It isn’t perfect, but it is better than it was.

Tools To Make Tools

I finished my tool toot Friday. Yesterday I started work on another tool, a shooting board.

The tools I’ve made so far:

• Workbench – Functional, needs more bracing
• Winding Sticks – Used to visualize twist in a board
• Crotch board – A V notch in a flat board used to hold a board on edge for planing.
• A round-head mallet — used for hitting things
• A tooltote — to carry tools more easily

The tooltote is an exercise in barely good enough. There are so many mistakes made, and yet it still works. Not only is it functional, but I want to use it.

Once I clear space on the workbench, this will reside at the back of the workbench to organize the tools I need. The front section is large enough to hold a #4 plane, a block plane, and a #5 jack plane. The back section is a bit narrower. It currently holds my chisels. Marking and measuring tools and a rasp.

I will remove the rasp to make the tote more useful for other things, such as a marking knife, try square, and straight edge.

I need more Planes

I will start the search for a ‘fore’ plane in the near future. A ‘fore’ plane is the plane you use before all the others. This plane is used to remove lots of material rapidly. It is used in a way similar to a scrub plane.

I already have my #4 smoothing plane. I’m still tuning it. The bed isn’t flat enough yet which causes the corners to dig in a bit too much. My #5 jack plane needs some work on the iron to finish bringing it back to life. It is a joy to use. My #7 requires much work on the flats of the iron. Mostly because of rust issues.

Part of the care and feeding of these tools is to keep the soles and plates lightly oiled so they don’t stick to the wood. I’m working towards that.

This leads me to “specialty” planes. There are three specialty planes that are required for general work. The first is a router plane. This plane is used for smoothing the bottom of a hand-cut dado or other pockets in the face of a board. Think of mortising a hinge.

I found a mini version; I’m going to make a wooden version of a more normal size.

The next plane needed is something for smoothing shoulders or making rabbets. I might have found a cheap used version. If so, this will be a huge improvement in my game. In the same vein, there are rabbet planes that are designed to cut right to a shoulder.

When I’m next at the Fort at No. 4, I’m going to see if I can borrow one of the molding planes. A simple roundover or a fancier edging tool is what I’m looking for.

Cheating

If I buy a piece of 1×6 pine from the lumberyard, it will be smooth. It won’t be flat. It is likely to have twist. This means that if I’m lucky, after preparing the board I’ll have something around 5/8 thick, not 3/4.

My sawmill is providing me 4/4 rough-sawn lumber that is not smooth, but it is nearly flat and has almost no twist. Because of his quality, after preparing both faces, I will have a board 15/16 thick.

Because my target thickness is 3/4 (12/16), I have to remove nearly 1/4 of the wood. Turning wood into shavings is fun but requires time and effort.

So I cheat. I resaw my boards from 15/16 down to 13/16s. This reduces the handwork greatly.

Before I sharpened my handsaw into a rip saw I used the band saw to rip a board I used in my workbench.

Pre-drilling and countersinks

While it is unlikely that an #8 screw will split soft pine, it is always better to drill a pilot hole. The all-in-one version I’ve tried using isn’t working for me.

The nice thing about the all-in-one drill is that the drill bit is tapered, leading to a hole that is big enough to not grip the screw in one board but small enough to grip the wood on the far side, allowing the screw to pull the two pieces of wood together. The builtin counter sink acts like a depth stop and does leave a counter sink for the screw.

And it does a horrible job. I will be switching to doing this in three steps. First, drill the pilot hole, then drill the clearance hole in the outside board, and finally countersink the outside hole. If I do it this way, I know that all parts will be done correctly. Fewer stripped holes.

Screw Lengths

You’re doing it wrong! Yeah, that’s what I keep hearing in my head.

There are two types of screwed connections in normal woodworking. I.e., ignoring pocket screw construction. You can screw two pieces of wood together face-to-face, or you can screw face-to-edge.

When screwing face-to-face, it looks like the proper length should be the total thickness minus 1/4″. This gives the maximum hold without poking through the other board.

For attaching through a face into end grain, I should be using 2 1/2″ or 3″ screws. I didn’t know.

Nails

Period-correct nails are still available today. I picked up a pound of artsy-fartsy wrought iron rose-head nails to use on the 6-board box. But with what I just learned about screw length, I think I will pick up some two or three inch cut nails.

The only issue I know of when using cut nails is that you have to pre-drill to avoid cracking the boards. But you want the hole to be as small as possible to increase the grip of the nails.

Conclusion

Today I should finish the shooting board. This means I’ll be able to start my first 6-board box soon.

We are into the 2025 term. The Justices are on vacation, yet they are still issuing opinions relating to orders almost weekly.

This is another win for Trump. So far every case to reach the Supreme Court has been a win for the Trump Administration.

The left is having hissy fits.

The frustration in the Court’s opinion is highlighted here. “…squarely controlled…” is court speak for “We told you ungrateful incompetent rogue judges how to do this already! Don’t you make me stop this car!” The following does not differ in any pertinent respect: telling those same self-important, agenda-driven hacks that they were told how to do exactly this type of case.

Justice Kavanaugh wrote a concurring opinion. His opinion is that the Court should just grant certiorari and issue a full opinion.

The inferior courts continue to play games to get what they want. It is just stupid.

They keep losing, but it makes for great headlines.

So tomorrow we will hear about the great Justice Kagan and how she brought the heat down on the conservatives of the Court.

Vinegar is one of those items that should be in every prep pack. It’s useful for SO many things! What can you use vinegar for?

• making drinks (shrub, sekanjabin, switchel, haymakers, etc.)
• baking (you can use it to make a buttermilk substitute)
• all purpose cleaner (AMAZING on windows)
• preservation (pickles, meats, etc.)
• descaling (clean scale from coffee makers, kettles, etc.)
• removes stains (especially yellowing along collar lines)
• weed killer (on its own it’s okay, mixed with Dawn detergent it’s better than most commercial mixes)
• insect repellent (I’ve read this one but haven’t tried it)
• wound cleaning
• treating nail fungus
• cleans chrome and helps windows be no-frost
• soothes a sunburn
• great for disinfecting cutting boards, especially wooden ones
• white vinegar in laundry helps remove general stains

I’m sure I missed stuff, but man, we use vinegar all over the place in our house. From salads to shower drains (where it kills off those little irritating gnats that come from drains), it’s basically an all purpose item to have in your go bag.

But what if you don’t have vinegar on hand? Fear not, it’s not actually difficult to make!

Making vinegar from scratch can be such a sinch, and coupled with its indispensability in the kitchen, makes it a worthwhile endeavor. The process of getting to vinegar is simple:

1. start with a sugary liquid
2. let the sugars ferment into alcohol by way of our friendly local wild yeast
3. then with continued air exposure the alcohol will be eaten up by native acetobacter making it into vinegar. Boom!

An even simpler overview:

1. crush fruit in your fermentation vessel of choice
2. leave it be until it tastes like vinegar.
3. strain the solids. So easy!

From: Ferment Pitsburgh

Basically, vinegar is made from scraps, the stuff you’d normally toss in the garbage. You can use apple cores, skins, bruised stuff even. You can use old wine that’s already starting to turn to vinegar, too.

A very basic apple cider vinegar recipe that I have used:

Read More

DoJ is Pro 2A?

In a strange twist of events, the federal DoJ has filed multiple briefs with the Supreme Court supporting the Second Amendment-protected rights of The People. Amazing!

They have also done things at the circuit court level to close out future attacks on the Second Amendment.

It is a great time to be alive.

Sharp Yesterday Means Dull Today

My progress as a woodworker has been frustrated many times. The most common frustration? The tool is no longer sharp.

Yesterday, I was fitting the bottom to my tool tote. I’m sweating like a pig. It is dripping onto my glasses, making me even more misirable.

When I came in for a break, I told Ally that this is the first time I wished I was using my power tools. With very little effort, I could have set up the table saw and fitted the bottom in just a few minutes. Planing the ends flat and with the correct angle was painful.

Then, for grins, I pulled the blade out of the plane, did a hand touch-up, and then put the iron back in the plane. What had been a fine sawdust became end-grain shavings. Not more than 10 minutes later I had a great fit.

What Do You Mean Rip Cut Saws Rip Boards Better?

There is a scary moment when you first modify a tool to “fix” it or make it work for you. I think my first time was when I cut the shank of 3/4″ to JT-3 from 3″ to 1.5″. It worked perfectly, but cutting a piece off my new adapter? That was scary.

Modern handsaws are basically shit. Most people don’t know how to use them. Most people won’t even bother to learn how to use them. Most people would consider it too much work.

Older saws can be had for a reasonable price, but they are not ready to use.

The reason that new saws are so bad is that they are designed to do everything and to leave the best edge possible.

You can find old saws with 4 Teeth Per Inch (TPI). It was seldom that you found an old saw with more than 10 TPI, with a few being 15 TPI.

There is a good reason for that: the coarser the pitch, the faster the saw cuts.

Saw teeth have several parameters to them. The TPI, the angle of the tooth, the set, and the shape of the tooth.

When you crosscut , you want to sever the fibers. This requires a knife-like action. This is accomplished by putting a cutting edge on the saw tooth, alternating teeth. This cuts the wood fiber before removing the waste.

When you are rip cutting, you do not need that knife-like action. What you want is a chisel-like action. This is accomplished by having a 90° angle of attack that shears the fibers under the blade.

Modern saws are marketed to do both. They have a crosscut grind to the teeth, and they have a high TPI count. They do not do either type of cutting “well.” They do both adequately.

Thursday I took a new saw blade and “sharpened” it. That is to say I reshaped the shape of the each tooth to be that chisel profile. Then I tested it.

In soft pine, a full stroke was cutting somewhere between an inch and a half and two inches. Three or four times as well as it was cutting before the reshaping.

Obama Fights Back

The Obama sycophants, on command from the holy one, have stood up and screamed that the referral that Tulsi Gabbard made to the DoJ is just a distraction.

The argument is something like Trump is in the Epstein files. He doesn’t want you to know what we all know, that he is a kiddy diddler and a rapist. This referral is just to distract the MAGAots.

How do we know? Because Trump said he wasn’t in the files. He is lying.

How do we know he is lying? Because he was lying in his first term.

How do we know he was lying in his first term? The media told us so.

How did the media know he was lying? Because Trump always lies.

You can’t make this shit up.

Epstein

The world turns; now the Democrats are demanding the files be released.

There is a huge issue with the files, and every Democrat who is listed in the files will scream it to the skies.

The chain of custody has been broken because untrusted agents could have modified the content.

The files have been in the Biden DoJ for 3 or 4 years. Who had access, who could have modified the content, and who could have added or removed content? None of that can be trusted today.

For the Democrat caught with his pants down the same will be said. They will claim that the Trump Administration modified the content.

Obama Has Immunity!

Did he order these things done as part of his duties as the President of the United States?

No? Then he doesn’t have immunity.

Question of the week

Are you going to keep your Sig P320? Sell it? Buy them as they flood the market?

The Trump Administration has announced numbers for tariffs collected. The number is huge, something like $77 billion. Of course the panic vendors are now screaming that this means that Americans paid $77 billion in taxes. They also claim that the tariffs are causing the price of everything to skyrocket.

Let’s take the case of a lowly woodworker making a stool. The stool is made from two pieces of 2×4 by 8 ft.

Because the woodworker wants to up his game, he decides to use a different wood; he chooses Canadian maple.

A quick check on wood prices shows that hard maple is running $6 per board foot. The amount of lumber needed is 2*4*8/12 = 5.33 bf.

Or, 2*4*96 / 144 = 5.33 bf

At a cost of $6 per board foot, this means the cost of the lumber will be $32.

The woodworker uses a $25/hour labor rate. It will take him 3 hours to build the stool using hand tools and rough-cut lumber. That is $75 in labor.

There is another cost for the finish and time for finishing. We are ignoring that part of the equation. He also adds a 20% profit for the business.

Putting it all together, we get $32 for the wood, $75 for the labor, and $21.40 for profit, for a total sale price of $128.40.

Now say that there is a 25% tariff put on importing that wood from Canada. This would be $8 that needs to be paid to the US government.

From a bit of insider knowledge, I know that the $8 can be paid by the company shipping the wood, making the 25% come out of their profit. They might split the cost 50/50, or they can pass the entire cost on to the buyer, our woodworker.

Assuming our woodworker gets the entire $8 passed on to them, let’s see what that does to the cost of our stool.

$40 for the wood, $75 for labor, and $23 for profit, giving a total price for the stool of $138. With a 25% tariff on the cost of the materials, we see a $9.60 increase in the price. That is a 7.5% increase in the price of the stool.

The truth of the matter is that many products only use pennies of tariffed materials in their goods. Hershey increased the price of their chocolate recently. While the left is screaming “Tariffs!” the fact is that cocoa costs went up. The tariffs are a small part of the increase in costs.

The more value added in the US, the more the profit margin is the less impact tariffs have on your costs.

I do know people who are having a difficult time because of the tariffs. Their product uses a gizmo they import from China. That gizmo is not made in the US because there was no profit in making that gizmo here.

Until there is a US competitor for those gizmos, she is going to have to pay the tariffs on those gizmos. She has announced a very modest increase in the price of her goods to cover her increased costs. She feels miserable for doing so.

Regardless, our economy seems to be doing much better in 2025 than it was in 2024.

Behind the  “read more” are lots of photos, so if you’re not on a good connection, beware. This is also replacing FBEL for the week, because I don’t have the mental space to write about politics right now. I hope you enjoy.

This past weekend was the first of three at Maine Renaissance Faire. It’s a lot of fun, a TON of work, and you never know what the weather will be. This is my fourth year presenting at MERF (as we call it), and though three weeks is a LOT at a single site, I have been looking forward to it.

When I prepare for a faire, I need to worry about different types of things. First, I need to address my infrastructure. When I’m at MERF, I get to use the kitchen tent of the Brotherhood of the Arrow and Sword, which is my 15th century historical group. They’ve been around for a couple of decades now, and so they’ve acquired the kind of equipment that I can only dream of. They have many amazing looking tents, trestle tables, medieval lamps and tripods and clothing, things I’m still working at achieving and creating. I have better cookware than they do, though. 😀

Their kitchen tent is a massive wedge that opens on one side. In modern parlance we’d call it a Baker’s tent, though it’s much larger than any one I’ve ever seen before. It can be used with the front closed, making it a plain old wedge tent (albeit one large enough to hold six queen sized air beds with room to move around) or you can put the side up (as seen in the pictures below) to use it for vending out of. This is where I sell my cookbooks, and where my cooking demonstrations begin (they end at the fire, of course).

The other tents are the type used by various medieval military. There are some bell wedges (wedges with ends that bump out to give you a bit of extra room), some square and rectangular wall tents, and a round tent (the most usual used by the average knight, at least according to paintings). My own tent is a tiny wedge, just big enough for me and a small cot and my personal gear. It, too, opens on one side (just like its big brother, the kitchen tent), but it’s not tall enough for most people to stand under. I’m tiny (only 5’1″), so it works for me. I have to stoop a bit, but not much, and I can get dressed standing up by shoving my cot on its side. When I’m at an event with my sweetie, though, we need something larger. We’ve been staying in the “modern camping” area for the past few years, in a very modern pop up easy set up tent that accommodates our queen air bed. I wanted to be closer to my Brotherhood, though, and so my sweetie finagled a “long term borrow” of a 9×9 wall tent for our use from his sister. It is just large enough for our queen bed, our personal clothing bags, and one “gear box” each. Luckily that’s all we really need, as other items are either stored in the car (cash box, harp) or in the kitchen tent (cast iron, chairs, tables).

Read More

A friend I know has no health insurance. They have great medical care. They just pay for it out of pocket.

There are three different medical care facilities that they use. Their primary care provider, urgent care, and the emergency room. They have used the emergency room for broken bones and a burst appendix. Those bills have been paid in full.

The urgent care people collect in full before you leave the building. Those bills have been paid in full.

The lowest cost is using their primary care provider.

Recently they needed to get their medications out of hock. To get their prescriptions renewed, they have to visit the doctor once a year for an evaluation. No big deal.

The appointment was made; they went. The office visit was a longer one. Time to leave.

Stopping at the front desk, they asked how much. This required a wait while the desk called back to get the billing code from the doctor. Office visit, level 4 was the code.

This took an expected visit price of around $85 and bumped it to $110. They figured out why and paid in full. The desk refuses to mark bills “paid in full” or even “paid”.

Nearly a month goes by when a medical bill shows up. It is a bill for the visit.

The bill has a new line item, “complexity,” for $50. It has another line item for “medical,” and the price of the office visit has gone from $110 to over $200. In total, the bill has gone up by around $170. This is more than the original charge.

What happened?

Well, the first thing is that the medical group refuses to tell you what you will be billed for at the point of service. They know what was done, but they don’t “know” if there is anything else.

This means that the office manager, not the doctor, can change the code if they feel that the doctor spent more time than they coded. Some one in the backroom added a complexity charge because they saw their primary care provider, who considers the entire history. (Which I thought was a good thing, not something to be punished for with a surcharge).

The “medical” was tacked on because they took a medical survey which the doctor read before entering the treatment room.

The billing office claims that the change in price of the visit was because of an honest mistake.

In short, the bill turns out to be an extra $36.70 over what was paid at the point of service.

No wonder nobody knows how expensive medical care is. The doctors office makes it impossible to know.

I’ve been building. I figured we had all heard Another One Bites the Dust more than a few times.

Today, I put the vise on the workbench. This is a game changer.

The jaws are 11+ inches wide. The vise can open around 15 inches. It is a parallel jaw vise, meaning that the jaw presses against the apron with the same force from top to bottom.

The shiny metal disk at the left front corner is an aluminum planing stop I turned on the South Bend. The handle for the vise is 1″ hardwood from the local hardware store, but the endcaps I turned myself. And then I found my 1″ bit was in such poor condition that I threw it away after it drilled two holes that drifted.

The board at the bottom of the image, on the ground, between the vise and the bench leg, is a wedge. It keeps the vise jaw parallel. It is the fulcrum point of the vise.

There is one of my homemade mallets on the table. Two crap saws, one good saw, and one OK saw. There is a 50″ straight edge and my clipboard with the plans attached.

The next modifications to the bench are to drill 3/4″ holes for side board support and some 3/4″ holes in the top for different hold-downs. Because this is a softwood top and it is thin, I need to add blocking under whatever boards I drill.

I also need to put the braces on the front and a stop on the chop (the moving part of the vise) to keep it from twisting.

I will soften the edges of the vise jaw at some point, but for today, it is fully functional. I’m happy.

On the other hand, I just messed up my tool tote build. Ally wants the broken one, but I’ll make it all work.

I adore Scotch Eggs. They’re the perfect match of sausage, egg, breading, and deliciousness. Done right, the exterior is crispy and salty, the sausage properly cooked without being greasy, and the egg yolk EVER so slightly soft. I will buy them at Ren Faires as a treat, but here’s how to make them at home!

Ingredients:

• 6 cooked eggs
• 1 cup ground breakfast sausage
• whisked egg and breadcrumbs, for coating
• salt and pepper to taste
• frying fat

Depending on how cooked you want your yolks to be, this can be tricky. I usually aim for very soft boiled eggs, around 6 minutes in boiling water. For hard boiled, you want 8 minutes in boiling water. (Note: always put eggs into cold water in the pot, then bring the temperature up to boiling, and start your timer when the water reaches the boil.) To make them easier to peel, you can prick the bottom of the egg (the fat end) with a pin, which lets the water in and separates it from the shell. I’m told baking powder in the water also works. When your eggs are boiled, put them in a cold water ice bath for at least 20 minutes before attempting to peel them.

Remove the shells and rinse then wipe the eggs dry. Using your hands, pick up a ball of ground sausage and make it into an oval shape, flattened to an equal thickness throughout. Wrap this carefully around your egg and gently mold until the entire egg is encased in sausage. The harder boiled your eggs are, the easier this is.

Set the whisked raw egg in one bowl and the breadcrumbs in another. Dip the sausage encased egg into the whisked egg, then roll it in the breadcrumbs to coat it. Add the coated egg to a fry pan with oil and fry them until they’re golden brown. Turn them constantly so that they cook evenly. You want the sausage to be cooked through (and the egg will cook a bit further while you’re cooking the sausage).

These can be served as is, hot and crispy. Alternatively, you can split them in half and serve them with sliced tomatoes and a whisked mixture of equal parts mustard and mayonnaise.

If you ask a woodworker if they have enough clamps, the answer is always “no.” You always need at least one more clamp.

I’ve become that woodworker. I don’t have enough clamps. So I make do.

My glue of choice is Titebond III. This has a working set time of 15 minutes, it is an extremely strong adhesive, it is water resistant, and it is “easy” to work with. It comes in sizes ranging from your standard Elmer’s glue bottle to 55-gallon drums.

My local hardware and lumber store only had it in the pint size. I’ll be ordering more online shortly.

What I learned today is that I have not been using enough glue in my past glue ups.

Yesterday I went through almost half that bottle with an 11×48 three-board lamination. And I didn’t use enough.

The first board didn’t get enough glue, but I think it will be fine for what it is. The problem I ran into was spreading the glue. I had quickly made a spreading stick, but it just wasn’t working. I switched to using my finger and got better results, but I almost ran out of time working the first board in the sun.

Even a thin layer of glue is more than you expect.

I also took a page from the machine shop and looked up the specifics on the glue. It requires 100 to 150 PSI to properly work.

For those keeping track, that means we need to be providing over 65,000 lbs of pressure for proper use. A good clamp will provide 2000 lbs of pressure. This means that I should have been using 30 clamps on that one glue up.

I hate mathing.

Have a fantastic day; music tomorrow and SCOTUS on Wednesday.