Archive for ‘Tools’

Old Mechanical Pencil and Friend

By John, 28 January, 2011, 1 Comment

40 Year Old Pencil

Somewhere around 1971-2, I met a man in Kemmerer, Wyoming. Lloyd Bass came to that small Polish, coal mining community to work on the new coal fed power plant. I was there for other reasons.

Lloyd was the only African American in town, and I seemed to be the only person in town willing to befriend him. He and I became good friends. We both had motorcycles, and rode some together. I managed a gas station for Amoco and he worked part-time for me just for something to do in the off hours.

We hung out together often during his stay there, and I enjoyed the relationship. He was one of the nicest and most genuine people that I had ever known.

One day, Lloyd presented me with this pencil. They had just gotten some at the plant, and he wanted me to have one. I had never seen anything like it before, and I loved it at first sight. Mechanical pencils had been around for sometime, but this was a .05 millimeter pencil when most had a fat lead that wrote an ugly line. And the lead advancement was by clicking the top instead of rotating the barrel.

This pencil has lived in 4 states and 7 towns with me. I was using it in the shop last week when it dropped to the floor again for the 5th time. As I picked it up, I thought maybe I should be more careful with it. I bought some cheapy pencils to use in the shop and brought this into the office with me where it belongs again.

This wonderful little tool has been with me now for almost 40 years, and I think of Lloyd often when I pick it up. It still works well, and I thank him again here for it and for his friendship.

Drilling Guide

By John, 28 January, 2011, No Comment

PortAlign Drilling Guide

As promised in the previous post, I want to highlight a tool purchased about 30 years ago. I don’t recall where I purchased it, except that I got it someplace in Lawrence, KS. During this period of time, I was a self-employed handyman. I had numerous quirky jobs that I did for people, and for one such job, this appeared to be the perfect tool.

The Patent description for this product explains far better than I have in this space what this tool does, but it has served me well over the years on several projects. Essentially, if you attach it to your drill, you can drill a perpendicular hole on a flat surface. In this picture in fact are holes in my workbench top that I drilled for bench dogs using this very tool.

With Drill Attached

The bars that hold the drill perpendicular to the base also extend beyond the base if you wish. When used this way, you can center an edge between the bars in a clamping motion when you rotate the base until one bar is on each side of the wood. That effectively puts the drill bit in the center of the edge and if you keep downward pressure on the plate it is perpendicular too.

I see that the company, PortAlign Tool Co. went out of business, but there are some imitations. I love this one, and would not surrender it. The drill is the same drill used in it from the start, so it too is a good 30 years old. Boy, has it been abused!

Just this past year, I located a new chuck for it that did not need a key. Curiously, a new chuck costs nearly as much as a drill anymore, so I avoided buying a new one. But just a few months back, I ran across one on clearance for about $7 at Home Depot. Believe me, I snatched it in a moment. I hate chuck keys with a passion, especially the ‘L’ shaped one that came with this drill.

I will confess that when I dug this tool out of storage a year ago, it was kind of rusty. But, a few minutes on the buffer and it was good to go again. I put a little oil on it, and I will likely use it for many more years and many more projects. At least on 3 more desks…

Miniature Plane

By John, 24 January, 2011, 5 Comments

Veritas Miniature Shoulder Plane

I have large hands, and they are not quite as limber as they were when I did woodworking 30 years ago. The benefits of age though are many. One particular benefit is the cash to buy some nice little toys that are cute and useful on projects.

Sometimes you need something small when you are working on something small. These desks contain a few small pieces of wood that fit into sockets. I got them close with table saw and router, but finished the fit by hand. One piece is 1 inch wide and the other is 1 and 1/2 inch wide. Both are just over 3/8 inch thick.

Using the Veritas Miniature Shoulder Plane

With just a tiny bit of adjustment required, I started with my marking gauge. I scribed a line all the way around each end to make a cut about 3/8 inch from the end which is the depth of the mortise into which the pieces will fit.

At this point, I needed to shave of a very minute amount of wood along that line to make it fit nicely into the mortise. I started with a sharp chisel and then finished with the miniature shoulder plane from Veritas. It worked very nicely. The plane hugged my scribed line, giving me a nice sharp shoulder, and removed the tiniest shavings until I had a great fit.

This is the second occasion in which I pulled out this tool, and each time it was a delight to put into play. So far, I have not sharpened it, using it just as it came from Lee Valley. Highly recommended.

Shoulder Tools

By John, 13 December, 2010, No Comment

Veritas Shoulder Plane

A good tool at the right time solves a lot of problems, and creates a sense of joy in the usage. For these cover panels, I pulled out two tools that I bought over the past year. The first is the Veritas medium shoulder plane that you can get from Lee Valley (see my links). This thing is a joy to use. I have not used the large shoulder plane, but surely this is the more useful tool. A friend brought his to work for me to handle and after I did, I went right to the web and bought my own.

Laying it on the side, I cleaned up some of the rough edges left by the router after the 45 degree bit made a pass. Nice!

Record Bull Nose

A second plane that I used came from an eBay purchase. This was a fortuitous purchase, as I just happened to catch the new listing as a buy it now. Obviously, the owner did not know what he had, and I snapped it up for under $15. Wow, what a bargain!

This plane was made from 1933 to 1943. Veritas makes one that is comparable, and can be found at Lee Valley if you are looking for one of your own.

I used this plane to shave off some thin slices of wood on these cover panels where the saw marks could not easily be removed with sanding, or where the levels of the shoulders were not equal due to small issues in sawing.

Record Bull-Nose

They are all fun to use when they are sharp and you are working with the grain of the wood, or even across the grain. Tools like these are perfect for places where you just can’t fit another tool. Of course, it never hurts to have them sitting at the ready on your shelf too!

Baby Crib Slats

By John, 14 April, 2010, No Comment

Last Saturday, Tyler and I focused on getting slats ready for the crib.
The original design called for solid wood panels on the ends, but we
decided to change this for a more contemporary and open appearance.
Removing the two solid panels added to the count of needed slats, which
bumped up the total to 42.  

Now 12 slats short and out of useful wood pieces, I tried gluing some
narrow, left-over strips together to make viable pieces.  I succeeded in
getting 12 that might work, but only 5 really looked like something natural
and not two mismatched pieces of wood slapped together.  So, I picked up
some more wood from a local source, and I got them ready for Saturday when
Tyler arrived.

On a bed of this type, two options present themselves for getting that
traditional slat look.  The first option is to mortise and tenon every slat
in the crib, which means an awful lot of work.  The second option, which
the plan I bought off the Internet suggested is to fake it.  

That plan made use of pieces of wood for top and bottom with grooves cut
along their length.  The slats fit into those grooves and small pieces of
wood sat between each slat to act as spacers, to give strength and to hide
the fact that the slats did not sit into a mortise.  In reality, that gave
the crib an old fashioned look with lots of edges for little fingers to
grip, and a bric-a-brac look.

Since making tenons is much easier to make than mortises, we utilized The
Mortise Pal I purchased months back for this project.  The rails we did
last time we worked together, but now we needed tenons on the slats.  If
the hole created by the Mortise Pal left square corners, the tenons could
be made by cutting a tenon on each end of the slat with a table saw.  But
the mortise has rounded corners because they are made with a router bit.
So, we decided to make floating tenons.  A floating tenon is a short piece
of wood that is put into two mortise slots and glued together.

So, now we needed to mortise 84 holes in the ends of our 42 slats; one
hole in each end.  Making a mortise, even in a slat that is 1.5 inches wide
and ¾ thick, proved to be simple with this product.  Working together as a
team, we sat two slats at a time in the vise.  Earlier in the week, I made
a jig that slipped over the end of the slat and quickly provided the
stability and perfect spacing for the Mortise Pal.  

The plunge router sat down easily and made a quick hole.  With Tyler
moving the jig and flipping the wood, we burned through the first 30 slats.
The few that I glued were not quite the same thickness and the new wood
from the local vendor was also thicker.  Since they did not fit over the
thicker slats, we did those by hand.  But again, working as a team, we
knocked them out quickly.

Mortised Slats

Patina Reflections