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New toy…

New Toys!ToolsWoodworking

So my old power drill died. Or more accurately, its batteries. Six hours charging, twenty minutes of charge held with no load, or one 3.5mm hole in inch-thick poplar. That’s NiCad for you, just not great for occasional use. And last time this happened, it worked out cheaper to buy a new drill and use its batteries, which was exceptionally irritating. So I figured enough; I’ll get a new drill and move up to the new lithium ion batteries and maybe down in size to the newer smaller drills. I don’t use my drill that often, and when I do it’s for quick small holes or driving screws faster than the cordless screwdriver does – which basically means jigs and mounting stuff on the shed walls. So for stuff like that, the new 10.8v and 12v sized drills seem way more suited:

That’s the Bosch PS32, their brushless 10.8/12v drill.… Read the rest

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New Year’s goals

GeneralWoodworking

No, not resolutions, those are stupid.

But goals would be nice. So, here’s my goal for 2018:

Build and sell one piece from the shed. Maybe a small chest, maybe a small table, whatever.

The idea is to get to the point where I could buy some nice timber, make a few things for friends and sell one or two other pieces to defray the cost of the timber. It is not supposed to be an income stream (not least because I already have a day job and taxes are so much fun). It’s just that thanks to brexit and the US-Canada timber trade war, the price of timber is spiking; and if the hobby got to where it could see the break-even point, well that’d be helpful. Oh, and before someone asks, no, I don’t want to change my day job, I like it too much, and no, this wouldn’t make much money at all especially on a per-hour basis (hand tool woodwork as a career kindof died a death with the second world war), and that’s not the point anyway.… Read the rest

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Mucking out and mucking about

FinishingShedWoodcarving
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Woodworking

Couple of days out of the shed, mostly spent lying down and paying attention to all the little muscle cells as they turned to me and said “what the feck was all that then?”. Today though was bin day so back out to the shed and spent a half-hour cleaning up all the shavings and using the shop vac to tackle the sawdust.

Before:

After:And then, having made a clean spot, went and tidied the small section behind the tumbledrier there where I usually wind up standing wishing I’d cleaned that part of the shed.

And then, having cleaned everything up, time to play…

First off, I did want to see what the stains look like and to try to replicate this:

Granted, I don’t have resawn squares of flamed sycamore, I’m mucking about with bits of poplar, but still…

That was a bit of fun.… Read the rest

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