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Being entirely lazy I've found that black rouge on a tightly stitched cloth wheel will take me from the fine side of an India stone to an edge good enough to carve soft, crumbly wood... Red or White on a leather wheel will take an edge to the point of being able to cut whitewood end grain...

I excelled myself today and accomplished 2 things today... The main job was turning this: Into this: Which was a task comprised mainly of tentative sanding, followed by copious amounts of waiting blended with a small amount of applying laquer. I made this, in the intervening moments...

It starts to get terrifying when you look at Carburising processes in a gas hearth... A large refractory cylinder inside the hearth, with a supply providing a slight positive pressure of pure acetylene inside it, such that there's a sooty acetylene flame in the mouth of the cylinder for...

Surforms are also dead handy for rough shaping soft foam for a plug (the composites/fibreglass moulding equivalent of a pattern in casting). Nothing will hog a complex 3D shape out of styrofoam or expanded LDPE foam with the same balance of control (good), removal rate (excellent, almost...

How so? What evidence do you have to suggest that working with pine charcoal produces a better result? What is the mechanism of action for the improvement? I suspect if I took three knives, the one from the OP, and two of the same design one forged with a gas hearth and power hammer and one...

Straight answer to a straight question: You are likely to be able to use your P/T without a chip extractor, you may have to modify it if the guard for using it as a thicknesser is also a extraction hood, as one designed like that that will almost certainly clog without. From prior experience...

BM Trada 's online species database is more or less authoritive... https://www.trada.co.uk/techinfo/tsg/ You may have to register, but it's free. (Also, the difference in Larch durability described is partially due to the climate, with old-growth, slow grown material being more durable than...

Think bigger, don't be constrained by the shape it is now.!

They're sold as Douglas fir and Larch... both have superior strength and durability over red/whitewood and so are able to command higher prices (particularly slow-grown Siberian Larch). In practical terms, Redwood is generally suitable for internal joinery, especially if one buys a decent grade...

Would all thread and nuts up to M80 suffice? Available here, mild or stainless steel. Edit: The price might make your eyes water... Their catalogue lists M64 threaded bar at a very reasonable* price of £22350 per 100×1m lengths... Thankfully they do sell it as individual 1m lengths, not just...

Not technically in my workshop, but... Re-fitted the grates in a sentinel steam loco, fitted (modified) cab windows to the same, and got finished in time to join the owner and another chap who were just making a start on water testing the boiler and various associated piping runs. It has a...

Accepts is one possible material, if you want to make something from PSE to have a very square look. Alternatively, the ideal way to go "with nature, not against nature" would be to get a small(-ish) elm trunk, saw it in two and hollow it with a curved adze or scorp.

Weirdly gigantic spanners are still easily available and being manufactured up to 3"BSW...

Depends... for workshop use, clear. Amber are intended to help with eye strain in low light environments, dark/mirrored for bright/high UV environments.

The ones I find best for adjustability are Uvex I-vo, they also come in a version with a strap which is great for use with ear defenders, but the Carbovision are better suited to that as a halfway house between glasses and goggles. My personal favorites are Peltor Metaliks Sport, which adjust...

Grinding and turning, you should be wearing a face shield/visor and goggles or properly fitting safety glasses. For most other tasks, close fitting safety glasses (ones which fit and adjust to leave no appreciable gap round them), are sufficient. Fit is crucial to making safety glasses...

A duff capacitor is a likely possibility... If you push the saw spindle, up-down, left-right and in-out does it move or wiggle appreciablly relative to the motor casing?

You must be a sucker for punishment making that from purple heart... It looks lovely, but I've always found it a bear to work by comparison to the vast majority of timbers. When you're referring to blocking the mouth, is this referring to inserting a separate block of timber into a rebate in...

Thanks Mathew, that's a very interesting missing link between the similar setup I've seen in reference to the file trade (Less heavily curved hammer, more vertical angle of the stitching tool, less issues with visibility) and actually stitching rasps. I'll let everyone know how it progresses.

I would really strongly suggest fitting a no volt release type switch with thermal overload, (commonly sold on eBay as DOL Starters for about £25-30). Setting aside the obvious safety benefit in terms of unintended starts, if your wires degrade or get nicked exposing conductor, It's the...