Going to Build: up

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Sunday, March 2, 2014

A Peek and Catching Up

The past couple weeks have been a whirlwind of activity and now I can hardly believe were already into the second week of November. I thought Id better do a quick catch up post, just on the off chance anybody noticed Ive been a bit absent (smile).

My grandparents have been visiting all the way from New Mexico for the past week and weve had so much fun together. They leave tomorrow and I know well all shed some tears. Below is a picture of my grandma and I taken today at a visit to the mill where we enjoyed perfect fall weather.

In house news, weve completely and finally finished our kitchen! The first picture above is a little peek of the new reclaimed wood shelf Justus built for a wall in the kitchen. Ill be back in a day or two with pictures to share of the entire kitchen!

Now that weve finished the kitchen, were also finishing up a little remodel in our bathroom. Justus installed a new ceiling and now hes finishing up installing the beadboard walls. It feels so good to get some house projects checked off!

I was a little remiss in posting the winner of the Bee Lovely Botanicals giveaway, but I did draw a random winner, which was Cinnamon. Thank you all for entering!

I also wanted to mention that the November/December (Holiday) issue of Celebrating Everyday Life is out and its beautiful as always. In this issue, youll find a Hot Cocoa Porch Party, a Gingerbread Wonderland, fun & festive DIY projects, beautiful homes, delicious recipes and much more! For more information or to purchase, you can visit here.

November December 2013 issue of Celebrating Everyday Life with Jennifer Carroll

I hope you all are enjoying your November so far. Im already looking forward to the upcoming holidays, especially time with friends and family.

Ill be back soon!

Thursday, February 20, 2014

Toolmongers Bosch Axial Glide Miter Saw Write Up

As many of you know I took the plunge and bought the Bosch Axial Glide Miter Saw. Ive had it for over a week now, and Ive still not been able to fire it up due to the bench slab experiment which has been taking up most of my shop. Ive finally got the slab experiment done (complete failure by the way) and Im hoping that the four day Thanksgiving weekend lets me do a little shop re-organization and finally set up the Bosch.

Toolmongers New Bosch Axial Glide Miter Saw.

In the mean time, please check out Toolmongers review of the Bosch. Its a great write up thatll probably give you more information than mine even after I finally write it. If youre not already a Toolmonger fan, you should be. They cover tools, and whats not to love about that?

What tool have you lusted for, bought and then not had a chance to set up?

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Further On up the Road

" . . . Some body will hurt you like you hurt me" OK so Im not Clapton but its a great song and it comes to mind as I think about the current project in the shop. For those of you who are newer to reading here, I will catch you up.

Due to the increased focus on hand tools in the Wood Shop Jr. and the need to increase my collection of usable hand tool solutions to help facilitate my Medieval Reenactment hobby, and due to a serious restriction on monetary funds, I decided to go "old school" on my tools. Craftsmen of the day may or may not be able to buy their own tools, but they worked hard to be self sufficient, purchase the steel of the tool from the local blacksmith and fashion the wooden parts on their own. I decided I had to carry on in this tradition. I will briefly list the agenda I decided to follow.

1. Saws: upgrade, sharpen, re-handle and build from scratch all the saws I need. This includes replacing handles on the three bench saws I use (done) Sharpening and reshaping the teeth on the 4 full size saws I inherited (2 down, 2 to go) make from scratch a dado saw (done) wide blade and narrow blade bow saw (almost done) and a frame saw (next on the agenda)

2. Planes: Sharpen, and tune up the planes I own, including my #4 Smoother, #5 Jack, #78 rabit, 2 wooden joiners, and a round bottom Japanese plane. My mini plane and the p.o.s. low angle block plane I have. (my Father in Law has a nicer quality low angle block plane that is coated, I mean coated in rust, I may try to talk him out of it and see if I can refurbish it as well.

3. Chisels: I have several bench chisels I like a lot but they have crappy plastic handles on them, I plan to fix that issue, I will also reshape and resharpen and replace the handles on the cheep hand carving tools I own as well.

4. Clamps: I need to make some simple mostly wood clamps that would be plausible historical usage.

5. Brace and Bits: I want to make an older version of a brace and get bits that will fit into it, preferably spoon bits.

6. generally replace handles and get the kit together

7. build a joiners tool chest and a small joiners style workbench that will break down to travel to faires and festivals.

I know theres other things in here that Ive missed and forgotten, but whatever. Anyhow, tonight I moved on a bit to finishing the saw section of the project, I am 75% done with the bow saws, one more piece to shape after this evening. Heres a few pics of the work I accomplished tonight. after I got the mortise and tenons all cut and finished.

Cheers,

Oldwolf

Monday, February 10, 2014

Grizzly T10010 Wet Grinder Review Follow Up

A while back, I posted an initial review of the Grizzly T10010 Wet Grinder; you can read the review here. Well, after having used the machine for a while, I thought I would post a follow up and give some more thoughts. First, I still love this machine for sharpening and honing; it is SUPER fast and easy. Second, you will need some "3rd party" accessories. Ive read that the best, most economical setup for this machine, as compared to a Tormek, is to buy this machine, but use the Tormek accessories since they will fit. I have to say that I TOTALLY agree! Out of the box, I was fighting the Grizzly straight edge jig that comes with the tool; its just not very good. So, the first thing I bought was the Tormek Square Edge Jig from Highland Hardware. That was a huge impovement, but I still wasnt getting a completely square edge and had the feeling that my wheel was not completely trued up. So, my next purchase, from Highland Hardware, was Tormek Truing and Dressing Kit. This was perfect! I found that my wheel was about a 32nd of an inch off from end to end, but also was not perfectly round. So, after a couple of passes with the truing tool, and I had a nice level, perfectly round, surface. I then went to town on my hand plane blades and got them nice and flat for a change; so much better.

So, bottom line is, if you dont want to fork out the money for the Tormek system, can recommend the Grizzly T10010 Wet Grinder, but I would save some money to also buy the Tormek accessories; it makes a big difference!

FInishing Up the Big Table

I dont have time to write a long post, but I did promise a potential client I would put up some photos of the table weve been working on ... Also, we picked up the chairs Monday and they are pretty sharp too ... Its our first experience with Danish Cord seats. Nice job by Sandy Sherman Chair Caning of Brookline, Vermont.

This is the second coat of gloss finish .. the final satin coat will go on probably today

The eight side chairs

Close up ... all for now

Monday, January 27, 2014

Up Against The Wood Wall Again

Chris Schwarzs Lost Art Press ran a series of articles on good ol Mr. Studleys Tool Chest last week.

I first got turned on to Henry O. Studleys tool chest back in the late 80s when Lee Valley Tools used an image of it for one of their catalogue covers. When I built the house I was living in then, I added one of the major items I had always wanted; a built-in magazine rack and book shelf in the can. That catalogue sat in that rack for over a year and I spent a great deal of time studying that cover while doing...ahem...other things, trying to figure out how Studley did it. Studleys work is beyond amazing.

I believe credit for this image should go to Fine Woodworking magazine,
but I have enhanced it considerably since finding it.

What I didnt know until recently was that Studley built a workbench that matched his tool cabinet. Chris has also written an article about it; a teaser for Don Williams book about Studleys work.

This is Chris Schwarzs image of Studleys workbench, which he will probably kill me for
because I messed with it; straightening out camera distortion, changing the
lighting a bit and getting rid of the distracting background.

I tried to build a modified version of Studleys tool cabinet with no luck, even after making three attempts to get it right. The biggest problem is that I ended up buying more tools than ol Henry. Who knew I would enjoy the hunt and the purchase of old tools as much as I enjoy using them? The second problem is that I dont have room for a workbench and a floor-style tool cabinet, and wont have for the foreseeable future. Another major problem was that I kept ending up with odd shaped areas that wasnt large enough to hold anything I owned, or any that I planned to purchase. It was a livable irritation, but an irritation nonetheless. After completing the plant shelving unit I have been working on for 10-months now, I plan to build a combination bench and tool cabinet, sort of like a Melhuish No.100, but one on steroids.

This example of a Melhuish No.1 was sold by David Stanley
Auctions in 2004 for a few cents off of $3000.

Chris latest entry in this series is in regards to how much flak he has taken for being involved in the Studley project in the first place. I havent been running up against this situation as long as Schwarz has, but I have probably bounced off of it more often than him. Being one of these guys who questions everything, then has the cajones to actually question the answers, I have run up against the "wood wall" Chris is talking about in this post more times than I care to image. Recently, an example of this just played out, and again, it was instigated by a Chris Schwarz post.

Chris ran an interview with Konrad Sauer from Sauer & Steiner Toolworks regarding his newly designed "K13". This new plane design for Sauer started to sprout legs on some previous thoughts I had on planes, thoughts that I had been forming for a while. In general, these thoughts were directed, overall, to the height of hand placement while using a traditional plane, and specifically, dealing with the high Centre of Gravity those high hand-holds produce.

This is an image of the Sauer & Steiner K13 Panel Plane. Sauers customer
wanted a plane that oozed speed. Me? I just want one that doesnt
feel like it is going to fall over all the time.

Sauer brought the front knob down considerably and gave the lines more sweep as they moved towards the rear of the plane for an appearance of speed. Im not interested in a fast looking plane, mainly because I know that saying "speed" and "hand planing" in the same sentence is an oxymoron. I was, however, very interested in that lower front knob. By the time I finished reading the interview, my thoughts had legs that ran as long as the knees. By the time I had finished reading everything that was posted about it on the Sauer & Steiner blog, they had ankles, arches and even toes.

I didnt find one comment about the low knob causing problems during planing anywhere. In fact, all I read was the exact opposite. As a result, I kept asking myself, "why keep the tote and knob so high?"

I "get" that planes have a traditional design and the world of woodworking has been following the basis of that design for centuries. I "get" that a high centre of gravity has been build purposely into the planes by utilizing tall totes and knobs. I "get" that the reason for this is so the user can better gauge the tools plumb during use. I "get" all that. I also "get" that everyone in the world, for centuries, thought the world was flat, too.

My belief is that, while the high centre of gravity offers a built-in gauge for plumb, this benefit may be outweighed by the possibility that the high centre of gravity adds more to being off plumb than the operator of the tool could manage without it. Plane the edge with a block plane and you stand a far better chance of remaining on plumb than when you plane the same edge with a bench plane, at least for me. I think it is because the high COG forces the plane out of plumb more than the operator does. Please dont tell me about the guiding finger of the forward hand, I already use it. You still have to push the plane with the tote, and that is where the wiggly-wobblies come into play.

I also think the angle of the operators wrist has a lot to do with getting off plumb too. To plane properly on a proper height bench with a traditional designed plane, you end up with a crook in your wrist that is not conducive to keeping the plane plumb. It is also not conducive to varying the pressure between heavy forward and light downward, and light forward and heavy downward either.

Lowering the tote would cause its angle to reduce, resulting in the operators wrist being less-cocked. A more natural angle to the wrist means less stress on it, less weight trying to throw it off plumb and easier variance of pressure. At least thats how I see it, although the only way I could prove it is to have one made and try it out, an expensive exercise in experimentation if ever there was one. That is because there isnt anything written about this, and I sure havent seen a plane made this way. Why? I have no idea. It could be that I am so wet with this, Im drowning, or it could be that we have all been following this design religiously for so long, going against it would be, for a plane maker, like falling on his float.

I know the most common answer to this question before it is even uttered. "If I learn to use the traditional plane design properly, I will see the high COG as an advantage. Until I do learn how to use it properly, the high COG will always work as a disadvantage. From my perspective, whether I have learned to use a traditional plane properly or not is an irrelevant argument. With enough practice, you can train yourself to overcome pretty much anything, even swinging a golf club in its proper, but unnatural way.

Maybe in time I will be able to put this thought to bed, but in the meantime, I actually was stupid enough to write it all down and send it to a plane maker I know and am considering using. I think my quest for answers wasnt met with the same joy as it saw when written. In other words, I havent heard from the guy since.

As to Chris report on meeting the "wood wall". I left the following comment...

"I have come to believe that there isn’t any species of wood out there that is quite as unbending as the average dedicated woodworker’s mind."

Peace,

Mitchell

P.S.: Considering that dropping 4 to 6-grand on one plane is not conducive to my wifes belief that she shouldnt have to hide from our bank manager when she visits the bank, I will be listing some duplicate and "ok, I like it, but I dont love it" tools I am selling very soon. All proceeds from the sale of these tools will be going to the "Infill Plane Payment Foundation". I am just working on the images of the tools included which are:
1 - tack hammer - not so new - not so expensive
8 - Stanley Everlast chisels - conditions from "its ok" to "hey, thats pretty good"
1 - General Angle Divider with its original box
1 - Stanley Speed Drill with most of its original bits
1 - solid wheel Stanley No.624
1 - very good Stanley No.5 Type 11 plane
1 - never used QTG laser beam level with case and - are you ready for it - original batteries still unused - wow!
I should have these posted before the end of this week.
Peace