Not much posting lately. I’ve made a few things, like my first hot formed and hardened chipbreaker as it just seems like a good idea to make an entire plane end to end:
That turned out well, and the first is good enough that the second will be exactly what I want. And it leaves just making screws without machine tools. We’ll see about that.
But turn of the year with some family obligations and kids in their mid to later years of youth before going off to college pinches time.
I don’t need much as far as woodworking goes. I need to buy steel occasionally, and getting rid of unused stuff is more important than getting more, but I did two things in the months before Christmas up through Christmas. I bought a bunch of boots to wear in the shop (did I mention that already?). Some new, some very little used – all US made stuff to try out various pairs. It’s perhaps not normal, but rather than buying a pair or two of shoes a year, I usually buy a glut of shoes every half decade to a decade. If it’s casual work shoes, I’ll track down five pairs and those will go at least ten years if they’re good shoes.
So, the boots are the same. Thorogood moc toes and a pair of redwing heritage boots. I don’t know why I never thought to look closer at them, but it was a chance thing replacing one pair with some heel pain courtesy of daughter getting better at tennis – I can no longer keep up, and putting the boots on to replace one other ratty pair of boots only to find they are more comfortable than any shoes I’ve ever worn. To see how the different boots are made, especially the simplified by really high quality redwing heritage stuff (smaller in profile, with your pants over the laces, they just look like shoes – solves shoes and boots at the same time). Great – it fits something I like to do, which is to make something you have to do something you like to do. You have to shave, or probably do. Shaving with a straight razor is a nice way to do it, one that you eventually look forward to. I need shoes – and dread finding out how crappy the stuff floating around really is as nothing is sacred in shoes.
Anyway, the tools:
I figured I’d like to get a forkstaff plane since I’ve never had one, and I found some from England and bought all three. They seem to be slow movers!! for the uninitiated, hollow sole, bench plane with a double iron. They sell for pennies and would be pretty difficult to make, especially because the cap iron matches the sole profile.
I quacked out one of my good calipers by getting tung oil in it and not noticing it until it was dry, and replaced it for now with two older vintage mitutoyo calipers. I know, no woodworkers need a dial caliper. It’s a nice thing to say. They’re awfully nice to have making tools, though and having older high quality ones that cost the same as new ones that are garbage is a far better idea – you don’t have to fight them or get annoyed with their function. And they’ll do better than new cheap ones even if they’re already used.
And lastly, I found this style of marking gauge on ebay – I knew there were a couple, but found out later that they’re pretty common:
these were apparently made by marples, but there is no name on them. As far as I can tell, there is a length of threaded rod, but it’s extremely close tolerance with zero slop, and there is some boxwood inside the brass tube.
I can’t vouch for all of them, but this one has the feel of a hydraulic clutch in a car – it is just worlds different than the average mortise marking gage, and it was about $65, I think, to get it shipped here from England. The cost of shipping is really something from England. One seller will ship something like this for $45 and the next $15. The former probably won’t find a buyer in England and because of the shipping, they won’t find one outside of England either.
But this gauge is just dandy, and I really have no interest in making one like it, so it is the rare pickup. Everything on it is just superb, and I can leave it set for 1″ work with my favorite mortise chisel and maybe use the adjustments for sport just to appreciate them.
Jeez
And as I sit here typing this out, I realize I also got a try plane or long plane that’s probably from about 1780-1820 – all depends on whether the iron is original, as well as a pair of ward mortise chisels that I should’ve left in England, but they are the kind of thing that I really thought someone should make, but are really uncommon to find. They’re a sash proportion chisel, but with more height for actual cabinet mortises, and moving toward the oval bolstered type in design – long bevel, tapers, etc, but without the heft.
So, Jeez -I guess I bought more than I could remember at the start of typing this ten minutes ago, but remember now. No wonder there’s a space problem here. I’ll have to check the gig rules for taxes on ebay, because as a never-made-profit type person, the last thing I want to do is unload a bunch of my stuff and then get stuck trying to figure out the value of it to offset the gains. How stupid.
Of Making by Hand with Wood and Steel 