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16 October 2022 at 9:02 pm #777136
The glue itself isn’t strongly coloured, it’s a creamy off-white. But it is powerfully affected by the spirit-based stain I used.
24 May 2022 at 7:27 am #760859Ha, the joke would be on them then, since (a) I’m terrible at doing repeatable work on the lathe, and (b) I’m also terrible at working to somebody else’s specifications. 😀
13 May 2022 at 1:33 am #759607I left the point at that angle, but I ground a steeper secondary bevel on each facet. It makes it much easier to drive and twist into the fibres of the timber.
7 October 2020 at 3:10 am #681212I’ve modified a 10mm bevel-edged chisel to get an 8mm blade, and it was pretty simple (though I didn’t try to reinstate the bevel). I used a grinder wheel to remove the bulk of the waste, working from both sides of the blade to keep everything centred and cooling the steel periodically in water, and finished off with a diamond file.
The key to getting accuracy, it seemed to me, is to creep up on your blade width. Don’t charge in and try to take off too much material at once.
7 October 2020 at 3:04 am #681210White vinegar (acetic acid) also works well as a rust-removal bath, and it’s very cheap from our local supermarket. I usually soak things in it overnight, and rinse them off in clean water afterwards so that the acid doesn’t keep on eating.
1 October 2018 at 8:13 pm #552404I have a Stanley 4½ and I do like it, but I certainly feel the extra weight when I’m using it. I’m not a big guy, so that’s not an insignificant consideration.
6 September 2018 at 9:52 pm #550961I used a bit of oak for mine, which is not ideal because its very open grain created a lot of friction. However, a few coats of shellac took care of that, and it will be easy to renew when needed.
14 August 2018 at 9:36 pm #550222The beads are very consistent and clean, as long as the scraper is sharp.
It’s not necessary to complete the whole length of the wood with a single pass; I usually work it down in a length comfortable for my own rather short arms and then move on to the next length. The key is to be careful to keep the fence hard up against the edge of the plank for the first few passes while it’s establishing its track, and after that it’s largely self-guiding.
Where I do find it difficult to keep the bead clean is at the very ends, but I suspect that’s more a matter of my own technique than a limitation of the tool.
26 July 2018 at 10:40 pm #549654[quote quote=549568]If you don’t mind me saying, you could round the other end of your fence and turn it around for circular/rounded applications.[/quote]
That’s not a bad idea, I’ll give it a go.
5 May 2018 at 8:44 am #540049It’s a New Zealand native timber, a primitive conifer, and it is very pleasant to work, especially with hand tools. Its heartwood is quite dark and often very attractively figured, while the sapwood is a deep caramel colour when oiled and generally pretty even grained — I tend to find the sapwood is often a bit bland, but that’s a subjective thing I guess. It also comes in “colour” grades in which the heart and sap are mixed in all sorts of piebald patterns, which can be very nice in certain applications.
It’s getting hard to come by these days. Once upon a time it was New Zealand’s cheap throwaway timber, used when jobs had to be done at low cost. As a result it was very heavily milled, and now it’s quite pricey — the last time I looked, it was at about $8,000 per cubic metre. There’s still a reasonable amount available from the reclamation yards though, because it was so extensively used in building in the old days.
22 March 2018 at 7:02 pm #505678I did order some cast bronze(ish) knobs from China, but I thought I’d like to be able to make something entirely by my own hands. The current knobs are just screwed in place, not glued, so if I find I just can’t live with them I can always swap them out, but I find I’m coming around to them.
Buying something similar to these locally in turned wood is pretty expensive. I’d be paying in the region of a hundred bucks to get pulls for all ten drawers.
21 March 2018 at 11:47 pm #504978The carcass and drawer-fronts are made from some laminated sapele, which I think used to be a counter-top. Being laminated, quite often I had grain running in opposite directions side by side, so I had to keep my planes set to take the shallowest cuts I could manage. I still got the occasional bit of tear-out, but not too much, and mostly easily mended with a card scraper. There are a couple of places though where I lost a decent chunk, and those I’m just going to call “character”.
1 March 2018 at 12:44 am #487209I have a set of Veritas metric blades, of which the ones I use most are the 5mm and 6mm (and a very old ½”). But the smaller ones are excellent for cutting very shallow and precise shapes, as their narrow entry means that they require very little force to cut, and there’s less chance of accidentally overshooting a border line.
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