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Thanks for the replies. I will try a couple of different stains on a bit of scrap left over from the project. I think it's worth making the effort with tulipwood because if you've got a bit with nice grain - as I have in this case - and there's none of the green or brown bits, it could be made...

I'm just finishing up a shoe rack built in tulipwood and thought I'd stain it. So I put some alledgedly walnut coloured stain on a test piece and it came up looking like purple heart! This led me to think "to hell with it" and I just whacked some good old danish oil on. It looks OK because it's...

If I were going to try make that I imagine I'd use a No 4 or thereabouts plane, a shooting board (home made) for the edges, a 12" combination square and a crosscut backsaw. You might want a sliding bevel for the angled edge but you could do it by marking in one line with a marking gauge and...

In that case it would be interesting what you would think if you got the chance to have a play with a No 6. I've got an old No 5 as well but have it set up exclusively as a scrub plane. It does feel small but that seems to be OK given the few quick strokes it gets used for. I don't think I'd...

It looks like it should be enjoying a well deserved retirement! :D Put it on light duties: enlarge the hole for the screw head and employ it as a beer bottle opener.

I have all the planes I need and indeed could justify (4 1/2, 5 1/2, LA Jack and No Eight - the computer keeps putting up a smiley instead of the last plane) but I had a bit of Christmas money left over and decided to treat myself (that in my opinion being the point of Christmas money) and so I...

When I was in Berlin last week I popped into Dieter Schmid's tool shop and got one of these fishtail paring chisels: https://www.fine-tools.com/fishtail-paring-chisel.html I used it for the first time yesterday to clean out some half lap dovetail sockets and it worked a treat. I particularly...

I was going to say something like that: the harmless quest of the hobbyist for as much information as possible about his area of interest. In my naivety I just sort of assumed that firms kept records of all they did. It would appear not.

"... collectors with hundreds of examples of the same model ..." Uh? I could understand two of the same model of a plane you used a lot e.g. one with a cambered and one with a straight iron but hundreds of the same? I'm sure that nearly every human being has an instinct to collect something but...

Fair enough. I just thought they looked like the sort of thing useful enough to find a place in my biscuit tin for odds and sods.

I just stumbled on these while having a look at the Dieter Schmid website: https://www.feinewerkzeuge.de/platform-saddles.html Any thoughts? I reckon they are the sort of thing that might be nice to have in reserve as you never know if they would come in handy.

Any hand cream does it. Nivea for instance.

Thanks for the replies and now I see the rationale. Nonetheless, I will check in when I get there. I have an aversion to being "processed" although it seems to be an increasingly unavoidable part of modern life. In more practical terms, hotels tend not to be busy in early January and I'll be...

I've just booked a four night city break in Berlin for the new year. Today I got an email from the hotel offering me the chance to book in now so as to save time when I get there. Uh? It's a hotel, not a b****y airport! Does anybody know what this is all about?

When planing I love getting the long, thin strip which is produced when you cut the upper half of the gauged line away. It's a lovely confirmation that you're getting something right and it can't be faked. This morning I got such a strip which for the first time ever was a single piece from one...

Thanks for the replies. I did a bit of youtubing after posting on here and found this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KklOGGBh8_Q The last example makes a particularly good case for owning one if you think you are going to come up with problems in the middle of a board which you can't reach...

Good Morning All, I was idly flicking around the second hand tools websites, as one does, and spotted some crank handled paring chisels on offer (wouldn't "dog leg" be a better term than "crank handled"?) and wondered what is the thinking behind the design. Never having had one in my hands I...

You are missing something, I'm afraid (see my first post). What you can see is the cover up job to hide the extremely messy through tenons.

Andy, now that you say that, maybe alarm bells should have rung as the plan in the book called for oak. In other words they may not have specified a softwood for the reasons you point out. I just thought it would look good in pine. I decided it would have a back on it after reading in The...

Just4Fun: I cut the mortices from both sides using chisels which were freshly and carefully sharpened (a lesson learned from previous working of pine). Of the total of 16 joints, about 5 were acceptable i.e. they would have served a decorative purpose. I think the problem starts with the...