Woodworking Projects

Quick Index:
Twin Beds,
Chopping Block,
Stereo Chest,
Wooden Turnbuckles,
Maple Workbench,
Bowsaws,
Maple Sideboard,
Barrister Bookcase,
Small Kitchen Totes,
Jewelry Boxes,
Computer Cabinet,
Cradles,
Kitchen Remodeling,
Sewing Machine Cabinet,
Machinist's Toolboxes,
Shadow Box,
Snakes and Whales,
Player Piano Roll Cabinet,
Parts Cabinets,
Pens,
Unusual Music Box,
Yuppie Workbench,
Chute/Shoot Board,
Roll-around Workbenches,
Schnitzelbank,
Finger-jointed Boxes,
Shepherd Planes,
Wooden Spokeshaves,
Pennsylvania built-ins,
Window Seat and more,
Shoulder Plane Project,
Another Display Case,
Cherry Display/Coffee Table,
Lambertville Wall Clock,
Veneered Boxes.
Hammacher Schlemmer Tool Box Interpretation,
Shoulder Plane Boxes.
Wall Mounted Tool Cabinets.
Gerd Fritsche A13 Smoother Plane.
Gerd Fritsche A7 Shoulder Plane.
Norris A7 Shoulder Planes from scratch.
Zig Zag Rule Display Cabinets.
Miter Planes.
Fritsche Saw, London Pattern Chisel Handles.
Ellipsograph, brass and cherry.
HNT Gordon Plane Box.
Panel Planes.
Refurbished Langdon Shoot Board.
BenchCrafted Yuppie Workbench II.
Veneered Boxes.

I've built, rebuilt, and repaired a lot of things over the years. I had one bout with rebuilding an old BMW years ago. But other than that one episode, my inclination has been more towards wood and sawdust than grease and oil (easier to clean up and other reasons). I'd like to think my skills have improved a little over time.

Little Twin Beds

These little twin beds were my first woodworking project. I don't remember what kind of finish I used on them, but it would be 20 years before I finally got a finish I liked. Pretty cute, huh? No, the girls, not the beds!

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Chopping Block

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Stereo Chest

Most folks spend time trying to hide stereo equipment and the wiring. This little chest was my solution. It is made of cherry and finished with one of the early Bartley wipe-on products. Small Aiwa stereo components hang inside. The bottom of the cabinet is a perforated panel for cooling and wiring access.

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Wooden Turnbuckles

A while back the travelling Woodworkers Shows were a new and wonderful idea. It was at one of these shows that I became fascinated with the Beall Wood Threader. If you have been to any of these shows you'll know what I mean. The Beall sales area was usually covered with an assortment of wooden nuts and bolts. I remember they had made a big wooden Stilsen wrench one time. Anyway, I bought one of these threading gadgets. I bought the full-up model for both right and left hand threads. With this gadget external threads are cut using a jig and a router, while the internal threads are cut with a large conventional-looking tap. So I get this thing home and I need to make something with it but I don't want to make another handful of nuts and bolts like on the salesman's counter, so I came up with these turnbuckles. They're made of Walnut and finished with a spray lacquer from a can. The barrels were hollowed out using a horizontal mortiser and then turned on a lathe. The eyebolts were turned on the lathe to get the shape of the eye and the dimension for the threads. They were bored out in the center and finished with a round over bit in a router. These turnbuckles may have been the first of many projects that have absolutely no value whatsoever... except entertainment. (The brace is a Stanley 813G with a 1/2-inch RJ bit and a Stanley #49 nickel-plated depth stop).

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Maple Workbench

This is the first fancy workbench I made. I thought it would be cool to make a workbench with wooden vises all around since I had the equipment to make 1 inch wood screws. This is the design I came up with. Here's another view. It is made of Maple and finished with Hydrocote lacquer. The lacquer was put on by hand. There are tapped holes all around the bench; sides, ends, and top. Each vise worked with a pair of screws and they could be put most anywhere. About the time I decided to make the bench a friend approached me and said he had a piece of real heavy wood, and since I was a woodworker I might like to have it. He said he'd been using it to block up his car when he changed the oil. Well, it turned out the wood was Rosewood, the first I'd ever seen. I used it for a lot of small projects including the inlay in the vise screw handles on the bench and for the original bench dogs. The basic center tray design was driven by the size of the old Belsaw 12-inch planer I had then. After I glued up the 2 bench sections, I ran them through the planer and then joined them together with the tray and end caps. It is assembled with bolts through the stringers and clamps to hold the top on the leg assembly. Once assembled, all the screw holes were plugged with Rosewood. The bench breaks down quite completely.

The design worked fairly well. You do need a fair amount of time to secure the work. And, you can really build up your wrists and forearms adjusting the vises. They are certainly not quick release, either! A while back I added a Veritas twin-screw end vise. Adding the new vise was fairly easy since the bench was designed to be taken apart. All I had to do was drill out the rosewood plugs and remove the nuts to free the old bench end cap. Notice the nice nearly-NIB Stanley #703 bench dogs which, very conveniently, fit the 5/8th inch round dog holes.

In 2002 I built my Yuppie Workbench. The Yuppie Workbench replaced this one on the clean side and this first effort got moved into the real work area. I added a nice German side vise and I gets used a lot more now. The new side vise is one of the few that was big enough to suit my needs yet not so long as to limit closing by the edge of the center tool tray. I changed all the vise handles to make them match. The only thing I don't like about the new side vise is the hole for the handle is kinda puny. Oh well.

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Bow Saws

At some point someone gave me a bow saw kit. It came with three blades, a pair of pins to put in the handles, the pattern and a piece of string. Since I almost never make only 1 of anything, I fabricated some more hardware out of stove bolts and was able to come up with four saws. (Hacksaw blade for the fourth one.) I finished one with a wipe on product that I wasn't particularly satisfied with and the others remain unfinished. I haven't thought of a use for these things except as wall ornaments, as you can see. (The brace is a Miller Falls #732 with a 3/8th inch RJ bit and a Stanley #49 japanned depth stop...).

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Maple Sideboard

This sideboard is the biggest piece of furniture I have built. The basic size and shape came from a Bartley catalog. They had something like this in a Queen Anne style. I scaled it from the catalog and gave it more of a shaker flavor. This was made during my "dovetail" period. The shelves are dovetailed into the vertical pieces. The vertical pieces are dovetailed into the carrier blocks and the carrier blocks are dovetailed into the top of the base unit. The legs are dovetailed into the sidepieces where mortise and tenons would normally be used. The front face pieces of the lower cabinet have dovetails connecting the horizontal and vertical pieces. The sideboard is made from Maple and stained, somewhat (big mistake). This was the last of the brush-on Hydrocote projects. Did I tell you the drawers are dovetailed, too? But, of course!

Barrister Bookcase

This barrister bookcase was made to complement a file cabinet that was set next to it. Then we rearranged the furniture! Not much to say about it, really. I made it because I wanted this special size. It is oak, with a little stain and finished with Fornby's tung oil. I like Fornby's tung oil, but this project is on the extreme end of large, for a multi-coat wipe-on finish. The old tools are pretty, too, don't you think?

Small Kitchen Totes

These little totes were made mostly for Christmas presents. They are made of ash with hydrocoate water based stain, no filler. I think this was my first project using the HVLP sprayer. The dovetails are a little tricky here since both sides are angled outwards. The pieces must be tipped a little when they are put into the Leigh Dovetail Jig. Something the jig does not have provision for.

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Jewelry Boxes

Every woodworker makes jewelry boxes at least once. I made one batch of them, 13 to be exact. There are only a few left. This is probably the only project I've made in multiples where the end result was not expected to be all the same size. The construction details are alike but the dimensions are different based on the best use of the wood I had. The boxes are made of Walnut and the interior trays are Maple. I used Hydrocote Water Based Lacquer for these, too. This may have been my last try with water based finishes. The boxes have mitered and grain-matched corners. The feet are all the same. There are several kinds of hardware (I bought most of what the store had to meet a Christmas deadline). The interior trays have box/finger joint sides and a simple glued on bottom. The trays were flocked with one of those Donjer flocking gadget; works well. In making multiples of small projects like this, there is always one that is smaller than the rest. This might be because of test cuts, or screw-ups, or whatever. I've found the smallest one is usually thought of as 'cute' and the most desirable. I usually keep that one for my wife! Here's another picture of one with a red interior. Note the gadget on the right. Some folks call it a smoke grinder. When you turn the handle it gets rid of smoke in the air. Don't see any do you? Some folks call it a BS grinder for the same reason. The biggest problem with these jewelry boxes is in the lid. It is fairly large on the bigger boxes. As a minimum the lock tends to be difficult in one season or the other and some of the lids will bow a little throughout the year. Got any nice quarter sawn cherry? Maybe I'll make another batch!

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Computer Cabinet

When we got a new computer I decided I didn't want to put it in a separate sanctum sanctorum. I made this computer cabinet to be as compact as possible to use in the family room. One side is open for necessary cooling but the other side looks nice! The keyboard can be put inside and the whole thing put up against a wall if you want to get it out of the way. The bottom shelf swivels out for access to the drives, and the keyboard shelf slides out and can be used for short sessions (not very comfortable, but it was made more for storage, anyway). I find the small extension will carry the mouse pad and a glass of wine while I run the keyboard from my lap. It is made of ash with a sprayed Deft lacquer finish.

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Cradles

The cradles were made for our first grandson. We found an antique cradle in a shop that we liked. I took some basic dimensions from it and noted some of the details and eventually came up with the pattern for these. I made five altogether; optimism perhaps! These were made of oak salvaged from a barn or out-building from Bruceton, West Virginia.

Anyway, the cradles were made from some of this salvaged oak. It was a lot of work to get usable pieces of wood from this pile of mostly trash. I found some 18-inch wide boards, very old, very tight grain. Some boards had three layers of wallpaper with newspaper over that. The newspaper dated from 1922. I figure this stuff must have been growing before Columbus landed. This is me with one of the cleaned-up boards. I modified the design of the cradle in several ways. I used a frame and panel (panel is in the form of slats) arrangement for the bottom so the bottom would not split as the original one-board bottom had done. I dovetailed the corners of the sides and smoothed out the scrollwork some. The sides are simply screwed to the bottom; they should move together ok. The rockers can be removed. They have a tenon that fits a mortise formed by the bottom slats and they are held in place with a screw and fender washer. As with the little totes, the dovetails had to be cut with the pieces oriented slightly away from vertical in the Leigh jig, but I was ready for that this time. The wood for the sides of cradles was originally 1 inch thick barn siding and I planed it down to about 1/2 inch. The rockers were originally floor joists. This old wood is pretty nasty to work with, but instant antiques don't come easy. Of course, they look a lot nicer when occupied by a pretty baby!

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Kitchen Remodeling

I did finally get the kitchen redone. I refinished all the original cabinets and put in new counter tops. This is the new cabinet that carries the microwave. When I made the original cabinets, I didn't have a good way to make consistent wide panels for the cabinet doors. I just used a joiner to bevel the edges and made clips to hold the panels in the doors. That scheme worked well enough for 20 years so I made the new ones the same way. Carolyn wanted hardwood flooring in the kitchen to match what we had in the family room. The family room floor was store bought'n Bruce flooring. It is random length 3,5,7-inch width with plugged ends. The area in the kitchen was so small, I made the new flooring from my recently acquired woodpile, and installed it by hand. Since each piece I made was straight and flat, installing the new floor was like laying tile. I simply set the board in place, drilled a few pilot holes and drove in some screw nails. The color match is not perfect even though I used the same 'color' stain. Different material manufacturers and 20 years difference was too much to over come. The seam between the old and new floor is (conveniently) under the kitty.

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Sewing Machine Cabinet

Some projects are part rebuild and part refinish. This sewing machine cabinet is mostly new work. The original veneered top was pretty well shot on this sewing cabinet. I kept the drawers and made a new top, flip lid, and sewing machine surround. The cabinet now houses a modern machine. The sewing box in the foreground is a refinish/repair effort.

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Machinist's Toolboxes

These little machinist's toolboxes were started a long time ago, before the cradles, and before we thought of re-doing the kitchen. But, I finally finished them. Each has five drawers. They are made of ash and finished with sprayed on Chemcraft Pre-catalyzed Lacquer. The basic dimensions were, again, lifted from an antique in a store. I made the back with a raised panel rather than using a nailed-on board as on the original. I had an idea for hardware that would keep the draw from being easily pulled out of the carcass. I was going to put a bullet catch in the back corners of each drawer. When the draw was pulled out the ball would drop into the little divot on the slide. This arrangement worked pretty well, but it was a little stiff. With the hard rubber feet I put on the bottom, the chests tend to walk around as the drawers are pulled out, so I didn't bother installing them. You can see some of the construction details. The front panel is made with three boards. Made like a bread-board end table, the center board is dovetailed into the two end pieces. You can see the dovetailed assembly on the right side of the picture. The dovetails are glued only at the top so the panel can move around. Making the cutouts for the little escutcheon for the lock was a little tricky and each one was ever so slightly different. The most satisfying phase of a project, or at least the time I like my work best, is when all the machine work is done but the project is still unfinished.

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Shadow Boxes

This shadow box is one of three. They were made to hold a salt shaker collection and Sandra has two of them. I think I've finally gotten rid of most of the ash.

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Snakes and Whales

Most recently I've been intrigued with these snake and whale puzzles I've come up with. A fellow named Chapman in Virginia has been making them and selling them for years. I first saw them in a gift shop in Williamsburg many years ago. Chapman contributed an article detailing the process and his products to Wood magazine. The article had plans for a little fish key-chain thingy and I made a couple of those out of some rosewood scraps. (Remember my friend's board, I'm still getting projects out of it.) The little fish were not very exciting but I also made a handful out of walnut and maple. The kids like those. (Yes, I know, I need to work on the focus, not much depth of field on this one.)

I ordered a box of scrap exotic woods from a place in Grafton, Vermont. The box contained about 20 pieces of 1 x 1 x 12 inch chunks of mostly cocobolo. I made these little snakes out of the cocobolo. They were roughed out on a bandsaw, shaped on drum sander, hand sanded to 320 grit, and then polished on a buffing wheel. After they were polished they were cut out with a scroll saw and then each piece polished up again before being put back together.

After my first efforts were so soundly trounced, I decided to spend some big bucks on real pieces of wood and see what I could do using a bandsawn puzzle rather than the tiny scroll saw. I made these 9 big snakes from various woods. They come from a basic 2 x 2 x 30 inch blank. All of them are made from various exotic hardwoods, except the bottom one, which is made from cherry. The exotic wood can be polished to a high shine and doesn't need any kind of finish. The one in cherry has a lacquer finish. The woods are, from top to bottom. Ziricote, Bocote, Comotillo, Granadillo, Cocobolo, Honduran Rosewood, Snakewood, Purpleheart, and Cherry. Oh, one of the whales is Walnut and the other is Purpleheart.

Here are three walnut whales before they were puzzled out. The walnut whales had to be finished with lacquer and then carefully cut out to prevent damaging the finish. Here's another snake and whale picture. These things were kinda fun to make.

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Player Piano Roll Cabinet

This is a player piano roll cabinet. The cabinet is a copy of an original pre-1920's cabinet we have. The original is in Mahogany. It was pretty beat up when I got it but I repaired and refinished it. I had picked up a piano, a bench, a roll cabinet and 200+ plus piano rolls. The piano was a low end unit and in too sad shape to rebuild. I did make it work after a fashion and was able to sell it. I kept the rest of the stuff, hence the need for the additional roll cabinet. The new cabinet is made from some of the hundred-year-old salvage oak I've been fooling with. Here's another unfinished picture. I had a piece of plywood that I thought I would use for the back, but it turned out to be too small. I stretched it a little by making this paneled back. See the little plane on the set-up table? It is a Stanley #278 from about 1920. I figure I'm the youngest part of this project! Here's the finished cabinet. It easily holds 120 rolls, more if you pack them in tight.

Parts Cabinets

I made a pair of these stack cabinets. They took ten months to complete. They were started in July of 1999. We've taken to calling them 'parts' cabinets. That's a very generic name for something that took so long to complete, eh? We have been fascinated with the various forms of 1930's office furniture. There were many 'stack-it-your-way' manufacturers. You could buy assemblies consisting of the common barrister's bookcase units, legal and letter size file cabinets, card files, invoice drawers, etc. We've seen a lot of different configurations in the antique malls, but they were never in a configuration that was really useable for my purposes. For example, the card file drawers have a big slot cut in the bottom. The invoice drawers were really neat but were actually too thin to use for anything other than paper.

Anyway, my wife and I both liked the design of these old cabinets with all the little drawers and all the brass hardware, so I decided to make something in the 1930s style. Mine would be a little more practical, at least more oriented to my applications. Hence, the "parts" cabinet designation. They are general catch-all cabinets in my shop. They are made from more of the salvage oak, with the drawer parts supplied by various secondary wood. The basic appearance came from a cover on a Veritas hardware catalog.. It was a simple guide that I used to draw my basic plan.

Anyway, each pair has four stacked 'units', a base, and a top. There are 58 drawers in each stack. They are frame and panel construction; frame and panel on the ends and a modified frame and panel construction in the partitions for the drawers. The drawers have oak faces, and the sides are dovetailed in the front, mortised in the back, with a thin plywood bottom. The hardware was inexpensive. I bought it from Lee Valley. I drilled all the holes in all the drawers in advance. Imagine my disappointment when I found that the Taiwanese hardware I had bought from Lee Valley was so inconsistently manufactured that many of the holes in the hardware did not line up with the holes I had drilled. Oh well! I made some adjustments, and the remaining small misalignments will disappear with time. Right? Here's a picture of the pair.

Pens

I made a bunch of these pens. I'm not sure how (as in how I got talked into it...) I wound up making these, but I did. I had always looked at these kits thinking it was a shame to spend $4 - 5 for kit parts to make something that can be had 20 for a dollar. Anyway these will be mostly gifts. They are made from the scraps of exotic wood left over from my snake puzzle adventure. There's cocobolo, rosewood, camatillo, bocote, zericote, snakewood, and purpleheart. I think the biggest challenge in making these was figuring out how to accurately turn them on a standard 36-inch lathe... the tolerances need to be within 1 or 2 thousandths of an inch.

Unusual Music Box

I made this unusual little music box for SWMBO. It's cut from a solid block of macassar ebony... pretty hard stuff.

Yuppie Workbench

This is my Yuppie Workbench. I got a deal on the fancy vises and made the bench out of cherry, walnut and fancy mahogany crotch veneer. The full story is here.

Chute/Shoot Board

My chute board provides two fences, one right and one left, seperately adjustable. Here's a view of the other side. Mine is made of cherry. I used some of that reduced friction plastic for the plane to run on. If the solid cherry base moves any, I can put paper shims under the plastic to level it up. Mr. Lie-Nielsen provided the #9 to go with it and graciously provided the high gloss matching cherry handles on the plane! I made a couple of wooden sticks to extend the bases of some plastic triangles, which can be used to set standard angles. One of the 'features' of my chute board is that as you swing the back board stops through the available cutting angles, the front edge of the stop remains aligned with the chute board plane track, right up to the edge. There's a board on the bottom that lets me secure the chute board in my bench vise. It can be removed to clamp it in other places with whatever clamps.

Roll-around Workbenches

I made these roll-around workbenches at the same time as the Yuppie Workbench. The bases are walnut with a cherry top. The back panels are matched walnut burl veneer. I re-jappanned the green Yugoslovian end vises. These get used for more than just woodworking. I have a piece of plexiglass sheet that bolts to a board that can be secured in the vise. It provides removeable protection from oil and other debris from non-woodworking projects.

Schnitzelbank

This is a Schnitzelbank, german for shave horse. I had this super oak plank that was part of the salvage wood I bought. It was about two inches thick and it looked like a shave horse to me. Plans are available here. You can buy them through this site. But, if you are cheap like me, all the info you need is right there on the web site. Many plans call for metal parts for holding it together or for pivots on the arm. Mine has only wood components. Most assembly is with through and wedged dowels. The pivot is a dowel that is friction fit and can be tapped out with a light mallet.

Finger Jointed Boxes

February 2003
I've been making finger-jointed boxes. I have some turning tools and a set of bench chisel that need storage boxes. Since I rarely make just one of anything (in case something goes wrong) there are ten boxes in progress for the tools. While I am in this box making mode, I asked SWMBO if she wanted any. She offered that a walnut recipe box would be nice. So, there are three of those. She also has these little sets of salt and pepper shakers. There are 6 pairs, so each guest can have a set of their own. There are four boxes for those. Then I had all these scraps of thin wood that were leftovers from the bigger boxes. So there are eleven little boxes for some small wooden puzzles. There are four small boxes with sliding lids that SWMBO will use to give away some pens I made. How many is that? Here is the pile of boxes so far.

There is nothing special about making the boxes. Finger jointed boxes are pretty common. What I think is different and may be of interest to folks is the jig I use for the joints. Most folks have seen the box joint jig that consists of a fence with a little stop projecting near the blade. What you are supposed to do is cut a slot and then move the board so the slot straddles the stop and then you cut another slot, etc. I never built one of these, so I'm not sure of this. But, the design seems rather in-elegant and difficult to adjust.

My finger joint jig will cut perfect joints of any size with almost any blade combination you choose. There! Does that sound like marketing or what! I rely on 16 TPI all-thread rod as the positioning mechanism. I use a carrier which holds all the pieces for one box and cut them all at the same time. There is a dial indicator for precise movement and positioning of the carrier. The carrier holds the pieces to be cut. There is not much special about the design. My only requirement was to be able to clamp the pieces together in a carrier that slides along the fence piece. I think the most important part of the carrier is that it has arms that keep it upright and linked to the fence. This is important since you certainly don't want the assembly falling over into the saw blade while you are making adjustments. The all-thread is supported in two places, one has a nut epoxied into it and the other is simply a support sleeve.

Here are the simple directions for its use. Say you have a 1/4 inch dado blade set up to cut the slots. You would assemble your four box pieces in the jig. Clamp two sides against the stops on the carrier and two sides offset from the first by 1/4 inch. Use a replaceable backer board behind the assembly to prevent chip out. Turn the all-thread to position the carrier so the first cut is 1/4 inch into the clamped up assembly. Make the first cut. Now turn the all-thread 8 turns. 4/16ths for the uncut tab and 4/16ths more to position the assembly for the next cut. Make another cut and add 8 more turns until the whole assembly is complete.

The reality is your dado blade probably does not make a 1/4 inch cut. It can be oversize or undersize, affected by wobble and run out, hence the need for finer adjustment. My jig has a dial indicator on the end that will let you dial up something more accurate than simply 1/16th per turn. This is a little difficult to explain, but here is an example. I found that for these joints I was making with my 1/4 inch dado blade set, I got the best joints when I added 12/16ths to the slot and made the associated tongue 4 turns plus the 4/16ths. Notice that when you make proper division between the slot and the tongue, e.g., for each slot and tongue pair, you will always start the pointer at zero. Note that the dial simply rides on the all-thread and the pointer is secured to the all-thread with a pair of nuts. You can make any size joints with any size blade. Needless to say a flat bottom blade works best.

I only glue the finger joints at the bottom of the slot. I make the joint tight enough so no additional clamps are need after the joint has been securely and squarely pressed together. You need to make the fingers longer than the thickness of the sides. I go a little further in that for these boxes I made the fingers 1/2 long. This makes it easy for me to add 1-inch to inside dimensions to get the box size I'm shooting for. Here are some of the cut pieces and glued sides.

June 2003
Well, I have finally finished this little exercise. The box building effort seemed more worthwhile when I started, but done is done. This air dried walnut takes on a nice coloration when finished. Some of the boxes are for SWMBO. Here are the boxes for the salt and pepper shakers and a couple of recipe boxes. Some of the boxes hold chisel sets. Another batch hold my lathe turning tools. This walnut wood is pretty wild. Coupled with the sap wood, the boxes are, er... interesting. These left overs are too small too finish effectively. Some are puzzles. There are a series of blocks inside that are somewhat difficult to get back into the box once removed. The long thin ones are for pens I made. SWMBO gives them away. There's a couple others. I put small turning chisels in one of them.

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Shepherd Planes

In 2003 Ben Knebel and Doug Evans had started the Shepherd Plane Company and were selling an assortment of ready made planes and plane kits. There were rave reviews of the products so I purchased three of their kits. I bought their 1 inch shoulder plane, a Spiers No.1 Panel plane, and a Spiers No. 7 Smoother. What follows is a description of my experience building the shoulder plane.

Making the Shepherd Shoulder Plane:
The kit consists of three steel plates with rough cut interlocking dovetails. You get three pieces of wood, the front/toe piece, the blade ramp and the wooden wedge. You get a metal wedge-wear-plate, and you get the steel rivets to hold the whole thing together. Here's a picture of the kinds of parts provided with the three plane kits. These are the side plates and sole piece for the shoulder plane. The objective is to precisely fit the side plates and sole together with the wooden pieces in between, whack the daylights out of the dovetail joints with a ball-peen hammer until the joints magically disappear, whack the rivets into place, and then polish up the whole grungy assembly. Along the way the various metal and wood pieces are polished to a fine finish. The blade is sharpened, and when assembly is complete, fine shavings will be made. This was advertised to take about four hours.

What follows in excrutiating detail is my experience with the shoulder plane. I assembled this first kit over a weekend. Let me say right here, it came out beautiful! You can skip this section and go down towards the end of this piece for pictures of the completed planes.

Getting started:
I found a scrap of oak, ripped it, kerfed it, cut the 5 and 15 degree guide blocks that are used as guides for the file when fitting the steel dovetails. I drilled a couple more holes for lamps in the bench near the machinists vise; can't have too much light, right? I loaded a new one-edge-safe bastard file into a handle and double checked the instructions. I chaulked up the file and made the first file cuts on the right side plate. dovetails. Elapsed time: 1 hour

The safe edge on the file is not quite safe enough for my liking. When pushing it at 15 degrees there is some slight marring from the teeth on the other side. I took it to the grinder and gave that safe edge a small bevel. I finished filing the sides and sole. The sides mostly dropped into the sole plate. I had to take two more file passes on one end of one side. These pieces may be looser than what I should have been aiming for, but I'm not sure. I'll have to wait and see how the pieces close up when I whack 'em. I fitted the wedge wear plate in place. I tapped the provided bolts through the front/toe wood piece to clear out the holes. Set up the drill press to complete the drilling of the heel/ramp piece; the holes weren't drilled all the way through. I dropped the front wood and the rear ramp wood pieces in between the steel side pieces. This is where I encountered the first minor problem.

The front/toe wood piece does not sit flush on the wedge-wear-plate. This is because the undercut was not made deep enough. This is the cut out that is supposed to set on the wedge-wear-plate. As you slide the wood into the plane it stays where it should until it hits the wedge-wear-plate.But when pushed all the way in so that the bolts can be inserted, then the cut out in the wood is riding up on the wedge wear plate. It only took a couple minutes to hack out a little more wood to make it fit. With the bolts installed in the side plates, the wedge-wear-plate is now mostly tight and nearly flush all the way across. There is a .002 or .003 inch gap at one edge above the wear plate. This will likely 'disappear' during the finishing.

Then I wanted to see how this heel/ramp piece lines up with the ramp in the mouth. I wanted to do whatever is necessary to minimize working any problems in this area after the planes has been assembled. Elapsed time: 2 hours

I wanted to check the alignment of the heel/ramp block of wood with the ramp and angle of the mouth in the steel sole. For starters the bolts would not fit through the holes in the side plates. With my plastic calipers I could only detect a difference in the order of .001 inch, the difference between the threaded area on the provided bolts and the shank on the bolts. Since the holes in the side plates need to be chamfered in later steps, I got out my tapered reamer and enlarged the holes just enough for the bolts. This is kind of important because not only do the bolts not fit, but the rivets don't fit either. The rivets are a good .005 inch bigger than the bolts but I'll leave the fitting of those until later in the assembly. I reamed the holes out enough to accept the bolts provided.

The heel/ramp piece is chipped at the top outside edge. I used a piece of 100 grit paper from an old sander belt to round off the chipped area. I then used 150, 220, and then 320 grit on the rounded area and the bearing surface of the ramp until all the marks were gone. A couple seconds on the buffer makes this piece nicely finished. I inserted the newly polished heel/ramp piece and put the bolts through it. The angle of the wooden piece aligns quite nicely with the angle of the mouth in the sole, but only if pressure is applied to the mouth end of the heel/ramp wood. I can't think of anyway to adjust the wood closer to the metal sole (short of enlarging the holes in the wood) so I'm going to assume the wedge will keep the wood tight if the peening doesn't move the pieces closer together. The gap, though I can't measure it, is in the order of .015 to .020 under the wood at the throat bevel in the sole.

It will likely get scratched again when I cut the metal out of the mouth side plates, but I took this opportunity to finish the wood inside the mouth of the front/toe wood. Same deal, 150 - 220 - 320 grit and then a pass over the buffer leaves the inside of the mouth looking 'finished'. (This will turn out to be a waste of time as noted below.)

I'm ready to fit the bolts. I figured now would be a good time to champher the holes for the wedge wear plate so that peening would really lock the plate in place. This seems to me like a good thing to do, but not called for in the instructions. Elapsed time: 3 hours

While I was doing the final fitting I figured I'd better clean up the inside of the side plates where the wedge fits. I wouldn't want to be doing show and tell and have someone see the inside of the rusty side plates.

At this point, before assembling the sides, I changed my mind and decided to drill out the wooden pieces to better fit the rivets. I used a inch drill and the rivet pins are still very tight in these. I'll ream the side plates bigger when I get ready to actually install the rivets. Elapsed time: 5 hours

I'm ready to start peening. With everything bolted up and ready to go, there is a space under the wood between the wood and the sole plate. The space is .015 inch at the front and .018 at the back. I can't think of anything I can do about it short of re-drilling the wood. I'm not willing to do that. If it doesn't close up some during the peening process I'm sure a nice stiff wax crayon will fill the small area. With the jig plates installed the whole assembly rocks quite a bit on the 'anvil'. A few taps with a wood block and the peening hammer takes care of most of it. I wonder what moved? I wrote the peening sequence on the plane rather than trying to glance back at the booklet. Here's my 'anvil'. It's a 50# plate balanced on some 4 x 4 cut offs. It walks around some when I whack it. Maybe I should screw the legs to the plate, eh? Maybe for the next project.

I started whacking/peening the side plates. It's not hard to hit the side plate dovetails with the flat face of the hammer. When I got to the tiny pins near the mouth I figured I'd be a little more cautious. I took the drive rod out of a gadget for driving nails in concrete. The end is a flat rod about 3/16ths in diameter. This worked pretty well on the small dovetails at the mouth and later for the finishing strokes where the ball on the peening hammer was supposed to be used. Elapsed time: 7 hours

peening the sole and the side is finished. I'm fairly satisfied with the peened joints so far. There is a space at the mouth I don't like. I can't tell what kind of a problem it is until I get those side doohickies cut out.

Now on to the rivets. The rivets are plenty long enough but rough cut. I chamfered the ends so they would start in the holes better. I elected to do one rivet at a time, e.g., I took out one bolt and installed the rivet, took out another bolt, put in that rivet, etc. I used a tapered reamer to chamfer the sides of the holes in the side plates. On the first couple holes I added a few cuts with an oval file at the top and bottom of the hole. Doug had suggested this to keep the rivet from turning. I decided it was too difficult to fully peen into this cut out and only did it on two of the rivets. As hard as it was to insert these pins I doubt they will ever turn. I used the reamer until I felt enough metal had been removed. I used scotch tape to hold a couple of the provided washers over the hole and then used the machinist's vise to press fit the rivets into place.

After the rivets were installed I started grinding off some of the banged up sole and side plate munge with my belt sander. I wanted to see if these joints were really going to disappear. I fooled around on the belt sander long enough to watch some of the rivet joints and some of the dovetail joints disappear. I'm thinking this thing may come out pretty good! I didn't take it down to fully finished side or sole. I figured I'd wait till all the metal is cut out. Besides the whole assembly was getting too danged hot to hang on to, even with leather gloves on. Elapsed time: 8 hours, 45 minutes

I Started cutting out the little triangular support doohickeys at the mouth. I should have bought better quality hacksaw blades! But, still, it didn't take long. Elapsed time: 9 hours and 15 minutes

There is a space between the sole plate and the side plate at the mouth. I cleaned it out using feeler gauges and compressed air. The space is more than .008 inch on the worse side, less on the other side. After making sure the space was clean as I could get it, I clamped the plane to my anvil plate and used my punch thingy to drift the side plate into the sole plate. The joint won't likely disappear like the rivets and the dovetails but it may be ok. Elapsed time: 9 hours and 35 minutes

When the blade is inserted it sits above the machined ramp in the sole. I started filing the wooden heel/ramp piece and the ramp opening in the sides of the plane. Three hours later I've changed the pitch of the heel/ramp and the ramp in the side plate to match the ramp (mouth bevel) in the sole. I used a 4 inch flat bastard file and a stick with 100 grit sand paper on it, then 150 grit paper to change the angle of the ramp.

I've cleaned the blade to remove the manufacturer's marks. (No, not the Shepherd marks, the raw steel manufacturer's marks.) I've re-ground the blade to get a bevel on the pointy end. As provided the blade is more blunt than a butter knife! Elapsed time: 12 hours and 20 minutes

I'm not certain what to do next. The mouth is already .037 after starting to flatten the sole. (I remember it was about .020 + when I started putting it together.) When I started to flatten the sole I was hitting the mouth almost immediately. I smoothed an edge on a piece of scrap aluminum. I clamped the plane on my bench with the sole up in the air. I positioned the aluminum over the cutter-side of the mouth opening, raised the other end of the aluminum with a small metal rule, and whacked the mouth area with the ball-peen hammer. My thinking is that by hammering the mouth a little lower it will be the last area to get flattened when I do the sole and this will minimize making the mouth opening larger. It should also help the bearing surface for the cutter. This metal does seem awfully soft and movable.

I started finishing the opening in the side of the plane. Needless to say my efforts at pre-finishing the wood parts before installing them was a waste of time. Now I'm starting to work the metal and the wood in the mouth area so that they are all in alignment. Lots of filing and sanding to do here. Elapsed time: 13 hours and 20 minutes

The wood and metal all around the side opening in the plane is pretty smooth and level. Not fully finished yet but ok for now. Next, back to the belt sander to flatten the sides and sole. � Elapsed time: 15 hours and 35 minutes

The sides and sole are flat. The sides are square to the sole. I think the joints are ok. I can see a small line here and there. About like other planes of this type that I've seen. The mouth is pretty big at nearly .050; this is a little disappointing. But, given the opening I started with I doubt it could have turned out much better.

I couldn't resist the urge to try to take a shaving or two. Even though the iron has not been sharpened (honed) it looks like the plane will at least 'work'. How well remains to be seen. By the way, here is what the mouth looks like after drifting the metal closed, right side, and left side Elapsed time: 16 hours and 15 minutes.

So, what's left?
Level the wood on the outside of the plane flush to the side plates.
Sand out the planer marks on the wedge.
Sand and polish the whole business.
Scary sharpen the iron.

I covered the sides and sole with two layers of masking tape. This will provide protection from dings while I grind down the wedge wear plate and form the wood to the contour of the side plates.

I ground most of the metal off the wedge wear plate with a disk sander. I then started on the wood and side plates with a reciprocating drum sander. This wasn't working too well. For one I was getting a lot of chatter and two, I couldn't get inside the small radii. I chucked a small dowel in the drill press and wrapped some stik-it paper around it. I started with 150 grit and worked through 220 and 320. The dowel fit the radius and since the paper only stuck to the dowel and not to itself I wound up with a small flat sander. This worked well to make a smooth finish especially in the finer grit. Elapsed time: 19 hours and 15 minutes.

The wood and side edges are done to 320 grit. I took the masking tape off and did some hand work on the sides to remove some minor scratches. The metal is really soft and easily marred. I don't know if this is a good thing or not. Harder metal would not be so inclined to flow in the dovetails, eh? I didn't do anything to the chamfered edge on the side plates. They have tooling chatter marks but I couldn't think of a way I could readily improved on them.. besides I'm running out of patience. Elapsed time: 21 hours and 15 minutes.

All that is left is to finish sanding and final fit the wedge and then buff the whole plane. Buffing brings up a pretty good size check on the inside of the front 'knob'. I filled it with a black finishing crayon after making certain it wasn't radiating from one of the rivet holes.

The buffing is done. There are a couple places I could have sanded a little more (ain't that always true?) I've honed the iron and I'm finally done. Sure looks nice and purty! ...and it actually works well, too. Elapsed time: 22 hours

Here's another glamour shot .

Well, needless to say it took me a tad over the four hours the Shepherd folks were advertising to complete this plane. I don't like the check in the front knob, though it is small. I was expecting a smaller mouth than what I wound up with. I'm not much of a hand plane user per se, so I can't say with any authority if the mouth size is a big deal or not. The only other shoulder plane I own is the LN-73 and it has an adjustable mouth. I'm certain every set of problems encountered with a kit will be somewhat different. I was able to find satisfactory solutions (perhaps compromises) to the problems I encountered. This plane is not going to compare to a Holtey but it didn't cost anywhere near what a Holtey costs. It's very pretty and it works. I'm pretty pleased with it. No, very pleased with it.

Here are some pictures of the other two plane kits parts. pic1, pic2, pic3, and pic4.

I went on to complete the Smoother and then the Panel Plane. There were a lot of quality control problems with these kits, quality and delivery problems that eventually, IMO, led to the demise of the company. For example, the mouth on the shoulder plane was chipped and the wood had checks in many places. The wood had rough lower edges and chips that had to be filled with lacquer on both the Panel Plane and the Smoother. For the Panel Plane, the instructions were wrong, with a mix of instructions for different planes. The holes were drilled improperly for the lever cap on the Panel Plane. The handle was too thin for the cut out on the Panel Plane. The wood was all different color and texture, one piece looked like It had the remnants of a rough sawing operation, e.g., tear out. The lever cap for the Smoother had no logo on it, and on the replacement cap the logo was not centered. The mouth block was missing on the Panel Plane kit. One shoulder kit had no bolts (3/4 inch).

Anyway, I completed the Smoother (pic1, pic2, and pic3) , and then the Panel Plane (pic1, pic2). I guess for the price and the entertainment value, I'm still pretty satisfied in spite of the many problems. Before I got bored with the whole process I built a couple more of the Shoulder planes. Here are pictures of my fleet of Shepherd Planes, pic1, pic2, and pic3.

I'm sure the folks who paid for kits never received feel less kindly than I do, but it is really a shame the Shepherd folks went out of business. They had a great idea and nearly a great product. They were not great business men and had some other set backs along the way. I wish them well...

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Wooden Spokeshaves

After the Shepherd plane making efforts, I decided to try my hand at making spokeshaves. A lot of folks had made then from instructions on John Gunterman's "Teach Shave" page. There are quite a few suppliers of blades. I liked the three different blade sizes, and the pricing, offered by Kevin Brennan of Kansas City Windsor Tool Works . I made my pattern by taking a photograph of a suitable manufactured wooden shave and then scaling the picture up and down to create three different sizes. I made 15 spokeshaves in all. They all have brass wear plates. The plates are glued and screwed in place and then the heads of the screws were polished off flush with the brass plate. I made some in Cherry, Cocobolo, and Granadillo. These are Cherry and Cococolo. These are Granadillo. These are Cocobollo. I didn't try to use anything fancy for blade adjustment. I found a few paper shims inserted between the blade and the body gave me all the adjustment I needed. As is usually recommended, I set one end of the blade very tight for a fine cut and the other end a little looser for a more coarse cut. This is one of the big ones in use. This is one of the smaller ones. And, here is a picture of the whole lot.

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Pennsylvania Built-ins

The Pennsylvania built-in project consists of building a paneled wall, a built-in bookcase and a new fireplace mantle and surround.There's a little detour to paint the front rooms and put in a floor where the two story foyer was.

The floor plan for the new place is really nice. It is generally very open and very bright. But, the living room and family room run together with no seperation of function. This picture shows the problem. The living room and family room are joined by a 6-foot framed opening. I'm going to close up the opening and panel the wall on the family room side. I'll do a built-in on the Living Room side. We don't much like the fireplace and the slate surround so we plan on replacing that also. Notice in the picture there is a column standing there by itself. We don't like that very much either, so that will be made part of the foyer wall.

February 2007
I started by framing in the wall from the errant post. When the dry wall work was finished, I framed in the opening between the two rooms. I have quite a bit of wood stashed in the shed (If you are interested in the "wood story", look under Woodworking Prjoects, then Cradles). I have a lot of Black Walnut, but it is generally poor quality, lots of knots, nothing very clear for any length or width. This is the design I came up with to make maximum utilization of the wood at hand. The paneled wall will provide a darkish background for the TV and stereo equipment planned for the room.

I thought I would be able to re-saw the boards I have and glue up book-matched pieces to make the panels. But, the wood just is not quite thick enough for that to work. I tried out my new MiniMax shaper, a stile and rail set, and a raised panel cutter. They seem to work well. I made the test-cut stiles and rails 4-inches wide. I do not know if that bodes well for the project as my sketch calls for 3-inch stiles. I tried making a simple flat panel but that design was pretty unexciting. I found I can get a pretty good looking panel as long as I edge glue two pieces from the same board. The color and grain match well enough to be acceptable. I glued up 55 blanks. That is 5 more than I need, but I expect some mistakes and test cuts along the way. The glued up panels are 0.90 thick. I expect them to move a little as the wood decides where it wants to go after the first rough planning. The finished thickness for the panels will be 0.70 thick.

March 2007
I still wasn't certain how to approach building and installing the paneling. Should I do just one row at a time? Should I just go ahead and make all the pieces? I settled on just making the first row. The first row gets 12 x 24 inch panels whereas the panels in the rows above are 12 x 12. I made the 10 panels , the horizontal rails, and the vertical stiles. I kept these clamped and watched the humidity until I was able to spray on the pre-cat lacquer.

April 2007
Along the way I rigged up a spray booth of sorts out in the shed. A couple of attic fans mounted in a sheet of plywood and wedged under the roll-up door work for ventilation. A piece of peg board screwed to some 2 x 4's and my strip tank work as a drying rack Some plastic, a roll-around box with a lazy suzan on top complete the spray area.

I was concerned about how difficult it would be to keep the stiles aligned perfectly vertical while tapping the panels into place. As it turned out the stiles grabbed and held pretty well with no appreciable movement, though I did check them after each panel was installed. I installed all the panels and their stiles for the first row, and then put on the top rail. The top rail was the most exciting part! But, I got it hammered in place without moving any of the stiles. As one would expect, only the stiles and rails are glued. The panels are tight but free to move around. The biscuit slots in the top rail will let me mount a chair rail without visible nails or screws. The top rail is screwed to the studs in both the old and new framing

May 2007
I decided it would take way too long to get this job done if I only finished on one row at a time. I made up all the rest of the panels, stiles , and rails. It was a tiresome two days to spray all these pieces. IIRC, it was about two hours to spray and three hours to sand them between coats. So, something over 15 hours.

I laid all the pieces out. I made sure the panels. were random in color, no groups of light or dark panels. I made up a story board with the panel locations marked on it. Installation of the panels and stiles was as straightforward as before. I used wedges to lock each top rail down untill the glue set up a little. Getting the very top rail in place was a bit of a challenge. I couldn't swing the hammer to tap the rail in place becasue I was too close to the ceiling. I panicked a little before I grabbed a stack of shim shingles and used them as wedges between the ceiling and the rail. Whew, all's well that ends well! Here's a test-look without the trim pieces. Glue blocks connect most of the stiles to the framing.

June 2007
The remaining trim pieces were mostly pretty straight forward. I needed to make multiple passes on the shaper for the chair rail. It got away from me at one point and I thought I'd need to trash it and start over. But, a few hours with some old hollows and rounds and I was able to recover enough to make it useable. The profile is a little different than planned, but who's to know?

I glued the chair rail in place using an improvised clamp system. The wall wasn't quite as straight as I would have liked but the joints get covered by the television. The top trim is just a couple boards with round-over edges, but it looks OK and was a lot easier, less risky than crown molding. . There's a one-screw screw-up there but I plugged it. The baseboard finishes the installation. And here's the overall shot. So, the family room side is done!

September 2007
The fireplace mantle and surround in the Living Room is, well...let's just say it leaves something to be desired! There is really no other way to put it. It is mostly particle board with the few pieces of wood looking like they were cut by hand with a kitchen knife. The slate is dull and stained, too. I found a design for a fireplace surround in the December 1997 issue of Wood Magazine. I used the basic idea to design a built-in and a new fireplace surround. The built-in goes in the living room on the back side of the paneled wall.

The built-in starts off as a basic MDF box with a face frame. Notice the knots! It's tough to find good long boards in my stash. Fortunately only about an inch of the bottom board is exposed. In this picture I have temporarily set the box in place in the living room. I need to tailor the wrap-around corners and the two outside vertical shelf supports to the depth and contour of the wall. Then I can finish building it in the shop. Once the locations are all marked and everything is back downstairs, I need to secure the bookshelf columns to the cabinet top. The unit is a little too big for my set-up table. Notice the one column setting setting on a drawer on the cabinet behind. The columns are secured to the cabinet top with screws and dowels. I have made the doors for the bottom cabinet. I don't have a lot of room for assembly much less for taking pictures but I did stand all the piece together to get a test-look.

October 2007
The plan calls for quite a bit of large cove molding on both the built-in and the fireplace surround. The molding will be made by pushing the pieces across an angled tablesaw blade. A cumbersome and nasty effort, but necessary since I can't afford a shaper cutter that large. These are the glue-ups for the cove moldings. Here are some of the molding pieces as they come off the tablesaw. They require lots of sanding!

November 2007
There are a lot of molding pieces on this thing! The little pieces that bridge the step around the columns are particularly difficult. They are too small to hang onto to fit by hand with a chute board. Once I figured out the exact dimension I used the tablesaw. I had to tape up the board to prevent tear out. Then I had to hook more tape to the cut off piece so it wouldn't fall back into the saw and go sailing across the shop. Hey, it is supposed to be a challenge! Here is the top section with all the molding installed.

Molding for the bottom part of the cabinet was a little easier to install. Plus I could get the cabinet back in the shop closer to the tools. These flash pictures make the wood look a little strange, plus the cabinet is laying on its back. Re-orienting the pictures doesn't always help. Here are details of the base cabinet moldings: pic1, pic2, and pic3. Here is the whole thing put back together for another test-look. I still need to make the shelves and buy something veneered for the back and top. I'm going to take a little break from all this woodworking and do something fun. I'm going to put up Crown Molding in the Living Room and Dining Room!

December 2007
The crown molding is installed; caulking is your friend! Anyway, time to start on the fireplace mantle and surround. Here is what it looked like at the beginning. The first thing was to pull the old surround off the wall. It was only held in place with four nails and a lot of caulking. I made some cuts into the drywall to get access to the framing so I could install a couple of wall sconce light fixtures. I taped up the drywall cuts to ensure no drafts and installed the new granite. The granite is simply glued up there. The cross pieces will hold it until the glue dries. The pieces are essentially stacked, with all the weight being transferred straight down to the hearth. Not much force pulling away from the wall. Having said that I think I'll leave the cross pieces in place until the surround is fully installed. I found a really nice piece of wood for the mantle top, and a nice piece for the front horizontal piece. I found two pieces for the fronts of the columns but one had some nasty rotten knots on one side and I couldn't tell how far they went into the board. I glued up the pair of 3-piece columns and cut the flutes in them. Here is the router table lash-up to cut the flutes. All the clamps simply make stops to control the length of the flutes. Here's the nasty knot I mentioned. The front side of the knot doesn't look too bad, and the routed flutes didn't cut into anything bad. With the hoizontal board keeping the column square, the columns had to be fitted to the wall. A hand plane was the only way to fit the wood to the wavy wall. Once the columns were fitted to the wall, they were screwed and glued to the hoizontal board. This will be somewhat of an exercise in wood movement. That is an 8-inch horizontal board cross-grain glued to a 6-inch vertical column board. There could be some splits, or moldings popping off, somewhere down the road.

January 2008
Happy New Year! Here is the first picture of the new year. I was getting nervous installing the molding without test fitting it so I carried the whole assembly back up to the living room. While it was there I figured I might as well install the top mantle board since it had to be fitted to the wall.

I finished the moldings for the bottom of the mantle. I'm pretty pleased with the way this coming out so far. It should be pretty sharp if I can get it finished properly. I just love all this molding on these things. I made the rest of the odds and ends. I made the shelves for the top and bottom sections of the built-in. I'm going to do walnut baseboards on two walls, the walls with the mantle and the built-in. I made these little doobers to go in the corners. They will make the transition from the walnut baseboard to the existing white baseboard on the other two wall. It is difficult to add nicely finished natural wood trim to this place that uses all white fiberboard trim and white plastic windows. I hope my idea for the walnut to white transition looks OK.

February 2008
You didn't think we would keep the really red walls, did you? I added crown molding to the two rooms, the living room and the dining room. There are some funny steps in the walls in the dining room. They probably hide some sort of duct work. The trim looks a little strange going around these corners. The chair rail had to be routed back where it butts the window trim, and then it had to be coped where it ends on the wall. The freshly painted room is quite a change. We have been looking at those red walls long enough!

March 2008
Well, it is March and too early to set up the spray equipment. It will be April or May before it is warm enough in the shed to start spraying the mantle and built-in. We have, or had, one of those two story foyers that seem to be so popular these days. Some of those are very nice, with stairs entering, nice railings, fancy upstairs windows, etc. Ours was not that way. Ours was simply a two story white box with a big hanging light. We decided to add a cailing/floor and make a second floor sewing room. I made some measurements, did some checking with the stud finder and cut some exploratory holes. These holes mostly confirmed what I thought was there, so I set out to remove the necessary dry wall. There was nearly a 100 kinear feet of cuts to make to remove the dry wall. I wasn't about to do that with a knife! I knew it would make some mess but I decided to use my circular saw. I marked the area to be removed with pencil lines. I put up plastic sheeting to try to contain the dust. Then, with repirator and safety goggles I started cutting. It went pretty quickly; saw a little, shake off the dust, saw a little.... When it was all done I stepped outside of my tented area, removed the respirator and googles, and looked upstairs. The dust hanging upstairs made it look like the house was on fire! I hadn't planned on so much of the dust rising up. Anyway, there was a really stiff breeze blowing outside so opening a couple windows on either side of the house cleared the air pretty quickly. After the drywall was removed, everything was pretty much as I expected. I could see the header above the door but it looked like a board laying flat so I couldn't really tell how it was made. If I didn't know exactly what was there, it would worry me the rest of my life, so I took down the dry wall over the door. That is a really nice 12 x 6 inch beam! That will certainly hold the floor joists. Anyway, after the initial mess, the rest of the work went quickly and predictably. The I-joist were hung on hangers at one end, and set on the built-up header at the other end. I added tight bloacking over the door to make certain the I-joists could not twist. Drywall installation was uneventful. All of the trim, painting and lighting is now done for the living room, dining room and foyer. Now to just wait for the weather to warm up enough to start spraying finish.

May 2008
It took four weekends to spray on the finish for all these pieces. I did all the doors, shelves and baseboard trim pieces one weekend, then the mantle, then the built-in base, and the top part of the built-in last. I put a little stain in the lacquer for these pieces, so starting with the shelves and things made sense. These pieces are heavy and pretty awkward to handle. Once I got things rigged up they went fairly quickly. Here is the mantle propped up. The top of the built-in was difficult to spray at the transition from the vertical sides to the horizontal base. I made a little baffle that helped there. Here is the mantle installed, and here is the built-in. This is how the corner 'doobers' worked out. Her is the corner transition to the white painted molding. I thought I would have some trouble securing the built-in to the wall, but I guess we all luck out sometimes. It sits tight against the wall, not needing any additional fasteners. This project is done!

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Window Seat and More

This is about finishing off the second floor area created by putting in a ceiling that changed the two story first floor foyer into a single story. Some folks ask why I would do that. Some new homes have nice two story foyers. They generally feature a fancy stairway and a nicely finished balcony of some sort. Ours was simply a two story box with a big light hanging in the middle. We didn�t see a lot of value in it.

The upstairs area under discussion was carpeted and had some really ugly railings made of framed drywall and particle board. Here are some pictures of the upstairs. Here�s the railing design. This is the OSB subfloor and part of the cut up railing. The new subfloor lined up well with the old floor and rests securely on a large beam.

It made sense to put a hardwood floor in this area. This makes maintaining the carpeting in the bedrooms a little easier and breaks the monotony of all carpet. The installation of the hardwood floor was pretty straightforward. The new-room area and the old area tied together nicely. The only tricky parts were trimming out the stairway opening (read, not square) and making up a new top tread for the stairs. The new railing was assembled from standard big box components. They match the components used downstairs.

This was supposed to be about a window seat. This was another fit-and-fiddle job, shaping and fitting it to the uneven walls. Here�s an in progress overall picture and a detail picture. The inside is particle board. The bottom is the hardwood floor. The multiple partitions will carry the surround that will support the lids. Here is the test-fit of the whole thing. Finished and close-up. The finished railing looks better, too.

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Shoulder Plane Project

I enjoyed making the Shepherd plane kits I described a little further back. As described there, the company has gone belly-up and the kits are no longer available. For some time now I've been toying with the idea of trying to make some of these infill planes from scratch. There is a quite a lot written about how to make them. In theory they are not all that difficult. Some would have you simply take a hack saw and file to your metal to produce the product. I'm certain it can be done that way but the outcome that way is too risky for me. Some folks do their basic metal work on a milling machine and that is the way I decided to go. I acquired a milling machine, bought some end mills and a sturdy vise. I did enough experimentation to understand the machining sequence. and off I went. I didn't have any metal working experience other than the Shepherd plane kits I made. I don't know if that qualifies as experience. This project contained plenty of opportunity to simply crash and burn. When I started I really had no idea whether they would ever get finished.

These are the Shepherd infill shoulder planes I made and these are what I was trying to copy. I started out thinking I'd make a set of four planes. I thought I'd try for 3/4, 1, 1 1/4, and 1 1/2 inch sizes. I could cut the various size sole pieces out of one piece of metal or I could buy the correct widths for the sole size I need. The metal I bought for the sole comes in 24-inch pieces, enough for three planes. Well, one thing lead to another and I wound up making three sets of four or 12 planes. When I start something like this I always try to make more than I need or want. This allows for screw ups and the fact that I�m not ever likely to set up to make the same things twice.

One of the problems with the Shepherd shoulder plane, for me anyway, is the fact that the metal around the mouth opening cannot be held in compression as it can be with the dovetails that are not near the mouth. Here is a picture of one of the shepherd planes partially through the clean-up phase. Notice that the locked dovetails fore and aft of the mouth are very tight and the joints have essentially disappeard. However, the dovetails at the mouth cannot be tightened sufficiently to make them disappear. They can be adjusted enough to make a satisfactory appearance but I wasn't able to make the joint disappear. It is not a huge problem and the finished Shepherd planes came out pretty nice. I still find that small dovetail line at the mouth to be distracting. Anyway, For these new ones I used brass for the sides instead of steel. One, I thought I'd like the brass contrast with the various wood infill choices I had, and secondly I thought the small problem with the dovetails around the mouth would be less apparent. The steel planes with steel rivets are quite nice when done properly such that the riviets and dovetails esentially disappear. This is not too difficult to do but a small mistake here or there will show the position of the rivet or dovetail, detracting from the overall quality perception. By using brass sides, the dovetails and through rivets become accents and I got a more consistent appearance. The following is the log of my efforts

March 8, 2011
To make the side plates with their dovetails I figured I needed to secure the side plates as close to where I would be cutting as possible. The vise I have for the milling machine has vise jaws that are only 1 � inches high and 4-inches wide. The metal for the sides starts out at 3-inches so I figured I'd get better results with vise jaws 2 5/8 inches high. Also to avoid repositioning the work as I made the dovetails, I figured 8-inch wide jaws would also be good to have. One of the first things I did was to make two pair of new vise jaws. One set is 2 5/8 inches high by 8-inches wide as just described. The other is 1 � inches high by 8-inches wide. The second set to be used to hold the 8-inch sole pieces while cutting the pins. Here is a picture of the new jaw sets and here is a picture of the tall set installed on the vise.

March 14th
I cut my first metal today. I started with the brass side pieces. I made a paper pattern and marked out the tails. I loaded the 8-pieces I had in the vise to gang cut them al at once. I used a straight milling cutter to get rid of most of the metal. Then I put the dovetail cutter in to finish. This way I could set the depth on the dovetail bit and not move it for each set. These were pretty easy as the spacing is not critical. If it roughly matches my picture it will be good enough. The pins on the sole pieces will be laid out from the tails. Those will be more critical. I took this picture of the sides because it looked cool!

March 15th
The sole pieces are four different widths. Only one size is taller than the 1 1/2 in jaws on the milling vise. I was looking around to find spacers (parallel bars) to raise the others up to the proper height. I found two small metal rules. One is 1/2 inch wide and the other � inch. These will lift up two of the sole blanks. I guess I�ll need to make something for the smallest size. So, I�ve been thinking in terms of lifting each sole piece to the proper height for cutting the individual pins. Now I start to think about how I might gang-cut the bunch of them to rough dimensions so that when I make the finished pins I don�t have to adjust the height of the milling cutter. Thinking in terms of raising each piece individually, it took me a while to come up with this magnet idea. I just stacked all the pieces on this magnetic base and flipped the whole bunch over to fit in the mill vise. Not genius I guess, but I was pretty pleased to be able to get them all rough cut at once.

March 16th
I cut the first set of pins today. I used the dovetailed sides to mark the pins on the sole piece. I tried juggling them in my hands but realized pretty quickly I needed a more reliable way to hold the parts to be marked. I lashed up some odds and ends so I can hold the sole piece in the vise. I can then lay the side piece with the dovetails over it. The rule acts as a stop. Using marking fluid and a scratch awl I marked the position of the pins on the sole plate. The mill vise swivels, so I set it to 15 right and then left to cut the pins. The first pair of sides came out pretty good. The lines were pretty hard to see so I need to mark them better. One set down, 11 to go.

March 19th
Well, setback number one! Peter McBride, a good fellow from the land of down under, was perusing my write-up here and observed that I was using C360 brass. He did this, surprisingly, by simply looking at the striations in the brass pieces I was using. He suggested that if it went 'dink' when struck it was problematic and that it should really go 'dunk' when struck. I'm repeating what he said because it does make a distinct 'dink' sound when struck. Anyway, long story short, he said he had had problems with some C380 brass that was too brittle to be moved properly and suggested I would likely have similar problems using the C360 brass.

Since I had already a fair investment in time and materials I thought I'd slap something together and see how this brittleness phenomenon would actually manifest. I lashed together a steel sole and a C360 brass side piece. They weren't well secured. I hit the pieces with the ball end of a ball peen hammer. The objective was to see how fragile this brass really is. Some of the brass did, in fact, break off. Here's a close-up. I ground off the excess metal on the pins and tails. The biggest real problem is the brass didn�t flow into the corners and actually broke off where it should have flowed. Where I hammered the steel to bond with the brass the metal flowed nicely and looks pretty good.

I'm very grateful to Peter for being so observant. There are a lot of steps between cutting the brass and actually hammering these things together. If I had cut the mouth, shaped the outer edges of the sides, cut out the holes for the blade access, made and fitted all the wood pieces, and then tried to hammer these things together I would have had a major disaster on my hands. It would have been a 'fill the trash can and don't look back' kind of moment. Anyway, the initial news was somewhat discouraging, but I've made plans to return some of the C360 brass I bought. What I've cut up so far I'll put on Ebay. I'll be ordering some C464 Brass momentarily, and then I'll start again.

March 23rd
While I'm waiting for the C464 brass, I decided to go ahead and finish cutting the pins in the sole pieces. I�ve determined it will be easier to fit the sides to the sole rather than vice versa as I had started to do. To explain: if I'm cutting the tails in a side piece, the side is vertical in the vise and I can check fit the pins without removing the side. I can keep shaving the sides until they fit. Fitting the sole to the sides requires removing the sole from the vise and then putting it back to take off a little more metal. Clear? Right? Here are the soles with all the pins cut. So far all are useable.

I started cutting the blade openings, the mouths. (How often do you get to use the plural of mouth?) This is a bit problematic. First I didn't know what size opening I should aim for. I know that the mouth will open some when I polish and flatten the sole. However, I don�t want it too tight such that when it opens it is still not large enough to get a file into. Plus, I wanted to minimize the hand work needed to adjust the mouth later on. Anyway, I cut all the mouths. The first ones I made too large. I had a problem when I did my practice cuts and then I forgot the lesson I learned. The milling cutter does not punch through cleanly. Instead, when it is close to cutting through it deforms the metal and then breaks through bigger than intended. Anyway, I have four that are obviously too big and the rest I think are OK. What I wound up doing was just sneaking up on the final dimension until I could just push the tip of an exacto knife through the remaining metal. That translates to a 10 or 15 thousandths of an inch opening. For the four that are too big I'll need to complete the cut-through on the sole and then close the mouth up as I cut the dovetails in the side plates. That will require a little more attention when I get to the peening part. Anyway, here's the milling lashup to cut the mouth. This one is a little closer. Here's the bunch of them. Here's a couple pictures of the mouth cut-outs, mouth-too-big on the left, inside, and outside.

March 25th
The new C464 brass arrived last evening. I quickly realized I�d made the same mistake on the second order as I had on the first. I didn�t order enough! I ordered enough for 12 sides, not the 24 I need. I wondered why it seemed less expensive than I thought it would be. I'm catching myself in a lot of mistakes. I wonder which ones I'm not catching!

I'm a guy used to doing wood working out of my pile of $1bf lumber. If I make a mistake with that kind of wood I just go grab another piece. Anyway, taking a saw to a $160 piece of brass was kind of a new experience for me. ! actually got a little belly twinge before I applied the power. I got the 12 x 36 inch chunk of brass cut into 8 x 3+ inch pieces without any problems. I'm using this old Dewalt radial arm saw as my metal saw. This little saw is as tight as a band box though a little under powered for most wood working. It has only a 3/4 hp motor. Tomorrow I can start fitting the sides again.

April 4th
I've been a little remiss in keeping up with the pictures. I've made some progress with only one setback. Here are a couple pictures to illustrate what I was saying up above about fitting the soles to the sides. Here is a side with the sole sitting in front on the vise. Here I can test fit or slide the fitted sole into the side.

I cut up the four soles that had the mouth too big. I ground the edges so they fit together tightly. The two piece sole made fitting the sides a little more difficult than the sole that is a single piece. I got the sides all fitted. More on the missing one, the mishap, later. Here is a pair of the cut soles and a close up. I think these will work out just fine though I'll need to make a special bar to make sure they are held down tight and flat when peening. After all the sides and soles were fitted together I made up a couple wooden blocks to hold the sides more or less square. I then touched them all to the belt sander to make the soles and sides even in length. I had to take quite a bit off the ones with the split sole.

The next operation was to put the little divot in the sole that forms the locking dovetail. This was a little tricky in that I had to reinstall the sole in the vise and then bring the milling cutter down to just touch the existing cut-out. What I did was to take a tiny piece of scotch tape and stick it to the metal at the opening. Then for each cut I lowered the dovetail bit until it just started to clean off the tape. That seemed to work well. The scotch tape is .0015 inches thick so I don't believe the small difference will be detectable by eye. The bigger problem was to get the little divot exactly the height that was needed. I aimed for setting it to the line for the side or a little higher. I'm thinking ahead to what happens to these dovetails when the sole is linished and becomes a little thinner. Anyway here are two pictures of the sole divots.

It was while doing these little dovetail divots that I had my mishap. I was having a little trouble with the cross slide on the mill. When I started to make the cuts on another sole it quickly became apparent that I was distracted enough that I had not tightened the vise. When the cutter hit the metal it walked the sole out of the vise ruining the sole and breaking the dovetail cutter. It took a few minutes to get calmed down. There was enough of the dovetail cutter left to finish the divots in the rest of the soles. I don't think I'd want to make the side plates with it, though. This project keeps getting more and more expensive so I guess another dovetail cutter is part of the cost. Actually, if I can get through a couple more operations without more screw-ups I won't need another on this project. I need to make a replacement sole but I don't need a new dovetail cutter for that.

April 6th
So far I have just about 80 hours invested in this project. That is actual work time and doesn't include design time, or the stand-around-figure-what-to-do time, or the gee-that-looks-pretty-good time.

The next step was to begin cutting the opening in the sides. I used the milling machine to start the cut-outs. Here is what I wound up with. Cutting these did not produce the precision holes I had hoped for. I ganged the plates together to cut 6 at a time. As the milling cutter broke through each side piece, it would tear out a piece of metal that would get jammed between the cutter and the side as it was expelled. This produced a little chatter. Irritating, but not an important problem as they all get sanded/filed to shape. These cut-outs give me some symmetry to start with. I'll need to use a coping saw and files to finish the cuts. Part of the finished cut will be driven by the location of the mouth. There will be a slight variation from plane to plane in the way the mouth is blended into the sides. The plan is to do the cutting with a coping saw after the sides are hammered together. The area where the sides slope to match the front of the mouth and the side angle that meets the blade ramp will need to be cut by hand and cut after the wood is installed. Working the coping saw through the opening and trying to saw one side plate without hitting the other may be a little tricky. I may cut out a little more material on each side plate before I start whacking them together.

I've glued the paper pattern on the side and started cutting. I though I was going to cut these by hand. I started with the coping saw but it became apparent pretty quickly my arm doesn't have the strength to saw for hours on end. Instead I reverted to the powered scroll saw. I've never really liked the scroll saw. The piece wanders left and right so you need to be careful to keep the blade centered and vertical. These little blades have a set all their own so they don't necessarily cut straight. I got a couple cut out. I think I'm averaging 3 blades per side and, so far, about 40 minutes each.

April 10th
Sixty-three blades later, I have all the sides cut out. I'm disappointed in how poorly they match. Accumulation of tolerances? Oh well. Hand drawn paper patterns, cut-out by hand, adjusted for slightly different lengths on the sole plates, stuck on with a glue stick and scotch tap. Here is the stack of cut sides. I could probably pair them up and get them to match a little better but then the peening plates wouldn�t match. The sides all seem to be big enough so they will work OK. It will just take a little longer to do the final shaping.

On the Shepherd kits, they had left this little web of metal in the blade opening in the side plates, and they had you use the partially cut wood pieces in place of a bucking block. I don't have any wooden pieces ready yet so I made a bucking block. I drilled the rivet holes in all the pairs. I added a steel bar across the top to provide an additional hold-down for the sole. I had some problems with the Shepherd kits with the thin mouth area riding up. I was hoping the extra metal bar would prevent this. Not so as you will see later.

I decided I didn't want to try to finish cutting the side plate opening after the parts were pained together, so I finished rough cutting the paired sides. Now I�m certain the side plates will cave in when I start whacking them so I made filler plates to provide support. Actually, the cut-out I made with the milling machine is more-or-less the same on all the sides. I made a filler piece for that area that is just a tad oversize. Then all I need to do is shape the last cutout piece to make a tight fit.

Here's my anvil. It works pretty well. It is a 10 x 18 inch piece of steel nearly � of an inch thick. I rounded off the ends of a couple bolts to use as drivers in place of a hammer. I couldn't swing a hammer at the tails with that bar across the top. I doubt I'd try to hit the tails even if the bar was not there, either. peening this first one seemed to go OK. The metal seemed to flow into the corners as it was supposed to, though I won�t know for certain until the excess is fully ground off. I ground off most of the smashed metal, leaving about 20 thousandths of an inch to whack and tighten everything up later. It looks sorta like a plane.

I don�t like the way the mouth looks. When I peened the tails of the side pieces, I used a sequence that I thought would tend to pull the mouth open. It doesn't look like the sequence worked. Instead it looks like the mouth actually closed up some with the ramp riding up and over the front of the mouth. Guess I should be able to get the tight mouth I want. It is really closed up now. That front edge is pretty thin and flexible. I should be able to get it back where it belongs. Anyway, it doesn't seem like something to worry about right now.

April 19th
I made a new sole to replace the one I screwed up. I've finished peening the sides and soles of all 12. Before I put them together, I ran an orbital sander over the inside of the plates at the back. This gives the inside a satin finished look in case anyone looks inside where the wedge goes. I was able to use through-bolts to hold the sole down on the bucking block for the bigger planes. For the record, these are the tools I used for peening. Nothing special about them other than that they are what I had available. Here is a close-up of the ends of the tools. This is what the joints look like after peening. I did have one other screw up back during the early efforts, but there is no need to talk about it. Spacial manipulation problems I guess.

My next steps will be to do some more rough shaping of the side profile I'm going to use a router and wood working bit to try to make the side plates more or less the same shape and then I'll use a oscillating drum sander to smooth the profile. Then I can start thinking about working on the infill.

Elapsed time so far: 140 hours.

June 15, 2011
After several weeks of spring projects I'm finally able to get back to my plane making effort. I mentioned before the side plates, cut by hand from a paper pattern, didn�t match very well. While I think they are all usable, there is considerable differences in the paired plates. What I decided to do was use a router bit and shape each side to its mating other side. This won't really help with the finished shape but it will get them closer to being the same. I rigged up a straight bit in my router table. I used the shank of the router bit as a guide. I used a couple wooden blocks and a clamp to give me something to hang onto. This worked pretty well, but I won�t recommend this method. You need to really hang on! Because I haven�t yet ground the side dovetails down flat, I taped a steel rule to the side to level off the whole thing. I wish I'd thought of that before I'd finished with a couple of them.

I finally made a decision on the wood for the infill. I chose Macassar Ebony (black with yellowish streaks, Gabon Ebony (nearly solid black), and Honduran Rosewood similar to cocobolo). The Rosewood came with some small end checks that I hope do not go too deep. The Rosewood seems to take a polish well. I know the ebony polishes well, also. I cut the wood into blanks for the three necessary wooden pieces; the blade ramp, the infill and the wedge. I cut the chunks to the approximate thickness using the bandsaw. I used a belt sander to flatten one side and then used the milling machine to obtain the desired finish thickness It was a little messy but I managed to keep most of the sawdust out of the table ways.

After thicknessing the wood I made the blade ramps. I made a jig for the sander using a 20 degree gage block. Then it was simply a matter of sanding the ramp to the proper angle. The infill blocks were inserted, outlined with a pencil and then rough cut on the bandsaw. I flattend the wedge bearing surface of the infill then cut a flat for the brass wear plate. The wear plate is epoxied to the infill. A piece of plastic electrical tape works to hold the brass in place until the glue sets up. After the epoxy was dry I used the milling machine to make the brass flush with the wood. This is what they look like so far: all of them and a few.

With the wood for the blade ramp and infill installed, I was anxious to see how the riveting would go. I grabbed one plane and drilled the holes for the rivets. Because of the small shift in the hole alignment during the peening, I drilled the holes half way through from each side. The rivets seem to fit OK. I got a little chatter around one hole. Hard to tell right now if, or how badly, it will show. I chamfered, or tapered, the edge of the rivet holes a little. I used a hand held reamer. It doesn't produce much of a taper but it is all I could come up with. (I did try to find a reamer with more taper, but no luck. For the Shepherd planes, the recommendation was to use a file. With the steel rivets being so apparent I didn't want to risk that the holes might not remain symmetrical if I used a file.) I taped some washers to the rivets on one side of the plane body (to maintain the rivet spacing) and started pounding. It takes a lot of heavy blows to flare these steel rivets properly. It was also difficult to tell if the rivets were properly seated. I guess you just get to a point where you hope they are 'good enough'. I used the milling machine to carefully remove excess metal from the rivets and the side dovetails. Anxious to see what I would wind up with I went to work on the belt sander. I used a 120 grit belt to take the sides down smooth. I'm figuring a more coarse grit would be too rough and anything finer would take too long. I haven't yet decided whether to go to something like 220 grit on the belt sander or go to hand sanding from this point on. There's risk in using the belt sander because it is difficult to set the piece down flat. Every time you set it down you risk slight contact with the edges rather than setting it down perfectly flat. Anyway, this is what I wound up with. It seems to be pretty satisfactory. Close up here. The next step will be to shape the wood and brass on the top and ends of the plane. But, for the moment I have more riveting and sanding to do. I'm going to install all the rivets then work the assemblies on the belt sander. For this first one, I had to spend a lot of time cooling the piece as it gets too hot to handle. If I work the remaining 11 pieces on the belt sander at the same time maybe they will air cool enough to handle as I rotate through them. I should be able to work faster.

June 20th, 2011
I finished installing all the rivets and I've completed all the rough grinding on the rivets. So far I've done all the same operations on all twelve planes. That seemed to make sense considering all the various tool setups. Now I think I'm going to concentrate on one set of four.

July 6th, 2011
I continued on, working the one plane with the smoothed sides. I was anxious to make some real headway and my planning was off a little. The next thing I did was to smooth the curved edges of the top and ends of the plane. I used this oscillating spindle sander. I use the rags to keep the sanding particles thrown off from scratching the newly surfaced side pieces. Guess how I learned to do that . The rags tend to throw off the concept of keeping the surfaces square. The shaped top/ends will not be completely square to the sides. I hope no one notices.

The smallest sanding sleeve I have is 1/2 inch diameter, so the profile is changing just a little. I used a large drum on the bigger surfaces and the small one for the tight radii. The shape is slightly different than planned but I think the new profile is satisfactory. Here's a top view side view, and detail.

The biggest problem I had, or am having, is creating a smooth curve on the long sweep portions of the profile. It is very difficult, perhaps impossible to get a perfectly smooth curve using a drum sander freehand. The slightest imperfections are likely to show up very readily in reflected light. On the side opening, one curve was planned to have a radius of considerably less than 3/8 inch, but with the sanding sleeves I have, it is now a little bigger than 1/2 inch. It is different than planned but I think it looks OK. I worked some on the blade ramp. I took it down close to flat and smooth with files and sandpaper. Looks like I'll be making the blades soon. I plan to stick sandpaper to the blade and use that to smooth, fit and finish the ramp. Here�s the side cutout.

If you have been paying attention, you will remember I talked about how the mouth of many of the planes closed up when I peened the whole thing together. In some instances the ramp actually rode up and over the leading edge. If I tried to flatten the sole without fixing this, the raised metal would be ground off, ruining the mouth. I used the scroll saw to cut through the mouth, guiding the tiny saw blade against the front edge of the opening the sole. I then used this little spot-pressure gadget in a vise to push the raised metal back into alignment with the rest of the sole. The spot pressure thing is simply a flattened piece of wire held to a piece of brass with double-sided tape.

I left the brass dovetails a little proud of the sole on all the planes. I had planned on peening them just a little more before grinding down the sole. I changed my mind thinking they were likely peened well enough and I didn't want to be beating on the dovetails around the mouth because the metal is no longer well supported. I should have stuck to my plan. After grinding/sanding the sole smooth, I find I have a few tiny spaces in the brass dovetails. The dovetails are locked enough to be solidly held in place but there is now a cosmetic defect to try to hide at some point further down the line.

July 8th, 2011
So I've continued working on this set of four. Before grinding the sole flat, I peened the brass on the sole some more. I took a small nail-set and rounded off the end to focus the blows. You need to be careful where you pound. I found that I could actually make a little divot in the sole and then drive brass into it!. Anyway they all seemed to grind out OK Here's the four of them, end view, and the view of the soles.

Now I need to start thinking about making some blades

August 10, 2011
I've been impatiently charging ahead and now I'm ready to take a break from this plane making venture to work on some other more pressing projects. I've mostly completed the first set of four planes. Thes are the ones using honduran rosewood. The wood polished up quite nicely. Here are some beauty pic... pic... pic... pic... pic... pic... pics.

I made a batch of blades. They were fairly easy to make and fully believing that, I impatiently made enough mistakes that now I don't like the lot of them and I plan to make another set. One problem I had was chatter in this very low-end vise. I've made new jaws for it and flattened the ways to be ready for the next batch.

The sides of the planes were chamfered with a woodworking router bit. I had a 45-degree bit but the bearing was loose and too far away from the cutters to guide on the 1/8th inch thick side plates. I had decided to make a new pilot that would be closer to the cutters when I discovered I could do a little machine work on the cutter. I removed a shoulder on the bit that allowed butting the bearing right up to the carbide cutting surface. This let the bearing ride securely on the thin brass. As before, using a woodworking router on brass at low speed is effective and only a little bit exciting.

Much of this is very tedious and time consuming hand work and I'm easily losing patience trying to plow ahead. I said this set is mostly complete. They have not yet been made to 'work'. I opened the mouth of each plane just enough to check for square and assure myself they can be made to work properly. Since the blades I made have not been hardened or tempered, they cannot be sharpened properly to fettle the blade and clearance properly.

As with most of these fitting, fiddling operations, working the blade ramp and plane sides coplanar was quite time consuming. After using an assortment of files for rough fitting, I put adhesive backed sand paper on the blades and worked it back and forth on the blade ramp to get everything smooth. With little available movement, this was really slow work; time consuming for sure, but low risk.

October, 19, 2011
I made the new set of blades. The O1 steel I bought comes in 36-inch lengths. The blades are a little less than 8-inches long. I couldn't think of any other use for the left over piece if I had only made the 3 sets I needed, so I made 4 sets. I used a radial arm saw with a metal cutting blade to cut the rough lengths. A belt sander was used to square the rough cut ends. Here's the milling operation for the primary bevel and the vise set-up for the side bevels. Note I did make new vise jaws and leveled the bed on the cheap vise that came with the milling machine. It works better now than before. The rough milling was done on 8 blades at a time and then the finish-cuts were made one at a time. The radius ends were made using a rotary table. The final shape for the main bevel was made on the belt sander using a Veritas sharpening jig. Here's the finished set before going to Ron Hock for hardening and tempering (Rc62). This set took nearly 40 hours to make; way longer than necessary. I'm certainly paying a price in using the milling cutters without coolant flow. I can only take small cuts of around .015 inches and even then the import cutters don't last a long time. Back from the heat treating, the blades look better than when they went out. I sharpened a first set of blades. That took about 2 hours including finding the supplies and remembering how to do it. It only took about an hour and a half to fettle the planes to get them working. I opened the plane mouths only enough to get them to 'work'. I'll leave any additional tuning for when they actually get used.

Now I only need to finish the remaining 8 planes.

December, 13, 2011
Well, they are all done! Here are the pic, pic, pictures to prove it!

They all work. I opened the mouths just enough to pass a thin shaving. They can be made to work better but I'll leave that until some later time. They are mostly pretty, but close inspection will reveal defects in each and every one. The defects will be less noticeable after awhile; my projects generally look better after some time has passed. I learned a lot.

Some Statistics:
Manhours = 388
Calendar time = 9 months
material = $874.96
supplies = $144.12
services/postage = $95
rejected material = $143.09
Entertainment cost = $3.23/hour

What next, jointers? smoothers? No where to go but up!

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Another Display Case

January 2015 With the purchase of a copy of Duncan Phyphe's tool chest and other tools I was in need of another display case. I bought a used display case with an eye towards refinishing it for my use. I knew the display case was in really rough shape . I thought there would likely be need to remake some of the parts. The price I paid for the display case was less than the cost of the glass it contained so I wasn't too concerned about the repair/rework outcome.

The old display case came apart easily enough. The more I got into it, the more problems I found. There were some broken parts, some were rotted and sun damaged, others had large amounts of epoxy forced in and around loose joints. In the end I decided to simply re-make the display case, keeping only the glass.

Re-making the case was not too difficult. I changed the design a little to provide additional strength where the original was a little skimpy. I couldn't change the basic design too much because the old glass pretty much dictated major dimensions. I had the usual problems building a large cabinet in my too-crowded shop space. Fitting the cabinet to the glass rather than the glass to the cabinet required lots of care.

The new case, like the original, is made of red oak. I spent extra money to buy quarter sawn material, but I didn't get much of the figure I was hoping for. I finished the cabinet with the usual pre-cat lacquer and some light stain. The new cabinet has a solid base rather than the four short legs of the original. The trim on the base is a little heavier, more elegant. The display case looks pretty nice with some old tools inside.

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Cherry display/Coffee Table

March 2015 While visiting Roger Smith, MLW was admiring a combination coffee table and display case Roger has in his living room. I took some dimensions from it and promised MLW to build something similar. My design evolved and turned out to be quite different but LOML seems pleased with it. The top part is a single drawer used to display stuff. I thought my design was a little risky. I'd never built a drawer assembly without guides or runners on the sides of the drawers. This design has guides on the outside of the 3-drawer group but no runners between the drawers. Seems to work OK and looks OK, too. The natural finish on the cherry wood has already taken on a nice warm patina. The outside panel assemblies support flat frames to support the drawers. The frames are mortised into the corner posts and then secured with glue blocks to the frame of the end panels. Each drawer is custom fitted to the case. The top frame was adjusted to the glass. Here's a slightly different angle of the completed table

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Lambertville Wall Clock

October 2015
For years I had wanted to build a grandfather clock. I bought a set of plans some 30 years ago and another set perhaps 15 years ago. Eventually SWMBO got the point across that she really didn't care for the grandfather clock idea and after 30 years of occasional interest, I, too, was tired of the pursuit. SWMBO took a fancy to this old rail road clock we saw while on an outing. When she said 'why don't you make something like that', I thought I'd give it a shot. After the work of scaling a 6-foot clock down to something that will fit an 8-foot wall, adjusting the design to something I thought I could build, and choosing from the very few clock movements available today, I was able to build this clock case which bears only passing similarity to the original. I got to use a lathe chuck I had purchased many years ago. It didn't work to well, but I finally got the finials turned. I made mock ups of the top and bottom moldings. When I got the movement, I mounted it on the wall. I needed to make sure it worked properly and I needed precise measurements. The decorator parts on the bottom took a little while to figure out. The rosettes were turned and the little design thing was cut with a scroll saw. The inexpensive locks are humidor locks. They would have been pretty easy to install if they hadn't been a little bigger than their advertised 3/8ths inch. A small aside, I've set up my spray booth again, in the garage out back. I use a couple attic fans set under the door and whatever tables and benches I need to spray the pieces. Here are some pic, pic, pic, pic, pic, pictures. The back for the clock is screwed on and carries the chime block. The movement mounts on a removable mounting board. Finished pictures, closed and open.

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Veneered Boxes

January 2016 It was 15 - 20 years ago that I bought a pile of various veneers at a yard sale. The pile has been kicking around since then, being moved from place to place, and suffering additional damage with each move. The pile contains mostly walnut veneer. My next project is going to be a Hammacher Schlemmer style tool box and workbench combination. It will be made with walnut and walnut veneers. That will still leave the rest of the assortment of really interesting veneers for me to continue to move around. I figured I should stop moving the stuff, use it somehow, or get rid of it. I decided to make some boxes and try my hand at veneering them.

Some of the veneers were fairly easy to identify, others only guessed at. In the picture, number 1 is rosewood of some kind, number 2 is birdseye maple, 3 might be lacewood, 4 might be olive burl, 5 is maple, 6 is mahogany, 7 is cedar crotch, 8 is birch, 9 may be curly ribbon sycamore, 10 and 11 are walnut crotch. Number 12 shows some of the odd pieces in the veneer pile I bought.

So what to make? I decided on 3 recipe boxes and 6 wine boxes. The plan was to use up scrap walnut and cherry lumber from previous projects to make simple boxes that I would cover with veneer when assembled. The sides would be mitered and the top and bottom simply glued on. The first thing I did was cut all the pieces. The first screw-up was making the tops and bottoms the same size as the sides; now I have 12 wine boxes working! For the recipe boxes, the inside shelf was mitered into place and the top simply glued on. You can never have enough clamps! The wine boxes before adding the veneer, 6 in walnut and 6 in cherry. The veneer was glued on with clamps and pads, sanded flush after each of the pieces was dry. I used a router to put a decorative edge on the tops. Here's the whole batch ready to be cut open. They were cut open with a bandsaw, sanded, and the hinges installed. I bought inexpensive Chinese hinges and locks for the wine boxes. The hinges were a real pain to install but at $1/pair, the price was right. Spray finish, as usual, required a unique but simple fixture. Here's how it works. Gotta love the way the grain, pattern, and color pops out when the finish is applied.

Here are a couple pic, pic, pictures of the finished and assembled boxes. I still have some veneer left.

A new local brewery, Victory Brewing Company, will fill and seal a 32 ounce can of any of their on-tap brews. Some of my friends prefer beer to wine, so I used up some more veneer with these beer, beer, beer boxes.

These were really time consuming, much more than I expected. Most of the veneer had to be flattened. I used a commercial flattening product. It was about the same price as the various products for homebrew flatteners. Flattening means soaking the veneer and pressing and drying it. They were kind of fun to make. Some of the veneer is really interesting Some has a texture like old leather; pretty neat! And best of all, the only veneer I have left is a few pieces of maple and the walnut for the tool box/work bench combination! Coming soon...

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Hammacher Schlemmer Tool Box Interpretation

Hammacher Schlemmer Combination Bench and Tool Cabinet

January 2016
Hammacher Schlemmer sold a workbench and tool box combination from sometime in the late 1890's through, I think, the 1920's. The ad on the left, this one, is one representation of their workbench marketed to all woodworking wannabes. Another ad played on the emotional premise inherent in parents' desire to teach and bond with their children.

I have wanted to try building an updated version of the Hammacher Schlemmer Combination Bench and Tool Cabinet for many, many years. I want it to be furniture-like as it was intended to be but I could never convince LOML it would be nice enough for inclusion in the main living quarters. That changed when I showed her pictures of the Meluish bench Joe Parker made and presented at a BAG meeting (Bay Area Galoots).

My bench will use 1-inch MDF as a base and frame. Exposed surfaces of the bench frame will be walnut veneered. The rest of the bench will be solid walnut. The panels in the fold-out wings will be solid walnut, but the inset panels will be veneered with walnut crotch veneer, flat, on the outside, and raised panels on the inside. (Note: I changed this concept to flat panels in and out somewhere along the line) I'll use more modern metal vises, one on the end as the original, and a removable one on the left front. Collecting the tools to populate it will be fun.

I've made a few sketches. Dimensions for the vises are very tight but I think I can fit them in. The original never had a front vise so that one will be difficult. I have reduced my veneer supply to only the walnut needed for the bench so I'm ready to go.

March 3rd, 2016
Well, I've started! I bought 2 sheets of 1-inch MDF. The MDF will be used for the base, the back, and the supports for the bench top and the drawers. It will provide needed rigidity and weight. I'd forgotten how much that stuff weighs! I had to rough cut the sheets before I could even get them off the truck. Handling the rough pieces to make finished dimensions is difficult.

The sheets of MDF are square, near perfectly square. But, the edges are rough and they get nicked up in all the handling along the way to the consumer. I rough cut each piece with a circular saw, and then each piece was re-cut, all four sides, on the table saw. This to make certain all the pieces were square and smooth-edged.

After the pieces were cut, I propped them up in their relative positions to check the dimensions. I cut up a bunch of small blocks to represent the various solid wood pieces that will make up the edge treatments. So far so good!

I have some walnut veneer but decided I didn't have enough to do a really proper job. I ordered some circasian walnut veneer and that will be used for the show surfaces. I'll use the old stock for non-show surfaces like the back of the cabinet and inside the drawer supports.

March 22, 2016
I've finished with the veneer work for now. Most of the veneering went very well. I used the similar sized pieces of MDF as a press for the veneer. Clamps and a couple concrete blocks make the press. This worked quite well except for the large back pieces. I wanted the large back pieces to be a continuous veneer sheet so I tried to press the whole thing in one piece. The veneer piece was too big to properly flatten out and it came out with some wrinkles in the middle. It's a little disappointing but not real important as the wrinkles will be behind the drawers. Here is a picture of the drawer support pieces. The one on the left has the exposed side up with the circasian walnut veneer. The one on the right has the drawer-side veneer. They look a little different but I suspect there won't be much difference once they are finished. This is the back and this is the bottom piece. The next step is to make the border for the bottom. It will get a 3/4 to 1 inch mitered border finished with a round-over bit.

April 13, 2016
More progress, though nothing startling to report. I put the trim on the bottom. I ran the assembly through the shaper to put a nice round-over on the edges. For the back, I added a top board that will carry the lid and I added side trim that will carry the doors. Sometimes you need longer clamps, sometimes you can improvise! The next step was to make the grooves in the side supports. These groves will support the drawers in the cabinet and the drop down lide in front of the bench top. I used a pretty straightforward setup, the only risk was inadvertantly turning one of the support pieces; didn't happen. Here's what the pieces look like so far. I couldn't find barrel nuts in the size I wanted so I made some. Drilling the holes for the barrel nuts and connecting bolts required some fixturing. The barrel nuts will be used as part of the bench top hold down system. The drawer shelves were made using biscuit joiner as floating tenons. I made the three top shelf sections as stand alone pieces. I glued these in place keeping the sides square. I couldn't risk trying to glue in all seven shelf pieces in one glue session. The rest of the support shelves were assembled in place. So far, so good. The two support sections are sturdy and square. To make the drawer support frames I used some of the worst boards from my stash. Selecting bent, bowed, and twisted boards, I rough cut the pieces I needed, jointed one flat surface, used the bandsaw to rip a flat piece a little thicker than the needed 1/2 inch, and then jointed the stock to the required thickness. Not a complicated process but look at all the wood waste. just from the drawer supports. and then there are more cut-offs.

April 24, 2016
I was trying to decide between working on the bench top or the drawers next. I had a couple 10/4 cherry boards and decided to hack them up for the bench tops. I reduced about 50bf of lumber to this pile and then further reduced it to the parts needed for the bench tops. I had hoped I'd be able to make the bnech tops using all heart wood but it couldn't be done. SWMBO says she likes the contrast between the heart wood and the sap wood; so that's that. I'll probably let this pile sit a while. While this wood is very dry, it's been drying for more than 20 years, I did cut off a lot cracks, knots, and general thickness and I want to make sure any movement has settled out before assembling the bench top.

The vises will be a pretty tight fit so I'll need to have them on hand when I lay out the bench top. I ordered them and got them in. These are Lee Valley Veritas Front Vises. One will go on the end and the other on the front, on the left side. The front vise will be removable and store under the bench top when not in use. The Veritas vises are green, just like the ones I bought 15 years ago. I had painted the first ones I bought with Old Pontypool Asphaltum (black japanning) from Liberty Paint Company. When I bought the paint in 2001 I bought a gallon and repackaged some of it to sell to other folks but had no takers. I had heard stories of very poor shelf life for this product. When I popped the lid on one of the small cans I was surprised to find it appeared to be just fine. I disassembled one of the vises, wiped the pieces down with prepsol and applied two coats. it seems to work as advertised; still very slow to dry and will likely need some heat applied. These are the same vises installed on my shop roll-arounds from years ago.

May 21, 2016
I worked on making the hold-downs for the bench top. They are made from 1/2 inch brass stock. They will fit in a slot cut on the inside of the bench top side pieces. These hold-down blocks work with the barrel nuts to hold the work bench top in place.

I've been working on the cabinet drawers for most of this month. There are nine drawers in each cabinet. Top to bottom, the drawer outside heights are 2 1/2, 2 1/2, 3, 3 1/2, 3 1/2, 4, and 4 inches respectively. The inside useable height is about an inch less. The big drawers are about 25 inches wide and 16 inches deep. The fronts are 5/8 thick. The sides and backs are 3/8 thick. They have a plywood bottom advertised as 1/4 inch but is actually about 0.200. These drawers are probably not rugged enough to load up with nails and horse shoes but they should do fine for the collectables I plan to fill them with. I had to install all the handles to make certain I had enough and had drilled the holes correctly. Cutting dovetails in walnut is not as satisfying as cutting them in cherry. The open grain in the walnut tends to chip so I had to make some repairs. Lacquer sticks can be your friend! The fronts have an accent line below the handle that I cut with a 1/4-inch round-over bit. The spacing for the accent line and the handle position are different for each size drawer, predictably.

June 15, 2016
My original plan for the cabinet top and the doors was to make walnut raised panels for the door inserts. I was going to make solid walnut raised panels, venneer one side, the ouside, and have the inside show the solid wood raised panel. Well, after more thought, I decided the raised panel would be proud of the inside frame, creating some problems, and using up a lot of valuable wood. After rethinking, perhaps over thinking, I decided to go with flat veneer panels inside and out. I decided to use 1/4-inch MDF for the substrate and then labored over what veneer to use. I had originally planned to use walnut crotch veneer for the panels. I couldn't find much that really pleased me. What I finally settled on was walnut crotch veneer for one cabinet and walnut burl veneer for the other. This is the walnut crotch veneer. It is not the figure I was going for, but it is economical for its size. The pieces I bought, six pieces, are 24 x 36 inches. This doesn't have the distinct fossil like pattern I like, but I think the swirl will be fine. This is the walnut burl. I bought 8 pieces of the walnut burl, each sheet is 26 x 19.5 inches. As I said, the substrate will be 1/4-inch MDF. I bought two sheets and brought them home in the back of the truck; they were all ready starting to roll up in the sun before I got them home. I rough cut the big sheets to handling size, put them in the shop, well weighted to flatten them out.

I labored over how to handle the veneering process, yet again. The veneer I bought was advertised as not needing to be flattened. True perhaps, but it wasn't really flat. I was concerned that using a pad between the cauls would not fully flatten it. I had just made a bunch of veneered boxes. For those I had used a Melamine platen and a pad to install the veneer. After much thought, I decided the pad didn't really reduce risk in any way, so I decided to simply use two 3/4-inch melamine coated particle board cauls and a requisite number of clamps.

Veneering the panels was mostly uneventful. Of course veneering one side of the MDF caused it to warp significantly. Rapidly veneering the second side mostly corrected the problem. For the record I used good-old Titebond II for the glue. I know, I know, you can worry about some small amount of creep but in this situation creep doesn't really matter. The one-hour dry time for the Titebond Versus 24 hours for the Unibond types was the reason for my choice. Here's the finished pile.

July 7, 2016
Well, screw it! That is the next step. The objective is to mount the piano hinges on the back of the cabinet. The three hinges are for the top and the two side doors. This hinge effort has been somewhat problematic. First I ordered some fancy, pricey solid brass hinges that were supposedly polished and lacquered. They arrived slamming together in a box, not polished, not lacquered. I returned those. Next I went with brass plated hinges from the local big box store. These hinges came with a bag of oversized phillips head screws in a bag taped to the hinge. Removing the taped bag removed some of the plating! Careful! I bought new brass oval head screws for the finished product. In order to consistantly and reliably install the brass screws I started with a drill bit the size of the hole in the hinge to make a centered divot and allow the brass screw to adjust to the hole. I used a 1/16 bit to depth, then a gimlet and finally a steel screw. Very time cosuming! I made a few test screw installs, but the new brass screws won't be used until the final assembly.

The next effort I screwed with was assembling the base, back, and drawer frame. These pieces are screwed together so they can be disassembled for finishing. Additionally, once assembled the single unit will be too heavy to move easily. A little on-line research suggested SPAX screws were the best bet for assembling MDF components. These screws have deep threads with courrugated cutting edges. I did some tests with #9 2 1/2 inch screws and some MDF scraps. With a properly sized pilot hole, the SPAX screws hold really well, no splitting, and they still pull strong after 5 or more insert and remove cycles.

August 15, 2016
I've finished the doors for the two cabinets. Nothing particularly entertaining in their construction. I used my little lamb's tongue jigs again. A little tricky to route the small pieces. Blocks and clamps, blocks and clamps. After the lambs tongue edge was put on all the stiles and rails, I used my horizontal router to cut the groves for the panels and the floating tenons. After assembly I laid the doors out to make sure I had the veneer patterns the way I'd planned. The crotch veneer doesn't really match from door to door, so the pattern is not too important. I wanted the burl to flow around the doors and I think I got what I wanted. After cutting off the exposed tenons I couldn't resist stacking the doors in place as a sanity check. A little precarious! After a couple more days screwing on the hinges, the doors are hung and align quite nicely. Here's the second one.

The carrier for the center drop down panel is a three-step affair. Probably a little difficult to visualize, but a tab slides in between the top shelf and the drawer stop below it. A second step provides a finished edge for the cork that will cover the MDF. Another step carries the hinge and covers the edge of the cork. And, the drop down aligns quite nicely closed or open. These will be pretty large cabinets with the doors open.

August 20, 2016
Here's the first test-fit of the bench top. I had to go with what I'm calling a vanity panel on the left end. The vise is a little bigger than advertised so I couldn't use anything much heavier. This vanity panel will hide the view of the vise from the end. The screws should let the bench top move around a little. My clamping scheme for holding the bench top in place works. It fits a little tighter than I planned. The hold down plates and screws need to be inserted into the slots and then the whole assembly lowered on the support. A little cumbersome but it works. The bench gets an end vise on the right and a front vise on the left. The front vise will need to be removed to close the cabinet.

August 25, 2016
The end skirt for the end vise will be held on with hanger bolts. There is enough play in the holes in the skirt board to allow for some movement of the wood. It is a scheme that works well as I have used it before. Here's a test fit of the end vise. This is the assembled end vise. The holes in the vise skirt will be plugged. Not certain what I'll use for plugs; I may have enough ebony in the scrap bin. Here's a look at the test-fit for the whole bench top. The front vise must be removed in order to close the cabinet. There will be a place to hang the front vise in the left side of the cabinet. The end vise on the right is pretty tightly fitted. It will have to be nearly closed to close the right side door.

September 3, 2016
I'm finishing up some odds and ends before starting on the top. I finished making the vise handles. They may be a little short but there isn't a lot of room to swing a longer handle. The caps will be painted black and the handle left natural.

I had made a very small and flimsy mock up to test the lid supports I had purchased. It wasn't heavy enough for a satisfactory test. I tried these lid supports on a bigger mock up and they didn't provide satisfactory support. The upright lid was wobbly and wanted to slam shut. This is the new mockup. Notice the fine blend of MDF and melamine! These gas shocks work much better. They supposedly lift 22.5 pounds each. They are positioned so that the barrel bears on the rear support. This seems to make the top fairly rigid when opened. There is no danger of these closing on their own. Simply lifting the top 5-inches from the closed position and the lid begins to lift on its own. It is necessary to hold onto it so it doesn't slam too quickly into the upright position. It should work well when the lid carries the tools expected to be secured there.

The three front doors will have brass knobs and the doors will be kept closed with magnets as catches. I had to drill out the cup for the magnet to take the 8-32 screw for the knob, but this simple design seems to work well. A felt pad between the magnet and the catch plate will adjust the magnet tension.

The large section of the swinging door pair need a stop of some kind to keep them from hitting things stored inside and to align the small door to the front of the cabinet. I also wanted to provide some support to the end of the large door to prevent the door from sagging under the weight of the tools that will be mounted there. This small stick is my solution to both problems. The end of the stick has a beveled step which matches the 1/8th inch space under the door. The step also locates the side door and similarly, the position of the front door. These stick will be tacked in place rather than glued since they could wear and should be replaceable.

September 30, 2016
Nearly done cutting wood! At least for the basic cabinet. These strips go on the back of the cabinets. They are covers for the spax screws that hold the back and the drawer frame together. Makes sort of a board-and-batten appearance on the finished back. These are tool trays that go between the rear of the bench top and the rear of the cabinet. I jazzed them up a little with the handy hollows for grasping the ends.

I probably should go back and see how many times I've posted the same pictures. Anyway, here is the current configuration closed up, and here's the whole thing opened up. I've started collecting some tools with the optomistic idea that I will finish building the tool boxes someday. This Stanley #150 Mitre Box was one of the tools in the original tool box. It is also one of the few tools for the tool box that doesn't require a tool holder or carrier of some kind. This bright and shiny mitre box was refurbished by Mike Raub.

November 15, 2016
The cabinets are finished! I finished spraying them with pre-cat lacquer and have assembled them. I was a little worried they would not go back together without problems but everything went well. They are not quite as heavy as I thought they would be. I had guessed they would weigh over 300 pounds but they came in at a paltry 270 pounds, still not something that is going to be tossed around easily.

Here are a few details I haven't shown before... I think. These strips hide the spax screws in the back. The strips make a board and batten appearance. The shelf under the bench top is covered with cork. All of the parts for the bench top are completely finished to help minimize wood movement. I finally settled on a design for 'feet' for the cabinet. These pieces of 3/4-inch melamine have rounded edges and should slide well on hardwood floors without scratching. After removing pads I'd been using, I put a few pieces of double sided tape on the back of these melamine strips and lowered the cabinet onto them. Of course if someone was actually going to use the bench something with a rubber base would work better to minimize chasing the bench around. The tool tray sits nicely between the bench top and the cabinet back. The vises are a tight fit, but they work. The cherry handles have caps painted black and rubber 'O' rings provide a soft landing when the handle is released. The pneumatic lid supports work as expected. They appear to hold the lid securely in the vertical position. When open, the pneumatic rests against the back of the cabinet. This is not the recommended installation and since they are mostly plastic, I'm going to open the lid gently and minimize slamming the pneumatics into the back board. The pneumatics are a little more elegant than the chain used in the original cabinet, eh? The magnetic latches shown previously work well. Judiciously placed felt pads adjust the latching pressure and make the sound and feel pleasing.

Here are the pictures of the finished cabinets. This one has the walnut burl. I especially like the way the heartwood burl wraps around the sides and the top. This is what it looks like when fully opened. This one has what was called walnut crotch veneer. It doesn't have the usual distinctive feather pattern but looks pretty all the same. Surprise! It opens in a similar manner. The front vise must be removed to fully close the cabinet. When I get the tool holders built, the vise will have a hanger inside the cabinet.

January 13, 2017
As I built the cabinets I had a rough idea of the tools I wanted to include and where the tool holders would go. Based on these rough ideas I installed 1/4 - 20 threaded inserts on the insides of the doors and the lid. I could have put a little more planning into locating the inserts but I've managed to make do with their locations and the tool holders all work reasonably well. Each of the tool holders presented its different challenges. Holes for chisel ferrules needed to be tight enough so the chisels wouldn't fall out of the lid when closed. The odd sized chisel ferrules required special hole sizes. Spacing for chisels, files, and auger bits mathematically produced a lot of tiny fractional increments that were laid out with the scales on the milling machine.

Nothing unusual to report in making the tool holders except to say they were each a small challenge. Here's the lot of them. And another angle. They have been finished sanded and are ready to finish. As is usual, making the jigs to hold the pieces for spraying is a small exercise in itself. Most of the jigs have 1/4 dowel pegs to carry the holders. Some of the smaller pieces will simply be stuck on with masking tape. Here's another picture.

It's predictably cold in this the middle of January. After some more fiddling with the spray jigs I'll fire up the heaters in the shed (aka spray booth) and hope for the best. I have two 1500W heaters out there. I'm hoping they will bring the temperature up to at least 65 degrees. When I set up the exhaust fans, they bring the cold outside air right over the part being sprayed. I'm hoping the warm air from the sprayer compressor and the limited time the parts are in the cold draft from outside will all work out to meet temperature requirement for properly drying the pre-cat lacquer. We shall see.

January 21, 2017
The spraying went uneventfully. It was pretty crowded in there. I had to rearrange all the lawn equipment and cover everything. I had made a bunch of little dividers/separators for a chisel set. I thought spraying those would be problematic but sticking them to some boards with masking tape worked well. More on what those are for later.

The left side door carries a saw till. There are two sets of five saws, one for each cabinet. These holders have tight slots cut for the brass backs to keep the saws hanging more or less vertical. This is a set of Lie-Nielsen saws: small IT dovetail, tapered tenon, IT tenon, tapered carcass, and miter box saw. This is a set of Adria saws: dovetail, pair of small tenon saws (rip and cross), pair of large tenon saws (rip and cross). These exciting holders are for the front vise when not in use. The vise simply hangs by its handle. Here's the overall picture of the left side of the cabinet #1.

The lid carries quite an assortment of tools. This holder is for auger bits and layout tools. Cut from a single piece of wood, this was one of the more difficult ones. It has a lot of different width slots and variable spacing between them. I originally tried to use bar magnet tool holders. They were too weak and too bulky. I finally settled on these rare earth magnets. They are mostly just pressed in place. A few are supported by only one wooden edge. Those are epoxied in place. The holders for both tool boxes are the same with only small variations in a few dimensions. These two holders are for the chisels that store in the lid. The top one holds an assortment of Robert Sorby chisels. Only two of the fourteen chisels have blades that are wider than the chisel ferrule. Two of the holes have slots to accommodate these wider blades. The lower holder is for a set of German Bracht chisels. The German chisels blades are all wider than their handle ferrules and the holder has slots that allow the chisels to be removed through the front. The holes for these chisels are all somewhat non-standard. They had to be made to fit reasonably snug so that the lid could be closed without dumping the chisels out of their holders. These holders support a level and a couple Bridge City squares. Spring steel lets the top bracket move to install the level in the holder or remove it. Felt in the little blocks keep the squares from falling out. Here is the fully populated lid for one and the lid for the other.

The right side door carries files and chisels. A brace and an egg beater drill hang on the side of the center section. These two holders are for files and chisels on the right-side door. The top one is for files. The files kind of dangle, and they dangle very close to the chisel holder below. The large cut-out is for the vise handle. I made the file slots as tight as possible but I expect they will get bigger over time; that's what files do, right? The chisel holder lower of the two, has a back that aligns the files and protects the fingers when grabbing a chisel. The tools in the two sets are similar. The files and handles are mostly Nicholson. One set of chisels is by Freud, the other by Henry Taylor.

There are two holders, one for an egg beater drill and one for a brace, on the right side of the center console, under the end vise. The little tab on the holder for the egg beater, top one, stops the handle and keeps the egg beater from rolling over. The holder for the brace has a little shelf for accessories and to jazz it up a little. Here's a Millers Falls 5A and a Buck Rodgers T-1950 brace installed in cabinet #1. Here's the overall picture of the right side of cabinet #1.

I mentioned the little dividers I was spraying. This picture shows three little totes, a bunch of the dividers in the totes, and some straight sticks. I had used little wooden dividers made essentially from wood scraps, to display my spokeshave collection. I thought the display looked rather elegant so I thought I'd try something similar for a set of Pfeil chisels. I made the dividers first and tried fitting them in a drawer. I didn't like the way they just 'sat there'. I made some sticks to lift up the back edge. That looks better and keeps the chisel from sliding out of the divider when the drawer is closed. Still doesn't look quite finished. I needs a border of some kind behind the chisels for a finished look. That's where the little totes come in. Now they look pretty neat, right? There are 48 chisels in this set so there are three drawers for them. These haven't seen the light of day for 15 years! I wish I had two sets of these chisels, but alas, only the one set for cabinet #1

January 24, 2017
This is the end. Here's the fully opened glamor shot for cabinet #1, and closed. Cabinet #2 is hard to photograph. Here are pctures with tools installed, right side, left side, and closed.

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Shoulder Plane Boxes

July 2017

I was just congratulating myself on using up my stash of yard sale veneer from many, many years ago when along comes another batch, er, oportunity. We visited the shop of a deceased woodworker whose heirs were trying to pedal an assortment of poorly stored, nasty, dirty, and mildewed veneers. Several other folks with me passed on purchasing any of it so I bought the whole pile for very little money and took it home. I went through several culling operations and after a while I had the lot down to a pick-up load.

I had been thinking about making boxes for the shoulder planes I made years ago. I thought I'd try to use up some of this new-found veneer on some shoulder plane boxes. I needed three boxes for the three sets of planes and of course I had to make a couple extras, you know, for mistakes, etc. I set out to make five. The veneer purchase had a nice selection of birdseye maple veneer and I like the contrast between walnut and maple so that is the way I decided to go.

The boxes have walnut sides with birsdeye maple veneer. The top and bottom of the boxes are MDF and will be covered with felt. The top of the box is MDF with a walnut frame to provide contrast when I route a form on the edge. Here's the glue-up of the top and bottom. You need to look close to see the top MDF has a walnut frame. Putting on the veneer is the usual clamp and glue procedure with glue, veneer, wax paper, and melamine for a clamping caul. I tried jazzing these up a little bit by adding some fake tenons. Here are a couple pictures of the jig to make the little tenons. I used a flat ground blade to cut the slots. I used some spacers to double the width of the slot and more spacers to position the other tenons. Picture 1 and picture 2.

I found some nice brass quadrant hinges on Ebay for cheap. They were a bit of a challenge to mount.They have rounded ends and are most likely metric sized.

These are the dividers for the plough plane boxes. Here I'm test fitting the dividers and I have installed some spacers in the lid. The spacers in the lid look like they hold the planes in place but they actually give me a divider for the two levels of felt in the box lid. Here's a more detailed picture.

The parts were sprayed with pre-cat lacquer as usual. Here are two of the finished boxes. The one on the right is for the shoulder planes. The one on the left is one of the extras and is sort of a jewelry/keepsake box. Here are the two of them opened up.

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Wall Mounted Tool Cabinets

I've taken over the upper foyer, as we call it. That is the area that was the second story of the two-story foyer we had. It is now called the upper foyer, or tool room two. There is a bookcase, window seat, and the second of the two Hamacher Schlemmer work bench/tool boxes up there now. The tool box sits on an otherwise blank wall. I wanted something to go on the wall, around the tool box, but something that would allow the tool box to open properly. I've decided on a pair of wall hung tool boxes. Here's the basic plan. They will be walnut frames similar to the HS tool box, with birdseye maple veneered panels. Uses up some more of my recent yard sale veneer purchase. The veneer looks pretty bad at first blush. Cleaned up a little and properly flattened out, it looks pretty good when glued up in panels. These panels are for the doors and the sides.

October 30, 2017
I haven't done much on the cabinet project. All I have done is go through my lumber stash and cut boards up into rough dimensions. Most of the pieces for the cabinets will be 2-inches wide when finished. Cutting these to rough dimensions and letting them sit is advantageous as it allows the wood to stabilize after tensions in the boards are released. Makes the wood less prone to movement during planing. The pile...

November 22, 2017
I finally got back to doing a little work on the cabinets. I completed assembly of the side panels. The sides are frame and panel. The panels are MDF with veneer. The outside veneer is birdseye maple and the inside is just maple.. I think. I made what I call a lamb's tongue on the edge. It's the same detail I used on the HS tool box and the same detail I've seen on other early cabinets. It is made with a router, 45-degree cutter, and a little ramp for end stops. Pic 1, Pic 2. I use a horizontal router to make the grooves in the parts that carry the panels and floating tenons I use to assemble everything. I don't think I've talked about my horizontal router gadget. I made one years ago out of the Robland parts I had previously and I made this one using the mortising table from my MiniMax jointer/planer. I had thought about the design for quite a while and was reluctant to spend money on the amount of metal needed to support the 100# mortising table. I finally settled on a Harbor Freight 20 Ton H-Frame Industrial Heavy Duty Press for the frame. Here's the back. It provides a lot of metal to hold the mortising attachment for only a little money. I modified the base to shift the position of the legs. I added a cross piece to the front of the frame, added wheels to the back, and some teflon slides in the front to be able to move it around. The frame carries a vertical melamine panel mounted to the press frame and some additional angle iron. The router is mounted in the melamine with the existing holes in the router. A melamine panel is mounted to the top of the mortising attachment and a T-track is let into the melamine allowing the use of a miter square from my old Delta stuff. When you take a piece of quarter inch MDF, actual dimension unknown, add various yard-sale veneers to either side, you end up with a panel of indeterminate thickness. Using a smaller straight cutter in the router, it is pretty easy to make two passes and get the dimension needed and very precisely. A dial indicator mounted below the table allows very tiny and precise table movement to facilitate routing any size groove needed. Here's the set-up and some of the completed parts. All this to say I completed the side panels. Still need to cut off the tenon ends and sand them.

December 22, 2017
I've made a little more progress, but I've been remiss in my picture taking. I made the top and bottom for the cabinets. Nothing fancy, just a couple boards with an ogee pattern cut into the edge. I'm using biscuits to join them to the sides. I punched in the biscuit slots. Here is my first fit-check for the sides and top ogee pattern edge. I glued up the pices for the two shelves that will carry the drawers. They are 3/8ths inch thick and are just butt jointed scrap wood; seem to work OK. I cut the mortises for the shelves into the side panels. I used a router and a clamp board as a guide to route a pair of sides at one time. All but one of the shelves require stopped mortises. I just marked the end with a piece of masking tape, ran the router to the tape, and then finished the mortise with a chisel. Here's what the sides look like now, and the mortises near the one end. I'm working on the hanger boards. The completed wall cabinets will be held on the wall with molley bolts through what I'm calling hanger boards on the top and bottom of the cabinets. I've started making them. They will be glued to the top and bottom boards with biscuits. Sometimes the wood I use has only one good side! I'm hoping to finish gluing up the main carcass frame this weekend. I still need to make the two main interior shelves, install threaded sleeves to hold the removable shelving system, glue up the top and bottom hanger boards and then glue up the whole shebang.

December 23, 2017
That didn't take too long. Gluing these things up is always exciting. Once the glue is added shifting parts for alignment is always more difficult than without the glue. I glued the hanger boards to the top and bottom. I drilled the holes for the molley bolts in the hanger boards, then glued the hanger boards to the top and bottom boards. At this point, any clean area in the shop becomes a work surface for glue up. I installed the threaded inserts on the inside of the top board and the upper shelf inside the cabinet. I started the carcass glue up by gluing the two main shelves into the sides, then the other side, then I pounded in the drawer shelves and finally added the top and bottom boards. All's well that ends well. Here's the finished frames.

January 4, 2018
Back to working on the wall cabinets for a little bit. I'm working on the backs of the cabinets. I want the backs to be removable. It will make the spray finishing easier. Spraying into a closed box produces tremendous bounce back and poor finish results. With the back removed the problem is eliminated. I used a piloted router bit to make a 3/4-inch deep dado in the sides, top and shelves to carry the removable back. The dado is a little rough in places but I can probably fix it or live with it. I finished making the frame pieces for the back; I had made up the veneered panels a while ago. I used my made-up horizontal router. Notice I made up a better-working dust collector for it. It is an improvement and catches 90% but it still makes a mess. Gluing up the frames was uneventful, floating tenons again. This is what the inside will look like. The backs will be screwed in. I'll need to be careful in placing the screws as there is not lot of room for error in the placement and angle. The backs are not pretty, but they don't need to be. I rounded off the corners of the back panels rather than chisel out the cabinet to make the recess square. Easier? Yes.

March 19, 2018
I finished the doors. No pictures but they are my standard floating tenons with lamb's tongue embellishments on the outside. The inset panels are birdseye maple on the outside and garden-variety maple on the inside. Installing the hinges was a little tedious, as all hinges are prone to be. I was able to use the electric router on the doors but there was not enough room on the carcass so I had to use the chisels and a little hand router. I had to do most of the work in what I call my clean room side. (Need to remember to vacuum!) I used a knife, chisel, small router, and a file. My work area has been reduced to balancing my meager tool needs on a stool! Here is a first look at the cabinets with the doors installed and the fancy knobs.

I made some brass stops for the doors. They are adjustable for depth. I thought they might help take out any small warping in the doors should that develop, by keeping the two door's edges aligned. They are brass with a felt pad on the front edge.

I'd made some last minute changes to the design. I decided I needed a front flush mounted shelf, so I added that. I forgot I needed stops for the drawer fronts underneath the shelf so I added that.

Starting on the drawers. I labored over how to make the drawers in order to maximize the interior dimensions; the drawers are pretty small. In the end I opted for conventional dovetailed ends and a simple plywood insert for the bottom. I sliced up a pile of wood and let it sit for a couple days. Using my cheap wood you never know what you are gonna get. Looks good on the outside. but the inside may not be usable, eh! I use this really large Veritas dovetail jig to make my tiny little drawers. Overkill, perhaps, but it works well. Here's a pile of drawer parts. Usual efforts with the horizontal mortiser to make the slots for the plywood bottoms. Here's a pile of glued up drawers. Here's the same pile with the birdseye maple veneer glued on. I made the six outside drawers first. I then made the middle drawers for a snug fit. Here's a first look at a full set of drawers with the hardware installed. Here is the pair of cabinets with doors and drawers installed. Another shot of the newly finished drawers.

The cabinet doors get an assortment of tool holders. I started with trying to layout a single tool holder for some Bridge City lay out tools, but I couldn't make it work. I wound up making three individual holders to go on one lower door section. I made one holder for some spoke shaves I made a long time ago. This holder has spacer pieces that fit into the mouth of the spoke shave to keep them aligned. They will have magnets installed to keep them in place. There will be two chisels sets. SWMBO was surprised when I explained that these were bought way back before I began keeping records for my hand tool purchases. This first set is by Freud. The second set is Two Cherries. You can see a set of 3 inexpensive gent's saw there, too. Here's another pic of the spoke shave holder and another holder for a pair of Adria saws. Another door gets this holder for some spoke shaves from years ago. A couple of them are St. James Bay kits.

What's next? Install the threaded inserts for the tool holders on the doors. Touch-up sanding of all the parts in preparation for spraying the finish.

April 2, 2018
I did all that. Installed the threaded inserts, sanded all the parts. made all the jigs for spraying, and finished the spraying. Spraying was mostly uneventful... but not quite. Each spraying project presents its own unique challenge. In this case the cabinet frame or carcas was a little difficult. I needed to spray it standing up, at least that was my thinking, as I wanted access to both the front and back in order to hit the insides. I needed to stand the cabinet upright for spraying, but how to do it. My solution was to lay the cabinet flat and spray the bootom of the cabinet. When dry, I set the cabinet on some 1-inch mdf that I cut precisely to fit the bottom and rounded over. This worked well, preventing the spray bounce back from messing up the already finished area. Worked well!

Here's the MDF plank and rolling contraption. Here's how it looked with the frame / carcas installed. Here's the pair of them. In spraying the tool holders making fixtures that work well is always problematic. In this case I had finished the backs first. Then I turned them over and stuck them to some scraps with masking tape. In this picture you can see how I stuck them to spacer boards, but you can also see how the bounce back from the sprayer messed up the finish on the backs of the hangers. The doors came out well.

Tomorrow I can start assembling the cabinets and hanging them. A satisfying effort without a lot of consern. I'm not looking forward to running the gimlet into all the hinge holes to allow for the deeper screws. I'm certain I nearly wore out the holes for the shorter screws with all the test fitting I had to do in getting the hinges layed out.

April 5, 2018
In hanging these things I had decided to use toggle bolts so I could lay out symmetrical brass nuts top and bottom. There is not enough space in the small area where these are supposed to go to be able to hit a stud and still have the symmetrical layout for the hardware. I did put some extra drywall screws into the studs as I'm not sure how secure the drywall installation might have been. In some cases they used screws in others they used nails. I don't know if they used glue or not. After getting them hung I decided to see what is the weight limit for toggle bolts. Too late, of course, but you gotta know these things. The googles tell me between 50 and 150 pounds for a 3/16-inch bolt. That narrows it down, eh? So with 6 bolts I should be good for 300 pounds. I weighed the cabinets as I assembled the pieces and came up with 70 pounds for each cabinet. Well within the limits for the toggle bolts. I doubt the tools will add another 50 pounds. Anyway, looks like I've gotten ahead of myself.

Milk crates, MDF boards and cardboard shims to level them. I turned the toggle bolt screws around and put brass cap nuts on the other end. I used a very long 1/8-inch drill bit to mark the holes and then a 1/2-inch drill to open the holes up. I don't really know how much to tighten these things. Too loose and the cabinets will slip out of level, too tight and I crush the drywall. Anyway, they are hung and still level. The brass cap nuts look a little puny, eh?

It didn't take long to install all the hardware, doors, drawers, cabinet latches. Here they are fully assembled. The birdseye maple and walnut combination finished nicely and I like the looks of it.

The cabinets were originally intended to display the planes I have made. They evolved to hold more tools and have become a display like in the Tolpin Tool Box book. They are not fully loaded yet. I'm planning on making a few more planes at some point. I hope to get a good one eventually! Here is cabinet number one. Here is cabinet number two. There are only nine planes. The twelve shoulder planes I made are in boxes like this. Here is the overall picture of what as become the tool room annex. This narrow area was originally the upper part of a two story foyer. It was just a big box with a light hanging down. I'm much happier with it now as a combination library and tool room.

April 8, 2019
When I made the wall cabinets I intended to add more shelves at a later date. I hadn't thought it through but I did add some threaded inserts to the middle shelf and the top board. It was an idea that wasn't fully thought out and I decided not t use them. Instead I simply wedged in some vertical boards with adjustable shelf clips. This adds three more shelves. I still have room for a couple more planes.

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Gerd Fritsche A13 Smoother Plane

October 2017
With the demise of the Shepherd Plane Company, there was no longer a maker of infill hand plane kits until I was pointed to Gerd Fritsche in Germany. He makes a range of infill planes and infill kits with good feedback in both areas. Here's a link to his page.

Having started on the wall-hung tool boxes and not having much to put in them I decided some nice infills would look good there. I ordered two kits, one a Norris A13 Smoother and the other an A7 shoulder plane. Those pictures are from the Fritsche web site. I received the kits and Gerd took pictures before he sent them. This is the smoother kit, pic1 and pic2. And this is the shoulder kit.

The picture on the left is from Gerd Fritsche's web site also. The rest of the pictures should be mine... I hope! October 18, 2017
The kits arrived in good order. Shipping took just under two weeks. There were no additional shipping or customs charges; very smooth. The kits arrived with no instructions. Gerd said he was having trouble with his computer and instructions would be forthcoming next week. He sent a PDF file but the file wouldn't open. Oh well!

I was anxious to get started. I suspect the metal is cut with a laser. This leaves a tiny rounded edge in the corners. In some of the pictures I had seen of Gerd's planes the finished dovetails in the plane seemed to lack a certain 'crispness'. Could be me being judgmental, could be the quality of the photos I was looking at. Anyway, for my kit, the tails were laser cut on the brass sides. The pins were simply square cut, no taper to accept the tails. I tried taking a few swipes at the tails with a file, but I couldn't see well and wasn't getting the results I wanted. I set up the milling machine with my 15-degree bit and just touched the edge of all the tails. This nicely removed the tiny round-over in the corners. I then set up a regular milling bit and cut the proper mating angles for the pins on the sole. I got nice tight fit for both planes. Here's a picture of the A13 and another of the A7.

In handling the metal pieces I noted some problems, small problems I hope. On the A7 the otherwise nicely cut mouth has a tiny hole on one edge. I don't know how much of a problem, if any, this will be. The mouth will likely need to be opened up somewhat and that may absorb the tine hole. It could make the mouth bigger than optimum, but I'll have to wait and see.

I note several problems on the sole of the A13. There is a demarcation line on the inside of the sole. This line should line up the bottom or edge of the cut for the pins. It does not and the difference is .010 to .012 inches. See the picture. A little closer. I wish I had noted this before I cut the pins. It would have been easy to fix the depth at the same time as cutting the pins. Now I need to cut the depth without touching the sides of the pins. It will be tedious.

Some other problems of note. The cut-out for the mouth is pretty ugly, pretty rough. And, the blade will not fit through. The blade alignment screws in the side plates are positioned too far back on the side pieces such that they will interfere with both the mouth plate and the wood when it is installed. Picture here. I was a little disappointed to see some light hammer blow dimples in the sole resulting from the riveting of the mouth plate. They will come out in linishing the sole, I just didn't expect to see that. I appreciate the amount of work Gerd does on these kits. It is difficult, unfair perhaps, to make a judgment call as to what level of finish or quality is to be expected in these kits. I think I'll be able to make fixes that will be satisfactory. Always the risk of making things worse, too.

October 19, 2017
I have fixed the sole for the A13 to move what I called a demarcation line so that the line on the sole is the same position as the cut-out for the tails. I cleaned up the mouth. This is the front and this is the rear blade and bearing block. I cut little divots into the blade bearing block to allow clearance for the blade adjusting screw. The wood will need a similar relief cut but the adjustment screws should work.

October 30, 2017
The instructions called for specific metric thicknesses of Baltic birch plywood for the bucking block. I opted to make my own out of an oak glue-up. I secured the sole with screws and washers, and installed the jig plates. The screw holes I drilled in the bucking block to hold the sides walked around a little in the oak so I simply clamped a board across the sides and to my anvil. This keeps the sides tight against the bucking block. The whole thing looks pretty ugly after all the peining. Here are a couple close-ups: pic1, and pic2.

I milled off most of the smashed metal, checking that the peining was completely closed up. I then worked the sole and sides to roughly flat using a modified edge sander to become my linisher. The edge sander was modified to slow it way down and provide adjustable variable speed. The good news is all the dovetails are completely closed. The bad news is some of the dovetails are slightly distorted. I think the distortion came about because the tails were not exactly 15-degrees and when I cut the 10-degree locking bevels I was reluctant to go too high up on the tail as the higher I went the wider they got at the bottom. I know, difficult to follow. I'll need to study this a little more to find a solution for the other plane.

November 4, 2017
I haven't worked much on the plane kit lately. I've been busy playing with my new toys from Brown's show. I stripped and re-japanned the Morris Patent Sandusky plane I got from Jim Moon. Not a huge effort but tedious and time consuming.

I have shaped the front knob or bun to fit the plane body and shaped it to a reasonably nice form. Lots of care needed to get the bun to fit properly, keeping it square to the sides and aligned with the mouth opening. After I was satisfied with the shape I realized it would be difficult to machine the front of the bun flat to the plane body without cutting into the bun so I reshaped it to move the profile back about an eighth of an inch. Hopefully I won't hit the profile when I machine the front assembly.

Most of the work to mount the Norris adjuster into the handle had been done by Mr. Fritsche. He did the basic milling but left the kit builder to cut out the sides and the taper long the edge of the adjuster. The fitting into the handle was pretty straight forward with the milling machine.

The tote in the Fritsche kit is three pieces of wood. The tote in the Shepherd kit was two pieces of wood, a base piece with a slot for the handle and then the handle. I think the Shepherd kit was easier. Simply fit and install the base piece, shape it to the metal, and then install the tote in the provided slot. In the Fritsche kit I think it would be difficult to assembly the three pieces and then shape the wood to match the metal profile. I didn't pay too much attention to Mr. Fritsche's instructions but attacked the problem in a different manner. I first smoothed the sides of the three pieces so that they would lie flush to one another. I then drilled two 3/16ths holes through the three pieces and drove in a 3/16ths brass rod. Now I had a solid assembly that I could work as one piece. I then flattened the bottom, squared the sides for a tight fit in the frame, and then smoothed the plane bevel angle until the three pieces were aligned and the assembly aligned with the bevel block or frog block. Here's the assembly so far. Here's a nice tight fit in the body. The assembly aligns quite nicely with the bearing block, or frog. Still not sure what to call that block.

November 7, 2017
I drove the pins back out of the handle and then reassembled the two side pieces using these little jacks to hold the assembly tight and aligned in the body. The wood and the metal have considerable alignment differences. A few minutes on the drum sander and all the pieces align quite nicely.

Other than slow and careful, putting the 45-degree bevel on the sides was uneventful. I used a carbide woodworking bit that I modified a little to put the bearing closer to the cutter. Taking multiple passes and raising the cutter less than .010 for each pass produces pretty reasonable results.

Shaping the tote was not as bad as I thought it would be. It started off pretty ugly. I used the drum sander to smooth the curves as best I could and then re-shaped it with a cove bit. From that point on it was all hand work. Mostly I used strips of sand paper torn from a used sanding belt. I had to be careful to stay away from the areas where the side pieces attach. Changing that dimension now would leave the tote assembly too loose in the frame.

Drilling and installing the sleeves in the infills was uneventful, scary and tedious, but uneventful. Tedious because after the pilot hole was drilled aligning the blocks for the bigger sleeve bit required careful alignment with the pilot bit; back and forth for the eight operations. Lots of clamping, aligning, drilling. I was worried that the sleeve at the rear of the tote assembly might blow out the thin wood sides. Again, all's well that ends well. For the record, Gerd sent drill bits that were supposed to be used for the pilot holes and for the insert sleeve holes. I probably shouldn't complain about the gift but the bits were in need of sharpening and were badly abused. I used my own, a #9 for the pilot and a letter J for the sleeves.

This was my first opportunity to assemble all the pieces to check my progress. Everything looks pretty good so far. I did note the cap iron is too short. It is not like the pictures on Gerd's web site and the lever cap screw hits right in the middle of the Fritsche name stamp. I'm sure he will provide a proper one when I need it.

November 11, 2017
I reinstalled the screws through the sleeves using a generous amount of Loc-tite and torqued them as much as I could without destroying the screws. I let the loctite set up over night, probably not necessary, and then milled the screws flush. I was afraid the rotation of the milling bit might unwind the screws but all went well. I stick a piece of scotch tape next to the screws and lower the milling cutter until it just scratches the tape. At this point in the construction I don't need any more scratches in the brass. Off to the linisher to finish smoothing the sides. The belt sander flushed the front bun to the frame. Another touch on the sander finished the bevel on the brass edges.

When the kits are made, Gerd drills all the required holes with the sides paired together. But after the fitting and peining the right angle alignment is no longer perfect. The lever cap had to be tweaked for side clearance and then contact surface at the blade/cap iron. Not a huge deal, just another step.

Opening the mouth was more work than I anticipated. I started with 320 grit sand paper, then a small file, and a couple steps to a really big file. I'll do most anything to avoid doing any of this work by hand but I don't have a vise big enough to use the milling machine so I kept at it with the files and sand paper. It came out OK, I think. It is not perfectly square but it works OK. The opening is about .020, a little tighter in the corners. Gerd furnishes the blade fully sharpened and ready to go. Shavings are about .002; good enough for me!

A little more final polishing and I'm done with this one. I reach a point of diminishing returns when it comes to finishing the brass. I expect I'm doing something wrong but I run out of patience. Here are a couple glamour shots. pic1, pic2.

I need to offer a realistic review of Gerd Fritsche's kits. Looking at the first one I have completed I would say it was an excellent value. The metal parts are cut with, what I assume, is a laser of some kind. They are accurately cut but the laser produces a small radius in the corners that may not be acceptable to some people. I didn't like it and tried to correct it and my corrections contributed, only slightly to my problems with the dovetails. What you are buying is a kit. So, if you can fix it, it is a kit, if it can't be fixed, then it is problem with the kit. With mine, the metal at the mouth was really rough. Not outside the required dimensions and I was able to fix it to my satisfaction. The wooden tote was scary rough but it too, was relatively easily worked to a nice configuration. The provided instructions were, I think, pretty rough. I didn't pay too much attention to them as this is not my first kit. I did note in skimming through them some strange words and sequences that probably would not be clear. Instructions for these things are difficult in English so translating from German has got to be quite a task. And, the premise that you can build one of these things with files and a drill is beyond my comprehension. You need to control your expectations and/or be very confident in your skills and expectations. I didn't like the length of the cap iron/chip breaker but Gerd is willingly providing a longer one. I didn't really like the wood provided. It sands and polished well as rosewoods do. But I would prefer an Ebony or Cocobolo but I'm certain there would be a requisite price difference. Overall I would offer Gerd's kits are a great value. Assembling them is not trivial, but if you have problems you cannot blame the provider. You need to fully understand all the steps needed to complete the operations you are going to perform. Whether you get that understanding from reading the instructions or other intuitive means, matters not. Gerd Fritsche's kits are a good value.

Quick Index

Gerd Fritsche A7 Shoulder Plane

November 16, 2017
I started back on the A7. Checking the wooden infills I note they are about .020 too thin for the sole thickness. A little disappointing but not a huge deal. I set the milling machine to take off .020 from one edge. I made the cut where I had previously noted the hole in the sole, this moves the hole closer to the edge. Making the depth cuts was easy. Moving that demarcation line was tedious. OK, so now the infills fit properly.

Having finished the A13 and not being thrilled with the color of the African Rosewood infills, I decided to make some infills out of some Macassar Ebony leftovers. That went pretty well. Here's the new one. Now I'm ready to build the assembly for drilling the bridge in the main infill piece. I'm a little leery of doing this. I can see a lot of things going wrong but the instructions simply state, paraphrasing here, assemble the bridge upside down, clamp in the infill, and drill through the assembly from the bottom, through the bridge, then open the hole to accommodate the threaded tube. Rather than simply using one side, the infill, and the bridge, as per the instruction picture, I actually assembled both sides, the bridge, the infill, and the end of the sole. All this to make certain the assembly is as square as possible. Pic1, Pic2, Pic3. I decide to make the test cuts on the original infill rather than risk my ebony on a first try. This all went pretty well, actually. After drilling through the bridge tube I widened the hole to accept the tube and it assembled reasonably well. So on to the ebony infill. Same procedure. After drilling I assembly the parts and %$#ed if the parts aren't misaligned by about .020. I'm frustrated and irritated now, so I take .020 off the side of the bridge and taper the wood of the infill .020 on the other side. So, things look better but the sides are twisted; never a good thing on a shoulder plane. I turn out the lights and call it a day!

After getting calmed down I realize I can either trash this thing or settle down and figure a way to properly fix it. I ordered a piece of .1875 brass (Naval 464) to make a new bridge piece. I bought a piece of bocote to make new infills. My plan is to assemble the new infill with the sides and a new bridge plate. I'll drill down through the top. I'll drill the proper hole for the M8 x 1.25 tap through the infill and the new bridge. Then I'll widen the hole to take a piece of the tube from the original bridge. Then I'll run a proper tap through the bridge tube, the infill, and the new bridge plate. If all that works I will have reconstructed the ruined parts.

November 17, 2017
I bought a 3 x 3 x 12 chunk of Bocote from Woodcraft. That is a convenient size to get the infills for two planes. I didn't discover the cracks in it until after I removed the wax. The wood should work OK. I can likely work around the cracks; they may not be very deep.

I cut the tube off the bridge assembly. Cut it into two 1/2 inch pieces. I experimented with the procedure I laid out. I discovered my taps won't cut more than about an inch because the shank is the same size as the cut teeth. I had to buy a tap with a narrow shank. Other than that the experiment looks OK. Assuming the infill is inserted tight against a new bridge plate, the procedure would be:
1. Using the drill press, drill the press-fit hole for the brass sleeve, use a 'W' bit, 3/8 deep.
2. Change the bit and continue drilling for the tap size, use an 'I' bit. Drill through the bridge plate.
3. Thread the sleeve on the tap and secure the tap in the chuck.
4. Use the drill press to press the sleeve in place.
5. Free the tap from the chuck.
6. Use the tap wrench to thread through the wood infill and fully through the bridge plate.
And, voila, Bob's your Uncle! Here's the experiment.

November 18, 2017
I started slicing up the piece of bocote. I thought I would have plenty of wood to make the infills but it was really close. There was a large crack that ran the length of the billet and more than half way through it. I got a good 1-inch slab for the two main infills. On the second 1-inch slab I was just barely able to rough out the 2 wedges and the 2 blade ramps. I was going to work on the main infill but decided to wait until I get the new brass bridge made. I did work on the blade ramp and the adjuster cut-out. I almost jumped into the blade ramp assuming it would be 15-degrees. Turns out it is closer to 17-degrees. Not a big deal as I caught it before I messed up anything else. I was going to work on the second ramp since I was set up for it. I decided to wait because I don't know how consistent the kits will be if I decide to make another A7.

November 26, 2017
Finally received the piece of brass I ordered. It was packed like nothing I've seen before; two pieces of card board, two pieces of 1/2-inch chip board, stretch wrap and then boxed. I hacked out a little 1 1/2 x 2 inch piece and made a new bridge. The square holes in the sides were sized for the 4mm (.157) brass Gerd provided. For the new .188 brass I ordered I had to choose between making the holes bigger or the tab smaller. I don't have any small coarse files to make the holes bigger so I made the tabs on the new bridge thinner. Seems to work well, Everything appears straight and square.

Starting on the main infill, I see the ends of the 1-inch piece of bocote I had set aside are already starting to check. I cut off the checking on both ends and now, instead of two nice square pieces to work for main infills I have one piece that I might be able to squeeze two infills from if I mesh them together. I used the band saw and belt sander to reduce the 1-inch thick piece to .915. That dimension works for the plane I'm working on but is too thin if Gerd makes the next one properly and I don't need to reduce the thickness by .020. Oh well! I was placing the block of wood on the sander free hand. Set it down for a second and then check the corners for thickness. Set it down again and apply pressure as needed to keep it flat. Didn't take long. Once at the correct thickness. I needed to mill the two critical angles and alignment. The infill needs to be perfectly flat on the sole and snug to the angled bridge. A little tricky to do. I used the belt sander to sneak up on the angle for the bridge. I made the bridge shorter than Gerd did so that the joint from the bridge to the wood is further up inside the plane body. The infill is still pretty rough at this point.

I'm nearly ready to start peining and I started making up the bucking blocks. My anvil is an old and heavy rack panel. It is about 10 x 19 and 5/8ths thick. It weights 35 pounds so it works well for plane peining. The bucking block assembly looks like this. It is securely held together but now I need to get the pins bearing on the steel of the anvil for whacking. I found this piece of steel in my scrap bin. This A7 plane has a little tab that joins the two sole pieces during peining. I cut a slot in the steel bar for the little tab. Now I have this whole lash-up to sit on the steel bar and the anvil and a support board to keep the whole thing level. Here's an end view. The jig plates on the carrier board bear on the side plates and on the anvil when I stand it on edge to pein the tails. At this point I think I'll let things sit for a day or so to see if the infill is going to check or crack some more. If it does check some more I'm not sure what I'll do about it. Try making another piece, I guess.

December 4, 2017
The bocote continued to check on the ends so I gave up on it. I made a new main infill and a filler for the blade end. I used some Honduran Rosewood I bought several years ago. It is a light brown in color and tight grain. It polishes nicely. Not as dark as I would like but at least I know it is dry and stable. I assembled it all in the bucking block and proceeded to pein it. I think I did a little better job than on the A13. I didn't make any of those little slices that just produce dents; that's a good thing. The metal at the side opening of the plane needs more structure. Gerd connects the brass along the bottom edge of the opening with a little piece of brass but it is not enough to prevent the sides from opening up. The opening needs a more substantial web of metal to keep the finished metal up against the pins on the sole. I managed to whack it back in place with only a few extraneous marks. I'm hoping they will be sanded or filed out. I went over the peining looking for joints that weren't closed. The metal around the mouth moves a lot because there is too little support, as mentioned.

I milled off the sides and the sole and then put it on the sander a little bit. I'm not far enough along to take it down too much. I used the milling machine and then some files to clean up the mouth opening; not finished but enough to see what I'm doing with the new ramp for the blade. I made the new ramp and the cut-out for the adjuster. I did a check fit on the adjuster only to find the blade hits the adjuster knob. I hadn't done this check on the first blade ramp I did. If I had I would have seen the blade adjuster cut-out is not parallel to the ramp but is offset by about 10-degrees so the blade clears the adjuster knob. Again, a real PITA making metric cut-outs with English tools. Anyway, here's a pic of pressing in the sleeves. The sleeve protrudes into the body of the infill ramp, but just a little. Fortunately it doesn't hurt anything. I got it to fit tightly in the body and then used a scrap of sanding belts to shape the exposed surface of the blade ramp. It looks good when finished.

December 7, 2017
I sanded the edges of the plane body. I added the 45-degree bevel on the edges of the sides. I did some work on the mouth. I shaped the inside of the infill at the mouth. I did some work on the inside of the infill at the opening to smooth the wood that butts up against the new bridge. I shaped the main infill to the curves on the sides. I installed the sleeves and tightened up the screws. I started making the wedge. Here's the current condition.

December 11, 2017
I milled off the protruding screw heads: pic, pic. I installed the tension screw for the wedge using the procedure I laid out before. I made the new wedge with a curve that more closely matched the body of the plane. When I finish sanded the wedge it moved too far into the plane so my curves don't match the body any longer! Oh well. I'm still not able to get satisfactory dovetails. Here's a pic of one of the problems. This is caused by the fact the dovetail closes at the surface but not down inside. Guess I can always do more, eh? This continues to be discouraging. I'm going to put it aside for awhile.

December 15, 2017
I cut the wedge screw down to length and made yet another wedge. I used the point of the hold down screw to mark the location for the little brass bearing point, but it didn't come out centered. The point on the screw may have been off a little, my tap efforts may be off a little, maybe my eyes aren't as good as they should be; we'll never know. It works and tightens well. It took another hour of work on the mouth to make it work, and it works well. I went back over the whole plane again, sanding out some remaining scratches, polishing the inside of the mouth and linishing the sides and sole one final time. Here's a glamour picture. Here's another. Note the curve of the hold down matches and aligns with the body curve. That's what I was aiming for. Here's the finished A7 shoulder with its bigger brother, the A13 smoother. I thought this plane was going to do me in. It is not as good as I was hoping but it works well, looks pretty good, and it will look better in a month, eh?

Quick Index

Norris A7 Shoulder Planes from scratch

December 29, 2017
The Fritsche A7 works well, but I'm not real satisfied with the way it came out. I've been thinking about building some more, more or less from scratch. I was thinking about building a set of four, four different sizes. The more I thought about it I realized the pattern would get uglier as it got wider. The shape of the wedge, exposed blade ramp, and the protrusion where the wedge hold down screw goes won't look as nice as the plane gets wider. At this point I think I'll just make two more A7 style planes, one steel sides and one brass sides. The brass I bought to make the new bridge is 3/16 thick, I can use that. Too thick for a 1-inch plane if I want to squeeze an adjuster in there. I think the planes need to be 1 1/4 inches wide. With 3/16-inch sides that will leave enough room for a 3/4-inch wide adjuster inside the 7/8-inch wide infill. Anyway, still thinking.

So I've been thinking about the parts I need to make or buy. I need an adjuster and I need a screw for the wedge hold-down. Lee Valley makes some fine adjusters they use on some of the planes they sell. They sell the adjusters by themselves. They are a little shorter than what Gerd put in his kit but they will work, I think. The adjusting knob on the LV adjuster was domed so I ground it down flat; looks good now. I fooled around press fitting a brass head on a piece of 5/16th threaded stainless steel rod. I put some knurling on the brass and came up with a nice enough screw for the wedge hold-down. So now I have two screws and two adjusters that match, look like they go together.

I don't like the dovetail approach Gerd uses, where he tapers the sides of the tail. His approach, he calls it the Norris design, makes it too easy to close the outside edge but leave a space down inside the joint. This can result in a space in the dovetail when the sides are ground down. It can be done correctly, but I think it is more risky than the Spiers way. Also, he recommends an angle of less than 10 degrees, whereas I think all the dovetil angles should be 15 degrees. Anyway, the Spiers way cuts a little divot in the edge of the pins on the sole and doesn't need quite as much metal movement to fill it... I think... maybe. I should probably do some experimentation but I hate to waste expensive metal. Anyway, more thought is needed. Spiers way, Norris way, may be arbitrary designations. I really don't know the history of those gentlemen's fabrication details. I bought some metal rods at the local hardware store. I thought I might try making something akin to a Norris adjuster. I also ordered some brass tubing, a 1/4 inch size to make the spacers that go in the infills and a 5/16 inch piece for the insert that goes around the wedge hold-down screw. Anyway, that's as far as I've gotten.

December 31, 2017
Happy New Years, Ya'll. I found some parts from previous efforts and I've been experimenting with my approach to dovetails. I've gone back to my divot-in-the-sole method. I moved the divot back into the plane body from the dimension I was using before. To summarize here: I'm starting with a completed sole that properly fits a dovetailed side. I fit the two pieces together and scratch-mark the position of the tails on the sole with a scratch awl. I position the dovetail cutter in the space between two pins. I lower the bit untill I get full contact with the sole and then back off .005 inches. I align the edge of the bit with the edge of the sole and then advance the cutter .100 inch. I then cut the divots in the sole until the height matches the marked thickness of the tail material. I made a couple experiments with only a sole and a side. Pretty flaky set-up but I got pretty fair results. Here's a pic. The joints look pretty good. If my real planes came out like that I'll be pretty pleased! Of course the new planes will have enough differences in the metal to cause other problems. The metal will be thicker, the tails narrower.

January 15, 2018
I've started. Well, I've already messed up quite a bit of metal, so I'll start where I think I'll have some success of finishing. I've started with the sole. I made the sole wide enough so that I could cut the mouth and leave enough metal on the side so that I can keep the mouth together while peining and still have the mouth full cut when I've finished the peining. I set a sole blank in the vice using angle blocks. A pair of angle blocks on one side; 10 degree plus 5-degree. A 15-degree on the other side. This arrangement lets me cut a 15-degree mouth in the sole with plenty of metal on the side to allow for maintaining the mouth while peining. The mouth looks usable so far.

I used a straight bit to rough out the pins in the sole. Next I marked the sole as to where to cut the angle in the pins. I marked the angle on the edge and I marked the inside edge also. When I cut the tails by swinging the vise 15-degrees left and 15-degress right, I'll move the cut until the marking on the inside edge has been removed. Like this. So far so good, here's the sole pieces so far. These are done except for cutting back the bridging over the mouth to facilitate the peining.

I started hacking out the side pieces. I used my metal cutting band sand. This is a perhaps somewhat unorthodox use for the saw but it worked... for a while. I ganged up the four sides, two brass and two steel, and level off the sides. After careful marking, I used a straight cutter to rough out the tails in the sides, gang cutting them all at once. Since the pins were cut in the soles individually, the tails for the sides had to be cut individually also. The tails are carefully cut so they precisely fit the side they are intended for. Properly done they fit tight and square. Here's the two pair of sides, one brass and one steel. So, what next, eh?

January 18, 2018
I think I'm avoiding the risky task of cutting in the slots for the bridge. That is, I think, the last critical step in getting the assembly ready for peining. There are, of course, other steps, but they cannot wipe out a bunch of work like screwing up the bridge slot placement.

So, I bought some cocobolo a while back. I bought two big chunks. One is 57 x 4 x 6, and the other 34 x 3 x 6, so somewhere better than 13 bf. It was pretty pricey but I figure I can make any plane parts I want from these pieces. The alternative was to try to find something 3 x 3 by something long for buns and what not and then another 6 x 1 1/2 by something long for totes and other pieces. I didn't find any of those, so I bought the big pieces. I figure now was as good a time as any to rough out some pieces for the shoulder planes and let them acclimate in dimensions closer to the finished product. The biggest piece had a big crack in the end, appropriately discounted in the price. No telling how the crack would run off in the wood, and I didn't like the look of it, so I decided to cut it and see if I could get the shoulder plane pieces from that end. I hoisted the billet up on my skinny band saw and made a cut off long enough for my needs. The crack run out worked in my favor and is nonexistent in the end of my cut off piece. I cut the chunk up into three pieces about 1.125 inches thick and I'll let them sit for a while to dry some more. I was a little surprised my moisture meter shows 10% MC. I thought it would be less having been sitting around in the shop for a couple months. The relative humidity in the shop has been 40% RH or less for quite awhile. The pieces are about 11 x 5, more or less, and the needed parts are shown behind the slabs.

I bought a piece of brass tubing to make the sleeve that goes around the hold down screw. The brass is .375 in OD. I drilled and tapped it for the 5/16-24 rod I used to make the screws. Making a clamp to hold the tubing was easy enough, but it didn't hold too well. Got my two tiny sleeves made in spite of the poorly designed clamp.

I bought brass rod to make the sleeves for inside the infills. I bought 1/4-inch rod with an ID of .152. I had to drill it out and then tap it for 10-32 screws. I made a slightly better clamping jig than for the sleeves previously mentioned. I needed 10 sleeves for the two planes in progress, so those are done. I managed to booger up a couple drill bits in fooling with these sleeves, but my handy-dandy sharpener fixed them up pretty quickly... after I figured out how to use it again!

January 28, 2018
I started on making the bridges, one brass and one steel. I started by making the slots in the side plates. I used my full size template to make an angles top at 25-degrees, marked the plate, and then drilled holes at the end of the required slots. I then used a milling cutter to widen the slots. The drilling speeds up the effort and gives me a space to lower the milling cutter. A lot of nuisance work with files followed; nuisance I say because I don't have a file that works well in that size hole. I did get them hacked out after a fashion. Making the bridges was mostly uneventful. Here's the pair. The holes in the side plates are pretty ugly, but they don't have contrasting metal so they should be OK. The side plates and bridges assemble properly.

I decided to use the Spiers approach for the dovetail locking device rather than the Norris approach. The Spiers approach uses a dovetail shaped divot in the sole rather than tapering the tail on the side piece. This business of Spiers approach vs Norrise approach is pure conjecture on my part. I mean I know the difference in the two methods but I have no real basis for naming them or assigning credit to those gentlemen. Anyway, I'm making the divot in the sole. I used a marker to cover the tails in the sole, assembled the sides, and scribed a line across the pins at the tail thickness. I then used my dovetail cutter to make the divots in the sole. The objective is to make a divot that is just tall enough to touch the marked line for the side thickness. Here's a bunch of the divots.

The next step was to cut the sides plates to the rough shape required. I marked the sides using my hardboard template. I was going to use my scroll saw to cut out the marked sides, but with the thicker material and the use of steel, progress was way too slow compared to the ones I did years ago. I decided to just hack them out as best I could with the powered hack saw. I was able to gang cut some of the parts. Some of the cutting I did by standing the band saw on end and sitting on one end and using it like you would a regular band saw. A little nerve wracking but it works.

Making the main infill is difficult. Getting the two required angles to fit properly is a little tedious. The infill must properly match the sole and then slide precisely into the assembly and properly match the angle of the bridge. It takes a fair amount of trial and error fitting, and it cannot be done after the peining as the parts would be too tight and not very visible. Here are the two infill pieces. They are significantly different in color brcasue of the wax that was used to slow the drying (and probably a little to darken the wood for selling it easier :-). This is how they fit into the sole and bridge assembly.

Next up, peining. The peining assembly is a little simpler using the divot approach for the dovetails. No jig plates are needed since the top edge of the plates are square/flat, and the first hammering is on the tails on the opposite side. The bucking block looks like this. The peining assembly has only side clamps and screws to hold the sole in place. Seems counter intuitive to be so fussy in making the parts for this thing and then hammer the snot out of them. Makes for an ugly assembly!

The next step was to mill off the protruding tabs for the dovetails and for the bridge. Then cut the side opening, clearance, for the blade. Here's the pair of them after all the cutting and some rough belt sanding to get them roughly flat.

I've done a little more work with the various sanders. The outside is pretty well shaped. I've worked the blade opening some. I'm going to approach filing the ramp a little differently this time. I'm going to make a metal 15-degree angle piece to insert above the ramp in the sole so that when I file the ramp in the plane body cut out I'm less likely to take off too much metal. Here is the current state of the steel body. I'm going to set these aside for a few days and take a short break. I had a great time yesterday at the York MWTCA meet and I have some new toys to play with.

February 6, 2018
I had this 15-degree mouth cut-out in my scrap bin. I cut it down to fit the shoulder plane. When I installed it in the plane it gave me a guide for filing. Worked OK, but didn't help with the squared angle at the back.

I used my same router table and 45-degree angle bit to bevel the edges of the plane. I thought the edges on the steel plane would be more difficult than the brass one, but there wasn't much difference. I have a 16-threads-per-inch screw on the router height adjuster. I was doing 1/10 of a turn per pass. I think that works out to about .0004 per pass. Slow but sure! They came out OK. The bearing on the router bit is a little loose and floppy, so there is a little bump where the bearing goes over the bridge and at the sole. Just a little more work to sand and shape it out.

I started working on the blades. I used a rough tilting vise that came with the milling machine. It is pretty junky but it works. I use some simple sticks and blocks in the table grooves to align it parallel to the table. Here's the set up for making the side bevel on the irons. I got the blade and side bevels done and the holes for the curve in the front before I realized I needed the blade adjuster installed in order to drill the holes for the blade adjuster, so I switched to working on the blade ramp and the blade adjuster installation. I got the blade ramps done and the sleeves installed. The blade ramps don't look like Gerd's original, but, hey, this is my plane, right? The Veritas adjuster is quite a bit different than the one Gerd provided so adjustments had to be made to its location on the ramp infill. The ramp infills fit really well, flat, tight, and the sleeves and screws work well. I got really good at making the infill ramps. I made quite a few of them in my pursuit of the ideal design.

After fitting the blade ramp infill I went back to thinking about the blade. With a working ramp and adjuster I was able to lay out the hole position in the blade. I drilled the holes and then laid out the other dimensions on the blade. Here's a slightly better picture of the blade layout. I don't expect the blade to be too much problem to cut out. There are a lot of holes and angles, but the blade is mostly about appearance and only a little about function. I was using Dykun layout fluid for metal marking but it was expensive and dried out pretty quickly. Now I just use a felt marker. It is not as clear and doesn't hold up as well, but it is inexpensive. Here's a close up of the mark up for the blade end.

February 21, 2018
Here are the finished blades. Rough forming the main infill and the blade ramp was uneventful. I did a test fit on the infill, drilled and enlarged the holes for the sleeves and inserted them. I shaped the infill curves with a strip of sandpaper. Here's what they look like so far. I used my router table to put the bevel on the body edges. This is tricky work, taking off about six thousandths of an inch per pass; slow but sure. The infills are inserted and secured with screws.

I used the milling machine to level the screws. At this point the plane is supported on shim blocks and is not precisely level. I place a piece of transparent tape next to each screw. For the final cuts to level the screw, I lower the bit until it just scratches the tape, then make the last cut to level the screw. The tape helps ensure I never go too deep. Note the rough shape of the infills.

After using various sanders to shape the infills, I made the rough blank for the blade wedge. It was a little tricky getting the angles correct and making two identical wedges. It has to fit tightly along the entire length of the bridge plate. I shaped the curves on the wedge using my favorite manual sander.

So, after as much hand sanding buffing and futzing as my patience would allow, the planes are finished. I tried taking a pass on a scrap board and, predictably, got nothing for my efforts. The blade has not yet been hardened or sharpened. I'm sure they will work just fine when the blade is ready. But, they look OK, eh? More pics, one here, another here.

February 1, 2019
The blades for the Norris A7 shoulder planes were heat treated and sharpened in the same batch as the blades for my miter plane project. They seem to work fine now.

Quick Index

Zig Zag Rule Display Cabinets

April 12, 2018
At the Bud Brown auction last fall I bought a point-of sale display for Lufkin rules. It is a really nice old display and it came filled with a lot of interesting rules; masonry rules, log rules, some metric, etc. The lid has a clever catch to keep the un-initiated from getting into it. The front glass panel opens like this. In February I went to another auction, and because they went inexpensive, I wound up with another pile of zig zag rules. They are all new-old-stock. So, what to do with this new-found collection?

Well, must make a display of some kind, right? I'll use the Lufkin display as a basic pattern. I'll make mine to hold more rules. The Lufkin cabinet only holds 22 rules. It's rather strange, with 7 slots for 3 rules (= 21) and then another single slot for 1 rule (total = 22). Mine will be 24 rules wide and 2 rules deep for a total of 48 6-foot rules in the one display. Here is what I have so far. I'm making two. Here is the first one. And, the second one is similar. Surprise, eh? The back has a small storage area; more work to be done.

The pictures don't show it yet, but the show faces are nicely figured quarter sawn oak. I bought a pallet of off-cuts of oak from Hearne's a few months back. The pallet had some nice quarter sawn stuff and some small project junk. I paid about a dollar a BF so I think I did OK. I have enough quarter sawn stuff for the show surfaces and flat sawn stuff for the insides and base. The biggest problem is the wood was already planed to about 7/8ths inch. Too thin to resaw in half and really thick, time consuming, to plane down to 5/8ths inch which is what I'm using for most of the dimensioned lumber. I think they will look nice.

I want a decal to go on the front of the cabinet like the Lufkin has. I have fooled around fixing up box labels with photoshop, but trying to enlarge a box label just does not produce satisfactory resolution. I bought this Stanley Zig Zag rule sign reproduction on Ebay. It is a shame they went to so much trouble to 'antique' the thing. It will take me a while to clean it up. I hope it will work.

April 18, 2018
The base uses up a lot of wood. Too big to resaw, I had to plane it down from 7/8ths to 1/2 inch. It just has a simple bevel on the edge for decoration. The doors don't have a lot of wood at the top. I was pretty careful fitting the floating tenons, making certain they are as tight as possible. I hacked out the mortise for the glass. They don't really need to be pretty as the back of the door can never be seen.

Clamping in the back pieces. Can't have too many clamps. Here the backs are done. Small brass hinges, hook latches, and a small brass knob. I had purchased the hook latches for use on some Miller's patent blade boxes, but the way they are stamped out means they don't work well for one set left and one set right. I changed the design of the blade boxes so they don't use the hook latches. Here's what the blade boxes look like. They are made from poplar and will be stained. I digress. The small brass pull is left over from a tool box project from many years ago.

Installing the section dividers was a real nuisance! The two cabinets were supposed to be identical but with all the little tweaks needed to fit parts together left the dividers different for each cabinet. The inside of the top has slots also. Since the dado blade stopped before the front edge, there is a notch in the divider for the radius left by the blade. Here's a fit check for the rules. There are six yellow No. 06 rules in the one slot. So, as before, the cabinet can hold as many as 48 4-foot rules. The Lufkin on the left is a 8-foot rule. That one would not fit in the original cabinet.

May 3, 2018
I finished the wood working effort by making the molding sticks to hold the glass. The cabinets pieces are both ready for stain and then the finish. I took them all apart one more time, stained them, and sprayed them. The figure shows up nicely in that last shot. Reassembled, they look pretty nice. The hinge bars are polished and lacquered brass; made from some scrap from my plane making efforts. The latches in the back work well and enclose a small space for added inventory. Nearly finished now.

May 16, 2018
I took two pictures of the Stanley logo mentioned previously. Stuck the two pictures side by side to get the highest resolution possible. After a spending some time with photoshop, I had the logo cleaned up and the color changed to a more appropriate dark Stanley green. They are printed on available hobby decal paper. The hobby stuff is, predictably, not nearly as good as a commercial decal might be, but given my various options, I think they came out reasonably well. The color is a little porous and the wood grain shows through. Given how crude my starting point was, they turned out rather antiquey looking which is just fine. The decal paper is sprayed with Krylon before applying them, then a couple more coats after they are stuck on.

The two cabinets are finished now. I added handles on the side; they are too difficult to pick up trying to get fingers under the base. This one has 48 Stanley rules; numbers 106, 167, 286F, 06, 856, 206, 167, and 804E-M. This other one has 32 Stanley/Defiance rules; numbers 1296, 1296F, 96, 804, 106, 167, and 856. For the record, each weighs 23 pounds plus weight of the rules.

Quick Index

Miter Planes

October 2018

I made the wall mounted tool chests to hold planes I was planning to make. I guess it is time to begin the process. I was going to order more of Gerd Fritsche's plane kits but he couldn't or wouldn't deliver what I wanted. The African rosewood he was providing earlier is now on the CITES list. He was not inclined to ship his block plane kit with an adjustable mouth. I'm thinking of making something like Gerd's Classic miter plane and his Improved miter plane. These are suposedly copies of, or designs based on Norris A11 miter plane designs. He has basic measurements for these on his web site, plus I think I can make an acceptable Norris adjuster. His Norris adjuster is shown here.

The first thing to do is make some sketches and then a full scale mock up. Guess I'll start with the sketches.

November 12, 2018
The weather has changed. I finally finished most of my odds and ends of Spring projects, including spraying the chisel displays. I've started the plane making first steps. I've made some patterns, drawings and mock-ups and I've started making some parts. I've made mockups of both planes. I've decided on two style variations and two material variations, total of four planes, of the Classic style. One will have rounded ends and rounded infills. The other will have square ends with squared infills. This latter will have what I'm calling a boat tail ramp. The mockup pictured is a composite of both styles but it gives me all the information I will need to make both variations.

The Improved style is a little more difficult. The blade ramp and the front bun are a little more involved though I think I have a design that works. I had to modify a router cutter to work in the milling machine in order to make the bun with any predictability. A purpose-built router jig will shape the ramp. The jig provides both the shape and a slope to match (I hope) the sides. I'm aiming for three of these planes in various wood and metal combinations.

I made quite a few of the adjusters. These are not as sophisticated as commercially made units, but they seem to work reasonably well. 1/4-20 thread in combination with 10-32 thread produces a positioning movement of .019 (19 thousandths) per turn of the adjusting knob. That seems quite sensitive to me. The problem, if there is one, is that the adjusting knob moves nearly 2-inches for the 1/2-inch adjustment range between holes in the blade. Seems a rather minor cosmetic problem that can be fixed by repositioning the adjustment barrels on the adjustment shaft if the user so desires. I made 11 of the adjusters. I expected to makes mistakes on some of them, but they are pretty easy to make, I didn't make any mistakes, and I have more than I need.

The blades are pretty straight forward. I needed to make the blades for the mockups so I used all the O1 steel I had. I need seven blades for the seven planes I'm planning but only had enough metal for six. I'm going to regret having to make a single blade later on. It would have been a lot easier to make all 7 at the same time. I hope I can understand my own instructions.

Next steps is to make some lever caps, and lay out the rivet holes in the sides. Then I should be able to start on the real plane bodies.

December 6, 2018
I haven't been keeping very good records of the plane making progress, plus I've been diverted from my efforts by other projects. I've added some tools to the Hilton chest and I've installed a new floor on LOML's laundry/pantry/office.

I thought the lever caps would be difficult to make but they turned out to be rather straight forward. Starting with a 2 1/2 x 1/2 brass bar, I cut and milled the basic blank. Next step was to drill and tap for the side support screws. Using a plastic French curve template a curve was scratched on the front edge. Waste was hacked away with the hack saw (pun intended). That leaves them looking like this. A sander smoothes the curve. Next step was to drill and tap for the 5/16-20 lever cap screw and then mill out the relief behind the front blade contact point. I'm not sure what the relief is for or why it might be necessary but they look like this now. The shape on the screw end was laid out with circle and French curve templates. The design was scribed into the area highlighted with magic marker. Roughed out with the hack saw and then sanded, they are nearly finished. They will be fine-fitted to the planes and then polished a little more. A couple have been fitted to the mock-ups in this picture.

I used some metal scraps to make a test frame assembly. This to check my cut and milling sequence, choose the dimensions for the sole peining divot (for lack of a better name) and, to make certain the 3/16-thick metal can be properly hammered together. My procedures seem to work OK. This test piece has nicely formed and tight dovetails

January 5, 2019

I've cut the pins in the sole.

I switched gears for a few days to make some gimlets for the Hilton tool chest. I cut up my used set of French gimlets, and made some handles from scrap Bocote. Turnings were pretty small so made two or three handles at one time. Here's the completed set. They are not particularly authentic, but they fit the tray in the chest.

I fitted the individual plane sides to their respective soles. Couple more pictures here pic, and pic. Rounded off the ends of the soles. A pair of the classic style will remain square with a boat-tail heel and blade ramp. Shaped the sides for the Improved model. pic, pic, pic. Here is the bucking block lash-up for peining. Note I'm now only using C-clamps on the sides and only on the joints I'm hammering. The seven plane frames are all peined, milled, and sanded. The joints all look better than I have made before these.

January 12, 2019
Working only on the 'Classic' style planes, the peining and grinding is finished. They look pretty good, ignoring the couple errant chisel marks. The brass rivet sleeves have been cut to length, drilled and tapped for 10-32 screws. The infills have been installed and shaped to the plane bodies. Two of the planes have rounded ends. Two planes have squared ends. The squared planes have a boat-tail shaped blade ramp. The rounded planes have a rounded blade ramp.

At this point the next steps should be the final finish work; blade fitting, beveled edges, final sanding and polishing, etc. Handling for the various previous operations leaves the plane bodies with many scratches, scratches that should polish out. I'm going to stop working on the 'classic' style for a while. I'll work on the 'improved' version for a while. Hopefully the blades I sent to Ron Hock for hardening and tempering will be returned before I finish the 'improved' infills.

January 21, 2019
The infills for the 'Improved' version have been shaped and fitted. My jig for the blade ramp worked better than I had hoped and the infills align with the metal edge almost perfectly. Here the infills are just set in place.

The cut outs for the adjusters are complete. The rivet screws installed and milled smooth and the lever cap and screws installed. Press fitting the stainless steel all-thread rod for the lever cap screw into the brass knob was somewhat problematic. In many cases, rather than the desired press fit, the stainless steel simply scraped out the opening in the brass resulting in a tight pivot, fine for an axel! I finally go enough tight fitting assemblies so all are good now. Ron tells me my blades will ship this week so I think I'll wait for them. I want to fit the blades and make the planes work properly before doing the final finish on the planes and their parts.

Here are the 'Improved' planes in their current condition. And the 'Classic' planes.

February 1, 2019
The blades came back from heat treating. Ron has a new supplier and he is not particularly gentle with the blades. The blades came back with a lot of small chips in the sharp edge that had to be ground out. Here's my lash up for coarse grinding the blades. That is a 6 x 48 Delta belt sander. The blade is held in a Veritas blade sharpening fixture that rides on the end cap of the sander. 120 grit was used on the belt sander, then 220, 320, 400, 600, and 800 on glass for the final scary sharpening.

All the blades were tested and the mouths in the planes adjusted for clearance. The sanding and polishing is conpleted on the 'Classic' style. They are completed except for the final finish on the lever caps. I've ordered a signature stamp to mark the lever caps and they will be finished and polished after that arrives. Rounded ends on the 'Classis' pair, pic and pic. Boat tail and square ends on the other 'Classic' pair, pic and pic.

The blades for the Norris A7 shoulder planes were heat treated and sharpened in the same batch. They seem to work fine.

February 3, 2019
The sanding and polishing is conpleted on the 'Improved' style. The only improvement, if there is any, is in their appearance. As with the 'Classic style, they are completed except for the final finish on the lever caps. These are a little more interesting to look at, but the function is still the same. These planes look very uncomfortable to use until you remember miter planes are generally used one-handed. And then, they are still uncomfortable. These planes have combinations of brass or steel sides, and Honduran rosewood or cocobolo infill. Pic, and pic. They certainly have the weight for their task. They weigh in at about five and a half pounds!

February 21, 2019
Received the signature stamp a few days ago and it works well. I changed some of the pictures in the write-up above so the signature stamp already shows up in some of the previous pictures. The signature stamp is used in a 12-ton Harbor Freight hydraulic press. Here's a close up. The process is pretty straightforward. The black surface came with the press but it is too rough and will print the back of the lever cap. I inserted a piece of smoothed brass under the lever cap. There is another piece of brass behind the actual stamp. This piece is stuck to the lever cap with double sided adhesive and is square to the cap as a guide for the stamp. The dial indicator tracks the movement of the press. I thought I would need to use that for determining the proper movement, but in fact what is needed is the maximum travel that can be forced out of the press.

A little more info on the lever cap. The hold down screw is made from 5/16-18 stainless steel all thread with a knurled brass, press fit, knob. The side screws were made from M16x12 cheese head screws. Here's a picture of the whole assembly with a couple of the unmodified cheese head screws.

So, now they are done. They work pretty well but need some more fettling. I don't know what kind of wood is best used for those wispy shavings people use for bragging, but I don't have any of it. Walnut is too open grain to produce shavings that stay together. Here are a couple of action photos; pic, and pic and another.

Here's a group shot. And another. What do we call a group of miter planes? A flock, a herd, perhaps a murder of planes!

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Fritsche Saw, London Pattern Chisel Handles

April 4, 2019
Gerd Fritsche sent me a small back saw kit as a consolation prize for a complaint I had. The kit consists of a blade, brass back, a couple saw nuts, and a paper pattern for the handle. I'm trying to clean up odds and ends on my to-do list, so I decided to give it a try. I found some 4/4+ cherry and roughed out two handles blanks. Here's one. The biggest problem in making the saw kit, I surmised, would be making the tiny slot in the handle blank to accept the very thin blade. The only tool I have that will make a cut that thin is a Hegner scroll saw and it doesn't cut straight! I wasted my first handle blank getting a fence fitted to the scroll saw that would let me cut a straight line on the remaining blank. Here's the fence on the scroll saw. I had to keep shaving the handle blank little by little to get it under the arm of the scroll saw. If I ever have to build a saw with a taller handle I'll have a real problem. The next step was to round off the back of the brass back and make a slot for it in the handle blank. The handle itself was not too difficult. I used the bandsaw, a router, and a drum sander to complete the profile. It is a little clunky looking, but that comes from the pattern. I'd make it slimmer if I were to do it again. I didn't like the steel saw nuts provided, so I made some brass ones. I also used my signature stamp to mark the back side of the brass back.

I bought 3 'sets' of interchangeable patternmakers chisels awhile back. These 'sets, if they should be called that, have an arbitrary number of blades, one 12, one 17, and one 18. One 'set' had four different shaped handles and the others had only one handle. I decided to make a set of four handles for each of the two latter sets and decided on a London Pattern design.

I didn't take pictures of the process but here is an explanation as best I can remember. My finished handles are 5 1/2 inches long. I started with 1-inch square stock, 7-inches long. Use the bandsaw to score the ends for the lathe drive. Next, drill a 1/8 hole in the head stock end about 1 1/2 inches deep. The why will become apparent. Tilt the bandsaw table to 45-degrees and set the fence to slice off the corners of the blanks to make the octagon. Mount the blank in the lathe and turn the areas in front and behind the octagon section. You can experiment with whatever profile you like. Do not finish-cut the area for the ferrule yet. Remove the blank from the lathe and trim off the excess for the lathe mounts. Now mount the handle on the metal lathe. The top of the handle goes in the lathe chuck, the bottom rides on a dead center in the hole drilled previously. Now carefully turn the area for the ferrule for a tight press fit. Hammer on the ferrule. Sand the ferrule and handle flush to length. Drill the handle to accept metal shanks for the chisels. Sand the finished handles until you lose patience and Bob's your uncle.

Here are the two sets, 9 handles, actually. 9 of 12 survived! This is how they work. Here are the two sets with the original single handle. They have been fitted into the drawers in my wall cabinets.

April 8, 2019
I put the finish on the saw and the chisel handles. They look a lot better now. Here are a couple pictures of the saw. Pic and Pic. The little saw was kinda fun. A lot easier than plane making. Saw kits and parts are available from Blackburntools.com and they are pretty reasonably priced. If I decide to make more I'll continue with the way I made the first saw at least as regards the saw nuts. I'm still feeling it is easier to fit the saw nuts to the handle than the other way around.

The chisel handles look better, too.

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Ellipsograph, brass and cherry

May 8, 2019
While looking into the construction details of the Benjamin Seaton tool chest this video from the Woodwright's Shop was offered as containing interesting information on the veneer work in the chest. The video showed how to make an ellipse with a bit of string and a couple nails, That is probably the simplest method. The video also showed a fancy ellipsograph made in Colonial Williamsburg. Fascinating tool! I thought I'd take a shot at making one. It was somewhat difficult trying to make a scale drawing from a video, but here we go.

First step was to set up the router table to make the basic wood stick. Here's the profile. A piece of tape helps reduce tear-out when cutting. An abundance of caution and a lot of clamp-on pieces to cut the miters. Next step was to glue up a pair of mitered corners and then cut and glue the pair together. That is the basic wood assembly.

Next these metal guides were made from a piece of 1/8th inch brass from the scrap box. The size of the piece, 3 1/2 inch width, dictates the size of my ellipsograph. Next step was to drill and counter sink the holes for the screws to hold the guides in place. Here is a test fit for all the guide pieces.

The next step was to cut the 1/2 inch mortise for the guide blocks. Then reinstall the guide brackets and cut the 1/4-inch space between the guide brackets. Here's the assembly with the mortices. The assembly was cut to length, the ends rounded and sanded, and the brass given a basic polish to lose the screw heads. It is starting to look like an ellipsograph.

Next was to make slide blocks and posts to hold the scribing bar. When assembled it is starting to look rather functional. The parts work but not as smoothly as they could. Some more fitting and polishing and perhaps adding a little wax is required. Before any wax can be brought to play a lacquer finish needs to be applied.

May 10, 2019
With the brass taped off, it was pretty easy to apply the finish. Some long bolts, washers, and nuts let me spray one side and then flip it over to do the other side. Three coats in four hours.

The only part left to be made was the pencil holder. It is a little clunky but it holds the pencil tightly.

After a little more polish, some bevels added here and there, plus a little wax, it works quite smoothly. The pins suggested in the Woodwright's video were not installed. I'll use double sided tape to hold it in place when I use it, if I ever use it. Here are some pretty pic, pic, pictures. It is not quite as elegant as the one the Williamsburg folks made but it will do, eh?

May 13, 2019
I was challenged to show how it works and I had to make a couple ovals. I used double sided tape to stick it to the set-up table. The ovals drawn show up pretty well on the white formica. It works so well I figure I might actually use it some day. To that end I made another head for it to hold an Exacto knife. Here's another view. Here's the overall view. Done again!

Some statistics for the ellipse that can be drawn:
Minimum width is 7-inches.
Minimum length is 10-inches.
Minimum difference between length and width is about 3-inches.
Maximum difference between length and width is about 7-inches
With a 14-inch bar, the maximum oval is about 28" x 21"

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HNT Gordon Plane Box

August 2019
I came into a set wooden planes made by HNT Gordon, from Australia. The set includes 18 hollows and rounds, a pair of side rounds and a pair of snipebills. These are made of quarter sawn ringed gidgee (Acacia cambagei). Well, they are as close to quarter sawn as these smallish trees allow. I thought these fancy planes deserved a fancy box for work and for storage. The box is designed to be used sitting on a bench providing both storage for the set and a place to set the planes that are in use. The box is made of cherry, mitered corners, with reinforced box joint pins. The drawer has birds-eye maple veneer as do the insides of the wings and drop down front panel. Here is the box closed up. And, this is the box open with a couple planes setting on the shelves that are created by the opened top. My sig plates complement my vanity but are important in that they make the lids into level shelves when the box is opened.

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Panel Planes

August 30, 2019

Panel planes, or smoothers, are my next plane project. I have collected enough metal to try to build 6 planes. I am looking at 4 planes with brass sides and 2 planes with steel sides. I bought some ziricote and some granadillo from Tradewindswood.com in Vermont. Good prices but still very expensive when you realize you cannot just order a few small blocks of wood for parts. I have a new stock of ziricote and granadillo, and an older stock of Honduran rosewood and cocobolo. The old stock has been drying in my shop for a few years. It is at about 8% EMC and I don't expect it to change much from that.. I'm hoping the new stock will be similarly dry by Christmas. The new wood measures 9 to 12% right now.

I've been working on the design and a mockup. This is what I have so far; pic1, and pic2. The planes will be about 15-inches long with a 2 and1/4 inch wide blade. The mockup has a lever cap left over from the miter plane project and a hastily bent chip breaker.

While waiting for wood and metal I've been working on the design and placement for the blade adjuster. Since I'm using a blade with a chip breaker, the adjuster is a little different than what was used on the miter planes. My adjuster is a little different than what is considered conventional (as in Norris adjuster). Mine works well and is easy to make. The combination of 1/4 - 20 threads and 10 - 32 threads translates to blade movement of about .019 inches per turn of the adjustment knob. Methinks that should be good enough.

Here are some of the new parts. The 3/8-16 stainless steel screws were pretty rough and had to be turned down to 5/8 inches in head diameter to fit the adjuster. The banjo for the adjuster was milled, drilled, tapped and ground to shape by hand.

October 27, 2019
Here are the rest of the parts for the adjusters, all assembled. Some effort for mock-up parts for the blade and cap iron there also.

I have been continuing work on this batch of planes. Other projects have taken a lot of my time so progress on these planes has been slow. I cut the dovetail divots in the soles. The frog blocks were hacked out 1/2 inch bar stock. They were drilled and tapped for 10-32 screws. Some experimentation followed to establish procedure for cutting the mouth. The frog blocks were screwed to the sole and then the screws milled off flush.

Moving right along, I finished mounting the frog blocks and cutting out the mouths. I am not particularly pleased with the results but they will be useable. I traced the mock-up pattern onto the side plates and then the side plates were cut out on the metal band saw. I worked to get the largest single piece of metal possible at the front and back to use as jig plates in the bucking block.

On to the peining effort, here is the assembled bucking block. After hammering the tails then the pins for a while, they look like this. This picture shows the band saw work to cut the side profile. At this point they are pretty crude. I milled off about half of the protrusions and then peined the whole assembly again. I used a pin punch on the corners of the sole dovetail divot for extra measure.

After milling off the bulk of the peined pins and tails the whole assembly was taken to the sanders. Different size sanding drums were used to shape the sides, one bigger, one smaller. A flat belt milled the dovetails. I'm pretty pleased with the initial results. The curves for the sides flow pretty well, and the dovetails have all but disappeared from view. Much more polishing is in order. Here's the bunch of them, so far, all good, pic, pic.

November 26, 2019
I ran into a small problem while putting the 45-degree bevel on the edges. My old plastic insert for my router table just wasn't going to hack it for the precision needed to do the bevel. I don't know if the insert was maybe sagging a little or perhaps it was the tiny variations between the table and the insert. Anyway the old arrangement wasn't going to work. I needed a really flat surface. I had purchased a 16 square foot piece of 1/2 inch Plexiglas at a yard sale a while back and it had been sitting in the shed just waiting for this problem. I covered the whole router table with a piece of the plastic. I drilled a hole for the router bit and holes for the screws to hold an old Sears shaper fence so it will be useable for other projects. The plastic isn't going to wear too well, but I doubt I'll wear it out. So, the bevel on the sides of the planes came out pretty well, pic, pic.

I was floundering a little as to what to do next, so I decided to get the fabrication of the infill sleeves out of the way. A very boring operation; cut to length, drill the inside diameter, tap for 10-32 screws. Thirty of these took a while.

The next step was to start working the infills. I wasn't real confident in my procedure so I made the first infill assembly out of cherry and carefully documented each step. After a couple minor refinements, I started on the real infills. Step one, cut the blank for the handle; 1-inch thick, that was pretty easy. Next step is to add the side pieces; a little more difficult, as they had to be about .635-inches for a tight fit. Setting my big thickness planer in increments of 2 or 3 thousandths is pretty tedious but do-able. Here are the tight fitting blanks. I'm working with four different woods. I have cocobolo, Honduran rosewood, granadillo and ziricote. Those are left-to-right in the previous picture.

The next step is to pin the three-piece blanks together to plane them square and cut the 45-degree blade ramp and then fit them around the frog. Here they are pinned together, and fitted to the frog.

Next, I set the infills in place and drilled through the side plates for the threaded inserts. After the inserts were hammered into the infills, the screws were installed and fit checked. The hammering took a toll on the threads on a couple inserts but were fixed with a little use of the 10-32 tap. So, that's my progress to date. Next steps will shape the sides to the frame and shape a nice looking tote.

December 8, 2019
Making good progress here. Four of the six totes have been shaped and fitted. The first step in the fitting is to fit the side pieces to the plane frame. Remove the tote from the assembly, rough cut the side pieces and then install them in the plane body. I use these little jacks to hold the side pieces against the side... pretty novel, eh? The whole assembly is run against a drum sander to make the side pieces flush with the frame.

After the sides pieces are fit, the tote is next. The tote is made, first with a paper pattern, a couple holes saws, a bunch of sanders, and a lot of hand sanding. The last step is to cut the mortise for the adjuster. Here are four that are finished and installed. Well, not finished, but ready for the next steps. Here's one that is almost ready, and the last one to be done.

December 27, 2019
Progress to date: The front knob has been finished and installed in the plane. Each knob has a slightly different angle for the chipped ejector slope. The knobs have been shaped, polished, fitted with the threaded mounting sleeves and installed in the planes. The sides of the planes have been cut back to match the curve of the front and back of the plane. A vertical bevel has been put on the ends of the side to match the bevel on the curves of the sides. The front knob and rear tote have been cut off and fitted to the curve of the sole. The exposed metal inside the plane has been cleaned and polished. The screws for the infills have been installed with loctite and tightened as much as possible. Next step is mill the screws flush with the sides. Here are some pictures of the front knobs, finished rear of the tote, the wood at the chip ejector, and the bunch of planes. I installed one of the lever caps from the miter planes. It needs only a small modification for the panel planes.

February 7, 2020
I have finally finished all he parts. I fitted all the adjusters. I had to turn down the pivot barrel on all of them, just a little. The barrel was too tight to pivot properly after sitting for a month or so. Here's a better look at the adjusters. Remember, since the chip breaker is always adjusted to the edge of the blade, the adjuster doesn't need to have a tremendous range. My adjusters allow about 1/4 inch of adjustment, and about 20 thou per turn within that 1/4 inch range.

I finished the lever caps. And the screws for the lever caps. The screws are stainless steel all-thread with a pressed on knurled brass knob.

The chip breakers turned out to be more work than I had planned for. I thought they would be pretty straightforward, but getting the bend angle and the jig to bend them was a little time consuming. I used this Harbor Freight press to bend the chip breakers. I tried various configurations but finally settled on this as a bend fixture. This is how it works. The bend is controlled until a 15-degree angle block will fit under the bending part. Here's some of the chip breakers. Mated with the blades they look like this and this.

As I said, all the parts have been made. I suspect I have several months of fitting, polishing and adjusting in order to make the planes work properly. They finally look completed. Here are a couple pictures from today, pic and pic. You probably would not want to push a plane like this all day. They each weigh a tad over 8 1/2 pounds!

May 20, 2020
After a long hiatus I'm back to work on the panel planes. I Put a file to the mouths to established the absolute minimum clearance for the blade. After the soles are flattened again and the blades cleaned and sharpened I'll have a final go at the mouths.

I fired up the old forge for heat treating the irons. The forge isn't really old and not really a forge either. A big weed torch and a few fire bricks is my heat treating apparatus. Seems to work OK. I tried to make a heat-induced dark finish a la Larry Williams, but that didn't come out very well. Tempering takes place in a little toaster oven; two hours ought to do it.

The heat treating left the blades pretty ugly as mentioned, so back to the belt sander to make ‘em pretty again. Duct tape tabs give me something to hold onto while grinding them shiny again.

My scary sharp lash up consists of this really thick piece of glass and a veritas sharpening guide. I start with 320 grit and work up through 400, 600, and 800. Some folks do a lot finer but that is all I have right now and it seems to be enough.

I made a test run with the first blade I sharpened. Works better than I expected. Nice full width shavings and they measure about .0005 thick with my crude instruments. Quite passable, methinks.

I removed the blade and wiped it down for storage. I gave the sole a light pass over the belt sander to remove the small scratches caused by the shaping operations. A few light passes on the sides also. The more I fool with it some areas get better and some areas get worse. I reached the end of my patience and called it done. It now joins my other efforts in a display case. For the record, the plane is nearly 15 inches long and 2 1/4 inches wide. The blade is 2 1/4 wide.

Only five more to sharpen. It would be nice if they all work as well as this first one.

May, 23, 2020
They are all finished! They are not as bright and shiny as they could be. I'll leave that to others if they are inclined. I simply ran out of patience, which is what usually happens. All the blades are hardened, tempered, polished and sharpened. They all work.

The following pictures are for the record and complete the discussion. Here is the 2nd of the two steel framed planes. This one with granadillo infill. Making shavings, pic 1, and pic 2. Here stored with my other efforts.
Brass sides with ziricote infill: pic1, and pic2.
Brass sides with granadillo infill: pic1, and pic2.
Brass sides with cocobolo infill: pic1, and pic2.
Brass sides with Honduran rosewood: pic1, and pic2.
And, the last four...

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Refurbished Langdon Shoot Board

July 2020

I acquired this Langdon Shoot Board . It's the biggest one, the 4-inch model. It's in nice user condition with some deterioration of the paint and some small amount of rust. For some reason I decided to repaint it. I thought it would be pretty easy to do and I like my tools bright and shiny, right? This will definitely be my main user so if the painting doesn't go well it will only be my loss.

I taped up the machined surfaces with masking tape and carefully sliced the masking tape to make nice clean cuts. I then used an old sand blaster to clean off the remnants of the original paint. (Not sure why an old sand blaster is relevant, but I've been lugging it around for the last forty years... old sand.) Surprisingly, sand blasting takes off the old paint, and the masking tape effectively protects the machined surfaces.

I used Rustoleum rattle-can paint. I used a sophisticated color matching approach. I laid the paint cans up against what I could find of the original finish and made my choice. Matching the green pic pic pic, and matching the red/orange pic pic.

Here are some pictures of the original parts. The rotating miter assembly has little of the original gold paint on the logo and patent lettering. The detent for the miter assembly was originally nickel plated, now pretty rusty. I stripped and sanded the basic machine first and then went on to the red-orange paint applied to the grooves in the frame. The masking tape makes the whole thing look pretty ugly but it turned out just fine. Painting jigs took some time to work out as usual.

Some of the original hardware was nickel plated. I tried to find someone who would re-work the nickel for me but came up empty. I decided to try a new-to-me powder coat system. Here are the parts. hung for powder coating and the finished product .

I sharpened the blades and reassembled it. Here are some pictures of the finished product. pic, pic, pic. This close-up of the lettering was taken a little later.

It works really well but predictably really needs to be anchored down. I made a carrier board, so I could secure the whole thing in the end vise on the Yuppie Workbench. Here's the bottom of the carrier board. The shoot board screws to it from above. The bottom has supports that clamp into the end vise on the Yuppie Workbench. The supports have UHMD plastic slides on the bottom so that it can be scooted around on the floor.

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BenchCrafted Yuppie Workbench II

July 2020
When we moved the exercise equipment out of the room in the basement I got an area to expand my shop. I moved the Hilton chest and Bob Soule's Duncan Phyfe chest in there. I added a glass fronted display cabinet and then decided I had enough room for a smallish work bench. Initially I was thinking of a hand-tool-only area and a traditional bench with square dogs and wooden vise screws. When I got into planning the bench I quickly gave up on the wooden bench dogs after reading a discussion about their limitation regarding irregular objects and the difficulty making them. The wooden vise/screws went the same way after reading about warpage, sagging, and not being particularly suited to being hammered upon.

So now the plan is a Roubo style split-top design with round dogs and a couple hold fasts. The vises will be leg and tail vises by BenchCrafted. These are fancy vises and are pretty high end hence the designation 'Yuppie Work Bench II'. Did I mention the bench will be made using solid cherry!

I cut up a pile of planks to make the glue-ups for the two-piece bench top. There are lots of reasons for the split top Roubo design. Not the least of which is the weight of the individual top pieces. Most of the cherry I have is in the 1-inch to 1 1/2-inch so I needed to make a lot of glue-ups for the legs, stretchers, tops, vise chop, deadman, etc. Here's a picture of a bunch of the blanks.

The BenchCrafted tail vise requires a specially sized slot to run in. The slot had to be worked into the glue-up for the top. The two top sections were very heavy and had to be moved very carefully. I weighed one section at 84 pounds. Hernia surgery is not a lot of fun, I've had a few! They make a nice work bench extension, though. Here's the layout with the tail vise hardware. Eventually I drag out enough tools until I still run out of room.

The leg vise, and its associated leg are pretty heavy. The manufacturer recommends working the leg vise before the leg is assembled into the bench. Here's the leg and the leg vise installed. Most leg vises have a mechanical adjustment of some sort to keep the jaws parallel. This leg vise uses a criss cross assembly to keep the jaws parallel.

There are a lot of mortises and tenons to be cut to hold this thing together. Here are a few pic, pic, pictures. Here's the finished leg vise chop. Here are the pieces for the end sections ready for glue-up. The horizontal members are fitted into mortises and held with long bolts through the leg members. It's a little disconcerting to slice up these kinds of boards to make a work bench. This board is 20-inches wide. The tops sections engage the tenons protruding from the base. They are cut carefully so that the bench top edges align properly with the legs. The mortise maintains alignment and a pair of lag screws holds the top in place (like it is going to go anywhere, eh?) Here's the bench with most of its pieces. The deadman slides between a runner in the bottom and a groove in the top.

November 20, 2020
I put 3 coats of solvent based pre-cat lacquer on the pieces before assembly. The horizontal pieces are held in place with 1/2 inch machine bolts that are 8-inches long. Here's a picture of the open mortise and tenon along with the big bolt and barrel nut. Here is the whole bench assembled. The bench is functional but not yet finished. I need to make and install plugs for all the bolt holes, 16 for the ends of the bench tops and 4 in the base stretchers. I also have to make the filler for between the two bench top slabs.

January 11, 2021
The bench is finished. I made the divider that goes between the two bench top sections. Mostly it stays level with the bnech top. Lift it and slide it to the right and it becomes a bench stop. It's good for holding tools, too. The plugs have been inserted in the bolt holes. I've added some shelving above the bench. I had to adjust the length of the leg vise chop and glue on the 'crubber'. Yeah, crubber. That is what they called the material provided for the vises faces. It is a mix of chopped up cork and rubber. Anyway, bench is done... onward and upward!

Quick Index

Veneered Boxes

July 23, 2021
I decided to try to use up some of the very large pile of various veneers I have. I cut up all the generally reject wood that has been sitting around in the shop. The wood consisted of a couple left-over planks of walnut and a couple pieces of cherry that were mostly sap wood and the outside edges of the log. I Re-sawed all this stuff to 3/8 to 1/2 inch thickness. If all this wood were usable there would be enough for 20 boxes or more.

Sept 19, 2021
I have cut up and worked the wood described above. I wound up with 16 recipe boxes, 5 wine boxes, and 26 beer boxes. Plus I cut up some MDF to make two drink stands. As of this date the drink stands are finished and in use. Here is what the drink stands look like. Here's the pair of them. The 16 recipe boxes are complete with all hardware installed and are ready to be taken apart, finish sanded and then sprayed. Here are the rest of the boxes. There is an extra odd-sized box in the picture. Here is the cut-up veneer for the rest of the boxes. Here's the usual pictures of spraying the recipe boxes. Here's another. Here's the finished set of sixteen assembled and done!

December 1, 2021
All the boxes are finished, completed; 6 recipe boxes, 26 beer boxes, plus one odd ball, and 5 wine boxes. Handling the 54 pieces while spraying the beer boxes made for a pretty intense work day. Five coats on each piece, 2 coats inside, 3 coats outside.

I took some time to resurrect this old puzzle box project. I made some out of ziricote, and I made some out of cocobolo. Here's the bunch of those. I also made three puzzles out of Ebony and (faux) Ivory. Those are the prettiest!

Back at the boxes, here are pictures of the finished beer boxes, pic, pic, pic. I bought a bunch of threaded brass balls and made little feet for the beer boxes. Some are brass, some are black, and some are nickel plated. The five wine boxes came out well, too.