Dan's Hobbies » hand tools

Wine Rack Pt. 4

Dan — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 01:39:25 +0000

I spent very little time in the shop over the last week, because it was the hurry up and wait time of the project. Since my shop is a garage with no real climate control, I have to take my time milling up lumber. My routine is strait forward, and starts by flattening a face, and then letting the boards rest for 24 hours. The next step is to thickness plane the boards, I don’t take them down to final thickness, just down enough to make them uniform across the entire board. I then let the boards rest for 24 hours. I then repeat this the process on the edges. I run through the entire process one more time to bring the boards to finished thickness & width before I start cutting joinery. It takes a long time, but it guarantees my boards stay strait and true.

Since I spent most of the week doing nothing, I was itching to get into the shop over the weekend and start doing something. As I stated in an earlier post, this is my first project I’ve made that used mortise and tenon joinery, so I took my time and set up the router table to rout out the waste. One thing I have to admit, is buying the spiral up bits was one of the best purchases I’ve ever made. Once I got the waste removed i set to work squaring up the ends using my chisels. I think for a first attempt, I did pretty well. The following photo is inspired by Chris schwarz, and all the black & white photos he posts on his blog.

Rusty squares no more

Dan — Tue, 31 May 2011 00:44:47 +0000

I’m one of the lucky (yea that’s it) few, that has sweat/skin oils that rust metal. I’ve read some place that roughly 10% of people have this problem. Most of the time it’s not much of a problem, but if your involved in woodworking or metalworking, it’s a real problem because a lot of tools are made from metals that rust. Rust causes the tool surface to become uneven, and while it’s mildly annoying on most tools, it’s a real problem on a precision tool like a square.

Most squares are made from tool steel, and most tool steels aren’t know for their rust resistance. Fortunately, Peachtree Woodworking sells special layout squares made from stainless steel. I’ve had them for about month now, and they are well worth the price in my opinion. They’re exceptionally square, and their unique design means you don’t need 3 hands to use them.

Chisel racks part deux

Dan — Sun, 22 May 2011 22:52:39 +0000

Last time, I posted about the chisel racks I made for safety Week. Since then I’ve built the accessory racks that mount on the front sliding dovetails. I could babel on about them, but they are pretty simple, so I’ll let the photos do the talking.

Chisel Racks

Dan — Wed, 11 May 2011 18:18:18 +0000

A few years ago Marc Spagnuolo came up with the concept of Safety Week, eventually one week a year, several prominent bloggers write about ways of staying safe in the shop. It’s not talked about much, but lets face it, woodworking is one of the more dangerous hobbies to get into. Careless mistakes in a woodworking shop, can easily lead to a missing digit, eye, or worse. Now I’m not known for being Mr. safety, some times I do stuff that would make most people cringe. One thing I take very seriously, is cuts caused by hand tools.

If you’ve done any amount of woodworking you’ve probably come to learn that hand tools make certain tasks very easy. You’ve also probably learned that the sharper they are the better. In the grand scheme of things planes and back saws aren’t that dangerous. Your chisels and marking knife however are just waiting for you to let your guard down so they can slice you open and send you to the emergency room for stitches.

With all that being said, I decided to make myself chisel racks for safety week (yea I know I’m behind schedule). The requirements were pretty simple, the racks needed to be cheap, simple, fully cover the blade, and if possible stylish. What I came up with is below, It’s made from black Willow that I piked up at my local Rockler dealer for $1.92 a BF. They mount to the wall with dovetails and they also have a dovetail across the front of them so I can make “attachments” to hold my marking gauge, rules, etc. The finish was BLO and paste wax.

Stanley 102 reborn

Dan — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 03:38:40 +0000

The weather is finally starting to turn here in central Illinois, and since I don’t have any major projects in the works, I worked on refurbishing this old block plane over the last few weeks. It’s a Stanley #102 type 2, so old is the keyword, because it’s at least 139 years old. I didn’t take a lot of photos during the refurb, but i did get the before and after photos below.