One year Anniversary!

I just realized that the one year anniversary of thewoodshopbug has come and gone. Awesome. I'll save the mushy sentimental stuff for my 100th post (two posts from now).

Czeck Edge Kerf Kadet- Review

A marking knife is a simple tool- or is it? My first marking knife was an craft knife. This worked pretty good, but had an old dull blade, and was not long enough to mark in between dovetails. So then I made a marking knife that I blogged about in February. That was okay, an upgrade from the craft knife, but it had two major flaws. The first is that the tip of the blade was rounded, not pointed. At the time, I didn't realize it was that important. With a pointy blade, less of the knife has to be in the work to scribe the same depth of a cut as a rounded tip. This enables the knife to not stray from where you want to mark as much because it's less likely to follow the grain. The second flaw was that it looked terrible. Okay not that big a deal, but it annoyed me.

So now we come to the Kerf Kadet. Mine is in Macassar Ebony- $41.95. Let's start with the blade. It's 0-1 steel and is 1/32" thick and 1 5/16" long. This is a very nice set-up, all bevels are very crisp. The blade cuts very cleanly.

The handle's grain is more visible that I expected, never seeing this ebony before in person. It is very striking(no pun intended) has a great shape and has a very attractive finish. The bronze ferrule is very nice too.

Shown here are test cuts in pine and walnut.
A good marking knife is very important in the shop; it's more accurate than a pencil, and will even help you saw straighter. I highly recommend the Kerf Kadet from Czeck Edge. It is available from Czech Edge, and Craftsman Studio.






P.S.-shoutout to cornell dairy customer!

The Legs Are In

The top is all done, dogholes are cut, and tenons are glued and pegged with 3/8" oak pegs. I made a lot of progress on the bench's undercarriage, the legs are mortised into the top with 1" long tenons, those blocks coming out of the top of the legs will be lag-bolted to the top. They too are mortised to the legs. The legs in the rear photo might look weird. That's because I goofed and on the right, I made the mortise's edge at 16" from the end (correct), but the left one was 15" (incorrect), so the stretcher was offset in order to be parallel. I bought some 2" hickory for the vises. I also bought some more tools, a LN 102, and these microplanes, which I used to shape this handle (which is still in progress). That's all for now, I am now going to focus on the wagon vise.

Refinished #6

I recently bought and refinished a Stanley #6. I used the techniques illustrated in these three sites:
Plane Fettling
Rex Mill Hand Planes 101
Hand Plane Restoration
Pictures from before I started are here-Ebay