yolk being made, 2 videos for the price of one. Good on you. Nm I don't even know how many things are being made.
Dutch rush ?
Woodwind players (especially double Reed players) use this to make or customize their reeds to their own needs and preferences. It is capable of very fine shaping and smoothing.
What about tanning the hide to get a more flexible "sandpaper" for inside corners, man was making leather long before bronze, still informative as always, and good luck in the new shop!
I wonder if you would try making polishing powder. It's the same as making paint pigment from ochre. A rock tumbler or a ball mill. Then you mill the pigment with a hand mill with some linseed oil until glossy smooth.
I wonder if the sharkskin would work better wrapped onto annother tool, like the end of the polliseur (is that how it's spelt? The hay tool)
Cool exploration
just tell him what you want, give him a couple sand dollars, and he'll have it done by tomorrow.
I LOVE THIS SHOW!!!!!!!!!!
Using a strigel to sharpen the scythe is not enough, you need to Dengel it as well, i.e. using a hammer and specific metal anvils (they tend to be small and round) to hammer the scythe to a razors edge.
I once4 made a wooden spear and wanted to test how well i could throw it so i used square hay bales, after a little while i noticed the wood became shiny and smooth. Just wanted to recollect on that and help boost you in the algorithm
if you need very coarse sandpaper, i think Rayskin would be pretty good. i'd compare it to 40 grit if not even lower.
a good way to finish wooden projects like that is burnish them the best way is after you're satisfied its as smooth as you want it take a hard smooth stone or a piece of smooth bone or antler and aggressively rub it along your project with firm pressure and it will compress the outer layer of the wood and remove many small fibers that are left over from the sanding process. this method can be enhanced with beeswax fat or oil which will also protect the wood from the elements one other tip the wax fat or oil will absorb better into the wood if its lightly heated over something like a coal bed or equivalent het source.
Why not leather or wool felt and something like a red rouge or fine mud for the abrasive? They'd be a little messy but great for a final polish.
2:28 you rock!
I suspect that straw polisher would be better to knock down and finish up something that is lacquered or something similar with a finished coating on it.
Man... The Selachian Pugilistic Centre would love you...
I think you should try the sandy fat with the straw bundle
The policier(?) might work better if you dip it in some kind of mud or other abrasive paste
Love Harry’s my family has used them for as long as I remember. Got their vbox for my 15th birthday
great video!
Long Live HTME!
I cannot find where to buy the brick
Job good Andy done you have.
5:08 You should have gone with Jeremy's Razors instead of Harry's. lol.
9:06 Ouch, no. You should not be applying force. The blade should be cutting by a dragging motion across the grass. You want the sweep to come from your hips with your arms just guiding, like the rotation of turning your leg outwards. Well, you are learning various skills constantly so no point to harp on you. I just have used scythes before and have a bit more understanding of them. Might want to hammer down the edge more too.
The harvest season is upon us
That's the downfall of this channel's whole thesis. A single person can't progress from one advancement to the next, because people spent several lifetimes to master each part in between before they could move to the next step. All the difficulties that Andy has had using copper tools and eagerness to get past that is because he is using the very first and (no offense) shittiest copper tools made. By the time people were moving onto iron they had literal centuries of iterations and innovations, resulting in far better copper tools than what he is trying to work with.
Do remember that in ancient China, paper wasn't the weak white paper that we use today but a cloth-and-plant-fiber mashup, usually using old rags and similar.
What was the goo used at 9:23?
As always amazing episode HTME Team!!!
Sharks are smooth and you can’t convince me otherwise
Verry nice to see u evolve i loved this one and the last one about chicken poop keep going you hero
Final polishing should be in a circular motion 😊
Silly reset man, everyone knows sharks are smooth!
everyone when new tech breaks: where did i save the how to make everything reset playlist?
Can a shark can?
The shark can can
*Music starts playing and a shark starts doing a funny dance with its legs*
As a kid I tried sanding stones with other stones and sand so i can confirm this works
Should have used rock and then card scarper, would have been the smoothest finish
I feel like a majority of the failure here is in technique and material. The straw one would likely be great at getting a fine polish on metal, such as a helmet or sword, without affecting shape or structure. I also feel like the pumice would work better in slower, single direction strokes or concentrated sanding, like making a divet or shallow channel for aesthetics
Is there a difference between hyaluronic acid and hyalroric acid?
Shark skin is smooth in no matter what direction you move in im pretty sure.........
Did you forge the scythe yourself?
Very nice
My grandfather carved and polished a walking stick with pieces of broken glass. Something his father taught him, and he taught me.