Up and Away

To say I was a bit 'twiched up' on Friday was a bit of an understatement 'cos I'd been waiting for the 'call-forward' instruction from the Falklands. Until that call is recieved, the seat on the aircraft is never certain as it only takes a couple of extra confimed bookings and your seat has disappeared. Well, much to my huge relief, the call came on Friday at 2-30 so I'm off to Brize Norton tonight at 6pm ready for the midnight flight.

I had a fabulous day last Thursday when three of us (me, Pete and Paul) met over at Pete's place for what could be described as the first 'Bash' of the new season...a great day had by all with lovely food provided by Pam. We were playing around with scrapers for a lot of the day in Pete's shop and I was hugely impressed with the Veritas No80 that Paul had brought along. This is a much improved version of the old Stanley original of which I've owned a couple in the past. I could never though, get them to work properly, maybe due to the shape of the casting...who knows. Anyway, the Veritas version is light years better than the original, so the next day I ordered one from CHT and it came on Saturday, so after a little bit of blade prep on the Spyderco 10000g stone and a quick turning of the burr on the edge, I had it taking off whispy thing shavings of some difficult and cranky grained elm, so I guess it's going to be a very valuable addition to the hand tools in the 'shop.

I also made the back panel framework yesterday for the Elm Cabinet, which went together well and was the first time that I'd been able to use the new LN mortice chisels...they certainly are good to use. I also used the big 25mm bevel edged LN for the first time (even thought the back needs a bit more work on it) and I was very impressed with it...seems to have a lot of 'presence', difficult to explain but I think it may become one of my most used chisels in the rack, especially for cutting things like tenon shoulders, which is what I was using it for yesterday.

I just need now to make sure that everything's oiled in the 'shop and then I'll be able to give all the tools a cuddle before locking the door for a couple of weeks...how sad is that?