A Little Organizing

After a little clean up after Christmas, I was able to take some days to work in the shop. My cousin was even home from school and was bored at home so he came out and worked with me. We did some maintenance tasks and some shop cleanup. We waited for a good day that wasn't windy and put up 30 feet of gutter on one shed that had some down from ice and a windstorm. After that though, we started doing some projects. We built two roll around cabinets, one which the mini fridge would sit on, and one that would be a tool cart. The goal is always to minimize taking up floor space. The fridge cartdoes that by only occupying floorspace that the fridge once did. I used the bottom of the tool card to store my Dewalt planer, which was occupying floor space before, hence a net zero gain. The fridge cart needs drawers made and I'll use it to store hardware. The tool cart will have one drawer at the top, still giving clearance to get the planer in and out. The top of the tool card has 3 sided white oak rails, carpet cover, and you can see the framing square storage on the side. Two stainless japanese framing squares fit nicely in slots and are easy to get in and out, yet do not rattle. I'll definitly hang some items on the pegboard recessed sides soon.

The bit holder on top of the cart is meant for another cabinet or to go in the drawer.

Last winter I had made a sandpaper sharpening station. This station uses a piece of plate glass about 6"X36". Strips of pressure adhesive backed sandpaper are applied to the glass, and chisels are sharpened, starting with coarse grits and working to progressivley finer grits - 80, 150, 220, 400, 800, 1000, 1500 grit. With chisels that have been damaged, are not flat, or have now edge, most time is spent on the 80 grit, and less time is needed with each successive grit. After working with each grit, the tool is wiped off to preven contamination to the next grit. The paper used is also wisked with a brush or wisk broom to remove any metal or sandpaper dust and prevent clogging of the paper. My blue brush is one that was in the brick/mortar section of my local home center. Just have one that is stiff enough to brush out the paper. Once the first three grits have been worked through, finer paper is laid on top of those grits. These finer grits are NOT adhesively backed. they are held in place by the friction of the sanpaper base. These finer grits are automotive wet/dry paper that can be found in autobody stores or sometimes autoparts stores, and come in sheets that can be cut into 3 pieces. A razor blade holder(on the right of the station) is used to cut the adhesive backed paper to length and the fine grit paper if scissors are not handy. I use a red marker to color chisels and after lapping, I can easily see what has and has not been lapped flat by what marker has been removed. All of my framing chisels are antiques and are all TH. Witherby purchased off of ebay. Some were badly bent and were straightened by Jim Rogers partner in a forge. All of my chisel sheaths were purchased from Jim Rogers as well. My chisels are currently still being prepped with 80 grit but most are almost ready to move to the next grit. This sharpening station can be used for more than just chisels. I've used it to sharpen a hatchet, pruners, loppers, tune ships auger bits, and even sharpen the counter sink on countersing drill bits. Some of the small wood dowels and pieces of wood are used with the various grits of sandpaper to sharpen small or curved tool edges. This is a very effective sharpening method.

Chisels that are in good shape, you usually do not need to go back to 80 grit unless you damage or chip the tip or corner. a tuned chisel that is starting to dull just needs to be gone over from 400 to 1500. Exactly how coarse you start on depends on how it looks and your judgement.

If you've used your chisels when they are sharp and when they are not, you know the difference. You can shave and plane with a sharp chisel. You fight and cuss with one that is not., and you end up gouging when you don't want to.