Small Business Related!!!

Food for thought

So over the last few weeks I have putting all of my efforts into trying to come up with ideas of projects that would enable me to make a side income, after all woodworking is somewhat of an expensive hobby.

As you can probably surmise from my recent blog post that I have been working with trivet’s and my main reason for this is because I intend on (and have actually started) making several designs that I hope to sell on my Etsy page and in my store here on my site. What has actually been taking so much time is figuring out best shipping practices, my primary reason for never doing this line of business was because I always thought that shipping in the United states was a terrifying ordeal because of all the intricacies involved in setting up. When all the time right under my nose fellow Etsy store owners were doing exactly that making small flat rate sized items for sale and distribution within the United States and beyond.

So in the coming weeks and months keep and eye out as to what is happening on that end oft he business, I am also doing more research in setting up a e-commerce provider that can help me with setting up the sales & shipping aspects of what I am trying to do. I currently use Squarespace as my website host and I don’t want to change that as I believe they have the best “value for money” in regards to making your own website and they have awesome templates that enable you to make a website no matter what type or style of content you will be creating.

What I am ultimately looking for is to have multiple small revenue streams that enable me to make small projects and also looking for a little income stream that can then be absolved back into the business, enabling me to buy better quality tools, buy better quality wood and ultimately creating higher quality projects that are worthy of people to purchase, people such as yourself.

So over the next few weeks I will be spending my time creating some products that I will sell on Etsy and then hopefully after a trial run I will also stock my shop here at www.edscustomwoodcrafts.com

Project Award : Trivet Jig

I recently received another Daily Top 3 Award on my online workshop where I currently have a membership with www.lumberjocks.com. 

I received the award along with 2 other makers that also made woodworking projects. My award was for the Trivet Router Jig that I made for the shop. I have included links below for the project.

Here is the trivet jig that I made.

---

Wooden Router Trivet Jig

WHY BUILD A TRIVET JIG??

So as of late I have been playing around with the idea of selling and shipping products on my site, but in the past I was really hesitant because of the costs associated with shipping and trying to determine how much to charge for said projects.

That was until I came across a show on YouTube about making and batching out certain projects for sale with minimal cost and time constraints. So that is how I came up with making Trivets because of a couple of reasons.

• Small (Low shipping weight)

• Can be made with a variety of woods

• Can batch 10 or so in a day (without applying finish)

• I already had an Etsy shop to sell from

Trivet Jig Design

I would love to take credit for this jig but unfortunately it wasn’t me, I came across this jig online at www.rocker.com , the jig’s concept is really easy to comprehend. It’s basically a trammel on a base, the base has 2 fences that hold the trivet blank and you adjust where the slots are cut with spacer blocks. Ill explain in more detail in a later part in this blog.

Here is the completed jig, its basically a base that has 2 fences that form a 90° corner where the trivet gets positioned, and held in place with the fences.

Here is a picture of the jig with the trivet blank positioned between the fences, I also used self adhesive sand paper to help keep the blank positioned while using the router.

Here is the jig in use, you can see the router attached to the pivoting arm which is how I achieve the curved grooves in the trivet.

Although this is a plywood prototype of one of the designs I will be using, I am very happy with this design.

STEP BY STEP BUILD

Source Rockler.com

The trammel jig is fairly easy to assemble and, while it doesn't alter router's cutting radius, it allows you to make repetitive cutting patterns very simply. The jig is really simple to build. Start with a 22"-square scrap of 3/4" plywood or MDF, and draw a diagonal line connecting two corners. Cut a 6"-square trammel support from 1/2" scrap and bisect it with a pencil line. Fasten it to the base with glue and brads so the outermost corners of the support align with the edges of the base and the pencil marks of the two jig parts line up. Now rip a pair of 1/2" by 2" fences, cut them to an overall length of 15-5⁄8" and miter-cut one end of each to 45°.

Completed trammel jig (stock photo)

JIG BUILD

Once you've put the mitered ends of the jig fence together against the support block, nail them down to secure them to the base. Butt the fences against the support piece so the tips of the miters touch. Make sure they form a square “pocket” for the trivet blanks to register against before nailing the fences to the jig base. Line the “field” area inside the fences with sandpaper attached with spray adhesive. Later, this will hold the trivets stationary as you rout them. I left the base’s outer corner bare where the trivets and spacers don’t reach it.

After mitering the corners of the fences to 45°, pin them in position and making sure everything lines up using a square. (stock photo)

ADDING THE TRAMMEL

Draw a layout line 12" from the center-line of your bit to establish the pivot point of the trammel. The trammel is a scrap of 1/2" material cut 6" wide and 20" long; this width fit my router base nicely. If your router has a wider base, change the trammel width to suit it. Set the router near the trammel’s end to mark mounting holes for screws, as well as to establish where to bore a clearance hole for the router bit. Mark the trammel carefully with two layout lines: one identifying the center-point of the router bit and a second drawn 12" back from this line, before making the bit clearance hole and fastening the router to it. 

Attaching the trammel to the router (stock photo)

NEXT

Slide the trammel along the support block until the router bit touches the outer corner of a trivet blank to set the position of the jig. You’ll need one of your 6"-square trivet blanks to mount the trammel properly on the jig. With the router bit installed, set the trivet blank in the corner formed by the fences and balance the trammel on it and the square support block. Slide the trammel along the support until the inside edge of the bit just kisses the outer corner of the trivet

Positioning the router in order to find the pivot point on the jig (stock photo)

ATTACHING THE PIVOT PIN

Use the dowel's pivot point line to find where you can bore a dowel hole to complete the trammel. Make sure it lines up evenly over the support before boring a 5/16" dowel hole through the trammel and support — right into the base. Center this hole on your 12" layout line drawn previously. Now insert a 2" length of 5/16" dowel to engage the trammel’s pivot action. You’re nearly ready to start routing trivets, but first, make up 14 spacer strips from 1/2" scrap. Mine were 3/4" x 14".

Drilling the location of the pivot pin (stock photo)

MAKE SOME TRIVETS

Making your first cuts on the trivet face using a pair of spacers along the jig fences and cutting a little deeper than halfway through the blank in the first slot. Start the router and make your first cut, milling to final depth in two passes. I used a 1/2” up-spiral router bit — but any sharp straight bit should do fine. Swing the router clockwise or counterclockwise — either works fine, but keep the trammel pressed down firmly against the trivet blank to prevent it from shifting.

Begin routing the design (stock photo)

Continue adding and subtracting spacers and feeding your router clockwise and counterclockwise to make further cuts, but keep the trivet stationary as you pivot the router. Once you complete the first cut, pull the trivet forward, insert another pair of spacers and repeat for the second, longer “swoop.” Continue adding spacer pairs between subsequent cuts until you reach the other corner of the blank. Now flip the blank over, give it a quarter turn to establish the “X” pattern and repeat the whole routing process. This time remove one pair of spacers after each pass.

Adding spacer strips to maintain equal gaps between the grooves. (stock photo)

FLIP THE TRIVET

Flip the trivet and give it a quarter turn to make an "X" cutting pattern on the second face, continuing to cut them in the reverse of how you made the first side. In minutes, you’ll have your first trivet knocked out and be on to the second. Sand away any bit burn marks or fuzz, and round over the edges

The waffle pattern is coming to life. (stock photo)

THE above step by step guide is taken from the Rockler.com article as well as all the pictures, but below is a trivet that I made and looks OK, it will look even better when I actually get to use some really nice wood and not the plywood prototype that I used below.

Not too big and not too small, this prototype will look great in oak or ash.

Adding a round-over to both sides of the trivet really feel great to the touch and doesnt look too bad either.

Love the dimensional aspects of this little project.

I still need to do some research on making these and eventually with a bit of luck will be able to sell them in my Etsy store… I will also be making FREE PLANS for the jig once its completed I will posit it in my shop, don’t worry I will post when their available.

Thanks for reading, and I will catch you all again soon.

New Project: Trivets

So I needed a little project to keep me busy and I needed to use up some scrap wood that I had lying around. I was sitting at dinner one night and noticed that all the trivets looked terrible and some were even broken, so I went on YouTube and finally found an easy way to make them using a table-saw and dado stack.

THE PROCESS

• The Wood

• Miter Saw

• The Trivet blanks

• A little Layout

• Cutting the Grooves

• Adding a Round-Over on the Router Table

• A lot of sanding

• All finished

THE WOOD

Since I wanted to use up some scrap that I had around I used a piece of 1x8 poplar that I could get about 9 trivets out of. I wish I had some 1x8 oak as that would of been a nicer trivet, but maybe in the near future I will make some trivets for Christmas presents.

Here is the piece of poplar that I used.

THE MITER SAW

Usually I use the miter saw a lot for a project but I only wanted to cross-cut the board to around 18” as I wanted to do a trial run making 3 trivets and see how they turned out.

Crosscutting the board at my miter saw station.

TRIVET BLANKS

• So after cutting the piece I took it from the miter saw to the table-saw and ripped the board to its final width.

• I took out my cross-cutting sled because I usually get more accurate cuts from it and set-up a stop block and cross-cut the board into 3 blanks that were exactly 6”x6” square

Here is my cross-cutting sled is not fancy but it’s dead on accurate. You can also see the stop-block which is nothing more than a scrap of plywood clamped with the sled fence.

Here is the 3 blanks all dimension-ed and ready to be turned into trivets.

A LITTLE LAYOUT

I needed to do a little layout on one of the trivets to make sure all my dimensions were correct, so I took it to my bench and drew some layout lines where I was removing wood.

• Measure over 3” to find the center of the blank and strike a line, then measure 3/16” to the left & right of that line so as to center the 3/8” dado stack to the work-piece.

• Finally measure 3/8” on the wood thickness (as it is half of 3/4”wood thickness) so as that I new where to position the dado stack in the table-saw

• Now that I had marked up one face I needed to turn the board 90° and do the same on that side that is what creates the waffle pattern I am going for.

Here are my layout lines on one of the edges. All the “x” represent where the grooves will be run.

Here you can see the dado stack measuring up-to the 3/8” line on the blank edge.

CUTTING THE GROOVES

Here is where it will get tricky in how to explain this process. Using a 3/8” thick dado stack in the table-saw I needed to cut the 7 grooves on each of the marked faces which will give me the waffle pattern design that I want. This is my first time making trivets lets alone doing repetitive groove cuts in such a small pirce of wood, but I am happy with the results, practice makes perfect. One more thing I experience a lot of tear-out doing this and it left a decent amount of sanding after.

Here is my attempt at detailing the step by step process.

STEP 1. With my 3/8’ wide dado stack center on the work-piece I run it through the blade, which results in a centered groove. As you see in the following pictures some of the cuts are made with the grain and others against it which is what makes the waffle pattern.

Using my center-line I ran the stock through the 3/8” wide dado stack

Here is the center groove

STEP 2: The goal of the next couple of steps is make grooves on one side of the blank with equal spaces between each groove.

• Using the groove that I just made in the center, I re position that groove on the blade and use a spacer block which is 3/4” and position it beside the cut groove and line my table-saw fence against the spacer block and then move the work-piece over until it reached the rip fence. This step can gut 2 groves either side of the center by simply turning the workpiece 90° after each cut.

Here is the spacer block against the fence, when I remove the spacer block and move the work-piece against the fence it will center the next 2 grooves.

Here you can see the work-piece butted up to the fence and ran through the blade, once this is done I rotate the piece 90° to get the other groove.

This is what you should have, 3 grooves equally spaced.

REPEAT STEP 2 UNTIL YOU GET ALL 7 GROOVES DONE ON ONE SIDE OF THE WORK-PIECE.

After repeating step 2, two more times you should have this. 7 grooves all running in the same direction, and for the most part equally spaced.

Here is a edge view of what your work-piece should look like.

STEP 3: Now we turn our attention to the other side of the work-piece and create 7 grooves that go in from the other side than the ones we just did, this will reveal the waffle pattern.

• Using the center line on this side, run it through the blade which is still at 3/8” wide & 3/8” high, you might need to make a couple of passes until you remove enough material to reveal one groove where you can see the waffle pattern below. After this step you should have what looks like below

Waffle pattern coming to life after cutting the center groove.

As we did in Step 2 above we need to repeat that process to define all remaining 6 grooves using the spacer block and the rip fence method I used in Step 2. You should now have a work-piece with the waffle pattern visible, although in rough shape because of all the tear-out.

With 3 grooves cut, your piece should look like this, only 4 more cuts to make.

Here is the final waffle pattern, there was so much tear-out that I thought that I was doing something wrong or my dado stack wasn’t sharp. Anyway we clean this up later.

ROUND-OVER AT THE ROUTER TABLE

To remove all the sharp edges on the outside edges of the trivet I used a 1/4” round-over bit in my router at the router table and eased some of the edges.

1/4” round-over profile bit in the router table.

I’m not sure if you can see the round-over profile as it is very small, but it did the trick. I will also be using several grits of sand paper to clean it up more, especially on the inner grooves that the router table cant reach.

A LOT OF SANDING

To be honest the most time consuming part of this project is all the sanding that needed to be done, there was so much tear-out on the inner grooves because the wood was un-supported going through the dado stack that it created a mess, so I used a piece of sand paper and wrapped it around a 1/4” thick piece of plywood to fit inside the grooves, I also used a chisel to remove some of the stubborn wood fibers.

After using the sandpaper I turned to my random orbital sander to sand the top / bottom sides of the trivet to make it inviting to the touch.

Here is what I started with when beginning to use the sandpaper.

Here is my solution to sanding in between the grooves. Some various grits of sand paper finishing with 320 grit and a piece of 1/4” plywood scrap. I wrapped the paper around the plywood and went to town.

Here is the sandpaper doing the trick

Here is the finished trivet, a great improvement over what I had started with.

ALL FINISHED , FOR NOW!!!

Well I set out to make 3 and that is what I got done today, I gave the 3 to my mother in law and she was happy. These make a great little present, and the holiday season is coming up. I must say this was a fun little project and the possibilities are endless with the style options. I am actually thinking of making a jig that I can use with my router to do curved grooves, below is a few pictures of the threesome that I made.

Awesome project and a nice little item at the end.

Whats useful is that you can group them together if you have a large item that your table-top needs protection from.

Well thanks for reading and I hope to catch you again soon. I am in the process of making plans for these exact trivets and I will post them in my store as soon as they are completed.

Project Award : Portable Sharpening Station

I recently received an award for the Portable Sharpening Station from www.lumberjocks.com

If you would like to read all the project from beginning to end, I created a blog series that can be found here. If you like the project that much I have just made plans available for the project here.

Thanks Lumberjocks for supporting everything that I do, and I am always appreciative of any and all recognition that I receive.

The completed Sharpening station.

---

Portable Sharpening Station : All Finished

Today I finally got to finishing this project all I needed to do was to add wooden plugs to the countersunk screw holes for the base and apply a urethane finish to the entire sharpening station.

MADE THE WOODEN PLUGS

I usually have some oak dowels lying around the shop but for the life of me couldn’t find any so I needed to make my own which is very easy. I used a 3/8” plug cutter in my drill press and since I had some oak scraps lying around from this project I used it. Below you can see some pictures of the process.

Step 1 : Cut the plugs on the drill press

Step 2. Added some glue and hammered the plugs into place

Step 3. Was to flush cut the plugs to the surface.

Cutting the plugs on the drill press.

Here is a close up of the plug cutter.

Here is the protruding plugs that needed to be flush cut.

Finally using my flush cutting saw, I trimmed the excess off.

APPLYING THE FINISH

Now that everything was done all that was left was to apply a finish, the finish I wanted to use was Minwax Poly-Crylic but by big box store didn’t have any so I choose an alternative water base polyurethane and I applied 3 coats.

Here is the last of the 3 coats, applied to the top, still wet.

Here is a before picture , this is before I applied the finish.

This is after the finish has been applied, I love how the box joints pop.

ALL FINISHED

All that is needed now is to wait for the finish to dry, but here are some final pictures. I love how handy this station will be and I should have made it a long time ago, everything that I need to sharpen my tools is now in one place just the way I like it.

This concludes my blog on this project, I hope you have enjoyed reading about this project as I have enjoyed making it. I will be releasing plans for this in my shop as soon as I have a chance in putting them together.

Until the next time I’ll catch you later.

This station is a very comfortable height for me to work on, although I might have gone over-board in its design it is extremely functional.

Here is my Veritas MKII honing jig being put to good use.

I really like the contrasting oak plugs that I used and also really enjoyed making the pulls, which I made from solid ash.

I really love having everything that I need right at my finger tips.

Portable Sharpening Station: Day IV

So today I got so much done and the project is almost finished all I have to do is apply a finish to the station and add wood plugs to the screw holes and it will be ready.

Here is what I got done today:

• Made a leather strop

• Remade the base

• Made wooden pulls

MADE A LEATHER STROP

One final item that I needed to make for the sharpening station was a leather honing strop and I found a YouTube video that Paul Sellers made regarding making one, he used a scrap piece of wood and some leather that I purchased at Woodcraft.

Since I had some oak left over from the lid what better use for it than to make 2 leather strops, I cut the oak to the same size as that of the diamond sharpening stones, 8”x3” and I used double sided tape to adhere the leather to the oak.

Here is the honing leather and honing compound that I used, you can find more details on woodcraft, just click the links. But here is all the materials I needed to make the strop’s.

Here are the 2 pieces of oak that I used for the base of the strop.

Next I cut the leather to size using a box cutter.

I added the double sided tape.

Now I have 2 nice honing strops and it only took 5 minutes.

REMADE THE BASE

When I was looking at the base I needed to make one recess for a different type of honing guide, I really didn’t like the look of the recesses that I made previously so I just remade the base and added the extra recess. You can see the pictures below, I remade the base the same way by drawing layout lines of the size of the recesses that I need, used my palm router to route to the line and then cleaned it up with some chisels and now it looks much better.

Here is the new base with the added recess for an eclipse stile honing guide.

Here is the new base installed and looks a lot better,

So here is most of my accessories in the box, still need to figure out a method for housing my diamond plates.

MADE HANDLES

I needed to make 2 handles for the sides in order for me to carry the station around easily as it is heavy.

I originally made these pulls before for my Drill press cabinet that I made, I designed the pull on Sketchup and then made a bunch of them when I was making the drill press cart, and of course as usual I couldn’t find them, so I needed to make some more.

I had some left over ash from the drill press project that I used and made like 6 handles out of 30 inch piece of ash.

I used 3 router bits in making them, 1/2” Cove bit, 1/2” round-over bit and finally a 1/4” round-over bit. You can see the pictures below. I also attached my original project where I went into more detail on how I made the pulls, check below.

Here is my ash blank, I started off the process by routing the cove on the back side of the handle.

I made several passes with the cove bit, raising the bit incrementally.

Here are the 3 bits that I used firstly on the left is a 1/2” cove bit, middle 1/2” round-over, right is a 1/4” round-over.

I finally used the 1/2” round-over to add a profile to the top of the handle and then used the 1/4” round-over to the pull.

Here is a layout of what router bits and where I used them.

So here are the 6 pulls that I made from that one piece of ash, its so much cheaper doing your own pulls and are totally customizable

All that was left was to secure them on to the sharpening station, all I did to attach them was to center the pull on the center of the sides pre-drilled 2 holes to receive screws into the handles

Here is the pull attached.

So the project is almost complete and all I need to do tomorrow is to start applying the polyurethane finish and adding some wooden plugs to cover up the screw holes located near the bottom.

Below is where I left the project today and took several pictures to display it.

The sharpening station is more or less finished, I need to purchase 1 or 2 more sharpening stones .

Here is a frontal shot

Here is the inside

Other than the blemish in the recess I think it looks great, its only a shop project so it will get dinged up for sure and wont look any better than this in a short amount of time.

NEXT

• Need to add wooden plugs to cover up the screw holes, Ill probably use oak.

• Finally I need to start applying the finish, probably 2/3 coats of Polyurethane.

Thanks for looking, catch you soon.

Portable Sharpening Station: Day III

Today was all about the recesses that I needed to create for the sharpening stones and to be honest there was a decent amount of layout work to be done and maybe 20 minutes of me actually using my router. I gone to great detail explaining the how and the why of the steps that I took.

• Materials Needed

• Laying out the measurements for the template

• Drill Press

• Template Cut-outs

• Dry run

• Router time.

• Recesses all done

MATERIALS NEEDED

I decided to use 1/2” thick MDF (Medium Density Fiberboard) for the template because of a couple of reasons, its very flat and easy to mill. I went to my local Big Box store and purchased a 2’x2’ project panel and cut it down to the size I needed.

Here is the project panel cut to size, before I made all my layout lines

MEASUREMENT LAYOUT

The longest part of this whole part of the project was this section, laying out all the lines and determining how much offset I needed in making the template, because if you remeber I am going to be using a router template bushing to guide the router inside the template giving me my final shape.

Here are some of my measurements that I am using for the template, but if you are going to make your own your measurements are probably and most likely going to be different than mine because I am using Diamond sharpening stones that are 8” x 3”. One more thing that I want to make you aware of I decided to make the template the actual size of the entire surface area of the sharpening station as it gave me more room to apply double sided tape to fix it to my tray that I will be applying the recesses into.

• I maintained a 3/4” wide space around the perimeter of the MDF template as this represented the box beneath

• Next to that line I came in an additional 1/2” and maintained that spacing between each of the stones and maintained this spacing all the way across the template so as that the spacing between the sides of the sharpening stones were consistent.

• On the front edge of the template I measured 3/8” in from the first line I drew which was 3/4”.

• One other reminder because I am a guide template bushing I needed to add 1/4” to the template to account for the offset.

• Below you can see the measurements on the actual template.
  

Here is a picture describing all the measurement descriptions I gave above.

DRILL PRESS

I needed to drill relief holes in the template because I will be using a jigsaw and because all the cutout are on the inside of the template I needed an entry and exit points for the jigsaw bit. So I used a 1/4” brad point drill bit so as that I could register the bigger bit because I really needed to stay inside my layout lines. I then came back with a 1/2” brad point to finish cutting all the holes, I put 1 hole on each corner of where the recesses will be cut out.

Here is an image after I used the 1/4” brad point drill bit.

Here is the template after I added the 1/2” holes.

Here is the drill press in action drilling out the 1/2” holes, this diameter bit has just enough room for me to fit my jigsaw blade through.

TEMPLATE CUT-OUTS

I needed to remove 5 sections of the template and to be honest there was not much to see except me using a jigsaw and dust flying everywhere, always remember to use eye protection and I always use a respiration mask to stop me inhaling he MDF dust as there is a connection with that dust and cancer.

Here is the template almost complete I needed to do a little sanding to even out the jigsaw blade marks, I also needed to square off the corners.

TEMPLATE DRY RUN

Before I used the template on the solid oak top I decided to use it on a scrap piece of plywood so as that if I needed to fine tune the template I could do it before I started actually routing the recesses.

Here is the template on the scrap piece of plywood after using it, I needed to fine tune the template before using it on the oak.

Here is the dry run on the plywood, not too bad for my first time using a template.

USING THE TEMPLATE

Next was to actually use the template to route the 5 recesses that I needed for the stones. When it came to deciding the bit style I wanted to use the 1/4” spiral bit but when it came to putting the bit into the router I realized that the bit was not long enough to protrude through the guide bushing, so I moved the bit a little more out of the Colette, enough so as that I went deep enough through the template and into the work-piece, the problem with that was that while I was routing the recess the bit moved out more probably because the Colette didn’t hold the bit in place and it dug deeper into the oak panel.

So I needed to come up with a plan b and that was to use 1/2” straight bit with a 3/4” OD bushing that way I could keep the template dimensions the same and still receive the exact dimensions that I needed to fit the diamond plates and it worked. The only problem was that I didn’t go as deep to get rid off the marks left from the spiral but slipping. In woodworking sometimes you face these issues and you need to find solutions to them, although I was plenty mad at the bit slipping , it was my fault that it happened and I will not be doing that again. To rectify this problem in the future I need to make sure that I have the correct size bit for the operation that I have before I actually start doing the work, a simple solution would be to purchase a router bit extension piece.

To be honest I thought about not writing about this, but woodworking has thought me to own up to mistakes because everyone makes them even the pros and mistakes make you think outside the box when trying to rectify them, at the end of the day I still achieved what I was looking for.

Here is a picture of the template on the oak work-piece, I used double-side tape to secure the template to the oak top.

RECESSES ALL COMPLETE

Here are a few pictures of the finished top, you can see the stones in place, I only have 2 diamond stones right now and I need to get at least one more, I will be putting a leather strop pad on the last recesss for finishing up my sharpening process, but that comes tomorrow.

Here are 2 stones sitting in the recesses , they fit great and will not be moving around.

Here is the front of the sharpening station, I was thinking off adding finger pull holes to remove the sharpening stones but they are not so deep that I cant just lift them out of the recess.

Here is aside view, as you can see the finger holes are deep enough to pull out the top when I need to have access to the box contents.

Well that is all I had time for today,

NEXT

• Make a leather strop pad for the last recess, I have the leather, just need to figure out a way to add some thickness and rigidity to it.

• Fill the screw holes with wooden plugs

• Apply a finish to the station.

Portable Sharpening Station: Day II

I returned to the project today after the weekend and I had the following steps to do.

• Sand down the box frame after the glue-up

• Make & Install the base

• Cut the top to its final dimensions

• Add some round-overs

SANDING

The glue had set and I think I used a bit too much as the squeeze out was on the excessive side, so I took my random orbital sander and went through 120 - 220 grit sandpaper to clean it up. The finger joints look OK there was a few tiny spaces in between the fingers but I will need to fill them in later.

Anytime I get inconsistent spacing between joinery methods I usually use the saw dust and glue trick. All this is is the mixing of a little glue and sawdust from the same species of wood I use for a project in this case is poplar and rub it into the spacing let the glue set for about 30 minutes and then return to sand it down and magically the gaps disappear. I will do this towards the end of the project.

This picture shows the state of the piece after removing the clamps but before sanding it down.

Here is the box after sanding, need to fill in some little gaps around the finger joints but other than that it looks fine.

THE BASE

The base is nothing special , I am using a piece of 3/4” plywood as it will not be seen and then using the counter-sunk holes I already made around the bottom of the box parts I will use 1-1/4” screws to secure the base. I am not gluing it just in case I need to replace it in the future. I also needed to resolve a problem with keeping tools and accessories in position in the box an not be bumping into each other and possibly damaging them. To solve this issue I decided create a recess for the accessories I will be storing in the box, so I used my palm router and free handed the recesses to hold the tools. I will be using a similar process for the top but that is a much more precise recess and I will need to adapt the process whilst still using the router.

I used this scrap piece of 3/4” plywood for the base. I am cutting it down to final dimensions here on the table-saw.

I am layout out the lines so as that the honing guide sits inside and will not rattle around.

I used my palm router to remove the bulk of the recess and then went back with my chisel and mallet to clean up the edges.

Here is the honing guide accessories all nice and snug, Ill leave it for now and can always remove the base when I need to add more recesses for other tools. I still need to figure out how to store my sharpening stones in the box cavity when its not in use.

Another view of the base, before its secured to the frame.

Base is all secured and looks functional.

THE TOP

I am starting work on the top today but will need to finish it tomorrow. The top has a decent amount of work to do because it houses all my sharpening stones, I am creating recesses in the solid oak top so as that when I am using the sharpening station my stones stay stationary. To achieve this I need to use my plunge router together with a template that I need to make, I also need to use a template guide bushing on my router so as that I remove the precise amount of material for the stones to fit in, I purchased the Bosch bushing pack for my Bosch router which is the 1617 plunge router.

I will need to do a little more research on how to use a template for routing as I have never done it before. What I have so far I will show later.

TEMPLATE ROUTING

As you can see from my 3D rendering of the project below the top is to receive 5 recessed sections for the stones and a stropping plate.

3D rendering of the sharpening station.

USING TEMPLATES TO ROUTE RECESS

After researching online for a little while I found that I needed a couple of things before I could do this recess in the top. I needed to figure out the following:

• Do I need tools that I don’t have for this task?

• Do I need to make a jig of sorts?

• Measurement considerations?

DO I NEED TOOLS?

After researching I found that I needed to buy a template bushing set for my router, a bushing is a router accessory that can be used with a jig, lettering, inlay work, even reproducing furniture parts. Here's the basic concept: A guide bushing mounts to the router's sub-base with a tube that protrudes below. A straight router bit extends through the tube. The outer surface of the tube rides against an edge guide or template, keeping the bit a set distance (offset) from the edge guide or template, see picture below.

Here is a picture that I found online to show the bushing in the router.

In the marketplace you'll find two bushing styles. The Porter-Cable two-piece (shown below) uses a screw-on locking ring to hold the tube part to the router base. This style fits a wide range of models. The other style of guide bushing clicks into place, but only fits Bosch routers. If your router doesn't accept these common styles of guide bushings, consider buying adapters and sub-bases .

The style of bushing I needed was the one pictured on the right below.

DO I NEED TO MAKE A JIG?

I don’t necessarily need a jig of sorts but I do need to make a template. A template is guide that I will use in conjunction with the guide bushing so as to guide the router to the shape that I need to create. I have decided to make the template because I have quite a lot of milling to do as I need to create 5 recesses and to do that free hand would be extremely difficult and would also mean a lot of clean-up when I was done with the router. Using a template negates all that clean-up probably with a chisel and also provides nice clean edges in less time.

I need to figure out how to make the template, that is tomorrow!!

Here is my router and bushing set.

MEASURING OFFSETS

To figure the offset, measure the outside diameter (OD) of the guide bushing tube and subtract the diameter of the bit. Next, divide this figure by 2 to determine the offset. In the example at below subtract the 1⁄2 " bit diameter from the bushing's 3⁄4 " OD. You get 1⁄4 ". Now divide this number by two and you arrive at a 1⁄8 " offset.

This diagram can aid in how to calculate the offset

SO FAR!!!!!

This where I leave it for today, I had the main box, bottom and top made. Below are some pictures as to where I left off today.

The lid is on but that about it, I need to put the recess in tomorrow.

The finger cut out fits perfectly for my fingers to fit in and pull off the top

Some accessories in there nice new recessed homes.

NEXT!!!!!

• Make template for routing the recesses

• Make side handles

• Apply finish, I usually use a poly-crylic for shop projects.

• Start sharpening

Until the next day, take care

Ed

New Project : Portable Sharpening Station

Ever since I was working on the hand plane restoration projects I didnt really have a good set-up for sharpening my tools, and I recently spent a lot of money on certain tools to help me sharpen properly such as the Veritas MKII honing jig and I also purchased 2 DMT Diamond grit sharpening stones (Course and fine) I need to buy 1 or 2 more stones in the future but these will do for now., and I finally bought a strop kit that I need to make its basically a piece of honing leather and compound to use on polishing my sharpened tools. Anyway I needed a way to store all of these tools and went about designing one on Sketchup.

CONCEPT & DESIGN & RESEARCH

After doing some research online I came across countless projects that were used for sharpening stations, some were very elaborate and some were simple.

I wanted a sharpening station that had the following features:

• Small & Portable

• A good comfortable working height

• Storage for the stones and accessories.

Here is my Sketchup design for the box. The top of the box is a removable tray that houses the sharpening stones and beneath the tray is a storage compartment for all the stones and accessories. I used finger joints to join the box frame together.

While researching online I found a YouTube video where Johnny Brook @ Crafted Workshop made a sharpening station, this is where I got the idea of a Tray with imlayed inserts to hold the bench stones, he also used a CNC machine to mill out all the patterns to use to hold the sharpening stones, I do not own a CNC machine so I have to come up with my own idea on how to remove this material, I’ll probably use a plunge router freehand or make a template to guide the router. I have included his video below.

I also came across another YouTube video from Steve Ramsey @ Woodwroking for Mere Mortals, his video shows you how to make a Finger (Box) joint jig for the tablesaw and I figured that I would use this joint to make a box. I have included his video below on how he made the jig and its also the jig I made for this project. Its not fancy in anyway but its quick to make.

So with these Youtube videos I had my concept complete and its what I brought to my Sketchup software so try and finalize a 3D model of the station.

---

BOX (FINGER ) JOINT JIG

So before I even started making the sharpening station I needed to make this jig and figured I would make and test it out and have it ready for that part of the build, I think it took me all of 15 minutes to make the jig, 5 minutes of which was looking for a suitable piece of scrap lumber. I settled on a 1x6x22 piece of plywood I had and I also need 1/2” x 1/2” sqaure dowel that was used a register that I used in the jig. If you want to look at a video of how to make this i have posted it above, where Steve Ramsey made it.

Finished jig, I have it screwed onto the miter fence. You can also see the 1/2” stacked dado blade in the saw, and also see the square dowel used to register the piece as you work on it.

Here you can see it in action.

---

GETTING STARTED: PARTS

This is where I get started with the station, I used my 1”x6”x6’ piece of poplar to start cutting the box parts, using my cut-list I ripped and crosscut all parts to their final dimensions. There are 4 parts that make up the box as you would think there is 2 sides a front and a back piece.

Here is the poplar length of wood that I used for the box.

Here are the 4 pieces in their correct orientation, I am deciding what faces to have have on the outside of the box, I usually try to wrap the grain around the box but because I was doing box joints , this didn’t matter as much as it normally does, anyway its only a shop project

SOME LAYOUT WORK

Usually when I am working on joinery I always mark out with pencil what I need to do, and to help simplify things when it came to using the jig I marked out all the pieces that needed to be removed, so using my marking gauge and straight edge I made all the marks, and placed an x on everything that was getting removed.

I placed an X on all parts that were to be removed using the box joint jig

Here I am using my marking gauge set to the thickness of the work-piece which is 3/4” this measurement determines the height of the cut.

---

FINGER JOINT JIG TIME

For step by step instruction on how to use the box joint jig, Steve Ramsey from WWMM has it all laid out on his site, I just mimicked how he did, you get the instructions using this link below

This was my set-up

DRY ASSEMBLY

I always do a dry assembly to make sure all the parts fit nicely together and another reason is to rehearse how and where to apply clamping pressure. So now that all the finger joints have been cut its time to see how everything fits together, to be honest there is a little bit of work to clean up the finger joints because of the glue squeeze out but that is later.

Here is me doing a dry assembly no glue yet because there are a few more steps before I glue it up.

---

THE CLEATS

The cleats are what I am using to support the removable tray that will hold the sharpening stones, these cleats are very simple. They are basically 3/4” x 3/4” x length of the front and back pieces, I need to pre-drill them on the drill press and attach them to the front and back pieces. To aid me in this I used a piece of oak to use as a spacer block so as that when I position the tray its flush with the top of the box that way I will not be hindered when atually sharpening.

First I went to the drill press and using a forstner bit I drilled 3/8” diameter holes and then came back with a 3/16” drill bit to finish the holes with screw holes that way when I screw the cleats into the box I will not run the risk of splitting the cleats or the box parts. I also need to do this part before the glue up because I would not be able to fit my drill/driver to reach the angle of the screws.

While I was at the drill press I also decided to drill all holes for the project on the box pieces because I will be attaching the base with screws and glue and I will be returning to add wooden plugs to cover the screws. (more about that later)

“Here are the cleats receiving their 3/8” diameter holes for the screws.

Here I am working on one of the sides, using smaller diameter drill bit to make through holes. Its so much easier doing this now than doing it after the box is assembled.

Here is the step before I actually screw the cleats in place, there is not much room and I thought it better to do this now than later, its always important to layout the steps of assembly that way you wont be pulling your hair out try to figure how to screw the cleats in place after the box is already assembled.

Using a spacer block to determine where to place the cleat so as that the tray is flush to the top and will not interfere with the sharpening of tools when I am actually using it. Everything looks fine so I screwed 4 screws into each cleat, overkill I’m sure but at least I am assured that it will never move.

I used a scrap piece of oak that I had to make sure the top would be flush, I also used a level to make sure. It all looks fine.

THE SIDES

So before I get to working on glueing everything up there is still a few things that need to be done, sometimes its easier to get shaping and milling done before the glue up and in this case I need to add a few features to the sides before I do that.

I wanted to add a finger relief in the sides to aid me when I needed to remove the top tray to get access.

To create the arc that would be convenient to use I used a sanding sleeve from my spindle sander to draw a semi-circle half way down the length of the sides, this center it from the left and right sides, and since I was going to use my spindle sander to finish sand it I thought what better way to get a best curve.

I took the sides to my band-saw and gang cut the semi-circles out together and then smoothed them out on the spindle sander, as an after thought I decided to use my palm router to add a rounder on the cut outs as they were a little catchy and I didn’t want to scratch myself when I placed my fingers in there to remove the tray.

Here you can see the spindle sander sleeve that I used to create the arc. I used double sided tape to stick both sides together for the cutting and sanding parts of this step.

Here is the spindle sander sanding both sides to remove all the milling marks left by the band saw.

I am using my palm router to add a 1/4” round-over to the cut outs and all the splinters were gone, in hind-sight I should of used a backer board to the left & right sides of the cut out because that wood was not supported when the router left the cut I had some tear-out but nothing that cant be fixed with some sanding.

Here is the cutouts after I used the router on them, do you see the tear-out, no biggie it happens from time to time.

---

BOX GLUE-UP

After all that the box is finally ready to be glued up, as I said before I did a dry rehearsal before actually applying glue so I had an order in my mind as to how to complete this process.

I applied glue to all surfaces of the finger joint except on the faces that would be see on the outside of the box, that is why this joint is very strong, its not as strong as a dovetail joint but it close enough for what I need it for.

I used a total of 8 clamps to glue this up making sure I was in square as I need to add the top tray and base after this has dried, out of square would be a disaster

Here is another view of the glue-up

A close up of the box joints, they do look nice but I will have to clean them up after the glue sets.

That is all I had time for today, thanks for reading

NEXT

• Cut the base to size.

• Cut the top tray to size

• Rout all the recesses for the sharpening stones in the tray, wishing I had a CNC machine at this moment in time lol.

• Make handles for the sides

• Apply a finish.

New Project : Portable Sharpening Station

Recently I have been working on restoring a bench plane and I also wanted to sharpen all my chisels and basically anything with a metal edge so I have been purchasing supplies which I am still in the process of buying what I need as they are not cheap.

i bought 2 DMT diamond plate stone and a Veritas MKII honing guidea d now I need a place in my shop to store them as I need them to readily available when it comes time to sharpen so I am drawing up plans for a sharpening station. 

Stay tuned more to come !!!!

#5 Hand Plane Restoration : Disaster

Well this morning I was in the mood for getting this very old #5 finished decided to take stock before I went any further rehabbing it.

A lot of the parts that are key components in the operation of the hand plane are from other planes, for example the chip breaker is also damaged and the bottom needs to be ground to sit flush on the plane iron, the frog doesnt belong to this plane and was canabolised off another plane, the tote is broken and for some reason I cant get the 2 broken parts together I have tried 5 minute epoxy, Titebond II wood glue without any success, I could always remake the tote but with all the other issues with the plane I have decided to leave the plane for now and try and either find a Stanley #5 or find better replacement parts for this plane.

So as sad as it makes me feel I am leaving the restoration for now, but some times you need to cut your losses.

Anyway I need to perfect my honing skills and perfect my sharpening methods for various tools.

Until next time

Ed

#5 Hand Plane Restoration

The 2nd hand plane for restoration is a #5 hand plane, this plane is in very bad shape with a lot of surface rust and a broken tote (back handle), I also think a previous owner tried restoring it at some point because I feel like he/she used parts from other planes because after looking up all the parts for this plane I didn’t recognize some of the plane parts, primarily the frog and other solutions were improvised with common parts. The plane was also broken on the side which went right through the side and also on the underside of the plane near its mouth. A repair was attempted by brazing the crack and I am not too sure how strong the weld is.

So although I am excited to start rehabbing the plane I am unsure at how good I can get it looking and performing.

Plane Problems

1. A crack on the plane side that has been brazed.

2. The frog doesn’t sit flush with the plane bed

3. Severe rust and a little pitting

4. Chip Breaker has broken edges

5. Lever Cap has broken edges

6. Broken tote

7. Sole needs to flattened

8. Plane blade needs to honed

This #5 is in really bad shape, I am hoping I can pull this off

Broken Tote

Severely rusted plane Iron

Severely rusted chip breaker

Plane Bed

Ready for its bath

Tote close-up

Front of plane

FIRST THINGS FIRST: RUST REMOVAL

I am using the same method as the last time, I took the plane apart and put all the parts in a white vinegar bath and left it soak over the weekend and again the results speak for themselves, I also need neutralize the white vinegar so as that the parts didn’t rust when I removed them from the solution, I did that by soaking the parts in a water and baking soda.

Look at the color of the vinegar , that should tell you how rusty this plane is.

So after I left the parts in the vinegar over the weekend I took them out today and using several rust removal methods I cleaned up primarily today. My 3 methods were

1. Used a wire wheel in my drill press to remove most of the rust

2. Used various grits of sandpaper to primarily remove the rust and also to flatten the sides and the plane bottom

3. Used steel wool to remove the rust in places I couldn’t reach with the drill press and wire wheel

4. Tomorrow I will do some more as I want the sides looking a little more polished, but below you can see some of the results of today’s cleaning exploits

Plane Iron, Chip breaker and the lever cap

I started to clean these today but still have some work to do on them, I work on these tomorrow

Frog & Plane Tote

I decided to touch up these parts as I basically removed all the paint on them when I was removing the rust

Better but still need work

The vinegar worked awesome and it didnt take much to remove most of the rust and polish them up, still have a lot of work but its looking night and day better than when I started

Plane Tote

Although I didn’t take any pictures I worked on the plane tote (handle) I used my wire brush in the drill press to remove all the old finish and I also used regular wood glue to glue the two parts together, I used the the mounting screw to keep everything aligned while the glue set in a clamp .

NEXT:

Tomorrow I need to polish the plane sides and work on flattening the base of the plane and if I have time I will work on grinding down the lever cap so as that it sits flush on the chip breaker.

Until next time

BEFORE I STARTED

AFTER TODAY'S EFFORTS

Stanley Bailey # 4 HandPlane : Complete

I have to say that this whole restoration project was a real joy and to be honest when I was thinking about this I thought this whole process would be a chore after all I am woodworker and love making projects with wood, this project had everything but the wood. I was introduced to a whole new array of topics that I was very inexperienced in. I had to do a lot of research on “ The How” when I say that there are countless article and videos on the subject on the internet.

I figured what did I have to loose when I started, I was determined not to sink a lot of money into the restoration but after trying so many ways I did need to spend money on some tools that I didn’t have and if I was to spend more time using hand tools there were certain aids and tools that I just simply needed to have, such as;

• A high quality honing jig, I could of gotten a really cheap one that might only have cost $10.00 but a fellow woodworker told me in order to make something of quality you need quality tools and that is why I got the Veritas MKII honing guide, and I love using it it because it takes all the work out of figuring out the bevel angles needed.

• I also got a DMT diamond grit sharpening stone because although the sand paper method was great in cleaning up the rust on the plane it didn’t perform quite as well in sharpening anything. I also realized that when using water-stones you have to consistently flatten the stone or the unevenness on the water-stone would be introduced into whatever you sharpened on it.

• What blew me away was how effective the white vinegar was in removing even the coarsest of rust on the plane, I was truly amazed at how effective this was. While I was researching this so many people had so many methods of doing this task such as electrolysis, sand blasting and other other chemical solutions but rest assured the white vinegar is cheap and very effective.

  One of the biggest enjoyment of this whole project was how quiet the workshop was and I really enjoyed that aspect because I usually have a lot of noise in the shop because of all the power tools that I usually use in making anything, and to be honest this project really introduced me to a new found respect for hand tools so much that I really want to purchase a few more hand tools or find beaten up, old tools and restore them because I learnt so much about the tool because you are forced to research the tool in a way that you didn’t destroy the tool.

So without any more rambling from me I will show you some before and after pictures of the hand plane, although I am happy with it and it works fine, I think that the more experience I get in sharpening I might revisit this plane to get it even more sharp

BEFORE RESTORATION

Some surface rust needed to be removed and the vinegar exceeded my expectations

The plane need a lot of elbow grease especially on the plane bed and the base of the plane.

AFTER RESTORATION

The plane came out awesome and actually can smooth wood….

As you can see the wood shavings are great, full length even thickness. I could not do this before the restoration.

I went through 4 grits of sandpaper to get the sides looking this good, if you are willing to put the effort in the rewards speak for themselves.

Here you can see how much better the bottom of the plane is and its dead flat, its probably the flattest surface in my shop.

Well thanks for reading and in my next project I am still in the restoration mode where I will be attempting to restore a #5 bench plane. This project has a lot more to it as it is in extremely bad condition with severe surface rust and a broken tote.

Bailey # 4 Hand Plane : Day 3

So day 3 into this project and I had a couple of hick-ups there were some parts of the plane that I really need to work on especially the chip breaker and plane blade, the plane blade was so hard to get sharp so I had to switch from the sandpaper method and I went with the sharpening stones and with ALOT of elbow grease I finally got the plane sole flat and the planes cutting edge sharp as well.

WATER STONES

Although the sandpaper did an awesome job removing the rust and buffing the sides and the bottom of the plane to a decent luster unfortunately it did very little for sharpening the cutting edge of the plane blade even with a very good Veritas honing guide, so I went to Woodcraft and bought a course DMT diamond grit to use on the plane and also is very useful for flattening the water stones that I had which were a 1000&6000 grit combination stone.

DMT DIAMOND PLATE made quick work of sharpening the plane blade

Here is my combination water stone, this is great for polishing the bevel

FLATTENING THE SOLE

I tried various grits of sandpaper to flatten the sole of the plane (plane base) but I was getting no where fast and it would of taken me a week to get it flat, the middle of the plane was high which mean the bottom middle part of the plane was not cutting the wood, so I used a method where you put a grid on the plane base and used it on the the sharpening medium at this point it was my DMT diamond plate and all the grid disappeared on the left & right but not the middle, so I raised each side by placing a very thin ruler and that worked the middle and just did that until the entire grid was gone.

SHARPENING THE BLADE

I used my diamond plate to start flattening the back of the blade until I got a burr and again using the grid method to make sure the back of the plane blade was flat and eventually developed a burr, next was to hon the cutting edge, my blade had a 30 degree primary bevel and the beautiful thing about the Veritas honing guide is that it actually has a setting that you deploy to create the secondary bevel and I think that is a 25 degree bevel… I am very new to this whole plane blade sharpening but I did get a pretty good sharp edge and it passed all the testing I did to make sure it was working properly. I will only get better at this the more I practice.

BEFORE

BEFORE:

AFTER

AFTER: Stanley # 4 Bailey Hand plane all restored, as you can see by the shavings I got uniformed thickness and full length shavings

I hope you enjoyed this project because my next project is restoring a # 5

TAKE CARE

Ed

Bailey #4 Hand Plane Restoration : Day 2

RECAP : DAY 1

In the previous day I disassembled the plane and started trying to remove all the rust from the parts by soaking it in a bath of white vinegar and salt and I have to say that it did a great job.

TODAY’S EVENTS

I needed to go out and get some supplies for the shop today and while I was at it I decided to visit my favorite woodworking shop and that is Woodcraft while I was there I picked up some sanding paper and also purchased the Veritas Honing Jig MKII. My old eclipse style honing jig was just not cutting it as far as sharpening anything in my shop and so I decided to upgrade it, the jig is very nice and I will get to using it tomorrow, bit more about that later.

HERE IS WHAT I DID TODAY

• Removed the plane parts from the vinegar solution

• My temporary sharpening station

• The Veritas MKII honing jig

REMOVING THE PLANE PARTS FROM VINEGAR

As I said the vinegar method that I saw on Jay Bates Youtube channel that I previously talked about really did a nice job, when I opened the lid to the container I saw all the rust residue floating on the water so I could tell it did a decent job, in the picture below you can see the immediate effect this had on most of the parts.

In the future I really need to establish a set sharpening station in the shop as I see a lot of hand-tool use going going forward.

Most of the rust is gone, and I didn’t use any harsh chemicals which is something that I am please about.

TEMPORARY SHARPENING STATION

When I was researching online for the best method in cleaning up the plane lots of people had lots of different methods but I went with the cheapest and also the most used method and that was using a couple different grits of sandpaper on a true flat surface.

I had a little assembly table that I use from time to time and figured this would be ideal because of its height and its medium sized work surface.

Since I needed a known flat surface and I didn’t really want to use my cast iron wings on my table-saw I found some solid granite floor tiles that fit the bill so I used them and added 3 different grits of sand paper to the , so I also used some contact adhesive to attach the sandpaper to the granite tiles, and so far its working good.

While I am thinking about I recently saw a guy use Micron sandpaper it had a different consistency than sandpaper and it is a little more expensive but it had really nice results.

Here you can see my 3 granite stones with my regular sandpaper on it, I used 120 - 320 grit paper.

I used this setup to start flattening the plane sole and I think that came out great, I have pictures below.

Plane sole looks great

A rear view of the plane bed.

I used WD-40 to clean the black painting on the inside of the plane and it came out awesome.

While I am talking about cleaning the plane parts I also cleaned every component of the plane and sanded everything, I also used by bench grinder with a buffing wheel to polish the brass screws to a high sheen, I need to do a little more and I will show you the results. I also used a wire brush in my drill press to help clean some parts especially the frog because there were some very hard places to reach and while I was cleaning the frog I couldn’t help but remove the japanning so I I resprayed the frog, that’s all the plane cleaned, I need to sharpen the plane blade tomorrow and I got a nice tool to aid me with that, more about that next.

VERITAS MKII HONING JIG

I had a very old eclipse style honing guide that was pretty inexpensive and it served its purpose but I needed a better honing jig because I needed more help getting a scary sharp edge on my chisels and plane blades so I purchased the Veritas honing jig , its not that cheap but in this craft you get what you pay for.

Here you can the blade registration jig that has a dovetail on the back to register into the main honing guide, once the blade is aligned with honing degree bevel via a stop block you can remove it and start honing the blade.

Here is the main honing guide, there are 2 thumbscrews that tighten the jaws that securely hold the plane in place.

The honing jig is made extremely well with a solid construction. The Veritas Mk. II will set bevel angles from 15° to 54° and back bevels from 10° to 20°, and it will accommodate blades from 1/4" to 2-7/8" in width. Included is a blade registration jig which slides onto the guide body, centering and squaring the blade with the integral fence ensuring accuracy. Features include a blade stop that has discrete positions for preset bevels and a three-position eccentric roller that allows you to hone micro bevels quickly and accurately with a simple turn of a knob. Manufactured from die-cast zinc with precision machined brass and steel parts. 

That’s all I have for today, tomorrow I need to sharpen the blade and put the plane back together and hopefully start using it.

Until then, take care

Bailey #4: Hand Plane Restoration Project

About 5 years ago I decided to build out my own woodworking shop in the basement, my father in law had a paint workshop and when he passed away I decided to use the space for a woodworking shop.

There were a decent amount of tools in the shop for painting but he had a few woodworking hand tools that looked in bad shape most of them were hand planes and old ones at that, I always said that I must restore them as I thought they would come out good looking and would actually be very function-able hand planes, but alas I never did until last week when I looked around my shop and realized at how many power tools that I had but had very few hand tools, sure I had a few chisels and marking tools, but I didn’t have any planes or various saws so I decided that in the coming months since I don’t have any major projects that I would start building out my hand tools and eventually make a nice hand tool cabinet.

THE HAND PLANES

My father in law had 3 hand planes that I am looking into restoring and I believe they are

• A Stanley # 4 Bailey hand plane

• A Stanley #5 plane

• A very old but un-branded block plane

My first order of business was to do research on how to actually restore a plane as I never did it before, so I read woodworking articles, borrowed library books and watched countless You Tube videos before I undertook this process.

There are so many resources available on the internet on how to do this but I used various tips from different people on the Internet to aid me in this project. Below are some links and YouTube videos that I though would help.

• Jay Bates @ Jays Custom Creations & How to restore a hand plane

Jays uses regular household vinegar to aid in the rust removal process, he also shows you how to make the tote or rear handle (as his was broken). He also used various grits off sand paper to clean and sharpen the plane.

Rob Cossman :Top 5 Hand Plane Issues

Although Rob doesn’t specially cover a plane restoration in this video he does address some key issues with having one, for example his sharpening techniques

REX KRUEGER : Restoring a hand plane using a bench-top grinder

Rex goes through the entire process of restoring a hand plane using only a bench grinder, this video is awesome and it actually made me get one because this machine is extremely useful in a wood shop.

• Wood Magazine: Resting a hand plane

• Instructable.com

• Paul Sellers : Restoring a Smoothing Plane

• Restoring Old Hand Planes

• How to identify your Stanley Hand Plane

WENT SHOPPING

I went to my local home center to pick up some supplies before I started the restoration project, some or most of these items you might already have in your house. I also purchased a Ryobi bench grinder as I have been wanting one for some time and this was the perfect time to get it as I will be using it in the restoration process.

• Rybbi 6” Bench Grinder

• 80,120,220 & 320 Grit sand paper

• A wire cleaning wheel for the grinder

• A polishing/buffing wheel for the bench grinder

• A container to put all the planes parts in so I could clean them

• House hold white vinegar

• 3M Cleaning pads

• Small wire brushes

BENCH GRINDER

Before I dived into actually starting the hand plane restoration I needed to unpack the grinder form the box and needed to do a small bit of assembly.

When I turned the grinder on for the first time It was moving all over the bench so I decided to mount it to a platform that way I could clamp it to my bench and also use it so I could remove the grinder into a shelf when I wasn’t using it.

So all I did was cut a scrap piece of plywood big enough to support the grinder by using screws and also large enough to add clamps to either side of the grinder so as that it enabled me to clamp it to my bench.

As part of my assembly I purchased a wire brush for the grinder so as that I could use it to remove rust from the plane, I also purchased a buffing wheel for all the brass screws, to use when I was giving it a final cleaning.

Grinder all set up and ready for use. You can see the wire brush on the right side of the grinder. I got to admit for $45 this grinder is impressive and up-to most tasks that I would ever need it for.

You can see the plywood base that I added , this makes it super portable and I can put it on a shelf when not in use.

Here is just another picture angle

---

GETTING STARTED

So to get started I firstly took my rusted Stanley # 4 Bailey plane, and disassembled it as you can see below

My Stanley #4 Bailey Hand-plane before I took it apart

The plane on its side, here you can see most of the rusting is on the dies of the plane bed.

TIME TO TAKE THE PLANE APART

So it was time to take this plane apart and see how much work was needed to fully restore this plane into a working tool. I did it in the following order

1. Took the front knob off the plane

2. Took the cam levelr cap off

3. Took the chip breaker off

4. Took the cap screw off

5. Took the plane iron off

6. Then took the frog off

7. Took the depth adjuster wheel off

8. Finally took the tote or rear handle off

Hand plane diagram showing you the parts and their names

All the parts are disassembled and waiting for their vinegar bath

All that was left was to submerge all the plane parts in a white vinegar bath, I will be leaving this over night. The plane isn’t in that bad a condition and this duration is overkill but I couldn’t get back to it today so it should be nice and ready for tomorrow.

Here are all the parts soaking in the vinegar solution.

That’s all I have time for today…hopefully tomorrow I can start cleaning the parts and start sharpening the plane… with a bit of luck by the end of tomorrow I should have a nice new sharp plane.. that doesn’t look to bad either.

Until then

LABOR WEEKEND SALE

GET 10% OF ANYTHING IN MY STORE

Use Code 10%OFFLABORDAY

Project Award

I recently received another Daily Top 3 Award on my online workshop where I currently have a membership with www.lumberjocks.com. 

I received the award along with 2 other makers that also made woodworking projects. My award was for the Drill Press Cart that I made for the shop. I have included links below for the project and also links to the other winners.

MY PROJECT

I’m on vacation

For the next week I am on vacation and will have limited resources so I will see you when I get back , next week. 

Take care

Ed