Hello all,

It was not too long ago that I realized that I wanted to tackle my personal "mount everest" as a woodworker.  I felt and still feel that now is the perfect time to challenge myself to the hardest project that I can think of.  It just so happens that it is also a project that I really have wanted to make for myself since I first saw its graceful and alluring curves.

So this past week I started making myself a Bombe Secretary.  I am using air dried black walnut and popular as a secondary wood.

This 12/4 thick 23" wide and about 52" long slab...
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and these (similar sizes) will be the case sides, the serpentine drawer fronts, and the four boston style ball and claw feet.

that caused so much saw dust and tears...  (it was emotionally difficult to take a huge slab of such beauty and turn most of it into dust.  I ended up with about 150 gallons of dust from all the milling of these case sides and a fair bit of other 8/4, 5/4 and 4/4 walnut)

They wanted to bow so I clamped them to stop the cupping.

I cut the DTs for the bottom and I'm almost done with the DTs for the top (all done by hand).
I'll post pictures of that when they are together.

I started carving the feet
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That is going to take me the most time.  It is hard and I think the first one that I've started will be a "practice" foot.  But I have enough cuttoffs from the slabs to get another one or two quarter saw 3"x"3"x7" block.

As the week went on I stopped taking pictures but I will once I get to work in my shop here in CT.  I did this when I was away on vacation.  This is what I do to relax.
My hope is that in two years I'll have this done. [img]/ssl_proxy.php?url=/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/yellowyes.gif" />

I also hope to keep this thread going with regular updates.  I do  think I'll finally start a woodworking blog to record my progress as well.

Enjoy... I know that I will.

Oh and BTW it seems that one of the pictures gives away where I was on vacation

My compliments to Dave's wife.  She did her best to fatten me up with cookies, rice crispy treats, and meals like this


Not only did Dave let me use all of his tools, teach me new things constantly, he even let me put bluegrass music on the satellite radio in the shop... he and his wife were very good to me

What a timely post. I'm looking for just such a guide myself.

I've been wanting to build a full sized rip and crosscut saw for a while now. Until recently I didn't have access to large widths of 0.042" steel. But that changed about a month ago.

Along with that steel I also picked up a Beverly Slitting Shear. This little gen allows me to cut spring steel like it was paper. Now that all the pieces were in place I decided it was time to layout a rip and cross cut saw prototype. I used Autocad to design the saw plates to meet the hang line of a couple of my favorite saw handles. The Wheeler Madden &amp; Clemson as well as the old Disston D-7. Once I had these laid out I printed out the plans and went to town on the saw plates.





Using a trick I picked up from Issac, I used blue painters tape to provide a background for my marking lines. Then it was a simple matter to get the slitting shear set up,...



And start cutting. It went a lot easier than I would have thought! It was a lot like cutting paper.



It only took me about 10 to 15 minutes (really took my time here) to cut the saw plates to size



After that I spent some time smoothing out the edges and curves with a combination of files and my grinding wheel.

Before I punched the teeth out I decided I wanted to run a test with a small piece of 0.042" thk scrap. Thanks to JoeMac (and Wilbur for transporting them) I no have a couple additional Foley retoothers. So I decided to use the oldest (and most sturdy looking of the bunch) to perform this test. It was a manual retoother but that posed no problem. It worked GREAT! One by product of this is now I have a small saw plate punched to 9ppi rip. I plan to use this to help me cut the slots in the handles.

Now that this is out of the way I moved onto cleaning/debluing the saw plates with Citric Acid. Hopefully I can punch the teeth tonight

More progress photos to come.

My goodness! that thing looks sharp. I'm still learning how to sharpen these things. Nice looking saw, sir.

A recent conversation with BJ about SS gifts on my bench build thread got me to thinking of another SS gift. A SS in a different year - who remained nameless - sent a note that he had read my posts and noticed I liked old B &amp; W books and magazine articles. So he sent several things along with 2 old B &amp; W books. Here's the pic from the old "after SS gift thread":



Now that I kinda sorta have a bench and a lot of suggestions to build something, I thought a re-read of these particular two was in order. I am almost thru with the first one "How to Work with Tools and Wood". It is the official Stanley publication copyrighted in 1942. It has the original Stanley adv pamphlet "The Joy of Accomplishment" with a list "Selecting Tools for a Home Workshop" at the end and ads for "Stanley Tool Guide, Stanley Plans and Book (this book), and more Stanley Plans". While it is at the beginner level, it is 174 pages of very complete descriptions.

I guess it's been enough years now that I can say again, what I think is lost in the current crop of full color book and magazine articles is that much or most of the communication of detail is left up to the pics and color drawings. I do this myself every day in my business and am thankful that a pic can show more than a thousand words. But I don't do ww'ing for a business and when I read the old materials before color printing, the B &amp; W text and drawings had to go the whole nine yards to try to describe whatever complex technique was at hand. That is, while the language is a bit stilted, I find the language much more descriptive (without the color) and really enjoy soaking up the essence of the era at leisure.

What makes the biggest impression now on a re-read is that in there nowhere does it mention how something could be done some other way with power tools. It assumes that if you're going to work your way all the way up to the most difficult joints that you would be using a #55 to do them with....

Next up I'm looking forward to reading again "A Manual for Hand Woodworking" by DeWitt Hunt, copyright 1925. While it only has 141 pages by comparison to the Stanley book, the subjects it does cover are in greater detail. To that nameless SS, once again, thanks very much! Here they are with their brethren back then:

Yep, good technique, never hurts to hear repeated.

Wow! I love the design and the wood is great!

Nice job.

Frank

Here you go:
Saw till concept: Version 1

Hi gang,
Back about a month ago I was asking for a suitable wood to use for repairing a rosewood tote. I was advised to use walnut, along with some other easier to obtain woods. However, I also received a couple PMs where members here offered to send me a chunk of rosewood. I accepted and used a couple small pieces to repair this rosewood tote.

Now before you ask, "Why go through all this mess? Just make a new one!", I'll give you MY reasons.

First off, I really don't like making totes. I can shape them pretty easily, but I consistently mess up the drilling for the counter bore at the top. The only way I can see to make it full proof is to buy a counterbore bit. And I have one of them on order now.

Secondly, when I'm restoring an older handplane I like to retain the original rosewood just to keep a measure of "authenticity". Sure a walnut tote will look authentic. But those old rosewood totes had style. And they look so cool once they are cleaned up and refinished!

Thirdly, I hate to throw out a rosewood tote, or cut it up for scrap just because it's got some dings and cracks. The old timers used rosewood for a reason. It looks awesome and just carves so beautifully!

So here we go:

Here's a shot of the tote. Notice the flat I made at the top of the horn. That's where a major chip was. And take a look at the front mounting hole. The front is missing and no amount of tightening would stop this tote from wiggling.







I use 2 part epoxy that you can buy from Home Depot. I chose epoxy because it makes a more flexible bond than CA Glue. The cup is for containing and mixing the glue. It also acts as a nice way to catch the charcoal dust that I use to color the epoxy.



In order to fix the front of the tote, I needed to do the patch in two parts. One to give me a base to work on and one to affix a new "toe" where I could new drill a hole for the screw.

I planed/sanded a flat for the patch and then wiped the area down with mineral spirits (just to clean away excess oils). After that I found two suitable pieces of rosewood and then planed/sanded a flat on them as well. The patch area was given a coat of colored epoxy and then the pieces were clamped in place. I allowed them to dry over night.

This is what it looked like the next day.


Now that I had the first patch(es) glued in place, I could shape the parts.



I used a rasp to get the surfaces as close as possible and then decided it was time to clean up the "toe". A small incision was made using my dovetail saw and then the broken portion of the tow was parred away.



I then repeated the process for gluing in the patch.



The next day I used my rasps to define the overall shape.


And some scrapers and sandpaper to clean up the rest




And then gave both the knob (which was cleaned and sanded) and tote several coats of TruOil


After some buffing and waxing, the tote and knob were installed back on the plane.


That's pretty much it. The colored epoxy blends into the surface and you can hardly see that patch.

Thanks for viewing.

I am building a Ranger 15 using plans from  Bear Mountain Boats and thought I'd share photos as my build progresses.  

   

The first step in building a strip canoe is to build a strongback.  Essentially a strongback is just a long torsion box whose purpose if to provide a stable base that the forms get mounted to.   This strong back is 14' 6" long and 12" wide.  

   

   

   

Usually strongbacks are mounted to the floor for rigidity.  I wanted to be able to roll mine around so I can work on it outside in nice weather.  The problem is the stongback can twist a little on uneven ground.  You'll notice I used winding sticks to shim one wheel to remove the twist.  I painted an outline under each wheel so I can put it back in the same spot each time.  

   

   

   

The next step for me is to plane then rip the Western Red Cedar into 1/4" x 3/4" strips and scarf the short boards into full length (16') strips.  I'm going to temporarily mount some jigs to strongback and use it as a long workbench for this process.   I'm won't be able to work on it for a week so it may be a couple of weeks until the next update.

Thanks for looking!