Progress Report

I'm sure that all of you faithful followers have been checking this blog every day for the past few weeks and have had your hearts broken daily by the lack of new material. What can I say? I've been busy.

Not really...just haven't been working much wood. I milled a couple more logs for stock and have been pretty good about keeping up with the dovetail-a-day project. It's not going to exactly be "30 DTs in 30 days" because I was away for Thanksgiving, but it will be close. Here's where things currently stand:

Pretty cool, eh? I was considering making it an outwardly spiraling square, but then you couldn't see old joints and that would've taken a lot more wood towards the end. Here was the first effort:

And here was tonight's specimen:

It hard to capture the differences with a camera, but you can see a lot less over-cut at the base of the tails and pins. There is a little blow-out on that top full-pin but I think that actually happened when I cut the stock to size. I've also reduced the time by nearly a third, so that's pretty good.

The past two days have been very wet here in North Georgia. Rain, rain, and more rain. I was out in the garage yesterday puttering around and noticed a light coating of RUST on the side of one of my bench planes. Then I noticed it on the sole of the plane. Then I saw some on other planes, some on my holdfast, some on my vise hardware, and basically the whole surface of my scrollsaw. Most of it was light enough that I could just rub it off with a rag damp with Boeshield. Other surfaces, such as the scrollsaw were in bad shape:

For this, I had to get out the sandpaper and give it a little elbow grease. In truth it's pretty satisfying work because the results are pretty quick and look nice too:

This rust had to have formed in about 48 hours. Unreal. A couple of weeks ago I started keeping a Boeshield rag in a little Altoids tin on the workbench for wiping off my handsaw after I used it. The Schwarz recommends this and I'm now inclined to extend the use to all ferrous tools. Along with more Boeshield, I've added a respirator to my Amazon wishlist; I'm getting a little tired of that penny taste in my mouth.

Speaking of Amazon, it can be pretty fun to play around with some times. For example, THIS is the most popular item in the "Tools and Home Improvement" category. I watched the video for Twilight Turtle wanting to know if he projected actual constellations and it looks like he does. But judging from the included book they're all messed up: they have Cepheus as a house! Grrr. Also, THIS is the bestseller in the "Power and Hand Tools subcategory. Is that even a tool? Frankly I'm astonished THIS and THIS weren't even in the Top 10. Come on, America! Is there any question that our country is in the tank?

So there you have it...not a whole lot to report. Right now I'm just trying to wrap up the semester, graduate, and get really really good at dovetailing. Also, most projects in the near future will probably be Christmas gifts, so they may not receive the much attention on this blog.

In the near future I'm looking at building another couple of saws. I've been looking at bow saws for a little while and I think they would be fun to make, so look for that after Christmas. My mind is moving more and more towards harvest lumber for stock, so I think a big rip frame saw is in order as well.