Dovetail Delivery

I'm home for Thanksgiving and this is the perfect time to give my niece the dovetail saw I made for her.

I set up a pine 1x6 and had her practice some straight cuts then some angled cuts, about 10 or 12 of each.  It didn't take long before she got the hang of it.  She didn't always cut right to the line but she was usually parallel to it and always on the waste side.  Now it was time for her first dovetail joint.

I marked out three pins and turned her loose on them.  She did great.  I held the pin board while she marked out the tails with a pencil.  Some of the tail cuts were a little proud of the line but not bad.  Cleaning them up with a chisel wasn't difficult but it did help her understand the advantage of learning to cut to the line.

 

Not bad for a first try.

As I took this photo, I think she was sending a picture of the finished joint to one of her friends. 

Lighting Upgrade

When I first set up my shop, I didn't know much about lighting.  I bought the cheapest florescent shop lights I could find.  Although they did produce light, they were slow starting in cold weather and some of them buzzed like a swarm of angry bees.  I only bought a few at a time, as my perceived budget allowed, and I ended up with several different styles.  Some had decent size reflectors while others had smaller or no reflectors at all.

Dovetail saw conclusion

I finally got the rest of the video edited, so here is the conclusion of the saw build.

More on the dovetail saw

As I continue to edit video, here is part 2 of building the dovetail saw.

I'm still working on part 3 but should have it ready in a few days.

Dovetail Saw Build

I recently completed my first back saw with each and every component made in my shop.  It's a 10-inch dovetail saw with a folded steel back, steel saw bolts and split nuts, and a walnut tote.

I was able to locate plenty of information online about making and sharpening saws.  The more I researched, the more I realized that making a saw really isn't as big a mystery as it first seemed.

I was able to acquire most of the materials locally, with the exception of the saw plate and a saw file.

Saw rebuild

This is a saw I bought 10 or 12 years ago as part of an inexpensive set.  I was never impressed with the way it cut or the junky laminated tote.  Here I've given it a bit of re-purposing.  It has a 12 inch saw plate with about 3-5/8" under the back.

I retoothed it 14ppi and filed it to 10-degrees rake with 11-degrees of fleam.  This would make for a nice do-anything hybrid saw.

After multiple test cuts I changed the first inch to 30-degrees rake and the second inch to 20-degress rake.  So, rather than progressive pitch, it has progressive rake.  This made it much easier to start a cut.  I left the remainder of the teeth alone.

The tote is made from locally sourced walnut that I got from a friend and I used a pattern I downloaded from blackburntools.com.  This is the small size pattern since I was making it to fit my niece.  I reused the original brass saw bolts.

I'm still new to saw sharpening but I'm happy with the way it turned out and the way it cuts.  My niece was pleased with it as well.

Welcome to my blog

For the past few years I have been posting all of my hobby related stuff at my website www.mikescncshop.com.  I find that maintaining the website can be fairly time consuming.  Consequently, I haven't done a very good job of keeping it up to date.

I noticed that many of the articles I have on the website take on a blog-like appearance.  It seems like the logical next step should be to just start a blog.  I intend to keep the website as an archive of past projects but new items will be posted here.

Even though the original website url would imply that the site is strictly about CNC, I find that I have a lot of non-CNC content as I have a wide variety of interests.

Thanks for looking,
Mike