Was it the tools or the project?

Tools assembled piecemeal over the years.

In the beginning, there are tools discarded by your grandfather. Some will barely work.Some needed a little fettling. When you successfully nailed 5 pieces of plank, you call that a box....A box that only you (and maybe your mother) will love. And you thought to yourself,"..what kind of house can be without a rusty old hammer?.."The box served as a pull-out drawer under your bed for the next 5 years, was repainted with leftover white paint, served as a stool, a prop, a small table, a saw horse, before retiring as a full-time flower bed. It was ugly, it was crudely made, but mainly... it's made by you. All thanks to the hammer. Beneath the rust, it was stamped "STANLEY" On the wood handle, "Genuine Hickory" Saw that Word on a hockey stick. Must be some kind of tough wood.

Soon, the neighbourhood hardware store forages progressed worldwide, with internet. I have yet to name a tool I cannot find on ebay.

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SHARPENING WITH ARKANSAS STONES

What on earth are they? A user made box of assorted Arkansas stones. They are America's answer to: The Wales' Welsh Slate (Dragon's Tongue); The Scotch Tam O'Shanter; The English Charnley Forest stone; The Japanese Tenin Toishi; The German Thuringian Hone; The Chinese Guangzhou River bedrock; The Belgian Coticule; You get the idea. Local rocks that you use to sharpen mama's kitchen knives. A collection of smaller pocket-sized Arkansas stones In this entry, I will not try to tell you what you probably already know. What is the point of describing that oily rock you already have under your bench, in your drawer, in a can of kerosene? Note also, that the sharpening I describe here is best applied to woodworking in general. I am an amateur handtool woodworker. Sharpening a straight razor would be entirely another branch of science. I do not profess to know all there is to know about sharpening or Arkansas stones; I simply failed ...

The prolific & seemingly mundane Stanley 110 block plane..

R eally? Well, it's everywhere, check Granpa or uncle Tim's shack ( if you include copies of it by lesser tool makers) For something so abundant (well, Stanley sold them by truckloads), so common and so relatively inexpensive, I will attempt to wax some lyrical on them. By "them" I mean their design, their construction. The plane pictured above was purchased off ebay for $4.90. It looked like Joe Meatball (to borrow Patrick Leach's character) bought it, used it on some hardwood (pre silicon valley micro chipping at the edge)without first fettling the plane(unsharpened factory bevel), and put it away (in some dry place), and totally forgot about it. First off, at Five Bucks, how can you go wrong? Five bucks don't buy you a door wedge these days. STANLEY'S SUPERIOR ADJUSTABLE HEIGHT DOOR WEDGE, TYPE 16. 1) The lever cap also serves as an ergonomic palm-rest to push the plane forward, and the oval shaped cut-out serves as a hanging h...

10 Things I learnt about Arkansas Stones

10 things I learned about Arkansas stones Stones should be kept in their own box, or in a segregated box. This keeps out saw dust, and protects from stones knocking on each other, causing chips. 1) Not for sharpening tools: Not a typing error too. I'm sure everyone has a dull knife or two in the kitchen. The type that will not cut meat or slice bread. You may be able to push-cut an apple, but that's all it'll do. Or that vintage ebay Marples chisel or that plane iron off a vintage Bailey. The edges on these tools will need to be dressed (chips ground-out, skew-edge squared, rolled-edge removed) and re-profiled (irregular and multiple bevel angles corrected) on a bench grinder or a coarse diamond plate, carborundum stones etc. All the above before it even touches an Arkansas stone. I have never met an Arkansas stone that can remove chips or correct bevel in less than 2 hours. Use Arkansas stones for honing and polishing. Old timers call it ...

The Far-Eastern Wood Butcher: Prime cuts from the far east.

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