Woodworking Tools

Read Time: 2 mins

There is a reason that the image of a hand plane is on so many business cards for woodworkers and business that do woodworking. The hand plane has become a symbol of woodworking and is recognized around the world as such. For me, moving them to a wall mount rack wasn't about the woodworkers spirit moving me to do so, it was all about freeing up more room in my woodworking cabinet.

For some reason I seem to have accumulated a few more tools over the past few years and finding a place to put them is at a premium. Storing hand planes on their side, in a drawer is fine, if you don't need the room for other things ... which I did. I felt the only reasonable alternative would be move them out of the drawer where they really were taking up much more space than needed, and moving them on to a wall rack would make good sense.

Building a Hand Plane Wall Rack

This was not a complex build but because you everyone has different planes and different numbers of them it's pretty hard to work from plans. And so, another "build it on the fly" project began ...

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All woodworking tools need to be kept razor sharp. It really does make a difference. Not only is woodworking easier when cutting tools are sharp, the outcomes are better with less tear-out, less fuzzy edges and sharper cleaner cuts. All of which often means less sanding (at least for some things).

I have always found chisels to be the one tool in the shop that you can instantly tell if they are sharp or not, just by how they work. If you are a carver, you will really know the meaning of sharp tools because to carvers, trying to work with tools that are dull is exceedingly frustrating. I know carvers, and woodturners as always sharpening their chisels. They very quickly get to know the condition of the sharpness of their tools and are constantly "tuning them up" which really means adding the fine razor edge sharpness to what many of us would consider a sharp tool.

There are a few different methods, jigs and tools for sharpening, either by hand or with some sort of a machine. One of the sharpening machines is called a Tormek Grinder and is produced by a Swedish Company.

Chisel Tune-up and Sharpening Overview - On Tormek Grinder

The Tormek Grinder development started around 1973, but long before that, around the world, large grinding machines were quite common. Often the wheels were 24" in diameter and were driven by a foot pedal or a crank, and some of them even had water cooling troughs attached to them. What Tormek did was bring this old concept and adapt it to more modern electric motors and make an amazingly accurate and efficient sharpening tool.

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I try to cover off as much detail as I can in each video, then follow-up with a written article, but sometimes people are more interested in the video details that what I provide ... hence a follow up video like this.

On Joint Testing ... Many people were interested in the joint testing and there were lots of comments and suggestions ... as I expected. The one joint that received a lot to comments and questions was the pocket hole joint. I did NOT glue that joint because it is an edge grain to long grain joint.

Follow-up To Joint Testing and Hand Planes

And as most of you know, there is little advantage to trying to glue end grain to long grain, seldom does the glue hold it very well.

Read Time: 5 mins

stanley plane I don't know how many Planes Stanley must have made, but it seems like I am always running across at least one at every garage sale and flea market. Sadly, not all of them have been nicely looked after over the years and between rust, broken and warped bases and broken wooden handles, many are not worth bringing home except as a collectable piece, but their are exceptions. As much as I love Lie-Nielsen planes and their excellent quality, sometimes it's nice to rescue some of these old planes too.
On a recent tool swap meet adventure I found ... in excellent shape ... a Stanley Bailey #3 Plane. It really caught my eye because it is narrower than the other Stanley planes I have and something about it caught my attention. The price was only $20 for this little gem, at that price I figure I could afford to just bring it home and leave it as an ornament in my shop if nothing else.

Refurbishing A Hand Plane

After disassembling the plane, I could see it really was in pretty good shape. I set the blade, chip breaker and lever cap so I could concentrate on the base. The base of a plane needs to be ...