Shopmade

Low temperatures make the shop a “no cure zone” for epoxy, thus postponing the next boat building steps.

So, something else is in order … more tools. When I first built the workbench, I made a few simple bench dogs from some sort of not-so-hard Indonesian hardwood found at the Borg. They have served well, but have not lasted well. The remainder of a piece of Ash called out for use. It was left over from getting out structural parts for the Mill Creek 13 boat. I ripped off one strip to 1 inch by 13/16, and another to 3/16 by 13/16. The thicker piece was cut into lengths, making the bodies for 24 bench dogs. The thinner strip was cut into 48 pieces, making the top faces, and the spring pieces. The springs get their action from being screwed onto a bevel at the bottom of each dog. One is shown resting on the bench in the photo. (As always, click the photo to see  larger version.)

The mallet is one of the “Two Mallets that Followed Me Home” from a while back. Several pieces from that small log seem dry enough to use. I have no moisture meter. My only measure is that the temperature of a freshly cut end is the same as a broad surface. A too wet piece usually feels cooler at the fresh cut. You also get juicy shavings when planing wood that is too wet. This wood made dry shavings. The mallet’s design is the age old design of fitting a tapered handle into a mortise in a rounded head with angled faces. I used no plan, cutting the parts to what could be gotten from two pieces of the log. The head is laminated from two pieces, gently curved across the top, and with faces angled 10 degrees from the handle’s axis. The top surface of the head measures 4 and 3/4 inches by 2 and 1/4 inches. The mallet will get a couple of coats of BLO finish shortly.

There’s more wood from that log, easily enough for the second mallet. Yet, maybe it wants to be a small turning saw instead?

We live within a hundred yards of a woodlands, a large state park. My better half and I went hiking there a couple of days ago. On the way back home, I spotted a small log hiding under a guard rail along the roadside. A maintenance crew goes along the park roads every fall trimming limbs and trees that might fall upon the roadway during ice storms. They usually saw logs into firewood length and leave them to be picked up by whoever wants them. Someone missed this little log of black locust. I could see a couple of mallets inside that log, so I picked it up and carried it home (which worked off at least a Snickers bar).

I wanted to reduce this log a bit to help it dry without splitting too much. I would really like to rive the wood rather than cut it, but there are not yet any tools for green woodworking in my shop. My solution was to use a coarse setting of my #40 scrub plane to make flats on either side of the log. Then, a few passes through the band saw reduced it to pieces I think will be useful for mallet heads and handles. Those are set aside to dry for awhile.

I’m not certain on the design yet.  Maybe a sawed head, maybe a turned head. Of course, for the turned head I don’t have a lathe that’s large enough. I’ve been wanting to build one of “St. Roy’s” spring pole lathes. To be continued…

A scraggly old broken spring hook (tool “G” at this link), with the broken off end roughly resharpened to a point, served as a scratching tool for many years. Now, with the ability to neatly grind metal, and a little scrap of oak, it takes new form, a finished scratch awl. There’s really not much to it. I turned the handle in a small model making lathe. The awl itself is that old tool reground and polished.  3M microabrasive film is fantastic for polishing. The ferrule was donated by a self-sacrificing Pentel mechanical pencil. Finish is several coats of danish oil.

Yes, it is small. It fits the palm easily. As shown in this picture, I was using it to prick through a paper pattern to prepare for cutting a boat part.