Old Tool, New Life

I have posted several times about tools that were my grandpa's or great grandpa's, but here is another. My favorite hatchet to carve with belonged to my grandpa. It had a handle on it that he had made himself.

Here is Grandpa's hatchet with the handle grandpa had made

I wasn't knowledgeable enough about axes/hatchets to know how to correctly fix the fact that the head was loose on the hatchet. I would typical bang the bottom of the handle on a stump to try and tighten it up while working, One day mid winter while splitting some kindling to get the stove going the head broke off the handle. I was sad that I had broken something my grandpa had made. I then did some research on the correct way to fasten (hang) a head on an ax or hatchet.

Hickory is the wood of choice for ax and hatchet handles. After digging in the wood rack I found some Hickory. I rough cut the overall shape on the bandsaw and then did all the shaping with rasp and files.

While making the handle and studying the hatchet head I realized that one side of the head was flat and the other side was beveled. After looking online and talking to some friends I decided that originally the hatchet head had a single bevel and would have been for hewing timbers, and that some point someone sharpened it putting a bevel on both side. I decided to reshape the head and sharpen it back having a single bevel. I didn't want to remove all the pitting and patina on the blade so I didn't grind the sides, and focused my work near the cutting edge. I did the majority of the reshaping using the old stationary belt sander that I had gotten from grandma. With a 60 grit belt I established the single bevel cutting edge and with a little filing it was sharp enough to shave. I plan to polish the cutting edge more soon.

The flat side of the hatchet 

The curved/beveled side

I hung the head on my hickory handle and then finished it with boiled linseed oil. The hickory really came alive when I applied the oil. I shaped the handle where it had a nice place to grip right under the head for detailed work and made a nice palm swell on the bottom of the handle to give a good grip when taking a full swing. What I have learned while doing this has made me want to restore some other axes and make some more tools.  I am very  glad to have grandpa's hatchet back to usable condition. I really enjoy using these old tools, thinking about what was built using them. I hope that someday someone in my family will be using these tools and some of mine also and thinking back about me.

Taxidermy Plaques

A coworker of mine has a side business doing taxidermy, he mainly does deer heads and antlers. A few weeks ago he asked me about making some wooden plaques for him to attach his work onto. He had a few cardboard templates of the shapes he was looking for. I made plywood templates from the cardboard ones so I could use them with the router to trim the final work pieces. This has the possibility to be be something that I batch several of the out at once in the future so the plywood templates were the way to go.

The plywood templates

 I had some hickory on hand to make the two plaques I was starting with.

I had to glue 2 pieces to make a blank wide enough for the Illinois.

With the pieces rough cut I attached the templates to the work pieces with double stick tape and used a flush trim bit to make them match the template.

I routed a ogee profile on the European mount and went with a round over on Illinois Shape plaque.

Both plaques got a coat of Boiled Linseed Oil to richen the color, I will be top coating with shellac in a few days.

Bottle Holder is Finished

Last night I Got the Hickory bottle holder done. After the last 2 coats of shellac had plenty of time to cure/dry I gave it a light sanding with some 400 grit sand paper and then applied a coat of finishing wax. I will try to get some pictures in better lighting.

Here you can see there is nothing holding it up, it's balanced.

 This was a fun project, I think its neat that this came from a tree I cut down.

 I recently picked up an insert plate to build a router table.  I plan on getting started building the router table top once i get done rearranging my shop.  I bought a large shelving unit and I am  rearranging  everything else to make it fit.

Bottle holder progress

I mentioned in the previous post that I had applied 2 coats of linseed oil to the hickory bottle holder, Last night I applied 3 coats of shellac.  Here is the after photo.

 This photo shows the color the linseed oil brought out in the hickory. Both of these pieces have shellac on them.

 Next the bottle holder will be sanded lightly with 320 grit and then I will apply 2 more coats of shellac.

While waiting between coats of shellac I worked on the marking gauge I am building. With a little more work I was able to get the beam to slide through the fence.  I decided to try tapping threads into the fence to lock the beam in place.  This worked out quiet well, I just need to get a brass bolt to replace the plain bolt I had on hand.

 Next I worked on getting the knife ready.  Its is a xacto knife blade that I filled and sanded some.  I need to figure out the best way to cut a hole in the beam that will allow the knife to be inserted and wedged into place.

Pallets and a gift

I am going to try and build a cabinet for the back porch to hold my cast iron cookware and other grill related goodies.  I am going to try and used as much recycled/reclaimed lumber as possible.  Which means pallets need to be broken down to "harvest" lumber from them. I got one pallet taken a part and after cracking half the boards and wasting a lot of time I have decided to cut apart the rest of the pallets and not try to pull them apart.

I also spent a little time working on a birthday present for a friend. I had a chunk of hickory I milled out of a piece of firewood. My friend's kitchen is built from hickory so I decided to make a wine bottle holder.  It's a simple project.  I still need to sand it a little more and then apply some finish, but here is how it looks now.