22/9/2013 – My next venture into the tool building phase of my journey, will be an attempt to build four each of four different sized Hand Screws with je ne sais quoi. The plan is to build sizes 3/0 (6″ jaw), 0 (8″ jaw), 2 (12″ jaw), and 4 (16″ jaw). I am slowly doing research on the different materials I could acquire in this part of the world, in order to build these beauties from scratch. So far it looks like I might go with brass for the hardware side of things. I plan to make the insert nut and threaded rod myself from the brass blanks.

I am still spending most of my shop time finishing the two planes (Jointer and Shooting Plane), but have started on the preparation of the Assegaai ear-tagged for the jaws. The board on the right was ripped and planed with the help of my two apprentice cabinetmakers Didier and Connor about six weeks ago. It then rested in the shop until this weekend.

 

Here you can see them hard at work during the ripping process.

After that they cleaned the strips with wire brushes before we fed them to the thicknesser.

Here they are busy rescuing the a strip after it passed through the thicknesser.

A last picture before they went on a six week holiday.

Yesterday I welcomed them back while being a bit bored with my plane-building-activities by using one of the finished planes (in this case the Fore Plane http://www.jenesaisquoiwoodworking.com/building-a-wooden-fore-plane/) to prepare the surfaces for lamination.

It is good habit to get everything in place before opening the glue. My glue roller came into it’s own for this glue-up. You will find an entire post on how I built the glue roller under the hand tool category on this site.

Once liberated from the clamp shackles, I will process the assegaai to resemble jaws.