pickled carrots

i mentioned these a long time ago. they are awesome. but i kinda forgot to keep making them until my friend allyce sent me this picture:



i'm not sure what recipe she used (did i give her this one? i can't remember.) but this is the one i use (i don't even know where my recipe came from).

step one: prep 1.5 pounds carrots.

step two: prep spices. 6 sprigs thyme, 5 sliced garlic cloves, 1.5 teaspoons each cracked peppercorns, mustard seeds, red pepper flakes and salt.

step three: bring 1.5 cups of apple cider, 2 cups of water and .25 cups sugar to a boil. add all the spices and simmer for 10 minutes. cool slightly and add another .5 cups apple cider vinegar. pour over carrots:

step 4: cool for a while, then pack into jars, topping off with 2 to 1 vinegar water if necessary. store in the fridge. start eating after 3 to 5 days.

the recipe yield is 2 quarts, but i got pretty much all of it into this single one liter jar. also, remember that these are just quick fridge pickles. they need to live in the fridge and be eaten within, oh, two weeks.

marking gauge

this is another post about adding important elements to my toolbox (with the secondary goal of getting some much needed practice). so be warned.

it's essential as a woodworker to be able to mark lines repeatedly and accurately. all my life, i have accomplished this with a carpenter's square and a sharp scribe or pencil. and that's perfect for a lot of applications, except for when it's not. the main advantages of a gauge are that it cuts the wood fibers so that a cleaner cut can be made and that it can be used with one hand, thus speeding things up considerably. also, it's the kind of tool that all the old woodworkers, both european and japanese, would surely have. and when have a bunch of dead craftsmen lead you wrong?

i started with the same base woods as i used for the mallet- mostly because they are available, but also because now my tools match and that's kinda cool. after cutting the arm piece, i punched a mortise through the end where the blade will be set later. (the quality of cut made by the mortising machine is surely lacking but it is a hell of a lot quicker than cutting a mortise by hand.) then i cut a rabbet for the brass wear plate. for the body of the gauge, i hand cut a big ol' mortise which took quite a while as i wanted a tight fit that still allowed the arm to slide easily. here's a test fit:

next, i drilled a hole for the set screw and tapped it using a standard metal tap. i've heard that using a tap can leave a bad thread in wood and that a shop made tool is the way to go but i've never had a problem using this guy in hardwoods:

then it was just assembly. screw in place:

and the cutter that i ground from a piece of tool steel (i have since decided should be facing the other way, but that's easy enough to fix when it's held in with a wedge):

and there you have it.

i've already found some flaws with my design, mostly regarding the size of the pieces, but i will spend some time with it, and once i really know what i want from a marking gauge, i'll give it another shot.

bailey #5

using a good hand plane is a wonderful experience. a sharp, well tuned plane will lift a continuous wood shaving thinner than a sheet of paper with much less effort than you would expect. it will leave a near mirror surface without dust and with only a low, satisfying "purr" to be heard. a dull plane, on the other hand, takes all your effort and turns it into a ruined board so that you can use more effort with a loud and dusty sander to get what is still an inferior product. maybe that's why a good plane can run upwards of 200 smackers.

lucky for us, they've been making good planes for a long time and old ones can be found all over the place. a good friend of mine gave me his grandfather's #5 stanley bailey plane. it was in pretty reasonable shape when i got it- a little rusty, some paint globs on the handle, a chipped blade- but no cracks in the casting or anything like that.

 
a plane like this is definitely worth the repair effort. i used an article in fine woodworking #216 as a guide and now have a beautiful, functional, long lasting tool.

after removing as much rust as i could with naval jelly and then washing all the parts in alcohol to remove any remaining grime and moisture, i got to work on the blade:

this was the original condition. there is at least one big chip in the blade and the cutting edge has been rounded from sharpening. i ground down the bevel to get past the chip:

after some grinding, the chip is still visible on the right side. after a little more grinding, i set to work on the 1000 grit water stone:

the honing jig locked on to the plane iron was a great and rather inexpensive purchase. the wheel on the back keeps the blade at the correct (25 degree) angle. i spent way too much time working the blade down before deciding to take a step back and clean up the body of the blade on fine (320 then 600 grit) sandpaper. i then restarted the sharpening process on a 600 grit oil stone. after stepping back up to the 1000 grit water stone and finally the 3000 grit water stone, the blade was in pretty good shape:

i could have gone farther and gotten a completely flat, mirror finish. but i'm lazy and i gave up once i got to a rather flat, somewhat reflective finish. i then cleaned up the chip breaker on some sandpaper. before:

after:

the plane body was still quite flat, so i just lapped it over some fine sandpaper to take down a few high spots and remove some bits of paint. then i gave everything a light coat of camellia oil to prevent rust, tuned it up, and made some test cuts:

that's good enough for me!

chisel mallet

i've been working on building my tool kit lately- mostly because i want to be able to transition smoothly from my father's shop to my own work space when the time is right (i'm really hoping the time will be right around mid-may. but we'll see.) i'm also trying to get back to a heavier and more continuous project-load in all areas (both art and various crafts) as well as build and hone my somewhat rusty and limited skills. thus, i have started assigning myself little workshop projects. the first of these projects was a small chisel mallet.

i started with a little chunk of some very hard, heavy, tight grained wood that i scavenged from a friend's scrap pile. i bet it is teak, as he is a sailor, though it could be one of many exotic hardwoods that i don't have experience with (i try to stick to more local stuff when i buy material) (ed: he says it is probably ipe). for the handle i found a scrap of maple.

i cut a piece from the block for the mallet head and then cut a flared through-mortise by drilling out the excess and then bringing the walls to relative flatness with a bench chisel. the front and back of the mortise flare about an eighth of an inch from bottom to top- this will be important later. i cut the tenon on the handle on the router table and then cleaned up the shoulders with a chisel:

then the handle got a quick spin on the lathe and a couple of notches in the tenon:

then i mounted the head and drove wedges into the notches to lock the pieces together (remember that flare i mentioned earlier- that's so the tenon will have room to spread).

see-

finally, i cut the wedges flush with the tenon, rounded the bottom of the handle with the stationary disk sander and carved a maker's mark into the head:

in the end, it was a good little project. i really do need practice cutting clean mortises (did you see the tear-out in the second to last picture? i sure did) and nice, tight shoulders, and i haven't done much spindle work on the lathe. oh, and i got a nice little hammer out of it- just the right weight for controlled joinery cuts.