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24 May 2019 at 9:39 pm #574967
Definitely a big improvement. And by making your own you have the opportunity to make it fit your hand perfectly. Making a new handle for a few of my saws is another thing on the ‘to do’ list. Some day…
29 April 2019 at 4:21 pm #557441Hello George, made a few pictures, including of my last two braces; I estimate the braces are from around WW-1, give or take 10 years. They’re still in the condition as I got them, no restoration has been done to them. The cigar box pictured contains some of the drills that fit those braces; they don’t have the usual conical-square shank, but are more flattened and held in with a screw. As you can see, one of the braces is missing the original screw; have temporarily replaced it with an inner-hex screw till I get around to making a proper screw for it. The drills are mostly spoon-bladed ones and some that resemble modern speeddrills quite a lot. Incidentally, the box cost 0.50 Euro at a fleamarket (it was completely filled with brace bits, including many conical-square shanked ones, which I now store in another box). That box was worth its money. Then, stacked below it, I found a second similar cigar box full of saw files, both new and used ones, enough to last me a lifetime. Same price, 0.50 euro…. Needless to say I went home a happy man that day.
The darkest moulding plane started out very dark and dirty, like most of your planes. A lot of dirt came off with the boiled linseed oil. It really came out pretty nice, especially considering how dark and dirty it was. The lightest moulding plane started out like your light-coloured plane. Still have quite a few more planes to clean and sharpen (I just noticed I haven’t sharpened the blades of those moulding planes yet….)
I think I learned about that method of cleaning and preserving planes (with BLO) from the Lumberjocks.com forum. If you search there you may find more about it.
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You must be logged in to view attached files.28 April 2019 at 5:06 pm #557350I usually remove paint remnants with a card scraper. Then rubbing with boiled linseed oil (BLO) removes a lot of dirt, then a few more layers of BLO to preserve the wood.
The planes afterwards look nice and cared for and still show their rich patina. It’s a simple and easy method that preserves the wood and looks nice (smells nice too, in my opinion, but opinions vary on that…). If you’re unsure, just start with one single plane before tackling the entire batch.
The brace looks very nice. Have you got the drills for it as well? I’ve stopped acquiring braces, unless it’s something special like yours. But the drills for them I scoop up at every chance I get.
If you’re interested I may be able to take a picture of how mine look after the BLO treatment, and how they look before. Now that reminds me, I still have a few more planes to treat. Have been sewing leather covers for the axes today and treating them with BLO. Should’ve treated old dirty planes while I had the BLO out….
Cheers from the Netherlands (my father grew up near Melbourne though, in Geelong, during the ’50s, but later migrated back to NL when my grandfather returned. He very much liked growing up in Australia, always speaks fondly of that time and the Aussies. Still have relatives in that area.)
9 April 2019 at 5:48 pm #555916I have made my strop from the leather of an old TIG welding glove. The part that’s over the fingers/palm is made of very thin leather that usually wears first and is useless. But the ‘sleeve’ part, that goes over the wrists and lower part of the lower arms, is made of a thicker leather. In the image below, it’s the part that’s printed with ‘Longevity’
I cut that leather off, cut it roughly to size and glued it on top of a piece of plywood using contact-adhesive, then trimmed to final size.
I don’t think it’d be wise to buy new gloves just for this leather but it’s what I used because I had a few old, worn-through gloves lying around. The sleave-leather was undamaged, just a little dirty. I also used the same leather to repair the nose of my steel-nosed work boots.
I have another bit of thin, black leather, about 80×80 cm, that I got at a thrift store. They cut off the leather of old couches that are otherwise unsellable. The leather cost, if I recall correctly, 1 euro. I use that for all sorts of small projects – cutting leather-seals for petrol/kerosene blowlamps, sewing a pouch for my dumb-phone and for dozens of other small projects.
Leather is a very useful material to have around. Wouldn’t dream of buying new when used leather is available for so little money. And for a strop… well, let’s just say it won’t look as new for long anyway….
12 October 2017 at 10:07 am #333149Haven’t read all other replies so maybe I’m repeating here, but ‘contact noise’ is probably the greatest contributor to the discomfort: vibrations (chopping, sawing) being transmitted through the bench legs to the floor and walls, going all through the house and ending back up as soundwaves when there’s a suitable sound-board around. Bit like the child’s toy of a telephone made from two tin cans with a string in-between, where the structure of the house acts as the string.
Isolating the benchlegs from the floor (carpet, multiple layers perhaps, under the legs, or rubber pads, or soft particle board, or anything else which dampens and absorbs mechanical energy (vibrations)) is likely to make a huge difference. My guess is 80% reduction in nuisance with only very minor effort invested.
19 September 2017 at 10:48 am #316804I think I’ve heard him mention in one of his videos he uses Chromium-oxide to charge the strop.
Myself I use a pink compound, used for polishing stainless steel. No idea what it is (as it’s pink, I suspect aluminium-oxide, but not 100% sure), but it works fine. I’ve used liquid metal polished too in the past, and that worked as well.
The actual compound you use isn’t that critical, I think. If, after 30 (not 29! not 31! 🙂 and yes, I always count them) strokes the bevel is polished then one can reasonably expect the compound to be suitable.
26 August 2017 at 3:55 pm #314688Reminds me of a BBC show that annoys me to no end to the point I stopped watching (don’t recall the name of the show). It’s about a lady scouring the dump yards looking for nice finds, and ‘recycling’ them by turning them into anything that sells.
As someone who restored (both electrically and cabinet) a few antique valve radios in the past, I was horrified to see her gutting an old radio, removing all the old valve electronics and installing an MP3 player inside…. This, and other blasphemies, made all the hair on my neck stand up straight.
This lady would probably knock down a villa and then would proudly show how she made a dog house from the materials. Or an antique TV into an aquarium. What a terrible waste.
I agree, heart breaking to see people maltreat things like that and calling it ‘recycling’, when a bit of love and care would have restored those tools to their former glory.
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