Author Archives: Brian

Building the Paul Sellers Workbench – Day 3 & 4

Progress has been slower that desired, but on par with expected. After glue-up on Day 2 it rained intermittently, permitting no work other than removing the clamps after 24 hours. I was pleasantly surprised that no tell-tale sounds of creaking glue joints occurred. Turning the scallops into a slab As was mentioned in my first […]

Building the Paul Sellers Workbench – Day 2

As the rain had stopped me before gluing up on Day 1, my goal was to get a lamination finished. Since my stock was still uneven, I went through each board with a straight-edge and jointed them with a No. 5. I hadn’t been very careful when I first smoothed the faces of the boards, […]

Building the Paul Sellers Workbench – Day 1

It is about time I built myself a proper bench; the MDF topped table with no vises is rather limiting. I realized this after falling into the folly myself:  building a workbench is one of the largest ‘mind-sinks’ of a starting galoot’s journey. Detailed research into materials, vises, styles, arrangement and types of joinery; on […]

Coastal Oregon

After leaving the Mill With No Name, I stayed in Coos Bay. Aside from the impressive bridges, the bay is a hub of activity in boating and milling. I drove by mountains of wood-chips awaiting shipment from the interior of the bay. There are a few nice shops downtown, however one with a visible profile […]

The Mill With No Name

The second article from my Pacific coast trip. While I had great fun on the coast of California, and visited many a purveyor of antiques, nothing otherwise eventful took place. I will attest that the North coast of California (north of San Francisco) is more beautiful than our famed Central coast and good driving fun […]

Meeting a fellow Galoot

This is the first of several entries from my Pacific Coast road trip. Making rapid U-turns in small towns to investigate an antique store is common-place in my life. I’m at the point where I don’t even think, “I wonder if they have anything”, I just go in. At the very least, there is always […]

Rays of Old Tool Heaven

As I was slipping into a old tools slump, I began to wonder: “Is Southern California OT hell?”. The 100°+ heat last week certainly didn’t help. While our local tool meet yielded interesting specimens and many tools finding new homes, the wild was drying up—much like the shrubbery. Today was set apart. At 6:20a the […]

Disston Acme 120

Resurrected Saw

This was a great garage sale find. The guy’s father had about 12 hand saws of various sorts, I bought 7 of them including a mishandled tenon saw and a latter model mitre-box saw. It’s a good ol’ D8 24″ crosscut 8 TPI. The medallion dates it from 1898-1917 and the etch indicates the later […]

Balance

Sometimes working makes me philosophical. Recently I’ve read work by Freudian psychologists which centers around the balance of id and ego. (Traditionally they say the third domain is Super-Ego, however if you’d like to read an essay-ish discourse on why Super-Ego does not exist, I’ll post it sometime). The whims of id are instinctive and […]