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Cleaned up the last of the hardware bits with wire brush and buffing wheel. Assembled the vise. Restoration is officially completed. I'm quite pleased with the end result. Now I just need to bolt...

Last night sprayed the bottom of the main casting.

This evening I oven cured the paint. Put all the painted parts in the oven for 1 hour at 175 deg F and then bumped the temp up to 200 deg F...

To get into the tight corners, I tried using a small wire brush chucked in the Dremel tool, but that brush lasted about 5 minutes before coming apart. I switched to a small stone and that worked...

Removed the side angle adjusting plates. Stripped of the old paint with powered wire brushes (grinder and hand drill). Prepared wooden dowels as plugs for threaded and reamed holes in handle. ...

The next step in the saw vise refurbishment was to work on the broken handle. I removed the handle stub and stripped the paint with a wire brush. Then, I clamped it in my Taig benchtop milling...

Earlier I posted a little gloat about the ACME saw vise I got at a recent auction. I've begun the restoring it, and thought I'd do a separate thread documenting the process. Hopefully this will...

Measured last night: 28 1/4"
Todd F.

For once, I planned ahead and took a nice set of before pictures of the plane before disassembly. I even took pictures of the donor plane, ready to go. Then when I went to use those pictures, I...

Early last year I attended an auction, drawn by the possibility of getting an anvil. Unfortunately, all the "old guys" from miles around were attracted by the same picture on auctionzip. The anvil...

It is a Wilton vise I picked up in 2007 at a garage sale for $5 or so. It has a heavy duty rotating clamp and both bench vise and wood vise heads, so it can act as either one. When I bought it, the...

Thanks.

I know what you are saying about the vise. It looks pretty rough. But most of the rust color that shows up in the photos is overtop of the baked-on original paint. It looks like the...

A cascading chain of events, starting with a water heater leak, led me to reorganize my garage shop a bit. Part of the reorg was consolidating all my saws into a new saw till.
...

I picked up this saw sometime in the past year at a garage sale. Today I took a few hours to restore it. The blade was sanded to remove rust, and waxed to protect the steel. The handle was filed,...

Although it never bothered me much, my wife has never been crazy about the mantel which was attached to the fireplace of our house when we moved in 4 years ago. After trying and discarding several...

Interesting thoughts, Bob.

Today I was doing touch up on a couple small pieces that had an unfinished side I didn't realize was going to be visible. The garage is colder than it has been, so...

I have been working on a new fireplace mantel for my living room. The finish needs to be tough, so I chose to use polyurethane. Previous to this, I had used spray-on finishes on my projects, but...

This weekend I spent some time fixing up two #80 scrapers I have picked up at flea markets in the past year. Both have matching screws clamping and bowing the blade, but they are different on the...

Bob,
Nice tools. Do you have a closer picture of the square? What does the inside of the case look like?
Todd F.

Thanks for the compliments, guys.

Here are some pics of the firewood pieces I sliced up the other evening. Now I need to decide what to do with them. The pieces aren't super large, so they will...

In '08 I made this pencil case for my nephew from wood from the same woodpile.
Todd F.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3661/3661516064_e801d2bd00_b.jpg
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The house I live in now came with a wood shed fully stocked with firewood cut from trees felled from hurricane Isabel. I have been burning the wood for three years now and there is still about a...

I think the wood is rosewood, but I'm not an expert in identifying exotic hardwood species. The wood came from a carving of a swordfish I found in an antique store. The bill was broken off, and...

Beats me. I bought about a dozen spare hammer handle handles at a flea market about 10 years ago. These are two of them.
Todd F.

Like most handmade things, you would not want to pay the money it would take to compensate for the time it took to make it. :)

If you seriously want one, take a look at the great hammers made by...

I made a second, smaller, plane hammer to compliment the first one I made. The diameter of the head of the larger is 1.10" (from 1 1/8" bar) and the second has a .745" diameter head (from 3/4" bar)....