Another day, another parcel

The posties' been this morning with yet another parcel with shiny tools in it, this time from Brimarc which felt a little on the light side. Ripping of the packaging yet again, it had the two 'shaves in it...but no BU smoother, even though the Delivery Note said that it had been dispatched. Bugger.
PM'd Martin Brown at Brimarc who was profuse with apologies and said they'd probably missed the order, he'll be sorting on Monday, so my guess is that someone's in the sticky stuff up to their hat band! So... there'll be another parcel to rip open next week, not withstanding the last couple of chisels to come from CHT which I expect later on this month.

A Close Run Thing...

Having completed the top panels now on the Elm Cabinet, I biscuited them together...only trouble was that I had the machine the wrong way round and stuck a slot where it didn't out to go, about 80mm into the inside of the cabinet, so I had to turn the bottom over and put the slots in the right place. By a huge amount of good fortune, the slot will be exactly covered by one of the bearer rails on the stand, so on this occasion, I've got away with it, and as a man on a horse once said a long time ago...'twas a damn close run thing'
Had one parcel delivered yesterday from CHT which was very pleasant. Ripped off the packaging to reveal a little envelope (the metric dowel plate) and four oblong cardboard boxes, which I assumed contained the LN mortice chisels.
Wrong. Three of the boxes had chisels in them, the fourth had a roll of tightly wrapped tissue paper inside which didn't look anything like a 1/4" mortice chisel! Mystified, I rang Mike Hancock at CHT who very matter-of-factly explained that this wasn't the first time that this sort of thing had happened. Cutting a long story sideways, he said he would sort it asap.
Just waiting today for another delivery with the Veritas plane and 'shaves in it.
The article about 'Wooden Planes' has gone into F&C this week so I'll have to wait and see when that comes out...hopefully, not too long.

New Year

Well, 2008 has finally arrived...would someone like to tell me how the rest of them have gone so quickly? I was working last night but managed to celebrate the New Year in the appropriate style and so am feeling a little queasy this morning though a nice fried breakfast has certainly helped to redress the balance, much of which I lost last night.

The Elm Cabinet in coming along reasonably well. I had some trouble in lipping the mdf for the top and bottom as I couldn't get the mitres to close so I had to do it again, which was a bit of a pain in the aris but I got it sorted in the end. I had to bandsaw the elm for the veneers which was surprisingly easy to do as I was expecting to make a complete cock-up of it, but it all went very well. Each pair was shot and joined after which they were glued in the AirPress. One pics shows some of the veneers straight from the saw and the other is where I've just started to clean up the surface of the first piece with a very finely set LA jack...fabulous plane.

Eagerly awaiting the postie now as I've got some lovely shiny new toys to play with, one of which will be another new plane, this time the LA BU smoother from Veritas...can't wait!

A very happy and prosperous New Year to all.

New toys...and maybe something to sell.

Having won £100 in the Competition I've ordered some shiny new toys from Classic Hand Tools as they have a 10% reduction on LN tools up to Christmas. I was also mightily chuffed this morning to see that those lovely people at GMC have deposited a further wedge into my account for the article on the Teak Casket that appeared in F&C recently, so the keyboard was fairly hot this morning as I ordered a bit more stuff. To date I've got on order the following:

4 - LN mortice chisels

1 - 25mm LN bench chisel

LN dowel plate

Veritas Bevel Up Smoother

Veritas round spokeshave

Veritas flat spokeshave

...the Veritas stuff was ordered from AHC in Camberely with a huge saving on equivalent stuff from either Axminster or CHT. Only trouble is that this little lot will be arriving after Christmas. Not sure now whether to sell my Record Calvert Stevens smoother shown in the pic. If anyone's interested maybe you could let me know?

The new cabinet is coming along quite well, though it's a bit parky in the 'shop at the moment so it's difficult to get the glue to go off until I get a bit of heat in there. I've got the top boards veneering (with a mahogany substrate veneer) in the Air Press at the moment with a hot water bottle and blanket over the top to provide a bit of local heat, so with a bit of luck the glue should go off reasonably quickly. After that they have to be lipped and the bandsawn elm veneer applied.

Simon Platt (Heath Robinson on the forum) was round on Thursday afternoon for a little bit of a basic fettling demo on his No4 plane which by the end of the afternoon was working every so slightly better than at the beginning. We also went through a lot of the fundamental 'shop stuff that many of us take for granted but which is a bit bewildering for a newcomer, so hopefully the afternoon short circuited a painfull and possibly expensive learning process.

Finished

Well Big Woodie has finally been finished and it's been a bit of a journey. Once I had finally taken delivery of the glass, it was a fairly straight forward process to make the jig for sanding the sole. However, the engineering method that Pete and I had a look at last week didn't really work out. The problem was that the medium used was simply too thick (in the end I used a very thin slurry of paraffin and grease) and even with the most careful application, high and low spots were being marked on the plane's sole which didn't make sense when I checked it with a long steel edge. In the end I used the Veritas jointer to shoot the sole and kept on checking it every other shaving or two...it came flat in the end and then it was onto some 150g paper in the jig to give the sole a final sanding. I've written the draft copy of the article for F&C and just need to 'fine tune' it...I also need to take some better pics of BW and the other smaller planes, job for next week.
I received my cheque yesterday for £100 as the UKW prize and have spent it at CHT on a couple of LN mortice chisels and the 1" bevel edge so they should be arriving next week, not with standing Christmas postal deliveries.

Flattening

Pete Newton came round the other day for a natter. When we went out to the 'shop we had a look at the progress of the Big Woodie. All bits are done but I had'nt done anything with the sole as I've got this bit of glass on order. Anyhow, Pete said that he'd being having a few thoughts about the sole so we put my big steel straight edge against it and it was pretty good, straightish, not in 'wind', acceptable over most of the length...'cept for a little bit of snipe from the P/T which meant that the sole is, in effect....convex...28" and its convex. Bugger.
To cut a long afternoon sideways (a very enjoyable afternoon by the way) Pete took me thru' the metalworkers way of truing to obtain a surface by using a marking medium on a dead flat surface (my long piece of 10mm glass) and then scraping away the high spots, which as he explained, is mighty tedious but safe, so no danger of making the convexity more pronounced. Which is what might have happened had I gone straight onto the sandpaper, which don't really bare thinking about on a plane this big.
After a little bit of experimentation, we found a suitable marking medium. More difficult than you might think as the glass is dead smooth and won't 'hold' a medium very well, but we eventually found something that I hope will work very well. So next task will be to make up a jig to hold the glass (already bought the mdf) so that I can tediously get the sole scraped flat. I'll then be able to just put some 150g paper into the jig just to finish off, and then it's final assembly and finishing.

Frustrated

Have been trying to get hold of a bit of 10mm thick float glass so that I can make up a jig to finish the sole of the Big Woodie. Ordered the glass last week, went into the glaziers yesterday and was told that the supplier had broken it... 'so sorry, not here. Will re-order for you sir, will be here Wednesday'. Rang up today... 'so sorry sir, it missed the lorry, not here. So when here' says I...'next Tuesday sir, so sorry'.

On a more positive note, the latest edition of F&C has been published and there's a decent bit on the construction of the Teak Casket. I'm a little bit disappointed that some of the pics were so small, I 'spose that if CE-E had made them any bigger, it would have had to run to another page or maybe a second part in the next issue, which would have meant some more dosh for your truly. Bugger.

Elm Cabinet is coming on steadily, I'm working on the side panels at the moment and hoping that I'll get offered the £100 prize in the competition which means that I can get hold of some LN mortice chisels from CHT (as there's a 10% discount up to Christmas) so that the ends can be chopped square