Occasionally In The Shop

[kablerj]

This time of the year my hands crack badly. Some times gripping the clamps and especially releasing them can bring tears to my eyes. I bought these gloves at TS and the little gripping dots work very well and made clamping much more tolerable.

Have you tried O'Keeffe's Working hands? http://okeeffescompany.com/working-hands

This stuff really dose the trick for me. My hands were always cracking, particularly my thumbs. No more.

Jim

[mbcabinetmaker]

Yes I have tried it. Doesn't do much for mine. I think I have probably tried every product on the market. Bag balm works the best but is messy.

[JPG]

Zim's Crack Creme???

A&D Ointment?

[mbcabinetmaker]

It has been a bad week for getting out to the shop. Finally got in a few hours this evening.

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At last I am ready to start punching for the dominos. I have made 2 story boards.

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I have marked the bottom for the one for the sides. The top will work from either end.

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That's what I'm talking about.

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I have also marked the side that I worked from. I will sand out the marks from the story boards later on so this way I will be able to make sure I am working everything from one side. The dominos are close to center but may be off a few thousands.

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This thing is a pleasure to use.

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As bad as I wanted to keep on punching I had one more panel to glue up before calling it a day.

[mbcabinetmaker]

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Why water stones? I admit I was on the waterstone bandwagon way back in 80's and that is pretty much all I have used for my wood working tools since. The waterstones are messy and I have always dreaded pulling them out, cleaning them up and making sure I got all the water including finger prints cleaned off to prevent rusting my expensive tools. I have always used oil stones that I inherited from an uncle for my pocket knives and such. They were already badly dished out from years of use but worked fine for the Case XX. Christmas of 2013 my wife and I treated ourselves to a new set of J.A. HENCKELS kitchen knives and I ordered a new Norton oil stone system. Being the way I am (bigger is always better) I ordered the IM313 With the 2 1/2" x 11 1/2" stones. I was impressed at how massive it was and just could not bring myself to use it for sharpening knives and dishing the stones so it sat unused in my sharping cabinet for about a year.

Back before Christmas I was working on a project and need my smallest block plane. I mostly use it for breaking the edges of banded plywood so it is never really sharp. I went over to the sharping bench and on a whelm pulled out the IM313. It came with a course, medium and fine stone. Now the course and medium were fine if you were sharpening axes and machetes and the fine was what i would consider course but I used the finer of the 3 to quickly freehand sharpen the plane blade. I was really surprised at how quickly the stone cut and even being that course the plane worked great. It took less than a minuet and no Water.

I have since ordered a soft and hard Arkansas stone to replace the 2 courser stones (in the back ground of above picture. I plan to build a simple wooden jig to use them in the event I need to hone out a nick or sharpen an ax!

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Now this is sharp! I can pull it out and sharpen any tool quickly and just wipe the excess oil with a paper towel. No more rusty tools and I will never go back to water stones.

Oh and those old dished out oil stones still work great on the new kitchen knives.

[mbcabinetmaker]

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Okay the sharpening post came up because I needed to sharpen that small block plane again to clean up some of the center fillers.

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Now it is time to cut some domino's. I have a jig from another project that works well.

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Everyone has their own system but in much of my woodworking I like to stage the parts that I am working on and get them ready for the next step toward assembly. Here I have finished sanding the panels and have the domino's all cut and laid out. They are ready for final assembly.

[mbcabinetmaker]

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Now it is time to punch the post. This is where it is easy to make a mistake and it would be costly both in material and time. This is my system to help prevent that. First I stack and mark all pieces.Left front-right front-left rear-right rear.

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I have prepared another story board. This one has a lay out on one side for the panels and another on the back side for the rails. My system is to never separate the post but rather lay out 2 at the time and then rotate the entire stack 1/4 turn and lay out. Each time I rotate the stack I also flip the story board to the other side.

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Oh crap this is bad! I always use a bench brush on the bench to clear it but this shard of steel came from some place and I rolled the post over and slid them on top of it. It is very deep.

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I was afraid I was going to have to make another post but decided to try the steam trick first. If I can get most of it out my finisher can preform his magic. He is very good.

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First step is to soak the spot down with water.

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Next step is to cover it with a clean white rag and soak the rag also.

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After letting it set for a couple of minuets just iron it with a hot iron. Im using my edgebanding iron but your wife's will work just fine also. Just don't let her catch you.

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This is after 2 ironing attempts. Its not quite where I want it but I think I can use the #4 smoothing plane and make it acceptable.

[mbcabinetmaker]

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I worked it down pretty good with the #4 and swiped some Famo-Wood on. I was going to let it dry good and then sand the entire post to see what we have when I got a call that my mother had been taken to the hospital. So I'm setting in her room doing these postings. She has a bad heart but I don't think it is a life or death situation but at 89 years young you never know.

[JPG]

May your mother return home happy and healthy soon!

[mbcabinetmaker]

Thanks JPG. For now she is resting comfortably.