Why I need a mill

Today visited the workshop of the university.

Ricardo, the workshop maister, asked me why I didn't study mechanics. Cause I didn't know I liked so much this shit till my third year in physics.

I needed to groove my blade so I could use the adjuster to move the blade, it worked perfectly:

there were also some random pieces that took home with me.

A small little future anvil, and a 1/2" chisel.

and this is why I need a mill. Doing this by hand is a bit beyond me.

We didn't have a T-slot bit so had to improvise, that's why the groove is so wide, at least wider than the original.

Blade upgrade

A quick one. 

The end result:

 As you can see the edge is a bit slanted. I didn't want to grind too much of the steel since still need to make the ura nice and flat I rather have some room to spare.

The small contraption for thicknessing filing. Tape helps to keep the bastard in place. On the background is another handle model, just wax and oil tho, larger than the previous but still a tad too small for that monstrous file. The best was to draw file it to get a nice even texture on teh back:

There you can see the slant. And the lamination, and the wrought iron.

Before you scream for me butchering a japanese blade into fitting a lie nielsen, let me show you the mirror side. (Still need to work a bit on it, but will be done in subsequent sharpenings.)

I had to grind pretty much 5mm on each side of the blade, it was left on the body and rust ate all the hagane where it was making contact with the wood, and on other places, still didn't manage to take away all the pit. The good thing of working with a japanese blade is that you can grind only the hagane holding the blade at 45 degrees from the stone and then simply file or saw the wrought iron, making for a faster job. 

I still need to make the groove where the adjuster fits, but I'm thinking that maybe that's a job for a milling machine. At the moment I just retreat the adjuster and push the blade if I need to. This is plane that mostly works in one setting only though.

That's it. 5 usd rusty blade turned into state of the art upgrade for western planes. (You may wonder why I own a brass plane? Well, small japanese planes are a tad too light for my taste, so in contrast to bench planes, here I do want metal in the body.)

 

Far too long

The drawback of being mildly active in Instagram is that I feel like I posted something when in fact the only thing I'm doing is to take pictures. The whole meat of thinking, critical philosophy and bacon are missing from there.

So I will try to take this again as the favored means of expression for all things wood.

So, first things first, my new handles:

I'm getting more and more friend of french polish. Very thin shellac, a rag and patience is all you need. And sand a bit if you want at the end. Micromesh is your friend if you want mirror finish.

(That's how far 10usd will take you in files in a Chilean flea market. Old Nicholson, Erizo and a Swedish one. )

The handles... I've spent quite a long time thinking about them. Or rather thinking on them, as Roubo would say. The sharpness of the lines doesn't come that easy. You need to gouge carefully and make scrapers that fit nicely on the curves. The one on the right is my favourite atm.

On the japanese department I rehandled a chisel and re-ura it on the grinder.

Making the ura was simpler than what I thought on the electric grinder but not as reliable as to do it with all my chisels. I'm thinking of a jig to help with this. I like skinny uras. Ideally though on should have different grinding wheels for different chisels. My wheel is 8" and anything larger than 15mm is not possible to make in one pass.

So, why did I end up handling my chisels? I was making a new blade for my small brass lie nielsen plane with A2 steel. What a piece of crap is the steel. It's like eating european meat when you have lived all your life in chile. A hard rubber without taste, it takes ages to sharpen and scratches super easy.

What else? Got kidney stones. First time in July for my birthday and then last week again. Not fun. That got me into bed for longer I'd like and implied that I had to spend more time working in front of the computer to catch up after that. But now summer is around the corner and we need to prepare for the summer school 2017, where we will finish the roof of the Kincho in puerto varas.