Monday, February 05, 2007

Side-tracked

It seems I'm very, very easily side-tracked at the moment. Although perhaps that's three words too many...? Events conspired to push forward a small change in workshop layout earlier than intended, namely this weekend. So the bench got moved against the "Woodrat wall", the cupboard under the timber store went to the other end of the workshop while the tool chest that had been there is now full of wooden planes and under the timber store instead. The theory is I can pull it out easily enough if required. That's the theory... Despite making taking WIP shots easier, having access to the rear of the bench wasn't really necessary and this way I can still use the end, which was a genuine improvement.


Meanwhile the Woodrat, for the first time in our sojourn togther, moved to a New Place. I took the opportunity of hanging it a little higher than before, but I'm in two minds of the wisdom of same. And yes, so it's still a bit of a pickle with all the 'Rat stuff above the bench and the handtools over the 'Rat, but at least it's workable for the time being. The time being possibly lasting into years of course...


Naturally all this means I have numerous saws lying about the place just waiting to be damaged, so more than enough impetus to get on with the saw till. Immediately, after all this time not needing the workpiece to overhang the back of the bench, I needed the workpiece to overhang the back of the bench. Which is now against a wall. Aaaargh! So I switched to the mitre-clamp method of holding the tail and pin boards for marking, as championed by my mate BugBear. Took me a while to find the clamps at first. Got one straight off, but blessed if I could locate the other despite being pretty sure I had three of them altogether. Yeah, yeah, three clamps where nature dictates there'll be four corners, I know what you're thinking. They're very cheap clamps and the fourth one broke. Not so sure these others aren't on the way out now too, so I may step up a notch in quality and get the three quid ones instead of the quid ones next time. Might have to think about better clamp storage too...


Anyway, after some effort and lots of swearing - that blasted pine goes from glass hard to punky and back again in the space of about six inches, seems to me - I have a rather more tangible-looking saw till.


Not glued up yet of course, still plenty to do to make it usable, workmanlike rather than gloatable, plus I have to find somewhere to hang it... But it's at least getting there.

7 comments:

  1. It's coming along nicely.
    So what method did you use for working out the spacing of the DTs?

    I'm looking forward to the clamp storage project.

    Andy

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  2. Great progress! It sounds like you're feeling distracted an a little late off the blocks, but from my perspective you're moving pretty quickly.

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  3. Splendid!
    Workshop re-arrange AND project progress. You know no bounds, M'Lady ;)
    Philly

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  4. Andy, as few as I thought I could get away with, stepped out with dividers "Cosman fashion" so it looked sort of all right.

    Rookster, hold on to that perspective - I like!

    Tony, hah, that floor ably demonstrates what I'm up against. See that curve? That's not the camera lens, that's the actual floor. I'm able to experiment with workbench height by simply walking from one end of it to the other... :D

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  5. Alf, just thought I would kick over a little info to you to show how I am tackling my New Year's resolution for better storage and organization practices. I am building a cabinet to handle the smaller stuff like marking and measuring gadgets, boring tools, chisels, etc. The top half of the cabinet will be a saw till, and so far that is the only part I have completed. You can read all the gory details within, but the exciting bit is that I made the till tall enough to create a bay to hold my bog 'ol wooden jointer plane. The pine is nasty stuff off of our basement walls that had a 1/4" of varnish on it, so the wood is ugly, but nothing paint won't take care of.

    http://marsh-monster.com/forum/wiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ToolCabinet

    -Jamey

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  6. Nice use of corner clamps!

    I'd HATE to try transfer-marking the DT's on pieces that big the "normal" way...

    BugBear

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  7. Jamey, I 've been encouraged to persist with this ghastly wood by that very project. Wish could fit a jointer plane in mine - at one stage I thought there'd be spare slots for at least a couple of saws but now...

    BB, the "normal" way being totally out of the question, the clamps saved my bacon big time. Many thanks for drawing everyone's attention to it.

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