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A Wonderful and Free Tool Cabinet Plan!

Taunton Press has been kind enough to give a superb  Fine Woodworking cabinet design away!

 

I think it is great!  Inexpensive, pretty, and able to hold a large collection of tools.   It has great tool visibility and uses a minimum of hardware to make.   Jan Zoltowski has done a brilliant job of refining the basic tool cabinet design.

While I am not a purist, I am a predominantly hand tool user and this is a hand tool cabinet, so I see this  from a hand tool users perspective.   If you look through my blog you will find more than one tool storage design.  You will also see where I have critiqued my own designs fairly severely.   I am apparently never satisfied with my own tool storage.   So don’t take my snarking on this cabinet as a deal breaker.  It is still a great design and with a bit of modification would be a near perfect design.

Continue reading A Wonderful and Free Tool Cabinet Plan!

April 29th, 2012 | Category: Hand Tools, Tool Box, Tools, Tutorials, Woodworking | Leave a comment

A Lifestyle Woodworker – Paul Sellers Blog

I rather love the web site, http://paulsellers.com./

The results of Paul Sellers’ sharpening methods are simple and sound, and the results of  his philosophy are shiny and sharp. Or maybe the other way around. In any case his advice is worthy of study.

One theme you will see over and over in my blog [...]

April 23rd, 2012 | Category: Hand Tools, Tutorials, Woodworking | One comment

A Spherification Rack, A quickly made Fixture from Split Prone Cedar.

Creme De Menthe Caviar on Haagen Dazs Vanilla Ice Creme

 

Sometimes you need to do molecular gastronomy, and you need to do it now!

Spherification is a rather nifty process where you react juice with sodium alginate in it and a calcium containing fluid to make little juice filled gelatin balls.

While adding sodium anything to your diet should always be questioned, sodium alginate has been shown to help lower retention and absorption of lead, mercury, and some other bad stuff. Depending on your situation a little bit every now and then might be quite good for you.   The entire reason I am doing this is to reduce the effect of some of my past exposure to lead and mercury.  I have been a technician for a long time and have ample opportunity for exposure.

There are reasons to fear sodium alginate and reasons to want sodium alginate in your diet. Spherification is one way to get a small amount every now and then.

The basic method of spherification is to drop drips of sodium alginate bearing juice into a bath of calcium chloride. To make a lot of them quickly you need to be able to make a lot of drops quickly. One method is to make a spherification rack.

Continue reading A Spherification Rack, A quickly made Fixture from Split Prone Cedar.

April 18th, 2012 | Category: Chemistry, Hand Tools, Recipes, Tool Making, Tools, Tutorials, Woodworking | Leave a comment

Making Tools with HSS Blanks

 
 
For under $5 you can obtain a set of HSS blanks from Harbor Freight.  Do this at a store, I have been so amazingly and expensively burned by online shopping with HF that I will never ever do that again.  The stores however are great as long as your are careful what you get.
 

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April 16th, 2012 | Category: Hand Tools, Metalworking, Tool Making, Tools, Tutorials | Leave a comment

Remaking a Snap Blade Knife or How to Work Wood that Splits Easily

 

I love mesquite wood. It is beautiful, tough, weather resistant, hard and the worlds most stable wood. It does have a curious weakness, a screw will split it in half despite it being able to survive years as a mallet. The wood can split.

So there are methods you learn, that you would not have to learn on a wood that did not split easily. This project will show a lot of these methods.

Click Knife Tutorial

Snap Blade Knives are handy. I use them to cut things that I would never, ever use a good knife for. If you are going to cut a box open or shape cardboard, score chipboard or cut sandpaper, then a snap blade knife belongs in your tool box. The problem is that even a nice one does not fit in when you are putting it beside fine hand tools. Lee Valley has just offered a new Retractable Japanese Saw in a snap blade knife format. This is a great idea, but it calls for a nicer handle than the typical snap blade knife shows.

Continue reading Remaking a Snap Blade Knife or How to Work Wood that Splits Easily

April 12th, 2012 | Category: Hand Tools, Tool Making, Tools, Tutorials, Woodworking | 2 comments
 
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