Project #23 - new handle for a small DICK bread knife

This project was one of the fastest ones so far. Shortly before I was about to visit my parents my mother asked me, whether I could help her to pick a new bread knife (size was the main limitation). After brief search I settled for a smaller DICK bread knife with about 20 cm blade, but the handle was just unsighty piece of black pastic, so I have decided to try to make a western style handle (with hidden tang) for it.

As always - I appreciated very much your questions, comments and feedback.

I had just a few days (evenings, to be more exact) to finish this project. Fortunately I already had some components in preparation for a similar handle, so I did not have to start from scratch.

Knife as it came from the shop

The original handle is only half-tang

Design and material

The handle was going to be a 'free style' western handle with a hidden tang made out of:

• stabilised & dyed maple burl
• paper micarta spacer
• buffalo horn ferrule

Preparation

The first step was the removal of the old handle - I simply ground it off the tang with a #40 belt on my little 1x30" belt sander. This was a quick job that took just a few minutes, but I did slip a little and caused a slight scratch to the blade close to the hadle. I decided to leave it that way as full removal would have been very labor intensive (basically refinishing the whole blade)

The next step was shaping the (originaly half-full) tang to a width of 12mm, so that it would fit my stadard handle making process. Once this was done I could proceed with the handle.

Tapping the bolts

Drilling away the bols

Grinding off the black plastic handle

Painting the tang with permanent maker and scribing the future
hidden tang.

Handle - making the block

I had the block and ferrule pre-drilled as these were originally intended for a different knife (which is still in the making). All I needed to do is to make a spacer and a dowel before fitting the handle together and gluing it.

Construction-wise this handle was going to be a 'hidden dowel' handle where the dowel connecting all handle parts is not visible from the front. This has not only design reasons, but also to have the possibility to taper the ferrule on sides without risking getting too close to the dowel.

The handle construction started with squaring up the stabilized dyed handle block. I consider this step very important, because it makes it much esier to clamp and drill the handle in a well defined manner. Once the black is squared up, decide where I want to drill the handle (and how deep), and then I draw centerlines on all 4 sides. plus I tap the opposite (butt) side of the handle. That little tap should help me to know where the center (axis) of the handle is later in the process, as the lines will eventually be ground off during finishing of the handle.

Once the block was ready I have drilled 12 mm wide opening. I did the same with the spacer (ivory color micarta) and the buffalo horn ferrule.

I would than proceed making a dowel and dry fittinig all parts to make sure that I will be able to insert the tang into the hanle once the handle will be finished.

Note: Use only as little glue as possible as the excess will flow inside the dowel and give you a lot of work with a needle file or needle rasp later when you will want to fit in the tang

The gluing of the handle followed in 2 steps. First I would glue the dowel inside then handle (I use a small piece of steel to keep the dovel 'opened' (pushing against the handle). The next day I would glue the spacer and the ferrule in place (and clamp the whole handle).

OK, at this stage the handle block is all glued together. I would test that the tang can be inserted. If a bit of glue leaked inside the dowel, than I would clean it up before proceeding with needle files or needle rasps.

Once the dowel was made to fit, it was glued inside the handle
block with an epoxy. The piece of steel makes sure the dowel
does not 'close' while the glue is curing.

Testing the fit of the tang before the whole handle would be glued.

In the next step the whole handle was glued together.

Shaping the handle

Once the block was glued it was time to start shaping the handle, but first the block would be squared-up again, the excess glue would be removed and the ferrule ground so that it follows the width and height of the block.

In the next step the handle dasign (profile) would be traced on the handle.

Important: The 'waist' of the handle is relatively narrow and one should not forget that there is a 12 mm dowel inside. So alignment is important here, otherwise one could grind too much later when shaping the handle and expose the dowel.

Design traced on squared-up handle block

 I first roughly ground to shape the profile of the handle with a #40 belt. This was rather fast as this particular wood was not too dense and not oily.

Note: It is a good idea to first test how does the wood reacts to grinding - some woods are easy to grind, others will start to burn very easily. Also - if you are grinding oily woods like for example african blackwood, than heating up the wood too much will make the wood 'sweat' the oil and it will clog your belt in no time.

Handle profile ground.

I would then re-draw (not shown in the photos) the centre lines on both upper and lower side of the handle + roughly trace the profile (from the top view) on the handle and grind it with #40 belt. I would use the upper (and only accessible) wheel on the grinder to grind in the concave curves of the handle.

The handle ground from all 4 sides.

In the subsequent step I would start to grind the edges of the handle. At this point I would regularly check the handle size in hand (I would insert the blade to have a better feel for the size). Once I was getting happy with the result I would switch to #120 belt and smoothen out the surface.

Important: Be careful when finishing the grinding with a coarse belt - these cut very fast and have hard edges - it is very easy to accidentally 'bump' into the edge of the belt - in particular around inwards curved areas.

Handle ground to shape with #40 belt.

Handle after #120 belt

Handle finished with #120 belt. Here in different
light so the colours are a bit different.

What was left was the surface finish of the handle - I have sanded the handle by hand with the progression of sanding paper from #180 all the way up to #1000 (the buffalo horn seems to profit from the fine grit finish, the wood did not change much past #400). I have applied a few thin coats of Tung oil and gently polished the handle with '0000' steel wool. 

Tip: When hand-sanding a handle - always use some support under the sanding paper (wood, metal, plastic) when sanding over contact area between two or more materials to avoid over-sanded transitions as usually two different materials react to sanding differently. This is in particular important when there is metal spacer of ferrule involved.

Using a piece of steel as a dummy tang I was able to
position the handle for hand sanding.

Applying final polish and checking that the butt is nicely shaped :)

With the low grit hand sanding (mainly with the #180) I have used a round pice of wood to support the sandpaper as I was removing some 'bite marks' from the coarse belt.

Note: The trick to get an even finish with Tung (or similar hardening) oil come from Robin Dalmann - he first applies the tung oil and then wipes the handle with a clean cloth or paper towel like he would want to remove all the oil. This leaves only very thin layer and when repeated several times yields a very nice finish.

The handle before mounting

I took a little time to 'play' with the handle - to make sure it has the right proportions and sits well in hand. It is very easy to make a handle too large when one does not have much experience (happened to me with a few handles before). At this stage - before the handle was glued onto the tang, it would still be easy to re-shape and re-finish. Yes - the same could be done once the handle was glued onto the tang, one just needs to be a little more careful. 

The tang was glued in place with G/flex epoxy

Finished knife

The final handle while not perfect (some light symmetry issues) turned out pretty nice - I think I did get lucky at times - after all this was my first western (Yo) style handle.

Lessons learned

With this project I was spared from painful or time costing experiences, but there are a few points worth mentioning:

• If you have an approximately reasonable handle design (a good starting point), than you can fine tune the handle shape 'on the fly'. I found this fact very liberating and I have actually enjoyed a lot shaping this handle.
• It may make sense first test the handle design on a piece of simple wood (I used beach) to see whether what looked cool on paper also sits well in hand.
• This was the first time I have used micarta in the handle making - and I have enjoyed it a lot. I am starting to understand why is this material so much loved by knife makers.
• There are many very cool handle materials, but when making a handle for a lightweight knife, make sure you do not pick too heavy materials, as the knife could become 'butt heavy' - a property usually not appreciated with kitchen knives.

Project #8 - WA handle for 240 mm kurouchi Tanaka

Tanaka blue steel #2 knives are well known and belong to (price-wise) entry level 'proper' Japanese kitchen knives. One of the issues many users had with the damascus cladding was that it would oxidize rather fast and would take a long time to develop a stable patina. James from knives-and-stones brought an new version of the knife with kurouchi finish that should help to mitigate the reactivity issue.

I myself was intrigued by Tanaka knives for quite a while and once James offered the option to buy just a blade I had an excuse as I would make the handle myself.

Design

I went with a 'standard' design with a wooden ferrule and wooden body of the handle with a dowel connecting the two and reinforcing the handle for more mechanical stability.

Materials

• Ferrule: purple red heart wood
• Handle body: black locust burl

I have not worked with either of the two woods before. However I really like the look of the red heart on the handle of my Carter and the locust burl has a very interesting figure and at the same time it is supposed to be very resistant to water damage.

The materials. The red heart looks a bit strange, but that is
because the block is covered with wax to seal it.

Making the handle block

I have started with cutting a piece of each material, cleaning and squaring it up on stone plate with sanding paper and getting it ready for gluing. I have used epoxy to glue the blocks together. I am growing fond of the G/flex epoxy as it has long pot time (not quite as relevant in this particular case), is rather liquid and most importantly holds very well.

Cleaned and squared-up blocks - ready for gluing

Letting the glue to cure for 24 hours

Once the glue has cured I have cleaned and squared up the block. I try to make sure that the bottom part of the blade is perpendicular to the sides, as it makes it easier to get proper alignment for drilling the hole for the dowel.

I also draw center lines on the block before I proceed with the drilling as that helps me to keep the track of where the center of the handle is. Before I start to drill I try to as sure as possible that the drill and the center of the handle are aligned as it is not easy to correct this afterward.

Cleaning and squaring up the block before the drilling.

Drilling the dowel hole. Do nut hurry this step.

Once the dowel opening was drilled I have proceeded to mark the handle for rough material removal. The aim is to get rectangular shape with close to final width and height.

Not shown here is a little 'tap' that I applied at the bottom in the center of the handle - that allows me to keep the track of the center of the handle even when the lines on the sides are ground away.

Marking the handle for further shaping

Detail of the marked handle.

It is important to mention, that while I do my best to mark the handle as precisely (and symmetrically) as possible - I will still check several times (in particular at the ferrule) that the dowel hole remains in the middle of the handle.

I use coarse #40 grit (fresh belt - cuts faster and heats up the handle less) belt to remove bulk of material and clean up on disc sander and subsequently by hand on sanding block.

Cleaning up of the coarse shaped handle.

Even though the handle does not have its final shape yet - I constantly check how it fits inside my hand. The best is to do this with a dowel and blade as the weight of the knife changes the impression how large or small the handle feels in hand.

Once the width and height of the handle was right I would then carefully chamfer the edges on the disc grinder to create the octagonal profile. This is a bit tricky as the grinder is very small (just 125 mm diameter). It needs to be done slowly and checked many times, so corrections can be made if necessary.

Note: While I have not tried it yet - this could as well be done on a sanding block with #120 paper.

Once I got the shape finished I would proceed with #240, 400 and 600 paper on sanding block + I would use a smaller block of wood of about 20 x 100 x 50 mm and would attach a double-sided Tesa tape to the long narrow sides and use it to attach sanding paper. That can replace the sanding block if you do not have one and also allows to round the edges on the both ends in a rather well controlled manner.

Final step is done with very fine steel wool - then it is onto oiling. I have used Tru-oil and applied 3 coats. After each coat would dry I would sand it carefully with the steel wool - just to get even semi-matt finish.

Tip: I recommend using some sort of gloves when sanding with steel wool, because the tiny steel particles with find every crack on your skin and your hands will turn black and will not be easy to wash.

Sanding the handle with seal wool

Handle nearly finished - see how my hands look like?

Dowel

The dowel is made from beech wood. The main reason for this choice is availability of round stock (I use 12 mm for larger and 10 mm for smaller handles).

The length is based on the length of the tang + about 2 cm for the bottom part + about 5 - 10 mm that should remaining sticking out of the handle. That allows me to remove the dowel when doing dry runs (checking that the dowel, handle and tang all fit together).

After cutting it to length I cut a slot with a hack saw and then carefully clean and widen it with a belt sander and #120 belt until the tang fits sungly without pushing it aside. Then I carefully sand (thin) the dowel until it fits with not too much resistance inside the handle and allows to insert the tang. The fit does not need to be super tight at this stage as the glue will take some space and make the fit tighter.

I have installed the dowel only once the handle was final shaped here, but it actually makes more sense to install it after the dowel opening was drilled. That reduces the risk of damaging the handle during sanding.

Cutting the slot into the dowel. Try to stay in the middle.

Gluing the dowel. The metal piece is used to push
the dowel open to avoid the gaps around the dowel.

Once the dowel was glued the front of the handle was finished and the handle treated with Tru-Oil. I used 3 coats and sanded the handle lightly with steel wool after each step.

Finishing the handle with Tru-oil

Once the handle was finished I used G/flex epoxy to glue it onto the tang.

A bit unusual way to keep the blade in the upright position.

At this stage it would have been all finished, but After handling the knife a few times I realized that the handle is a bit on the thick side, so I went back to the disc grinder - carefully thinned the handle on all 8 facets and the re-finished it as above. I have removed about 1 mm in width and height of the handle. It sounds little, but it made a noticeable difference in how does the knife feels in hand.

Finished handle:

Project #17 - Mounting Shiro-suita from Ohira-yama on a wooden support

Again - another non-knifemaking project. Somewhat similar to what I did in Project #14, but this time a bit more complicated - with a shaped base. After all - we are talking $500 stone which deserves to be mounted properly :)

This project proved considerably more involved that I expected - partially because after 2 hours of work I realised that I needed to start from scratch.

Disclaimer: I am even less of a woodworker than I am a knifemaker. Those who have experience with woodworking will probably shake their head when reading this I assume. Those, who like me do not have that experience should consider this article to be at most an inspiration, not a How To instruction.

Materials

• Wood No. 1: Peruvian nutmeg
• Wood No.2:  Brazilian tulipwood (Dalbergia decipularis).
• G/flex epoxy (lot's of it)
• Shellac (1:5 weight parts with ethanol)
• water-based lacquer from 330mate_com (apparently not available since several months), but it is really great and 100% water resistant once dry.

The design

I wanted to do something a little nicer that just a rectangular piece of wood and then I got a very nice (about 100 years old) mounted on a nicely shaped (but otherwise very simple and roughly finished) base that I took for inspiration. So after working on the design ... for about 10 minutes, I came up with the following:

The profile of the holder

Nothing fancy. What is not shown is that I decided to embed the stone some 2-3 mm into the wood for a more secure attachment.

The process

The basic idea was:

• cut the board to shape
• shape the board with rasps and files 
• remove about 3 mm of material (with a chisel) so that the stone can 'sink in'
• finish the board with sand paper, coat with Shellac
• coat the bottom and sides of the stone with a lacquer
• fill-in low spot on the bottom side of the stone with epoxy
• glue the stone to the board

Simple and easy, right?  Nope :)

Attempt No.1

The first step was to cut out a pice of board that had the right dimensions. It turned out to be a rather decent upper body training to make one long (28 cm) and one shorter (9 cm) cut into a 4 cm thick hard wood.

Note-to-self: get a bandsaw

 Once the board was cut to shape and sides evened out with a coarse sandpaper, I proceeded to shape the base with rasps - the Japanese one is really great.

It is all straight forward.

About to start shaping (rounding) one of the ends

 I first shaped the ends of the stone with the rasp (and took first notice that wood seems to chip too easily) and than started to work on the 'arches'. My hands were already aching and there was a lot of material to be removed which on top of everything kept chipping. At this stage I should mention that I have never did any kind of work like this with a rasp, so making errors is not really surprising here.

Well, not quite finished yet

For a reason not known to me, until this moment I competely forgot that I have a little 1x30" belt grinder. I felt so stupid that I started to laugh. I've put on a fresh #40 grit ceramic belt and 15 minutes later the rough shaping was finished.

After about 5 minutes on belt sander.

I then switched to #120 belt to smooth out the arches.

Before doing any more finishing work I turned to the next task - cutting /chiseling out the groove for the stone. The idea was:

• Draw the profile (from the top of course) of the stone on the wood
• Cut along the profile line with some thin blade (to keep chipping the wood outside the area in check)
• Use a special 'curved upwards' chisel (also known as Saya Nomi) made by Robin Dalmann to slowly remove the material.

Already trying to make a deep enough cut along the line proved pretty much impossible as the wood was, well - hard, but after struggling with the chisel for about 15 minutes I realised that it will take me many, many hours to get the work done, and, that the wood is very chippy along the grain.

At this stage I abandoned this piece of wood.

Yep, the wood chipped very easily. In retrospect it was not maybe quite
as bad, but I did not come to think about the Proxxon.

So I stopped, went to local hardware store and bought a proxxon with cutting discs and a milling bit. Yep, I chickened out.

Attempt No.2

Since I was not too impressed by the behaviour of the wood, I have decided - before doing any more work - to switch to the board which I originally bought for the purpose - a lovely piece of Brazilwood. The reason I did not use it in the first place was that the surface was very rough and about 2 - 3 mm of material needed to be removed to flatten it and since I did not have an idea how to get that done, I just put it aside.

But since the brilliant idea of using the belt grinder (which I have for about a year and use for all possible tasks) I now had the means to do it in a reasonable time.

Board that I originally bought for the purpose

But first of course the board had to be cut to shape, so ....

Anyone finding this familiar?

But once the cutting was done and I cleaned the sides quickly on the grinder so I could proceed to form the board.

This time much faster.

It took me about 30 minutes to carefully grind the board to shape with a #40 belt and clean it up to #120 belt. It was very easy to make 'facets' into the arches, but not easy to remove them.

Rough shaping finished, the wood has a lovely figure.

The wood is really lovely.

 I then quickly sanded the wood with #240 sandpaper and worked on the arches a little more and followed with #400. Then it was time to get digging.

Did I say to wood looks lovely?

After #400 grit.

First step as already mentioned was to draw the shape of the stone on top of the board. Just before I did that I noticed that the board did not have the same thickness on the long sides (say left-and-right). I felt stupid for not noticing sooner, so I wend to check the stone and ... found out that it was also tilted to one side - lucky me :) So I only needed to orient the stone such that the two tilts would mostly cancel. You need to have a lucky day from time to time.

Yes, this is the stone. The feel does not compare to synthetic stones.
Just fantastic :)

 Next - cutting along the line - this time with a cutting disc at 10.000 rpms (as 20.000 proved too much). This time I tested it first on an off-cut piece. Once I got a feel how to proceed I cut the grove.

Cutting the groove - the blue line indicates the depth I was after.

Just a few minutes later. The little Proxxon is definitely worth the cash.

At this stage I still wanted to try it with the chisel ...

Yep, the chisel is really is "bent".

And again, this is a hard wood ...

... and I was not getting nowhere. The fact that I basically did not work before with a chisel was not of much help either. So I turned to Proxxon and a milling bit and decided to do it the crude way.

Now this seems to work.

I first carefully milled a groove just along the cut-out line and them moved inwards. Eventually I had to swap to a longer mill bit. It took me about an hour of work and I had the depression where the stone would fit.

About half-way done.

I then proceeded with more sanding (and trying to cover-up the few places where my hand slipped with the Proxxon). I went through #400, #600 and #1000 grits. I used a sandpaper holder to make the work easier and keep flat parts more-less flat.

Sanded to #1000 grit and ready for Shellac.

Once I was happy with the result (and tested the stone would fit in) I proceeded to surface finish with Shellac. I use the 'clean' one (light amber color) mixed with ethanol about 1:5 or 1:6 and one could thin it even more for a more even result. Applying the first layer made the already strong figure even stronger.

About to start coating the base with Shellac

First coat of Shellac is drying.

Even though it is rather chilly in my workshop at the moment, the Shellac dried in about 15 minues. Within an hour I have applied 3 coats and decided to let it cure until the next day for first sanding with 0000 steel wool (that would be the finest grade). I would then repeat the process with applying 3 more layers, allowing them to fully cure and subsequently sand lightly with a steel wool.

The steel wool makes the overly glossy and not to even (in particular around edges) looking finish more even and less 'flashy'. See below.

After second round of 3 Shellac coats but BEFORE
sanding with a steel wool

After second round of 3 Shellac coats and AFTER
sanding with steel wool

The stone

In the mean time I needed to test the following:

• water-based stone lacquer on a piece of natural stone I had lying around from making fingerstones
• Once cured a bit see whether G/flex epoxy actually attaches to it
• Test whether the G/flex could be removed from the sticky part of 2 different scotch tapes - this was necessary as I needed to fill-in one corner of the stone and wanted to use the tape to outline the shape

Coating the testing piece of stone with the stone lacquer.

Here I would s inforhort mention the lacquer from 300mate_com (an eBay seller who specializes in sharpening stones and knives). Concetrated the lacquer has a consistency of 'thick milk'. According to information provided with it it can be thined from 1:2 to 1:5 with water. I used 1:2 as that was plenty thin with the stone. Thinned lacquer looks exactly like milk and has practically no smell - so make sure you mark the container properly so someone does not drink it (!) as I guess it is not too healthy to do so.

I would use a simple hair brus to apply a thin coat to the stone surface. On places which are uneven (and thus a more lacquer would collect there) one could see 'white spots', but after drying you are left with nearly perfectly transparend, slightly glossy surface. Even after 5+coats you do not change the look of the stone. I really like that.

G/flex on both tapes and stone (after coating). Right - the
bottom side of the stone getting the lacquer.

So - on epoce it turned out that the lacquer works well, epoxy holds on it and the epoxy can indeed be removed from the tapes, I applied about 4 coats on the stone and once it all dried over night (I wanted to be sure that even the local fractures and inclusions were all dry) I moved to the next step - evening out the bottom side of the stone with epoxy. I did cover the complete top (working) surface of the stone with the orange Tesa tape to protect it before starting with the lacquer.

The reason to do this was to have the complete bottom part of the stone having contact with the wooden support and not to have one corner 'sticking out' and asking for trouble.

The top-left corner has a depression going down to the edge
that I wanted to fill with epoxy

Since the stone does not have equal thickness ove the whole area but has one long side thicker than the othjer, I taped wooden sticks to the thinner side to level the surface I was about to pour epoxy onto.

Working side of the stone - covered with Tesa tape
with 'leveling sticks' attached to it.

I then used the orange Tesa tape to make a barrier around the stone so the expoxy would stay where it should - yes this is why I tested whether it will be possible to remove the tape after the epoxy dried.

I have mixed 15g of G/flex and filled the corner and a few low spots along a strong, but shallow iron line. I took my time to do this as well as I could. G/flegavex was great for this job as it gave me enough working time plus its lower viscosity made it easier to spread it evenly.

The top-left corner and all the low spots filled with G/flex

Epoxe-filled corner

Low spots filled with epoxy

Checking the stone after the epoxy cured revealed that I indeed pretty much managed to level the bottom side side of the stone.

The repaired corner of the stone.

Seems that I actually managed to get it level rather well.

Once the re-modeling of the bottom part of the stone was done I have carefully removed the tape. Still - on several places it managed to remove the applied lacquer, so I had to re-apply it. This was however rather quick job.

Remnants of the lacquer on the tape.

Applying first layer of the lacquer after the tape was removed - the darker places
are where the stone absorbed the lacquer.

Finished base:

Bellow are a few photos of the finished base before the stone was glued on it. It can be clearly seen that my hand slipped a few times when working with the Proxxon. I will be more careful next time.

Bottom side - the curves show the grain of the wood
really nicely.

Detail of the milled depression.

Next to off-cut piece - shows the difference with and without
surface finish.

Next to off-cut piece - shows the difference with and without
surface finish.

Mounting the stone

Since I had to model one corne of the stone I needed to to some light adjustment to it so that it would fit will the base. I used a sharp knife to do that. Also the edges of the stone needed slight sanding to get a proper fit. This also meant that I had to apply a few coats of the stone lacquer to cover them

Once I was happy with the fit I have prepared 30g of G/flex epoxy, spread it evenly on the base and attached the stone. I would mention here that for this kind of job you do NOT want to use a 5 minutes epoxy - as it takes some time to spread it over the base, put in the stone, if necessary do some adjustments and finally wipe the excess - while the epoxy is still flowing. I have spent about 30 minutes wiping out the excess glue MANY single movement wipes. You can not cheap out using acetone as you would probably damage the Shellac, so just dry wiping. 

About to get started with gluing.

Stone is in place - now is the wiping time!

Filling in the corner was probably a good idea, it would otherwise been
in a risk of breaking off.

And done! :) Lets have a look how it looks in a kitchen environment

Lessons learned

This was a new kind of project for me, so naturally it was a lot of discovering and making mistakes. But here it comes:

• If you have never worked with a high quality chisel (means hard and easy to chip), than starting with a hard wood is not going to be too successful and in particular - do not expect removing material fast.
• If you want Shellac not to be uneven (mean uneven thickness after applying), than you need to make it thin (at least 1:5 if not thinner). Still - you can improve a lot with 0000 steel wool.
• Do not sand after first coat of Shellac - the layer is too thin and you will just remove what you applied (though that may depend on what kind of finish you want). Applying around 3 layers will give you enough thickness so you will not go down to bare wood while sanding (lightly!) with the steel wool.
• Once you turn to powered tools like Proxxon (or Dremel or similar), you need to be careful as you can very quickly dent or chip your work. I tried to be fast and the result shows this.
• Always test new materials (glue, lacquer, wood, etc) or processes (sanding, filing, rasping, polishing, gluing of different materials, etc.) before you start to work on the actual piece. It can save you a lot of trouble.
• That little 1x30" belt sander is really very helpful when working around wood :)

Finished stone

Let's splash some water on the stone to see the Aka Renge pattern