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Showing posts from December, 2016

I Got a Ray Iles 6 inch Froe for Christmas!

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Those early shake-makers were experts with the froe... Donald Culross Peattie, A Natural History of Western Trees , 1952 I like to split guitar bracing material from billets of spruce or Douglas fir, usually I use a 2 inch wide registered mortice chisel for the task, but the chisel doesn't work as well as a froe. During this past summer and fall I bugged a friend of mine to weld a piece of steel pipe to an old file I have to make a small froe for the shop. Either he was too busy or I was, the froe never got made. Then, lo and behold, there on the Tools For Woodworking website were three different sized froes made by Ray Iles! I emailed the web address to my wife and told her which froe to order for me, I was so very excited! On Christmas morning I unwrapped a wonderful present, a six inch Ray Iles froe. It's a nice froe, very much the length I need... and today I cut up a length of a hickory pick axe handle, chucked it into the lathe and made a new handle

Framing the New Workshop, Days 8 and 9

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For most people, setting up a shop for the first time is largely a matter of adapting to the existing facilities. Hideo Kamimoto, Complete Guitar Repair , 1975 I have so much work to do! Today, I finished nailing down the roof sheathing and got some trim up on the fascia. I would have put up more trim, but the local lumber yard had nothing but junky 1x8 pine, I was a little disgusted by the selection. The day started out partly sunny, the temperature was about 16 degrees Fahrenheit, by noon the temperature dropped to 12 degrees and a breeze came up making it too cold to work. Yes, there was a time in my life when I would framing in subzero temperatures, I work for myself now, no point in making work a brutal thing. As I write this post, it is 10 degrees Fahrenheit with heavy snow. The forecast calls for subzero temperatures tonight with up to one foot of snow! After getting the rafters up and into place, day seven, I got the sub-fascia up on the north and south elevat