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one other suggestion, from Bob Flowerdew (Radio 4's Gardener's Question Time), is to use boiling water to kill of any stragglers that pop up after any poisoning attempts. He uses whatever is left in the kettle after he has made a cuppa.

well, my view on this is based on the fact that Alan Titchmarsh still calls them 'Ladies's spades' and he is also an unexpected sex symbol. Until someone comes up with some compelling evidence that these two things are not connected, I will be following suit.

Good to see Elwell getting a mention - I have two Elwell spades and a fork which I use as my main gardening tools. The ladies spade, which I got from a car boot about 10 years ago, is easily the best garden tool I have ever owned. the forge at Wednesbury operated for over 400 years...

a couple of coats of boiled linseed oil and it is done. The BLO, in addition to affording some limited protection to the wood, also helps to colour the wood an attractive dog-pee yellow and does an excellent job of highlighting the various errors I made :) I managed to squeeze in a final...

the bench is surprisingly sturdy, but given the state of the dovetail joints I doubt it would last very long if put to use in the current state, so it is time to add some bracing parts which are attached by joints that are apparently called half lap dovetail joints. I used a saw to remove the...

thanks Andy, and yes it has been very enjoyable. I particularly enjoyed using the various old tools I've collected and refurbished over the past 18 months, and seeing how they compare in different tasks - for instance I tried preparing a board with a no 4 plane alone, vs a wooden jack + no 7...

strengthening the joints between legs and feet by 'draw boring'. I have intentionally drilled one of the holes slightly out of line with the others to liven up the piece and give it that authentic hand made look.

made the dovetails to attach the top to the legs. I enjoyed the the pins more than the tails, at least as soon as I had worked out that it was not necessary to cut them accurately to the lines since you make the 'pins' by copying whatever you ended up with in the first stage. I am quickly...

that's a fair point BB, I have never set eyes on a 'clay spade' let alone used one. The pointed end makes a lot of sense, but what is the purpose of the removing the two sections of metal from the blade?

Oops! I shall leave the original post unmolested for the entertainment of others :)

In my experience the best spade for digging in clay is not a spade at all, it is a fork :)

.. not something I can take any credit for I'm afraid! Today's job was to cut the tenons in the legs - I got a bit better at sawing by the 4th one, but they all needed some work with the chisel to get them to fit. Although the fit in the end was quite tight, I think I was mainly benefiting...

todays job was to make the feet for the sawbench. First create two housings: I had the perfect tool to smooth the bottoms of the housing, (c.f red Tyzack router), but as documented here it was not working at the time: tyzack-router-plane-question-t105449.html so I used a chisel - as you...

nor in this 1963 catalogue (By which time Brades, Skelton & J. Tyzack had merged to form B.S.T. They still have '3-leg' branded tools though... http://huk1.wkfinetools.com/01-BritishS ... ackCat.asp

the 1940 catalogue does not contain the plane - the intro confirms they are still making things at the Meersbrook Works in 1940, and that the firm was founded in 1837 https://archive.org/details/J.TyzackAnd ... ogue71.1MB

thanks for the explanation DoctorWibble - the edges on my plane do not appear to have been ground and are very rough, so i think it is very plausible that the narrow slots are the result of measuring from these unreliable reference points. I will keep an eye out for something I can repurpose...

I know, I know! I have only just got over going to fortnightly bin collections (5 years ago).

hello, I am in the process of making a saw bench using only hand tools. I am several days (!) in already and seem to be averaging about one major cock-up per day. I haven't got a clue what I'm doing, so I will quite probably make mistakes without even noticing - feel free to point those ones...

here we go: the adjuster is 5/8'' diameter. The larger wheel from a 71 does indeed bridge the gap to the iron when it is in a narrow slot, but unfortunately the thread is not the same (it is only screwed on a couple of turns in the pic below). If the deeper slot was filed by hand to...

that is a good thought Andy, but they are all wrong apart from the one on the central post that faces towards the closed throat, which is a perfect fit.