Been awhile

[kenneth hatch]

I haven't been on the forum for a couple of years. Retired and that has taken most of my time. My last posts were mostly about building workbenches and that with other workholding solutions has been my interest for the last year or two. I've had simple criteria, the workholding system had to be easy to build, inexpensive, portable (fit in the motorhome bins), easy to take apart and put together with just the use of a mallet, the modules have to be transportable by a single person, and last and most important hold the workpiece without compromise. I've come up three units, the first is the Moravian workbench thanks to Will Myers there wasn't much butt scratching involved. Will just copied an original Moravian bench and I copied Will. The Moravian bench can be scaled from small to large shop sized, I've built both and both work a treat. The next was a shave horse. I built a couple of different styles settling on a 'deadhead' horse because it allowed the head module to be fixed to the the horse base with a wedge meeting the put together/take apart with a mallet requirement. The third is a spoon mule. The horse and mule share a base but have different holding requirements. The horse "clamps" from the top where the mule "clamps" from the sides. The mule clamping module is pretty simple much simpler to build than the horse module but, there is always that but, it took some fiddling to get everything working.

Bottom line I've three functional workholding systems that meet all the above criteria.

Photos to follow.

ken

[kenneth hatch]

Shave Horse:

499086

Shave Mule:

499087

Moravian Bench with first Shave Horse prototype:

499088

[kenneth hatch]

Anyone interested in building any of the three I will be happy to help.

ken

[Jim Koepke]

Welcome back Ken, looking forward to some more great ideas on horse building.

There is a hunk of wood in my shop that has just been waiting to be made into a shave horse for chairs and/or spoons.

jtk

[Mike Manning]

Welcome back, Ken. Congrats on retirement! You still in the Tucson area?

[Christopher Charles]

Hey Ken, great to hear from you. Have always enjoyed your posts and was wondering about your radio silence over just the past couple of days. Happy retirement and glad to see you back.

Best,
Chris

[James Pallas]

Nice to see you back Ken. Always enjoyed your posts. Hope things in the desert are good. I agree that the retirement thing is something that has to be worked into.

[kenneth hatch]

Thanks Jim,

Go for it, I've found for spoons and such the mule is a much better option that will still work to make sticks. It is one of those things where is it good to have both.

ken


Welcome back Ken, looking forward to some more great ideas on horse building.

There is a hunk of wood in my shop that has just been waiting to be made into a shave horse for chairs and/or spoons.

jtk

[kenneth hatch]

Welcome back, Ken. Congrats on retirement! You still in the Tucson area?

Thanks Mike,

In Tucson most of the time. We will leave for Oregon the middle of next month, back in Oct.

ken

[kenneth hatch]

Thanks Chris,

Other than horses and mules there hasn't been much to write about plus we've been on the road a lot.

ken

Hey Ken, great to hear from you. Have always enjoyed your posts and was wondering about your radio silence over just the past couple of days. Happy retirement and glad to see you back.

Best,
Chris

[Frederick Skelly]

Wondered what happened to you. Very glad to see you back with us!

[kenneth hatch]

Thanks James,

It couldn't be better other than maybe 20 years younger :-). I know it is a cliche but how did I find time to work before, retirement is a full time job but I am learning.
ken


Nice to see you back Ken. Always enjoyed your posts. Hope things in the desert are good. I agree that the retirement thing is something that has to be worked into.

[kenneth hatch]

Thanks Fred,

Lost souls do wander back, sometimes.

ken

Wondered what happened to you. Very glad to see you back with us!

[mike stenson]

Hey Ken,

Good to see you back around these parts. I'm not going to lie, I'm envious about getting out of the Sonoran desert for the summer ;)

[Mike Cornwall]

Is there a way to see these for someone who can’t see these on here? Thanks in advance

[kenneth hatch]

Mike,

PM me and I will reply with jpegs.

ken

Is there a way to see these for someone who can’t see these on here? Thanks in advance

[Mike Cornwall]

I think that Kind of access is similarly inaccessible, but thanks

[Charles Taylor]

Is there a way to see these for someone who can’t see these on here? Thanks in advance

$6/year. Not a bad deal.

[Stew Denton]

Ken, Welcome Back! It's good to see your name on a post again! Hope things are going well for you.

You have been missed, and I, for one, always enjoyed your posts, especially the ones on the workbenches.

I am now retired also, and like you have wondered how I ever had time to work. (Seems like all I really did was change bossed. Well kind of.) Currently I am remodeling the house Donna and I bought to retire in, and have basically reached a point where I can just about start work on garden and (finally!) a shop. When the shop is built I will finally be able to work on building a Moravian workbench, etc. for the shop. Then I will finally be able to use the marking gauge you sent several years ago.

Will you be able to do some woodworking, using the three items you list above, while camping, and be able to post a little while camping?

At any rate, really good to see you back, and hopefully we will see some posts from you.

Regards,

Stew

[kenneth hatch]

Sorry I forgot about that, never think about the $6 USD membership. It is just part of using the forum.
ken

I think that Kind of access is similarly inaccessible, but thanks

[kenneth hatch]

Thanks Stew,

Yeah, funny less time for the shop now v. working full time. Go figure. congrats on getting the house done. I understand the garden thing, I've tomatoes in a small greenhouse, peppers on the porch and grow tents inside. Yep I usually take a bench and/or a horse or mule with us. I don't get a lot made but it is a great way to meet the neighbors. Sometimes posting is hard because cell service can be bad to not there. We are booked to be on the Oregon Coast starting the first of June thru Sept back home mid Oct. Seems we are always working to get the house and motorhome ready to leave or working on both to recover from being gone 4 months.

ken



Ken, Welcome Back! It's good to see your name on a post again! Hope things are going well for you.

You have been missed, and I, for one, always enjoyed your posts, especially the ones on the workbenches.

I am now retired also, and like you have wondered how I ever had time to work. (Seems like all I really did was change bossed. Well kind of.) Currently I am remodeling the house Donna and I bought to retire in, and have basically reached a point where I can just about start work on garden and (finally!) a shop. When the shop is built I will finally be able to work on building a Moravian workbench, etc. for the shop. Then I will finally be able to use the marking gauge you sent several years ago.

Will you be able to do some woodworking, using the three items you list above, while camping, and be able to post a little while camping?

At any rate, really good to see you back, and hopefully we will see some posts from you.

Regards,

Stew

[Stew Denton]

Well, I wish the house was done, but I have only gotten as far as I can go without a bigger place to finish things like doors, etc. Thus, I need to have a shop before I can go on to other things on the remodel.

That said, the worst of the remodel, the bigger stuff, is virtually done except a few tiny jobs. Things done are like building a temporary support so I could pull out a load bearing wall, then reframing the area with a big header to support that load bearing wall and also framing that area for a big pantry for Donna, framing an area for a freezer off one of the hallways, building and putting up the shelves and doorway for the pantry, stripping off the popcorn ceiling and painting the ceilings, finishing and installing the base molding for the kitchen, family room, dining room, and living room, the utility room and hallway, helping pulling down a bad kitchen ceiling, putting up a range hood, painting almost all of the rooms, etc., etc. etc.

We hired the window replacements, flooring, wiring done for the kitchen, the replumbing for the moved sink (required jack hammering up the concrete floor) , the sheet rock work, and putting up the new kitchen cabinets. I could have done all of those things except the bigger plumbing stuff and flooring, although I don't like wiring for 220. Donna wanted them done a LOT faster than I can do them by myself so we had folks that had crews of folks to do that work.

We have one room left to do, but it is filled with boxes of tools for the shop, and kitchen stuff that is buried deep under tool boxes, etc. Once the shop is done I will have to work on base, casing, doors, etc. for the remaining rooms, etc., but prior to doing those things I need a shop to work in, so it looks like about another year or so, but the most important things like having a nice and usable kitchen again for Donna and the other rooms I mentioned completed makes the house very pleasant and livable so the pressure to get the house in nice shape is finally over. Thus, quite a bit more to do, but everything except the room full of boxes is OK for now.

Like you getting ready to go camping, work on the trailer, house, etc., seems like it is never completely done.

Regards,

Stew