Making shavings from deep in the wood.
I am a great fan of pencils. I love to use them for marking but also to write and take note. The only thing that always annoyed me is pencil sharpeners. I always found very hard to get a good sharpener that can last more than few months without becoming dull and more crushing the pencil than really sharpening it. The following are some examples of sharpeners I used. Some sharpeners. All of these…
I have always been wondering about the Stanley 55 universal (is it?) plane. Based on my readings it looks like a beast that needed to be tamed. So, when I found one for sale for an affordable price, I jumped on the occasion. The plane came in a wooden box. The box is in good shape and just shows some damage at the top. The lid was missing though. The Stanley 55 box. The plane came with a set of 4…
Last winter I left my greenhouse in an unfinished state as snow was coming, so I covered it and it stayed that way for winter: Ready for winter. Not a very glamour look but this was all I had time to do before freezing hard for 5 months. When spring came it was time to pursue the adventure, quite some work to do. First step was to build the interior workbench and shelves. Building the interior,…
Finally it is there and done. After long delays due to other priorities I am finally done with my bathroom vanity and got it installed yesterday. This was a long run but it looks good to my eyes and more important my wife is happy about it! Now it is time to my next project, door and windows for my greenhouse, 1 door and 10 windows to build, a lot of fun ahead!
Quite some time flew since my last post. Never would I have believed how much busy I could be while working from home. I have more personal time but find many ways to keep me busy so at the end I need even more time! I have always been interested about circular planes and never had a chance to try one...well until now. Few days ago I was lucky to find one in almost perfect condition for a very…
Long time without any post as I have been very busy this summer, working on my boat renovation, my garden and so on. But now is a new post about some kind of woodworking, building my greenhouse. It has been a while that my wife ask me for a greenhouse to start our seeds as well as working on flower pots, grow greens etc... So it was time to get to work and build it. As with anything else I first…
I am from the ones who think that what we are now or at a given time is the sum of our past experiences, choices we made and people we met. The reason why I like woodworking is maybe the result of people I had the chance to meet before, who influenced my life, like my great grandfather who was a sawyer and carpenter. Some 25 years ago, while doing some volunteering in a museum in France, I met a…
Following one of my previous post the last part of my box to be done is the cover and handle. The cover is a simple pine board but I wanted the handle to stand out of the box so I used a piece of mahogany to make it. I started with a small 11/2x5x1/2 mahogany piece that I marked to cut each end round. I then roughly saw the corners and got the final round shape with a chisel. Rough cut with a…
Few days ago, I received an email from Simon living in Netherlands about the dimensions of one of my Peugeot plane. Simon got a Peugeot blade assembly and wants to build the plane that goes along. So I made some pictures and drawings with measurements and here is the anatomy of a Peugeot plane. Introduction Peugeot 48 The plane is a Peugeot 48 (what is also the blade width measured in mm) and is…
Last weekend was my wife birthday and instead of wasting some paper I thought about making another box to wrap her gift. I used some Pine leftover from another project and adapted the box size to the available length. Of course the box had to be dovetailed so I thought of sharing my adventures with dovetails. Tails or Pins, who's first? I read enough opinions and discussions about this subject to…
It has been a long time since my last post, but still the butcher is alive and well alive. I have been busy with some gardening work, landscaping and all sort of outdoor pleasures but now that winter is back at our door it is time to be back to woodworking. For a long time now I wanted to get a wooden brace for the beauty of the tool but also to use it. I always found some either too expensive or…
I just went over the strangest brace I ever saw and thought this one was worth a post, so here it is: A strange brace. It looks like a mutant born from a brace breeding with a hand drill and apparently can be both. If one is interested it is currently for sale on EBay.
In my last post I started to work on the two shelves that will go in the middle and at the bottom of the vanity I am building. I cleaned the tenons on each board and marked them so to remember where each one was going. Each board is marked to recall its place. The next step was to make the mortises in the rails used to assemble the shelves boards so I marked each mortise on one rail. Mortises…
Now that the raised panels for the vanity side are done I did start making the frame that will receive them. I first cut the four legs to length and planed them square to 1 1/2 x 1 1/2 . Two of the 4 legs. The side panels are set in a groove made in each leg. To make this groove I used my small Record #43 plough plane. Making the grooves. However, as it can be seen in the picture above, the groove…
Long time since my last post. We just came out from 3 weeks of vacation (at home of course) that we spent doing some long due home renovations. Still I took the opportunity of the nice weather coming back to start planing some big slabs of white pine to prepare them for the bench I want to build. It is a joy to plane outside under a shining sun! Start planing the slabs. This was also the…
After making the doors for my bathroom vanity I need to make side panels of the same type that is to say that these panels will have a pine frame enclosing a birch raised panel. Considering the size of these side panels I needed to make the birch panels by jointing two 6" wide boards. I cut the boards to length, adding 1" for the tongues, and planed the edges with a jointer plane. After a quick…
As shown at the end of my last post , my next project is a bathroom vanity. With all the situation regarding the pandemic evolution of the famous infamous COVID-19, I am working from home since last week and for an unlimited duration. I was thinking that this would give me more time for woodworking as I am saving many hours in transportation but I was wrong. My workload increased with all the…
After having finished my last project I decided to build some additional shelves for my shop. I was fed up to see all my planes taking my workbench space so it was time to sort that out. I built this on the same design as my other shelves for my braces and hand drills. Unfortunately I did not think about taking much pictures about the construction. Gluing up the last pieces For this one I added…
Finally, it is done. Last weekend my TV stand project was delivered and made my sister in law happy. Here are some pictures of the final result. Front view. Top side finish. In place. This has been a very nice and interesting project that allowed me to learn many things. In summary the lessons learned are the following: Full size drawing - Having a full size plan of what needs to be done provide a…
Now I see the light, finally I must say. I am pretty much done with my TV Stand project. It took much effort and more time than expected but more important, it is almost done. From last post , remained to cut the top board to size using my new sawyer bench . It was the first time I used my sawyer bench, and in fact the first time I used any sawyer bench so I was a bit nervous as I did not want to…
I need to cut the top board to be able to finish my TV stand project and as written in my last post , I wanted to make a sawyer bench to be more comfortable when sawing. So I put the TV stand on hold for few days so to build my sawyer bench. After some research on this subject and after seeing some variations about it, I based mine on the one from Tom Fidgen. You can see some example of his design…
As I mentioned I missed my Christmas deadline to finish my sister in law TV stand and finish is the main culprit for the delay. But this does not mean I stopped working on it. The last thing that I needed to tackle before starting the final assembly was the rear leg. The leg will be set using a tenon in the central part of the stand and at an angle (12 degrees from the vertical) so the joinery…
During Christmas we waste a lot of packaging and paper to wrap gifts that are unwrapped in a second. This year I wanted to do something different and as I have some time to kill waiting for successive finish coats to dry on my main project, I decided to play with dovetails and make a wooden box to wrap my wife gift. First I never made any dovetail before so this was my first try and I was not…
Today I met with Santa. As I have been a very good boy this year he brought me a lot of little candies. Let start with the list. First a Marples & Sons spokeshave and a dovetail saw. I am wondering if the spokeshave was ever used looking at it. The saw needs a sharpening touch up but does look good too. Marples & Sons spokeshave and dovetail saw. Second, a Millers Falls #10 plane. This is the…
Continuing where I left on my TV stand project I needed to make some more tongue and grooves in order to join the shelves and the face frame. I dismantled the frame and used a 1/4" chisel to make the grooves. Grooves at the rear of the face frame. Here the grooves are stopped where there is some tenon joinery. I made tongues on the side panel in the same way. Side panel assembly. I then did the…