Restoring a $3.00 garage sale backsaw find

The Craig’s List ad said there were some old woodworking tools. That’s it. No pictures, no heart-throbbing prose. Still, the garage sale was in an older neighborhood. And close by in case it was a bust. So I fired up my Chili-Red Mini and motored on over.

Five minutes and $5.00 later I walked to my car clutching a Disston 16″ backsaw, some brass screws and brass l-reinforcing thingies. The saw cost me 300 pennies. A bit of sleuthing on the Disstonian Institutes’ Website revealed that the saw was born between 1878-1888 per its medallion.

Here’s the prize of my quest:

As grungy as it looked, I was very happy overall. The top horn was split off but I figured I could find some apple wood to mend it.

A Horny Situation
In the interests of expanding my rehab skills, I decided to fix the horn. And to ensure an aesthetically-pleasing repair, I sought out two vintage handles. But that didn’t work out too well. The aged applewood didn’t pair well with either of the two donor handles. So I set them aside to wait for another handle repair. The horn would stay as it was.

 The Rehab
I gave the sawplate the usual rehab as I’ve detailed here and here.

Handle
After experiencing a “glassy” look from the use of polyurethane finishes I decided to go with BLO followed by wax. That’s it.

I like the natural feel of the wood in my hand. BLO + plus was works pretty well.

Sharpening
The original tooth line suffered from calves and cows so I had some evening out to do. I also tried adding some slope to my sharpening for the first time.

Here’s the finished rehab.

The Testing
This baby has some pleasing heft to it. I also like the longer, 16” length versus my 12” Disston backsaw. I find it easier to keep it true through the cut. And the longer length allows for a longer stroke through the work piece.

 

And here’s a look at the cut finish.

So all it took to add a nice user to my saw next was a five-minute drive, three dollars and two fun-filled rehab hours.

Not bad for a 125-year old saw. I wonder if 125 years from now (c 2138) some woodworker will get as much pleasure from finding this treasure as I did. I can see her driving up to the garage sale in her fusion-powered Mini Cooper (some things never go out of style.) “I found it among some other tools on a table,” she’ll say to her husband. “And I only had to hand over three $1,000 bills!” Her ever-supportive husband is sure to reply, “What a steal sweetie!”

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Building a chess-piece box that’s better than the pieces it contains

I’ve always loved playing games. As a kid living in Puerto Rico, my parents complemented the street Spanish I was learning with a Monopoly game in Spanish. I still have it today. By the time I got to high school, I was battling out Gettysburg over a monster, multi-map edition by SPI. Then it was off to college. My dorm room had no surplus space for games. But it did come with a roommate, Roy. So I picked up a cardboard chessboard along with some wood pieces to take my mind off the tough time calculus was giving me.

The pieces came in a wood box that was a bit crowded…

…and painted a terrible orange.

 I suppose that’s great if you’re a Bronco fan (which I am,) but not so great now that I’ve become a self-proclaimed woodworker. The quality of the chess pieces themselves pale in comparison to the memories they’ve given me over the last 32 years. So I decided to give them a finely-crafted home.

The old box got the once-over with my ruler. That scrutiny led to this plan.

 Materials selection & rough-cutting pieces

Classic French furniture draws upon a lot of beautiful mahogany. And if it’s good enough for Louis the XIV it’s good enough for my box. I harvested the side pieces from a piece of African mahogany I had left over from another project. It was ¾” thick so I resawed and planed the pieces to form two 5/16” halves, which were then cut to form the sides and front/back pieces.

For the top panel I resawed a 4/4 piece of maple and edge glued the pieces to yield a book-matched grain worthy of royalty.

Pre-glue-up details

My design called for everything to be assembled—bottom, lid, divider—for the glue up. So I had to complete many steps before the sticky stuff hit the edges.

With the pieces all trimmed to exacting size on a shooting board, I routed slots for the bottom (1/4” plywood) and the top panel (1/8” wide groove). The top panel got rabetted around the edges to give me a 1/8”.

The box has a divider to separate the black pieces from the white ones. I prefer this setup because it cuts down on the time it takes to sort and separate them for play. The divider is also made of ¼” plywood. I routed stopped dados in the front and back side panels to accept this piece, leaving a tinsy bit of room to accommodate the green lining that would adorn it. Next came a coat of Danish oil for the interior. Once that dried I applied the remaining green felt liner.

Joinery and glue-up

After dry-fitting the pieces, and tuning a bit here and there on the shooting board, I glued up the box. Once dry, I reinforced the butt joints by drilling 1/8” holes to take brass pins cut from a rod. These were glued in place with 5-minute epoxy.

After that, I sawed off the excess parts of the rods and sanded the entire external surface, progression from 180 to 2000 grits until I had a pleasing, shiny surface.

Final touches

The next step was to separate the lid from the rest of the box. I don’t have a table saw, nor do I trust sawing it off accurately by hand. So I put a 1/8” straight-cut bit into the router table and used it to make the kerf to separate box from lid. I took several passes, increasing the depth of cut each time until only the last 1/32” remained. A box cutter dispatched this last bit while also helping to dress up the edges to make them clean and true. A razor blade served to trim the green felt so that it was even with the top edges of the lower-half of the box.

After two coats of Danish oil dried, I attached cheap big-box-store hinges to join the lid with the box body, and a latch to secure the lid. I was a wee bit off, with the lid hanging over one side by about 1/64”, and under by that amount on the opposite side. So I planed these surfaces smooth, sanded them and finished them with Danish oil. The next day I applied two coats of paste wax.

The fun part came when I transferred the chess pieces to their new home.

Now they have a quality resting place to match the wonderful memories I’ve collected with them. And when I pass them on to my chess-playing nephew they’ll keep the pieces safe so the next generation of my family can make chess memories of their own in style.

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Restoring a depression-era Miterbox for a 21st-century workshop: Part 4-Restoring, sharpening and testing the saw

In the last post, you read about how I finally tracked down a soul-mate for my Goodell Manufacturing Co. miterbox. Next it was time to clean it up, sharpen it, test its cutting ability and add it to my tool kit.

Clean saw plate
The blade was in pretty good shape overall. I progressed through the grits 220-600 followed by a coat of paste wax. To preserve the etching, I only used sanding-block mounted grits 320-600.

Clean handle and saw nuts
I loved the aged patina of the handle and elected to keep it rather than sand it off. This got a good cleaning with alcohol followed by a wiping down with Howard Feed-N-Wax wood polish & conditioner.

Since I maintained the aged appearance of the handle, I decided not to polish the nuts and kept the 80+-decades of patina intact.

Sharpening
While the saw cut ok as I received it I wanted to give it a good jointing and filing of my own.

A query to the collected wisdom on the Lumberjocks “Saws, using collecting, cleaning and buying,” forum helped me settle on these sharpening specifications.

Rake: 25°, Fleam: 30°, Slope: 0°

A jointing was followed by shaping of the teeth. Then another light jointing followed by the fleam-imparting sharpening. A quick test showed that I didn’t need to add any set.

Test cut
The 28” x 5” Disston has some serious heft to it. It’s nice because the weight generates momentum to propel the teeth through the cut.

The length of the saw is perfect too because I can take a full back stroke without unseating it from the saw guide. Not so for my Ingersoll Rand miter saw which is about 23” long. It used to slip out of the saw guide repeatedly until I figured out that the hole in the top tip of the saw was to house a cotter pin to prevent this very thing.

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My two-foot-deep workbench sits flush against the garage wall. I wanted to be sure that the saw didn’t bump into the wall at its full extension, which it didn’t. The unimpeded clearance gives me liberty to take full-fledged stroke and enlist a large percentage of the saw’s teeth to make a cut.

I was in the middle of making a peg-board clamp holder. The three-piece lamination had dried and it was time to cut the ends to a consistent width. Sounds like a perfect test of my sharpening job.

Very nice! The 96 year-old saw slid silky-soft along the guide posts and left a baby-smooth finish.

And most importantly, the cut was square.

All in all, I’m quite happy with my miterbox, its restoration and the acquisition of a great saw to go with it. I have an excellent user that will serve my miter-cut needs for the rest of my life.

I think that a part of me will pass to it, just as the artisans of years gone by have added some essence of themselves. So that 50 years from now, a future lumberjock will wonder into my estate sale and hear a Goodell Manufacturing Co. miterbox whisper to them, recounting projects long-since done. And they’ll say to them self, “You’re coming home with me.”

And thus, the circle of woodworking life will be renewed.

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Restoring a depression-era Miterbox for a 21st-century workshop: Part 3-Finding a suitable vintage saw

In my last post, we talked about the restoration of my Goodell Manufacturing Co. miterbox. I also detailed the fabrication of missing parts, as well as the process of mounting the whole affair to a base. Next, I’m going to share with you my six-month journey to find a suitable soul-mate for my miterbox—a backsaw.

Boy. You’d think that tracking down a Disston miter saw stamped with a “Made Expressly for Goodell Manufacturing, Co.” etching would be a simple task, (***heavy sarcasm***.)

Well, that was my dream anyway. After six months of “no-dice” searching, it dawned on me that my hopes to pair the box with a reasonably-priced, era- and model-appropriate backsaw was too pie-in-the-sky-ish.

During those months I implemented Plan A by combing Ebay and tool-dealer sites for my prize. Plan B failed. Apparently miter saws with 5” under the spine aren’t as plentiful, nor being put up for sale as often, as they were 85 years ago.

Hmmm. Time for Plan B. Lie-Nielsen offers custom miterbox saws for the paltry sum of $195.

Well, it would be paltry if I was married to Kim Kardashian. But I’m not. So while I’d love the quality, beauty and performance of their saw, I was in no mood to pony up that ransom. Nor could I quite shake the fading hope of keeping the whole restoration vintage.

So I turned to Plan C…which was thinking a lot about what to do next. Odd. Now that I think of it, Plan C didn’t work too well either.

The stork delivers a bouncing, baby 28” x 5”, named Disston
After Plan C fell flat on its face, I was consoling myself by reading the positiverake.com woodworking blog. On it, I came across an article about Mike Semple, a renowned saw collector/chronicler and member of the MWTA. And that gave birth to Plan D-network with fellow woodworkers.

So I emailed Mike and asked him if he, or someone he knew, could point me in the direction of finding a 28” x 5” vintage miterbox saw with a “Made Expressly for Goodell Manufacturing, Co.” etching. And do you know what he said!!!

Nope. Don’t have an etching like that. But he did have a Disston 28” x 4 7/8” miter saw with a Millers Falls Langdon Miterbox etching on it he’d be willing to part with. And for what I thought was a very reasonable price. God bless Mike. Not only did he send a high-quality vintage saw my way, he did it before I could put a check in the mail to him. The man truly is a class act.

Less than a week later I was admiring this, perched atop my workbench.

The medallion dates the saw to between 1897-1917. That means that it predates my miter box by about 5-10 years. But that’s ok by me.

Here’s a bit of the saw’s history that he shared with me by email.

“I’m glad you like the saw. It is a nice example and those five inchers are not common. I think I had it about fifteen years and only used it once, when my son and I installed 6″ crown molding in my living room.”

With the saw getting used to its new home, it was time to spiff her up for use. And that’s what we’ll talk about in my next post.

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Restoring a depression-era Miterbox for a 21st-century workshop: Part 2-Restoration, fabrication of parts and mounting to a base

In my last post, I talked a bit about acquiring my Goodell Manufacturing Co. miterbox and researching its history. In this post, I’ll detail the restoration I did of it.

The restoration
When I was a kid, I was great at taking things apart—radios, kitchen appliances and such. But I wasn’t so good at putting them back together. Just ask my parents.

So before removing so much as a single bolt, I broke out my Canon PowerShot and snapped oodles of photos. That was my insurance policy against ending up with a useless doorstop.

Disassembly
My disassembly strategy was simple: That which could easily be taken off, was. Everything else stayed where it was.

I didn’t want to break anything, nor lose tiny pins or nuts nor itsy parts that might “appear” as inner workings of sub-assemblies exposed during the break down. Basically, that meant removing the saw guides, end slide hardware (clamps and thumb screws) and back panels.

Sanding
The saw guide posts got the royal treatment because they get a lot of up and down motion in their housings. That meant sanding them through 220-600 grits then polishing the steel on my grinder buffing wheel until they gleamed. The back panels got 150-400 grits while bolts and hardware got the wire brush. The bottom steel latticework enjoyed the dremel treatment. So did the left and right, grooved bed panels.

Masking & Painting
After preparing the surfaces, I masked the angle degree scale and anything else that I wanted to remain paint free.

The latticework supports, back panels and saw guide housings all received three coats of Rust-oleum semi-gloss black paint. The red accent trim was painted using Rust-oleum Sunrise Red. That’s the same stuff I used in the restoration of my Goodell-Pratt hand drill here.

The Reveal
After about 10 hours of effort, this is what my still-tacky-to-the-touch miter box looked like.

Accessorizing parts long since lost
This miterbox originally came standard with two accessory slides. To facilitate various angles when cutting moldings, a vertical post was attached to a slide that moves to and fro along the left-hand side groove. The right-hand groove accommodates a length gauge. Both of these were missing by the time I acquired it.

My idea is to track down a reasonably-priced machinist to fabricate these pieces. So far, I’ve collected the parts’ specifications from a post to a forum I did here. And I’ve made prototype slides out of wood and priced out steel online. But to really do this right, I’m going to need a specialist who works magic in metal. So that will wait for now.

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To hold the slides in place, the box came with a clamp, affixed by a knurled knob.

The left-hand slide groove was missing both the clamp and knob. So I purchased a knob and crafted a clamp myself from steel bar stock.

Mounting the miterbox for use
Using a miterbox entails all sorts of force, back and forth, not to mention the side-to-side shear that can be generated. So to prevent sliding I mounted it to a base.

But how should I do this? And what base is best?

For those answers, I queried the Lumberjocks “Miterbox of your dreams” thread. The collected responses set forth three potential options.

1. Mount the box to a bench or tabletop. While solid, this would essentially create a dedicated work station. And since I already have my Ingersoll-Rand miterbox bolted to the top of an assembly table, I decided against this.
2. Mount to ¾” plywood and add a cleat to secure it into a bench face vise. An intriguing option, but this approach limits the mobility and use of the box to a benchtop. Strike two.
3. Mount to ¾” plywood. A good solid option whatever the century.

A quick trip to the big-box store revealed that plywood is relatively expensive. So instead, I brought home a $3.00, 4’ x 1’ particle board shelf. From that, I extracted a base of about 1’ W x 2’ L. Rather than centering the box on the base, I moved it a bit forward. There’s still room to clamp it to whatever, but I get an additional few inches of clearance by doing this so the saw tip doesn’t hit anything in use.

Next, I countersunk holes in the bottom to accommodate the bolt heads and washers and mounted the whole assembly to the base.

To further guard against slippage, I affixed cupboard shelf paper (the rubbery kind available inexpensively at Walmart) to the bottom with a staple gun.

The shelf paper is so sticky that I can almost get away without having to clamp the box to my bench top. Almost.

Next up, I’ll detail the saga of finding a proper saw for the miterbox.

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Restoring a depression-era Miterbox for a 21st-century workshop: Part 1-Acquisition

During a rust-hunting expedition last summer, I picked up six saws and a miterbox. I didn’t really “need” it because I already had two sitting on shelves at home. Still, this one had all the earmarks of an industrial-age tool—definitely the early part of the 20^th century.

It spoke to me.

I could hear the whispers of craftsmen, shadows of an age long since passed, calling to me. I could feel them working grueling 14-hour days to eke out an existence in depression-era America. I was in a trance. The only thing I liked more than the history oozing from its patinaed steel was the $7.00 price tag. “You’re coming with me,” I muttered.

Once I had it home, I took a closer look.

 

A brand new 20^th-century manufacturer…to me at least.

When I first inspected the box, I couldn’t discern its pedigree. But after some initial rust removal, a maker’s mark emerged.

Goodell Manufacturing Co. Hmm. I’ve heard of Goodell-Pratt, but what’s this other company?

From what little I could glean from online sources, Goodell Manufacturing Co. was established in 1902 by Henry Goodell along with his son-in-law, Perley Fay. The humble affair manufactured miter boxes and drill chucks in a quaint one-building factory.

After Goodell’s death in 1923, William Pratt, the president of Goodell-Pratt, assumed the presidency of Goodell Manufacturing Co. Seven years later, the company passed into history with its acquisition by Goodell-Pratt in 1930.

Dating my miterbox
The front saw guide has an inscription “PATD. FEB. 9, 1904.” That tells me this specimen rolled out off the assembly line at least two years after the company was formed.

However, the 1904 patent illustrates sliding bar grooves that have flat bottoms.

My miterbox, by contrast, features a V-shaped sliding bar groove.

That’s consistent with Patent, 1,517,706 originally filed, January 27, 1923. So I would date my box to between 1922-1930.

Having determined its age, I turned my attention to making it a good user. So given the rusty, grungy condition of it, I decided to restore it.

And that is the topic of the next post.

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Rehabbing a Coffin Smoother For Use In My Shop

History, curiosity, performance. Those are the three things that motivated me to add a coffin smoother to my tool kit.

I got this plane at an antique mall in Scottsdale last summer. It had air conditioning and I reasoned that it was a great place to escape Arizona’s 113-degree oven.

One booth caught my eye and soon I held the smoother, noting the New York Tool, CO. maker’s mark plus the Auburn Tools Thistle Brand iron. At first, I was put off that the iron didn’t seat fully nor the wedge. Later, I would attribute this to shrinkage after 150 years, but at the time I was concerned that this was a defect that I couldn’t correct.

Still, I was drawn back to it because of its superb condition. Its surface sported nary a check, crack nor overly nasty ding. Sure it was dirty, but I was optimistic about bringing out the beech grain. The price read $25, but the ill-fitting wedge/iron combination allowed me to haggle the booth owner down to $20.00 via a call from the antique-mall operator. The moment I stepped back into the Arizona sauna, sweat began to bead on my…well everywhere for Pete’s sake.

But you wouldn’t know that from the smile on my face. No doubt it belied the delicious blend of anticipation and excitement I was feeling. A state of emotional intoxication that only woodworking tool restorers and children on Christmas morning can fully comprehend.

Isn’t she sexy?

Nice figure huh?

History-The plot thickens-New York Tool, CO.
As it turns out, the New York Took, CO. name was a trade name of Auburn Tool, Co. out of Auburn New York. The parent company operated between 1864-1893, ending its life like so many other fine tool makers when it merged with the Ohio Tool Company of Columbus Ohio.

From what I can tell, Auburn used labor from the local Auburn NY prison in 1864-1865, losing their contract in 1866 to a competitor. They won the contract back circa 1875-1876.

Apparently, there’s an 1867 Catalogue and Price List of Planes, Plane Irons, Rules, Gauges, Hand Screws &c. Manufactured and Sold by Auburn Tool Company, but I’ve had no luck tracking down an electronic copy.

So all I can really say is that this plane was manufactured between 1864-1893. It’s possible that it was made by convicts but given that they were used during only four years of their 29-year run, I’d say it’s statistically unlikely.

Rehabbing the coffin
Being new to rehabbing wood planes, I did a bit of research. Among the best resources were:

–Lumberjock superdav721. A fantastic two-part video series chronicling the steps Dave took to rehab his own coffin smoother.

–Lumberjock legend Don W, who details his transitional plane restoration process here.

–Lumberjock Dan, who showcases restoration finesse with methods on re-soling a wood plane and inserting an inlay to tighten the throat.

Overall, I’ve found that rehabbing woodies is straightforward. However it does require greater attention to detail at critical junctures. For example, flattening the sole is pretty easy, just sand it on a flat surface or run it over a jointer, or run your jointer over the sole.

Still, I’ve found that you have to be meticulously careful to remove only the absolute minimum necessary to make it a user. Otherwise, you risk widening the mouth so much that you have to either resole the bottom or inlay a piece to tighten up the mouth.

Cleaning
I seem to remember reading that Bob Rozaieski of Logan Cabinet Shoppe is a minimalist when it comes to cleaning beech planes. He uses soap and water.

That’s a good idea I think if you’ve got a plane in nice shape. Also, sometimes planes have stuff written on them in the hands of the shop keepers and merchants of the 19^th and early 20^th century. I’d suggest leaving those historic scribbles alone.

My smoother was pretty dirty, and there was no handwriting that I could see. So I queried some Lumberjocks as to their cleaning techniques and many of them combine beeswax with turpentine, then rub it into the wood using steel wool. Apparently the wax fills the pores while the turpentine removes dirt and grime.

I was too anxious to get started to track down some beeswax, so I cleaned the wood with denatured alcohol, then soaked the plane twice in BLO, letting it sit for 15 minutes each time before wiping it off and letting it dry over night. After that, I waxed the surface. I’m happy with the results because the plane has maintained a lot of the age and patina while showing off the beech grain.

Mouth adjustments
I read somewhere to use an auger bit file to dress the sides of the mouth. This worked very well because the shape of the file easily gets into the tight confines of the side grooves that the iron moves in. There was a bump in the groove near the mouth for some reason. The file took this out along with over a century’s worth of dirt. Note that I used a light hand during this operation, taking off the minimum necessary because I didn’t want to have to put it back on.

Iron and Cap
After a night in Evaporust, I scrubbed off the remaining rust then sanded the surfaces from 220-320 grits. Next, I flattened the iron bottom to a mirror finish through 2000 grit and reestablished a consistent 25 degree bevel. I polished the bevel too, to 2000, and then stropped the bevel and back a few times on bare leather (no compound).

Then I flattened the underside of the cap iron to 400 grit to mate tightly with the iron. After affixing the cap iron to the iron I noticed that the sides of both did not line up fully. The cap iron was hanging over one side about 32^nd of an inch and was shy of the other side of the iron by the same amount. Using a file, I filed off the excess (cap iron on one side and excess iron on the other) so that the cap and irons were flush. The edges were still a bit rough so I sanded the side edges together on the 150, 220, 320 grits affixed to marble slabs.

Flattening the sole
To finish the rehab, I drew a crosshatch pattern on the bottom of the sole with chalk and then sanded it on 150 grit paper affixed to marble. After about 20 total strokes, the sole was pretty flat according to my steel ruler. Then I finished with a few strokes on 220, and 320 followed by some paste wax.

The reveal

Here’s the after restoration shots.

Setting the iron
OK. I’ll be up front here. I had trouble getting a feel for this. In fact, I’m still learning the nuances of getting that iron tight, at the correct depth and at a perpendicular angle. But I have the new hickory plane mallet that I built to help me.

Here’s what I’ve figured out so far.

Figured-out Item #1: To advance the iron a very little, I tap the top of the wood wedge. This tightens the wedge-iron grip against the bed while simultaneously deepening the iron ever so slightly.

Figured-out Item #2: To advance the iron more, I tap the iron directly.

Figured-out Item #3: To back out the iron, I tap the heel of the plane

Figured-out Item #4: It’s easy for me to muck up the above adjustments and have to back out the iron and start all over.

Curiosity-How does it feel?
The coffin smoother fills my hands making for a beefy/stocky feel to my grip. It also feels quite secure without worries about slipping.

Performance-How does it finish?
This smoother definitely takes some nice shavings.

But will it replace my others? Probably not. At least, not yet. I’m going to have to fettle with it some more before I approach the glassy finish my LN #4 can sheer on cherry, or the gossamer, cloud-like shavings my SB #3 floats out. Those are my two, go-to smoothers. The LN for first passes and light planing work, then the SB (set for very-fine shavings) for the final goings-over.

Still, when it comes to history, those two fade in comparison to the rich life this 19^th-century plane has lived. Welcome to the family my Auburn Thistle Lady!

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