David Weaver
01-09-2011, 12:10 PM
(if you don't want to read the boring text, you can go right to the pictures and make any suggestions for improving the next one. I keep notes, george's criticism last time helped this tote a lot)
Way back with the original craze over the saw kits, I bought two of them. One 16" rip, and one 14" crosscut.
First tote ended up OK, but it was doggy looking in some respects.
This is the second - a 14" crosscut saw. I had done most of this thing before thanksgiving, but it sat around for a while after that, and then I lost the saw nuts and had to order more of them.
It is better than the first tote, but there is plenty of room for improvement.
First, I didn't think that hard about what I wanted the lamb's tongue to look like, and when the rubber hit the road, I didn't have enough skill or enough wood below the cheeks to make it really look separate from the cheeks of the handle, and then the one on the nut side got pooched a little beyond that. That's life as a piker.
Second, I really have to be more careful around the saw nuts. Any tool mark at all in the perimeter is really made to stand out by BLO.
The way I attach these totes to the plate is to mark where I want the holes to be on the tote cheek with a punch, and then I run them to the drill press and drill the holes with the saw plate in the tote. I don't clamp it or affix anything for the first hole. after the first, I drop a saw bolt in the first hole, and then drill a second (keeps you from ever having the holes not line up tote vs plate). Then drop the second saw bolt in the second hole and drill the third. At that point, I only have the small diameter drilled, and I need to locate a bit brace bit where the lead screw is big enough to fill the entire small hole so the wings of the bit don't wander around. I didn't think about this first, because the jennings bit in the first saw was for a larger bolt diameter and the lead screw was big enough. In this one, oops, jennings lead screw was too small. Fortunately, I had an irwin set, too, which I never use for anything, but which has larger lead screws, and that was good enough to get it done.
The only thing I did power tool-wise was drill out some mortise waste and belt sand the sides of the thing to make the bolt and screw heads flush.
I look forward to doing another one of these at some point to improve on the things that are not so great with it, but I have several planes to do in the interim, and I like making planes better - for me, it is a little easier to know it's going to end up just the way I want it to.
It is apple, by the way. Its working properties are out of this world. It's as hard or harder than hard maple (these boards are at least), but it works much much better - it never splits out unexpectedly, and all the way around, it works exactly like you'd expect it to. Finish is blo, I will probably just wax it after that and burnish it with shavings to keep it from looking dull. I'd like to shellac it with a few very light padded coats of garnet shellac, because it looks nicer (at least more shiny), but I like the oil and wax feel better.
Quartersawn apple of this quality is extremely hard to find, if you ever see any over an inch thick that is dead quartersawn and is big enough to make saw handles, buy it as fast as you can get your card out. I think you can find quartersawn parts of much larger boards, but you would have to spend several hundred dollars on one board. I bought enough to make four totes and have some scrap left from Mike Hendershot several years ago. I remember thinking it was expensive to buy two 6x3.5x11 soaking wet green chunks for $50 (i am cheap). Looking back, man what a bargain it was - I'll bet he worked pretty hard to find an old tree that would yield it. It is so nice to have nice wood working on something like this.
(somehow, the resolution of these pictures gets worse when they're viewed in the viewer. I worked hard to make the transition lines crisp and fluid on this tote, but they don't show up that well in the pictures).
177243177242177241
Way back with the original craze over the saw kits, I bought two of them. One 16" rip, and one 14" crosscut.
First tote ended up OK, but it was doggy looking in some respects.
This is the second - a 14" crosscut saw. I had done most of this thing before thanksgiving, but it sat around for a while after that, and then I lost the saw nuts and had to order more of them.
It is better than the first tote, but there is plenty of room for improvement.
First, I didn't think that hard about what I wanted the lamb's tongue to look like, and when the rubber hit the road, I didn't have enough skill or enough wood below the cheeks to make it really look separate from the cheeks of the handle, and then the one on the nut side got pooched a little beyond that. That's life as a piker.
Second, I really have to be more careful around the saw nuts. Any tool mark at all in the perimeter is really made to stand out by BLO.
The way I attach these totes to the plate is to mark where I want the holes to be on the tote cheek with a punch, and then I run them to the drill press and drill the holes with the saw plate in the tote. I don't clamp it or affix anything for the first hole. after the first, I drop a saw bolt in the first hole, and then drill a second (keeps you from ever having the holes not line up tote vs plate). Then drop the second saw bolt in the second hole and drill the third. At that point, I only have the small diameter drilled, and I need to locate a bit brace bit where the lead screw is big enough to fill the entire small hole so the wings of the bit don't wander around. I didn't think about this first, because the jennings bit in the first saw was for a larger bolt diameter and the lead screw was big enough. In this one, oops, jennings lead screw was too small. Fortunately, I had an irwin set, too, which I never use for anything, but which has larger lead screws, and that was good enough to get it done.
The only thing I did power tool-wise was drill out some mortise waste and belt sand the sides of the thing to make the bolt and screw heads flush.
I look forward to doing another one of these at some point to improve on the things that are not so great with it, but I have several planes to do in the interim, and I like making planes better - for me, it is a little easier to know it's going to end up just the way I want it to.
It is apple, by the way. Its working properties are out of this world. It's as hard or harder than hard maple (these boards are at least), but it works much much better - it never splits out unexpectedly, and all the way around, it works exactly like you'd expect it to. Finish is blo, I will probably just wax it after that and burnish it with shavings to keep it from looking dull. I'd like to shellac it with a few very light padded coats of garnet shellac, because it looks nicer (at least more shiny), but I like the oil and wax feel better.
Quartersawn apple of this quality is extremely hard to find, if you ever see any over an inch thick that is dead quartersawn and is big enough to make saw handles, buy it as fast as you can get your card out. I think you can find quartersawn parts of much larger boards, but you would have to spend several hundred dollars on one board. I bought enough to make four totes and have some scrap left from Mike Hendershot several years ago. I remember thinking it was expensive to buy two 6x3.5x11 soaking wet green chunks for $50 (i am cheap). Looking back, man what a bargain it was - I'll bet he worked pretty hard to find an old tree that would yield it. It is so nice to have nice wood working on something like this.
(somehow, the resolution of these pictures gets worse when they're viewed in the viewer. I worked hard to make the transition lines crisp and fluid on this tote, but they don't show up that well in the pictures).
177243177242177241