For those of you that don’t follow the Lost Art Press blog, Christopher Schwarz just wrote about some new Warrington hammers Lie-Nielsen will be producing. Have a look at Chris’s post, it’s exciting news. I’ve been looking for some quality hammers, and I haven’t had the best luck finding them. On eBay, most are in pretty sad shape, and the nice ones are typically over priced. I love that toolmakers are continually coming out with new tools. Hand tool users are living in a very exciting time.
Hand Tool Karma
December 6, 2008 By Leave a Comment
Is there something called Hand Tool Karma? I’ve been working on some Shaker Silverware Trays to give away for Christmas. My weekends have been busy lately and I haven’t had had much time to work on my project. I was going to use my new Veritas Plow Plane, to make the grove for the bottom of the tray. It worked very nicely for the through groves, but I was having difficulties with the stop groves on the ends. I’ll go into that move later, but though I would just knock out the groves with my router.
I got everything set up on the router table, and cut the first couple of groves. I was in the middle of one of the other groves and my router turns off. I thought what the heck? I flipped the power switch off and on and nothing. I’ve never tripped a breaker before with my router, and it was only a shallow ¼” grove. Sure enough the breaker tripped. I gave the router and cord a quick once over, and scratched my head for a while. Flipped the router back on and I saw sparks this time!! I’m trying to keep this a G-rated blog, but some really bad words came out of my mouth!
I pulled the router out from under the table and discovered that one of the caps that holds the brushes in had come off. Sorry for the blurry picture.
When the brush came out it contacted the metal case of the router and shorted out. You might just be able to make the burn marks on the router.
I looked all over the shop floor for the cap, and finally found it under my bandsaw base. I was able to get the brush back in and the cap back on. I also checked the other cap and it was loose too! I never thought about checking these caps before. You might want to check yours.
I was worried I had done some real damage to my router, but I plugged it and powered it up. I may have dodged a bullet on this one, it spun up and worked fine for the rest of the groves.
Is there Hand Tool Karma, I think so!
New Tool – Plow Plane
October 20, 2008 By Leave a Comment
This last weekend I was treated to the early delivery of a new plane I ordered. I have a couple projects coming up where I need to cut groves for the bottoms of drawers and the like. Wanting to do more with hand planes, I’ve been looking at Plow Planes. I looked at come “older” Stanleys, but I’m not into restoring planes at this time. There aren’t too many companies out there making Plow Planes at this time, but more are starting to show up. I choose to go with the Veritas Small Plow Plane from www.leevalley.com. At this time I only got the 1/4″ blade, it’s what I need for my upcoming projects.
I had a chance to try this plane out at a woodworking show recently, and to be honest I wasn’t really impressed with it. Although looking back, I have to say the condition in which I got to use the tool wasn’t ideal. After reading countless positive reviews by other woodworkers, I knew I hadn’t given the tool a fair chance. I knew Lee Valley had great customer service, and if I really didn’t care for it after giving it a try, I could return it.
Well, I don’t think I’ll be sending it back. It worked much better in my shop, after a good sharpening of the blade. The plane cut really smooth. It was easy to set up. It feels comfortable in your hand. The blade adjustment is very easy. The depth gauge is easy to set and stays in place.
The only think I will say against the plane, is that it feels a little “tippy”. I’ve never used a Plow Plane before, so it might just be me getting used it. The fence seems a little small in “width”, but is plenty long enough. You can add an auxiliary fence to it, and I will most likely do this for some added support.
Bandsaw Weekend
October 5, 2008 By 1 Comment
I did a quick tire change on the bandsaw this weekend and tested out the new bandsaw blade I ordered. The tire change went fast without any problems. It was then onto testing this new killer blade.
Resaw King bandsaw blade
The bandsaw blades I’ve been using lately have been Wood Slicer blades. I’ve been really happy with these blades. They cut pretty fast and pretty smooth. I knew even with the “nice” cut I was getting, there was going to be a lot of work cleaning up the cut surface. Recently I was listening to Wood Talk Online, and Mark was talking about a new blade he was testing. It was the Resaw King from Laguna Tools. He commented on the smoothness and quality of cut he got with this blade. He also said it was pretty expensive and he was right. I thought if the blade worked as well as advertised, it could save me a lot of time during the surface clean up.
There are some nice videos on Laguna’s web site, you might wont the check them out if you are considering one these blades.
The first thing you will notice about this blade, it’s not the standard hocked toothed blade you are used to seeing. It really looks like a “table saw” blade, but stretched out into a bandsaw blade.
A positive thing about this blade is that it can be sent back to be resharpened. It helped me justify the initial cash outlay, which for me was about $180. My bandsaw can support up to a ¾” blade, so I got a 105” – ¾” Resaw King.
While on Laguna’s site, I watched some of their other videos. In the section on their bandsaws, one of the demonstrations was on setting your fence for blade drift. It was brilliant and the simplest procedure I had ever seen. I had to see if it really worked.
Setting your fence for blade drift
First, find a nice piece of stock a couple inches thick. Make sure the edge that will ride against the fence is flat and square. Make your first cut about a 1″ in from the outside edge. The cut should be a couple inches deep. Turn off the bandsaw. Observe the blade position in the cut.
In my case the blade was resting up against the right side of the cut, as you looked at from the cut side. The goal is to get the blade in the center of the saw curf. I opened the fence up slightly and did another test cut.
I was a little conservative on my first adjustment. Another slight tweak, and I got it on my second try.
This really is the simplest and quickest method I’ve ever used. Now, the real test was going to be how it cuts.
Testing the blade
Here’s an example of a resaw cut I did last weekend using my Wood Slicer blade. It’s what I’m used to getting on my bandsaw and until now I thought it was a pretty nice cut.
Here’s an example of the quality of cut I get with the Resaw King blade.
You can just make out some very light “ribs” left by the blade. It is the cleanest and smoothest cut I have ever seen on a bandsaw. Laguna says they are trying to achieve table saw quality cuts on their bandsaws. I think I’m about 95% there with my bandsaw. I suspect you can get that quality of cut, on one of their saws with this blade. I on the other hand have a Grizzly 14” bandsaw, which is working fine for me now. Although, I look forward to the day I can move up to a higher quality and larger bandsaw.
I was so impressed with the quality of cut, I recut the laminates for the apron. The surfaces were so smooth, I decide to try the glue up without even cleaning up the cut surfaces. The apron is curing in the form and will be ready for a closer look tomorrow, or this next weekend.
Best In The West
August 13, 2008 By 2 Comments
Last weekend a woodworking buddy and I headed off to the Best In The West – Tool Extravaganza. This is a tool collectors gathering hosted by the Pacific Northwest Tool Collectors (PNTC). The event only happens every other year and moves between Washington and Oregon. It’s a 4-day event but we only went on Saturday, for the main tool sale and auction. Even though I don’t consider myself a collector, it was a lot fun.
I went there looking for some good user tools, but ended up walking away without buying anything. For me I was quite overwhelmed and really couldn’t make up my mind. I really haven’t done much research on older tools, so I really wasn’t sure what I was looking at. I could tell the different between the user tools and the collectable tools. The collectable tools were always in the hundreds and thousands of dollars range! I went looking for hammers, saws and eggbeater style hand drills, but for some reason those were in short supply. Maybe those aren’t as collectable as other tools.
I always knew woodworkers and now tool collectors are some of the nicest people. The people at this event lived up to this reputation. Everyone was very nice and answered all the questions of a couple newbies.
The other part of the event was the tool collection displays. This is worth the trip even if you don’t buy anything. These collections were amazing, I should have spent more time over there. I snapped a few pictures, but the pictures really don’t do them justice. If you ever have a chance to go to an event like this, I highly recommend it.
At the end of the day, there was a dinner and live auction. At part of the dinner you had a choice to purchase a “favor”. The favor cost $50 but was well worth it. For each event PNTC commissions a one of a kind tool to be made. When we signed up we saw some of the past favors, and they were incredible. So, we said we were going to get this year’s favor.
While walking around we found a toolmaker named Christopher Laarman. He makes these amazing Finger Planes. While talking to him, we found out he was the guy who made this years favor. What the favor is going to be, is always a big secret. There was no way he was going to tell us what he made. We both joked how cool it would be if we got one of those Finger Planes! We both knew it was out of the question, because some of his planes were going for over $300. Wow, were we surprised when we opened the favor! It was one of his planes. It wasn’t quite as refined as some of his other planes, but it is a beautiful example of craftsmanship.
As I stated before, I’m not a collector. I can get excited about seeing a MIB old plane that has never been used or hardly touched. At the same time, I’m a little sad that the tool never gotten to live out it’s potential as a tool. So, that means my little Finger Plane will be taken out of its box and tuned up and put to use! It’s a good thing those tools in their pristine original boxes are so expensive, otherwise I might let some of them free ☺!
