This morning I put a hard airline through the exterior wall of my shop from the insulated side to the non-insulated side.

This tool is not new but new to me, an old post vise or blacksmith’s vise.

On the Canadian May long weekend, i was able to get my forged from scratch knife to adding a handle stage.

I tempered my forged knife, and wanted to show the colour of the blade after tempering in the toaster oven.

I got some various size brass rod off of Amazon to use for pins for the handle of the knife I am making, the various sizes will allow me to choose what will look right.

I have had some time to work on a hand forged knife from agricultural spring steel ( a spring tooth harrow spring 🙂 ) it needs some grinding, and it is not perfect, but a very good learning project. I think I have some African blackwood I will try as a handle.

Despite an unseasonably cold weekend I make time for some organization including a bracket to hang the small (6ft) step ladder up out of the way in my cold side on my garage shop where I store the canoe, kayak, and my metal working stuff along with everything else 🙂

Did anyone else watch the latest Pask Makes with his new Bosch Glide miter saw?

I had the time to create a few cribbage boards, 3 in birdseye maple, and 2 in some lighted spalted live edge “scraps”. this pic is after painting the engraving and prior to sanding off the excess.

With the social distancing and slower shipping I can’t say I have bought much for tools, however this arrived the other day, as I am looking to do a piano black mirror finish for a piece.

I finally had time to finish up this cheese board.

@sotpa its an openbuilds C-beam

kswiss wrote:Would love to see some updated pictures of the cnc

Aside from router collets and bits, I added e-stops, a touch block, dust boot, guides, clamps, hold downs etc. It is still a small machines so it does smaller projects, lots of engraving, cribbage boards etc.

The 2 biggest things have been the touch block – huge time saver and…[Read more]

I am spending more time in my home office, so I am adding a couple of full extension drawers to my old steel battleship of a desk, for electronic project stuff and printer paper, if nothing else I can access the back of the storage better now.

The more I’ve used and tweaked my little CNC, the more I have started looking into ER style collets so i purchased some relatively inexpensive ones for a some of the routers, as they have less run-out than factory ones, handy in the CNC context, and gives more options for different size end-mills.

I’ve been pretty bad at posting the last month so I will try and post a few of the things that I took pictures of 🙂

The other day I got annoyed and welded a larger pad on a cheap Princess Auto (think Harbour Freight) clamp for use on my drill press table and it works well so far.

Since I have been home more recently my wife has increased the must do list, including mounting stuff etc. long story to say that I tried these little dust catchers that someone gave me to try. The verdict is that they work well for a single use relatively small hole, particularly in my old lathe and plaster house.

Probably gone to be doing more projects in the shop, staying home, working from home, not going anywhere.

Darn tough are still my go to socks, some are getting thin- but the warranty is good 🙂

Sorpa wrote:

wbembrid wrote:
I worked at replacing the handle scales on a couple of knives, one commercial one with plastic scales and one kit knife where the exotic hardwood I used didn’t hold up. I am going with walnut and brass pins.

Walnut is not so good for handles unless is stabilized.
My 3,14 ¢.

Thanks, I have done 2 previous ones with wa…[Read more]