Adjustable Mortise Gauge

With the wooden thumbscrew finished I turned my attention to constructing a much needed adjustable mortise gauge. The style I decided on has two adjustable beams with a nail inset in each end to act as a scratch awl. With this design I can adjust the width of the mortise as needed and I am only limited by the length of the two beams. Another feature I feel is a must when using a thumbscrew is the captive pad, it prevents the thumbscrew from marring the beams.


The wood for the gauge is from a white oak beam I salvaged from a barn that was built in 1867. It has a wonderful caramel color and is quite dense.  I am very happy with this tool.

When tapping threads in a piece of wood the same rules apply as making the screw. Use fine grained wood. Normally I would not use oak, but as mentioned earlier this oak is very dense and hard. I’m guessing it has to do with either the age or it could be that I counted 32 growth rings in the small section that makes the head. This tree had to be well over a hundred years when cut down in 1867.

The hole for the tap has to be straight and smaller than the diameter of the screw. If you buy a threading kit it should tell you what size drill bit to use. I just practice on scrap to make sure it’s the correct diameter and tap that before using it on my project. With this oak I used my post drill to make sure the hole was straight. Post drills are really more for metal, but I don’t have a drill press so I used it. When I made my slitting gauge I used an auger bit and just eyeballed the hole and got it straight. I think that was more luck than skill.

I used linseed oil to lubricate the tap and I ran the tap through it a couple of times. One side note; the linseed oil made the threads swell up and the screw would not fit at first. After an hour the wood soaked up the oil enough that the screw worked with no problem.

Below is a pic of my most useful marking gauges. This is strangely part of my bucket list. I want to construct as much as possible all of the tools of an eighteenth century carpenter and joiner like the Dominy’s. Then I want to build a small cabin using those tools and outfit it with the ironwork and hardware from my forge. Kind of strange I know, but I’ve given up on the idea of getting a job at a living history museum (there hard to find)  so I guess I will make my own. 

Screw Boxes and Wooden Threads

Finished Product

Threaded wooden screws can be incorporated into a multitude of tasks and tools. In an earlier post I showed a plow plane I constructed utilizing wooden screws for the fence adjustment so I thought it would be an interesting post to explain how easy they are to make.

First a screw box and tap is needed. The one shown here I ordered from Woodcraft several years ago. I also have a router driven set from Beall Tool that makes outstanding threads.  Next suitable wood is needed. Use fine grain straight stock. I’ve used hickory, maple, yellow birch, and even cotton wood which I don’t recommend. The best wood by far is persimmon and it’s the wood I used for this post.

Rough Blank 

The screw I made in this post is ½ inch diameter. I planed the wood down to just a bit above a ½ inch and cut the wood into the shape of a ‘T’. Next I carved the lower part of the T into a shaft. This really isn’t hard. You could use a lathe to turn out rough blanks and I do for larger screws, but for the small stuff this is the most efficient way. Don’t bother carving the head of the screw yet. If your threading doesn’t turn out you haven’t wasted any work.

 I checked that the diameter of the shaft is correct by testing its fit through the guide block on top of the screw box. Some wood can be made to thread easier with a lubricant like mineral spirits. The persimmon I used didn’t need it.    

Guide Block On

The first threading I did was with the guide block on. With this screw being short I needed to back the screw out and remove the guide block so I could cut threads closer to the head. It’s also a good idea to make your threads longer than you need, you can cut the excess off later.

Next all that’s needed is to shape the head. I will cover tapping the screw hole in a following post that will detail how I make my marking gauges. 

Guide Block Off

Butter Churn

My churn is 10" excluding handle by 5.5"

Butter is not a bad word! Unfortunately those crazy scientist’s and medical doctors say we should go easy on it. Use it more like a condiment or just don’t eat it at all. Tell that to our forefathers who slathered it on everything they ate.

Interestingly the production of butter goes back some 4000 years. Butter was a way of preserving the byproducts of milk much like cheese, and was a valued food source. Ever hear of Bog Butter? They still find this stuff buried in peat bogs in Europe. Some of it is edible after 3000 or so years. Now that’s what I call long term storage! ( I think I might have been served this stuff in the service)

Bog Butter

I've wanted to make a butter churn for a long time, but could never decide on a design. Then one night I spotted a neat table top churn on eBay. Not too big and probably 18^th century in origin. This was what I’ve been looking for. I never made any kind of coopered container before, but I really didn’t think it would be that hard. Wrong! I tried to do it with hand tools, but after two egg shaped failures. I decided to make a jig for my table saw so I could get a consistent angle and taper. The rest of the shaping was done with hand planes and spoke shaves. It took a lot of adjusting to get it water tight and even now I have to soak it in water so the staves swell up to hold liquid.

Original churn 

Making butter is not hard. All you need is cream, pasteurized is fine in fact I wouldn’t recommend raw cream due to safety concerns. Let the cream set out for 12 hours this gives time for the good bacteria’s to start producing lactic acid. The lactic acids weaken the cells of the milk fat and allows the butter to churn (congeal) easier. Basically the milk fat is contained in little vesicles that get popped like a water balloon by the action of the dasher. As the containers are broken the fat congeals and becomes a big mass separate from the byproducts referred to as butter milk.  
    

Everything ready to go the water in the churn
 is just to keep the staves tight it get dumped out
before the cream is added

Next you work the dasher at a gentle pace, about 12 min for my churn. After the butter fat has congealed you need to rinse it with cold water to get rid of buttermilk. If you don’t get rid of the buttermilk the butter will get rancid. In historic times a small amount of salt would be added to help in the preservation, but you really don’t need it if you’re going to keep it in the refrigerator. Your butter will most likely be white as the yellow in modern butter is food coloring. Natural yellow in butter is caused from carotene in the grasses the cows eat so it will depend on the time of year and type of feed the cows consume. It all tastes the same in the end.    

About 2 cups of butter from 1 quart of cream

The butter after it has been washed and salted

I know my instruction are vague, but it's just something you have to experiment with. If you’re interested in making something like this I recommend the book “How to Make a Coopered Bucket” by James D. Gaster. The third edition of Fox Fire has good information as well. Robert Krampf has a good tutorial on butter making on YouTube follow the link. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oropJD0CUxI

Ore to Axe

I came across this movie the other day produced by Ken Koons entitled Ore to Axe. I rented it at Amazon, but was so impressed with it I’m buying a copy. 

The film goes through the process of making an axe literally from the ground up.  It details collecting and preparing the iron ore, to making the necessary amount of charcoal. From there, a smelter is constructed and the ore is turned into iron. The smiths then take the bloom and forge it into an axe. Along the way they transform part of the bloom into steel for the axes cutting edge.

The movie is not a detailed step by step process, but it's well done and extremely interesting. I highly recommend it.  

Post Drill

Finished restoring an old rusty crud covered Champion #90 post drill for my forge shed. The drill was a mess and the whole thing was seized up. The guy I got it from told me it had been lying in his grandfather’s barn ever since he could remember so that’s at least 30 years. I believe the drill would have been made in the early 1900’s.  

 I tore the whole thing apart and scraped what dried crud I could and then used an angle grinder with a metal brush to clean up the rest. After a paint job and some lubrication, the drill works surprisingly well. These old post drills have some wobble in them but for what I’m using it for it won’t be a problem.  I also installed an adjustable chuck as I can’t find any bits made for post drills.  

Operation is simple, just put in your bit adjust the top wheel by turning it until the drill is in contact with the work and start turning.This type has a knurled knob up by the top wheel that lets you adjust the advance 1 or 2 clicks every revelotion of the handle. When the hole is drilled you flip up the feed paw and unscrew the top wheel to remove the drill bit from the work.

I also took a picture of my anvil and vice bench. Before the shed, I had been doing my blacksmithing outside. That’s hard to do in Nebraska because there is almost always a strong wind around 30mph. I will take more pictures of my forge shed once I get everything done. I can’t wait! 

Field Stripped Brace

I've had a few questions on how I made my brace pictured in an earlier post so I decided to provide some better pictures.

The one I made is a copy of an original that I believe dates to the early nineteenth century. The body of my brace is made out of yellow birch as well as the pad. I copied the pad from the original with its tapering octagon. In the future I think I will use hickory for the pads. The head of the brace is made out of hard maple because that was the only wood I had large enough to get the diameter I wanted. The head is held on by a friction fit wooden pin. I wouldn't make the pin permanent its nice being able to take it apart.

I love the brace and it works great. Make one there not that hard. The only hard part is finding bits. I recommend using only small bits like spoon or spur bits. You get too big and the torque will break the wood. Don't use auger bits save them for metal braces. 

Unknown Plane

Had this plane for awhile and never been able to figure out what type of plane it is, I've never seen one like it. Any help identifying it would be greatly appreciated. By the way It's not marked as to the maker or previous owner.

It has what I believe is its original butcher blade. At one time it had an adjustable fence on the bottom like it does on the side but someone has placed a permanent fence on it and filled the holes with putty. It has a nicker blade so I'm guessing it's some kind of strangely made panel raising plane. Don't know why it's made in a trapezoid shape and cant understand why someone went through all the time of making the throat opening raised like they did. Seems it would have been easier to leave it one solid block.