Old tools but good ones

Tools.

I’m not really a tool freak, not a collector in the sense of lovingly restoring old woodworking hand tools and putting them on display in glass fronted shelving but I do enjoy getting my hands on old tools and bringing them back to life. When I’ve a particular little job that needs a special tool, and I can go to my shelf and pick up a tool that was designed to do that special thing, I get great satisfaction from using it.

So I watch out for the unusual as well as the standard ones that I use every day.

Junkshops, garage sales, on line auctions and occasionally a friends eagle eye all bring in treasures.

My usuals the ones that I’ll buy without thinking are the Record and Stanley number 3 or number 4 planes.  Those are tools that I use every time I go into the boatshed, and now, living on the ship with the boatshed here plus my old shop back in Hamilton still being used, I have built up a double set of tools.

I’ve now 10 of those, the reason being that when working and one wears its sharp edge off or I hit something that puts a nick in the blade, that plane goes in the shelf above and I pick up another that’s sharp and set.

To be sure, when they’re all in need of a sharpen it’s a big job, but on a wet morning when there is no one around its quite a satisfying thing to set up an assembly line with the dry grinder, the wet grinder, the two different grade waterstones and the lap, and run through them all.

I digress.

Just recently my friend Paul Mullins came across a couple of unusual tools when a neighbours shed was being cleaned out.  There was a Stanley number 67 Spokeshave, this one is designed to cut right up against an edge and could be used to tidy up a curved rebate, left or right handed. 

The number 67 spokeshave, note how the handles can be repositioned to allow it to work against a rebate, that can be done either side.  Interesting tool.

The other is a router.  No, not one of those noisy finger biting things a “real” one.  Used to be known as a “Grannys tooth”. Its a Stanley number 71 1/2,  one of a series of different sized routers that Stanley made.

It’s a hand tool, essentially a flat plate with a pair of handles and a cutter that extends below the plate, push it and it cuts away below the surface, the cutter can be set for depth so its able to gradually work away increasing the depth of the cut.

Excellent for relief carvings.

Stanley number 71 1/2 router with 1/2 in and 3/8in cutters.  I do use one of these now and again, have also the very small one which I use when carving tabletops and such.

 Note that these, like almost all Stanley tools found in New Zealand or Australia are English Stanley so there are some differences from those made in the USA.

I was thinking that I should be looking for a brass wire brush to start tidying these two treasures up, they’ve been soaking in Inox for a while now, and are ready or a cleanup before I regrind the cutting edges and flat the backs of the irons, when my very elderly uncle, a joiner by trade, gave me a Stanley number 55 combination moulding plane that he’d had since very early in his career.

Its got all the standard irons, no parts missing, it’s a real treat!

Heres the link to a page of pics.

https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=stanley+number+55+combination+plane&client=safari&rls=en&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0CCgQsARqFQoTCOSjz6yy78gCFcxVPgodnjwAQw&biw=1024&bih=776

These planes can be used to make mouldings. Look around your house at picture frames, the surrounds of windows and doors, skirting boards ceiling coves, cupboards and chests and you’ll see a huge variety of different shapes.  This plane can make all of those.  Not in one pass you understand, but by planing away part of the profile then changing the blade and the positioning of it, it then does another part of the shape.

 In its original box, this ones done quite a lot of work but all of the original parts including "the book" are there and in good order. 

 There are a lot of parts to one of these, the handle is out to the left and each of the parts to the right is a separate fence and depth gauge system, some of which have knife holders as well as scribers. 

I should have counted them, there are probably 40 different knives in the set, rounded, radius edge, beading, rebate, oogee, you name it.  Amazing tool.  Yes Ive used one, but its not something that Id use every day. This is a collectors item, will be greased up and stored, but maybe, just maybe, Ill need it to produce a moulding to match something existing someday.

Theyre slow, but if one is matching up a section no longer available off the shelf, or too big for a router bit (the electric finger biting kind not the one above) it’s a practical and useful tool.

That plus it’s a really impressive thing to show off with.

I need more shelves. 

Again.

Made the spars for SEI today

The spars for SEI are simple rectangular sections with rounded corners, sure theyre tapered but only in one plane. Easy stuff.

I’ve already got the mast done fiberglassed with a glass sleeve material from Duckworksmagazine and painted, it just needs a leather piece around it where it goes through the partners and the fittings for lazyjacks and halyard bolted thereon.

Heres the glass sleeve link, I did a comparison between a mast of the same size and SEIs mast with the glass sleeve and its markedly stiffer.  Good stuff.  http://www.duckworksbbs.com/supplies/cloth/sleeving/index.htm

So now its time to make the yard and boom.

Yes I know, “Boom” is a noise used for starting yacht races, English is a wonderful language isnt it.

I’d a piece of Fijian Kauri, nice wood, this one seasoned for several years in my stack of interesting and useful pieces of wood, so it can be relied upon to be stable and not warp. Agathis Vitensis is an easy wood to work , not quite as strong as New Zealand Kauri but slightly lighter in weight, both are stable, both strong for their weight.

First job, the piece I had was 50 x 250, ( two by ten) by 4m, (just over 13 ft) which is plenty long enough for that job.  The “Long Steps” build is not far off getting serious and I’ll be needing stringers, so while sawing the lengths for the SEI spars I cut the rest into 25 x 32 stringers for that project. When scarfed up that will give me four stringers long enough for the lower ones on LS.

The two pieces on the right are the boom on the right, the yard on its left. The pieces cut from the ends will come in handy somewhere in the next build, youd be suprised at how much wood you can soak up in small pieces when making up cleat stock and grounds for frames and seating.  

The rest will be stringers for Long Steps, Ill need about three times whats there but its a start.

Having cut the blanks for SEIs spars, I then used the lovely Leuco sawblade I have in the sawbench as a planer to take the roughsawn grain off, it leaves a near planed finish, beautiful and much easier than dragging the thickness planer out and making a heap of shavings ( note to self,  fix up the old single phase dust extractor system and bring it up to this shed, it’s a pain in the low back region having to manually clear the sawdust from within the saw cabinet).

That done, the spar blanks down to dimension, I marked out the tapers on both, and cut those on the saw.  You don’t get quite the same finish when cutting freehand in comparison to running along the fence so I clamped the blanks to the bench and hand planed them smooth.  Note the Record number 5 plane, the longer the plane the straighter it will make the work.

 

Note, I cut the taper from the near end toward the middle of the spar blank, dont  try it the other way.
The sawbench by the way is an MBS 250. These are sold under various brand names but always have the serial number plate marked MBS 250 or 300.  I get to work on sawbenches among other woodworking machinery, and these are the BEST Ive come across and that includes the European and USA built ones, Ill do a review on it soon.

Out comes the elbow grease powered planer, in this case a Record number 5 of about 1930s vintage, very good tool.

Having done that, out came the old Ryobi Router I inherited from my elderly joiner uncle, it’s a beauty, heavy, simple, robust and way better than anything that Ryobi make today.

With a 12mm radius bit I ran along all the corners of both, then got the sander out.

 Rounding the corners off, the router makes the job very easy but I am always seriously careful with them, they bite.

Measure, mark length and trim. It pays to leave the pieces a little over length until you are in the last stages of finishing. The saw is a Japanese Razor saw from Duckworks, Id be lost without it.

With 120 grit paper and a soft pad on the old Bosch PEX 125 random orbital sander set on slow, I went along and sanded the ends rounded then took out any defects along the full length of the spars. A couple of places had faint sawmarks still showing and my hand planing had left a couple of visible marks which the sander coped with in short order.

With that done I hand sanded the two with 240 grit, laid them out on stickers and after a wipe with a tack rag gave them their first coat of varnish.

Varnished, they will get another two coats tomorrow. Im using an exterior grade spirit based satin finish varnish, Ill be able to tell you how it lasts in a year or two.

Two more coats of varnish then I can put the leathering on, and the fittings, lace the sail on and we’re getting close to sailing.