Old Mallet Restoration

This old wooden mallet may have been hand-made, or it may have been purchased. I didn't see any maker's marks on it, I think it was hand-made. Its got a nice size and weight to it, maybe 50% bigger than the wood mallet I made for myself a few years ago, so I think it will be handy to have around the shop. The handle fits into the head in a tapered hole, so the harder you swing it, the tighter the head gets, yet and easy tap is all it takes to loosen the head up. Between the two parts, the handles is probably slightly more complicated, so making a new head would have been pretty easy, but i wanted ti try and keep as much of it as I could.

So I planed off the big break at the top of the head, and matched it to a piece of white oak I had in the shop. After the glue set up I trimmed it on the band saw, and then took it down to rough shape in the vise with a hand plane. I finished up the shaping on the power sander, and then went over it with files and sandpaper to get the shape right. I didn't want to try and chuck this up in the lathe, so doing it this way was a little fussy, but the results were good.

After I got it shaped up I scribed the detail lines in with a marking knife, and then deepened them by running a thin wire in the slot. The final step was to clean the wood with grain alcohol and a utility knife blade, and then coat the wood with raw linseed oil.

You can see a video I made of this build on YouTube.

Scratch Stock

I have an old fireplace surround I'm working on for my sister and her husband. They've bought a gas fireplace that they'd like to install in their living room. The shape of the gas fireplace doesn't match the opening in the surround they found so I'll modify it to suit, and add some shelving along with some other elements to tie it into their living room (see below.) *

 

My son and I used a heat gun to strip most of the paint off the most complex parts we're reusing, the small columns. They have appliques on them but that section of the column will be removed to lower the height, leaving the lower fluted section, and there is still paint in the flutes. That's why I need a scraper. I could just round off the end of a piece of tool steel and use it like a paint scraper, but holding it firmly, and close to the wood surface will give me more control. At least that is my hope, so I'm working on making a simple scratch stock.

I found some great sites that really helped with the design and build of this tool. This article from Woodsmith Magazine is a great introduction to the basics and includes plans. For more of a deep dive into the types and styles of scratch stocks and their history, check out the Valley Woodworker blog. Fine Woodworking has a helpful article with an embedded video which is also helpful. Thanks to  these sources for the great information. 

Click to enlarge

 

I made a video of this tool build and posted it on my YouTube channel, check out the video here. I'll save the scratch stockfence for a later date, as I don't need it for this project. The cutter head is half-round and its designed to get into the flutes on the columns without damaging the wood. The cutter blade is made from a used utility knife blade, so between the scrap wood and the used blade, this project has basically no cost for materials. And the cutter head can be shaped on both sides, but I haven't done that yet.

The completed scratch stock

Leave a comment if you think the Sketchup model would be useful and I'll post it.

Here's the surround I'm building*

* Hopefully I'll get a chance to record some of that work and post it here and on my YouTube channel.

ECE Coffin Plane Restoration

ECE Coffin Plane as found in Wells, Maine

The E.C. Emmerich Company was founded in 1852, and  they're still in business in Remscheid, Germany. I found this 7-inch coffin plane at an antique shop in Maine looks like its labeled for sale in the US given that its labeled with both 51mm and 2" dimensions on the iron. I downloaded their catalog, and it doesn't appear that they still offer this plane. This plane doesn't look like it was used very often, but has sat unloved for a while and humidity has lead to rust on the iron, which in turn discolored the wood parts that come in contact with the metal. I've just cleaned it up and put it back to work. 

You can see a YouTube video I made about this restoration here.

There was some spray paint over-spray on the wood, and some general grime. The iron and chip breaker were rusty but not very pitted. There was some limited pitting on the back of the iron where the chip breaker was pressed against the metal. That took a little while to grind out but I don't think the back of the iron was ever flattened, so most of it came while doing that in any case.

Click on the pictures for larger view

I soaked the iron, chip breaker, and screw in Evapo-Rust over night to loosen the rust. While those pieces sat, I worked on the wood parts with a utility knife blade as a scraper, some small files, and sandpaper. I decided not to try and remove the rust stains as that would remove too much wood, and the worse of it is covered by the iron assembly when its put together.

The completed plane

The completed restoration produced a really nice plane. I had to square up the cutting edge and reestablish the bevel, then I worked on it with 400 and 100 grit stones before stropping it on leather with compound. The result was very satisfying. I flattened the sole by hand by marking it with a pencil and using sandpaper on a flat bed (my belt sander with the power off.) I rubbed the wood (except the sole, and the insides) with raw linseed oil.

The tuning of a wooden plane takes a little to get used to but once I had it set, it was taking beautiful shavings from a piece of quarter sawn beech I've had in the shop since 2015.

The wood shined after this pass

Check out the video if you get  chance. Leave a comment here or there (or both places!) and let me know what you think. Do you have a wooden plane, or two? How do you like them compared to metal planes?

Compass Saw Tote Design

I've been doing drawings once a day for the month of October this year for the Inktober Inking challenge, and the prompt for yesterday was Compass. Rather than drawing of a wayfinding compass, or a drafting compass, I decided to put down an idea for a new tote design for a compass saw.

Traditional handsaws, and backsaws have always had handsome totes, but compass saws have suffered a little in the design area. I think that is based on the needs of the user, and the way the saw is often used, either upside down, or sideways, with three fingers on the handle and the forefinger along side the cheek, or with four fingers in and a thumb on top. In practice, this has led to a simple hook shape with no horns to get in the way of turning the saw, or changes in grip, but I'm hoping for a tote design that allows for both.

My design takes obvious clues from traditional compass saw tote designs like those from Jackson and Disston, and others but I've tried to add just a little more detail to keep the tote from being so drab. Some larger versions or table saws will often have horns to and bottom, similar to a backsaw, but may not be as flexible for different grips as the hornless design.

A quick ebay search today resulted in a few examples:

Disston Compass Tote

Tyzack Compass Tote

'Vintage' so I'm not sure who the maker is

William Webster, Shefield Compass Tote

Is my Compass tote design a big difference? No, but that's not the point. The point is to add back a little of the detail that makes the horned tote on the Webster, without loosing the flexibility of the simpler, 'pistol-grip' styles.

Next up is to do a test.

Saw Tote Designing

I got a comment on one of the (very few) YouTube videos I've posted. That video is about a saw I built for a customer of my Etsy store. In the video I must have mentioned that I put together the tote design myself and the commentor suggested that what I had really done was just downloaded a tote design and made a few modifications. My response is, essentially, 'that's exactly right.'

Table saw tote design underlays set to transparent

In fact, I downloaded a bunch of saw tote designs, both drawings and photos, and worked with them all, plus what I had, to develop a tote that would work for this saw but still had that classic tote design. My first tote design was a few years ago, and while I was happy with it at the time, when I look back I can see a number of mistakes, that I've tried to improve upon moving forward. Why try to reinvent the wheel when we can all stand on the broad shoulders of those that came before us? And if you ask the guys who have made their tote designs available for download, I think they'll say the same thing. Their designs come from traditional saw makers too. (The TGIAG drawing included in the underlays above is labeled as a Disston No. 9, very similar to the No. 12) Still, the clean geometry of the drawings these guys make available for download make them even easier than photos to work with. My thanks (again) to Two Guys in a Garage, and Blackburn Tools for making them available.

Above is the design I put together (in red) for the 6 inch backsaw in the YouTube video, overlaid on a pistol grip tote design from Blackburn, which is one of the designs I used for reference, mostly for the grip. The design of the grip, including the relative positions of the 4 circles that make up the inside and outside portions of the grip at the top and bottom is critical for a comfortable tote design, and these relative positions change with hand size, as well as angle of attack. And you can see that I had to adjust the angle of attack on this tote considerably given the short plate length of this saw. Other changes include heavier horns to prevent breaks, elimination of the hook, more mass in the cheeks, lining up the saw bolts, and a few other minor stylistic changes. In the YouTube video about this saw build, you can also see that I added length to the horns, and combined the double top nib into a single nib.

The completed Table Saw tote design, with a nod to its Disston No. 12 origins

Above is my most recent tote design.* This is the design that resulted from all of the underlays shown in the first image at the top of this post. Its for a table saw, or pruning saw. I'm using Vectorworks for the CAD drawing. I found a nice old Disston No. 12 in the basement of my brother-in-law's family home. He thinks it may have belonged to his grandfather. Only half of the tote was there, it was rusted, and it had been sharpened so many times that the plate was nearly gone. You've seen those saws that come to a point at the end like a crazy keyhole saw. (You can see the plate in the top photo, which I used to lay out the holes in the tote design.) So I decided to cut it down and make a short hand saw for breaking down pine boards and other light duty stuff. Once I squared off the cutting edge, and trimmed the toe, the fourth tote hole was too close to the teeth, so I decided to remove it. (You can see the hole drawn in the final design, above. Its just outside the cut line of the new heel design on the plate.)

Here's how it turned out. I wanted a pistol grip for this little saw--I think its about 14 inches long--but I wanted to recall the extra loop in the grip of the Disson No. 12, so I opted for a little remnant. I cut new teeth for crosscut at 7 PPI, so its a little bear when chopping through softwood. The wheat design chip carving and the salvaged saw bolts are also a nod to the saw's history, but I gave up on trying to use a medallion; the cheek design just got too goofy looking when I made it large enough to fit the medallion.

It was a fun little saw to make, and it fits in a tool box, and I can throw it in a bag with the other tools when I'm working around the house and not worry about it getting beat up a little.


* If you think any of these tote designs might be useful for one of your own projects, please feel free to download. If you need a pdf, leave me a comment with your contact and I'm happy to send what you need or see if I can post it.

Stanley No. 5 Restoration

As my efforts to be greener and all natural in the shop have evolved, I've naturally been more interested in hand tools. You just have to take a quick spin through the handful of posts that precede this one to see that. Hand planes do some things that other tools just can't do, and they do some things better than the alternatives. Even some power tools don't stand up to what can be done with a hand plane. That being said, there are also some limitations that need to be considered. In this post, I'm going to walk you through how I cleaned up an older plane I bought for jointing,* while also touching on what I see as the benefits--and the limitations--of hand planes.

First off, there are lots of different types of hand planes, from general purpose smoothing planes like the Nos. 4 & 5, to specialty planes like routers and rabbet planes, to wooden shaping planes; Stanley alone has over 200 planes in their (historic) catalog. Want to know more, go see Patrick Leach.


The Stanley No. 5, or jack plane, is a general purpose bench plane, but has a long enough bed for jointing in a pinch. The 5 I've fixed up is a cast iron bodied plane with rosewood handles (tote and knob) a heavy steel blade and chip breaker assembly and an adjustable steel frog, fitted with a brass and plastic knob to set the cutting depth and a lateral adjusting lever to adjust the squareness of the blade against the bed of the plane. All of this adjustability hardware means that the cast iron bodied smoothing plane can be tuned and adjusted on the fly without tapping on the cutting iron, wedge or plane body with an adjustment hammer as you would on a simpler wooden version.**

The adjustablity that is built into the Stanley-type bench plane, means that the plane can be broken down to its basic parts. This really helps when it comes to cleaning. Once the plane is broken down, the parts fall into three major groups: The plane body, the rest of the metallic parts, and the wooden knob and tote. The cleaning methods I used on the plane body and the rest of the metallic parts is similar, but the size of the body, and the flatness of the working surfaces, make it a little different than the other parts. The wood parts clearly need a different kind of a attention.

Once its apart, I dust everything off and set the wood parts aside. Next, I take each of the metallic parts to the sink and wash them with scouring powder and really hot water. I know, rust. The hot water brings the temperature of the piece up to a pretty toasty temperature. I wash and rinse them one at a time, and then dry them while they are still hot. I knock or blow the water out of the screw holes and the heat in the metal evaporates off the rest in no time. Take care cleaning the blade, its easy to cut yourself.

Next, I chip off the paint drops--why are there always drips of paint on old tools?--being careful not to damage the Japanning. For this I usually use a sharp piece of hardwood, like maple, rather than a metal tool. After that, I check for rust. Fine surface rust comes off easily enough with some steel wool, or fine sandpaper. For the flat parts of the plane, I'm careful to clean them on a flat surface, coated with sandpaper, to make sure the surfaces stay flat. For bad rust, I drop the parts into some white vinegar overnight, and then its back to sink for more scouring powder and hot water. After the heavy rust is removed, I clean them parts as noted above. A wire brush is handy for hard-to-reach places, but I don't use it on the Japanned areas, or the brass/plastic bits.

The wooden tote and knob usually clean up nice with a little steel wool and some paste wax, but if you've got a broken tote (and it happens, boy) then you've got a more serious problem on your hands. I've done some tote repairs on planes and saws in the past. Getting the original shape right can be the tricky part. Luckily, this plane didn't have any damage to the wooden bits.

Once everything is clean and rust free, I put on a coat of paste wax before I put it back together. A little light oil goes in the screw holes and on the threads of the screws. I pay special attention to the paste wax on the raw metal parts such as the face and the cheeks of the plane, the blade, and chip breaker, and the lever cap, as it really helps to keep the rust at bay.



* I've since picked up a Union No. 7 jointer plane at a yard sale for just a few dollars. It's in pretty bad shape, but I'm going to see if I can tune it up and get it working.
** Stanley (and others) also make wooden planes with metallic inserts (often referred to as transitional planes) that allow a lot of the same adjustability as their metallic counterparts. I'm comparing metallic planes to the traditional wood plane with a wood wedge holding the iron in place against a bed that's carved right into the body of the plane.

Moxon Vice

My shop is growing like I think many shops on a budget grow: slowly, and as needed. The things I don't have, could easy furnish a very nice shop on their own. One of those things I don't have is a nice bench. Oh I know, its supposed to be first on the list, but the thing is, I do have a workbench, sort of.

It started out as homemade staging planks when I was fixing my house just after moving in. The planks I made are 10-feet long, and just over 2-feet wide, with 2x4 framing and 3/4-inch plywood tops. I set these on post jack staging and they were much sturdier than 2x12s. A few years later, I added some legs, some stretchers, some plywood scraps on the ends and across the stretchers and that is my bench.

Not very glamorous.

But I've mounted my grinder at the end, and then my drill press. So now its crowded too. But the wedge vice I had on there for a few years had some obvious limitations. I don't have a hundred bucks for a bench vise, and I've seen some nice Moxon vices on YouTube, and elsewhere on the internet and thought that a variation of that would work for me.

Moxon vices are typically a benchtop affair, set atop the bench and held in place with some clamps of hold fasts, and set so that the rear chop or jaw of the vice is flush with the front of the bench. This assumes you don't need it often enough to mount it, and because its raised above the surface of the bench, the height is more convenient for fine work like dovetailing, so you don't have to bend over.

My idea was to use it as a bench vice, set flush with the top of the bench, and add dog holes so I can also use it to hold items on the surface of the bench. So my Moxon is more of a hybrid between a Moxon and a double-screw bench vice.

Designing my vice started by thinking about it. I liked the idea of the heavy wheels that I saw on the nicer Moxon vices, they were weighty and you could give them a good spin and they'd tighten right up. But I also liked the wooden screws because they're bigger, and the edges of the threads aren't sharp like a lot of threaded rod is, so it doesn't cut into your work. Then it occurred to me: I've seen something like this before, when I was younger and used to lift weights.

After looking at the options, I was happy to see that there is a built in shoulder at the end of the thread to act as a stop for the rear chop, and they have these heavy steel floriform nuts* that take the place of the cast iron hand wheels in the fancy kits. And, they're threaded on both ends so I could cut one in half and $20 would give me enough for two vices! So wow, right? But the threads are little short, and if I'm going to make chops out of 6/4 or 8/4 hardwood, I'm no going to get much of a range with these things from they way they look, and there aren't any good dimensions on how long those threads are on the various places I looked online. So it was off to the store to see if I could find the dumbbell handles with the longest threads, and what do I find? This crazy thing:

Golds Gym 5-foot Weight Lifting Bar

Its a weightlifting bar that comes in three pieces. The two ends are solid, 1-inch diameter solid steel, threaded, with an integral stop like the dumbbell handles, The center piece is a hollow pipe, that slips over the end bars, and is fixed in place with set screws or something. Seems like a crummy idea for a weightlifting bar, but great for a vice! The threads are like 10-inches! This bar was about $25 at Walmart (corrected).

There are 3 of these with holes lined up. 2 under, and 1 in front of the bench.

So, I came up with a simple design to hold the threaded rods in place, so I can install this under my bench, and feed it through corresponding holes in the 2x4 holding up the front edge of the bench. Its a few pieces of 3/4-inch plywood, with holes large enough to allow the rods to slide in and out, but small enough to catch the raised stop at the end of the threads, and two side pieces of plywood  to hold them together makes a rectangular frame. [Let me know if you'd like to see a SketchUp model]

The completed Moxon vice with board clamped in place

I assembled the plywood frame, with the two threaded rods inserted. They don't fall out because the raised stops hold them in. There are corresponding holes in the front of the bench, so I slipped it in from below, and screwed the frame in place to the bench skirts. Then, with the two rods sicking out of the bench front, I slipped over the last piece of plywood, with holes aligned, and then the 8/4 white oak front chop and the nuts. Basically done.

BONUS: The rods slide back, out of the way, when not in use.

A couple of items to note: The rods slide in and out in the frame, so when the vice is not in use, I can spin the nuts out to ends, and then slide the rods away so I don't walk into them. The 8/4 chop is about 4-inches deep so I get an 1 1/2-inches or so of grip above the rods. Since I finished, I've added a couple of dog holes to the chop so I can use it to clamp work onto the surface of the bench too. Lastly, I made a 'wrench' out of pine that has a matching corrugated (floriform, right?) hole that fits over the spin nuts, and a short handle so I can torque the nuts tight.

I'm thinking about making some hand wheels out of heavy hardwood with the floriform shaped routed out, so they'll slip over the spin nuts. If I do, and they work, I may glue them on there (and I'll post it here.)


* floriform = flower shaped. The dumbbell folks call them threaded collars, spin collars, or star collars. They look more like flowers to me.

Disston No. 7 Refurbish

This is number 2 of 2 posts about two saws I just refurbished. The other is a Carcase Saw. I've had this saw for a little while and wanted to fix it up. I wasn't sure it was a number 7 until I cleaned the plate, but I guess I'm getting ahead of myself. It was clear from the medallion that I had a Disston from 1896 to 1917, and the tote looked like the No. 7 design, but it was chipped in two places. The upper horn was missing a chunk, and one side of the lambs tongue was gone.

The tote after I removed it and cleaned it with denatured alcohol

So I pulled the saw apart and set the plate in vinegar to loosen the surface rust. You can read more about that process on the carcase saw refurbish. The tricky part of this refurbish was the tote. The chip at the upper horn left a lot of wood at upper part of the horn, and I wanted to keep as much as I could, so I clamped it up in a hand screw clamp and cut out the damage with my small backsaw. I used a small try square to keep thecuts straight. Then I used a chisel to square up the notch for the patch.

The try square held tight to the hand clamp acts as a cutting guide

For the lambs tongue, I used the chisel to flatten the area, and then glued in a small piece of quartersawn beech in both places, doing my best to align the grain. I set up a series of small bar clamps and rubber bands to hold the little patches in place. The rubber bands are great because you can wrap them around the patch to apply pressure from a variety of angles.

The rough cut horn patch

Once the glue dried on the patches, I cut them roughly to follow the shape I was looking for and then went to work with a chisel, and then some rasps and files to clean up the shape, trying not to remove any of the existing wood in the process.

The rough cut lambs tongue patch

The lambs tongue ready for sanding and toning

The horn patch ready for sanding and finish, note the contrast in color

Touching up the color of the patches was next, so I tried a darkening agent first; vinegar mixed with steel, which reacts with the tannins in the wood to darken the surface. Once that dried I touched it up with some sandpaper and  rubbed the entire with raw linseed oil. A short time later I wiped off the excess, and set it aside to dry. In hindsight, I wish I'd adjusted the color better before putting on the linseed oil, but I couldn't see how poorly the color matched until the oil was on there; that made the next step difficult. I tried some wood stain to darken up the patches some more, which I let set and then rubbed off. The linseed oil kept the stain from penetrating, and while the lambs tongue turned out nice, the horn patch is not dark enough.

Steel and vinegar solution after a few minutes

After the solution dries, a light sanding evens out the tone

While the linseed oil dried, I turned my attention back to the plate. My one piece of advice, don't go too heavy with the sandpaper grit, its hard to get the scratches out later. Okay, one more nugget; keep the sanding strokes long and straight, they show when you're done, and short, wavy strokes look wrong. After a dip in the vinegar and some cleaning and light sanding the plate looked pretty good, so I put some paste wax on it and set it aside.

The etch confirms its a no. 7, early 1900s

I put a few coats of shellac on the tote, sanding lightly between coats. When it was good and hard, I rubbed some paste wax with a fine steel wool to take down some of the sheen and add some protection. The saw bolts and medallion I cleaned just a little with a Scotch Bright pad; I like to see some of that old color on the brass. The fleck in this quarter-sawn beech is beautiful.

The finished tote. The lambs tongue looks like it grew there

The refurbished Disston No. 7

All in all this was a fun project, and the two saws that I ended up with look great and are ready to go back to work. I guess I'll have to put them in the next rotation for a little tune-up sharpening!

Carcase Saw Refurbish

This is 1 of 2 posts on saw refurbishing I just did. I also cleaned up a nice Disston No. 7 I've had around for a while, and this saw, a reasonably new purchase for me. I was looking for a carcase saw that was a little bigger, and not quite as heavy as the W. Tyzack, Sons & Turner saw I fixed up last summer. This saw has a 14-inch by 3-inch plate, 13 PPI, crosscut.

Looks like a beater, but there's potential there

This Jackson is probably a little older than the Tyzack, but new enough that all of the detail had been designed out of the tote, similar to the Tyzack. It also doesn't have a Disston medallion, so I'm not sure when it was made, but I'm guessing something after 1950.

A little worn, a little rusty, a small chip in the chamfer, and no style

The plate was in good shape and the tote was solid, with just a small amount of play where it was mounted to the plate. And the tote? Its just ugly. All curves and no angles. No balance.

The tote after cleaning with denatured alcohol, with the inspiration tote

So I pulled it apart, and soaked the plate for a short while in white vinegar. I know, folks say that ascorbic acid (vitamin C) is supposed to be better, or some commercial rust remover that I can't afford, but the vinegar worked good for me. After just a day, I pulled the plate out and scrubbed it with hot water and soap to remove the vinegar, the carbon left on the steel, and whatever general crud was left on there. Then it was wire brushing and the scotch bright pad to clean up the metal.

I'm not trying to make the tote look new. I like the age, it tells a story

The tote I repaired by cleaning off the broken chamfer square and gluing in a small piece of beech with the grain aligned. Once that was dry, I shaped it to match the opposite side with a chisel and then re-shaped tote, adding back the V-notch, a double nib ahead of the top horn, and I sharpened up the notch ahead of the bottom horn. The changes are subtle, but the make a difference. I cut the shape with the band saw and some files, and then cleaned it up with some finer files and then sandpaper.

After the vinegar bath, a good wash, and dry scrub with a Scotch Bright pad

Once the re-shaping was done, I gave the tote another light sanding. I'm not trying to remove all of the marks, dings and scars, just most of the dirt, paint drops, and the crud. It tends to build up in the shellac as it gets damp and sticky over the years. Its hard to see, but just before finishing, I added an extra chamfer stop to each cheek. It looks like there might have been a very small one there, so I deepened them.

Click on the picture for a blow-up. The grain in this quarter-sawn beech is nice

When it was clean, I rubbed some raw linseed oil into the tote, to protect it, bring out the grain, and to swell the wood up a little. I think the dried out wood was part of the reason for the loose fit on the plate. If its still loose when I put it back on, I figured I'd file a little bit off of the bolts to keep them from bottoming out in the nuts, but it worked out fine and I didn't have to do that.

The refurbished carcase saw

The next day, while the linseed oil was still uncured, I wiped off the excess and put on a coat of 2# cut shellac and left it to dry overnight. The shellac gets mixed up with the oil on the surface, and the next day the shellac is still a little sticky, and even oily in some places. I sanded off any high points and put another coat of shellac on, which dried up fine. The linseed oil and shellac mix make a kind of varnish (this is what I tell myself anyway) which I think helps to binds the shellac to the wood, and slows the drying of the linseed oil. Time will tell, but I think it may work out to be pretty good.

Before re-assembly, I touched up the saw bolts and medallion with the Scotch Bight pad, but didn't remove all of the color. The bright brass is pretty, but too pretty for a saw that looks its age. I put paste wax on the tote and on the plate to protect them. I used a fine steel wool which takes some of the shine off of the shellac so its a little more matte, which looks good.

I haven't even sharpened this saw. It cuts great. Now it looks great, won't rust anymore and the tote doesn't wiggle. That's worth a few hours, and I did the Disston No. 7 at the same time, so... efficiency, baby.

Hand Tools

Hand Tools: Their Ways and Workings is a beautiful soft cover book written and illustrated by Aldren A. Watson in 1982. This is now my go-to guide for hand tools. Watson is clearly a lifelong user and fan of hand tools and in this book he has poured out all of what he knows, illustrated clearly and concisely with beautiful hand-drawn illustrations of the tools, their parts, their use, and even care and sharpening. The appendixes even include measured drawings and instructions for building your own jigs, wooden hand tools, a work bench (including a version that folds up in a closet for the apartment dwellers) and patterns for replacement handles.

Exploded view of a smoothing plane

The book is organized by tool types. Each tool is described in detail, with cut away drawings of the innards, and its workings so the tool owner fully understands the tool and how it functions. Watson explains, and often illustrates the variations found in the tool, what the different options and adjustments are good for and then goes on to describe how the tool is used. These descriptions are full of examples, and advice ton the best ways to work, often with illustrated techniques, tips, and time savers along the way. For example, in the discussion about a spirit level there is a great tip for leveling a wooden table that doesn't include cutting the legs or using a matchbook. Fantastic!

Do you know this is called an adze-eye hammer?

If you are just starting out with woodworking tools, or if you've been using them for years, like I have, this book has something (many things!) for you. If you've been outfitting your shop with the latest power tools you see on The New Yankee Workshop and shows like it, you may want to take look at this book and see what hand tools can do, often times with less effort, less set-up time, less sawdust, and better results.

Knowing what's inside informs its proper use

Aldren Watson was a professional illustrator, woodworker, print maker and book binder. He died just a little while ago, in 2013 at 95.

Read this book. And then set it in your workshop for reference.


I also posted this book review on my other blog.

W. Tyzack, Sons & Turner Carcase Saw

I picked up this nice carcase saw at a yard sale a few weeks ago. I'm not sure of the vintage on this saw but it looks like its 20 or 30 years old. There was some minor discoloration on the plate, no pitting or hard rust. The teeth were pretty sharp and the set seemed pretty even along the length of the cutting edge, just a little gummed up with sap or something. The tote is in fine shape but the finish was just falling off. Looks like it was kept in a damp place or something, I'm not sure but it seemed to have been alligatoring right off. I'm sorry I don't have a nice before photo, I thought I did. I think you can see in this first picture how the finish that's left, is a little funky. The worst of it was in the larger, flat expanses on the cheeks of the tote; the edges were actually holding pretty well. What I didn't like about this tote, other than the finish, is the vestigial signs of the tote design of yesteryear.

After sanding, I penciled in the lamb's tongue and other adjustments

Take a look at the design of this tote. You can see the lamb's tongue right there! Its just... mushed in with the rest of the handle. Its like a tease. So I decided that if I was going to strip this tote anyways I might as well bring a little life back to my new saw, and to myself, because, as you can see, a little part of me died inside when I looked at this thing.

Here it is after a quick trip to the band saw. Hello V-groove.

I'm not trying to recreate an older version W. Tyzack, Sons & Turner saw, so the design I chose is just something I like. Other than restoring the carved lamb's tongue complete with a clip and a real V-groove, I also adjusted the upper and lower curves of the lower horn to accentuate that Western design. The upper curve of the lower horn also rubbed against the bottom of my hand when I held the saw, so I wanted to open it up a little. I also wanted to cut in a double nib at the front of the upper horn.

From below, the reshaped lower horn, lamb's tongue and clip

After the rough cutting it was over to the bench vice with a rasp and a few files. This tote is beech, so it works pretty easily with the grain but shreds across the grain, so I couldn't cut very deep with the rasp without making a mess for myself, so it was easy going and I ended up swapping back and forth from my whittling knife to a small file as I got closer to where I wanted to be. I ended up finishing the shaping with my Dremmel to save my shoulder, which has been bothering me. If I had to do it again, I'd cut the clip in by hand, so its not so deep; seems like a weak spot.

There, doesn't that feel better?

Once it was shaped out nice, then it was only a matter of sanding it down, cleaning off the rest of the old finish and putting a new finish on. I don't have any ruby shellac, and frankly I'm not wild about the original color, and I thought the beech was a little pale, so I rubbed in a little oil stain and set it to dry on my shop made pin board. A guy I worked with years ago described this finishing aid to me. Mine is a piece of fir with box nails driven through it. The piece sits on the nail points to dry and the blemishes are tiny and sand out easily between coats. Thanks Phil!

After the staining, I added a few coats of 2# cut shellac, with a little sanding between coats. While the finish coats were drying I turned to the plate and the sex bolts, which I cleaned up and coated with paste wax. I thought about stripping the plate with abrasives to remove the discolorations, but the plate isn't etched, its just screened, so it would have come right off. I decided that a little cleaning with a scotch bright pad was enough.

All set to go

 
I finished up with a coat of dark Bri-wax rubbed in with 000 steel wool, and reassembled the saw. No re-sharpening right now, I've decided to use it a bit and see if it really needs it. A few tests cuts have confirmed that its good to go for now. Not only does this pretty little saw look better, but it feels better in my hand. Not bad for a few bucks at a yard sale a few hours at the bench.

A last glamour shot