My wife left me unsupervised for the weekend and I spent
like 22 hour in the shop over a two-day period, which would have been bad juju
if she were at home. I was super
productive:
Cherry and walnut “cutting board” glue-up for my router table project
All the panels cut out for butler’s pantry cabinet
Poplar strips added to front of plywood shelved destined for the Kitchen
Wired and entire wall of 20 amp 110vac receptacles
Installed two 4000 lumen shop lights – 10 more to go.
Ran 20’ of dust collection pipe, installed shuts, and 20+ feet of flex duct.
Wired duct with anti-static ground wire
Finished fabricating and clear coating track-saw rail mounts
Installed rail mounts on garage door and felt amazing when it all worked as planned.
Hope to NEVER accidentally bend a track rail EVER again!!
Did a little filming for my YouTube Channel
drew up some plans for miter-saw dust hood
Went to Home Depot 3 times
Listened to Blues, old Country and about 14 podcasts
Last minute run to Woodcraft for a dust collection fitting.
Said dirty words
Drank about a gallon of coffee
Spent some time on Instagram and Twitter
There may have been some political ranting…
Added a coat (last ones) to my current canoe and kayak paddles
Cleaned and sweep and put tools away that had been gathering for a few weeks
This is the central 4” vacuum line, mounted, wired, and sealed. Happy to have this in! The garage door track-saw rail holder. Really proud of how these worked out. The rails are worth almost as much as the door!
Forgive the long preamble, I guess shaving the beard made me all wordy… I built/up-cycled a cabinet that sits above the toilet in the 1st floor bathroom of our 1928 Craftsman Bungalow. It matches the existing cabinets in the bathroom and in the rest of the house. I also added a shelf, finished the vanity with a faux raised panel end piece, and installed a 49″X 34″ mirror to match the existing mirror above the vanity.
As my wife was moving into her newly completed attic studio, she found that she was in need of some additional bookshelves. She has a LOT of costume, pattern, and fashion books – piles of books and reference material. She asked me, ever so sweetly, to put together some simple bookshelves that would fit in, but not overpower her space.
Her shelves are made of Grade 2 (full of knots) Big Box Lumber Store white pine (because that is what I had on hand) and it took about an hour to cut them out and an hour to put them together. The total cost of the shelves to less than $40 each, but I had some of the materials and supplies, so I did not have to make a Home Depot/Lowes Run for anything.
My wife put two coats of yellow milk paint on them and then two coats of satin spar varnish, sanding lightly between coats. I ended up doing two versions of the shelves for her, giving her around twenty-three liner feet of shelf space in the attic and giving her shelf options for some of the large, oversized books.
The two-shelf design is the one featured in this video, but I will add the link for the measured drawings for both types below and the links for the paint and varnish. I don’t get any sort of kickback for these – just adding for information. If you build a version of either shelf, let me know.
I am not the sort of guy that has a $3k winch/winch bumper combo on the front of his rig for show. I use my winch pulling logs, stretching wire, lifting heavy crap, helping out someone in a ditch, or extricating myself from a sticky situation.
Recently, I tore a huge gash in a leather glove using the winch – cable splinter – and it was deep enough to cut my hand as well. This is not the first time that has happened, just the most severe. I decided finally, after saying I was going to do it for years, to replace my steel wire winch cable with a synthetic rope. I went with a 3/8″ X 100′ 17.5k# rated Winchline Orange rope with a reinforced eye (no hook). It was a pretty strait forward process (as long as you don’t lose the 1/4-20X1/2″ line end retention bolt…) and I spent an hour unspooling the 100′ steel cable, installing the rope, pre-loading the line, and reeling it up. Well, I spent an hour looking for the lost bolt THEN spent an hour doing the actual swap…
Also changed out the standard cable hook for a Factor55 shackle, which are safer, especially when coupled with a synthetic rope. There is sllim chance in cutting the cable/rope with the hook or having the hook slip or break and come flying through a windshield/my head.
I am super careful while winching and have been riding back-roads and 4X4 trails, pulling myself and other folks out of holes and ditches for 30+ years (Jesus I am old…). Even being really careful, I have snapped a cable and broken two hooks in that time. With a strap and a D-ring on the shackle, I don’t think that a broken hook is a possibility anymore.
The new line also couples wonderfully with the ARB bumper that I installed last year as icing on my Jeep Cake when I finished the rebuild and paint.
Original bumper and Steel cable with hook fastened to frameSteel rope with shackle as I was installing the new bumperSteel Cable RemovedSynthetic Rope and Shackle Installed
I set up a second apiary this year (the first one is in my backyard). It is at a large private charity garden that is surrounded on all sides by acres and acres of blackberries. My hope is that the hives here will help with the pollination of the fruit and veggies in the garden and have overflowing frames of honey. This is both a test to see how well I do with multiple hive sites and a chance to do some good: The honey from these hives will go to the community pantry that this garden grows produce for. If successful, I will grow this little apiary by a couple of hives next year and add a third site of hives.
In addition to building my steel hive stands, I also bought new hives and packages of bees – a full and couple ground-up start. I ended up using recycled steel bed frames for the hive stands, a smattering of welding, a lot of painting, some concrete work, and a little carpentry on some of the boxes that were broken in shipment.
After years of making do, welding on concrete slabs or steel sawhorses or toting whole projects to someone else’s shop, I decided to build a solid, adaptable welding table of my own. I would LOVE to have a big Baileigh welding jig table, but I don’t have pockets that deep for something that doesn’t support my primary profession. I would have loved a Certiflat table and that was the plan – until I spent the money I had saved for that on an X-Carve upgrade…
I had rolled a couple designs of my own around in my head for years and while at a salvage yard looking for a specific steel, I found a very old and very tired work table with a steel frame, steel castors on one end, and wooden top that needed burning. I paused. I had to do something with 4-5 welding projects at home looming. I decided then and there that I could work with the pile of awkward wood and steel and parted with $25 to take it home. I called Specialty Metals in Kent, WA the next day about sheet steel pricing. I phoned them up at exactly the right time: They had a remnant piece of .5” steel from a larger job on super sale that was almost perfect. They agreed to the steel, to make the two needed cuts, and to plasma cut the holes in the top I wanted for pennies shy of $100. A smoking deal! I sketched it all up, sent it over to them, and a couple of weeks later, it was done. I hauled it home that day… Where it sat taking up space in my garage for 11 months while I healed from knee surgery.
I now have the top welded to the base and have used it for a bee hive stand project already. I will add some additional bells and whistles as I have time this summer and fall as I work on other welding projects.
Our Global kitchen knives REALLY needed to be sharpened so I decided to go through the whole process of how I make and keep them scary sharp using Japanese water stones, a sink board, and a little bit of water. Dull knives are dangerous – keep ‘em sharp.
Super excited! My tiny YouTube channel just passed 500 subscribers! I haven’t been posting every week due to lots of filming and I have 7 videos in works, including two, two-part videos. I am ½ to 1000 subscribers and ½ way to monetization. My hope is that the new videos highlighting some welding, yard, printing, sculpture, rifle, and cabinet projects will help with that leap to 1000.
I spent a couple of days installing reclaimed bamboo stair treads on our attic stairs. I spent some time in this video going over my process, a few tips, and the tools that I used on this job and that I have used for years.
I use the bejesus out of my power tools. I LOVE my SawStop, my Bosch compound miter-saw is scary accurate, and my band-saw is magic, but there is room in my life and in my shop for lots of old school hand-tools. I am a child of both Norm Abram and Roy Underhill. I watched them both on PBS every Saturday after cartoons as a small child in 1981 until I was 44 or so… Their combined influence has made me value the old way of doing things without being a Luddite and I can appreciate modern cabinet shop/woodworking tools. Case in point: I have a 3HP Powermatic 3520 lathe and would not even want to think about turning a bowl or platter on a pole lathe with a forged hook knife. On the other hand, while I have not given up a single one of by 5 routers, I found years ago that it is sometimes faster to grab an old wooden molding plane from a shelf and take care of an edge detail or piece of trim. I can be done and dusted with the plane in the time it would take me to find the right bit an set up the router.
Because of my vocal love for hand planes and the massive collection/display of them in my shop, I get questions all the time from friends and acquaintances about what they should buy, where they should start, how to set something up, sharpening, truing a sole, etc… I thought I would take a minute to go over those things, stand on my soapbox a little, and give the world my opinions concerning hand planes.
.. Ascending my soapbox… Ahem…
Buy a quality block and #4 smoothing plane – Lie-Nelson, Wood River, or Veritas are great options. Stay away from used hand planes or classics until you get used to how a hand plane SHOULD work. Setting up an older Stanley or Bailey plane, sharpening, replacing parts and flattening the sole will drive you insane if you don’t know exactly what you are doing and will make you want to throw the thing and swear off hand planes forever. Start with the known good and once you know how it should function, then you can pick up a used #2 bench rabbit or a #8 corrugated bottom joiner and tune them sweetly – maybe. I would go over any prospective purchase with a scornful eye and replacement of the blade and/or chip breaker on an old plane is required about 50% of the time, in my experience anyway.
Here is my list of the initial planes and accessories you will want/need ( I like the low angle option when available but to each his own):
Plane chip-breaker Screwdriver I swear to God you need this, really! When you mare the screw an a $200 plane because you didn’t listen, it is your own fault for not listening.
Buy a nice set of Japanese water stones 1000 to 8000 grit. Watch the videos and keep your blades sharp.
Also, Japanese planes, like Japanese pull saws and water stones, are FANTASTIC. They deserve their own diatribe, but for the purpose of this post I will stick to western planes with the exception of an ~1/16″ edge-rounding plane. I use mine constantly.
Nice to have once you get serious about using hand planes:
A combination plane, but be wary of used Stanley Record #45/#46s. They can be a beast to swap around and if they come with all the original parts they are spendy!
if you are going to be doing a lot of drawers or insets, then both a Left and Right Plow Plane are really nice to have
Wooden molding planes : See below…
Once you have been bitten by the molding plane bug, you will want to run right out and buy a 1/2 or full set. Good luck. There are not a lot of makers out there and the ones that are doing it have a long wait list and are not cheap. Some people, like myself, invest is an older set. My molding planes include a 3/4 harlequin cove and round set (mixed from various makers and time periods) that I have carefully built over the last 9-10 years. The dates for my planes run from 1956 to 1930s to 1850s/70s and I have one from the 1790s that has an uncommon roman ogee shape that I use on boxes and 6-board chest lids. This collecting takes time as there has never been a set standard for what a #8 is, for instance, so there is a lot of variance in sizes between makers. I have replaced a few irons as well.
I often defer to people that are smarter than me and Matthew Bickford and Chris Schwartz recommend a set of #4 and #8 and a set of #6 and #10 hollows and rounds as an initial starter set. I would add that a 3/16 beading plane is a wonder to have as well if and when you start down this road.
To my own set, I have added some additional beading planes – up to 1/2″, tongue & groove planes for 1/4″ – 1″ stock, specialized profile molders, 1/4 rounds, scrapers, etc., but those is my own personal obsessive tendencies.
I failed miserably at finding a classic matched set of snipe-bills and half rounds (NEEDED for linen-fold panels). I have resigned myself to buy new ones from Old Street Tools or Matt Bickford, but I have to warm my wife to the idea of me spending serious cash on blocks of wood and iron that I will use 5-6 times a year. I have been working on her for 3 years and they are on my Christmas and birthday list every year. No luck yet.
Read Bickford’s Moldings in Practice (if you have bled with me or we have swapped spit, you can borrow my copy) and take a look at the video of the same name before jumping in. Molding planes can be sourced from the following, in no special order:
