Joys of "Repurposing" a Tool

 I am not a minimalist tools worker.  I am not a tool collector.  I have excess tools for sure but I try and keep it under control.  When I started woodworking, my first hand plane I purchased was a Lie-Nielsen 4-1/2.  It's a good hand plane and I mostly used that for the first few years.  As I've grown in my woodworking, I have purchased more planes.  Generally speaking, I use a No 4 with a heavily cambered plane as a "scrub" to remove the bulk of the wood, then a No 5 jack to straighten, then a No 3 to do the final smoothing.  I like this three plane set up that I use.  On occasion, I use a No 8 or a formal scrub plane as needed.  The No 4-1/2 doesn't fit with what I normally do.  

For a while, I debated selling it.  When I ended up doing was purchasing a 55 degree frog for it.  As such, it was going to be my dedicated hand plane when I faced grain that was tearing out.  I am glad I didn't sell the plane and kept it for this purpose.  Rather recently, I am in the process of making a Krenov style cabinet that was feature in Popular Woodworking Feb 2022 issue.  The body and door is made of cherry.  In the door "panel" I am using a nice piece of figured maple for contrast.  My routine planes were all giving tear out on this figured maple.  I whipped out the high angle frog plane and the tear out was tamed.  I was quite happy by this.  I may not use my No 4-1/2 much anymore but when I do it often solves the problem.  Glad I kept it and repurposed it rather than selling it.   Now what to do with all the chisel sets I have .....

My 10 year old did a mortise and tenon joint all by herself - proud papa

My wife and I try and encourage our 10 year old to do something other than sit in front of electronics.  With some strong nudging, she will get off the electronics and do art (wife is an artist) and woodwork (my big hobby).  At 10 I don't have a lot of expectations.  I just want her to find it "fun."  I know she has listened and in theory knows how do do things  This past weekend, she was in the shop woodworking.  I had already gone in the house.  I checked on her but didn't want to hover,  I wanted to let her explore.  She made "this."  When I asked I got two different answers over a few days.  The first was it was a hoe for the garden.  The second was it was a nail puller.

I am a proud papa.  She did it almost all by herself.  The only help she asked for was how to remove the wedge of wood as the coping saw was working well (more on that later).  At one point, I had checked in and she was working on a mortise and tenon.  Yup, my little daughter made her very one half inch deep mortise and tenon.  The real kicker, she was made it out of ash!  It's why the coping saw didn't work so well earlier.  Ash is incredibly hard wood.  When she had started I suggested different wood such as pine but she had made up her mind.  This "tool" is now handing proudly on my wall in the garage.

Chatoyance

 When I made this shaker chimney cabinet 6ish months ago, I had noticed that the wood looked different on the drawers and some of the stiles.  I had assumed it was likely due to it being a different board.  The other day, I thought it could be due to the way the light interacted with the grain by the drawers and stiles being perpendicular to the other boards.  In other words, chatoyance.  So, the other day, I removed some of the drawers and rotated them to see if they looked more like the stiles.  Was hard to get a good photo but indeed they did.  Thus, the striking contrast in the way the cherry looks is due to its chatoyance.  Cool.

Evaluation of Clear Vue Mini CV06 Dust Cyclone Hooked up to My Shop Vac

Though I am saving for a bandsaw, I don't have machine tools at the moment requiring large dust collection.  As such, I have been using a ShopVac I purchased at Lowes in 2012 for handyman stuff around the home.  It has come in handy.  When I started woodworking in 2015, I used this shop vac to suck up the type of dust and shavings one gets from hand tool use.  I use both a bag and filter inside the ShopVac and I wanted to prolong the duration between changes.

About three (could be four) years ago, I received the Clear Vue Mini CV06 Dust Cyclone so I could hook that up to my ShopVac.  The theory is that the centrifugal forces, due to the design, cause most of the dust and chips to fall into 5 gallon bucket on the CV06 rather than go into the ShopVac dust collection.  By emptying the 5 gallon bucket frequently, I should be able to go longer before needing to change out the ShopVac bag and possibly the filter.

Three (could be two) years ago, I know for certain I put a fresh bag and filter inside the ShopVac.  Recently, I changed it out.  The ShopVac bag, had maybe only 10% of it's bag capacity filled with shavings.  As for the filter on the Shop Vac, I shook it a bunch and rubbed it and there was very little dust on it.  

All in all, I was happy about this.  I wrote down the date when I changed it this time and play to go three or four years before the next swap out inside the ShopVac.  Again, this isn't scientific and I can't say how other brands would perform.  Given my current needs, I am happy.  When I get a bandsaw, I will buy an appropriate dust collector.  Till then, I will keep using what I have.  Hard to come by this info online so I thought some of you might appreciate me sharing this.

My Woodworking Notebook

 For over 34 years, I have been a scientist.  One of the things I learned early on during my freshman year of college was the importance of keeping a good laboratory notebook.  Even since the tender age of 19, I have done so.  There is a lot to it and much of what I learned was by trial an error.  By the time I was in grad school, I was pretty refined in how I kept one.

When I started to do woodworking in 2015, I shortly after realized that I should probably keep some sort of woodworking notebook.  It documents what I do and can help me in the future determine what dimensions something was, how long or difficult a step was, or what finish did I actually use on a piece.  Of course, much of that is in my memory but I still like to have it written down.

I thought some of you might be curious about what I keep in my woodworking notebook so I am going to share this.  Firstly, I like an artist thick paper type sketch pad that has like 9x12" pages.  I dislike lines (feel like they constrain my imagination - yea, I know how goofy that sounds; back in grad school when I was trying to come up with new synthetic pathways and ideas, I disliked the lines as well.  Organic synthesis was part art and part science and I didn't want to stifle my creativity with lines.  I also strongly preferred soft leaded mechanical pencils for the way it felt on paper.  Yes, it is goofy and I will stop digressing.)

In the front, I record the date and % humidity in the shop.  Since I've been doing this for like 4 or 5 years, I have a pretty good feel what is the range of humidity I can expect.  I used to record the temp in the shop as well.  Since I have installed heating and cooling, I no longer record that.  I then reserve several pages for an index.  That way, I can find the projects more easily.  I put the title, start&stop dates, hours to make, and page number it is on.  If I end up with two projects going on at once, I turn the book upside down and start numbering the pages with a prime (1', 2', 3', etc).  That way I don't need to worry so much about guessing how many pages to reserve for a project, etc.  The book is full when the normal numbers and prime meet up in the middle of the book.

As for the project itself, if I design something, I will have a sketch of what I made.  If it is based off of a set of plans, I will cut them out and then tape them into my book.  As for the notes themselves, I put the date and approx number of hours I worked and what I did.  I will capture any insights and things I learned along the way.  If it is a complex project, at the end I will try and put a lessons learned summary - that is what would I do the same or differently next time.  On occasion this has been helpful.  To a much lesser degree, it serves as I diary and I will write stuff that is on my mind.  Often projects are for my wife or daughter so I write what I feel (the good stuff).  

And that's that.  Most of this was driven my decades of doing so as a hands on scientist.  It helps locate all of my woodworking into one location.  So, what do you do?

Installing New Clock on Gift Clock

 About 6ish years ago, my wife gave me a "mantle" clock.  After installing the batteries, we realized the clock mechanism was broken.  At the time, we were too busy with our 4 year old and careers to follow up with the company we purchase it from to address this.  Finally, I have gotten around to dealing with it.  

After much tinkering, I figured out how to disassemble the clock itself from the wooden front.  With the clock mechanism out, I found some sort part number on it.  I did a bunch of internet searching but couldn't find the comparable part.  As such, I knew i was going to have to do something different.  I looked for replacement size clocks and this turned out to be quite difficult.  I was in some sort of non-Goldilocks size.  I could find bigger clock faces and smaller ones but I had a heck of a tough time finding the diameter I needed (give or take a quarter inch).  After an hour of searching, I had found one (Hobson's choice as it were) and ordered it from Kockit.

I used a piece of scrap plywood to create a wooden round that fit the old opening (that will eventually be hidden).  I scraped off the finish on the mantle piece where the glue would be applied and then glued and clamped it in place.  Turns out I had a hole saw of the proper size for the needed hole for the clock insert.  My part is finished.  Though the plywood won't be seen, my wife (a very good artist)  painted it so it matches the finish on the clock.  That way, when the clock is pulled out to change the battery it won't have such a jarring color discrepancy.

This wasn't a huge time consuming project (3 to 4 leisurely hours spread over a week or so).  However, there was great satisfaction in getting it done and off my to do list as it had been there for a number of years.

Making a Large Spatula For My Wife's Large Pot

Recently, my wife purchase a large pot so that she can cook soups in bulk and freeze them.  That way, when she doesn't feel like making dinner, we can just thaw out some nice homemade soup.  She asked me nicely if I could make her a wooden spatula that was long enough so that she could stir the pot.  I am a reasonably smart man.  This was not something to take months to get to so I dropped what I was doing and immediately started working on it.  I used the current wooden spatula for a rough idea of thickness and made it bigger so that it would work well.

As for wood, I do a lot of my projects in cherry and I had the perfect board of scrap for it.  As to the woodwork, it was rather straight forward.  I used a mixture of saws, hand planes, spoke shaves, saws, rasps, files and sand paper to get it to the desired shape.  The hardest part was trying to get the two shoulders even on the sides for the main blade.  They are, unfortunately, asymmetrical.  Such is the limitation of my skills.  It will work just fine.

My wife was insistent that I put my makers mark on it so she could proudly display it in the kitchen on the wall rather than hidden in a drawer.  I happily obliged.  I think she was more excited about this project than the bread box I made her within the past year.  That's fine.  Happy wife, happy life.

It will be a working utensil.  I have been using wooden spatulas for over 30 years so I am fine with them.  However, I wanted to try and minimize the grain raising that would occur when it was cleaned.  Not sure if this will help but I soaked the spatula in hot running water then let it dry and then very lightly removed the raised grain with well worn 400 grit sand paper.  I did this an additional three cycles of hot water, let dry, lightly sand.  It should be good enough.

With the grain raising and sanding done, it was time to apply an oil finish.  This will be controversial but read all before commenting as.  I finished it with three light coats of olive oil over three days.  ???!???  YES, olive oil.  You say, it will go rancid.  I didn't have mineral oil and didn't feel like going out and buying it.  Also, I don't put mineral oil on anything I eat. I DO put olive oil on things I eat and like.  I'm not convinced this is a real world problem as much as a theoretical problem.  If it goes rancid, soap and water should remove it.  Oh, did I mention that Chris Schwarz uses olive oil?  The link is More of Katy’s ‘Soft Wax’ for Sale – Lost Art Press and is in the comments at the end of the article.  In case the link fails in the future, it comes from the Lost Art Press posting from 18May2016 and is located in the comments section "I hear this all the time. But I have used olive oil and walnut oil on my wooden kitchen utensils for 25 years and nothing has even gone rancid.  And Roy Underhill has used olive oil on his oilstones his entire career. No rancidity.  I’m sure there’s an explanation, but I don’t have it."  If it is good enough for Chris and Saint Roy, it is good enough for me.  Oh, one last point, you tell my Portuguese wife that her most favored imported olive oil that she treats as liquid gold isn't good enough for a spoon and let's see what happens.  Happy wife, happy life.

Needless to say my wife is very happy with it.  I am happy that my wife is happy.  More importantly, my wife has the tool she needs to feed me.  Life is good.  Might make some of these large spatulas for family for Christmas.  I have a lot of scrap cherry and this would be a good use for it.