Toolmaking Art

Long Shooting Board

Typically a shooting board is used for making the short end of a board straight or angled. When I was making a bunch of parts that where going to need to be exactly the same, on the sides as well, I made this one.

The back wall on this board allows me to put large shims in to control the thickness of the board I am shaping.

This way I can smooth one side, and then rotate one of the shims to a wider side. This forces the board out a hair more, After both sides are smooth, I can measure and insert paper shims to fine tune the width. Once I have it down, I can mass produce the same thickness.

Bob

The Disadvantage of Outdoor Craft in Texas Has Driven Me Indoors.

So many projects waiting to be completed, but now the Texas heat is driving me indoors.

Two sets of tongue and groove planes are going to have to be finished, and soon, they are needed. I have the parts lined up for making several spokeshaves, and that is also a nifty project that I want to write up a detailed instructional guide as I go. A saw till, five planes, another unique tool and a scorp all waiting to be made.

The long memorial weekend finally arrived, but the heat drove me indoors. The drive to create was too much and programming became irresistible.

Continue reading The Disadvantage of Outdoor Craft in Texas Has Driven Me Indoors.

Chip Breakers

An old video has resurfaced and now it has been subtitled. The magnificent Wilbur Pan, rides again!

This video has an odd enough history of impact. I have even heard it argued, in absence of the actual video, that it proved that chip breakers did not work.

There has been such a current of downplay on chip breakers, that when I originally wrote this article, I decided that I was not yet ready to publish it. There are some very talented and skilled woodworkers, some of them with a great deal of historical background, that would strongly disagree with me. A lot of these craftsmen are of such skill that I doubt I will or even could come close to the mastery of woodworking tools that they command.

But with this video link available, I feel a bit more confident.

Continue reading Chip Breakers

Tongue Plane

I have been needing a Tongue and Groove Plane Set. Not needing as in really wanting one. Needing as in there is no other good way to do what I need to do. Small changes in life require different tooling.

My car got hit. The insurance company insists there is no such thing as loss of value when a car gets hit. Even though they have to pay for that loss in other states, Texas is all about rugged individualism. In other words Texas protects the insurance companies instead of citizens. In our “proving” there was a loss of value we decided to look at what a car company would give for our car as a trade in. In doing so, we evaluated the cost of keeping our old car and the repairs that would now increase vs having a car payment. We decided to get a Prius. Better gas mileage, less impact on the climate, but now my trailer is useless, and I can’t pick up a sheet of plywood anymore. I can however manage a few boards. To do the same thing with boards as I do with plywood, I need a tongue and groove plane set.

If the insurance company, call them Anole Insurance, had done the right thing, I would be able to squeak out enough to get a lovely Lie Nielsen T & G plane. I probably would have, it is a sweet, sweet tool. Sadly however I will have to make my own tool. 🙂

Needing a blade that was not spoken for, and needing it pretty quickly, I went and looked for something to make a blade out of quick. A spade bit can be a really good quick bit, but I saw something that also had some other nifty parts, and the price was right, so I looked real close at the $10 plane from Harbor Freight. I bought two of them. They don’t have an adjustable mouth, but for a tongue plane I don’t need and adjustable mouth.

So the first thing I did was to alter the blades. One blade I put a 1/6″ gap in and ground a HSS blank to the same width. The other blade has a 1/4″ gap with the matching HSS blank. The HSS blanks are going to be the blades for the grooving plane.