At 6:03 PM -0500 1/31/99, Jim O'Brien wrote:
        [snip]
>My involvement in woodworking and preference for hand tools is not a
>Luddite reaction to machine work.  It is a desire, however misguided,  to
>use tools as extensions of my hands and fingers in the creative process.
>The activity flows outward from my mind and spirit to physically accomplish
>a task or process, not backwards in an attempt to avoid a mechanical moment.

        Yeah, what he said!

        Getting pretty well into my version of Mike Dunbar's 6-board pine
chest (I say *my* version due to various modifications and adaptations from
his FWW cover project), I'm not saying I've been transported back to 1764,
but I'm having fun, learning and relearning, and making something I hadn't
made before.  Not having done any extensive projects with pine recently,
all my user planes had their mouths tightened up to approximately 1.5
gnat's *ss units.  Working up my recycled pine flooring, it was Clog City.
At this stage my #5 1/2C jumbo jack, MF#9 and T11#3 smoothers, T9#8
jointer, and #40 rabbet planes have all have had their frogs backed off to
open the mouths to roughly 3 GAs, and the shavings are clearing nicely,
making a huge pile of pine aroma off the end of the bench, newly released
from lumber harvested maybe 140 years ago. Don't know how I'd get these
18"-wide panels flat and smooth with machines, even if I wanted to.  The
mouth of the #78 just sits there gaping, but it does what it's made to do,
as Bill Fissell said (and this could go for most of our tools), once you
get the hang of it...  That especially goes for the #45 combo, which I've
used for grooving the front and back planks to receive the chest bottom
(one of my monor design modifications).
        My sawing stool and pair of sharp One Son (1865-71) Disston #7s, a
4 1/2 ppi rip and a 10 ppi crosscut, are a joy to use.  The rip has an H.
DISSTON eagle medallion nut, and the cc has an H. DISSTON & SONS medallion
with scales in keystone.  Hmmm, interesting.  The marking gauge I made from
cherry scraps a couple of years ago, using a broken twist drill sharpened
like a crescent blade, continues to function admirably. The tote I made for
the #40, BTW,, feels good to my hand. The bench, the Veritas dogs and pups,
the tool tray, the vises--I try not to take them for granted.
        My little Disston 4" try square comes in handy for checking edges
when jointing, the James Swan drawknife is just right for knocking down
edge cuts that I don't want to have to rip again before final planing.
Mike instructs his readers to work up the dados with knife and chisel,
probably thinking that if he introduced the concept of a non-buzzing router
it would sew confusion in the ranks.  Yes, *this* is what a #71 router
plane is made to do.  And we don't want mention in a magazine article to
cause a run on them, pushing prices up, now do we?
        This little ramble is meant to provide a positive spin on What It's
All About, for me.  Thanks, Ernie, for the tenon report.  Nice to hear from
you.  So what have the rest of you been up to?
                Tom Holloway

Tom Holloway asked:

<snip>

>  This little ramble is meant to provide a positive spin on What It's
> All About, for me.  Thanks, Ernie, for the tenon report.  Nice to hear from
> you.  So what have the rest of you been up to?

Been doing some tool making...formal project completion gloat posts are
being held until the finish is all dried and the edges sharpened so I can
test the tools out.

The goal is to have a reasonable number of tools that _I_ made in my
chair-making toolbox by the time I get back to Mike Dunbar's for the April
side-chair class.  I even dug up a back issue of AWW (#44, pgs 42-43 if you
want to read along at home) so I can add home-made wood clamps to the list
of goodies I'll have made myself by then.

Just wish there was time to whip up a Jack and a Smoother plane but I'm not
yet ready to tackle those learning curves (have a couple more chairs to make
as well before April which leaves only enough time for a couple of wood
clamps, then back to chair making).

Pictures will be posted as well...after the finish is done.  They're already
oiled (you should see what Apitong does when you apply an oil finish - WOW!)
but I wanted to add a coat or three of shellac to them before buffing/waxing
them but my shellac hasn't yet arrived.  :-)

Also, almost finished my kids' workbench.  Just need to complete the tool
tray, attach the back of the top to the legs (front is already
attached...back attachment will allow for movement of the top), and flatten
the top.

It's already been used by my 7-yr old son for his first pinewood derby
car...which one first place in his Tiger Cub Den and 8th overall in his Cub
Scout Pack (out of 65 cars...58 of which were from older Scouts and only 7
of them beat our car).  Not bad for a first-timer...especially since he had
to work on an incomplete bench...  :-)

There's a chance this won't get finished until after the April class...

Oh yeah, I also turned a custom wine stopper for a friend's birthday (to go
with the bottle of decent wine [i.e.: NOT Ripple or MD 20/20] we gave him).

It was the hit of the party when folks found out it was turned on a treadle
lathe that's about a hundred years old (one of two I have...hmmm, my first
drive-by gloat of the new year).

It's just a scrap of Cherry leftover from the kids' workbench top...it's one
of three treadle-turned items I've squeezed in recently...the other two are
the knob and handle for my bow saw...one of the tools mentioned above.

If you're looking for a new Pukey Duck to add to your repertoire, then try
custom wine stoppers.  You get to use up your small scraps (so the material
is nearly free), the corks cost almost nothing, and you can sell 'em for
ten+ bucks a pop at the craft shows...

Tim S.