.. dry bones.
Quite why it should come as a surprise to me, I don't know, but bone is hard. And dusty. And smelly. Unfortunately the smell makes me feel a little nauseaous, which adds an extra dimension of difficulty I hadn't anticipated. Never mind, progress is being made - slowly; and it files and sands like a really good, tight-grained hardwood. The bone "plate" is now glued in with epoxy and I'll leave it to set overnight. After that a certain amount of shaping of the sole is going to be required, and I feel cheating and using a belt sander coming on. Did I mention how hard bone is? Well it is. And the old Eclipse hacksaw let me down repeatedly while I was trying to saw it so the cut was all over the place. Its days are numbered...
A thread on Woodnet about how "restored" a restored plane should be seems to be hotting up nicely. Rather to my horror I find myself agreeing with Todd Hughes, which is a bit of a worry... The idea of making an old plane that's earnt its wrinkles look newer than an LN or Veritas just seems, well, wrong. You can see what I mean by looking at this page, with both restored "old" and new planes photographed by the same person. You may need tinted glasses to protect your eyes from the glare... As for stripping off the finish and refinishing with x, y or z regardless; why? Does it make it work any better? Of course all that doesn't really matter one jot; after they're all their tools and the usual run of Stanleys are hardly valuable. What really bothers me is the whole "strip it and blast it" mentality seems to be getting greater coverage than a more sensitive approach, and it's only a matter of time before someone who knows zip does it to something valuable. Oh well, I'll just have to hope I never hear about it. What the eye doesn't see, the heart doesn't grieve over.
Well I don't see that I can keep up this pace for much longer, but, yep, I've been in the workshop again! Ran a couple of the walnut boards through the P/T; not for any particular project, just to have them ready to go when the mood strikes. I dunno. Call myself a neander? All this planer thicknesser stuff. 'Tis shameful... Anyway, one of them was pretty sappy, and one end was more than a bit waney on the edge, so I lopped that off, trimmed it up, planed it square with the #5 1/2 (gotta love that plane, with its carbon steel Hock blade...) and had another shot at the spokeshave. In connection with that, I wonder if you can guess what the wotsit below is for?
Just for the novelty, the holes were in the right place and everything, so I'm all set for the big departure from the instructions when I try out a round sole. Just waiting on getting some bone now, and then I can really mess it up... Also got round to putting a higher angle on the spare shoulder plane blade, but I've not really had a chance to test it yet so I need to get round to that at some point. Tsk, the life of a research woodworker is all go, ain't it? :~)
In case you're wondering, "intercostal clavicle" is a reference to the film "Bringing Up Baby". A good deal of the film is spent with Cary Grant's character going round looking for it (to complete his Brontosaurus skeleton), muttering "My bone? Where's my bone?" etc etc. As I'm also held up by the lack of a bone, it seemed appropriate. You'd probably have to have seen the film before you laugh, but it's worth it. The great screwball comedy of the '30s.
Finally got round to tackling the 6m of 1" cherry boards and do some initial stock prep. I looked at them from all angles for the best figure and so forth, but it helpfully worked out that it was just as effective to chop them all in half before machining as anything; so I did. One was pretty warped, and covered in globs of the paint used to seal the ends, so to clean up the worst I used the scrub in anger for the first time. My goodness, but that plane takes off a lot of wood in a hurry.
I also took pics of dashing round the P/T feeding the boards in and out; terribly boring stuff that no-one ever bothers to take pictures of. That and the progress of a board after each pass over the planer. I dunno; they might be helpful or whatever for anyone who's not familiar with the P/T maybe? I know it was the mundane stuff that always puzzled me when I was very new to woodworking. Anyway, click on the pic if you want to see it all so far, or you need a quick cure for insomnia...
In other news, I managed to foul up the drilling of the blade post holes for the spokeshave kit that's gonna get a curved sole. Must have been all of 0.5mm out... Grrrr. I wouldn't mind if it wasn't for the fact I took so much trouble over them to get it right. So I need to dig out another likely blank. Sigh. I suppose it is worth it...?
