debor054

My second project, a small toolbox / bench tool organiser. This little project started as an excuse for me to try my hand at mortise & tenon joints and finger (box) joints. Again it's made from scraps of Pine I had laying around. While it's pretty small, it serves to keep all my most frequently used things such as squares, tape measure, marking knife & gauges, bradawl and chisels close to hand. Its also big enough to hold my bench backsaws. All in all I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out in terms of the joints. My one niggle is the glue line along the bottom. I am using Titebond polyurethane expanding foam glue which is a nightmare to use and impossible to get off your hands (even with nail varnish remover). I guess I should have put a proper (glue-less) base on the box using grooves instead of getting lazy and simply glueing and screwing on a bottom panel. Oh well... It served as a good learning experience and the box will be handy.

Just a quick post while I'm waiting for some glue to dry... While making my small bedside table I quickly came to realise that I was spending most of my time making my inaccurate cuts to length correct by planing the end grain with a block plane. My old steel backed backsaw is slightly bent, almost blunt and in need of a sharpen, not to mention a slightly loose handle. This combined with my natural inability to saw straight meant a lot of wasted time, especially as I was 'leaving the marking lines and then some' just incase the cut went wrong. Now don't get me wrong, I know I could spend some time sharpening the saw etc but what better excuse than to splurge on some shiny new toys? I have to say a big 'thankyou' to my girlfriend for my late Birthday presents... My new 'bling bling' Lie Nielson 14ppi Crosscut Carcass Saw & 15ppi Thin Plate Rip Dovetail Saw has made cutting to size a breeze. I can choose to 'split the line' or leave it intac...

Recently my girlfriend's mum invited me to look through her shed for any tools that might be of use in my new woodworking hobby. A lot of the tools I found were suffering from rust and have not been used (or even touched) for around 18 years. Here are a few of the tools I am either in the process of cleaning up or have cleaned up and pressed back into service once again. Roll of 12 Auger bits Ridgway Large Expanding Bit Set 3/8" - 3" Large Yankee Push Screwdriver Small Ratchet Screwdriver Marking Gauge Small Hammer Stanley 102 Block Plane Rapier Spokeshave 2 x Egg Beater Drills (One Stanley the other a Millers Falls?) Spinney Bailey No#4 Bench Plane - I may set this up as a 'Scrub Plane' 2 x Sureform (Straight & Curved) Planes Wooden (Shoulder?) Plane. There were also three 'Warranted Superior' Panel saws which I counted as: 5tpi, 8tpi & 10tpi all filed rip. I de-rusted the blades, sanded and oiled the wooden handles and have sent them off along wi...

At last I have a 'workshop' to play in! ... After finally getting the spare room decorated, I have now 'moved my tools in' and made some wood shavings. Tool storage is pretty basic at the moment but I hope to either build a tool chest or wall cabinet at some point. As you can see from the photo below, the new bench is a nice size for such a small room and fits my needs fine as a beginning wood worker. As expected, the bench does try to 'run away from me' when planing heavily but it's not to bad if I butt it against one of the walls and my tools are sharp. It's also too high for planing, although the perfect height for cutting, etc, so I might shorten the legs a little in time to get more weight down over the plane. We'll see it's early days... Aside from a bench hook and generally playing around with scraps of wood, this small 'bedside table' is the first thing I have ever made out of wood in my life! All done using hand tools only and no...

Happy Birthday to me ... !!! As a birthday treat to myself I have purchased a few more goodies from Axminster tools. So what are we looking at here: Stanley No#6 Fore Plane DMT Diamond Stones Veritas MkII Honing Guide Joseph Marples Mortice & Marking Gauge Axminster Marking Gauge Joseph Marples 75mm Square and lastly just out of shot a Japanese Marking knife . Unfortunately, the room I will be setting up as a workshop isn't ready and has to be decorated first (sometime next week), so until then I have been sharpening tools and messing about with offcuts of wood etc. The DMT Stones and Veritas honing guide are amazing and I can sharpen chisels and plane blades to razor sharpness very quickly. The 2 3/8" No#6 Plane Blade is a bit awkward to sharpen on the 2" wide stones but I managed fine. More soon ...