So what's going on, huh?

A goodly question, you might ask.  I haven't produced an entry for a while as I've found I need to be in the right frame of mind (some would argue that I don't posses one😂) to get the fingers twitching  but for what it's worth, here's a few oddments of stuff that's been happening in the 'shop.

Shortly after Christmas last, I obtained a pristine 'green' Clifton No.6 from those rascals at Classic Hand Tools and it's now been joined by a baby brother. If you ever get a chance to buy a decent version of these British classics, don't walk by and pass it up; you won't be disappointed.

In the summer, I also started a major project, which was an interpretation of a Jim Krenov 'Silver Chest', first made in 1961.  In one of his excellent tomes, JK mentions that he needed to be in the right frame of mind (just like me) to make one of these things as they were 'difficult'...

He wasn't wrong.

  

This interpretation (not a copy in any way, sort of) was made in Paduk and Swiss Pear, finished with Odie's Oil. The stand and carcase were relatively straight forward (but did entail a bit of head scratching) though the really, bloody difficult part were the drawers, both to make and then to fit.  Suffice to say, they took a lot of research and modelling before I'd worked out how the cunning old bu%ger made them.

Kit wise in the 'shop, the biggest event was the purchase of an 'Ultimate Edge' linnisher/grinder/sharpening machine from Axminster Tools.

  Although I still have my original Tormek T7 with it's coarse diamond wheel, this machine simply can't shape steel quickly although it's excellent for sharpening. Using the T7 to grind a primary bevel on 5mm thick Veritas blades was purgatory as it could take hour after interminable hour....

The UE with a 60g or 120grit belt will do the same job in ten minutes.

Aslo worth a mention are the strops also bought from Axminster but alas no longer available:

There are three different grades of leather, finishing with an English Bridal type. I use them dry, with just a smear from a green Veritas stick on the first one.  It's true that if used aggressively, the edge can be somewhat 'drubbed' over but the trick is to lightly move the bevel across the leather no more than half a dozen times on each.

The difference it makes is astounding and anyone who makes the mistake of shaving hairs with an edge from these strops had better know the fastest route to their local Accident & Emergency centre!

As the man once said....'I'll be back'

  

HNY and a New Toy

Wherever you are on this spinning lump of rock we call home, I sincerely hope you had a Happy New Year and if you believe in Father Christmas (as I do) a great one of those as well! 

My festive season got off to a cracking start when I spotted a Clifton No.6 plane on the Classic Hand Tools  page shortly before Christmas. It appeared to be in pretty good condition and to my amazement it was still there in the New Year.  I lusted after this lump of 'old skool'  British cast iron all over Christmas so I girded my lions😅 and decided to take the plunge; it arrived yesterday. To say it was in good condition is a slight understatement; this plane was probably twenty years old and was in pristine condition:

On closer inspection, the sole had absolutely no wear or scratch marks:

...and the cutter had never, ever been sharped, except when I honed it yesterday evening.  The original grinding marks are still evident on the back of the cutter and the ground bevel is straight from the Clifton factory in Sheffield:

You can draw you own conclusions but mine are that this plane has sat in a lovely warm workshop for the last couple of decades and has never, ever been used.  There are a couple of insignificant 'dings' but essentially it's a brand new No.6 in perfect, mint condition.

It's now been racked out under the bench with all it's other playmates!

The Great Escape!

I haven't produced a blog entry for while, but having read the title of this one, I know exactly what you're thinking......

It's coming up to Christmas shortly and he's been at those bloody mince pies laced with quantities of dubious alcohol as a forerunner to sitting down in front of the telly to enjoy Steve McQueen on his (Triumph) motorcycle attempting to jump over barbed wire fences.

Close, but no cigar!

Although I'm looking forward to the Christmas films (I'm a sucker for Miracle on 34th St as well) this is actually about Japan, where I've just been for approximately the last month or so.  I'm not going to blather on as there's a vast amount on t'interweb about the country and I've also produced an account of our adventures in 2012 (covering several blog entries)

However, there's e thing that’s worthy of a blog entry, a souvenir purchased in Kyoto, which happened to be a pair of fittings (a 'kashira' and 'fuchi') from an ancient sword, possibly made the mid-Edo period, so maybe around 1750. Both of these beautiful, matched little fittings formed part of the complex handle on a katana and had been, over the centuries, never more than 200mm or so from one another.

Having travelled half way round the world, the fittings arrived safely in the UK but on Sunday last (8th Dec) I took the kashira out to the 'shop and being a complete and utter numpty, I tripped on the garden steps and the little iron pommel, inlaid with gold, spun off into the undergrowth!

The next three hours was spent, in freezing, windy conditions, on my hands and knees doing a finger search through the grass and flower beds but despite my best efforts, it was nowhere to be found and I was, as you can imagine, fairly pi$$ed off!

It had disappeared; gone (or so it seemed) forever.

I looked again in the evening before dark fell, but there was still absolutely no sign of it, so I gave up, decided it was lost and sensibly had a beer.

The next day, I went out to the 'shop, up the same steps and happened to glance down....

....and there, where my finger is pointing at that rock, was the kashira, face side up with the gold glinting in the sunshine!

'Gobsmacked' is an accurate description of how I felt at that precise moment, because I know, absolutely, that it wasn't there the previous day as I'd swept that ground with my fingertips at least six times on Sunday.

How to explain it?  There are strange tales and legends that surround Japanese swords but perhaps the little kashira has a Shinto 'kami' and decided that having successfully made 'The Great Escape' from my clutches, a freezing cold night in an English garden was much less preferable to being right next to his mate in a nice warm display cabinet:

....so 'please, pretty please, could you find me, pick me up and put me next to my pal?'

Maybe it was even the spirit of the blade's long dead samurai owner who knew exactly where it was and moved it during the night so I could find it the next day? There is though, a far more plausible explanation and that is that my 'furry friends' have been up to their old tricks.

I rest my case m'lud. 

TSBAS

 Some further progress has been made on this interpretation of one of Jim Krenov's 'Owl Cabinets', namely the small drawer has been constructed and fitted:

My drawers have always been a bit 'hit n'missy', sometimes they fit reasonably and other times I could quite cheerfully drive a tank through the side 'clearances', so this time I followed to the letter the excellent series produced by Rob Cosman in Canada on making and fitting them.  I don't agree with the ridiculous, clunky, inelegant North American affectation for thick sides, so in the one recently made, they're are a gnats knacker (or cock)😂 slightly under 6mm, co closer actually to 5.5mm. The sides are made in Paduk and the drawer base is in Ash to match the top of the drawer box, as is the front (handle yet to be made and fitted). Note the through dovetails on the front which is an unusual way to make joints for the front of a drawer, but to me it looks quite effective.

Although I've tried at least six times to upload a video clip, I've failed miserably but I can assure the readership that the drawer slides in with the merest push with a grubby finger on one of the corners.

You may though, be wondering about the title of this entry?  Anyone who reads this stuff won't have access to the background info, such as the stats....but I do!  I've been surprised and somewhat chuffed that by far the greatest number of 'enthusiasts' of this drivel hale from Singapore, with, it appears,  thousands of avid followers crammed onto that small island. 

In appreciation, I reckon you lot ought to have a proper, good old British knees up at some hostelry of dubious reputation (or even Raffles) somewhere along the Orchard Rd and perhaps I could suggest a name?

'The Singaporean Blokeblog Appreciation Society'.

Please though, don't bill me for the drinks. Or the dancing girls.

Cheers!    

The 'Owl' Cabinet: Progress Deux

There's been some progress on this project and remarkably, even miraculously there doesn't thus far appear to have been any spectacular foul ups and those who for some odd reason dip into this dirge from time to time will know that it happens with some regularity! There are other more succinct, anglo saxon phrases that could be used (are very frequently are) but they're beyond the remit of the 'Blokeblog'. Google however, is your friend😂 

First and foremost, the rebate for the back panel was machined; not too onerous a job:

The round corners need to be 'squared' out and the back panel, once completed is dropped into the rectangular recess.

Second and foremost, I've been pondering on the drawer box and how to install it into the cabinet.  It looks simple, but the application of some brain cells will soon tell you that it ain't! 

After much deliberation in which more that a few of the aforementioned brain cells were extinguished I've decided to make a dovetailed box to hold the drawer:

If you click on the pic to enlarge it, you'll notice that there's something odd about the shovetails; at one end there's regular spacing but at the other the pins remain equal but the tails gradually increase in width towards the middle.  These are quite straightforward to cut but tricky to work out the differing width of the tails.  Cunning n'est pas?

To give me enough time to glue the whole thing together, I've used 'old skool', slow setting Araldite which takes all the stress and angst out of a complicated glue up.  This took just over an hour to glue and had I used any other sort of adhesive it would have set long before.

It's 'icky' stuff so you need to get prepared:

...but the final job has gone together really well.  There was a small gap on one of the shoulders which has been pulled up with a Japanese sash cramp:

It's now residing somewhere warm for the epoxy to set properly overnight, so the next few days will show if the dovetails look presentable.  Or not.

The 'Owl' Cabinet; Progress

 As mentioned in a previous post, another Jim Krenov cabinet, or interpretation thereof is under way.  Thus far, by some miracle, there don't seem to be any horrendous gaffs that have been committed and it's pretty much gone together as planned...and it does take a lot work with the little grey cells!

JK's doors are always the hardest thing to make, so I started with them and as I'd never made a set of 'sail' doors, I made a prototype in pine, shown in the second pic.  This is one of the Ash panels being planed:

 ...using my little convex sole maple plane and couple of ancient 'rounds' to get into the tighter part of the curve. Jointing is by Dominos (quick and easy) but here I've used some mock green 6mm mdf doms:

Both doors are shown, with the mock pine door on the rhs. Dominos are also used for the main construction, with the horizontal ones being machined wider so adding a degree of 'slideability' 

when all four sections are assembled:

At this stage, you'll be able to see the verticals, the doors and one of the veneered horizontal panels, yet to be machined:

Shaping on the vertical panels is done in much the same way as the doors:

...but this time I used a straight edge to guide the planes, which made life a lot easier. Then it was simply a question of refining and finishing the curves at each end:

If you look at the following pic, you'll see that the doors sit into a stopped rebate at the front of each vertical side and the veneered top and bottom are 'wrapped around' which took a bit of sorting out to machine:

...but I got there in the end leaving a few mm all round for the eventual fitting of the doors. As mentioned earlier in another enthralling post, I hate fitting brassware but strangely, the Brusso hinges shown dropped into their recesses absolutely spot on:

It's all come together quite nicely, so I'm moderately chuffed with the progress to date.  However, over the last couple of days I've pondered at length just how the hell JK made and fitted the drawer assembly:

It looks very simple, but it's fiendishly difficult to make, fit and assemble into the cabinet.  Having worn out a load of brain cells over the weekend I think I've worked out how he did it and moreover the sequence of events to construct it and fit it into the cabinet. My version won't be exactly as shown above but in essence, fingers crossed, it will look very similar. 

Treasure Box; Deux

 Sometimes, deep down, you get a feeling that something's not right or won't work and such an insight happened the other day about the current little box, details of which were outlined in the last enthralling episode; I knew that faffing around cutting another hinge slot simply wasn't going to work!

As a result, all the holly banding was drum sanded off and I decided to try and use a wooden hinge aka Rob Cosman as I'd made a few of his boxes fairly recently...

As I'd never done any veneering using end grain 'oysters' this was a new departure for me and as a consequence there was a bit of a 'learning curve' accompanied the many and varied cock ups which which were too numerous to detail, even by 'The Blokeblog' standards. I was determined that this job wasn't going to end up as bandsaw fodder, so I simply soldiered on and sorted out the mistakes, errors and general goofs as they occurred. 

It was finally done today and despite all my reservations, it hasn't turned out too badly.  Fortunately SWIMO likes it and has accosted it for her watches.

...and once the lid's been opened:

The overall effect is acceptable, though the holly, although excellent to work with is fairly unforgiving of any discrepancies in the jointing and is also very difficult to keep anywhere near clean.

At the end of the jour, I'm glad this little box has been dun n'dusted and 'er indoors has found a suitable use for it.

Onwards and upwards.