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

Elm Cabinet MkII

Have completed the full size drawings this morning on the new cabinet, designed to hold some of SWIMBO's fossil collection. The whole thing should be quite good I hope, it'll sit on a stand about 700mm tall, cabinet with Golden Mean proportions, glass panelled door, glass shelves. Stand will be very slightly tapered, most of the joints will be thru' mortice and tenons with ebony wedges, exposed and rounded over same as the last one...bit more shaping on this one so may need to get hold of some rasps as well as a couple of 'shaves.

Here's a pic of a well known planemaker slicing up a bit of elm for the panels, which will be the first thing I need to get cracking on. All the elm needs to be shoved through the P/T now to come down to size...shouldn't take too long, and then it's on to the benchwork.

I Hate Boxes....

I seem to have been making nothing but boxes recently. Firstly there was the Teak Casket that's doing nicely in the UKW Competition, then there was Meg's box in spalted sycamore and I'm just about to finish a small pencil box in the same timber for Gareth as one of his presents. I rang him up and he said he wanted one to go on his desk in the flat, so with all that lot I'm pretty hacked off with doing small, fiddly boxes and am itching to get into something bigger, so next week I'm going to start the Elm Cabinet MkII, which should hopefully be good and more complex than the last one. The timbers' been rough cut and drying out now for a few months now so I can't wait to get going on it. Will definitely need to get a couple of the Veritas 'shaves for the stand as well as some LN mortise chisels for both bits...cabinet and stand. Need to do a full size drawing of the cabinet and stand as I fancy that the stand will have a bit of 'splay' to it...should be very interesting.

Progress on the Big Woodie

The Big Woodie is making steady progress...can't you just tell I used to write millions of reports! I bought the studding for the adjustment mechanism from B&Q the other day and Pete Newton very kindly machined a little off the chip breaker bolt for me as it was a fraction too big for the routed groove in the plane body. Needless to say, it's a perfect fit now, so many thanks Pete. I have to start the brass cap very shortly, which is probably one of the most unpleasant parts of the whole project. Sawing through 8mm thick brass by hand is just plain hard work....shouldn't take too long though and once that's done the mouth adjustment mechanism needs to be made and then it's just the final assembly and finishing.
Then I have to start the write up for F&C on plane making.