Pin up

So years from now *touch wood* I'll probably look back at the indignities that I've subjected my planes to with a certain amount of embarrassment, but for now, it is what it is....

Japanese planes are subtle creatures imbued with a quiet dignity. Or they are a chunk of wood with a big piece of metal inserted into the top, I'm not sure which. While I no longer feel any particular passion for those super expensive infill planes that look like jewelry and cost a second mortgage, I am not entirely immune to a bit of flair (and I don't need 37 pieces to show it!).

Out with the old...

Yeah, kinda flashy, I know. I live on the Oregon coast where everything rusts and/or turns green. You should see my car. I wash it twice a year, whether it needs it or not, but if I wait a bit longer, it should be fine with a quick mowing. This is brass or bronze brazing rod and WON'T rust, at least. It WILL turn green, however. It comes in 36" lengths and costs about $10/lb. That works out to about $0.20 I think. A decent welding shop will have a suitable size diameter. Probably not perfect, but surprisingly close, not being metric and all. The piece I used was just a teeeny bit small.

Use a small hammer

I peened over one end to tighten up the fit.

Use a nail set to get it where you want it

Now it's too tight, go figur'

And the gap is uneven

So, back to osae-gane 101. Pull the blades and figure out how to get the fit that you want. I tried messing around with peening the ends of the osae-bo just so and thought about just bending the bugger, but decided that the cleanest route would be to use a judicious bit of file work to get it perfect. Or good enough, as the case may be.

Remove material here

Nice and even

The holes for the osae-bo appear to be a bit off center and the original pin had been filed already. As you advance the osae-gane towards it's final position, it showed a slight tendency towards some left side drift and also showed an uneven wear mark on it's upper surface. You can see that a few pictures up. Obviously, I'm not the first person to decide upon the file route for this fix. It is sooo cool that someone, who knows how long ago, used this thing and thought "If I file riiiight here, it should be about right." Adjusting the fit of the pin also meant adjusting the fit of the blade to the sub-blade. More tap, bend and file work.

It works, but needs improvement

This is my rough jack style 55mm, a chu-shiko I suppose. It leaves a good finish, so not too rough, but not finish quality. I leave it set for a pretty fat shave, as you can see. If you check the shavings, you can see that they are a bit uneven in thickness and have a forward curl. Earlier in the day, the shavings were coming off clean and light, floaty (my word, I call dibs!), so the fitting work introduced a slight tension somewhere that still needs to be discovered. Or the stars are no longer in perfect alignment, that could be it!

I am really working on my sharpening and finish plane tuning and will be writing at length (Goody!) on that soon. This tuning thing is endlessly entertaining to me. It is REALLY incredible what these planes are capable of, but they are far from set-it-and-forget it tools. No such thing exists and that is a cruel joke played upon the gullible. Throwing money around doesn't help either. You can buy the nicest tool available and it will only work well until you sharpen it, if even that long. I love this stuff! My kind of puzzle.

Oh yea, I do build things on occasion....

(Knotty) Pine box

A simple pine box based on a Japanese crate/ toolbox design. Bamboo pegs (yea!), glue (boo!), shellac and wax (yea!). Nothing special, I just love making boxes. What's in it? I'm not telling. Magic, maybe? Everyone loves boxes, right?

Jason

Hello, is anyone home?......

I apologize for the prolonged absence. We recently got two new additions to the family, a couple of young cats, and right off the bat......my computer took a fatal spill. *Sigh*

So, new tablet computer in hand, i realize that these things are far from handy when it comes to typing ( not my strong suit to begin with)! I am still trying to decide where to go with this, so in the meantime, the posts will definitely have a different feel to them. SOOOOOO frustrating! Ive been busy with a number of projects, old and new, and have lots to talk about, i just need to find a reasonable means to do so.

Pine box to-be

More kanna tuning

Laundry room rebuild

Messy

But the new door looks good

My daughter Eliana has been busy as well.

Just hangin' out, playin' with dead stuff

We had a couple of bird strikes the other day and what does Ellie do? Pops them in the freezer, plucks the feathers for materials for a bird model/ display that she is planning, and starts researching ways to strip the flesh so that she can have some cool bird skeletons.....that's my daughter. Lest you think the blame lies solely on me, I assure you that my wife, Renee Bellinger, can be a bit odd at times as well.


 I need to start posting again or I'll have to add "inactive" to the list of adjectives that describe this thing.
Key words: inactive, obscure, irrelevant, obsolete.....confusing?


A quick shout out (does anyone say that anymore?) to my first follower. Hi Brandon! Brandon and his wonderful wife Virginia are owned by my old sailboat, a Columbia 43 ex-Oceanis now named Hagoth. Commiserate with them on their much more entertaining and well written blog....

Proud new owners

The log of Hagoth

Not to be too morbid, but prior to my MOAS (a PMP ((pseudo-myxoma peritonei)) term, Mother Of All Surgeries) when dying on the operating table was an all too real possibility, i started the divestiture process and put our sailboat up for sale at a superficially crazy cheap price. Brandon and Virginia were able to overlook the rough and have the vision and skill to give this lady a new life. I hope that they don't end up cursing me till the end of their days :-)

Brandon also gets a share of the blame for my re-kindled interest in woodworking. I'll write on that soon, as it forms a new core to the tool worship/sharpening thing that I've got going on. Now lets see if i can figure out how to include some pics.....

New (old) table saw. My Delta 1160 tilty top

So as you are aware, my table saw has been somewhat temperamental as of late. I mean, it works great now but.......I don't know. I guess that I never really felt like it was going to be a long term relationship. More a paring of convenience.  My father always told me that I would be more fun to be around if I would actually act my age, rather than that of a grumpy old man (this when I was in my wild 'teens). What could be a more appropriate saw than one that was old before I was even born? Obsolete, inconvenient AND old? Perfect!
Weeks of lurking on Craigslist yielded a few prospects, but in honor of my incipient curmudgeon-hood (is that a word?) I settled on........

Delta 1160 Tilty top table saw

In keeping with my tradition of not remembering to take the proper photos, and when I do remember, they are bad, this is what you get. This is a partially dis-assembled Delta 1160 table saw of a 1950'ish vintage. I had to take it apart so that I could fit it in my little car to get it home, so I figured that I might as well clean it up and give it a new paint job.

  Rather than have the arbor and blade tilt, like any reasonable saw, these ones have the motor and arbor/blade assembly stationary while the table rises, lowers and tilts. A bit goofy and inconvenient, it also has a very small footprint for it's size and is heavy and dead simple.

From the bottom

If you are looking at buying one of these, there are a few things to look for. The entire (HEAVY!) weight of the table and fence are supported by these two ridiculously puny trunnions. And they are cast out of a pot metal called Zamak. It's that stuff that cheap cabinet door handles and other things are made out of and looks and feels a bit like aluminum. Not tough, durable or high quality. These saws are top-heavy and if it goes over hard, these are the weakest link. Most everything else on these saws is well built, but these......

Oops!

 This is the front trunnion, where the 90 degree stop would be located if it had one. I have a feeling that even if it were still there, it wouldn't be for long.

More cracks!

This is the rear trunnion and you can see that the primary retaining bolt has split the casting a bit. This is also very common, but I am not worried in the least. It sure would've been nice if these pieces had been made out of a stronger material like cast steel. I think that these machines were targeted at the home hobbyist woodworker or small shop, often as a combo unit with a jointer on the side. I wonder if the designers would've guessed that even these lower quality units would still be around and in use 60 or so years after they were originally built? Products manufacture to the lowest common denominator and price point has turned this antique into a high quality/value tool that REALLY makes new saws seem cheap and flimsy. It makes you wonder what will be the norm in another 50 years.

Oops!

Remember when I said that these saws are top heavy? This one had tipped at some point in it's long life, breaking a couple of the bolt bosses on the underside. The repairs were two well performed brazes (?) and look to be good to go. The heat required for brazing is pretty high and often causes......

Flat (NOT)

Warpage. My photo skills being what they are, what you are seeing is a cast iron table surface that is bulged upward about 1/32" in the center between the two miter gauge slots. Again, not the end of the world. We have the knowledge, we have the power!





Completely dis-assembled, there are only about 2 dozen parts to this saw, so cleaning and painting were simple and pretty easy. Clean off the 60 years of caked on pitch and grease, mask, sand and paint. Not too much to show.

I used Rustoleum hammer finish black, painted with a brush to look a bit like wrought iron. I love this paint. Super easy to use and very durable, all things considered.



One note. If you use oven cleaner to remove the old pitch, don't let it touch the cool, red emblems. Two of the four weren't color fast. Why only two? This is a before.

Before. Red! (YEA!)

After. Pink (BOO!)

 Go figure.

Saw ( to be)

Other than that, pretty good. I also used a Rustoleum metalic gold spray paint for the hand cranks and stuff. I have never gotten that type of finish that I want with this type of paint, but I thought that maybe things had changed since way back when. Evidently not. What I want is brass/copper look. I might try electroplating. Give me a few days. Even with the crummy paint, it still came out OK. Now I just need to put it together.

Typical mess

I think that I remember

That's better

Now for the moment of truth.

Cutting machine

Nasty old doug fir, 4" rip

I did some test cuts to see how the saw and motor perform. Nicely, as it turns out (whew!). This is a 3" rip in 4" stock, hard old Doug fir, to see if the motor bogs down. The motor barely even changed pitch. Then I flipped the stock to finish the cut, still at full height, to check for blade wobble. Basically none. All attributed to the fence adjustment, which still needs doing. And the warped table top.

Time for some exercise

I used a long sanding block to mark the high spots, then put a 50 grit belt on my portable belt sander and got busy. After about 20 rounds of mark/sand, I got tired and remembered to take some photos.

Back in black

Kind of funny. When I looked for some "before" type photos to use, I saw some pictures on the "Old woodworking machinery" website of one of these, in the exact black finish, that someone else had rehab-ed. He did a REAL nice job. I also built a mobile base that will have a small cabinet to the right of the saw. This gives it a bit more stability and lets me roll it around my small shop. Good stuff.