Fairly ugly weather here for the last month or so, and between that and a broken tooth that developed an abscess and needed a root canal, I’ve just not been in the mood for the shed. But today was sunny for the first time in about five hundred years, and I’d bitten through the second temporary filling the dentist had fitted for the period between “drilling all the pulp out of the tooth” and “finishing off the root canal”, so I figured I’d go hide in the shed and play for a while.
Also, a new toy had arrived:
Nice early version of a Record #04, bought to be used as a scrub plane. I already have Sid:
Sid was made from a cheap-as-chips €12 #4 and for rough work it was grand, but the casting isn’t great and it digs into my hands until they bleed and the front tote keeps unscrewing, so I figured a Record #04 would be a good idea. Wouldn’t cost that much (and it didn’t, it came to about €30 with shipping) and it’d fit better (it does). I can keep Sid for really heavy work and use the new #04 as the workaday scrub instead. It was in much better condition than I thought it’d be mind you.
Needs to have the cosmoline gunk taken off the frog and the blade reground to give it a camber, and I might need to file the mouth a bit wider but other than that it should be grand.
It’s a bit shorter than Sid, but oddly, it’s also a bit shorter than my other #04, which is from the same vintage as far as I can tell from blade and frog and adjustment levers and so forth:
That’s a little weird. But okay. And as a bonus, I can finally clear out the interloper from my plane till…
…and just go full Record 😀
Anyway, on to veneers. I thought I’d found a source for constructional veneer…
Colour’s excellent; but the thickness is still 0.6mm 🙁 I’ve glued up two layers between two clamped sheets of MDF to see if I can build up a thicker veneer. In the meantime the search for better veneers goes on.
Mind you, it doesn’t look *terrible*….
The single thickness isn’t great as there’s a very visible gap beside it:
A double thickness isn’t too bad, but still not perfect.
And I need something to actually put stringing into, so…
Simple housing joints for the shelf, I’ll dovetail the back rails in tomorrow, and that’ll give me some large areas to try stringing on.
Tags: hand tools, planes, walnut, Woodworking
I like how you hung the Stanley 78(?) on the plane till. BTW, dental problems suck and those will even keep me out of the shop.
It’s a record 778 Ralph (two fence rods to the 78’s one). And the dowels seem to keep it nice and stable too.
Yeah, the teeth are a pain. Dentist on Tuesday and that should stabilise them, but I have a few trips to make there this year 🙁 Pro tip – never get dropped on your head, it’s not worth it 😀