woodworking
Jan. 19th, 2021 07:07 amWhen we reinstalled the bookshelves in our spare bedroom cum office, we realized we still had more books than would fit (some of them had been in piles on the floor, some in boxes). In particular, several boxes of math- and computer-related books retrieved from my University office when I moved out of it had been in the attic cum sewing-room for years, posing an obstacle to using the floor for laying out pattern pieces, and we saw this as an opportunity to triage and shelve them.
I've managed to categorize one box of them for giveaway, but the rest really didn't fit thematically with the wall of fiction. So![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shalmestere pointed to some floor space next to the desk and said "could you fit another bookcase here? And indeed, that space wasn't really being used, and would seem an appropriate place for computer-related non-fiction. So I took some measurements, went to Home Depot, bought some oak 1"x10", and started building a bookcase to exactly the right size and shape.
A few days ago I cut all the boards to length and checked them for squareness. Some of the cross cuts were pretty good, some needed a little fine tuning with coarse sandpaper, and some needed more work than I was prepared to do that day. Last night I got back to them and started in with a block plane, as I predicted that cleaning up the ends of these hard oak boards with sandpaper would take the rest of my natural life.
The plane didn't seem to be working very well, and I thought "maybe I need to sharpen the blade." I took off the blade, turned on the grinding wheel (one of the two power tools I own), and set to work. After a few minutes the blade didn't look any sharper, but it did look as though it had about half a dozen different bevel angles rather than one. So I pulled out the book on everything you ever wanted to know about hand tools but were afraid to ask, and read the section on sharpening plane blades. Naturally, the author does it with an oilstone rather than a grinding wheel; I figured this would take longer but couldn't produce a much worse result than I already had, so I started over that way. (The book also tells useful basics like which side of the oilstone is coarse and which fine.) And it produced a much better result: the bevel is now all at a consistent angle. But the proof is in the cutting: I remounted it on the plane, and it cut much better than before. So after an hour or so, all the boards were decently square and I could start putting them together.
Except that we want to be able to adjust the shelf heights, which means drilling holes at several heights on the insides of the uprights for movable shelf brackets. I measured and marked a couple of plausible hole positions, drilled a test hole in a piece of scrap to make sure the bit diameter worked for these shelf brackets, wrapped masking tape around the drill bit to keep it from going all the way through the boards, ... and found that both power packs for the cordless drill (the other of the two power tools I own) were dead. One of them is plugged in now, but this happens every time I try to drill anything, so I think I need a new drill. (The drill is old enough that I can't find replacement power packs for it online.) And, while I'm at it, more sharpening oil. And maybe a proper honing stone. And come to think of it, I need some plywood or masonite or something for the back of the bookcase. Some of this I can get at one of the hardware stores in walking distance, but some will require another trip to Home Depot.
I've managed to categorize one box of them for giveaway, but the rest really didn't fit thematically with the wall of fiction. So
shalmestere pointed to some floor space next to the desk and said "could you fit another bookcase here? And indeed, that space wasn't really being used, and would seem an appropriate place for computer-related non-fiction. So I took some measurements, went to Home Depot, bought some oak 1"x10", and started building a bookcase to exactly the right size and shape.A few days ago I cut all the boards to length and checked them for squareness. Some of the cross cuts were pretty good, some needed a little fine tuning with coarse sandpaper, and some needed more work than I was prepared to do that day. Last night I got back to them and started in with a block plane, as I predicted that cleaning up the ends of these hard oak boards with sandpaper would take the rest of my natural life.
The plane didn't seem to be working very well, and I thought "maybe I need to sharpen the blade." I took off the blade, turned on the grinding wheel (one of the two power tools I own), and set to work. After a few minutes the blade didn't look any sharper, but it did look as though it had about half a dozen different bevel angles rather than one. So I pulled out the book on everything you ever wanted to know about hand tools but were afraid to ask, and read the section on sharpening plane blades. Naturally, the author does it with an oilstone rather than a grinding wheel; I figured this would take longer but couldn't produce a much worse result than I already had, so I started over that way. (The book also tells useful basics like which side of the oilstone is coarse and which fine.) And it produced a much better result: the bevel is now all at a consistent angle. But the proof is in the cutting: I remounted it on the plane, and it cut much better than before. So after an hour or so, all the boards were decently square and I could start putting them together.
Except that we want to be able to adjust the shelf heights, which means drilling holes at several heights on the insides of the uprights for movable shelf brackets. I measured and marked a couple of plausible hole positions, drilled a test hole in a piece of scrap to make sure the bit diameter worked for these shelf brackets, wrapped masking tape around the drill bit to keep it from going all the way through the boards, ... and found that both power packs for the cordless drill (the other of the two power tools I own) were dead. One of them is plugged in now, but this happens every time I try to drill anything, so I think I need a new drill. (The drill is old enough that I can't find replacement power packs for it online.) And, while I'm at it, more sharpening oil. And maybe a proper honing stone. And come to think of it, I need some plywood or masonite or something for the back of the bookcase. Some of this I can get at one of the hardware stores in walking distance, but some will require another trip to Home Depot.
