Veritas Brain Dump

As the title suggests, don't expect coherent reporting...

So, my first port of call at the show was the Veritas stand to say "Howdy" to RL. Hailed from behind by C, we discovered we were both headed the same way, and confounding the gender stereotype I was able to lead us there unerringly. As required, mutterings of "Doo-dah" were to be heard, and R presented us with a calendar a piece and the other LV goodies previously mentioned in this Blog. Then the important stuff; what was new. First up the winding sticks. I've never seen anyone look so embarrassed about a product they intend to sell for money as R when he explained about them. As winding sticks go, they're well designed mind you. Extruded aluminium, a ribbed effect at 1/8" spacings to aid sighting and they slide togther for storage. But they are winding sticks, and buying them is just plain daft and R knows it, but if there's a demand, what can you do...? They're not getting the Veritas name; apparently a new brand name to cover such low articles, and things they've designed but are made in the Far East is to be introduced. Alas, a burst of tailed router torture meant I missed the name.

The other interesting thing was a new rear handle for the Low Angle Block. Earlier this year R had mentioned a thought about making a #3 sized bevel-up plane and wondered what I, and presumably others, thought. My reaction was Why? and Doesn't the Low Angle Block with ball tail cover that? Well it seems I wasn't the only one to think that (which gave me a warm glow), and prompted by an enterprising guy who made a regular tote using the ball tail fixings, that's the route they've taken. The prime aim is for sprogs, thus corrupting the next generation in a most effective manner. The best bit of all is the handle is fixed with only one screw, so making alterntive styles is easy peasy - and a kit for same will also be available. As R put it later in his talk; carvers alter their tool handles, turners alter their tool handles, cabinetmakers wax theirs and put them on the shelf. :~D Promoting altering your tools to fit is Veritas' aim, thwarted only by the two tote-bolt design they've got themselves stuck with. My view, not R's btw! ;~)

Also on the cards seems to be an idea to make some high spec planes with a view to their appearance. Once again the tortured router kicked in nearby, so I missed a good deal of the detail. It'll be interesting to see if the R&D boys can do "looks" though... At that point another seeker after a doo-dah hove into view, so I journyed on to other parts of the show.

The other stuff was the R&D talk R gave in the afternoon. I'd be able to write a better report of that if we hadn't had to stand throught the hour+ duration, again with the router from Hell screaming in the background. As it is, I was shifting from foot to foot a good deal in an effort to avoid throwing in the towel and just sitting down on the deck... I learnt that CNC machines cost a fortune but can do wonderous things, getting the first reference face on a casting is the tricky bit, automatic lathes that can run unsupervised for three days actually need checking every 50 or 100 units in case a cutter has chipped and you churn out three days of useless product, and a super-expensive and technical Chinese-made CNC machine has a hand operated windscreen wiper on its window so you can see what's happening inside... Deciding what a new product is made from depends a good deal on how many of them you expect to sell, apparently. Setting up to do castings is expensive, so you need to know you'll recoup the costs. For things you're not sure of, aluminium extrusions are a cost effective route; if it all goes wrong, at worst it's a couple of hundred on the die and you can melt down the aluminium to use again. That naturally has a knock-on effect on the designer. F'rinstance, the skew jig for the Mk2 honing guide is unlikely to be a big seller, so it'll be aluminium extrusion.

The models used in various stages of design were interesting too, and how I wish I'd taken a picture or two... Wood is a popular choice in the early stages, but there's also a machine linked up to the computer that can take a CAD image and build it up from layers of a glue-type stuff. IIRC, this can then be used in the next stage towards final manufacture. I was getting a bit tired by that stage, so the memory is going...

Anyway, I learnt a lot and found myself thinking it was churlish to do anything with a plane but be thankful it was there at all. Not good for the critical reviewer, so I'll do my best to forget it all ASAP!

Tomorrow, the Man from Maine.

Tool Pillage

So another year, another show come and gone, another painfully long countdown to the next one! But first, the gloats...

Started out on Wednesday with the aim of having lunch at Topsham; which we did. Then a look round Topsham Quay Anteek Centre, wherein hangs out Old Tools Feel Better. Well they may do, but he does horrible things to saw blades... Anyway, I passed by and looked at the other stalls where a few odds and ends of tools were to be found for the eagle-eyed. Amongst them a wooden side bead was spotted on the radar. Screws in the side jogged my memory, and I identified them as removable slips, rather than a repair. A look at the end revealed it to be solid boxed, made by John Moseley & Son, 55* middle pitch. I was tempted; the sign "30% off everything on this stand" and I was more than just tempted. The sale was made. Just under a fiver, and it's sharp and virtually ready to use! Looking up in British Planemakers when I got home, I found it to date to between1862 and 1880, which is not only older than I thought, but easily the closest I've been able to date any wooden plane I own, which always gives me a buzz. An excellent start to my pillaging raid.

Going on to the hotel, I was able to meet up and exchange the bulk of the saws as arranged. Some was in trade for five (five! Count 'em!) Woodworker Annuals - 1934, '35, '38, '39 and 1940. I already have '36 and '37 so it's getting to be quite a good solid run of them. I could do with '31, '32 and '33 now, to lengthen the run into my earlier copies. Only downside; all but one had had its index removed. Bit of a bummer, but I'm sure I'll cope. Anyway, that bit of high-pressure sales talk also produced some spending money for the 'morrow. Things were looking very good indeed.

Next day was the show itself, and rather more modern tools to drool over. There are about a million things to mention from the various conversations I had, but forgive me if I spin that all out over the coming week. I don't know if i'm just really lucky, but I've yet to meet a woodworker who is anything but nice. Two examples very generously came bearing gifts. Luckily I had sussed the likelihood of that, so I had too :~) BB had made a miniature square by expending infinite care and patience on an old saw blade. 'Tis a thing of beauty, and I shall have to make it a special holder I think; I fear I'll lose it otherwise. I may even be promted to try my first lap dovetail in order to use it... I'm also equipped with delights from a certain Canadian manufacturer, including a mug that should, by rights, be burning me as I sip my tea. Miraculously, it doesn't; I think it's double-walled. Well it did surprise me that a company priding itself on design should apparently have the worst possible design of drinking vessel!

So I was gathering up the goodies left, right and centre, and had only spent 20p on leaving my coat in the cloakroom. Time came round to meet up with the forum folks, although various of them had been popping up all through the morning and saying howdy. One resulted in a swift sale of my "user" dovetail saw in the car park, which left me a little embarrassed in the saw department. From glut to famine in 2 days! The chisel exchange previously arranged also went just fine and it was starting to be unbearable not to have spent any money. I went in search of the sizing tool I'd set my heart on. For a while I thought I was doomed to failure; Henry Taylor didn't have one, neither did Crown, and of course Axminster themselves didn't. I didn't think Ashley Iles would, but I had a quick look in passing. Huzzah! They had a Sorby one; so I swooped and purchased. It's actually a bit disappointing; the swarf wasn't removed before the finish was applied, so I'll probably have to file away some of the finish before I can even use it. Tsk. I knew Sorby weren't what they were, but that's really poor considering it's not that cheap a bit of kit. Anyway, the wallet was out and I was on a roll. I decided to have a look at the Veritas holdfast and wonder if I had the nerve to bore a hole in my bench top yet. Lovely smooth action on the screw, and the clamping force is excellent. Yep, gonna have one of those. As it turned out, it was going to make more sense to order direct from BriMarc after the show, so that's still on, erm, "hold" until next week. In the meantime I can decide if there's anything else I want...

Meanwhile the dovetail saw situation was bugging me. I decided to have a look at the L-N. The only available timber to try it on was far too thick, and I was disappointed in the saw in consequence. Also I managed to look like the most hopeless saw user in the world with DC looking on. D'oh. I beat a hasty retreat and went to have a look at the Thomas Flinn 1776 dovetail saw. Superficially similar to the L-N, it didn't grab me at all. Not least because the handle is significantly larger; great for the blokes, but a nightmare for me. Their bench wasn't helping any; it was wracking like a tea clipper in a gale which makes any saw look like dross. Anyway, that was no good. Bum. I wandered about wondering if I could manage okay with the saws I had until another DT saw should cross my path, but the pull of the L-N stand was great enough to find me back there eventually. And there was a thinner piece of stock. Ah-ha. I had another shot, and it was like a different saw. I know in my head that's as it should be, but I hadn't expected it to feel that different. I was convinced. I bought.

I haven't tried it yet.

I can also confirm it's slightly embarrassing to have manufacturer "A" peering to see what you've bought from manufacturer "B" while at the same time you haven't actually bought anything from manufacturer "A" - yet.

On Friday we wound our way home, via Liskeard and Bob's Tool Box. Naturally he had more dovetail saws than you can shake a big stick at... D'oh! Not cheap though. Very much serious dealer prices, but a heck of a range of stuff. I didn't buy a thing, but the old man fell for a billhook and got a wedge to help deal with some of the more awkward firewood. Bob himself was a bit busy, being in the middle of some reorganisation at the time, so I didn't complicate matters by introducing myself. Worth another visit if we're passing again I think.

So that was it. Back to the ends of the earth for another year, booty safely gathered in, feet worn down to the ankles. Watch this space tomorrow for what was gleaned from the Canadian.

Anniversaries

So today is the first anniversay of this Blog. Huzzah! Apart from missing out one whole month... this is the first diary type thing I've ever managed to keep going for more than a few months. Evidently the "Dear Diary" thing doesn't cut it and I need an audience. What a shameless attention seeker. :~S

Meanwhile I'm so rushed off my feet in getting ready to go up the Exeter tomorrow for the show that I spent the morning cleaning those auger bits. Sometimes my displacement activity-seeking surprises even me...

On a more serious note, a parcel containing some of my paternal grandfather's WWI documents arrived from my aunt this morning. As it's unlikely I'll be posting on Friday, Armistice Day, I thought I'd post this now. Here he is on the left; Lieutenant, later Captain in
the 9th Battalion Duke of Wellington's Regiment, aka the West Riding, aged about 22 or 23. At some point he won the Military Cross, but I'm not sure exactly how. Amongst the papers are numerous trench maps, photos etc, including the document on the right. It's a resume of their division's operations from August 1918 until the Armistice. Strange to think that the absence of tanks was worded as a matter of pride, rather than one of anger as it would be now. As there's a map of Chapel Hill amongst the papers, I assume HJF was involved in that attack. He went on to become a member of the Indian Civil Service, becoming Chief Secretary of United Provinces and died in 1981. My grandmother's brother, Cuthbert, wasn't so lucky. He joined the Middlesex Regiment in 1914 but was killed in action in September 1918. As far as I'm aware, he's the only member of my family to have died in the armed forces - although plenty have served in them - so, as ever, he'll be uppermost in my thoughts on the 11th. He so very nearly made it.

Braced for action

Well it's all go toolwise chez Alf at the moment. Delicate negotiations are on-going vis-a-vis a trade of goods. My part of the deal is this Chapman brace and Irwin pattern bits. But first they have to be cleaned... Actually the bits aren't too bad. Some I've already done, and others came in the baize tool roll in the picture, and have kept remarkably rust-free in consequence. Nope, it's the brace that's going to be the stinker. The ratchet is, inevitably, seized up, but other than that the working parts are all free and, well, working. But there's a coat of rust over everything, and the plating's there in places and peeling off in others. As a preliminary test I've put a small wooden handled screwdriver in the citric acid bath to see how it effects the woodwork - in theory it's apparently okay to put the whole thing in the citric acid, but this is nice hardwood and I don't want to ruin it. Failing that, it's just a question of elbow grease. I've done it before:
On the left, you can just make out the Stanley #901 brace as found in the Tool Chest; below that the result of much elbow grease. Super brace that, and judging by how little I was able to find out about it, not that common. It has the Parker patent ratchet, dates sometime between 1911 and 1935 (but more towards the latter half) and would have set you back a whopping $2.45 in 1914. Stanley's most expensive brace I think. The guy who assembled the tools in that chest seemed to have had a laudable tendency to buy the best tools available, for which I can but thank him.

There, and you thought I was just fixated on planes and saws...