Well, I got the big boards narrowed for the door sides. And I didn’t do it with the hand saws after all. Something about wanting to eat meals and stuff made me drop back to a fence and circ saw. The end results are boards that are now 85″ x 6″ x 2″ and weigh almost nothing compared to before. Thank goodness!
The boards for the replacement door for my office have been out in the garage, in a drying pile, for the past couple years, so they are ready. However, in the garage are all the other things that show up for two (ok, two plus) years, and that all had to be gone through and moved and reorganized and… you get the idea. Once I got the pile exposed, I also realized that the cherry I am using was about 9 rows down, below the 8/4 walnut I also had acquired, but is not yet dry. And as a result I had to recruit some assistance from my wife and daughter. Thank goodness they are patient with me!
Got caught off line for a bit – and have some items around the house that I’ve finally decided that I need to update – in addition to my fun stuff. The first item is to replace the office doors to my office at home. Since I moved in, I always planned to do something, but I also found ways to put it off. This past winter the doors apparently have given up, and since they were basically nothing more than quick door implementations I really don’t have a good way to simply repair them.
Another month gone buy, but only a bit of the changes in the shop have been completed. I had classes to teach and a project at work coming up on release, so I didn’t spend as much time cleaning up downstairs – yep the rec room is still way overloaded 🙂
Ok, we tried using a new servo to handle raising and lowering the carriange platform. The original one didn’t have the strength to suspend the drill when it wasn’t being raised, and that made it occasionally just drop. I ordered a stronger servo
I recently 
found a solution for use of the plane stop on my Nicholson workbench. Since the plane stop is a 3×3″ block of maple that just protrudes above the surface, I can basically hold a piece of wood against the stop, and plane directly into the stop. All the pressure (like with bench dogs on my Roubo, etc.) holds the wood in place. What I found was that if I used the doe foot to brace a piece of wood against the wooden plane stop, the width is too wide to help trap that end in place. So, after several months of looking around, and reading Chris S. I found that the next part I wanted to try was a metal edge that would mount flush to the top of the stop, and just protrued a few teeth forward to brace the wood when working it with the does foot. Now keep in mind, that when I use the does foot, I’m really using it to help with traverse planing activity. This pushes across the grain, and is what allowed the stop end to slip a bit. I just received an insert that I picked up on eBay, so I’ve not yet tried it. I will be drilling a vertical hole in the top of one end of the stop (it’s a 5/8″ diameter post) to try this out. Really looking forward to this working and me not having to try to buy and shape a piece of steel!
After a couple weeks of working on the lathe, there seemed to be too much variance in the carriage. Running it back and forth could introduce some change to the cut, some of which was because the bearing shifted a bit on the rod, and some was because the wooden layers would shift as the wear and vibration built up. As a result, Lee took some time to redesign the carriage to use a wider carriage. This created a longer base that would hopefully have less variance.
Work required some travel recently, so I had a limited shop time available. Plus since the “Day Job” has been pretty busy recently time in the shop has been kind of limited. There are 2 primary changes that I need to update, the first is the progress on the sharpening station. The second is the that the pen decorator has been undergoing some additional changes based on a bunch of experimentation Lee has done. We’ve ordered 400 step stepper motors, to replace the 200’s and give finer control over the cutter movement. We also replaced the mechanism that raises the platform with a stepper.
The sharpening station is nearly complete now. I will be updating the pen decorator section soon!
I don’t know how long I will keep doing these, but Dyami Plotke uses them to keep himself motivated — and I think it’s working for me. Much of what I have laid out in my shop is based on how I use things, how I’ve seen recommendations to do layouts, and how the floor in my shop area needs things to be placed. Hope you enjoy!
Ok, not really a favorite tool yet, but it’s just arrived and I plan to put it to use this year as I start work on some windsor chairs. Peter Galbert has this available via Benchcrafted now, so you can order yours if you find that you want a jig to help sharpen your draw knives.
Puisse votre lame être toujours tranchante !
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In which 1snugthejoiner writes about woodworking, publishing, house renovations, cats and Shakespeare (don't worry – that last one is rare).
Woodworking for the fun of it
Woodworking for the fun of it
Woodworking for the fun of it
Brian's Workbench 