Virtuallust

Chris Schwarz just posted several videos on the Lost Art Press blog of perhaps one of my favorite objects that I have never actually seen in person. The toolchest of H.O Studley is one of those things that has always captured my imagination and, until these videos were posted, I only knew it through the handful of images that are readily available and re-published prolifically.  The piece, once on loan to the Smithsonian, now resides in a private personal collection (in an undisclosed location). My mental image of the piece was only reinforced several years ago when Norm Abram visited with the chest of an episode of "The New Yankee Workshop". It was then that I discovered that there was even more immaculate ingeniousness and a whole second layer of tools hidden under a series of swinging racks and doors. These new videos, just a sneak peak, introduce new mindboggling level of detail and refinement. Once again my excitement about the chest has been reignited, as well as my virtuallust to one day see it in the flesh.

It's Always Sunny in Brooklyn. (Part 4)

The File-nal Frontier (oh dear, that’s bad)

In this the final chapter of our sawing quadrilogy, we will be address this saw’s mettle. First, I’ll prep the saw plate removing any rust and giving it a light polishing. Next, we’ll talk sharpening, and I’ll give this old dog some new teeth.

It's Always Sunny in Brooklyn. (Part 2)

 

Back to the lab with a pen and a pad.

Disclaimer: This was the first time making a saw handle and for the most part I was winging it. As a result some of the steps may be mildly-to-fully ass-backward. Also, I once said I wasn’t going to blog how-to's, I sort of lied, deal with it. For what it’s worth, this a more of a how-did anyway.

It's Always Sunny in Brooklyn. (Part 1)

So I have fallen in love with saws.

My induction into handsaw-dust began with set of joinery backsaws that I purchased last winter. They been largely unused until the past fall when I began making it a point to do regular sawing exercises for joinery. This consisted of milling up a stack of short little poplar boards and cutting hundreds of angled dovetail cuts. At first I didn’t assemble any joints, I just laid out 20-30 cuts and after they were sawn then tried to divide the material left in between by eye (a Klausz exersiz). Then I got to actually making little dovetail cases, chopping out the waste and pairing the joints. Then it was on to practicing cutting tenons, etc, etc. Anyway, I have a gained little skill, and I am hooked. I am also convinced with continued practice and deliberate use my sawing is only going to keep getting better and better and allow me to cut complex joints that would be a nightmare with my machines. But what about larger cuts?
I think we're going to need some larger saws.

Enter my burgeoning handsaw obsession.

Resurrection

When I decided to start using handplanes, I was somewhat at a loss as where to start. I had very little experience using planes and,in hindsight, the experience I had was probably more of an obstacle. As I planned my first purchase, I had to decide whether to buy a new plane or fix up on old plane. I ended up buying an old plane: an old Stanley Bedrock Style 605 from the 1920’s off of E-bay for about 90 dollars. The plane was in rough shape, but all the parts were there and nothing was damaged. Using Garrett Hack’s Handplane Book and some tutorials from online, I set about restoring the plane. The first step was to take the plane apart and figure out try to figure out how it did it- I would later have to figure out how well each part was doing what it was doing.