Search results

You can also kill mould with methylated spirits. It's not acidic, so no danger of a reaction with the tannins in the wood. Also dries more quickly, which is handy.

I would imagine a tourniquet you can use with 1 hand is also useful if you attempt DIY amputation of more than a few fingers. Keeping your phone handy is also a good habit. Getting stuck and not being able to reach a phone would be unfortunate.

Makita manufacture in a number of countries, including China, UK and USA. I don't know whether they make the same model in more than 1 country, but there isn't an obvious price difference in buying e.g. a made in UK vs. made in China circular saw from them. It's possible much of the casting, etc...

Here you go:

Yes, I can take a photo later if that would help?

I have that screw. It's a beast. Not nearly as refined an option as the benchcrafted offering, but no mortgage required to fund it either.

Leg vice - metal screw and a wooden guide. Takes a little longer to wind in/out than a wooden screw, but had the advantage of being bombproof, relatively cheap and easy to source. e.g. Veritas Tail Vice Screw

I have the Isotunes ones. https://isotunes.com/products/isotunes-link They're not active noise cancelling, but the ear defenders have pretty good attenuation and the sound quality and battery life are decent.

Ok, fair point about positioning above the bench. But the parrot vice can easy be made to have tapered jaws - see my post earlier. It may not be as versatile as a pattern maker's vice, but it does do a pretty good job as a luther's vice.

I'd love a pattern maker's vice, but the one you linked to cost 10x a parrot vice. Also, for many operations it's helpful to have the vice above the bench so the guitar body can rest on the bench while you hold the neck in the vice, or more generally so you can hold stuff a bit higher for fiddly...

You can add wooden chops to a parrot vice. If you make one or both of them convex on the vice jaw side(s) and leave the fixings lose then they can swivel sufficiently to hold an instrument neck quite nicely. Mine just had the rear chop free to move:

Cool photos. I'll take an educated guess: Lignum vitae is very oily. When you drill a hole in it, I assume the bit gets warm/hot. The oil in the word warms up in the process and becomes liquid. When it cools again afterwards, sometimes it crystallises out. The dust helps with nucleation.

Great, thanks both. It looks like I have a few options.

Thanks David. That's all good to know. I'm tempted to try to make one. If it doesn't work, I guess I have a couple of options. What type type of steel should I be looking for and any tips?

I have an oil heater in my workshop that's on a thermostat. Without it, the temperature would hover around freezing at this time of year. Not good for the glue and finishes. -20 doesn't happen around here. "Cold fingering" could mean very different things to different people.

Had to look this up as Farenheit is another language. I keep my workshop about 5-6 °C at this time of the year. I might turn the heat up to 10-12°C if I'm going to be in there for a while and/or want to glue something.

I've just been out with the calipers to have a closer look. The new iron is ~0.5mm thicker than the old one. The yoke can still reach the cap iron, so this shouldn't cause too much trouble. I compared the cap iron to others in my collection. It is ~3 mm shorter than the cap iron in my 4 1/2...

Thanks All. Jacob - Frog is set properly. Unfortunately, early 5 1/2 and 05 1/2's have 2 1/4" irons (probably because this was common in earlier wooden planes?) whereas newer versions share the 2 3/8" irons of the larger planes. I discovered this trying to swap irons at some point in the past -...

It's the plane iron that is new and the cap iron (chip breaker in the US?) that is orginal, so Jacob is on the right track. Except, I bought the new iron as I was struggling to adjust the depth of cut, and I suspect the issue was that that cap iron was fouling with the old iron too - I will...

Thanks, I figured that was the case, but wanted to sanity check it first. As 2 1/4" irons are unusual, it is not trivial to find a replacement. I probably have a spare 2 3/8" iron, so maybe I can make that fit with a little filling.