Writing Table Top Progress

Back in the day, I scored some genuine mahogany from a guys basement clean-out sale. I began working on a small writing desk, and it sat for a number of years while I moved, worked on different things and generally got distracted.

I've been working more on it recently, all of the parts, save the drawer stock are milled and ready, and I just got the tabletop together, which is really exciting. Here are some photos.

Top glue up, the stuff is nearly perfect quartersawn, and I love the colors and figure.

A close up of the grain...

And here I'm working on a travisher, out of beech. I cut some jigs to template route the curves, but I still have to finish adding stops and clamps before I can use them.

Griffiths Norwich Half Set Remanufacture

While at the local lumberyard picking up some persimmon and black locust for boxing, I met a guy really excited about molding planes that asked be about rehabilitating antique planes. I explained some of the previous work I've done on remanufacturing planes, and talked about a few of our favorite types.

Recently I got the opportunity to restore a Griffiths Norwich half set, some of them are pretty rough, namely the 2 and 4 hollow, and an 8 round with a badly chipped mouth. But others are in pretty decent shape. I thought I'd document the process from the large planes and later show the whole job complete.

There are some interesting defects in the set. On several the irons are very much too wide for the sole profile, but in some cases they matched pretty well for the first half of an arc. In the #18s the size doesn't correspond to "normal" by which I mean it's more like a 5" circle than the 3" radius Clark & Williams or Matt Bickford uses.

Most of the irons were in decent shape, but need sharpening, some need a lot of profile work.

Here is the #18 and #16 rounds, they are having their soles trued to a more common numbering size, they have been rough planed as you can see by the facets. I have to order some pipe or rod in the right sizes to finish profile them to the correct size, then continue with the shaping of the irons.

Busy as a Bee

There's not any woodworking or planemaking in this post, but rather about 250 reasons why I've been busy with other chores and delights the last few weeks. Here is a shot of our deck in the city, we're about to entertain guests and grill, corn, veggies, biscuits, and hot dogs. In the background you can see the defunct top bar hive, two langstroth hives and all the vegetable and flower starts for this season. There is a lot of food growing here!

In the big buckets in the back there are red onion and garlic, in the cups, parsley, tomatoes of various sorts, hot peppers, cucumbers, marigolds, basil, squash, dry beans and more. 

 These are an amazing fractal headed broccoli, and peppers.

Do you know what this is? It looks like basil, but it isn't. I suppose the tag gives it away. It's a fish pepper. They have variegated leaves and sometimes the pods are albino, which were used by black caterers extensively in Baltimore back in the day to spice fish and seafood cream dishes and soups. I'm very excited to cook with them, and smoke peppers!

We also recently started melons, winter squash, and more dry beans. Two of my little goji plants have sprouted! which I'm really excited for. I have to start some more of them.

3/4 Rabbet Plane with Rosewood Boxing and Spoons

First off, I listed two very large, very cherry spoons I carved from some fallen wood at school. They can be found on the Store page.

On to the real stuff.

Here's some progress on a 3/4 boxed rabbet, it's black birch, which I kind of love and has East Indian Rosewood boxing. I'm thinking about channeling E.W. Carpenter, a planemaker from nearby (spatially) Lancaster, PA who often make planes with contrasting wooden parts and putting an ebony or bubinga wedge or something. I'll probably wind up with maple or beech though. Though I may have a little piece of black birch around to cut a wedge from.
 

Here is a small toothing plane I've begun to think on. It measures four inches long, with probably a one inch wide iron. I have to machine some parts to cut the iron, tapered and with the grooves at 20ppi. I will be making several of these as well.

In other plane news, I've got a few really interesting basket cases coming my way to rehabilitate, some need irons, some need bodywork, and I've sourced irons for the Mathieson drawer planes so that can move forward as well.

Mathieson Drawer Bottom Planes

 I borrowed one of these from Josh Clark about two years ago to take measurements to someday build these. The time has come. I did some rough CAD to figure out where I needed dimensions and what else I had to think about. I found a few spots that need tweaking, but for the most part it's all thought out.

The Mathieson planes have a dull rounded sort of chamfer on them you see on later made planes. I dislike it, the broad chamfers look better to me.

Beech bodies roughed out, three currently in the works maybe more to come if I don't decide to use my wide stock on something else. I'm trying to decide if I want to use brass or steel for the skate. Any thoughts?