Tissue Box Cover

Last Christmas I made my sister a small box. I also made my aunt, uncle, and cousin a cover for a tissue box. It's all 1/4" thick quartersawn red oak, all from Lowes. In the second picture you can see where the sides were glued together to make a wide enough piece. The top and small sides are glued down the middle. Here are the pictures of the box in its new home. Thanks for the pictures Victor.

Plane Drilling Jig

I made this jig to accurately hold the plane parts together as I drill into the sides for the screws that hold everything together. The sole goes on the top, the sides are clamped to the sides. The middle piece is exactly the same size as the interior if the plane.


The base piece gets clamped into the drill press vise like so:

Making a Lever Cap

I roughed out the lever cap, first cutting out the bottom of it, at an angle, to reduce work later. I cut from both ends because I'm not very good at hacksawing to a line. Then I used coarse, and fine files to shape the round-over, then sanding through the grits to 600. Then I feather cut perpendicularly to the curved shape of the top half of the lever cap, and sawed out the waste with a fret saw. Then I used a round file to smooth the concave curves, and a flat file to smooth the convex curve (at the top). I used the edge of a triangle file to cut the step by the cap screw, this is a purely aesthetic choice, since in my opinion, if everything had been co-planar, it would have looked boring. To be able to sand into the tight corners, wrap a piece of sandpaper around a file. This is a trick I picked up from reading Karl Holtey's blog.

After the cap has been uniformly sanded to 600 grit, I start the polishing. I took a 1/2 diameter piece of oak dowel, and made a split in one end, about 1" deep. The I took a thin strip of paper, and folded it over onto itself. This I applied veritas honing compound to, since I don't have a nice real wheel yet. It worked fine. The hole for the cap screw is drilled for a 10-24 thread.
Derek Cohen's write-up about lever cap making.

Some posts of Karl Holtey's Blog:
Window to my Workshop #7
Window to my Workshop #8
Window to my Workshop #21

Drill Press

I finally bought a drill press, it's been a tool on my list to buy for a long time. It will likely be the only stationary power tool in my shop, besides a hand held drill and a grinder. It has 12 speeds and a 5/8" chuck. I've already used it to drill into brass, and it works very well. I need to make a stand for it however, as squatting on the ground isn't very fun.

New Year, New Saws

Recently I bought some saws, a tenon saw and a carcase saw. I also completed the handle for my half-back saw. As you can see, I have polished the saw in the center. The dovetail saw I bought when I first started woodworking. It has a large chip in the blade, but it still works okay. Sometime I'm going to buy the Gramercy dovetail saw kit. Both of the new back saws are Spear and Jackson. The one with the brass back has a leapfrog stamp, and has an etch that says that it was made specially for T E Jay Tool Merchant, Chichester. I'm going to re-handle the carcase saw, but no the tenon saw(the brass-backed one). The carcases' handle it not very comfortable, and plus, I can make a handle that will be like this!