Plane Cabinet

When I did my workbench I enclosed a shelf for most utilized planes. The shelf became full rapidly and several planes had not a dedicate place. The solution was building a new cabinet for hand planes, a good choice for keeping them in order and ready to use.

I used the frame and panel technique, with panels inserted in grooves cut in the frame inner edge. 

on the bottom are the long planes boxes

The loop screw engages a chain for keeping the mobile shelf

the cabinet is anchored to the wall for avoid its tipping

For a better use of available space, the long planes are held in vertical position in the back side of cabinet The smaller planes are on a mobile shelf; this rotates, permitting the access to the back. 

Long planes are available after the shelf is tilted forward

The wood was mainly recycled Douglas, coming from old windows and some piece of silver fir.  By utilizing recycled wood, well have to accept some defects it will show, if we want to avoid of discarding too much wood. In this case the wood was varnished and exposed to sun (windows) during some decades; this caused tone differences you can see mainly in lateral panels.However this is a shop cabinet and I think some defect is acceptable.The building  details are shown in the video in the previous post.

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Happy Birthday To Me

Happy Birthday to me ... !!!

As a birthday treat to myself I have purchased a few more goodies from Axminster tools.

So what are we looking at here:

Stanley No#6 Fore Plane

DMT Diamond Stones

Veritas MkII Honing Guide

Joseph Marples Mortice & Marking Gauge

Axminster Marking Gauge

Joseph Marples 75mm Square

and lastly just out of shot a Japanese Marking knife.

Unfortunately, the room I will be setting up as a workshop isnt ready and has to be decorated first (sometime next week), so until then I have been sharpening tools and messing about with offcuts of wood etc.

The DMT Stones and Veritas honing guide are amazing and I can sharpen chisels and plane blades to razor sharpness very quickly. The 2 3/8" No#6 Plane Blade is a bit awkward to sharpen on the 2" wide stones but I managed fine.

More soon ...

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Were all Tusken Raiders

My Festool Random Orbit Sanders

I like to sand. I know that goes contrary to popular opinion, but I find sanding relaxing.The reason I like sanding is that I’ve stocked myself up with an arsenal of sanding paraphernalia that usually make it easy. My normal routine is to use a Festool random orbit sander connected to my CT22 dust extractor via my vacuum boom arm. The result is that sanding is usually a relaxing process. It could be a little monotonous, but listening to an entertaining podcast or book takes care of that. If you don’t have a decent vacuum and boom arm to connect to your sander, you really should. The less dust, the greater the sanding enjoyment.

This weekend I’ve had to leave my fancy set up behind and sand by hand. I’m making some wands (more on them in a future post), and there’s not a flat surface on them.The result has been lots and lots of hand sanding. I’ve used 3M Sandblaster sanding pads for the wands, and while I’ve been happy with the results, I’ve been hating the process. I now remember why so many of us hate sanding.How do you deal with sanding?

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Door Hinges on the Bastard Wall Cabinet

The Bastard Cabinet: Now with Hinges!

It’s been far too long since I’ve worked (or blogged about) the Bastard Wall Cabinet. To be honest, nothings been done on the cabinet since my last post about it on March 22, 2011. That is, nothing until today. Keeping my head down and finishing my work homework on Saturday afternoon meant that I was actually able to steal a whole hour in the shop on Sunday.

I’m up to fabricating and installing the cabinet doors. As they will be relatively dimensioned, just like every other cabinet component, I decided to install the hinges first so that I can exactly mark the size of the doors.

I’m using Rockler Partial Wrap Slotted Piano Hinges. Though the brass platting breaks my usual chrome and brushed nickle aesthetic, these hinges are wonderful for doors made of sheet goods. The partial wrap means that on the door I’ll be screwing into both face and end grain so there’s no worry about screw holding power as there would be if I was only attaching to the end grain.

The hinges clamped in place, ready for marking.

I began by laying the hinges against the cabinet sides where they will be installed and marking them (I marked them on blue tape to make the pencil line easier to see). I used a try square to mark perpendicular to the hinge barrel. Then I took the hinges over to my bench, clamped them down and went to work with a fresh hack saw blade. That sized them right. A few quick passes with a file and the cut ends were nice and smooth.

Using relative dimensioning to position the hinges.

To install the hinges I began by fitting a scrap of ¾” baltic birch plywood (my door material) into the hing and setting it so that the scrap was flush with the end of the side panel as the final door should be. I then slid a temporary fence against the inside edge of the hinge and clamped the fence on. Once I removed the scrap door spacer, opened and clamped the hinge against the temporary fence, I was ready to install. I used a centering bit to pre-drill and then used an extra long bit in my screw gun to prevent the body of the screw gun from hitting the fence. I set the torque nice and low and each screw went in without a fuss.

In testing, the hinges seem to be working fine. Next I’ll re-mount the plane shelf (I forgot to account for door & hinge clearance when installing it) and then it’s on to doors. Hopefully this cabinet will be up on the wall soon.

Have you stolen and shop time lately?

Other Bastard Wall Cabinet PostsWinter Wall Cabinet WonderlandThe Bastard Wall Cabinet (for tools!)Trudging Towards Tool StorageCutting the Cabinet Carcass (in relative terms)A Home For My PlanesContinued Wall Cabinet AssemblyWhats a Bastard Wall Cabinet without Shelves?

Boxing in the Bastard Tool Cabinet

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