Category Archives: Shop storage

Cape Yellow Wood Tool Chest Journey

09/06/2016 Gerhard Marx 13 Comments

7/6/2016

Thanking Gerhard once again for opening up his website to woodworking friends and Toolgaloots. What follows is my Cape Yellow wood tool chests’ journey – and some more!

Not surprisingly, not very long after I developed the fatal fascination/affinity for old tools, I realized that these restored things of beauty can’t forever reside wrapped in pieces of cloth, all around the shop. No, they needed a nice little tool chest/enclosure, a wooden one, not plastic, not that I had that many old woodworking hand tools at that stage! Included amongst the antique restored tools was a Lie Nielsen dovetail (just missed the Independence era when I bought it) and a set of octagonal Boxwood handled Robert Sorby chisels. Otherwise, the majority of the tools were antique (another “less vintage” set of tools was kept elsewhere).

So, off I went and built a little chest out of the available wood I had, 12mm plywood….. By the way, the chest is sitting on a Kiaat wood (Pterocarpus Angolensis also called Bloodwood, Mukwa, Dolfhout) 8 chair dining set made about 40 years ago by Kavango residents in the Northern Namibia bushveldt. Having no electricity, the logs used to be cut in a saw pit (one guy on top and the other at the bottom of the pit) and the resulting planks then left upright against trees to dry. The finer “kilning” details I know not! Do they frequently turn it, how come it doesn’t warp and twist??!! I’ve heard that it tends to shrink very little from its green state, that perhaps being the reason. Never seen them stacked and stickered, but must have been! These bush artists used to make beautiful furniture, this set an example using just saws, jack planes and for the carved bits, little self made axes (with astounding accuracy and dexterity) and homemade knives, finishing by sanding it (with sanding paper!!). Just furniture polish was then applied. Working on loose sand as reference, these furniture were often a bit wonky and therefore often needed to be trimmed at home, once bought. This set is 40 years old and going, still using it!

Back to my effort.

Somehow, the dovetails ended up on the side of the little chest….

As the infatuation with old tools grew, the requirement for proper storage increased. At some stage I started to do away with doubles and triples (also read a very sensible Chris Schwarz article on reducing your tools and rather getting to know the one’s you have better), I still continuously strived to upgrade some of the tools that I already had, to more valuable ones. The old Disston D8 and #7 was not good enough, no-no, it had to be a set of #12’s. Since the ordinary wedged-stem plough was hurting my office hands, a Mathieson 9B would be more practical…… Often now, in hindsight (also looking at the costs incurred), I’m in two minds whether to kick myself or not!! Must have been the “collector” part in me (but does it mean I’m an official ToolGaloot???). But….. must admit, these tools are “rather nice” to have in your hands, albeit they come at a price (and which took endless times of bidding on eBay because these type of tools demand mostly ridiculous prices). You have to search for “old plough” (with bad pics) instead of “Mathieson 9B”. Also “old rusty wood saw” (with bad pics) instead of “Disston #12”. And then ask questions and hope for honest answers. And so we have all burnt our fingers once (or twice…). But also in hindsight, one should also strive to still keep a balance in your live and your daily responsibilities, because these old tools research, collection, restoration etc etc could become a obsessive beast, consuming all your free time and energy and may just pull you away from your family! Should always be viewed as just a hobby!

So, me being friends with “planning and scheming” started to make drawings en noting down ideas of what I require and would like to have eventually to store the majority of my old tools in. Again, as with my Roubo, not too large, not too small. Collected endless photos of other tool chests and played it off against what I wanted (and space I had). Because of my specific requirements, I didn’t really favour the idea of a large traditional floor standing tool chest. Have a bad back, so I wanted it sitting on a wheeled chest of drawers (with my lathe tools and accessories in the drawers). Furthermore I wanted a drawer to keep my measuring tools and other small items apart from the large tools. Didn’t like the idea of diving into a toolbox in order to access something at the bottom! But all this is purely personal and what works for me! The downside is that it takes more planning in order to cater for the tools hanging down from the top part in order to optimize space available. And because you run the risk of losing real estate for tools just because you want your tools to be a little more accessible and visible, you have to have quite tight tolerances, measuring each tool and plan your drawer and drawer compartment accordingly. I have built-in dividers keeping the chisels in the sides away from the side of the drawer.

Also liked the Seaton idea of some of my saws sitting in the lid (without overstuffing the lid). While the lid arrangement was a practical decision because of my smaller sized tool chest, it also serves a display purpose to me (remember I’m not just a user, I’m a collector-user)! I’m not working in the shop because I have to, no, I’m “playing” in the shop because I want to! “Playing” because I’m still not overly confident in many of the daily woodworking skills required in my cave, but love every step I take to up my knowledge, every new skill I acquire along the way. I suppose I’ll be a student until the day these old hands can’t hold these old tools anymore, just like the old hands that held them before me.

Lets continue now with the chest at last!!? Starting the project in parallel with my Roubo, you’ll notice some of the work was done on the old, metal framed bench (not wonder I struggled to get my panels flat!) Here I was also evaluating my newly acquired Mathieson jack and smoother.

Great timber to work with (also refer to my first post on the Stanley 246 regarding the Cape Yellow wood or Real Yellow wood (Podocarpus Latifolius)

Doing panel tails

Cleaning up

Trying my best with a mitre joint of the skirt…

Doing a very, very delicate balancing act. With a very, very expensive 607 on the oak bottom…..! What we’ll do for a work in progress pic…

Starting to work on the lid.

Panel insert

Decided to use brass detailing because I also have an affinity for Campaign furniture (not that I own any). Also practical to protect the corners, because Cape Yellow wood, although beautifully grained, is a lighter type of wood (just 510kg/m3 and a Janka of 830). Such a nice wood to work with, workability very similar to pine but ten times more beautiful (especially when aged). Bought the brass new and then “antiqued” it (files-sandpaper-ammonia fumes-rub/polish). Examples of the tree stages; new, fumed, final (the fumed one had not been man handled before the process, was just experimenting)

I treated it with a few coats of BLO, polish and finally a polissoir.

Inside the lid:

Top half:

And then the drawer, which is still not finished. Want to make one or two trays that will drop into the drawer to really keep my measuring tools out of harms’ way. Cork or felt bottoms perhaps. And, trying to be extremely clever in an effort to use one piece of plank for the front, bottom of the chest (inclusive of the drawer front), I now have to make a cock bead (or something) for the drawer (in a 17mm thick front), because I’m not satisfied with the 1mm (saw width……) gap on the sides. The top on the drawer engages air tight (i.e. no saw width sized gap!!). Lets not go into the drawer planning detail… Perhaps I’ll just make another drawer when I REALLY have nothing else to do. I’m not as fast and experienced in drawer making as most of you guys! But as they say practice…..

Reviewing my chest now after using it for a while:

I’ll have to re-fit the inside chisel rack because I recently replaced the octagonal Sorby’s with Witherbys (re-handled with Kamassi ie Cape Boxwood).

Also, while its nice to have the Mathieson jack and smoother, and though I’m using them sometimes (the smoother much more often) which is a real kick, it means that my other (very nice and very old) planes (Stanley 4½, 5, 6 and 7) are sitting in a wall mounted cupboard – and gets used more often. As previously mentioned, I’m still trying to reduce my tools but it is very difficult for me to say “bye” to my Mathiesons! Bit of a dilemma.

Furthermore, I have replaced the very nice tough looking cast iron “Campaign like” handles that I bought via eBay (which snapped first time I tried it out) with brass Campaign handles from Whitechapel. Still don’t trust these handles, even though they’re brass…..

The lid holding chains, even though they may be appealing, are not very practical. Might be looking at a simpler lid stay ala Chris Schwarz, just not as ugly (sorry Chris)!! Also have to take into consideration that I have to remove my saws from the lid without interference. Speaking about the lid, I’ll have to revisit the saw till as well, because while removing a saw is quick, but to put it away takes double the time and more care, not a simple out and back in, especially the Disston #12. I have to guide the saw a bit. Tried to design and built too tightly with too close tolerances. But, currently it works, so why change something that works!!

Although I achieved what I wanted with this chest in that it is unique as well as suit my personal requirements (also trying to built heirlooms), perhaps I should have given more attention to ratios, like in Golden ratios… Even if I increased the width by an inch or two, it would have looked less “upright”. But then it would have taken space away from the chest of drawer top, in front of the tool chest, which was a design requirement of mine. But given me more space inside the chest. Should have sacrificed that outside space….. Eish.

Regards

Frank Bartlett

Cape Town

Quick projects, Shop aids, Shop storage

The hovering skeleton chest

17/03/2015 Gerhard Marx Leave a comment

16/3/2015

You’ve heard of the Anarchist’s tool chest and the Dutch tool chest, which seems to be very much part of the prevailing woodworking vernacular. I would like to introduce the so called hovering skeleton chest. It is especially useful to woodworkers who decides to approach their bench from all sides, rather than the more popular custom of shoving it up against a wall. This is not a new idea as you can see from this close-up of plate 11 (AJ Roubo’s L’Art du Menuisier). Neither is the hovering skeleton chest (though possibly under a different name) a new idea, as a similar device is often employed in a kitchen to hang pots and pans from.

Here you can see the wife helping me to hang the contraption …

… after which I stocked it with essential tools needed at the bench.

Day to day, Quick projects, Shop storage, Tool acquisitions

Chisel storage

20/03/2014 Gerhard Marx Leave a comment

17/3/2014

On Saturday I briefly interrupted my bench-building-activities in order to ensure that my precious new Lie-Nielsen bevel-edge chisels receive a warm welcome and safe haven right from the start of our (hopefully) long and prosperous relationship. I ordered these chisels back in November 2013, but the tool works at Lie-Nielsen were out of stock and in the process of crafting new ones. As far as what I can gather they had a few hiccups in this process, which meant that the chisels only arrived on 10/3/2014. The guys and gals at Lie-Nielsen leave no stone unturned when it comes to their commitment to ensure the absolute highest quality, which was again quite obvious when I unpacked these heirlooms.

An example of the attention to detail is how the backs of these chisels have been perfectly flattened by hand honing. This means that you have the absolute minimum preparation honing to do before you go mental with it on a piece of timber.

Just look at these stunning Hornbeam handles. I plan to turn my own longer handles for when I am using the chisels for paring.

Here you can see how I very quickly built a rudimentary chisel dwelling from a piece of scrap Swarthout. Swarthout (Acacia melanoxylon and known as Australian Blackwood, Sally Wattle or Tasmanian Blackwood) originates from Australia (surprisingly) as a species, but this particular piece is South African by birth as it spent many years enjoying the tranquility of the rain forests of the Garden Route.

I decided that the quickest way to keep the chisels sitting stable and upright (as the three smallest chisels are top heavy and therefore tends to attempt acrobatics in it’s dwelling) was to whack dowels through the living room.

Together with the dowels, a small notch on the inside of the side walls where each chisel’s socket rests, does a great job of keeping each chisel proud and upright.

At this stage I left the dwelling as is, but might add a base once my bench is finished, because it might be useful to grab the who set and stick it on the bench next to you while doing dovetails or mortises. For now it will be supported by two storage containers on either side of it in my tool rack.

Quick projects, Shop storage

File accommodation

31/10/2013 Gerhard Marx Leave a comment

28/10/2013 – Over the past year I have realised how useful a tool the file is. During my plane building phase, which took up almost all of my shop time over the past 6 months the file became a real asset. It shaped the totes and created perfect stopped chamfers.

The way my files were stored until the weekend frustrated me with a vengeance. It was a quick fix when I first started setting-up shop, but not really doing the job anymore. In the picture below you can see this first attempt at storing them. They frequently fell out of their handles and ended up banging against each other when I tried to grab one or return it.

I then came up with the following plan. A small space became available when I moved my planes so I thought of building a type of beehive with PVC pipe to store each file in it’s own sheath. I bought 7 x 1 meter lengths of PVC pipe as shown below.

They were then each cut into 2 x 300 mm and 1x 400 mm lengths giving me 7 x 400 mm and 14 x 300 mm pieces. I drilled 4 holes into each end of these piece to accept cable tie.

The pieces were then tied together using cable tie as shown …

… and voila, a filehive. The next step would be to replace these horrible plastic handles with shop made Witpeer handles. I am in the process of documenting that project, so keep an eye out for the post.

Quick projects, Shop storage

Drill bit shelve

22/09/2013 Gerhard Marx Leave a comment

21/9/2013 – After all the arduous plane-building-manoeuvres, I decided to do something different before continuing with the unfinished Jointer and Shooting Plane. My Drill Press is at least 5 meters or so away from my assembly table were all of the drill bits I own lived until this weekend. This resulted in some serious calorie burning, while perambulating the workshop in order to provide the mentioned Drill Press with suitable dentures for it’s multifarious activities.

I therefore decided to build a austere drill bit shelve aimed at limiting my calorie expenditure. In the picture below you can see a collection of the drill bits I own in this particular year of our Lord.

I found an old piece of timber that was salvaged from a sideboard that used to belong to my grandparents. I ripped it into the strips seen below. As it was a tad short of what was needed I ferreted around and found small pieces of Ysterhout and Witpeer to supplement the reclaimed timber.

Here you can see the future arms of my humble elfin shelve.

This picture indicates how I marked out the area to be removed from the set of arm-anchors (or maybe shoulders is a better term).

Before removing it, I first drilled the holes for the screws that would eventually anchor the anchors.

This gave me some much needed practice to saw to a line as you can see. The waste was then removed by chopping it out with a sharp chisel.

With some careful pairing I managed to custom-fit the anchors to the vertical spine of the shelve.

Here you can see the anchors glued and screwed to the spine.

The unexpurgated spine-anchor-assembly was then fixed to the wall next to the Drill Press.

I then attached the multitude of arms, most of which were already armed with it’s own array of drill bits, but some were left barren for future bit acquisitions.

The arms swing towards the front to improve access to the bit of choice.

Just another stunning idea from Je Ne Sais Quoi Woodworking.

Shop storage, Wood

The lumbering odyssey

06/08/2013 Gerhard Marx Leave a comment

In this post I would like to document the long and arduous odyssey of the wood I love so much. As I have explained in previous posts such as “My journey 3”, I feel a special connection with the wood from the area where I grew up. The ancient hardwood forests of the Southern Cape is were I feel most at peace as a person. I love the the smells, the sounds and the cool damp atmosphere.

It is from these forests that I bought small batches of wood with every cent I could spare at the auctions they used to have there. They used to cut trees that are more than 80% dead in their crown and then auctioned them off once per annum. Apparently, even this activity has been discontinued since 2005.

It used to be my favourite day of the year, getting up in the early hours of the morning to prepare for battle. I used to pack some biltong, a few sandwiches, coffee, a bottle of Calitzdorp’s finest port and head off to the forest to tussle with the big furniture companies (with even bigger checkbooks) in order to secure a few logs. Over a period of 2 years (2000 and 2001) while living back in my hometown, I personally attended and bought wood from two of these auctions. On the second of these auctions I was accompanied by my father, my wife and my cousin. We had an absolute ball of a time and secured quite a few logs. My father then attended two more auctions on my behalf while we were living overseas. We managed to accumulate 17 cubic meters of mainly Assegaai, Ysterhout, Witpeer, Harde Peer, Kaapse Swarthout, Kershout and Wit Els.

21/11/2013 – Last night I found this piece of paper documenting what I bought over the mentioned time. My father must have drawn it up in order to get the clearance to transport the wood to Namibia. There are a few mistakes, but at least it reminds me exactly when what was bought.

Once you buy the logs you have to arrange to get them removed from the forest and sawn to your liking. My logs were always processed by a lady by the surname of Botha. In this part of the world Botha is similar Smith in England. My mother’s maiden name was Botha to give you an idea. Anyway, this Botha lady did a great job every single time.

In the pictures below you can get an idea of how these trees look like in the forest. The wood is (in almost every case) extremely hard and takes literally several hundred years to grow to the size needed for furniture making.

The Knysna Loerie is a shy yet glamorous resident of these forests.

The wood then went straight into this garage stacked with spacers (as shown) without any artificial drying. It sat in this exact position for between 6-10 years (depending on the batch) in a coastal environment at a fairly high ambient humidity. As you can see, my father did a great job of stacking the wood for slow yet consistent drying. By the way, you will notice the baby on the wife’s arm. This is my son Didi whom you would have met in earlier posts masquerading as Pai Mei.

Thought you might need a quick reminder of who Pai Mei is. If you are still intrigued watch “Kill Bill”.

At the end of 2011 we bought a house in Windhoek and moved all our earthly belongings 1800km. The wood that was very much stable at the coastal humidity at that time were stacked without pacers as shown below. I decided to stack it this way for two reasons. One, I did not have enough space at the time, and two, in an attempt to slow down the drying process moving from high to low ambient humidity. I also kept a few 20 liter buckets full of water in the garage and did not open it much at all for the first year in a further attempt to slow down the drying. Whether it was as a result of these measures I do not know, but the wood really settled down very well.

I will add the last stage (hopefully) of the odyssey, which should take place in the next few weeks to a month. I am in the process of preparing their longterm home. The idea is to have them under a roof shaded by many big trees in racks sorted by species. Here are the most recent pictures I have of their future home. You can see the carcass of the, soon to be, tin roof hiding under several large trees. It is an area of around 20 square meters in total. I hope to have my prized lumber ‘kickin’ it in the Caribbean’ (so to speak) under this roof by the end of this month.

19/8/2013 – I took these photos on the weekend of the rough structure my father-in-law built in order for me to be able to sort the 9 odd species of wood into separate “boxes”. Now we need to first wrap the area with shade net and black builders plastic in order to keep the sun off the wood and create an optional enclosed area in order to regularly fumigate the stack of wood.

18/10/2013 – A week ago my friend Sigmund and I started to add a sprinkling system to this wood storage facility. You will also notice that all the wooden structures have been painted with a 50/50 mixture of diesel and oil recycled from vehicles, as provided by my mechanic who filled a 20 litre can for me in only 2 days. The idea is that if and when the riverbed vegetation bordering this structure goes up in flames, (as what tends to happen during the last few months prior to the first rain as lit by thunderstorms) I could open one tap and the area around the shed and the wood in it would be soaked in water within minutes.

8/2/2014 – We finally managed to move the lumber into it’s cosy wee home today. Almost the whole family (Didi, the wife and I) and four chaps from Oshiwambo extraction (including our own Tobias) worked very hard for more than 5 hours on the trot to get the job done. We had a system going where the wood first ended up on the saw horses for me to code it according to species. Then it was moved to it’s new home to be stacked in piles according to the species.

Here you can see a ‘Y’ on a board, indicating that it is Ysterhout.

The wife enjoyed her gym session with a vengeance.

Didi got tired of carrying wood and decided to become the event photographer.

At this point we decided to have lunch. As you can see we made good progress.

Lunch came in the form of a proper Africa braai, which Didi managed with quite a bit of encouragement from his mother.

My precious wood finally came to rest in it’s purpose-built shed after 10-14 years (depending on the batch) in various different storage facilities and close to 2000 km of traveling!!

Quick projects, Shop storage

Stingy storage ideas

10/07/2013 Gerhard Marx Leave a comment

For this post I took a few pictures of very basic and quick ways of organising your shop in such a way that the bits and pieces you are looking for are easily accessible at no cost or cheap at worse. I plan to keep adding to this post to create a major opus over time so check in from time to time if you find this useful.

In this picture you can see how an old 20 liter paint bucket becomes the ideal storage for T-channels (used for jig-building predominantly), copper pipe (used to make the ferrule around handtool handles), long strips of wood, treaded rod, etc etc.

In this picture it is obvious how see-through water bottles (2 liter in this case) can become the ideal storage for small bits of scrap wood, which I find very useful to have at hand. It seems that most of the experts advise woodworkers to chuck these away, but I really find a job for most of them. I simply cut the top of the bottle away with a carpet knife and you can probably appreciate how the fact that it is transparent helps to locate the piece you need.

These plastic containers slide onto each other and it is fairly easy to grab the one you want and walk off to the location where you need the contents. If they are available to buy in Namibia, I assume they should be widely available. I store all my steel wood screws and bolts in these. The gibberish that you can not read is Afrikaans, my mother tongue.

In the centre of the picture below you can see another function for smaller see-through water bottles. I store smaller bits of threaded rod, steel, leather, assorted bolts and nuts, etc etc in these.

Empty tins of chopped tomatoes, become ideal storage for for shorter flat strips of wood that resembles spatulas for applying glue or mixing epoxy etc, etc.

The same tins screwed to a vertical part of a storage cabinet with a single screw becomes an easily accessible dwelling for pencils, magic markers, drill bits, etc,etc.

In this picture you can see how my main tool storage “cabinet” looks like. It is actually a slightly modified whip-up of the crates my Dad built to transport the tools he passed on to me, but that is a story for another day. The yellow cary-case for my DeWalt cordless drill is what I want to discuss. It has two handy drawers with dividers at the bottom and a tray with various drill bits that fit on top of these dividers. The problem is that you first need to remove the tray before you can access the dividers area. I took the trays out and positioned them on top of the case. The drawers with dividers now house heaps of drill bits, router bits, and thread cutting bits all within easy reach next to my bench.

In the example below, a scrap piece of pine with holes drilled into it, quickly and parsimoniously took care of 23 different hand tools. In the first picture you can see how I made a few tests with a pair of compasses to work out were to drill a hole with a Forstner bit to leave enough of a gap to accept a wide chisel. As you can see that it accommodates 8 chisels, two marking gauges, two calipers, three dividers, several small triangular files, several awls, a Lie-Nielsen float and a Stanley multi-bit screwdriver. Best is, that there is space for a few more and all that from one crappy piece of pine.

While we are on the topic of scrap pieces of wood, here is another idea to store your F-style clamps in a small area, yet very assessable. I took a piece of scrap plywood and used my Festool Domino to cut 5 mm wide and 15 mm deep slots on one edge. I guess you can achieve the same with a table saw or a router. The domino made it easy because it took one plunge with the 5 mm bit and Bob’s your Uncle. The piece of plywood was then screwed to the front edge of the cabinet’s side. The shafts of my Bessey F-style clamps fit snugly into these slots. Once in the slot one can the slide the clamp to the closed position and BYU.

Quick projects, Shop storage

Sandpaper storage

03/07/2013 Gerhard Marx Leave a comment

This past weekend I finally got round to building a small cabinet to house my sandpaper in an orderly fashion. I used scrap “shutterboard”, which is some really nasty stuff they sell in this part of the world as so called “plywood”. It is more fond of warping than a pig’s tail. To stabilise the shutterboard sides I used Supawood (MDF) for the back, some scrap chipboard for the base and top, and 3 mm hardboard (Masonite) for the dividers.

In the pictures below you can see how I used my Festool QF1400 router with a 3 mm straight bit to cut the dados. Please note the jig resembling a woodworking square used to guide the router. These are very easy to build as you can see. I might do a quick post on how to build them in the near future. You can also see how my assembly table is assisting in holding the work pieces. You can see the F-style clamps and benchdogs both utilising conveniently located dogholes. If you are interested to see how I built this assembly table, find the posts under the category “Bench”.

Here you can see how I used the F-style clamps to fix one of the sides of the cabinet to the side of the table. The f-style clamps slide into the T-channel on the side of the table. I elevated the setup by using my Lie-Nielsen no. 4½ Smoother on it’s side. This is a very useful trick in lots of different situations. In this case I elevated the setup in order to get two scrap pieces of hardboard (Masonite) into the dados (as shown in the next set of pictures) to line the side and back up perfectly before screwing it together.

You can see the scrap piece of hardboard in the first picture and how it helped lining up the dados perfectly in the next picture.

Sliding the dividers in is easy if the dados are well lined up.

Next I glued some Ysterhout edging to hide the chipboard, plywood and dados. This is a point were I disagree with most of the authorities who suggest that one should chuck away every bit of scrap wood left over from previous projects. Maybe it is a cultural thing, being born and raised in Africa, but chucking good wood away is absolutely against my grain (if you excuse the pun). Most of the projects I have written about so far on this blogsite were done utilising cutoffs, including every single part of this sandpaper storage cabinet. The chipboard that was used for the top and bottom of the cabinet were recycled from the crates my father build to transport his woodworking tools over a distance of 1800 km to my current shop. Before that it did duty in umpteen other cameos.

Here you can see the cabinet in it’s final resting place. It sits under the so called “effulgent arm” in order for the mentioned lighting impedimenta to swing past it when necessary. I will write a post on the lighting arm in the near future. If you enlarge the last photo you can see how I indicated on the right hand side which grid of sandpaper goes where. On the top shelve (no unfortunately no booze) I keep the roles of 3M Adhesive-backed Sandpaper.

Quick projects, Shop storage

Card scraper holder

21/06/2013 Gerhard Marx Leave a comment

This is a quick post showing an easy way to store your card scrapers so that they become very accessible. Until I made this high-tech holder my card scrapers were hiding in a leather wallet type of thing. That old saying that goes “out of sight out of mind”, applied and I often forgot that these handy tools would be idea for a particular job.

In the pictures you can see my set of Lie-Nielsen scrapers resting on the leather pouch while dreaming about their new luxurious abode. I took a piece of laminated Asseggai/Witpeer left over from my legvise project and tidied it up somewhat. In order to cut really thin curves to ensure that the scrapers will not wobble too much, I used this as a hand sawing exercise. My Lie-Nielsen carcass saw cuts a very thin curve, which only accepted the thin scrapers not the thicker versions.

My custom made Tamboti marking knife came in handy to mark out the cuts. (Please see www.jenesaisquoiwoodworking.com/tamboti-and-witels-marking-knives if you want to read the post on how I made the marking knife) I left the rest of the block of wood untouched for now. It might become the home of scrapers of different shapes that I still plan to make once I find a suitable piece of steel, like an old saw blade.

You can see how I practiced the skill of sawing to a line using a benchhook.

The results for all to see. It is certainly not perfect but good enough for this purpose and gave me a bit of practice.

As usual the product was finished off with some Ballistol and Bob’s your Uncle.

Je ne sais quoi Woodworking

Category Archives: Shop storage

Cape Yellow Wood Tool Chest Journey

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The hovering skeleton chest

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Chisel storage

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File accommodation

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Drill bit shelve

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The lumbering odyssey

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Stingy storage ideas

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Sandpaper storage

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Card scraper holder

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