shop time groove and paduak

It’s been a little tough to find shop time lately, but today I got a little bit of time and I took full advantage.

I’ve started work on a saw bench out of some reclaimed Yellow Pine, and I’ve got the top and legs cut out.  More on that later, I was making good progress but started second guessing my design.  I was going to just bodge it together, and not try for mortised legs or anything.  I’m not confident with my skills enough to try and angled mortise quite yet.  But now I’m redesigning the bench a bit, and we’ll see.  For sure I’m going to use it for more than just sawing and will be using my brand new holdfasts as well, so that will be part of the design.

In other news I did some reclaimed lumber shopping at Second Use today.  I got a box of Koa wood, and a couple pieces of surprise Paduak wood.  Check out the picture, the color is insane!  These are bound for pen blanks, so there will be some in the store soon I hope.

Paduak wood for Pens

I also got a chance to play with a previously purchased tool, an old Stanley #48 tongue and groove plane.  I bought it ways back, but I never got a chance to break it in.  I took some scrap pine, and just checked the blades (looked sharp) and tried it out.  It cut in right away, and worked fine just as is.  It’s a simple, no-nonsense plane, just does it’s job with now muss for fuss.  The tongue and groove fit great, and it’s user with little or no adjusting.

Stanley #48

Very nice.

That was all I got, but it was refreshing.  The old Disston 8 point crosscut saw made for easy work, but I still broke a sweat.  Gotta get some more shop time more often.  But then we had to go to Soccer game, go Sounders!

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