Southeast Michigan Woodworkers

Well, due to a bit of luck and logistical convenience coupled with increasing gas prices, I now get to carpool 4 days per week.  This means that I get a little time almost every morning to spend in my shop waiting for my ride to arrive.  This morning I was able to spend some time using some new-old hand planes on some curly maple.  While there was a little tearout, it still looked really nice.  Thank’s to Jim Crammond for providing some great planes to start learning with.  I have noticed that I favor tilting the plane towards myself, which causes less than perpendicular edges.  I was able to rectify that a little bit by skewing the plane as I pushed forward.  I think, at least on edge grain this tends to allow the plane to balance a bit more on the thin side of the board.  After about 30 minutes of plane work last night, I can see why Rob Cosman from LN is built like an English Bulldog.  I was sweating profusely.  Anyway, I guess the moral for the day is that a good tool gets you interested enough to continue to hone a skill while a bad tool can keep you from even trying.

I’ve almost used up the last of my crappy Lowes plywood. I’ve been trying to dust-proof the garage a bit. It gets pretty dusty. I know I need to run better DC lines, I have a larger/better air cleaner on the way, and I need to be better about taking the time to hook up the shop vac to the TS guard. I’m a slacker though. I decided I should replace some shelving with quick Kreg pocket hole’d cabinets. It worked out pretty great actually. I used an idea I saw on Wood Works for sliding doors and it was cheap, quick, and makes for a nicely closed up cabinet. It should keep things free of dust for a bit.

What’s better, on half of one of the cabinets I setup some shelves so I could take better advantage of the space. I still don’t use several inches of depth to them which bugs me a bit, but I’ve not figured out a good way to deal with it. This is definitely an improvement over the 12″ mdf shelves I had here though. More space, dust free, and used up just about the last of my crappy ply. What more could you ask for?

I decided today was a clean up day. After finally getting the tools out of the house and back into the garage I figured I should spend some time sharpening up my tools. I have a new router plane I grabbed off ebay and I have another pair of planes on the way. Hopefully they show up soon. I started out cleaning/sharpening my block plane which has a horrible iron on it. Then the larger plane. The #80 cabinet scraper, which I’m not sure I sharped right, and then I started to get into the chisels. I have a ton of work to do on them since I have a trash set that are nicked all over.

What’s horrible now is I want to play with the sharp new tools, but I don’t have a bench setup to hold things down right. I tried to stick a block of walnut in my cheap vise I have on my sawhorse-door, but it vibrated whenever the plane started into the wood. I’m not sure if it’s the plane or the vise’s fault, but either way…it’s not going to work for much right now. After the bench presentation last month, looks like it might be time to start working on plans for what I need.

I spent this weekend trying to get to work on my hall table. The top has no officially been started. Before milling the boards I changed out the planer and jointer knives so they’d be as sharp as possible with the curly maple I’m using for the top. The boards are fantastically figured, but that just means a new guy like me is going to be spending a lot of time with tear out issues. Hopefully, my trip to the milling place today will get me a nice finished top I can cut to size and start prepping for finish.

I also started planning out what I want to work on next once this table is done. My wife’s going to kill me, but I want to put together a really nice chisel cabinet. Something that I can keep chisels in the main body and in the door I’ll make it a little deep to put things like marking guages, squares, etc. I changed a sketchup model of a chisel to match the dimensions of my octoganal sorby’s and got the rough dimensions for a case that holds two rows of 5 chisels. I’m still working out things like the joinery and such, but I think I’m going to use some of the cherry I’ve got sitting in the garage on it. Only a few wood types left in the garage that I’ve not used now.

Nothing gets your mind going though like trying to design something. I had a hard time sleeping thinking of all the ways to put this together. Should the racks the chisels sit on be a sliding dovetail, just a rabbet. Could I get away with using some cheap 1/4 ply for the back. What if I covered the cheap ply back with some nice velvet to provide a dark backdrop on gleaming sharp chisels? How to do the door and have room for the extra tools in there? It’s crazy for sure.

Justin from the group hooked me up with a great deal. I’ve got an upgraded air cleaner on the way. As I work to put up a ceiling in the shop I keep thinking, “Man, I can’t wait for that air cleaner”. I currently have a hand-me-down Delta AP100 in the shop which works ok. It’s supposed to push some 400cfm and definitely puts out some noise. The new one is this Steel City single speed model. I couldn’t find the db numbers on the Delta so I can’t tell about the noise difference, but the cfm is going to be about double. It’s supposed to be on its way from PA and here around Easter. So I see dust around the garage ( it is an active garage after all) and I can’t help but hope this new toy I’m patiently waiting for will help solve it.

Now I need to start looking into how I can rig up something so that it runs for an hour every time the garage door is closed.

Test post, now isnt this all cool?