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 [...]]]> 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.

Personally, I would strongly advise a few changes but these are things that only a predominately hand tool user would  notice.   I am making a few assumptions here, but the construction of the box and the scene may give us a few details about this author.  He is creative, skilled and careful.  He can examine designs and reduce them to their simple ideals.  His plan however is clearly set up to be built with a tablesaw.  This is one of the clear signs of a predominately power tool user.  The flaws in this cabinet are not ones that a predominantly power tool user would normally notice or care about without them being pointed out.  I would probably pass on pointing this out except for one important detail.  This is a hand tool cabinet.  It is a very nice hand tool cabinet.  I think a review of it by a predominantly hand tool user is a very good idea.

It is a superb cabinet but it needs to be modified for use.  Having spent years trying to cram an entire set of tools in an ordered but tiny space, I am only beginning to learn that tight storage is superseded by  ease of access, removal and replacement.

Some empty space needs to exist in a tool box that will be used.   This is a lesson that I continue to ignore to the detriment of my own tool boxes.    There are many important qualities to a tool box, one of the most important qualities is to be able to take out and replace a tool easily.   In a tool rack close to your work, it is ideal that you can remain organized by easily put tools where they belong instead of laying them on your bench.

With a single central cabinet, you are forced to take a few tools to the work area at times, but since you will be grabbing more than one tool at a time it is even more important that you can take and replace  tools with ease and safety.

Examine the main photo of this cabinet.   With the tools intact, a lot of the tools are way out of reach.   This looks to me like a power tool using, hand tool collector has made a perfect display.  Inexpensive, pretty, and high enough to make a great visual impression.

Since a rechargeable drill and drill press will do almost all of a power tool users screw driving and drilling, those brace bits are best left way up on the left where they can never be reached.  I mean this, since I use a rechargeable drill and drill press regularly.  A brace and bit can do an amazing  job, but for me they remain a specialty tool.

Since the tool box uses table saw finger joints, the odds are good that the dovetail saws are predominantly ornamental.  The difficulty in getting them out, without standing on a stool, is not a problem in this case.  When I look at making this case, the first thing I want to do is convert it to dovetails.  In other words, the way the saws are stored here would not be acceptable to me.

The highly ornamental long chisels on the right are expensive and are not the first ones that I would grab.  Hopefully in this case they will never be used, and hopefully the owner will not tolerate someone putting finger prints on them. Otherwise the screwdrivers above them are set to fall one of the times the chisels are removed and will probably injure a foot or break on the floor.

This cabinet has truing and jack planes out of reach and specialty planes right at hand.  This works for a power tool user that needs hand tools for a few operations, but it would never do for a seriously dedicated hand tool user.

If you removed a few of the tools that are only going to be used once a year, and carefully store them in a tool chest, then you would have more than enough room to make this cabinet safe and convenient.

While I think this design needs a bit of modification, I still think this is the best all purpose, inexpensive, central,  hand tool cabinet design that I have seen to date.    All that and the plans are free!

Bob

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 [...]]]> 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 is the range of tools for a tool kit.  Paul Sellers’ list is another nice one to examine.

Mr. Sellers also has a fairly extensive presence on YouTube. If you want to learn fine and effective methods for using hand tools to craft wood, Paul Sellers is one of the better sources of old school and up to date methods that you can find.

Bob

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 [...]]]>

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.

I needed it done within an hour, so I grabbed some wood that was handy and the right thickness. This particular cedar was a bit prone to splitting, so it has sat there for a while with no purpose, just because it was very pretty wood. Since this project is not going to do any serious load bearing, and it was handy, I grabbed this wood.

So I square my bevel with a 1-2-3 square. It tool longer to set up the camera than it took to square the bevel.

I use another board end and the bevel gauge to draw a base line on all the boards that I will dovetail. I mark with a pencil and with a striking knife. Then I mark dovetails and put squiggles in the area I am going to remove so I don’t make a mistake.

While I am showing methods of preventing splitting, I’m not going to actually teach how to make dovetails here, Paul Sellars does a better job of that than I ever could.
Learn Quick Dovetail Techniques with Paul Sellers

Here I come in with my carving gauge to make the lines a bit deeper where I am going to remove wood. This helps reduce tear out and splitting. I made the holes first using a 1″ forstner. The holes where laid out on a two inch center using a divider/compass to mark intersections.

I use two carving gauges, so that I can limit the cutting action in either direction.

I also like to define the end of a cut. This can reduce splitting.

In the image below, the saw cuts when being pulled down. No deep gouges are needed on this side to prevent tearout and splitting. The other side can get nasty however without a well struck line. This is a method for cutting dovetails without using a vise. In the case of this quick job, I was more concerned with speed than precision, so I didn’t even bother with using a vise.

Sawing lots of slits into the waste can also reduce the chance of tearout on split prone wood.

It is possible to remove waste by using just the carving gauge.

With wood this thick, a key hole saw is  going to be a faster method.

The holes are drilled all the way through. I just haven’t punched out the biscuits yet. I drilled through until the point of the drill came out on the other side, and then I used that to center the drill and drill in from the other side. This is another good method to prevent split prone wood from tearing out.

With the project finished, I was able to complete testing on time.

I didn’t even clean up the edges on the finished rack. No glue, just a good combination of dovetails holding it all together.

With a board on top and gentle pressure, I was able to make a lot of ‘caviar’ quickly.

This rack has room to expand and it comes apart easily for storage. It does the job so well, that I am going to be putting up with this rush job for a long time.

My initial test told me that the rush was unnecessary,  the flavor had a rather unpleasant tone that needed adjustment.  So I did a bit more research.

First off, the recipes and methods out there on the web are for the most part ornamental and hardly gourmet.  Seriously, there are better ways to do basic spherification.

The first thing to do is to replace the calcium chloride bath entirely.   It makes the taste bitter/chalky and does nothing for you nutritionally.  If you need to settle your stomach then maybe, but not if you want a delightful flavor.   Calcium lactate barely has a flavor, and can be good for your teeth.  It makes a much better caviar developing bath.

The second thing to do is to reduce the concentrations of the chemicals so you are working more with the initial flavors and less with the additional materials.  The recipes out on the web are for the most part using way higher concentrations than are needed.   The basic recipe that I give below may still be way more than what is needed.

First I premix a cup of distilled water with a gram of sodium alginate, and get a fairly thick syrup.   I make this part ahead of time and keep it in the refrigerator.

When I am ready to make a batch of juice caviar, I put three tablespoons of  juice in a cup and then stir one tablespoon of the premixed sodium alginate.

Then I make the caviar developing bath by mixing 15 grams of calcium lactate with three cups of water.  This fills the bowl I use nicely.  I have a stainless steel strainer and bowl combination that fit together perfectly so I can leave the strainer in the bowl while the caviar develops.

Here is the process, a drop falls from the food grade syringe, and falls into the bath below.  The sodium alginate reacts to the calcium and cross links into an elastic shell.  After 30 seconds to a minute, the caviar is ready to be lifted out so it does not immediately become gel all the way through.

As it sets the flavor is muted.   If you have tasted jello juice before it sets, it is a much stronger flavor than after it turns to gel.  The same is true here.   So for the intense burst of flavor you need two things, the center to stay liquid and the flavor of the juice to be intense!

So My droppers run frantically for 30 seconds, I wait 15 seconds longer and then start to drain the caviar by lifting the strainer out of the bath.  The strainer takes about 20 seconds to drain and then I lower it into a cold water bath to rinse off the developing fluid.

The next important step is to serve immediately!

A blend of amaretto,  creme de coco and orange curacao makes an extraordinary burst of flavor!

Mixing in a few beads with raspberry syrup in with the liquor blend is also quite a joy!

Bob

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 [...]]]>  

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.

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.

As a disclaimer to total hand tool purity on this project, I used a bandsaw to shape these and a belt grinder to smooth them down before I started.

The tools used in this tutorial:

A Gyokucho 650, royoba saw.  My favorite saw hands down!

a nice if old Zona Saw, 42 teeth per inch, made in Connecticut , slow cutting but fine precision!

A  Veritas Small RouterPlane.

A striking knife, made from the blade of an old pair of stainless steel scissors.

Several chisels and gouges.

A carving gauge.  A marking gauge will do, but never as well.

A mallet.

A Pencil.

And a Bevel Gauge, the one I used is a Pitch Square, and the extra thick blade came in very handy.

To score the two marks you see in the blank, I first used the striking knife along the edge of the bevel gauge.  Then deepened the line with the ultra fine Zona saw.

I am marking the limit for cutting with my carving gauge.

Here are all the blanks with the depth of cut mark scored deeply to prevent tear out, and then penciled in to make it easier to see.

Now I use the Gyokucho 650 to do the serious sawing.  I also used a 1-2-3 block just to see how square I was cutting.

Here are the cuts, just shy or or touching the depth mark.  The extra cuts are so that the waste can be extracted easily.

By tapping in the chisel, stress is put on the center section.  I would be happy if  the sections on either side were to pop out on their own, but I will not force it.  One of the outside walls is as thin as the section beside it, and it would be far to easy for it to spit out.

The center pops out with a little bit of rocking it side to side.  Tapping in on the ends with a fine chisel also helped.

Normally I would use a saw to safely remove the rest of the waste, but the length of this cut out precludes effective sawing.  So this saw was not used.

Instead I cut the remaining waste sections into thinner, weaker sections.

These were much easier to pry out.

A little bit of chisel work was called for on the ends.

Finally we have a rough bottom to clean up.

Chips can peel up deep chunks from below.  by notching high parts, you make the sections more flexible and less likely to peel up a big chunk.  This is chip breaking for a chisel.

I like to chisel flat, like this, but grain and length keep me from being able to.  Since I sharpen to a single bevel, I am able to flip over and still plane a fairly flat line.

Here is how the notches made allow stiff mesquite to flex and bend up without tearing out other wood.

After getting the bottom reasonably flat, I used a router, the old fashioned kind.

Here it is with the bottom clean.

Now to fit the slide in.   There is an extra indention in the center.  Since I want the blade to be as stable as possible, I will need to cut out a gully for it.

Here I have marked the gully and the screw holes.

I am not going to use a chisel to mark the lines along the grain.  Pushing a chisel into a thin section with the grain is a sure way to demonstrate how easily mesquite can be split.  Instead I want rounded cuts.  Here i have made the start of the end cut by rocking the chisel into the wood.  Now I will cut outside that and remove a fingernail sliver to establish the end of the gully.

Th is curved cut is much less likely to split than a cut with corners would.

After using a gouge to cut the basic gully, I used the router to make sure I had an even floor deep enough to allow the metal channel to fit in snugly.  I had to continue to clear the sides with a gouge as the router made small splintery tags on the sides of the gully.

To adjust the router to depth, I first tighten it down and then tap the bade post down on the highest section of wood.  Then I press down to push the blade back up.  this leaves the blade at a point where it will take a fine shaving.  if by chance the shaving is too thick, I readjust.   In the case of split prone wood, thin shavings are a must.

I am not going to bother with making the gully clean looking, the slide will cover it, and removing more wood than needed from a thin section of easily split wood is rarely wise.

After getting the gully cut, shaping, smoothing and cleanup are in order.  I went for rough 45 degree bevels.  After using octagonal handles, I am becoming fond of the feel of them.

The back is pretty simple, but since this is the part that fits into most peoples palms, it needs to be smooth and feel good.

Then I soak it in a nice thick coating of high linoleic acid safflower oil.

Here is the front view of a finished snap blade knife.  After the oil soaks in, I treat it with wax.

The back view is simple but it shows the beauty of mesquite.

I am left handed, so here is what the knife looks like when I am using it.

While I tremble with the last details of working wood that is prone to splitting, I expect this finished mesquite handle to last me for as long as I can hold it.  Odd stuff mesquite.

Bob