BobSmalser

The drawknife is among the most useful and versatile tools in boatbuilding and general woodwork, but is also frightening, because it can behave like a power tool and get the beginner into a lot of trouble very quickly. That trouble, however, is merely a matter of sharpening the tool and learning to read the grain of the wood. As my stones live their life out on the bench where they belong for daily use, they are filthy from saw and metal dust and need cleaning. A simple stiff parts-cleaning brush and a pan of kerosene does the trick. I

Spar planes gave builders speed back in the days before power sanders, which is probably why you don't see them made any more. A spoke shave, as Dave says, wouldn't work well because it wasn't designed for long, straight surfaces...its sole is too short....too easy to make dips. Instead, use both a jack and smoothing plane or two smoothing planes. One set to take a full shaving...the other set for a very fine shaving. Take your square stock to 8ths then 16ths on the table saw....then to 32nds with the jack plane....then use the smoother to take to 64ths...then sand.

Make sure its sharp enuf to shave hair painlessly

A Quick Spokeshave Tune Up Spokeshaves like the Stanley 151 we

Thanks Bill...we used to zip over there from Checkpoint Charlie because the of the binos available from the DDR Zeiss...as we had to wear our uniforms, and as the binos were obviously going for military purposes...I'm surprised they sold them to us.

I just ordered the E German Zeiss 7X40 below for use on the kid's wedding-gift Hartley sloop restoration....and for the terminally frugal like me, I thought I would pass this resource on I've bought from for years. For general use I have a military surplus 6X30 Zeiss from this place...but there's nuthin wrong with Swiss Getz-Kern optics in the $75-100 range, either: http://www.sportsmansguide.com/cb/cb.asp?a=110946 http://www.sportsmansguide.com/cb/cb.asp?a=83562 Here's the newer set of E. German Zeiss 7X40 for 200 bucks that look to be an excellent value: http://www.sportsmansguide.com/cb/cb.asp?a=59189 And some decent Czech 7X30's (likely to have Zeiss-made lenses) for 40 bucks: http://www.sportsmansguide.com/cb/cb.asp?a=119349

What have you got, what are you trying to plane and what are the symptoms? You'll find several plane tune up articles here: http://www.woodcentral.com/cgi-bin/articles.pl And Aimee Frazier in Woodenboat Mag had a good one a while back.

Good for you, Jake...hope you understand that I'm not bonded and insured to fall danger trees next to your house....and glad it's not costing you too much.

Putting together a new work truck for myself...ladder rack, work bumper with winch and vise, electric trailer brake hookup...all the usual stuff. The truck I acquired from a friend who owns a logging company once had non-consensual, intimate contact with a skidder...requiring some minor bumper and tailgate repairs. So I'm on my back under the truck today swapping out the trailer electrics and mounting new bumper brackets simultaneously...the brackets unusually difficult because of the trailer hitch frame in the way. Sure enuf, the wrench slips under strain in a tight spot full of sharp corners, causing me to crush and pierce a fingernail...which bleeds like a stuck pig and my kerchief isn't handy. So I slide back and grab the bumper top with my good hand to pull myself up...placing that hand directly atop very hot electric soldering iron... ...at which time I jerk upward in pain banging my head and lacerating my scalp on the trailer hitch. Then...of course...as I lay on the ground muttering dark oaths the soldering iron falls onto my lap. I hate grease monkey work.

Half-cone-shaped slip stones from a woodcarver's supplier. Also wood dowels of different sizes with alum oxide wet-or-dry paper wrapped around them.

My retired weldor-machinist-blacksmith friend shows up for breakfast this morning with a 50's vintage toy Evinrude outboard he wants me to sell on Ebay for him, as he doesn't have a computer. We've done successful gunsmithing projects together for years...me wood, he metal...so I'm used to selling projects on his behalf as a favor. Somebody had told him these go for up to a couple hundred...all our companions snorted, of course, as they dropped it on the floor playing with it...and I said I'd check it out. Well eat my hat. The closest one to what he has is at 300 bucks with 7 days left for bidding: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3171471739&category=719 And I didn't waste any time getting his listed for him: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3171891000&rd=1

Lotsa off-line questions on this, so.... Chisel Types as I understand them...allow for regional differences: Butt Chisel: Short utility chisel primarily for carrying and hanging doors

Not unless I wreck the original. :wink: I can temper the blade easy enuf...the hard part will be reshaping the cap iron if it doesn't plane well with it in its original shape. I may try a thicker iron if necessary before altering the cap iron....but spar planes only do softwoods like spruce and none of this may be necessary, as the original plane was designed to smooth all woods. Would be easier to convert an old beech smoother, as they have thicker blades and no cap iron...but what's life without a challenge or two? On either conversion, removing wood from the sole will open up the throat and require a let in graving piece and the plane's mouth reshaped. Remember the gutter adze, eh?

My Uncle had several spar planes in different radii in his yard that all got "lost" before I got to them. Have been living without them ever since....which is entirely doable on the occasional one-off spar. Spar planes were for folks making spars all day, every day. I'm about to make my own by converting an old Stanley 35. I'll take pics when I do it. Stanley 22's, 23's and 24's would also be good choices. These can all be had on Ebay in the 25-dollar range. Until I sort it out, tho...try this at your own risk...I haven't entirely decided how I'm gonna do the cap irons, yet.

This trend is of great concern to those of us involved in growing timber, if not to those who buy that timber...plus that I've been a member of Sierra for decades, and this is disturbing:

Marine Rifle Company

I make a point of staying out of family squabbles between Surface Warfare types, Submariners, Airdales, Marines, SEALS and Seabees... ...but as all these colorful types graced the war-zone Camp I ran for a couple-three years as a Grunt, I could come up with some stories. But I never honestly did figure out how the heck they train a Rifle Company on the confines of a boat.

Sure...wedged tenons. like on trestle tables and this horse I made recently: Simple knock the wedge out to dismantle. And your cradle looks plenty sturdy....your shoulderless stretchers aren't going anywhere any time soon. But as you did with your uprights, the advantage of a shoulder is resistance to racking forces and greater glue surface.

Cool. Air Force pal of mine once commanded the New Zealand USAF jump-off station in support of these bases... ...always envied him that tour of duty, even tho I was Army.

No need to clean out the bottom, only to get the mortise to a depth slightly deeper than the tenon...you don't really want or need it touching there as that face offers no strength to the glue joint.

I'm no stranger to or critic of automation where it makes sense...but the WW Forums today are filled with newbies whose only exposure to any kind of teaching are from PBS's Norm-Delta Enterprises or trendy magazine and book authors... ...and much of that "teaching" is self-serving to the point of predatory. Its a sad reflection on all of us older, more experienced guys that a 30-year-old new father asks what kind of mortising machine, pockethole jig or biscuit joiner he needs to make his first project...a cradle for the new baby. I know he doesn't have that kind of dough to waste as I suspect things haven't changed since I was in that position...and are probably worse...and I feel there is a community responsibility we aren't meeting, here.

The next chopping sequence is from the center of the mortise, and the waste merely levered out

In a small response to years of subtle but predatory marketing on PBS that has newcomers asking about mortising machines for their early projects, I prepared a short primer this morning in the shop to answer a younger man