Month: July 2023

A friend mentioned to me a few weeks ago that his sister has a tool she absolutely loves. It was a Wilkinson Sword weed grubber. This brand is seen in the US in razor blades, and probably has been for other cutting tools in the past, but the garden tools aren’t that widely found as far as I can tell.

Here is a stainless version of the tool. Call me lazy, I’ll push a plane and saw for several hours in the shop, but I don’t like getting on my knees to garden and would put this thing on the end of a long handle. Gardening on knees and leaning over literally will give me a migraine. I don’t know if being unable to tolerate that kind of thing is lucky or unlucky.

But, it’s not for me. There’s also a carbon steel version of this thing and it’s probably all of about $15 US equivalent. I couldn’t find it on alibaba but other similarly priced tools from WS can be found there for about $2 each. The trick is you need to be willing to buy 20 of them. This is the nature of what we buy in the US. In lumber terms, we often hear something like “it’s 10 cents on the dollar at the stump” or at the mill.

Here’s the problem with the tool – the whole $1-$2 item branded and shipped and retailed is just the way things are now. That’s not so much the issue as consumers ultimately dictate what we get. The problem is that it looks like it’s blanked (many inexpensive plane irons are, too, and double edge razor blades definitely are), and that favors using a thin piece of steel and then stamping or manipulating the blank. My friend says his sister loves this tool, but it breaks at the handle.

He asked if I could make something similar – who knows. I hammer shape flat stuff, but it was worth a try.

I decided I’d use CruForge V and heat treat it a little under so that it’s still fileable. You do this with simple steels by heating them to nonmagnetic and no more and not getting too brisk in the quench. They get some stiffness and strength after temper, but can be filed, and you’re not gambling with tempering embrittlement like you would be doing if you just temper to 500F or so. Embrittlement occurs when it takes less energy to break something at a lower level of hardness than it does higher. It’s pointless territory. I also have no need for CruForgeV as I likely bought it some Tuesday lunch at work grasping for straws regarding a 1% steel with some vanadium, but not too much. Great in this case would be 0.3%, but it has 0.75%. I didn’t believe it could possibly lead to stray vanadium carbides of any size, but it actually does. They’re sparse and not that small – I really don’t know what the point of the steel was and maybe I’d need a power hammer to figure it out. Needless to say, it’s no longer made and you can still get old stock from retailers years later.

Translation – no big deal if someone breaks it and I have to find something a little tougher. it is tougher than something like O1 or 1095, though, and especially vs. something like a PM steel of any significant carbide volume. All of those types are intolerant of bending and prying.

Well, here’s what I came up with.

It’s 1/4 bar stock heated, flattened on the business end, hammered to the S shape and then hammered and ground at the tang.

Rather than trying to seat the handle by friction on a tool that gets pushed and pulled, and will perhaps live outside, I just epoxied it in with a very healthy amount of epoxy, and the bolster is glued on, and then also bound by the epoxy spillover. If it comes out, it can just be reglued.

I would guess CruForgeV steel is water hardening and underheating it plus just dropping it in the quench rather than moving it means it’s not fully hardened, and beyond that, it’s less hard in the middle. That should give it some forgiveness. Who knows how this would be handled industrially. I don’t.

Now, here’s my point about this tool – it could be made like this in China for $3, I would bet. Maybe the handle would just be something ashy looking with a cheap varnish dip, but that’s functional. It cost me probably $15 in materials to make it, so if it doesn’t outlast the original for some reason other than the tang, it’s just a fun project.

The handle is london plane tree, and it’s varnished with copal, and the business end of the tool is Japanned. If I won’t spring for stainless, it is probably good form to at least protect the steel and wood from rust until it’s confirmed that it’ll be used often enough to keep the rust abraded off on a regular basis.

The varnish isn’t neat, it’s just padded on and little bits of paper towel and other nonlevel stuff is left – there’d be no virtue to a slick-handled garden tool, even though it’s much more fun to really tart handles up.

The japanning is a full varnish, cooked and linked together like a true varnish so that it can’t settle in the jar, and all that it needs is either a long long time of air exposure to dry, or more smartly, the cure catalyzed by being baked. Which is what I did. Plane tree is sort of a boring wood – it’s one of the Acer woods (like hard maple) or it’s half of that and some kind of hybrid. It’s like a weird feeling hard maple, but the varnish did a great job of bringing out figure when there’s not too much there. Something natural resin varnishes do a little better than shellac or hydrocarbon or synthetic polymer finishes.

Like many favors – i hope once this thing is gone, I never hear about it again. That’ll be good enough – it will mean someone is happy enough with it and didn’t break it. It should be difficult to break it in the first place, but I’ve got no clue what people do in gardens. There are always rocks and roots in dirt, and not having the right tool in hand to deal with such things really doesn’t stop most folks and it never really stopped me.

The point of this thing as it is, I gather, is to go straight in, grab the stem of the plant below the dirt and tear it up or pull it out…..something I’d much rather do standing.

It’s all part of making. I’m just a tinkering amateur, not a pro by any means. it’s still much more stimulating to think about how to make something like this and experience it than it is to incessantly read various catalogues and try to be an expert on what can be bought.

I have to admit that part of this post is motivated by animus toward the “friendly” presenters who recommend obnoxiously expensive “nano” rust preventive measures toward the “friends” that they are making videos for. Let’s be honest, at least if you are cynical like me, they are making videos *at* people, not for them. You can skip the rest of the discussion that follows other than perhaps canceling the idea that maybe I just don’t have a very damp shop – and go down to the next header if you’d like. My discussion of humidity and circumstances follow because I’ve fielded at least half a dozen comments that “your methods wouldn’t work here”. Unless you’re getting a mist of salt water in the air, that’s not the case.

There is nothing difficult, expensive or time consuming about preventing rust on tools in the shop, and probably also not for metal surfaces on stationary tools. I used to have stationary tools – a jointer, a bandsaw and a table saw, and once in a great while early on, they would get a dot of rust. Let’s get something I guess set and clarified from the start – my shop is extremely humid in the summer. It is halfway below ground and it is not heated or cooled beyond whatever it gets from the ground and the surrounding house. Typical dewpoints in PA where I live are mid 60s to mid 70s, and on the hottest of days, my shop will reach 80 degrees. I *really like* this setup because whether it’s 95F outside or 0F outside, my shop will be in a narrower range -about 30-80F. You can work by hand in that range. But it does result in high shop humidity. At the moment, my shop is 86% humidity according to the digital hygrometer. I often hear people claim that they live somewhere hot and it’s 95 degrees and close to 100% humidity. Actually putting the dewpoint and temperature in a calculator should dispel that nonsense. RH is an interesting figure – when it gets really hot, it’s not common for it to be at or above 60% (95 with a 75 degree dewpoint is typical in the south – that’s an RH of about 53%). Really high relative humidity generally occurs when you take high dewpoint air and stuff it in an environment where the temperature quite so high. It’s 86% humidity in my shop because the shop is partially underground.

At any rate, like many, i started with a set of power tools and then mostly premium hand tools, and I ground the layer of patina right off of a lot of other tools. I spent a *lot* of time doing stuff like rubbing rust off of clean fresh cast and wringing my hands. It was a complete waste.

Here is My Recipe for Rust Prevention

• First, the lowest level of effort – Oilstones (wipe with high quality mineral oil if you insist on waterstones). I moved to oilstones a few years ago for a simple reason. They are faster to use. They don’t cut faster, but they’re faster to use and include much less screwing around. Once I did that, chisels and plane irons ceased rusting. period. If you are using oilstones, you can get the bulk of the honing oil off of tools such that it won’t mark tools easily, but it will take a lot of effort to remove every single little bit of oil protecting a tool surface. This is a good thing. You wipe oil off of the tool, it doesn’t mark wood, but you still have a layer of protection.
• Second, I use wax – on anything that I don’t want to constantly coat with oil. Paraffin on plane soles sort of covers those, and a Johnson Wax (RIP!) can or Briwax or whatever else for stuff you want dry, and then a 50/50 mix of beeswax and hydrotreated mineral oil makes a spreadable non-drying wax. Hydrotreated mineral oil is the stuff sold for all kinds of things – including as a honing oil. Could be bovine/equine supply, commercial kitchen cutting machinery, sewing machines, whatever it may be. These two types of waxes make a very persistent coating that will tolerate anything other than water laying on tools due to your absent mindedness. This is something you should avoid in the first place.
• For the worst, Light cut blonde or super blonde shellac – for anything that you find rust on, anyway, a very light cut of shellac – like 1 pound, can be wiped on. Just rub it into the surface of the metal – if you already have wax or oil on cast or steel, it won’t care – it’ll stick to the metal and then itself and if anything, push the oil to the top (exactly what happens in a french polish). The result should be almost invisible, and if you ever want to take it off, rub with an alcohol soaked rag, and it’s gone. If you put any shellac on metal and still have rust, something is amiss.

Wax your saws when you use them when they get in a bind. If you have new saws that you’re not sure about timing on use, use a light coat of paste wax – just wipe it on and wipe it off. You’re not finishing furniture.

One more comment about the oil and the comment “hydrotreated”. Hydrotreated mineral oils for cutting equipment, or if thicker, hydrotreated mineral gear oils, have had volatiles refined out of them. They will be clear unless someone colors them, they’ll have no odor (unlike some stinky honing oils) and if you put them in a container exposed to air, they won’t change over time, at least not in your lifetime. The princely sum for a hydrotreated commercial kitchen supply oil is all of about $18 for a gallon. If you get stuck shipping something, you might end up buying food grade mineral oil from amazon or somewhere else for about $10 more.

If you see a mineral oil by the gallon and you’re not sure – if it’s clear and for food use, it’s probably hydrotreated. You can google the SDS and confirm.

Too, the lack of volatile contaminants in hydrotreated oil doesn’t just keep it from stinking. It keeps it from drying, and means there will be no extra film like you might get from WD40 or something of that sort.

And that gallon of oil will find uses in a whole bunch of different things. French polishing, the oil and wax beeswax mix mentioned above, in an oilstone bath, and so on. It will take a very long time to use it. Of the things mentioned above, it’s the only extra purchase that I made to actually deal with rust, and my first gallon is almost used over 15 years, due to several things (like changing oil in an IM-313 oil bath) – but if just used for rust preventives, you’ll never use it all. That puts you $15 out of pocket. I’ll keep my gripe about commercial paste waxes to myself other than to mention that when I started, a pound can of Johnson’s was $5.95 and had a little bit of carnauba in it. The carnauba went away, then Johnson’s went away, and we’re left with paraffin wax-only garbage in a lot of cases for three times the price. Waxes that have 5 or 6% carnauba like blue label mowhawk wax fall into the category of a product that has almost no manufacturing cost, but those appear to retail now for $30+ tax or more.

If you have full fast changes in temperature…

….and a dirt floor in your shop or something of the like, what I’ve mentioned above will still work. If you find that you have something persistent that still causes problems, then the problem tools can reside in a box that shifts temperature less quickly. Temperature swings in my shop are moderated by being part of the way underground, but my tools have all been handled so much with oily hands from sharpening, or waxed in use, that there really isn’t anything that rusts unless I see water laying on whatever it may be out of laziness and just let it go. Since water is handy for grinding with a power belt grinder, it happens.

You shouldn’t be subject to people who want to market nonsense to you, but they’ll always be the most persistent. I’ve got cans of dry lube, bike chain lube, mutton tallow, and who knows what else – all in the original attempt to keep things lubricated. I can’t vouch for the tallow -the beeswax mix obsoleted it, but it could probably be made into a soap.

I really despise videos and other parroting of such about nano or graphene rust control or whatever the next flavor of the moment may be. My opinion is that all of that stuff is intended to give you the perception of value by a bunch of cliquey talk. One of the relatively famous guru youtubers made a pitch for it in the past ($70 for one ounce of the coating, without even getting into the nonsense “pre cleaning spray” and slippery after coating), and found rust on a saw that was put into storage. Using the discussion of the rust to come back and pitch it again. The video comes with the obligatory “sponsored video” upper left hand corner tag. It’s up to you to guess whether or not the second video was made because “it just worked so well”, or because there’s an underlying agreement that required more than one video.

It’s too bad this stuff isn’t called out a little bit more loudly. If the video maker would’ve applied 15 cents worth of thin cut super blonde shellac and returned later with an alcohol soaked rag to remove it, there would be no rust.

If Lloyds had odds on cutting rebates, what Nicholson says here would be high odds for anyone who has cut a hundred feet or more of rebates and worked by hand, and very low for people who buy boutique tools or use a table saw most of the time.

Why? Cutting rebates is best done with a moving fillister plane, and a wooden one at that – not a Stanley 78 and not a Veritas Skew Rebate or whatever else. Everything other than a wooden moving fillister is slow at this and the perception of metal accuracy is misplaced. The moving fillister works accurately, but not generally to finish accuracy – it’s set to cut and the rebate is finished with a separate rabbet plane – the skew kind that you’d find with no other fixtures at a flea market for about $10. There’s a reason they’re everywhere. From experience, you will get to this pair on your own, along with a marking gauge and anyone describing setting a metal plane “precisely” without marking the joint instead and doing the fine work with a second plane will seem a bit dippy.

So, let’s get on to what Nicholson says. Page 139.

Click to access mechanicscompan01nichgoog.pdf

Nicholson mentions the wood needs to be tried on two sides – those would be the ones that you’re cutting the rebate into. The first discussion is rebates less wide than the plane, which you will find yourself doing, anyway.

The discussion immediately goes to setting the plane short of the final width of a rebate and the depth stop foot short of the final depth. If you’re thinking this sounds like more steps and it will take longer because you can find an “accurate boutique plane that can be set perfectly”, you’ll find that not to be true as all of the speed of the moving fillister is lost in this process and the short front foot and issues of your own technique will never be as accurate as finishing to a gauge line.

Which gets to the next point – the joint should be gauged (marked) both in width and depth. Do this first so that you can easily set your plane off of the marking. Again, if you are thinking this sounds like an extra step, if you’re cutting many rebates, you’ll gauge them all at once. it gives you a perfect indication end to end on the stock you’re rebating and when the lines are gone, you’re done. You set the mark, don’t get lulled into believing that the feet and fence on a plane will do it for you – you’ll have no clue where you are and if you’re over a mark – how will you check, with a dial caliper? No thanks.

Nicholson goes on to mention setting the moving fillister relatively rank and equal depth across the plane. The rest of this paragraph is my words: Do this by eye sighting down the sole and also use the ability to do this as your indication for honing bias when you freehand hone the iron, which is how you should sharpen a moving fillister iron – if the iron doesn’t want to project evenly, you’re going to both have a strange out of square bottom, but also a plane that favors cutting toward the heavy side. Each time you hone, you’ll inspect this and it’s very easy to prevent. if you hone with honing guides and fixtures, you’ll drive yourself crazy here. Most fillister planes are steeper than common pitch, so if you’re pretty gross at freehand honing, you’ve got plenty of clearance and this is a good place to learn.

The rank set part is important – you are not taking smoother shavings, you are taking something between jack and try plane shavings, tending more toward jack if the wood allows. Set the rankness based on what the wood tolerates. you have but one mission, remove most of the wood inside of the gauge lines and don’t break out any wood past them.

Nicholson goes on then to describe a great deal of something simple – where your hands go. your front hand goes on the side of the plane with the thumb over the top, and your back hand pushes. Your job is to keep the plane in the cut evenly – the fact that the shavings are rank will allow you to get done pretty quickly, and it’ll also stretch out the volume of rebate cutting substantially vs. taking thin shavings. Sharpness is always important, but you’re going beyond fine shaving cutting here and you need to go back to the stones only when the plane tells you to.

Job number one for you at this point is to keep the plane relatively vertical – just look at it vs. your marks if you need to, especially at the far end of the board once you cut. Efficiency here leads to pleasure, and that means accurate work, not hurried, but in rhythm. You must use the front hand to keep the plane against the work – if you don’t, you’ll cut pyramid side like things into the wall of the rebate and leave yourself a chore with the rabbet plane. If the wood is good, the shavings will be thick enough to look broken.

Nicholson’s nod toward efficiency then goes into planing sectionally on the board and not walking the length of the board with one shaving after another. I think if the plane is rank set, if you’re an amateur, it probably won’t be that big of a deal. The more the wood dictates backing off of shaving thickness (if it’s poor grain orientation) the more you get out of planing sectionally and then moving.

Finish by taking a few through shavings as you work just shy of the marks. personally, if the wood is planing really nicely, you can probably plane right to the marks for all but the finest of work, but pay attention. The long through shavings will lead to the plane communicating all kinds of things to you – high spots, terrible wood, whatever. Use your judgement to make sure you’re not feeling any remaining high spots or skips.

Nicholson then goes on to say what I guess I jumped the gun on – you need to be able to feel vertical, and hold the plane vertical and keep the cut close. This isn’t a burden or tedious – it is the same sense of feel you will develop everywhere, it’s not as if it’s a skill that’s attributed to a moving fillister in isolation. Just don’t lose track of being close to vertical. Nicholson then says to use a skew rabbet plane (the kind open on both sides and with no fence) finely set to plane to the final mark.

You will be shocked how much faster this process is than trying to use one metal plane or one anything to cut the whole rebate right to the mark. You remove material, then you finish to the mark. It’s not the same idea as “use the plane like you would a rebate router bit”. I think the insane discussions about set screws and this or that on boutique metal planes (which have enormous friction in the cut, too – it’s really unpleasant) comes out of the idea that you can turn a fillister into a routerman’s dream. Poo.

What about the nicker?

Note there’s little discussion about the nicker and its relation to the side of the plane and projection of the iron from or equal set to the side. That’s because the role of the nicker is to establish a crisp edge across the grain. For long grain cutting, this kind of thing isn’t that critical and the nicker can be set up out of the way, pointing back to having a finely set skew rebate.

This pair instead of one is so dominant for another reason – it eliminates the idea that you need to have fillister planes that go in two directions. You don’t. The rebate plane (not the fillister) makes the finish cut – you just use it in whatever direction the wood prefers.

Wide Rebates

I have my doubts that many people do this by hand, but it’s worth noting.

If the rebate is wider than the moving fillister plane will allow, you will gauge the width of the rebate and plow a groove shy of the gauge line. A good plow plane has a depth stop, so the same rules apply – do the coarse work and leave the fine work to the mark until later.

Then, you use your moving fillister plane to cut some of the rebate on the side toward you, leaving a column of waste in the middle that you can remove any number of ways. A firmer chisel is fine, as would be planes if you have the means to use them. If the waste is relatively wide, you can groove several plowed grooves, chisel and then pare or rebate what’s left and work to the mark.

The text goes on to mention that if the groove is really wide, but a sash fillister can be used to cut from the opposite side of the board to finish with width, then that is also fine. For the uninitiated, a sash fillister is a plane that cuts the rebate to the width of the waste (it cuts on the far side away from you gauging off of the side toward you, much the way a router fence attached to a base establishes the width of the uncut wood, not the width into the cut).

If the rebate is very large, you can plow both sides of it leaving a solid bit of waste in the middle.

And while it’s not mentioned here, if there rebate gets so large the planes won’t work to depth or plowing becomes unruly even with a wide plow plane blade, you’ll be sawing the waste out so that you have less work to do. Same care is needed – cut short of the marks, discard the “stick” that you end up with, and then finish planing to the mark with something finer. You can do this sawing with a carpenter rip saw easily and safely if you proceed with the start of the cut slowly.