Thanks to the attendees of the intro to hand planes class, (6 members, 2 outsiders), we now have a few new items for our woodshop.
First off, we have a 2-sided diamond honing plate. There is a course and fine side. Don’t ask me what grit they are, they work just fine . I demonstrated this in the class by sharpening a plane blade to razor sharpness, and demonstrated that ‘razor sharpness’ was not hyperbole by shaving some hair off my arm. I now have a little bald spot on my arm.
Secondly, to go along with the diamond honing plate, we now have a honing guide. For shared tools, it isn’t really appropriate to hand-sharpen tools that can easily be set in a honing guide. We’ll need to construct a depth gauge for setting angles. For plane blades and chisels, you should be using the honing guide.
Third, we now have some winding sticks. I made these for the class but they are quite useful if trying to judge twist on a board.
The last item we have directly as a result of the class is a shooting board. If you want to get a specific angle, or trim up a board, this is a great jig. Basically you use a hand plane on its side in the track and place your wood either with a wedge against the fence for non-square cuts or directly on the fence for square cuts. If you don’t know how to use it, ask one of the members that took the class and we’ll get you sorted.
Additionally, a few generous members has recently donated:
3 Hand Planes (1x Block, 1x Smoothing, 1x Fore Plane)
A set of nice turning tools
A pen mandrel
A lathe chuck
A mini machinists square
A japanese-style pull saw
A marking gauge
And some other items as well! We are really starting to see our hand-tools fill out. Our hand planes are in a very respectable state, and all are producing great shavings. Most of the things people used to borrow from me for woodturning are now provided by the space.
Call To Action
We need your help! Now that we have what is turning out to be a great set of hand tools, we need places to keep them and make sure they are respected. We need to create something to hold and display our nice hand tools, and a sharpening station.
There are many different designs, and this is where your creativity can come. We need people like you to build storage for our hand tools, or a usable sharpening station so we can keep our tools sharp, but our sharpening items free from dust.
Please help us create these homes for our tools!