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During the somewhat extended -and sometimes surreal - thread on OBM or bevelled-edge chisels for morticing ( regular-mortice-chisel-or-bevel-edged-for-your-mortices-t109499.html ), several side discussions developed, one of which was about efficient methods. I thought it worth extracting the...

I'd change your tailor, if I were you. Or possibly seek medical advice.

Add a good squirt of washing up liquid to the bath water and give it a good swish around to generate some bubbles (I think we can agree that as good honest blokes we don't 'do' bubble bath, right?), then the 'unsee' button will not be required on removal of said underpants. Just be careful of...

May I present an alternative view? Let us suppose that you're an ordinary regular chap or chapess living normal life. You've got a stressful job, a fractious family, the bills keep arriving and there always seems to be month left over at the end of the money. Or perhaps you've lived through all...

Too right - I'd make an awful chef. I do cook things, though, and I know that left-over sprouts (which will be most of them, probab;y) can easily be made into delicious and nutricious sprout soup, thus negating all the work put into morticing them in the first place. The bacon tenons would...

In addition to the Suffolk Iron Foundry (owned by Qualcast after 1960, and still in business producing Sifbronze brazing alloys) Suffolk did make a contribution to engineering, notably in the field (ho! ho!) of agriculture and horticulture, but also heavy cranes, DC electric motors and others...

Hello, and welcome to the forum! The jack plane iron markings are almost certainly "W Marples and Sons", and may well have a sort of clover device as the trademark. William Marples were one of Sheffield's largest edge-tool makers, and used "Shamrock brand" (the clover device) to trademark their...

You're not too far from Richard Arnold (of this parish), who's between Market Harborough and Corby, and knows more than a thing or two about sash windows. http://www.richarnold.co.uk/

Hello Paul, and welcome to the forum! That's a try plane, and it'd a pattern that was commercially available from the late 18th century up until the mid 1960s. It's not home-made, since the handle is of the very common commercial pattern. It's not a first quality plane, as the grain does not...

Jacob - don't start that thread! NOBODY needs to cut mortices in brussels sprouts. Not even at Christmas. Look chaps, this thread has wandered hither and yon since the original question, but so far, nobody has mentioned tenons! If you're going to chop a mortice, you'll need something to stuff...

I wonder whether there's a danger of talking at cross purposes, here. Cabinetmaking and timber framing are significantly different activities, with valid techniques and methods of work applicable to either, but (except very loosely) not both. It's rather like comparing clockmaking with heavy...

Hmmm. Morticing, it would seem, is the new sharpening.....

Bit of background; apparently Richard Clyburn invented the adjustable spanner in the 1842, though Edwin Beard Budding (of lawnmower fame) is also considered to have some claim - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjustable_spanner

Should anyone have free access to British Standards, or be willing to shell out a not inconsiderable sum of money, the standards for carpenter's squares and engineer's squares (not including adjustable squares) are as follows; BS3322 - 1981 Carpenter's Squares -...

Not sure about the F&C cover chair - my first thought on seeing it was that it needed a couple of bricks under the back legs. Not sure about the dimples, either. But there you go - can't please all of the people all of the time! Digressing slightly, I find F&C is quite a good read these days...

I do very much agree with the point about the STYLE of bevel-edged chisel. The modern sort with the much stronger neck, bolster and tang, and deep lands, should hold up to a bit of malleting and levering quite easily, the old (say pre-1960) type with thin blade, very narrow lands, and smaller...

If you look at old tool catalogues - 19th and early 20th century - you find that most 'kits' of brace bits included a range of centre bits, maybe one Jennings pattern twist bit referred to as a 'dowelling bit', several shell and nose bits for smaller holes, several countersinks, maybe a couple...

Another point with woodworking squares is that they do tend to be vulnerable to knocks. I once bought a new 12" Rabone Chesterman try-square by mail order, and it arrived packed in only a padded envelope. It did cross my mind that it could very easily have been knocked about in the postal...

True - except that in a toolroom, all measuring equipment and reference surfaces are checked, and their inaccuracy is KNOWN. That's why metrology equipment is usually supplied against one of three grades - Workshop, Inspection and Calibration. There is a higher grade, which is comparison against...

There's a (little) bit more about the Vindolanda wooden finds and what's going to happen to them here - http://www.vindolanda.com/_blog/press-r ... den_world/ The wooden finds were, it seems, quite extensive, and include the earliest known Roman wooden toilet seat, and wooden water pipes that...