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, […]
Category Archives: Galoot
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Servicing a No. 921 Brace Ratchet
One of my recent flea market finds, a Stanley No. 921 10in-Y brace, needed some fettling. The ratchet checked out fine before I bought it. So did the jaws, I love the expression on people’s faces when you take two whole minutes to unscrew the chuck, check the jaws and put it back. When I […]