Thinking about a mark/stamp for my work

Yes, I got the idea from Chrisand thought it was cool.  He had a stamp made of some dividers which has become his identifying mark.  I thought I’d come up with an identifying mark, perhaps of a tool I made.  I’ve made a dovetail saw and a panel gauge; so using those as a mark and then, perhaps, adding my blog handle to help make the stamp unique.  Here’s a couple for consideration:

Dovetail Saw
Panel Gauge
This gives a little bit of an idea of what it would look like.
Here it is with out the Logo.  Better?

Ever thought about doing this?  Any lessons learned?

Cheating on my edges

No surprise, I have favorite tools.  This is one of them.  Its a Stanley No. 386 Jointer Gauge or Fence that I got off of eBay.

Some might think this is cheating, but I love it.  It positions my hands perfectly and makes jointing a edge a ton of  fun.  I don’t have to be obsessive about checking my edges and it helps me move my jack or jointer plane with easy. Most importantly, it gets a square edge ever time.

It also works nicely on end grain.

The only bad news is that its kinda hard to find and collectors like them, which can make them expensive.  If you’re willing to take one that missing a knob or otherwise not in perfect, but working condition, you can save some money.

 

 

 

 

Here’s where I found a few other options.
Hyperkitten – Center of the Table
ST. JAMES BAY TOOL CO. – under new products.
Fine Tool Journal

A little more tool cabinet progress

Stopped dados for shelving and a little bit of double checking to make sure things are going to fit.

Things are going so slow.  The end of the year has so many things to take me away from the work.  Oh, and I’ll be sneaking off to buy so more work to rebuild the base of my work bench.  More on that later.

Here’s a fun fact.  I started this blog about a year and 1/2 ago and I’m up to 10,000 views.  That’s pretty good as far as I’m concerned.

Thanks for readin’!   

My shop space has been bugging me ….

So I spend the weekend selling off some tools I wasn’t using, cleaning the shop and building this assembly/outfeed table on wheels.

I’ve been using a plywood sheet on saw horses which shorta hogged the space underneath it.  So it don’t LOOK like a big change, but it opened up the space underneath and tidied things up nicely.

You can see that my paper pattern is still on the wall and my tool cabinet is still in the making.  I’ve notice that I tend to clean my desk at work if I start feeling overwhelmed at work.  I’m thinking that this project might have been a similar organization exercise.  And it always makes me feel better.

Procrastination or a response to feeling over whelmed??  Or, something that just needed to be done?  Maybe all three??

Link to the casters if you need it: http://www.rockler.com/product.cfm?page=30842&filter=workbench%20casters

Creating the doors and mortising in the door hinges

Originally I glued up the side pieces with the door width included.  This made sure both the doors and case were squared together and the gain matched.  After carefully squaring the back edges up, I trimmed off the door pieces. So now I have put the door pieces back on using the hinges.

I wanted to not be limited by hinges on the doors so I’m using .. yes, I know .. ugly piano hinges.  I decided to mortise them in to make sure they don’t interfere with drawers and to make the whole thing look a bit more finished.

The router plane sure makes some fun shavings when you set it correctly.  Now that the mortises for the door are in I know where the front of the dados for the shelves need to go.