Back when I got my Roubo Frame saw kit from Bad Axe Toolworks, I also got the kerfing plane kit. I finally got around to finishing that this morning, and have put it to use.
With the kit you get a saw plate and a cherry board. Step one is cutting a hand-hold in the board. A couple different spade bits, some connect-the-dots with a coping saw, and some smoothing with rasps and files and I had that done.
Next was cutting a rabbet for the fence. Two saw cuts, and a little cleanup with a rabbet plane, and that was done.
Since I'm mostly after ¼ to ⅜ thick stock at the moment, I decided to make my fixed fence with a ⅜” kerf. So I clamped a couple ⅜×3/16 brass bars to the fence, and sawed right next to them with my pull saw. As it's just barely long enough, I had to start the kerf on one end, other, and then bring down the middle until it was level.
Drill a few holes, and put in the saw plate with the provided saw nuts (much easier said than done), and I had a completed kerfing plane, as shown in the first picture. The final picture shows a ½” deep kerf I cut in a poplar board to test things out. Looks pretty good!
A while back I saw a guide that MaFe had made for his circular saw at his allotment house. I thought it was a pretty neat idea and now that I have a bunch of cross-cutting coming when I start on my bookcases, I decided I needed one.
It's pretty simple. A 2×2 foot piece of ¾” plywood, two 2-foot tubafors, two 2-foot pieces of angle iron, and a few pieces of quarter-inch MDF.
I glued and screwed the tubafors to the plywood. Next, I screwed the angle iron to the tubafors, making sure I had right angles (probably the most important bit). Covered the screws with some MDF I glued down, and then added a couple more layers of MDF so the motor housing on the saw can't hit the angle iron, no matter how deep I adjust the saw.
The only snag is that this means the saw blade can't quite reach all the way to the plywood base, so I'll likely add one more piece of MDF on top of the base to raise the piece of wood I'm cutting. But I want to figure out the stop I'm going to add before I raise the base.
I also added a few stops. They're basically a scrap piece of pine screwed down to the base, with marks on the far 2x4 to show me where to align each stop. Simple, and fairly fool-proof. I cut board for 70 cases and a dozen plinths, and the biggest variance I could find as I was stacking up the cases was 1/16 inch.
I have written a number of articles about handy woodworking tools I've found over the years. This is where they're collected. A number of them are things I developed myself to build a special project (such as an octagonal box I built for a swap in May 2018).
