BobSmalser

Jointing is also where you add or subtract

Sanding is followed by a green rouge buff against the direction of sanding to restore some shine. If you don

A 6-dollar flea market beater? Yes, but this one is a Disston Acme 120, originally a cabinetmaker

Cupped toes can be difficult and often not worth the effort, so I

Only after the blade is straight and tensioned do I continue with rehabilitation. In this case, the saw was habitually filed without jointing, and instead of straight or crown-breasted, the cutting edge looks like the hooked nose of the Wicked Witch of the West. Accordingly, I have to stamp in new teeth. And guess what? 7 new teeth per inch on a 26

The best Western and Japanese handsaws are quite thin yet in competent hands won

Duplicating a curved profile using ticking sticks. Ever have to scribe fit a kitchen cabinet to fit a wavy and out-of-plumb wall? How about fitting a bulkhead or partition-wall panel into the inside hull of a yacht or ship? Can you scribe fit a curve as high as 7 feet and as deep as 3 feet? And in a space where nothing is square, little is plumb and level changes constantly with payload and wind? Welcome to the world of interior ship joinery sans lasers and computers, and file away another handy but simple, old-time skill for when you may need it. I took a half hour and got out some scaled-down panels, sticks and battens to answer a question on how to build bunkbeds into the inside curve of a yacht hull, and figured since I had the photos this may be useful to others. Now there are plenty of yachts sufficiently slab-sided for simple scribe fitting to work. But not this one. This one is a 180-ton ocean-going tug being converted to a family liveaboard. The space in question is around 7 feet high with a bulge in the outside wall around three feet deep. Time to get out some ticking sticks. First some old-time jargon. Woodworkers

So will the #65

Few are as bad as that Sargent, but when they are that bad, keep in mind that soles don

And degrease with mineral spirits followed by strong trichloroethylene, a suspected carcinogen, so here I wear gloves, which are also necessary to keep my oily fingerprints out of the blued finish. I then cold blue the parts using phosphate blue (Brownells.com). This solution hides rust staining, inhibits further rust, but most importantly is an index dye for the critical stages of flattening irons and soles. Before sharpening I check my stones for flat using 60-grit wet-or-dry paper on a precision-ground, cast-iron surface like this jointer table. A couple strokes done dry allows sighting down the stone to find any hollows still shining amid the stone dust made by the abrasive paper. If I have to flatten the stone I use kerosene as a lube and rub the stone till until I have a perfectly flat surface. I

I gave my heirloom Stanley #60

Use heartwood only in boats. The sapwood of even the most rot-resistant species like the cedars has zero rot resistance. Cut a fresh end to be sure. The sapwood in this freshly-cut log is clear: But in this log cut months prior, the colors are muted by oxidation:

I'm around and fine, thanks. I don't have time for many forums in the dry season. But that just ended with this 5-day storm that has me indoors. Now I'm finishing the backfill of the retirement home in the mud.

I like it. Like your lights layout, too.

You might read this post on green and pith wood: http://www.woodenboat-ubb.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=013383

Here's a Forester/Sawyer's forum with 4000 members: http://www.forestryforum.com/board/index.php Here's an older one even larger: http://www.woodweb.com/cgi-bin/forums/sawdry.pl Both have "wanted" and "find a sawyer" sections. But the best way is to log on and ask outright for a reference. You can often get half again the wood at twice the quality by buying green or partially seasoned and seasoning it yourself....or airdried, if you insist. Moreover, if I were selling lumber, and you were willing to back your truck up to my mill and offbear from the log to your truck, saving me bundling, banding, stacking and stickering chores, you'd get your wood for double the Scribner BF value. Scribner is the West Coast lumber scale, and for DF right now that would be less than 2 bucks a BF for clear, riftsawn select...and less than 3 bucks for cedar. But I ain't gonna even talk to you for less than a full-sized truck load, if you get my drift.

Look at the size of the ring cups in the center. Those are pith boards. You can also see it on the board surface...two qsawn sections bisected by a flatsawn section. These shouldn't even have been sold, IMO. On my mill, I cut out all that pith and tight-cupped surrounding wood and give it away for firewood. I mill short of it, cut it out as a 3"-wide board, and begin the next board beyond it. It's those itty-bitty cups that cause the warping. Plus some piths spiral in the tree, and you can't see that when milling boxed heart timbers....so all boxed heart wood is a crap shoot as to whether it'll remain straight. But all's not lost. Simply rip out those tight cups and use the clean but still slightly crooked wood with staighter stock in your birdsmoth spar. The straight wood'll pull it in and the epoxy will lockt is all in straight. Maybe 2-3 warped pieces out of 8 will work fine...and stagger them inthe assembly, eh?

See the full thread and discuss it at http://www.messing-about.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2706 James Krenov shows a simple way to make custom wood planes in his book,

You're welcome to any you like, Frank. Many are archived here: http://www.woodcentral.com/cgi-bin/articles.pl#smalser

There'll be different and equally-valid opinions, but I'd like to have 4 routers, as I hate changing bits and setups. A laminate trimmer, a lightweight classic Porter Cable for light work, a fixed-base, table-mounted router, and a honking, 3+hp plunge router for mortising. But I only have one.....a big, heavy, honking 3+hp Makita 3612 plunge router. And that remains my recommendation for folks who only have one. The reason is speed and stability. With a heavy router, I can not only plunge-rout big mortises, I can freehand to a line cuts others have to spend a whole lot of time making jigs for. While it's inconvenient for lighter work, it's also big enuf to hold upside down in a vise for use as a "router table"....which I don't recommend for beginners but I certainly do a lot of.