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HappyHippo posted:Update on this, I added face frames and installed them: I made a countertop by laminating two sheets of 3/4" MDF, then putting some poplar around the edge. Didn't have a long enough piece to cover the whole thing so there's an obvious seem where a light piece meets a dark piece but whatever, it's a garage project:  Next up: some doors
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May 4, 2024 17:26
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Leperflesh posted:Thank you for showing me the weird saw 
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May 4, 2024 18:39
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Leperflesh posted:Thank you for showing me the weird saw yeah this. I loving love seeing and learning about weird old tools. I have a few people in my area who regularly encounter piles of old stuff like that for various professional reasons, and they know to call me if they encounter an old weird tool that they don't know what it is. I've gotten some neat poo poo from them. I've shared a few of the weird items I couldn't figure out in this thread, actually! BTW even though I'm the one who suggested it, I'm not wholly convinced it's an ice saw. I just think that it's not a wood saw, and the only other substances for which I know old specialized saws exist are hay and ice, and I'm 100% confident that's not a hay saw (as I own two and use them).
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May 4, 2024 18:58
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weird saw update: there's some text on the plate that is pretty much impossible to read
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May 4, 2024 19:01
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I can just about make out Henry. The cartouche ends with EED SAW it seems, and Cast Steel, Warranted, Philadelphia USA underneath. I did some digging because Henry and Philadelphia point to Disston, and lo and behold what I found in a 1949 Disston catalog: https://archive.org/details/DisstonCatalogNo100R9/page/n91/mode/2up  It's a Disston No. 17 Utility Speed Saw. The teeth still are odd, but I'd guess that may have been an option or they've been shaped like that at some point by a previous owner. Or the picture isn't quite true to life.
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May 4, 2024 20:23
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PokeJoe posted:weird saw update: there's some text on the plate that is pretty much impossible to read Looks to me like an old (19th C) Disston label. http://www.disstonianinstitute.com/etch.html E: Maybe not that old, based on that catalog. Kalman fucked around with this message at 20:31 on May 4, 2024 |
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May 4, 2024 20:24
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hell yeah I knew this thread would come through. I didn't recognize the logo but I figured someone would. specialized for use in mines??? wild
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May 4, 2024 20:32
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Just Winging It posted:I can just about make out Henry. The cartouche ends with EED SAW it seems, and Cast Steel, Warranted, Philadelphia USA underneath. I think the photo in the advert is maybe being betrayed by shadow or some such, but I can definitely see how it's true-to-life, and the odd teeth just wear weird  
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May 4, 2024 20:36
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So do we reckon that's really good for cutting thicker chunks of green wood?
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May 4, 2024 20:39
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Given that's literally what it seems to be intended for per the catalog, I'd guess yes. Sockser posted:I think the photo in the advert is maybe being betrayed by shadow or some such, but I can definitely see how it's true-to-life, and the odd teeth just wear weird Ahhhh, it's just a weird picture in the catalog then. Just Winging It fucked around with this message at 20:50 on May 4, 2024 |
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May 4, 2024 20:42
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mines, docks, railroads, etc all seem like things that might be using big chunks of green or even treated wood yeah. maybe it's good for those tar soaked railroad ties
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May 4, 2024 20:47
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$90? I only paid $20 for mine  e: 
PokeJoe fucked around with this message at 20:50 on May 4, 2024 |
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May 4, 2024 20:48
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At least I got the stainless steel rivets correct.
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May 5, 2024 05:35
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did/do they use creosote beams in mines?
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May 5, 2024 05:42
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Just Winging It posted:Given that's literally what it seems to be intended for per the catalog, I'd guess yes. Cool, just kind of seemed the assumption but since "mine saw" is a bit open ended wasn't sure. Neat seemingly evolutionary dead end for a handsaw design.
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May 5, 2024 11:26
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yknow I kinda wanna try that saw out now, or see someone use it. I might email James Wright and see if he has one that he can demo on his channel. I spend a lot of time thinking about Roy Underhill's remark about how hand/human powered tool innovation has stagnated so much over the last century or so, which he drives home by offering bicycle innovation (another human-powered machine) in the same time as a contrast. And a lot of the time people really overestimate how much faster power tools are than hand tools in many contexts. Just last week I had a friend over and I was giving him scrap wood for doing some wood burning tests and we wanted to break down a couple of pieces to make them easy to carry. I blasted through them so fast with a hand saw that he didn't even know that I had finished one cut let alone all of them. He assumed I was going to use one of the several machines around, but I had them set up for another work flow and didn't want to alter their settings. It's not that I did anything special or had a special saw or even a particularly aggressive one, it was simply that the hand saw was in reach, the bench hook was right there, and he assumed that hand saws are primitive and slow. Has anyone ever encountered a Matthias Wandell-type person who plays with human-powered machines in his builds? Thanks for coming to my ted talk you can get the Wendy's drive thru going again.
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May 5, 2024 14:53
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I recently got rid of my table saw and miter saw as I got tired of having a tablesaw and, worse, a miter saw stand eating up most of my space. Since then I've been building a half-wall/soffit kinda thing along the side of the shop where the house foundation juts out past the drywall about 8". This isn't about that, though, but rather the hand saw I've been using when I'm too lazy to set up the tracksaw cut (which is a lot of the time). Cutting to the line with a cheap Suizan pull saw isn't difficult at all and once I've fitted a piece, because it's cabinetry and not Fine Woodworking, I can just cut it flush and I'm not worried about anything. Super handy to have for the install bit of the process. But also, I got annoyed at the crosscut bit on the tracksaw, too, in part because Bench Dogs sent me an imperial fence and I've been working in metric. I got rid of my miter saw, and now, oops, I sorta want a miter saw. I had a 10" Metabo HPT for zero rear clearance and that was the best part of what was in hindsight a pretty frustrating saw, but when I was browsing on Amazon I found that Wen of all people now have a zero-rear-clearance 12" miter saw. For $250, which was about what I sold the HPT for. Wen does have some good tools (for $100 their tracksaw is a loving steal), so what the hell, we'll try it. It showed up yesterday, and somebody put a lot of thought into this saw. Out of the box it was nearly perfect; I had to adjust a screw about an eighth of a turn to zero the bevel and so long as you don't jam the blade into the piece it cuts a 9" board without deflection. It requires the same rear clearance as the Metabo did while being a 12" instead, and because I'm building out that half-wall, I now have a place to put it and will stick a little vacuum in a cabinet underneath it. The neatest thing is that the saw came with a flip-style hold-down clamp for workpieces that's easily the nicest miter saw clamp I've ever used (it's better than the Kapex clamp!) and now I'm like "why hasn't everyone done this for years?". Even their stock blade is surprisingly not-terrible for a brand that we've been dunking on for years. Only really terrible thing is the dust collection, but that's what a cut-into block is for, so whatever. Cheap tools, when you pass the quality control challenge, have just gotten so good. tracecomplete fucked around with this message at 15:38 on May 5, 2024 |
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May 5, 2024 15:34
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CommonShore posted:did/do they use creosote beams in mines? My old boss had some walnut RR tie stock he had gotten somewhere before it was creosoted and the quality wasn’t great but you could get some heavy but short stock out of it. E: from a 1928 publication on mine Timbers in Michigan iron mines. I hadn’t considered the increased fire hazard. quote:Treatment with preservatives has long been used to increase the life of woods. Either creosote or zinc chloride will lengthen the life of a piece of timber provided that the impregnation is properly clone. Each of these preservatives has its faults, however. Creosote increases the fire hazard, which at best is ever present, causes excessive wear and tear of clothes of the men who handle the timber, and emits offensive odors— which are accentuated in the limited underground air spaces. Kaiser Schnitzel fucked around with this message at 16:22 on May 5, 2024 |
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May 5, 2024 16:12
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Hard to use? What do you mean--just not commercially popular? 'Cause I think sweetgum looks rad and wish I could get some up here (but New England is far from sweetgum territory).
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May 5, 2024 16:21
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tracecomplete posted:Hard to use? What do you mean--just not commercially popular? 'Cause I think sweetgum looks rad and wish I could get some up here (but New England is far from sweetgum territory).
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May 5, 2024 16:27
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:It’s very difficult to dry without warping, has an interlocked grain, moves a lot in service. I used it once on some cabinets and was a nightmare to keep anything straight or flat. It and pecan are my top two ‘never again’ woods. In both cases I think I may have not had well-dried stuff, but it was enough to scare me off. Heart gum can be very pretty and I’ve used it as veneer and not had any problems with it. are woods like that often good for things like chisel handles instead?
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May 5, 2024 17:49
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During the 19th century there was a lot of pine and Doug fir planted in Europe for mine props and railway sleepers, because they grow fast and big, and a consistent supply was more important than rot resistance I guess. (Which has sizeable consequences for the present, these forests aren't the most varied, and coniferous trees are kinda wimpy and need water year round.) CommonShore posted:I spend a lot of time thinking about Roy Underhill's remark about how hand/human powered tool innovation has stagnated so much over the last century or so, which he drives home by offering bicycle innovation (another human-powered machine) in the same time as a contrast. I don't disagree with that, but at the same time, what's there to innovate? I have some 19th century (or even earlier) wooden planes, and besides the quality of the workmanship, they're functionally identical to a late 20th century one. Same goes for my saws. It's not that weird though. Humans have been working wood since humans were humans, and the tools to do that have been around for as long as that. They've been optimized and stripped of pointless crap to the point where you really can't remove anything else. The only real changes have come from advances in materials technology, from stone to copper to bronze to iron to steel to modern, precisely made tool steels for the cutting bits, or from wood to cast iron for plane bodies when that became economical in the late 1800s (even though wooden planes are very much still around and for good reason too). I think it's kinda neat though, I could hand my tools to a woodworker working on a cathedral in medieval Europe, and they'd be able to use them without a hitch. Bikes on the other hand have been around for only a century or so in a recognizable shape, and relegated to children's toys or ridiculed in many countries when the automobile came on the scene. The only big change in bikes is the arrival of e-bikes, which isn't so much a new thing, just battery tech getting good and cheap enough to be within reach of the general populace.
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May 5, 2024 17:52
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Just Winging It posted:I think it's kinda neat though, I could hand my tools to a woodworker working on a cathedral in medieval Europe, and they'd be able to use them without a hitch. Bikes on the other hand have been around for only a century or so in a recognizable shape, and relegated to children's toys or ridiculed in many countries when the automobile came on the scene. The only big change in bikes is the arrival of e-bikes, which isn't so much a new thing, just battery tech getting good and cheap enough to be within reach of the general populace. But (as he puts it) bicycles have benefited also from better materials, better machined parts, better bearings, etc. In 1910 you couldn't gear shift your bikes, e.g. We now have multiple kinds of brakes and handlebar configurations and wheel designs for different uses and contexts. Human-powered tools stopped getting this kind of attention, so we don't know what kinds of doors we could yet open. It's a compelling question on the boundary of the known unknown and the unknown unknown. Maybe if I get better at building stuff some day I'll try to make a bicycle-powered sawmill that moves something like 1/2 inch lengthwise per 4 full rotations of the blade. It might take an hour per cut, but think of the youtube hits it would get!
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May 5, 2024 18:00
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Just Winging It posted:The only big change in bikes is the arrival of e-bikes, which isn't so much a new thing, just battery tech getting good and cheap enough to be within reach of the general populace. I'm not a big cycler, but even so I can point out a few advances in bikes in the past ~50 years besides the development of electric assist. In particular, they benefited massively from advances in materials science. An old steel-tube bike is a lot harder to ride than an aluminum frame one, simply due to being heavier. You can also get carbon-fiber bikes if you really want to go lightweight. We've gone from mostly single-speed bikes to gear systems being extremely common, and those gear systems have become much more reliable and effective. Helmets are vastly superior now than they were when I was a kid, and I expect that the clothing has also improved. e:f;b, but also a bicycle-powered sawmill isn't remotely farfetched IMO. People regularly make bicycle-powered laundry machines for use in places that don't have reliable electricity. I don't see why the same couldn't be done with sawmills. Just mount a belt to the bottom wheel of a bandsaw, put the other end of the belt on your bike, and start pedaling. TooMuchAbstraction fucked around with this message at 18:03 on May 5, 2024 |
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May 5, 2024 18:01
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:e:f;b, but also a bicycle-powered sawmill isn't remotely farfetched IMO. People regularly make bicycle-powered laundry machines for use in places that don't have reliable electricity. I don't see why the same couldn't be done with sawmills. Just mount a belt to the bottom wheel of a bandsaw, put the other end of the belt on your bike, and start pedaling. Turns out, yeah, that's pretty much what you do: https://youtu.be/jWn0hT_6GiA?si=WMY-bN5eyGHzQqKU Early industry had sawmills powered by waterwheels in some places, so I guess it's not that much of a stretch to hook the same mechanism up to a bike or human-sized hamster wheel.
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May 5, 2024 18:36
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I kinda forgot about recreational bicycles for a hot moment. There's a lot of money in that market, so I'm not surprised premium materials have made in-roads there. On the other hand, the common bicycle here, what apparently is called a roadster or city bike or utility bike in English, has changed gently caress all in forever. Both shape and materials-wise, still all steel frames, still very much recognizable as a late 19th/early 20th century safety bicycle. That's where I'm coming from, that's what people commute/do pretty much anything on. But yeah, it'd be interesting to see the attention that is lavished on power tools to be on hand tools instead.
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May 5, 2024 18:59
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CommonShore posted:But (as he puts it) bicycles have benefited also from better materials, better machined parts, better bearings, etc. In 1910 you couldn't gear shift your bikes, e.g. We now have multiple kinds of brakes and handlebar configurations and wheel designs for different uses and contexts. Human-powered tools stopped getting this kind of attention, so we don't know what kinds of doors we could yet open. It's a compelling question on the boundary of the known unknown and the unknown unknown. I think the issue remains that these are largely solved problems. The design of planes evolved over the 19th and early 20th centuries, a time when tens of millions of men were actually using those tools daily for billions of man-hours, into a few basic forms that work pretty darn well. That's not to say there isn't more work that can be done, but like a whole lot has been done already. e: Suntan Boy posted:Turns out, yeah, that's pretty much what you do: Kaiser Schnitzel fucked around with this message at 19:23 on May 5, 2024 |
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May 5, 2024 19:20
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Isn't a certain amount of mass also helpful for planes anyway? So there's not really any point in going for the space age materials, especially since they're generally less durable / more easily damaged.
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May 5, 2024 19:28
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CommonShore posted:Has anyone ever encountered a Matthias Wandell-type person who plays with human-powered machines in his builds? The only semi-common thing that comes to mind is spring pole lathes. The Renaissance Woodworker on YouTube has/ had some kind of bike powered jigsaw thing that I forget the proper name of. I think most people who don't want machines just aren't much interested in a machine that happens to have a human spinning the wheel. It's still a machine.
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May 5, 2024 20:28
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CommonShore posted:Has anyone ever encountered a Matthias Wandell-type person who plays with human-powered machines in his builds? George Clooney did something similar to what you are talking about in Burn After Reading.
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May 5, 2024 21:19
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 Wanted to pop in to the thread to thank you all again for those beginner hand tool recommendations; I usually have a hard time thinking of stuff to ask for for my birthday so this made things much easier for my family this year, lol. I went with two books on planning and design because I'm trying to avoid taking the "design process" class at the community college in favour of something more hands-on. My aim is to get through these and the first of the two Japanese woodworking books (the more simple one that introduces basic joins, not the Dark Souls traditional one), and hopefully a few little projects before I start the Intro to Fine Woodworking class in August. A somewhat more ambitious project I mentioned before was a backpack portable darkroom; they used to exist as bespoke things landscape photographers used in the mid 19th century before dry plates were a thing. I've already got an aluminium frame hiking pack to use as a base ready to go, I'm planning to design and 3D print a few brackets in ABS that will bolt to the frame to help get a nice level platform start building off of.  You'd basically drape a big piece of blackout fabric over it to use it; rather than a window with ruby glass (I'm guessing that was what was on those gaps on the right side) I'd just be using a red LED strip powered by a USB battery. Weight above all else would be the main design concern, with cost being second. I was thinking skin on frame construction (has helped me keep weight down on the darkbox I built for my car), but I don't have any experience working with anything smaller than a 1x2, so have no idea what would be a good way to join things, etc. What would be a good lightweight, affordable timber? I don't mind at all if it looks like arse, as long as it gets the job done and doesn't break my back, lol. The other, unrelated question I had: what are the potential pitfalls or other things to be aware of when repurposing existing hardwood (cherry, teak, etc) from stuff for projects? The algo showed me a free teak outdoor table with a worn top on Marketplace a few days ago which has since gone, but got me thinking. I'd have access to a thicknesser and other shop tools through my local tool library. TooMuchAbstraction posted:e:f;b, but also a bicycle-powered sawmill isn't remotely farfetched IMO. People regularly make bicycle-powered laundry machines for use in places that don't have reliable electricity. I don't see why the same couldn't be done with sawmills. Just mount a belt to the bottom wheel of a bandsaw, put the other end of the belt on your bike, and start pedaling. If you're into this kind of stuff, How to Make Everything on YT has a fair few videos of manual power tools he has recreated; water wheel, Da Vinci's sawmill, etc. He even did one of those big human hamster wheel things. It wasn't super effective.
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May 6, 2024 05:37
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:I think Veritas does try to innovate. Alot of their tools have some small changes and innovations to tradition designs. I don't have experience with any of the fancy toolmakers like Bridge City, but I think they do too. However, it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that hand tool woodworkers are a fairly traditional bunch who want ye olde steel and cast iron and brass and rosewood planes and not carbon fiber, tungsten carbide, aluminum and fiberglass planes (carbon fiber plane sole/body with replaceable and indexable carbide insert cutter would be kinda cool tbh.) I think there's a bit of the innovation you're looking for with turning tools, especially aluminum handled carbide insert stuff. Just today I saw an article about some new planes with disposable blades, which was new to me: https://tersaknives.com/collections/rali-hand-planes And as you say, this is innovation in the space but liable to be scoffed at by the hand tool woodworking crowd
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May 6, 2024 06:24
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Grumio posted:Just today I saw an article about some new planes with disposable blades, which was new to me: https://tersaknives.com/collections/rali-hand-planes
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May 6, 2024 13:22
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Ethics_Gradient posted:The other, unrelated question I had: what are the potential pitfalls or other things to be aware of when repurposing existing hardwood (cherry, teak, etc) from stuff for projects? The algo showed me a free teak outdoor table with a worn top on Marketplace a few days ago which has since gone, but got me thinking. I'd have access to a thicknesser and other shop tools through my local tool library. Your garage fills up with wood you don't have a use for (ask me how I know) More seriously, watch out for nails or staples. I wouldn't put anything through a thicknesser that I hadn't checked with a metal detector. I have a scrub plane I use to remove the finish on reclaimed boards. Even if I hit a nail with it it's not the end of the world. Also makes for way less nasty dust than trying to sand off the finish. A lot of things appear to be solid wood but aren't. Learn to check for the signs of real wood versus fake or veneered wood.
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May 6, 2024 13:36
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Grumio posted:Just today I saw an article about some new planes with disposable blades, which was new to me: https://tersaknives.com/collections/rali-hand-planes
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May 6, 2024 14:16
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Someone did a review of those recently, maybe rex Kruger? He didn't like it
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May 6, 2024 16:39
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpVKqqunTtE Rex was pretty positive on it, actually. He's just not into the disposable blade model. Rali has carbide blades on offer, his attitude might be a bit different with a blade that basically never goes dull
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May 6, 2024 17:06
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Are carbide blades good for hand tools in wood though? From a metal working perspective, the benefit of carbide is that it has a much better heat tolerance and keeps it's hardness at very high temps so it doesn't overheat and wear as easily, but can't take as sharp of an edge as a highspeed steel tool. For cutting plastics and stuff like that, steel is often preferred for its sharpness when heat isn't an issue. I'd assume (knowing very little about woodworking) that for hand tools like planes and stuff you'd want a sharp steel edge vs the more durable but duller carbide option.
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May 6, 2024 18:17
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meowmeowmeowmeow posted:Are carbide blades good for hand tools in wood though? From a metal working perspective, the benefit of carbide is that it has a much better heat tolerance and keeps it's hardness at very high temps so it doesn't overheat and wear as easily, but can't take as sharp of an edge as a highspeed steel tool. For cutting plastics and stuff like that, steel is often preferred for its sharpness when heat isn't an issue. I'd assume (knowing very little about woodworking) that for hand tools like planes and stuff you'd want a sharp steel edge vs the more durable but duller carbide option. I think that's perfectly fine for a jack plane or any of the more aggressive planes. You'd bulk with carbide and do a final pass with a smoothing plane. I think these are good for production work probably.
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May 6, 2024 18:34
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I've never thought about a carbide plane blade and I don't have much experience with carbide outside of like... circ saw teeth etc... But the trade-offs you describe there sound ideal for the way that most plane owners who aren't dorks like us use hand planes. A nylon-sole assembled plane like that with a replaceable carbide blade is probably a much better tool for e.g. home depot to sell than any of the low-end cast iron planes that they offer or those horrible rasp-style "block planes". It could be flat out of the box, easy to set up, require virtually no sharpening, and no maintenance. It would be a "buy it for one specific problem and throw it in a drawer and it'll be there if you remember it for the next time something comes up" tool, and probably a pretty good one. Rex's review doesn't weigh that use case (as I recall because I watched it when it premiered). I'd actually be interested in trying a jack set 4.5-sized plane like that, or maybe a block plane, especially a cheekless one. It'd be good for stuff like household fitting/trimming, especially for stuff where I don't want to risk one of my good planes.
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May 6, 2024 18:43
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