Monthly Archive

I’ve got three planes. One is a brand new Stanley #4. I bought it from Woodcraft when taking a Hand Tools Basics and Sharpening class. The other two are a Stanley block plane and a Victor jack plane, both of which belonged to my great-grandfather.

I’m having problems with ol’ Rudolf’s jack plane right now. When I mate the chipbreaker to the iron (loose, not tightened at all), it looks just like it should (click to enlarge):

But when I tighten the screw to hold the chipbreaker in place, one end of the chipbreaker rises up (click to enlarge):

So since I can’t use my Victor for planing down my workbench lumber, I turned to Stanley #4. And since I’m a complete blockhead, I tried lowering the blade while the lever cap was tightened. Using a wrench to turn the depth adjustment knob, I couldn’t seem to get the blade any lower. Then suddenly, *pop*. The gizmo connecting the depth adjustment knob to the iron/chipbreaker snapped (click to enlarge):

Part of me wants to blame Stanley for making such cheap crap. Even with my user error, certainly a pre-WWII plane wouldn’t have let me do this? But in the end, I have to take some of the responsibility for it. I’m going to send this back to Stanley and just pray that they’ll send me a new one. In the meantime, I’m going to the local hardware shop to buy a cheap little block plane (probably less than $10), sharpen it up, and keep going!

One of the hardest things about building anything here is finding nice wood. It seems that if you want anything better than standard construction lumber, you’re up the creek. That’s bizarre in a country that does so much logging and has so much nice exotic wood (I guess it’s mostly exported).

At least for a bench top, standard construction lumber is just fine. Since I’ll be using 2×6s for my legs, I needed something that would match it in thickness (I’ll be tenoning the legs up into the bench top). Thus these lovely 2×4s.

The first step is to plane them down. This, of course, led to big snag #1.

Since we spent our first six weeks in someone else’s home, I didn’t expect to get much woodworking done. Or any. I was happy that I was at least able to sharpen some of my tools.

Now that we’re in our own place, I’m able to get the ball rolling. In fact, I have my very own room which Amy has no desire to even set foot in. It looks like it had been used primarily as a storage room and place to hang clothes out to dry:

I’ve gotten rid of most of that clutter you see. I’ve also taken all the doors off the upper cabinets, and may keep them there in the long run. The bottom cabinets are useful for now as a makeshift workbench until I get a real one made. I mounted a shop vise on it, but the top material is so flimsy, it won’t really withstand any substantial use, so I have to take it easy.

No need posting an “After” picture until the bench is done!