Rambling Quickie #6

There's plenty going on in the shop this week. With the Stanley 80 Scraper, it's on a bit of a holding pattern until I can figure out what to do with the blade. It's not going to be possible to get it pit free, but I was able to get a hooked edge onto it. The only problem is that it's either no burr at all or one that seems so severe that it only grabs at the roughest of woods. Although it may be a setup problem as well. I need to look further into that one. The rust is almost completely gone though with a little naval jelly in the screw holes taking care of that.

The rascal was giving me such a hard time with setup that the name Finn came across in whispers as it glided across the face of an almost finished board without taking so much as a dusty shaving. Those of you that are fans of Huckleberry Finn will know what I'm talking about.

There's also the Hand Tool School which was launched a couple of weeks ago by Shannon of  The Renaissance Woodworker and I've completed the first 2 practice exercises. Winding Sticks and Hand Saw practice.

The winding sticks were fairly easy as I had been practicing my hand plane techniques after watching the Hand Plane Basics video (reviewed previously) a few times. I also used fairly tame grained wood (cherry with walnut and ash for inlay), so I went easy on myself. The inlay exercise using only a chisel was interesting, but I don't have a plow plane, so I couldn't have cheated anyway without enslaving a few electrons.

The hand sawing I did today, was just practice exercises. 10 cross cuts, 10 rip cuts and 1 resaw cut. At the end of it my arm was dead! But I did learn to cut to a line a little better, but more practice is required. I think the hand tool deities would be pleased. Although, I think I would lose about 1/8" if I were to hand plane my resaw cuts to flat and parallel.

The next project is due to be a Saw Bench, and I'm looking forward to completing that one as the recycling bin is just not very strong or suitable as a saw bench. It will actually be useful even in my power tool projects because when I rough dimension all of my lumber, I will cross cut my boards either by hand or use a jigsaw depending on my mood. I'll save my next sawing practice session for after the saw bench is complete so that I can have a non flexible surface to rest on.

Finally, I picked up a new blade for the band saw and reviewed the Band Saw setup video on The Wood Whisperer site (actually, it was still in my iTunes) and gave it a test by resawing a 5" wide piece of walnut that I've been saving to make my first box with.

There's actually one more project I'm working on, but I'll blog about it later ... say ... after Christmas!

Shannon's not the only one with Woodworking A.D.D!