Saturday, March 6, 2010

New combs are done at last!

Nothing like taking FOREVER to accomplish something! I had no earthly idea that these were going to take this much time to finish but now that they are done, I do have to admit that they turned out very nice for a pile of welding rod and some barn boards and firewood! When I started this project, my intentions were to make a 2 pitch set of Viking combs but mid construction, we signed Susie up for a class on working with Icelandic fleece. Once she was signed up, we found out that for this particular type of fleece, single pitch combs were better suited so I set aside the wood for the double pitch and grabbed some nice black walnut logs that we had salvaged from a down tree that I couldn't bring myself to burn. I turned the comb handles and the threaded "lock down" on the comb holder and ground another 38 tines! All in all the grinding process was a bigger pain in the.....well....lets just say that unless I figure out a more efficient method of grinding and polishing tines, I probably will not be making too many more of these "implements"! As far as the combs go, they are rather larger than most that we have seen but from what we had heard from others, a larger working load seems to be something that most folks wished they had. I haven't spent a massive amount of time using these since at present I'm still working on the mountain of gray fleeces for our matching sweaters but from what little I have, they seem to work very well. (At least the teacher at the Icelandic class was VERY impressed with them, so that's at least something!) My next set will be the originally planned double pitch set made from some absolutely "drop dead" flame Birch I've had for years! Stay tuned for pictures of them....maybe I can manage to get them done sometime before I RETIRE!