This is my no. 4 smoothing plane, tuned up and sharpened, and proving that it works! Lovely shavings, less than 0.1mm thick. I also started tuning my beautiful chisels, and two other planes of different types. More on them next week.
The tuning and sharpening process is hard work, but becomes somewhat meditative. There is a lot of figure-of-eight grinding, first on a lapping plate (essentially a hard steel block) with oil and decreasing coarseness of grit, and then on waterstones. The aim is to make everything flat and true (i.e. square), and finally to adjust things like the front of the plane iron (the blade) to be a slight curve (this stops the corners from digging in when you are planing).
I've also had some time for aesthetic tuning!
These are my flat head screwdrivers. When they arrived, all the handles looked like the middle one pictured here: covered in a thick almost-orange lacquer. Not very attractive, and not all that pleasant a feel in the hand. So, I attacked them with a scraper and then some abrasive paper to strip them back to the bare wood, as you can see. I've since been oiling them with danish oil, after which they'll be waxed.
The process of stripping off the handles is a little addictive: I've taken the lacquer off my pin hammer handle, and I've got my eyes on several other tools...
While I'm here and remembering, let me finish off with another couple of photographs, per The Knit Nurse's request. In reference to this post, here is a picture of my reddened hair and my new tattoo:
2 knots:
Really lookingforward to stripping don some of the furniture we have now! Great hair colour!
Lovely combination!
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