Cutting my teeth with Tom Law

Gooday !   Happy Canada Day !  Or if you are old enough to remember... Happy Dominion Day

So this past Friday night found me in my workshop, I had finally bought two saw files and was ready to get to work sharpening an old rip saw.  My saw vise had been ready for working action for some time and now I was going to take it for a test drive.  Earlier in the year I bought a 26" D-8 Henry Disston and Sons rip saw - now I was going to learn how to tune it up.

 The instructional video I purchased was hosted by Tom Law. This is a good DVD. The video contains good instructional content with demonstrations of an automatic saw sharpening machine and a dedicated machine for punching out new teeth. I wished I had him in the workshop in person so I could ask some questions.

As the night was getting later I was having some mixed results with my saw teeth. I need a lot of practice. I was literally cutting my teeth by shaping the teeth of ol' reliable(my saw). Overall, I had fun eating the best landjaeger and listening to Mr. Law and pushing my new file across some really old tool steel.

 My work is not done on this 8 point saw by any means ,(notice I did not include a close up picture the the teeth!) I will be going back and finishing the job. My saw vise will be modified to accommodate a saw from either end.

Stay tuned....

Dining room arm chair

This chair took a very long time to repair - mostly because I lost interest in it from time to time.However it is finished now!  The chair was disassembled, scraped clean, and repaired or made new parts as required.

Dining room chair is restored.

Most of the original wood is butter nut, and it had a plywood decorative piece in the back. The back of the chair has the same shape except I bought a piece of ash to make a new one. Ash is remarkably similar to oak in texture,colour and workability.  The front and rear pieces that connect the legs were reproduced using rock maple that I had in the shop.

The stain that I used was Varathane Wood Stain - Dark Walnut no.269 with a wax top coat.
As you can see in the picture the different woods reacted differently to the stain. The butternut wood accepted the stain with ease but the rock maple didn't care for it too much. The overall effect is pleasing to me even though irregularities are present with staining.

Rocking Horse

My Opa built several of these rocking horses during his lifetime.  I have some of the pieces from this plan already made by him. He also made fiber board templates of all the pieces. The legs which in my opinion are the hardest parts to make are completed for me.  I bought the plan and now am in the process of finishing this rocking horse.

More clamping options

I made this tool to clamp long boards to the edge of my bench top. The face vise holds the other end of the board.