Plow Plane

I made this plow plane a few years ago it’s proven to be a very useful tool. Besides using it for cutting groves like in a door panels it can be used in conjunction with hollow and rounds for making moldings. Check out the Blog “Musings from Big Pink” located on my blog links. The site has wonderful tutorials on the subject. 

The plane itself is made of yellow birch. I wanted to keep the character of an eighteenth century plane so I used rivets instead of screws to attach the skate to the plane body. I also made rivets for the arm of the fence. The rivets work real well. I have an eighteenth century plow plane that was made using rivets and after all these years they still hold the skate tight to the body.

I recommend making one! I feel this plane was easier than some of the molding planes I’ve made. Obviously buy a set of blades before you start then build the plane around the blades. I also suggest using wooden screws for the adjustment on the fence. I bought my threading kit from Woodcraft and have gotten a lot of use out of it on other projects. The alternative for holding the fence is using wedges but I find them a bit harder to adjust.    

Dominy Inspired Workbench

    I took advantage of the unusual weather we’ve been having in Nebraska (it got above 70 degrees on Thursday) to do some repairs and modification to my Dominy inspired workbench. You could say the bench is somewhat green because I salvaged much of the oak out of a trash pile behind a tractor supply business. The top started out 6 inches thick but due to continuing warping has been planed down to about 5 inches. What I like most about this bench is its weight as it doesn’t move around at all when I’m working on it.

    The vise has been a bit of a problem because as the top warped the holes the vice screws go in have started to bind. I fixed that problem this week by taking a long in cannel gouge and enlarged the diameter of the hole. Now it works fine at least till summer comes. It gets extremely hot and humid in the northeast part of Nebraska where I live and it plays hell on wooden tools. The vice does not have garters I don’t need them and this allows me to clamp odd shaped stock. The length of the vice is also nice because I can clamp long boards and plane them without any support.

    A few other features are the new chisel rack in the back. The bench is narrow and this does not leave space for tools I didn’t want a tool well but after dropping a few chisel on the cement decided the rack was the best alternative. I really like it! I also have an adjustable bench hook. You will note in the photo that it has a recess in the top so it can be retracted out of the way. This is important to protect your hands and stock. Also I forged a couple crude bench hooks. I really like them and don’t know what I would do without them now that I have gotten so use to them. The bottom shelf is where I store my planes when not in use.

The last few photos are of my pug security system she also doubles as a bench dog. The house buried in the snow is a picture from two years ago at this time. Winds in Nebraska are strong especially in the winter. We also don’t have many trees around here so that makes it worse.

Grease Lamp

Imagine how much we depend upon lighting in today’s world. We can go to any room in our house flip a switch and in an instant the room is illuminated. We have lights on our cars and on street corners. We have light on kitchen appliances and even power tools. We can go and do what we want when we want no matter how dark it is.

Imagine what life was like two hundred or more years ago. People’s daily routine revolved around the rising and setting of the sun. When night fell most all work stopped and the only light would be that of the fire or from candles or a grease lamp. Candles in the 18th and early 19th century were made from bees wax as paraffin candles were not yet invented. Living far removed from cities most frontier people would use other sources for light due to availability and cost of bees wax.

Animal fat on the other hand would be an item most frontier people would have. When animals were butchered their fat was saved and used for a variety of things besides eating. The fat could be used for soap making or burning in a grease lamp. The fat would be heated and rendered down into a substance called tallow. Tallow could be formed into a stick like a candle. A much easier method would be to place it in a grease lamp and burn it.

The grease lamp shown here is one I forged out of a flat bar of mild steel. Grease lamps are easy to make out of scrap and don’t require many tools. A person living on the frontier could have many of these at low cost. They don’t have to be fancy like the more refined Betty lamps they just have to hold a wick and rendered animal fat.

Grease lamps can be messy but they are a simple and reliable light source. You will notice there's a pick attach to the hanger of the lamp. It is used for adjusting the height of the wick. They do smell like what they burn so your place might smell like a steak house. I use beef tallow and olive oil in mine and it burns great.

18th Century Style Fore Plane

Just got done making a fore plane. I've never worked with beech before all my other planes have been yellow birch. Beech is a great to work with and I think easier than yellow birch.

The plane has a two inch cambered blade. I'm not real happy with the hardening job I did. I think that using torches on a blade this big is not enough heat. I will re-harden it in my forge and use a bigger oil bath for quenching.

The handle on on the plane is maple and the strike button is yellow birch. I copied the style of the plane from an existing antique. Even with the blade temper a bit off the plane works wonderful. Next I will make a small coffin plane and then a panel raising plane. All that will have to wait though as I need to paint the house:(

Wooden Brace

I've always wanted to make a wooden brace, but I could never find a design I liked. A few months ago I bought the antique brace pictured below from Jim Bode tools. The one below the antique is the copy I made. Its made from birch and maple and has a detachable pad. Currently I only have the spoon bit for it.

When I get old tools like this brace I always wonder who made it, where it traveled, and what it helped create.

Alone In the Wilderness

Anyone who has an interest in woodworking by hand and a yearning to return to the wilderness will love this DVD!

In 1968 at age 51, Dick Proenneke left life’s mainstream (if you can call living in Alaska mainstream) to live in a remote region of Alaska called Twin Lakes. He took with him some basic supplies and a few woodworking tools and built an incredible cabin alone, and by hand. Dick lived in the cabin alone till the mid 90’s.

In the DVD you will see Dick ripping spruce logs with a hand saw for lumber. He makes kitchen implements out of tin cans and a gigantic table from an enormous spruce burl. The part I liked the most was when he makes wooden hinges for his Dutch door. The hinges are made from the base section of a spruce tree. See the attached picture.

Buy "Alone In the Wilderness" you wont be sorry.

For more info see this site: http://www.aloneinthewilderness.com

Dederman Cabin

On May 23, 1866, 124 German Lutheran settlers representing 42 families set out for Northeast Nebraska from Ixonia, Wisconsin in three wagon trains. The group arrived a few months later on July 15, and laid claim to land about four miles north of where the North Fork of the Elkhorn River joined the main branch. The area is now the town of Norfolk Nebraska. (Home of Johnny Carson)

Interestingly enough most of the group built log cabins. Norfolk had very few trees at that time so the settlers had to traveled far to collect the logs. The cabin pictured here was built by Fredrick Dederman and his family. The Dederman’s lived in a dugout cave for two years as they worked on the cabin.

After retiring from the military I happened into restoring the cabin for the Elkhorn Valley Museum and Research Center. It was really a learning experience, a lot more work than I expected, and a great deal of fun. One of the neatest experiences was finding Mr. Dederman’s name written in a Germanic like cursive on top of one of the logs. An experience like this gives you a feel for what it was like for those early settlers.