A while ago, I read Dave Fisher’s post on his Souped-up Sharpening Shelf and thought that sounded like a great idea to get some consistency in my gouge-sharpening. It’s not that all of my carving gouges are dull, but I’ve been hand-sharpening them, and I don’t always get the angle the same, so over time, that leads to a dubbed edge, which may be beneficial or not (do some searching and reading if you want a lot of different opinions). In any case, a badly dubbed edge is not good, and consistency will get me to a happier place.

I also got a Tormek SVS-38 Short Tool Jig to use with it, and since that wants a ⅜” rod to ride on, I bought a stainless rod, as well.

With all the pieces put together (the pieces of wood at the ends were quickly half-lapped onto the main board, and the metal rod is friction-fit into holes in those pieces), here’s how the jig looks in use.

The one other modification I needed was to put a couple strips on the bottom of the box holding one of my sharpening stones. These allow it to rise above the metal edge on my bench (which is definitely not traditional on a woodworking bench, but I find it useful) and get the gouge at the proper angle with minimal fuss.

Putting these together gets the gouge on the stone as shown below. The angle is a bit steeper than the gouge was originally sharpened at, and I’ll probably lower it in the future, but sharpening at a steeper angle like this allowed me to see the results quickly. I put a line on the side of the board so I can recreate this if needed, and I expect I’ll add more lines over time. And of course, as the gouges get shorter with repeated sharpening, I’ll need to adjust the angle by putting the board lower in the vise, which will mean even more lines on the board. But the lines on the front of the board will help me keep the board level.

After a dozen passes of the gouge back and forth, rolling it to try to sharpen the entire length of the edge, I got this:

And this:

As you can see in the second photo, I didn’t quite get the gouge rolled far enough to sharpen all the way to the edge of the bevel, but very quickly I got a mirror surface on the gouge. This was with a hard Arkansas oil stone, which is quite a bit finer than the grit the gouge was originally ground with at the factory, as you can see in the photos.

Overall, I’m pleased with this setup. It took me a couple hours to knock this jig together, plus $40 in materials, and I now have a jig which will help me sharpen my gouges in a more repeatable manner. The Tormek jig isn’t ideal for a large veiner like this gouge, as it’s difficult to roll the tool over far enough, but for 90% of my gouges, this should do a good job and help me keep them sharp, rather than waiting until they’re dull before I decide I have to sharpen.

#handyTools #sharpening #woodworking

Discuss... Reply to this in the fediverse: @davepolaschek@writing.exchange

I bought a Lost Art Press engraving tool a while back. The short metal handle works fine for putting it into a compass, but for freehand use, it’s not very comfortable for me.

So I grabbed a piece of red gum burl I had sitting around (on sale from Cook Woods, I think), and turned a handle to fit the cutter that the engraving tool uses.

It’s a 13/64 hole in the end to hold the cutter. I may need to make a stopper-shaped 3/16 diameter wooden plug to put inside the cutter to press it more tightly against the wood (we’ll see after some use), but this is already a ton more comfortable to hold. Plus, with LAP out of stock on their engraving tools, this is available today. You just need to buy an 2-pack of Excel Large Round Carving Routers, Small Round Carving Routers, or triangular routers (the small round is what I used here) and make yourself a handle.

#handyTools

Discuss... Reply to this in the fediverse: @davepolaschek@writing.exchange

I have a MicroLux Drum Sander which is a nice little tool for sanding things that are too small to go through the planer. The only problem I’ve had with it so far is that the height adjuster, for the table that wood goes through the sander on, is hard to adjust by hand.

So I had a thought the other day, and decided to make a knob for it. I started with a chunk of hard maple, and cut a 4 inch square by ⅜ inch thick piece. I found the center by drawing the two diagonals, then drew a circle on it. Where the circle crossed the diagonal, I used an inch and a half Forstner bit to take off the corners.

That done, I drilled a ½ inch hole through the center and chucked it up on the lathe. Used a parting tool to make it round, and then sanded a bit to clean up the rough edges. Then I popped a ⅜-16 bolt through that center hole, got it as centered as I could by hand, and drew lines to make a hexagon around the hole.

The nice thing about a 9/16 inch hexagon is that a ⅜ inch chisel is almost the exact length of a side of the hexagon. And the ⅜-16 bolt (and nut) have a 9/16 inch head. When I put my (inch) calipers on the bolt-head in the sander, it told me 35/64 inch, which is close enough that a 9/16 will work.

After a short bit of chopping with the chisel, the bolt fit through the hex hole I had cut.

Next I made the hole a hair larger on one side with a ⅝ inch spoon bit, going about an eighth deep, and cut a short bit (also about an eighth) off the end of a ⅝ inch brass bar I had on hand (which has a hole drilled in the end from when I was making nuts a while back) and put them together.

With that done, I gave it a test. Here it is on the adjuster bolt. You can see that the brass is slightly proud of the wood surface, so it will serve as a bearing. I meant to do that!

And with the table set down, it’s now super-easy to adjust the height of the table. I think the bolt is a M6-1 which means every rotation gives me 1 mm up or down. On hard maple, one eighth of a rotation was plenty to lift the table for every pass through the sander, but I’m not sure how much of a change that is where the sanding drum contacts the wood.

Tomorrow, I’ll pull my new knob out of the sander and epoxy the brass into the maple with as little epoxy as possible. I’ll probably give it a coat of oil too. But in about an hour, I had fashioned a new knob, and I’m much happier with my little drum sander now. Yay!

#woodworking #handyTools

Discuss... Reply to this in the fediverse: @davepolaschek@writing.exchange

I’ve been needing a strop that I can use to touch up my gouges for a while, and have been mostly getting by with a flat strop. Last week, I grabbed a piece of ash from the scrap pile, and shaped it with the bandsaw, gouges, and spokeshaves. Yesterday I formed a piece of leather to it (but forgot about the clamps marking the leather). Today I contact-cemented the leather in place. It works pretty well for sweeps up to a seven.

I’ll probably wet the leather again and see if I can get the clamp impressions out of the leather, but it’s working well enough that I may not bother.

#HandyTools #woodworking #leatherworking

Discuss... Reply to this in the fediverse: @davepolaschek@writing.exchange

Sort of a micro-project, but it will enable a lot of other things.

I had a couple triangular braces I’ll be putting on the insides of the legs of a bench I’m working on, and I plan to do a bit of carving on the bench itself and on the legs, but I haven’t done any serious carving for a while, so I thought I should warm up by carving the braces. Plus, they’ll make a neat surprise for anyone who looks underneath the bench.

So I cut some 45°︎ angles in some pine and glued and screwed it together to hold the angled pieces with their faces level. And it works pretty well. I clamp the “hook” at the front end in my face vise, and rest the piece in the trough, and I can carve away without have to worry much about workholding.

Also unpacked a box that had my texturing tools in it yesterday, so now I’ve got those to play with. The bench these braces will go onto will be going to a couple who were in their 50s and 60s when they found each other and got married, so I figured adding paired hearts would be a nice touch.

The wood I’m carving is some “cherry” that came from India in a crate holding a slab of stone. Not sure what it really is, but it’s pretty enough that I feel a little bad using it for mere braces, but there you have it.

#HandyTools #project

Discuss... Reply to this in the fediverse: @davepolaschek@writing.exchange

Originally written Dec 18, 2021

I bought a miter box from another woodworker a while back, and needed a place to set it up, since my main workbench is a bit… chaotic most of the time. I also had scored four 92 inch long 4×6s from a neighbor, who had planned to use them as the corners of a pergola he never got started on.

First step was cutting down the 4×6s to 30-ish inch lengths and taking off the rounded corners, giving me nine 4×5s. Then I started building.

I started by cutting a recess for the Veritas small inset vise into the top of the bench, and cutting a line of ¾” square dog holes along the edge of the “front” board of the bench. With those two boards glued together, I attached a couple legs.

I also glued up the back of the bench, three 4×5s and a couple legs.

My joinery wasn't great, but I had a couple ½×10” carriage bolts, so I put one of those through each of the front legs and tightened them down. Much more sturdy! For the back legs, they got three 4” long deck screws each.

That done, I glued the two assemblies together, aiming to get the top of the bench as flat as possible. Then I braced the legs with a tubafor, mortised into the legs (with more deck screws).

A little flattening of the top, then leveling of the legs later, plus a few coats of BLO, and it was time to wrap things up.

The miter box sits on two ¾” thick scraps of pine left over from my bookcases. This makes the deck at the same height as my main workbench, so I can use that to support a long end of a board.

I also made a deck for my Stanley 77 dowel maker so I can mount it on the front of the bench when I need to make dowels.

Definitely not the prettiest construction, but I find myself using the small vise very often when working small parts. I've got two pine-scrap dogs to go with it that are enough for now.

---

Update February 9, 2023

I'm still using the bench on a regular basis. The only thing I've changed about it is that I painted a bunch of it with leftover paint from other projects, and I added a Veritas Universal Vise to the left front corner of the bench to hold things I want to carve.

---

Update March 12, 2024

This is a recent photo of the bench in use. The green carving vise is to the left, and in front is a board which will be one of the long sides of the box that’s going to hold my pen-making supplies after I put in some grooves with the Luban 043, which is sitting on top of the pine board.

---

#project #woodworking #HandyTools

Discuss... Reply to this in the fediverse: @davepolaschek@writing.exchange

Update:

After using this a few times, I made some updates (in mid-July 2023) and they’re detailed at the end.

A couple evenings back, I was watching some YouTube in the evening and saw a one-day build by Adam Savage of a stitching pony. I’ve been wanting a stitching pony for a while for when I make a sheath for a knife I’ve made, but watching his build, he was talking about using it for holding metal for filing and a bunch of other uses. That gave me the push I needed in order to build one for myself.

I started by cutting the arms from a piece of pine I had on hand. Rather than using plywood so the arms would be sprung, I decided I was going to use a couple pieces of hinge. It won’t spring open like his does, but I think it’ll still work pretty well, and if I make one of something nicer than pine, I can get fancier.

With the arms built, I found an inch square piece of ash, and drilled a half dozen holes in it. Rather than having a spinning piece of wood to adjust the range of the clamp, I figured multiple holes which I can slot a bolt or a dowel through would be easier. Since drilling round holes is easier than chopping square mortises, I made the hole in the arm with that adjuster a ⅞ inch round hole, and turned the end of the lever arm round on the lathe.

I left the other end square, and cut a slot into it to hold the cam on the lever arm. The cam was a circle drawn using a pop can, then made bigger on one side and smaller on the other. And then once I assembled everything the first time and realized that the handle restricted me to only a half-turn, I adjusted the curve so it would have the full ¾ inch of travel I needed based on the holes I had drilled. To match the square end, I had to chop a square 1 inch mortise in the other arm.

With it working, I added a cleat to the foot of the pony so I can hang it on the cleats on my wall. It’ll get a coat of oil after I contact-cement some leather pads to the jaws tomorrow. With the holes in the lever arm spaced ¾ inch apart, and with six of them, I can clamp anything from paper thin up to 4½ inches thick, though thicker things will have the jaws at an inconvenient angle, so I probably won’t ever use it for anything thicker than an inch or so. But I could make hinged jaws too…

And that’s it.

Update July 17, 2023:

After using the pony some, I made a few minor modifications to make it work better. First, I rounded the bottoms and sides of the jaws, so the thread wouldn’t hang up on them as I was working.

And second, I shortened the arm in the cam clamp. I can’t see ever needing those last two or three adjustment slots, and if I do, I can always make a longer arm again.

I’ll work with those changes for a few more projects, and if they’re good, the pony will get a coat of two of oil.

#woodworking #project #clamp #HandyTools

Discuss... Reply to this in the fediverse: @davepolaschek@writing.exchange

During the last surprise swap, Bill Berklich made Squares Everywhere and I thought that was fairly neat. I'm going to be building a bunch of bookcases for our home, and rather than dive right in, I figured I could procrastinate by building some of my own. I went back and looked up Chris Schwarz's writeup online, and then started digging through my scraps.

I found a fairly nice scrap of mahogany, and a birch 1×3. Since I wasn't sure what I was doing, I slapped together the square you see above. Nothing fancy at all, but it's actually square and I can use it to mark edges, but only in one direction. And shaping the mahogany got me some practice cutting curves and such (and encouraged me to finish my spokeshave so I could clean up the curvy edges).

Next was putting a profile on the birch board so I could make a fancy handle. I cut a rebate and plowed a groove in the birch, then got out my hollows and rounds and made the profile you see on the handles in pictures 1 and 2. Then I cut another rebate in the back of the board and sawed off a couple lengths in the section where my profile worked cleanly. I got the mahogany shaped, and carved a few patterns in it. The longer lines are done with a straight gouge, stabbing in twice to make a V, which is a technique I want to get better at for carving letters. And it meant I had to find my gouges and carpet tape so I could hold the piece while carving it.

Then it was time to glue things up. I drilled a couple 4/16th holes, and used some dowels to align the pieces so they'd stay square. After gluing them together, I had to run a plane along the edges to get things actually square, and run a chisel along the joint to clean up the glue squeeze-out.

Then a coat of linseed oil, and a light coat of wax, and it's done, and I managed to put off the real project for almost a full week.

Update Jan 26, 2023: I still use these two squares on a regular basis. They're a gateway drug into making your own tools, and I'm definitely hooked.

#woodworking #handyTools

Discuss... Reply to this in the fediverse: @davepolaschek@writing.exchange

Originally written Apr 18, 2020

Started with a piece of katalox from Savage Woods, a spokeshave blade from Ron Hock and some directions, which I mostly ignored, as I've done this before.

I found that working katalox is pretty challenging. It's a very hard wood, and while attempting to drill a pilot hole before drilling the larger radius hole for the curve in the handle, I snapped off the drill bit in the wood, and then had to work around that until I cut away enough wood to free the bit.

Shaped the handle with drills, turning saws, rasps, files, a knife, and probably some cursing, too. Not sure which was the most effective, but I got there in the end. I mostly finished with the knife and a file. Hit the shave with a coat of oil, and here we are. It needs a little fine-tuning yet, but I sliced a bit off my finger testing how wide the mouth was, so I'm going to write it up and call it a day.

Update Jan 26, 2023: This is still one of my most-used spokeshaves. This is my low-angle one, and the small shave from HNT Gordon is my high-angle version. Really glad I made this one, though.

#woodworking #handyTools #toolmaking

Discuss... Reply to this in the fediverse: @davepolaschek@writing.exchange

Originally written May 9, 2021

I bought a beat up dovetail saw on eBay. Put a fairly minimal bid on it (it was $25 with free shipping) and won. It's shown below. My goal was to have a saw I could practice sharpening and other saw maintenance tasks on, and not feel too bad if I screwed it up.

When it arrived, almost a year ago, the handle was even worse than it had looked in the photos, and was just too small for my hands, so I set the saw aside for a while and got on with other projects. Recently, I got “stuck” during my build for the plane swap and needed to work on something else while I thought about how to get past the problem I had created for myself.

I sat down and tried to unscrew the saw nuts on the saw I'd bought. Turned out they were rivets. I ended up destroying the handle I order to get it off, and the holes in the plate were pretty nasty looking. I filed the holes flat (they looked like they'd been punched through the metal, rather than drilled) and started shaping a new handle.

I traced the handle on a Bad Axe saw I bought, which fits me pretty well, onto a piece of 5/4 curly cherry I had. There was a knot in it, but I put that in the section that would end up “inside” the handle.

Then I did some shaping with files and such while I waited for new steel saw nuts to arrive in the mail, and then again while I waited for a 3/16 carbide drill bit to arrive after I'd mistakenly ordered a 3/32 bit.

I also pulled the back off the saw plate and cleaned up both the back and the plate. There was a fairly generic “Warranted Superior, Sheffield” etch that was almost gone (or had been etched lightly to begin with). I sanded it away, rather than trying to preserve it. I'm pretty sure this was a post-WWII saw, and nothing special, given the red plastic washer in place of a medallion and the riveted saw nuts.

I got the handle mostly shaped by the time the new saw nuts and drill bit arrived, so I was excited to get things put together. But I'd finished the handle at about an inch thick, which fits my big hands pretty well, but didn't fit the ⅞” long saw nuts I'd bought. D'Ohh!

So I took the handle to the belt sander and thinned it up a little. Which turned out to be good, since when I sawed the slot in it, I'd gotten it a little bit off, and it was off-center and aimed the blade a little to the right. Sanding the handle down let me fix that.

Then I had to reshape and re-oil the handle, but I did that with it on the saw. That let me test it as I went, making sure that it pointed straight and felt right. Last step was cutting chamfers at the top of the handle where the back went into the wood.

A couple coats of BLO later, and the saw is in use in my collection. And I learned quite a bit along the way, and have a saw I can practice sharpening on without worrying about destroying an expensive saw.

---

Handy Tools #woodworking #saw #handyTools #tools

Discuss... Reply to this in the fediverse: @davepolaschek@writing.exchange