• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

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  1. Dr.Al

    Like the ocean under the moon

    This morning I sharpened all the blades and did some experimentation with the plane. I mentioned before that I've done something a little unconventional on this plane (for reasons that will become clear later in this post) by not having a sprung cap iron. The usual approach with a cap iron is...
  2. Dr.Al

    Like the ocean under the moon

    Thanks all I'm not surprised that you don't like them; I've realised that my opinion of what looks good (e.g. the fact that I think slotted screws are ugly and that Torx and Allen heads look better) differs from a lot of people.
  3. Dr.Al

    Threading like Grandad

    Cold forming taps are still relatively common; I've got a few metric ones. They work very well. There's one in this picture of my M6 tap drawer (on the right, just underneath the empty pocket labelled "spiral point"): That photo shows quite a few different types of tap: Long series (at the...
  4. Dr.Al

    Threading like Grandad

    Fascinating, thanks for sharing Andy. I've never seen dies like that & I can definitely see the advantage of being able to adjust the cut. I've used serial taps before (which have three taps that each take a little material off to get to the final size) & they work really well, especially on...
  5. Dr.Al

    Like the ocean under the moon

    I've been away for a week so haven't done much with the plane. However, that does mean that the four coats of Mike's Magic Mix that I did before going away had plenty of time to dry properly. The sun was shining when I got back today so I took the opportunity to go and take a few photos. I'm...
  6. Dr.Al

    Well, that day didn't go to plan.

    Best of luck to your surgeon Mike :)
  7. Dr.Al

    Like the ocean under the moon

    I don't know: mine (which look a bit different to the newer ones) didn't, but then I've never felt the lack: they stand up okay on they're own.
  8. Dr.Al

    VCarving for the fist time

    Fantastic job Malc. They look really smart and I'm sure they'll be loved for a long time.
  9. Dr.Al

    Like the ocean under the moon

    They're called StopLossBags. It's basically a collapsible spirit-safe bag with a screw-top lid so you can store stuff without any air. They work well, although I don't expect they're any better than just using a wine bottle and a Vacu-Vin. For me they're good as they take up very little space.
  10. Dr.Al

    Like the ocean under the moon

    I was going to post this on Sunday evening but since we're still in a contract with Virgin Media for broadband and that means our internet connection goes up and down like a yo-yo, I couldn't. It's working again now, so... In the afternoon I gave the body a bit of a tidy up with card scrapers...
  11. Dr.Al

    So it is Spring now, for me it's still Winter

    The wild garlic is starting to come out now in the woods behind the house. Devilishly hard to get a photo, but I took a few on our afternoon amble. The area we walked in was mostly either bluebells or wild garlic, but the first photo showed a bit of boh:
  12. Dr.Al

    Like the ocean under the moon

    Thanks Mike, that's much appreciated. I think I've managed to get some good pieces out of them (albeit with a lot of epoxy and superglue).
  13. Dr.Al

    Like the ocean under the moon

    Over the last few days (in parallel with the work on the handle) I've been working on the front knob. The thicker piece of bog oak had a few cracks visible on the surface and I thought it was worth trying to deal with them before turning. Spoiler alert: this didn't work. My initial plan as to...
  14. Dr.Al

    Like the ocean under the moon

    I decided I couldn't live with the wonky thread on the screw so I made a new one with the thread single-point turned on the lathe. Here it is underneath the old one:
  15. Dr.Al

    Like the ocean under the moon

    The next thing to think about is the screw itself. I'd hoped to use another low-head M8 cap screw (like the one I'm using to hold the blade to the cap iron and the one I intend to use to hold the front knob in place). However, the longest one I could find isn't anywhere near long enough...
  16. Dr.Al

    Like the ocean under the moon

    That's an interesting idea and yes that'd probably work. Drilling accurately could be a bit of a pain (especially since the thread goes right to the edge and so I'd have to drill either side and would be drilling half in beech and half in brass). Another option I thought of was just to drill...
  17. Dr.Al

    Like the ocean under the moon

    This morning I cut the mortice for the handle. I started by marking out the pocket with a knife: The 10 mm mortice chisel did the bulk of the work... ... and a bench chisel (actually two as I already had the 16 mm and 18 mm ones on the bench so kept picking up a different one each time)...
  18. Dr.Al

    Sausages

    I think my other half would have grabbed a knife & given me a hand with the butchery.
  19. Dr.Al

    Like the ocean under the moon

    With the metalwork all done, it was time to get back to the difficult stuff: woodwork. A couple of weeks ago, I received a package from a very generous member of this parish (thanks @Mike G). In the parcel were these two bits of bog oak (home-made plane for scale 😉) All being well, these...
  20. Dr.Al

    Like the ocean under the moon

    Over the course of the week I've been mulling on the rather shabby job I'd done of hiding the screws from sight. For example, this was the photo I took of the front two screws: It's not great and I think I'll forever be wishing I'd done a better job of it if I don't do something about it...
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