Bookmark of the Week

Here is a page totally on hand tools. It is very big.


http://www.cianperez.com/

Bookmark of the Week

The Norse Woodsmith site is an excellent site with tons of interesting content.

Rear handle nut

Here is my procedure for making handle nuts.

First, file the top of your appropriately sized rod.
Then, cut the slot with a hacksaw. Test the depth with a screwdriver.
On the other side, drill the hole for the threaded rod using the correctly sized drill for the tap, this is where the threaded rod goes.

Then tap, making sure to use a cutting fluid. Use tape to show you when to stop. You cannot tap where you have not drilled.
Finally finish with sand paper. It works very well to mount the steel low down in the vice and bring the paper to it, than try to bring the piece to the paper.

Plane Metal

The metal for the lever cap and rear handle has finally come. From top to bottom: .25" by 1.25" by 4" brass, stainless steel of the same dimension, and .5" diameter by 1" stainless steel rod. I will be using the stainless steel for the lever cap, and the rod for the handle. I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with the brass yet, but for $7 shipping I thought I should get more than 2 items.A tip on ordering: when buying small quantities, you can save money by ordering more. At first I only had the brass and steel in my cart. The minimum shipping was about $10. When I added the $.51 rod, the shipping went down to around $7. I used Online Metals for this, just because it was the cheapest shipping, and they have a wide variety of sizes coupled with free custom cutting.

Weekly Bookmark

I will now start posting one of favorite websites per week.

This is Roy Griggs's website. He does a lot of very interesting things with old tools. This is definitely a website to check out.

http://www.shavingsandsawdust.com/index.asp

Mission Footstool Project: Splines

Before I mortise the legs into the top, I want to glue up the two top pieces. In the design, I called for a spline, or floating tenon, between the two pieces. First I cut the slot with a handsaw, which gave me a 1/16" slot. Then I enlarged it with chisels and a knife to 1/8". It would have gone a lot faster with a plow plane, but it's still on my tools-to-make list.
For the splines, I split 1/8" by 3/8" by 1" pieces and tested them in the groove. These are the 11 that fit. I'm leaving the splines at the ends for when I glue up the panel, so I can fit them perfectly.