Sunday 12 November 2017

Quick projects

A couple weeks back, the good lady wife bought a roubo-style workbench that had been converted to hold bathroom sinks. She wanted the sinks and the workbench came with it... so I inherited a 3rd workbench :) Timing-wise, it is interesting because I was about to start dimensioning lumber to actually make a roubo.

In all its bathroom-conversion glory


One issue is that whoever converted it did cut two chunks of the top and part of a back leg. I have started fixing the easy stuff, like reassembling the leg vise correctly.

Back to its original purpose
It's a bit lower than my other benches but works nicely for my wooden planes... so I'm a happy camper so far.

The planing stop and the holdfast went missing, luckily I still have a monster holdfast from another bench I'm currently not using. However, the holes are too small for it right now so I'll need to enlarge them at some point.

First time working with a planing stop
While I was in the workshop, and because I cleaned up the pantry yesterday... I though about making St Roy's dovetailed grease box as I have about a pound of expired shredded suet.

While the shredded suet was melting in a double boiler, I started cutting and drilling the dovetail box from some leftover fir. As I was in the zone, I completely forgot to take in-progress pictures and only grabbed the phone once the prototype was done:




I have tested the suet on the soles of a couple of wooden planes and it makes them very slippery indeed. The next time I'm in the workshop, I'll make the dovetail key to lock the box.

2 comments:

  1. Cool! Doesn’t St. Roy use mutton tallow? Do you think there’s much difference?

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    1. Apart from the smell? ;) I'll see in the long run if it also darkens the wood. A future test will be to simply buy pre-rendered beef tallow as that's still sold around here :)

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