Okay, here’s my attempt at writing a blog post in the style you described, about “keel dancing hard timber”:

Alright, so today’s project was a real head-scratcher, but kinda fun in a masochistic way. I’m calling it “keel dancing hard timber” because, well, that’s what it felt like.

Started out with this old, thick piece of timber. Thing was solid, like trying to carve granite. My goal? To somehow get this thing to look like it was… dancing. Yeah, I know, sounds weird. But I had this image in my head of a ship’s keel, but all curvy and fluid.

The Struggle is Real

First, I marked out some rough guidelines on the timber. Just eyeballing it, really. No fancy measurements, just trying to get a feel for where I wanted to take material away. Then, I grabbed my biggest chisel and went at it.

Big mistake. This wood was hard. I mean, really hard. Like, I was sweating bullets after five minutes, and I’d barely made a dent. I switched to a smaller chisel, thinking maybe finesse would work better than brute force. Nope. Still felt like I was trying to sculpt a mountain.

• Tried soaking the wood in water.
• Thought maybe that would soften it up.
• Waited a couple of hours.
• Nope. Still rock solid.

So, I was starting to think this whole “dancing keel” idea was a bust. But then, I remembered I had this old, beat-up drawknife. Figured, what the heck, might as well give it a shot.

Drawknife to the Rescue!

And you know what? It actually started working! Pulling that drawknife across the wood, shaving off little bits at a time, I could finally see some curves starting to form. It was slow going, super tiring, but I was making progress.

I spent the rest of the day just pulling, shaving, and shaping. My arms were burning, my back was aching, but I was in the zone. I kept refining the curves, trying to get that “dancing” look. It was all about feel, really. Just running my hands over the wood, feeling where it needed to be smoother, where it needed more curve.

Finally, as the sun was going down, I stepped back and looked at it. It wasn’t perfect, far from it. But it definitely had that fluid, almost-dancing look I was going for. It looked like a keel, but a keel that had decided to boogie.

So yeah, “keel dancing hard timber”. That’s my story for today. A battle with a stubborn piece of wood, a rusty old tool, and a whole lot of sweat. But hey, I got there in the end.