Interlocking Mobius Band Hair Clip

I had a thought to make a sort of Celtic knot hair piece, but after looking through a lot of pictures of carrick bends and small rugs, and a good amount of doodling, I settled on a pair of interlocking figure eight ribbons each with a half turn. This leaves a lot of room for an overwrought artist's statement: we've got infinity signs and mobius bands, interlocking shapes, blah blah blah.

There are a number of ways to do this project, and the steps at the beginning can be accelerated with the use of some power tools, but someone borrowed the batteries for my tools when I started this project so we'll be using (99%) hand tools. You might thank yourself for using a dremel with a ball burr for hogging out material at some stages, but speeding up progress means speeding up mistakes. One way or another, go slow, be careful, and have fun. (Or live fast and die young! Whatever, I'm not your dad.)

On sourcing supplies, I got the wood for this project from a local furniture shop I work for sometimes. I don't see any reason you should be paying for a piece of wood this small. Just go find some friendly craftsman who makes stuff out of thickish boards sometimes and bug them for some off cuts. If you're looking for something with figure, spend some time picking through their rubbish pile until you find something that really pops. The board I'm using has a massive dead spot and check 6 inches out from my project -- no good for making a bench, but small carving projects don't take much!

In no particular order...

-4 1/4" x 1 3/4" hardwood board (actual not nominal dimensions)

-1/4" x 1/4" x 12" piece of attractive hardwood, possibly cut out of your original board

-Hatchet

-Coping Saw

-Carving tools (gouges, chisels, maybe a V-tool)

-3/16" drill bit and drill (optional)

-Pencil

-Needle files (I found the half round and triangular ones particularly useful)

-Sandpaper 100-600 grit

-Sharp knife or razor blade

-Maybe a spoke shave

The most important reason for judicious layout is that the hole for the spindle needs to go in the right spot. Too close to the front face of the hair clip, and there won't be enough room for hair between the spindle and hair clip. It is important to leave enough thickness in the front face of the clip, as well, since there is potential for hair inside the clip to act as a fulcrum over which to break the whole clip, and the grain orientation of the piece makes the clip weak when being loaded in this way. Why not carve the piece perpendicular to the orientation I have done? This would probably be a better way to do it, as the curve in the piece offers a measure of protection in bending across the short axis of the clip, and continuous grain fibers would offer protection from the bending described above. I opted for this orientation because I wanted the figure in the maple I was using to shine across the long axis of the piece, but there is no right way and no wrong way. You just need to decide what's right for you and your piece of wood. Note that if you do flip the orientation of the whole piece by 90 degrees, you will be able to use narrower stock, but it will still need to be around 1 3/4" thick. Some steps may change a little if you opt for this approach.

We will end up using around a 1/4" spindle, so draw one line around 1/2" from the top, another 1/4" below that. I didn't take so many pictures early in the project, but you can see the lines I describe traced all the way around the piece of wood below. It is also good to sketch out some ballpark of the curvature of the whole piece on the endgrain of your piece. so you don't go too far when cutting it down.

Use a hatchet or improvise some other method to dome out the top of the piece. Once this is done, draw a picture of your piece on the front. In addition to the contours of the ribbons, it's good to draw a center line for the long and short axis of the piece in order to maintain symmetry as much as possible.

Flip the piece around and hog out the back with the hatchet as well. Take only as much as you're comfortable with. We'll be going over all this again with gouges, so air on the side of taking less. We are only using the hatchet to save the edges of our carving tools. That being said, a sharp edge on your hatchet will make this experience more controlled and less harrowing, particularly when cutting out the concavity on the back.

Notice that a sharp hatchet can be used not only for hacking and smashing, but also for cutting and smoothing when you are approaching the final shape.

If you have a decent V-tool, consider using that to line in the areas between the ribbons that will eventually disappear. If not, just use a sharp knife or the appropriate radius gouge for each segment of ribbon. The idea here is to bring down the level of all the areas that will eventually disappear so we can work on the shape of the ribbons independently. Make an effort to keep these lines clean, and maintain these hollows even as the height of the ribbons descends. Also cut down the edges of each overlap so you can see the shape of the finished piece as you work everything down to its final height; a chisel, sharp knife, or razor blade is the appropriate tool for the job here. Once the line of overlap has been cut, come in with a gouge and gently pare away the end of the ribbon that goes underneath. Be very careful not to slip here, as gouging out the overlapping ribbon means bringing the whole level of the top of the piece down, which you can only do so many times.

Leave the line: at this time, it is best to take a bit outside the lines on each ribbon, as you can always take more later if your tool slips and mars an edge, but you can't put anything back. Also be very careful and gentle at the ribbon overlaps in the very middle. The final height for this area should be very near the starting surface of your stock, so it is best to leave this material for now to give yourself as much as possible to work with later.

Once all the ribbons are lined in, focus on bringing the outsides of the piece where the ends of the spindle will eventually rest. Their height needs to be brought down considerably and they need to be curved so that the surface on these outer edges is parallel to the top surface of your starting stock.

At this point, I should probably make a note about keeping your tools sharp. As we approach the final dimensions for the piece, mistakes and slips are more likely to be catastrophic, and a sharp tool is more likely to cut smoothly, less likely to slip suddenly, and less likely to drag the grain when cutting across the grain, which is inevitable in this piece, as the ribbons are very three dimensional and mostly oriented diagonally to the grain, whichever way you decided to orient your grain. For this reason, keep your strop around and avoid letting things get too out of hand. It is also important to say that if you are carving wood with figure like I am, sharp tools are especially important, as "with the grain" becomes frustratingly ambiguous. Tear-out is often unavoidable, but should be mitigated as much as possible. Try to keep your mistakes on the order of "something I could sand out," and later we will go ahead and sand them out.

The most material you'll need to take at this phase is on the wings of the piece. the height of these sides needs to be dropped down at least to the level of the lower line you drew in step 1. Once you have reached that depth, you're ready to drill the holes the spindle will eventually pass through. Feel free to use a drill for this step, or just take a very small radius gouge and rotate it in place to cut a circle, then insert the gouge sideways into the hole and pry up gently to free the chip. Use the gouge to widen the hole from the top, staying well away from any ribbons, then drill in again. Repeat ad nauseam. Locate the hole on the back of the piece by feel and finish from the back to avoid blowout when punching through. (It is maybe better to just use a drill here, but I was still without a drill battery at this point).

I have an unfortunate lack of photos of this step; unfortunate because it is both finicky and time consuming. Our goal is to permit the spindle to pass through the piece with room for a bit of hair between the back face of the center of the hair clip and the spindle. This is what will hold the clip and hair in place, so it is important that there is enough room. This will involve two processes: bringing the wings down on the front face, and further hollowing out the back of the piece. Of course we haven't made the spindle yet, so when test fitting, use a pencil (provided you have a relatively fresh one, your weather beaten stubby won't do the trick).

When hollowing the rear of the piece, make sure to leave around 3/8" of thickness. If you are approaching that dimension in the center of the piece, flip the whole thing over and spend some time bringing down the level of the wings. It is very useful to have a bent gouge, as a straight gouge will tend to dig in deeply and cut poorly in concavities because the edge of the concavity will keep the tool at a high angle of attack. Bent gouges solve this problem by tucking some of the tool into the concavity, lessening the angle.

Be very careful to leave as much material as possible on the underside of the wings: they need to come down a lot to ensure there is enough room for hair between spindle and clip. Do not hamstring yourself by prematurely cutting away stock on the backside of the wings you will want to be there later.

When dropping down the wings on the front side, imagine the pencil going through both the holes (easier if it actually does), and try to have the pencil load evenly across the ribbon. This mental (or physical) exercise will keep you from taking away material you don't need to when you're trying to increase the hair-clearance for the pencil.

Once the entire backside of the piece is smooth, and a bit over 3/8" thick, and a pencil passes through the hole with around a quarter inch to spare where the hair is meant to go (a hair more in the middle of the clip, less closer to the wings), you're ready to move on.

There are still five areas on the interior of the piece that need to leave. In order to carve the ribbons into the back of the piece, we need have the ribbons match up with those on the top. In particular, the holes need to line up. These parts need to come out eventually, and now is as good a time to do it as any. At this point, either repeat the method for drilling with a gouge from step 3, or drill with a 3/16" bit (or whatever fits in your gaps, which may end up smaller or larger than mine). Wiggle the bit around or expand the hole with a gouge until you can thread a coping saw blade through it and pierce out the gaps. Be careful and leave as much or as little extra material on the boundary of each ribbon as you feel comfortable. Just remember that leaving little invites a damaging slip with the coping saw, while leaving a lot will require a lot of filing later (and will decrease the clearance for your file, also making things difficult). Find the happy medium of how much you can saw out for each hole, then file the rest away so only the ribbons remain -- the half round needle file is your friend for the concave curves, the triangular file is great for corners. Also don't be afraid to stick a small chisel or gouge in there, but do make sure it's sharp first. These are all end grain cuts and require a sharp tool to do effectively.

Cut from the front and back of the piece: you are filing mostly end grain, so there will be a tendency for blowout to occur on the backside of your cut, so as much as possible, avoid pushing the file over the far side where it might pull up some grain.

You can also cut away the stock north of your top ribbon. Use a big file to bring the edge into line with the boundary of the ribbons.

Now that the completed holes have illuminated the locations of your ribbons on the backside of your piece, use the same methodology as in step 1 to line in the overlaps (making sure that the overlaps on the top correspond to underlaps on the bottom, in accordance with your common sense). If you've left yourself enough stock there should be plenty of wood to play with and this shouldn't be too stressful, except where it is difficult to fit gouges and unpleasant cross grain cuts are necessary. Fortunately, it is permissible to leave the back a bit rougher than the front, as it is smooshed against hair in its daily duties (don't leave big chips that might catch the wearer's hair -- it is one thing to compromise aesthetics on an invisible surface, but another to sacrifice comfort and utility).

Once this is all done, turn the piece over and take a hard look at the front of your carving. You are about to cut the whole thing off the board, and it will become a monumental hassle to do any more carving. You will have to devise a clamping system, or hold the thing in one hand and carve it with the other hand, which invites misfortune and blood-stained wood. Do whatever is calling out to you, check your dimensions and symmetries, then use the coping saw to hack your project off the board.

Immediately stick it in your hair if you're a filthy long-hair like me, or call a friend to inflict your project on. Hopefully it works!

It's worth noting that you can use one or two hair sticks to keep up your hair to begin with, so if you don't feel like wasting a bunch of your time making a hair clip, the hair sticks make a nice afternoon project or weekend warmup for the carving project -- or just do this part when your hands hurt too much from death gripping gouges.

Begin with a piece of 1/4"x1/4" stock, maybe an inch longer than your final length (I make mine around 10 or 11 inches, but it is really up to you). Think about getting this piece out of your original board; then the figure will match perfectly, and you won't have to worry about any color differences when you apply your finish. I already had a bunch of blanks made up for these hair sticks, so I didn't do that, but it's something to think about!

Use a knife or a spoke shave to knock off the corners. Carving figured wood with a knife can be a bit of a nightmare, so this will give you a reason to spend some time sharpening the iron of your spoke shave. Once it is roughly rounded out, either sand by hand like a madman, or chuck the whole thing up in a drill by the spare inch of stock, hold the spindle gently but firmly with a piece of sandpaper, and pull the trigger. If using the drill method, keep the sandpaper hand moving up and down the spindle to avoid digging too deep in any one spot. Progress through the grits from 100 up to 600.

Taper down the tip at 100 grit and take a moment for each grit to touch up the pointy end, being careful to leave it well blunted.

You can do whatever you want with the fat end. I decided to cut mine at a bias with a coping saw then use a chisel to pare it back and leave a nice tool finished surface. break the edges with 220 or so and sand to 600.

There isn't much to say about it, but it will consume a great deal of time. Inattention here can leave a beautiful product imperfect. I spent several hours sanding mine and I still think I could have spent some more time. For the exterior surfaces of the ribbons, it is sufficient to hold the piece in one hand and rub it with sandpaper with the other. However, for sanding inside all the holes, it is nice to have some system for clamping. I used a vice grip padded with a dirty sock to hold onto the piece and threaded thin folded over strips of sandpaper through the holes to achieve this. If you go the same route, just be careful not to clamp too hard and squish anything important. consider closing the vice grip and then hand tightening the screw instead of the other way around -- harder to do damage that way.

Sand from 100 to 600 grit.

Take your time and be patient. If you're feeling impatient, just put it down and do something else for a while. What's the big hurry anyway?

I used a tung oil finish because it's something I've used on previous pieces, but most anything will do. Brush off any sanding dust and clean your piece with a tack cloth, then apply a generous helping of tung oil on a lint free cloth (okay I just use paper towels -- who has these lint free cloths anyway?). Give it some time to dry then buff it out until it looks nice and doesn't have any stickiness. Wait a while (the can says a day I think???) then do it again. Repeat until it doesn't feel like you're making any progress.

***This is what I do; for best results, read the very small words written on the tung oil can, and do what they say***

Do this for the hair piece and the spindle. If you're working in a figured wood, all the accumulated disappointment in how the "figure just isn't showing up like you wanted it to" will vanish now. Sit back and take a break. Maybe start dreaming up another project...

You're done and your project looks nice, but you got what you wanted out of it (making something cool and spraying about it on the internet); now it's time to spread the love. Go make someone important smile.

Note that this step is likely easier if you don't have long hair, so maybe consider a trip to the barber too!