Plywood

There's plywood, and there's marine plywood and there's Marine Plywood.

The local builders providers sells marine ply. Excellent. Less than half the price of the stuff sold by Waller Wickham. What's not to like.

Well - specifically, there's only 3 plys on the 6mm boards. And the veneer ply is as thin as paint, leaving a big fat ply in the middle with all it's strength along one axis. Not likely to hold up to much of anything.

So I bit the bullet and wandered down to Waller Wickham and got a sheet of 5 ply 6mm to make up the gussets and the centerboard case. I believe the ply they stock is Robbins Elite.

Who was it that said "Light, strong, cheap, pick any two". This stuff is light, strong, well made, but not cheap.

I didn't feel as though I even had a decision to make though, the builders yard marine ply was totally inadequate, even though it was stamped with BS1088.

Lisnavagh Timber Project

I went down to Lisnavagh yesterday to get some Oak boards, and picked out a few boards with the help of William Burnbury. They have a system to track every board, so they can show you where it came from. They even print you off a photo of the tree. They are very much into sustainable use of the resources. William was kind enough to email me the picture of the tree for my blog. From the history that William provided this fell itself so I don't even need to feel guilty about it being chopped down.

Now all I need is some good weather to turn this old tree into a boat.

Wet stones and good blades

I had thought that shaving the back of your arm with a plane blade was an urban myth, perpetuated by the Old Woodworkers to make us new guys feel perpetually inadequate.

However, in search of sharpness, I bought some high carbon plane blades from Hock Tools and a set of Ice Bear Waterstones from Axminster. (Nice fast delivery on both counts)

So I spent the time flattening the back of the blade, then honing the front till I found the burr, then removing the burr.

And there you go. It lifted a few hairs from the back of my arm, not quite up to Gillette's standard, but sharper than anything I've managed previously.

I am converted. My old wet and dry paper collection will now be reserved for flattening the wetstones. I've already ordered a course 220 grit wetstone to do the back of the cheaper blades, which have far move visible machine marks.

New Planes

Christmas brought some new planes. Wooden ones from Rutlands. The Jointer plane blade doesn't sit quite right. One side of the blade is lower than the other and no amount of pushing the top of the blade left or right will fix it. I suspect that the throat is not square with the base of the plane.

Since the plane is made of wood, a few minutes with a file should fix that.

The blades will need a little work to sharpen them up, a sheet of glass and some carbide paper is your only man for the job : ScarySharp.

Yep. I know that I opened them early, but that's a traddition in this house that goes back hours.

The Bosche GST 135 BCE / 1590 EVSK

It's wonderful.

I could stop there, but, specifically,

The pendulum setting cuts through 1" oak planks as though they were soft pine. (Remember to turn down the pendulum if you are cutting curves.)

The base plate angle can be set without tools, and you can set it consistently to reproducible angles.

I think that the best all round blade that I have tried so far is the bosch T144DP. Since it has a set to it's teeth, it follows a jig well. It will also cut a bevel and cut curves. I think I'll order a few packs.

Incidently, I got it from The Tool Man in the UK. Ordered Monday, arrived Wednesday. Nice helpful people.

Credit where credit is due

A while back I bought two saw blades for my circular saw from www.Tools4trade.com. They sat on a shelf for a few weeks while I did other stuff. This weekend I was just about to put the first one in my saw when I realised that I had bought the wrong size.

I sent them an email asking if I could exchange them, and got back an email to the effect of "no problem, send us the blades and let us know what you need".

Wouldn't it be nice if everyone was this great.