Bob Easton

Chocolate powered woodworking

Hand tools

Six Little Cam Clamps

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photo of 6 handmade cam clamps

My box making work will appreciate these clamps. I’ll see shortly if 6 are enough. They are extremely light weight, have just the right amount of gripping strength (I think), and are quickly adjusted.

Plans and video instruction from Paul Sellers. Paul says these are easy to make and are inexpensive. They are. What he doesn’t say is they take a LOT of steps, which is why most off-the-shelf versions are relatively expensive.

Materials: 4/4 mahogany, aluminum bars 1/8″ x 1″ x 18″, 10 penny nails, bits of leather.

 

 

Wilson’s Saw (and hat)

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Wilson Burnham is a luthier, handcrafting spectacular Spanish guitars from his shop in Colorado’s beautiful mountains. He wrote recently that hs is selling off some of his tools.

Coincidentally, I went looking for a crosscut saw on eBay and unwittingly bought one of Wilson’s saws. I have a few rip saws, but no crosscuts unless that recent vintage big-box, hardened tooth, plastic handled Stanley can be considered crosscut. That Stanley has been my saw for rough cutting for many years and is getting “old in the tooth.” It’s time for a good crosscut, especially since Paul Sellers has added a video about sharpening crosscut saws.

photo of two sawsI suspect this saw wasn’t one of Wilson’s favorites, and that the handle probably arrived in rough condition from a previous owner. It looks like the saw was not a top-line brand, but one of the second lines, often called “Warranted Superior.” The plate itself was in good shape: no kinks, no bends, no obvious rust, no pitting, and a tooth line that doesn’t need a lot of work. The handle was the main focus of my rehabilitation work. I reshaped a chipped horn and some pretty rough edges on one side. I left the original leaf carving, and then scraped off the old red finish and added my own shellac. A bent saw bolt needed replacing, and “in for a dime – in for a dollar” I replaced all three with Isaac Smith’s excellent parts. (Blackburn Tools)

Some of the “patina” spots on the plate showed some redness when I irritated them with sandpaper, so I irritated them some  more until the underlying rust was gone. I’m not a big fan of restoring tools to full-shiny, just to smooth enough to work well and this one is there.

photo - Bob in a paper hatAbout 8 minutes touch up sharpening brought the saw to a level where it easily out cuts the box-store Stanley.

I’m quite pleased with the results and the plastic handled Stanley gets demoted to “utility saw” that I carry in the truck.

Wilson wrapped the saw for shipping in several sheets of blank newsprint. The stuff was the perfect size for making a carpenter’s hat. So, I took Wilson’s challenge and made one (from these plans). Not that I need a hat, but….

Kerfing Plane – Done

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There are a lot more pictures this time because I read that a lot of people avoid saw making, rehabilitation and sharpening. I want to show that it’s within easy reach of anyone who wants to try and doesn’t care to wait while saws take long trips to the sharpener and back.

photo of completed plane

We can find many sharpening guides and tutorials online. Nearly all are very useful. For this particular saw plate, I followed Paul Seller’s recent tutorial about cutting saw teeth. The method worked wonderfully!

The plate itself is roughly 10″ by 1.5″, recycled from an old Disston that I cut down to make my frame saw a few years ago. Cutting to this shape was simple hack sawing. The tooth edge was smoothed “flat and straight” with a simple single-cut mill file. I decided to cut it to the same pattern I use for other resawing work, 5 TPI, zero rake, no fleam … just a dead simple aggressive rip pattern.

My ever handy Stanley No. 36 1/2 R rule has multiple scales in  8, 10, 12, 16 parts to the inch. The 10 scale made easy work of laying out a guide. The series of pictures walks through a number of steps, with notes about each. (Click any photo to start a larger slideshow.)

End result? A small piece of pine became the test victim. I set the fence to produce a kerf 3/32″ from the edge and went at it with only casual concern. What will this thing do without a lot of fussy attention? Cutting was easy once the initial grabbing was overcome. Hint: start from the far end as one does when planing a molding. You can see in one of the pictures that the kerf is not absolutely square. It’s tilted slightly. Despite that, I ended up with two boards that have less than 1/32″ of roughness left from the cut.
photo of first test result

It will be perfect after I make an adjustment to either the face of the fence or to my right elbow.

UPDATE: It was my right elbow that needed adjustment. The plane is perfect when the monkey pushing it holds it correctly.