Home / 2018 / January (Page 5)

Hello Unplugged!

Got an email this morning saying this blog is now getting picked up on the Unplugged Shop blog aggregator (who specialise in blogs about hand tool woodworking). Since that might mean new people reading here, hello. You won’t find much professional woodwork stuff here, I’m a software engineer who just does this as a hobby. It may, however, make you feel better about your own workshop because yours isΒ absolutely going to be bigger than mine (I know of woodworkers who have table saws with more space than my entire shed if you include their outfeed tables, and pretty much everyone who has a timber store has more room in there than I do in total). Here’s the wee shed:


That’s an eight foot by six foot potting shed at the bottom of the garden (seen here getting a new coat of paint last year hence all the plastic sheeting over the plants and the masking tape).… Read the rest

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Back to work…

So back to work today. Checked the thermometer in the shed before leaving the house around 0715 or so…

And given the ice on the decking outside the shed, I doubt that was the low point either. Must remember to put another layer of paste wax on the planes this week to prevent surface blooms of rust.

I figured it’d be warmer by the time I got home but by 2000h…

Hmmm. Uninsulated shed in the middle of winter. Such fun. Oh well, new toys!

Some trammel points and a new 3″ square from Proops (turns out, if you have a 4″ square, you shouldn’t drop it or you’ll have a 4″ not-square…).

And I wanted to see what all the fuss over Japanese chisels was about so I bought a fairly cheap second-hand one (came to about €15 delivered).… Read the rest

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More small jobs and practice…

All small jobs today in the shed. Well. Was a bit chilly.

And it was colder before I turned on the heater. Not going to get much better before the end of next week either πŸ™ Onwards…

Got my new japanese saw bench hook finished:

Spare offcuts of walnut and plywood, with 19mm dowels from woodies (if you’re in the US, woodies is what Lowe’s would be if they dropped their timber standards significantly and jacked up their prices by 50%). The dowels drop into the bench dog holes:

In theory this would work on any set of two holes, but it turns out there’s just enough variation in spacing that it only works for this pair πŸ™ Next time I build a workbench, I’ll be a lot more precise with a few things and dog hole placement is one of them.… Read the rest

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