Wool Picker Completion

I finished the wool picker and presented it to the fiber arts class on Friday. It wasn't as simple to finish as I originally thought it would be. I thought a simple stain, top piece, and feed tray would only take 2 hours at the most. In that time calculation, I forgot all of the other nuances that needed to be tended to. In order for the top sleigh to be stored inside the box, I needed to trim the handle, the nails were still fighting with each other, the runners needed to be trimmed, metal isn't easily bent, and it ended up taking five and a half hours to complete. I'm not complaining, I love playing in Dave's wood shop! I will admit that when the nails were clashing and the sleigh wasn't sliding as smoothly, I was ready to burn it. It was very discouraging to have put all the work into the design and construction and not have it work. I learned that almost nothing will work the first time you construct it, it takes time to tinker. Thankfully, Dave was encouraging and after some thinking, we trimmed down the runner and found a few problem nails and things were running smoothly. The top was easy, we decided on the size, cut it, sanded it, added pegs to keep it from sliding around and that was all set. Overall, I had a ton of fun building it and now I have a wonderful picker that cost me around $80 in materials. My building projects aren't over just yet though, I am making legs for the picker and I still have a hackle to make! If you have any questions, I would love to answer them!

Update On The Wool Picker

The wool picker is coming along, in fact it is almost done. After way too many hours of drilling the holes at a certain undisclosed degree angle and then having to re-set the angle on the other side of the drill press because the pieces wouldn't fit on it, and having to constantly check to ensure the holes would match the ultimate direction of the nails, I am done with that part!  After drilling all 450 holes I discovered that because I was using pine, the board would crack when I went to tap the nail in. This was fixed once I re-drilled all 450 holes with a bigger bit and glued the piece I cracked. After that dilemma, I was then faced with how I was going to keep the nails in tight since the hole was big enough to slide them in relatively easily. Glue, lots of gorilla glue that I applied to each nail with the tip of another nail. The results were strong nail beds and hard blackened hands from the oil and glue. Dave Paul (famous spinning wheel maker ( http://www.themerlintree.com/merlin001.htm ) and I debated over numbers and ideas, how this would sit, how that would sit, will this work, and after many thoughts on how things would work, it ultimately ended up being the most simple solution. Thank god Dave is a patient man! We found our height for the runners and where the nail beds would sit, we also decided on the length for the feed tray and the handle height. Now, the remaining work is cutting and bending the metal for the feed tray, making the top, and adding some wood stain to it! I was not able to take pictures of the process but I will post pictures later of the current stage.