Odds and Ends

The last couple or three weeks have been a zoo. As always it is work related activities causing the zoo. Five days off in the month of Jan and maybe the same in Feb.  Enough kvetching.....on to a couple of things I've wanted to post.

First is the new dovetail square. So simple but works better than anything else Ive used. setting the pin board:

Setting the dovetail square:

Setting the Tail Board:

Ready to mark:

It works and is easy to make and use.

I received a new double iron smoothing plane from Steve Voigt a couple of weeks ago. Here is a little tool porn:

And a photo of the plane's mouth:

Not much work has been done in the shop since the first of the year. Mostly tool maintenance and sawing practice just to keep the skills sharp. I have been fettling a couple of Kanna's as well, once finished I'll post some photos. 

As always....click 'em to big 'em.

ken   

Dovetail Square

Derek Cohen posted some photos of a small bench appliance on the SMC forum. It's for squaring up tail and pin boards for marking out the pins. I made one last night, in between doing my one day off from work this week "honey do's". It was a quick build and a good thing because shop time was very limited. That woman drives me like a rented mule of course sometime I act like a rented mule as well :-).

It has a simple pinned lap joint holding some scrap Cherry legs together. In use, raise the pin board just higher than the vise jaws with a thin piece of scrap. Use the same piece of scrap to hold the tail board at the correct height, square the tail board with the dovetail marking square and mark out your pins. A piece of cake or as my foreign clients would say "a sheet of cake".

This morning I made a quick and dirty set of dovetails to test the appliance out.  It is a winner, the base alignment was perfect. I could not feel the slightest difference between the boards. Now the question is....Why didn't I think of it first?

ken