Hi, new to this forum.

 

Have been working on restoring hand tools and developing skills for a couple of years. Thought you might be interested in a project from last year. These Eleven Grooved Boxes are made, with the exception of preparing the original stock, entirely with hand tools. A big Stanley miter box, planes 4, 5 1/4, 18, two 45s, and a round side 606. Love them all.

 

 

 

Beautiful work, sir. I also work primarily with hand tools. How did you choose to make the splined miters? The 45 set for plowing? Just curious. Would love to see more of your work.

Jim, those are very classy, there is something to knowing that a piece of woodwork was made entirely of hand tooling. Did you rip the stock down and plane it to thickness as well? Beautiful work.

Woops just saw your statement, "with the exception of preparing the stock"

 

But still beautiful work. Since you did so much work you may as well rip the material with a hand saw and plane to thickness being as far as you go anyway. Love it all.

 

Beautiful Work! Love the spline detail at the mitered corners!

Some of the box material was resawn with a good old Disston rip saw. But I had trouble with that as the Cherry I have is cast off wainscoting that was milled to only 11/16. For the splines to be effective, the sides need to be minimum 3/8", the top and bottom at least 1/8". My ripping was not accurate enough to reliably result in that kind of stock so for most of the boxes I resorted to resawing part of the way on a table saw and finishing with the Disston. Underhill starts with prepared stock also and since it's 3 1/2" I'm bettng he got it from Lowes.

 

Now I'm thinking about making one of Tom Fidgen's kerfing planes. He's getting 1/8 veneer reliably. I think most of my problem though is too much set in the rip saw. The kerfing plane would also be perfect at marking where the box lid is sliced off. Bad Axe Toolworks is selling the parts. I have a wooden plow plane I might be able to remove the skate and install a Bad Axe blade.

 

 

Being afflicted with a bad case of CRS syndrome, I make lots of notes and photos during a project so I can recall what I did the next time. Some time ago I started keeping those notes on Flickr and Wordpress which for the box project resulted in this obsessive Blog:

 

 

http://wb8nbs.wordpress.com/2013/07/26/the-eleven-grooved-box/

 

 

I'm kinda proud of the jig that makes it easy to cut the spline grooves accurately. That's the part Roy says his students have the most trouble with, and after several attempts doing it his way with my 45 I agree.

 

 

Long live the Stanley 45!

 

Jim that is some awesome workmanship to those and with the hand tools. If you don't mind, when you can, please post a picture of the hand tools you used. I saw the numbers listed, but some people don't know them that well by the numbers.

The finish on those is also extremely well done. The grain shows well and they have a nice soft look to them.

 

 

 

Long live the 45 indeed! Still learning mine!

 

I do have a photo of most of the planes. I think all except the big #six I use on a shooting board. Left to rignt, Stanley 45 with half inch cutter, Stanley 45 with 1/8" cutter, A wooden Dado plane modified with a homemade fence set to cut 1/8 rabbit, Craftsman low angle block plane made I think by Miller Falls, Stanley #18 block plane, Stanley #4 with Hock blade, Stanley 5 1/4 with Pinnacle blade. Below is a Stanley 95 edge trimming block plane, miller falls rabbit plane #85 I think. For more details see the Wordpress link above.

 

 

Finish is outlined on the blog as well. Is Watco natural.

 

 

Nice stable lineup Jim! Love em all.

With the 45's what process is your favorite to use? Dado's, moldings, bead joints etc? Thanks for posting this Jim, way cool stuff!

That is a really nice blog you have going on this as well. I have one question, what is wb8nbs?

---

John Morris
The Patriot Woodworker

It's my Ham Radio call sign.

 

 

I mostly use the 45 as a plow plane. I've tried to use the beading cutters with limited success. I think Roy has only used them as a plow (grooving) tool also with the exception of the single bead he did in this season's Iron/Wood smackdown

 

http://video.pbs.org/video/2365021501/

 

 

I have all the original cutters except for the slitter blade. Spent quite a bit of time last year learning how to sharpen the hollow blades with sandpaper.  Made nice boxes for both 45s too:

 

 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/wb8nbs/sets/72157625592042661/

 

Wow!!!! Nice 45 box Jim!!!! Incredible!!! Just like off the factory showroom floor, you have inspired me now! My old 45 has all the cutters, all the parts, and it's original box with a faded label on it, but I would love to build a box for it like you did, and set my original box aside for safe keeping. Nice job Jim!

 

I saw that episode of Roy's smackdown on the 45. He favored the wood molding planes, and I can see why, the change over time between cutters as opposed to just grabbing a wood molding plane is much more cumbersome. But, you would need a hundred wood molding planes to do what a 45 can do. hmmmm, decisions decisions!

Pretty awesome. I'm all hand tools and restore a lot of them, many hundreds of years old, for the most part I'd have to agree with Roy that the multi stanley's don't have any soul.
Wouldn't mind having one but the prices have really sky rocketed on them and my hand planes along with my router plane bits and my beading planes have me covered. Heck, with a little patience I'm a magician with chisels anyway.
Here in N.E. Tennessee we have a huge Flea Market on 11e where you can find them at times but I always joke with the vendors that Ebay has wrecked our local sales, the prices always seem to be reflective. Yeah, the Internet is pretty evil at times.
Honorable Salute

Mark, probably 3/4 of my tools came from yard sales or estate sales. Have seen that Flea Market on TV, would love to go there.

 

Seems I have a bit larger box for the hand tools I have.

 

 

While I'm not 100% hand tool, I do use a few, from time to time.

Looks like I'm going to spend some great time here with you all.
btw, I was born in 1961, began woodworking in the 70's with just hand tools.

Somebody left two slabs of half inch Butternut on the free table at the local woodworkers club. I turned them into two more boxes. These are sized for pencils (7 3/4" inside). Put Minwax Chestnut stain on one, did not work out very well. The plain box in Watco natural is beautiful though, and smooth as the proverbial babys butt.

This is a detail shot of the walnut splines.

Wiktor Kuc has ported my blog on constructing these boxes to his woodworking web site.

http://www.wkfinetools.com/wWorking/elevenGBox/elevenGBox-01.asp

From the archive, love this topic!

Shot Jim Harvey and email, hope he comes back online.