Welcome to Woodworks Made Easy

Practice any art, however well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to find out what's inside you.
--- Kurt Vonnegut

Pictures are meant to be self explanatory, and for visual clarity you may
click on each photo to enlarge. For older projects see Blog Archive. I don't specialize on a particular genre so there is quite a variety of projects for a number of different interests.

Even if you are not a woodworker but you like some or all of the projects, have your local crafts person make them for you from the ideas and photos you see here. For a particular project just click the specific title on the Blog Archive list (right side column below).

For anyone willing to learn or begin to do woodworking for the first time, please read first from the Blog Archive, "How and Where to Begin a Woodworking Hobby.

And it is not for men only. Read my note on "Women in Woodworking" from Blog Archive, April 2010.


click on each photo to enlarge


Monday, October 12, 2015

Vintage Ice Cream Scoop Restoration

I wasn't sure about how to restore a vintage ice cream scoop for a friend. First and second photos are indicative of the age of this scoop.  I had to do something about the hole at the end of the wooden handle and it is obvious that the ferrule had come loose and the stem of the aluminum scoop was even looser.  This ice cream scoop is definitely worth restoring because the cast aluminum is in very good shape and actually thicker than most vintage scoops - its rack and pinion is in excellent condition.  It will scoop ice cream as it had when brand new out of the box, however many decades ago.



I cut the portion of the handle that had the hole in it.

Pau ferro is a hardwood found only in Brazil and Bolivia; translated from Portuguese, it means iron wood - and it lives up to the name.  It is expensive so one must use it sparingly, as finger boards in guitars, for example.  I've used it once before as a corner accent for one of the platform  beds I made, shown in this photo.


Here is a piece of pau ferro.  I drilled holes at both pieces for a more robust joint.

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After a lot of hand filing and hand sanding the pau ferro tip on the handle had taken the half - egg shape. I  used 2-part epoxy/resin mixed with fine sanding dust to add thickness to the ferrule stem and in the hole that received the scoop's stem for a tighter joint.

There are many vintage ice cream scoops out there but the little detail at the end of the handle makes this one of a kind. 

Hopefully this will last for at least 25, if not for another hundred years.

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