A while back, I bought a sander designed to square pen blanks from Penn State Industries. It’s a nice little unit, but there are small pieces included and it’s not a nice shape to store, so I built a box to hold it.

Construction is pretty simple, but I tried a few things to practice them. The sides and ends of the box are angled in at a 7.5°︎ angle. The dovetails were otherwise cut as normal, which worked fine, though I appreciated having made the sides from pine when it came time to fit things together, as pine will compress a little which makes inaccuracies less of a pain.

The bottom of the box is some poplar I had on hand. Had to glue up some boards to get the right shape, and then I added cleats to hold the sander in place.

The top of the box sits over the base and the sander, and I will be attaching the sander to the base once I’m certain that’ll work. I’ll also be building storage pockets into the cover of the box to hold things like spare sanding discs and the adapter so I can connect the sander to the dust collector.

Finally, I did some practice carving on the sides of the box. Nothing super-fancy, but it felt like I needed some practice, and I know I found a half-dozen gouges that needed sharpening along the way, so it was a good time to do some carving.

That’s it.

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Of course, that isn’t it. A friend on mastodon asked about the style of the carving. I replied:

I learned mostly from Ron Aylor, who was heavily inspired by Peter Follansbee, so yes, it’s in the style of Peter Follansbee, but at a remove. I bought Ron’s Categories of 17th-Century Mannerist Carving years ago, and mostly refer to that, but I also have been reading through Mary May’s Carving the Acanthus Leaf and some of the details are things from her book.

#woodworking #shopStorage

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I was cleaning my shop this morning, and found my set of three nail sets. Rather than lose them again and have to use nails rather than the proper tool, I decided to give them a proper home.

I found a couple small pieces of apple wood, and made one flat so it could be mounted on my boring tools till. I drilled three holes in the other piece, then roughly shaped it to something organic-looking.

I glued and screwed the two pieces together with a #2-⅜ screw, countersunk from behind, so the mounting piece would still sit flat, then finished it with the Beall Wood Buffer, and finally I glued and screwed the mounting piece to the till door. Done and done.

Little projects like this can be pretty satisfying. Two hours and change from idea to finished product, and my shop is (a little) better organized now.

#woodworking #shopStorage #quickie

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