11/11/2013 – I made this screwdriver to keep with my handplanes.
I used a small piece of plane blade originating from a blade that used to be on one of my father’s old Stanley’s. The handle was turned from a piece of beech left over from all the wooden planes I built in 2013.
The shape of the handle and the short blade combines to created a very comfortable screw driver for adjusting capscrews, chipbreakers and my sliding deadman.
11/11/2013 – Just before I finally left my shop on Sunday evening, I took some photos of how it looks at the end of 2013. Hopefully this type of post will help me to see at some point in future that I am actually making progress. Since the shop tour photos of 2011, things changed quite a bit.
This first photo shows what is currently on my bench. At the back on the right hand side is the shooting plane I am working on. So far (excluding the shooting plane) I have managed to build 7 wooden planes during 2013. They are a Petite Smoother, a Jack Plane, a Fore Plane, a Jointer, a Scrub Plane, a Shoulder Plane and a Flush Plane. Here is a link to a gallery of photos of these planes http://www.jenesaisquoiwoodworking.com/shop-made-wooden-plane-show-off/ I also wrote a post on how I built each of these which you will find under the category “Handtools”.
In the front left, you can see the Witpeer stock ready to become file handles. Behind that is an area set up to treat the handles with tung oil and Wooddock as they are turned. I am about half way with this project.
My main tool cabinet (by lack of a better word) has experienced several changes this year. Some tools were added (most notably the Proletarian sanding contrivances), some were moved (ie the files and chisels) and some moved to the opposite side of the bench (ie the planes and drill bits). I finally arranged easy access for all my small Bessey F-style clamps (last picture), which has made a huge difference to my efficiency. You can read more about this in the following post http://www.jenesaisquoiwoodworking.com/stingy-storage-ideas/
As I said my planes moved across the bench to were I do most of my hand planing.
This is the area that I want to target next year. The bandsaw needs to move around the corner towards the left, while being lined up (height-wise) with the radial arm saw and the planer. This will created the space for my proper beech Holtzapffel bench, which will be my number one priority to build in 2014. The drill press might also move a bit to the right were the Kershout boards are standing up against the wall.
It is in this channel where I plan to line up the three mentioned power tools.
The green bench in the corner will move down to the shed where my wood will be store by next year. If you want to read more about that project see this post http://www.jenesaisquoiwoodworking.com/the-lumbering-odyssey/
My idea is to set up a rough lumber processing plant (probably a bit too dramatic of a description but anyway) down there in the shed. Then I will be able to cope with the tools and setup in this shop in terms of milling, shaping and cutting the tamer wood from the mentioned plant. Watch this space.
The future wood storage and rough processing shed.
These are makeshift wood storing hooks hanging from the rafters. I use this to get wood acclimatized to the shop, while trying to get a better arrangement in place, which is part of the project mentioned above. These hooks will hopefully disappear once the majority of my wood is in the shed, which will enable me to acclimatize wood in the garage that is currently housing the wood.
I thought it would also be a good idea to list the projects that I have managed to complete in 2013, while it is still relatively fresh in my mind.
The Legvise was finished in 2013 although I already started on it towards the end of 2012.
http://www.jenesaisquoiwoodworking.com/legvise-with-a-twist-chapter-one/
http://www.jenesaisquoiwoodworking.com/legvise-with-a-twist-chapter-two/
http://www.jenesaisquoiwoodworking.com/legvise-with-a-twist-chapter-three/
http://www.jenesaisquoiwoodworking.com/sliding-deadman-with-a-twist/
A set of six sanding planes (three short and three long) each with a different grit sandpaper
http://www.jenesaisquoiwoodworking.com/proletarian-sanding-contrivances/
http://www.jenesaisquoiwoodworking.com/tamboti-and-witels-marking-knives/
http://www.jenesaisquoiwoodworking.com/apodytes-dimidiata-scratch-awl/
http://www.jenesaisquoiwoodworking.com/another-scratch-awl/
I rehabilitated my father’s old Stanley Bailey no.4 and no.5 handplanes and replaced their blades with brand new Lie-Nielsen blades.
http://www.jenesaisquoiwoodworking.com/old-stanley-bailey-handplane-rehabilitation/
Before
After
Before
After
http://www.jenesaisquoiwoodworking.com/reprobate-sealskin-strop/ (by the way this is by far the most read post on this site, on 12 November 2013 it reached 1000 hits)
http://www.jenesaisquoiwoodworking.com/mallet-mania/
http://www.jenesaisquoiwoodworking.com/plane-hammer/
Tuned my bandsaw and built a bandsaw mitre-sled
http://www.jenesaisquoiwoodworking.com/bandsaw-mitre-sled/
Heaps of file handles (I will probably not finish this project before the end of 2013)
http://www.jenesaisquoiwoodworking.com/file-handle-mania/
http://www.jenesaisquoiwoodworking.com/glue-roller/
http://www.jenesaisquoiwoodworking.com/drill-bit-shelve/
http://www.jenesaisquoiwoodworking.com/sandpaper-storage/
http://www.jenesaisquoiwoodworking.com/card-scraper-holder/
Plane stops of different lengths and four bench hooks
Three similar jigs for routing dados, each for a different diameter dado bit
Not sure what this thing is called but it stops your vise from racking.
Sharpening jig based on a design by Deneb Puchalski (see the Lie-Nielsen site for a pdf version of his jig)
http://www.jenesaisquoiwoodworking.com/my-version-of-denebs-sharpening-jig/
A set of shop made trisquares.
Rehabilitation of this egg beater drill.
11/11/2013 – This weekend I finally managed to provide the below burnisher that came with a skinning knife I used in The Land of the Long White Cloud with a handle.
I simply drilled a hole in the handle and stuck the burnisher in there with a liberal supply of epoxy.
Next I did the same with a short piece of copper pipe to create an easy way of hanging the burnisher.
Once the epoxy was set I tidied up the protruding pipe, chamfered the sharp inside edges, …
… treated the handle with tung oil and Wooddock … and Bob’s your Uncle.
I use this burnisher predominantly to created a bur on the cutting edge of my Lie-Nielsen card scrapers.
11/11/2013 – Last week I took some of the beech left over from my plane building phase, laminated two bits and used it to turn some handles.
The idea was to turn a handle of similar design for a second scratch awl and one for a chipbreaker/capscrew screwdriver.
This is the handle that became the alternative scratch awl. I wanted an awl that is designed to make holes for accurate drilling as apposed to scratching/scribing lines at which my first shop made awl excels.
The punch I used was epoxied, tapped in and then clamped in position by the tight fitting ferrule.
I stuck the awl in the drill press to tidy up the copper with sandpaper.
After a treatment with tung oil and Wooddock it is posing with it’s brothers and sisters. These are all shop made marking tools.
28/10/2013 – As you might have noticed, my files recently found new accommodation. Now I want to replace their handles with shop made ones. For this task I found the Witpeer board as pictured below.
The board was a bit wavy so the first step was to chop it up into shorter bits. These were then ripped on my bandsaw into strips ideal for turning handles. I used the whole board for this purpose which would give me quite a few more handles than what I need at present, but I thought that I would just make heaps so all the handles look the same when I buy more files in future.
Before turning any handles I switched lathes as the grey one developed a wobble and is therefore now ear-taged to become a disc sander.
This is the first set of handles I turned and realised in the process that the stock is too thin to to turn such a long piece. I will turn them individually from now on.
In the pictures below you can see the process of tapping the ferrule over the end of the handle. The leading edge of the copper ferrule is chamfered in order to slide without digging into the wood which was turned to be ever so slightly bigger than the inside diameter of the ferrule. I first lubricate the wood and inside of the ferrule with epoxy, then tap the ferrule over by hitting the back of the handle with my dead-blow mallet, while the ferrule is pushed firmly against the bench hook. I wrote an entire post on how I made this and a number of other mallets. The post is titled “Mallet Mania”.
The design of the handle is my interpretation of the Lie-Nielsen handles made specifically for the Auriou rasps they sell. This design feels comfortable in the hand and gives me several different grip options while doing different filing tasks.
I hope to be able to turn the bulk of the handles this weekend and will update the post with the result of my efforts next week.
3/11/2013 – On Saturday I turned 5 more of the large handles and furnished them with ferrules.
On Sunday I decided to see how many of each size handle I actually need.
Then I took the stock that was cut for the handles and marked out the different handles to correspond to the the numbers needed of each size. For this task I used the ruler on my assembly table with the ruler stop pictured. It is as simple as butting the stock against the ruler and marking the different lengths with a pencil and square. I will write a short post on how this stop was made in the next day or so. You will find a whole series of posts on how I built the assembly table under the category “bench”.
Here are the fruits of my labor ready for the next step.
As I explained already, it became apparent that one can only turn one or at most two handles from a length of stock before it becomes wobbly. I assume this is because it is too thin. I therefore had to shorten the stock that was prepared last weekend. I took this opportunity to get plenty of hand sawing practice. As you can see, my Lie-Nielsen carcass saw and shop made mitre box came in handy.
Then came the prep work for the lathe. I used my shop made Dead-blow mallet (http://www.jenesaisquoiwoodworking.com/mallet-mania/) and scratch awl (http://www.jenesaisquoiwoodworking.com/apodytes-dimidiata-scratch-awl/) together with a Lee Valley centre finder for this purpose.
In the pictures below you can see how my medium sized handle turned out. This would become the handle for the bulk of my files. In the second picture you can compare it with the large handle and in the last one with the small handle.
Then came the small handle.
After a hour or so of turning, I needed to do something else. So I seated four large files. In order to know which file to grab devised a code which goes on the heel of the handle. In the first picture you will see the halve round shape with XL inside. This means it is a halve round extra large file. The SC-S refers to it’s double cut smooth grit. The second photo shows a square shaped extra large double cut bastard grit file. Hope you get the idea.
Four extra large files, seated with the information on the heel of the handle.
Here they are after a coat of tung oil.
11/11/2013 – During the past week I continued to turn, seat ferrules, oil and seat these handles.
Here you can see how the Witpeer handles are slowly replacing the horrible plastic ones.
2/2/2014 – This weekend I made a concerted effort to finish the file handle project. In the pictures you can see the last crop being processed.
