Gallery – Retrogrouch

Toolbox is Finished

I finished off the toolbox with two coats of Tavern Green milk paint followed by two coats of Danish Oil.

I think it came out pretty nicely.

Tills

The toolbox now has removable sliding dovetailed tills. I had to thickness my stock from 3/4″ to 1/2″ with hand planes. That was good exercise.

I believe this is the end of the joinery for this project. I still have to install on some hardware and decide on a finish, and I’ll have a toolbox!

Scrub Plane

Jack Plane

Sliding Tills

Tills

Hinges

I made my first ever hinge mortises yesterday. My toolbox now has a functional lid.

Knife an outline of the hinge

Chop some lines with the chisel

Smooth out the bottom of the mortise

Install hinge

Tada!

I glued up a panel

I glued up a panel for the lid of my toolbox. Jointed the edges with the No. 5 and then cleaned up the faces and end grain — all with the same plane.

It was a hell of a workout.

Marked out

Clamped for jointing

After laborious planing

End grain of the panel

Square Taper to Hollowtech II

I had a problem with my square taper crank arm coming loose and getting trashed by the crank spindle.

These new-fangled Hollowtech II whiz-bang cranksets can be found on the Internets for cheap, as 3×9 drivetrains are no longer fashionable.

Old damaged crank arm

Big Wrench to remove the old bottom bracket

New hollowtech crank

Test ride successful

Update From the Garage

Planed up the dovetails

Ripping boards

Planing out the saw marks

My wooden box project is coming along. I glued up the dovetails and planed them down. They actually look kind of not bad. Then, I got to use my rip saw to rip out some trim boards. My saw wandered all over the place, so I got to spend some quality time with my jack plane cleaning up the sawed edges of my boards.

Planing is a good workout. It was below freezing in the garage, and I was working up a sweat by the time the boards were nice and straight.

Dovetails

In preparation for the imminent collapse of industrialized civilization, I have gathered together a small collection of hand tools. When the last head is struck from the last zombie with the last machete, the world will be rebuilt by hand.

In the aftermath of the great Zombie War, you may have a hard time finding a place to plug in your Sawzall.

Having the tools is one thing, knowing what to do with them is another. So today, after doing some research in books and on the YouTubes, I have cut my very first dovetail joint using only hand tools.

From what I gather, this is a pretty good result for a first attempt, and so I am rather pleased with my joint. I will keep you all posted as my interest in post-apocalyptic joinery continues.