Sanding Sharpener

      

      That same night, I wrote my first short story. It took me thirty minutes. It was a dark little tale about a man who found a magic cup and learned that if he wept into the cup, his tears turned into pearls. But even though he had always been poor, he was a happy man and rarely shed a tear. So he found ways to make himself sad so that his tears could make him rich. As the pearls piled up, so did his greed grow. The story ended with the man sitting on a mountain of pearls, knife in hand, weeping helplessly into the cup with his beloved wife's slain body in his arms.

Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

So some time ago I bought a strip sander from Lee Valley (I've covered using it for curved blades in earlier posts). During covid lockdown I somehow stumbled across the tormek.  Maybe I was thinking about buying the Tormek I don't remember really. Pandemic fog is a thing. 

Anyway I didn't get the tormek but I did buy the guide bar and sought about seeing if I could use it on my sander. 

Well I did get it mounted and was able to use it on carving gouges which are definitely not my strong suit when it comes to sharpening.   

I use the big gouge to trim the tops of the legs and ends of tenons etc.  I noticed the other day it had some pretty good nicks in it so I decided to see how fast I could sharpen it start to finish. 

I used four different grits in the interest of time...180, 600, 1000 and 2000. Normally I wouldn't go all the way down to 180 but like I said there were nicks. 

I didn't take any shots as I was just seeing how quickly I could sharpen from nicked to razor. 

The official time was 2:40. That's it. Another thing I like about the sander is there isn't any (well very little) set up. No stones to wet not paper to dig out. It's literally just set the bevel, mark it make sure it's hitting right and sand for 2 minutes. Done. You can see the results below. Plenty sharp for me. 

New Drill

 

We are torn between nostalgia for the familiar and an urge for the foreign and strange. As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known

Ballad of the Sad Cafe, Carson McClullers

Well my trusty Makita cordless drill finally gave up the ghost. The batteries died as they will and I was shocked to see the cost of OEM replacements so I bought a new drill kit. I actually went to get a new charger but ended up with a whole new Metabo kit on clearance. 

One reason I hung on so tightly to my old Makita is the small block of wood I had glued exactly in line with the drill bit. This allows me to use a pencil as a sight and in conjunction with a paper circle with concentric circles I can drill accurately thru a chair arm. 

But dead is dead so I needed to remember how I did this years ago. Turns out it isn't that hard. All that's needed is two lengths of ⅜ steel rod and a scrap of wood. 

Here you can see the view looking directly down on the pencil which will be in turn directly in line with the drill bit. 

Just take a ¾x1x1 block of wood and drill a stepped hole. The first hole only goes in a little bit maybe an ⅛ just enough to center the steel rod. Then drill a ⁵/16 thru hole for the pencil (the pencil needs a few wraps of tape to fit snugly). 

Then after cutting a couple blocks with a v groove cut in them chuck the drill rod in the drill and set the rear drill rod in the same cradle block and after putting a little construction adhesive on the block carefully push the rod onto the back of the drill. Then remove the rod and viola a perfectly centered block for a pencil bomb site. 

I actually did it to both my Hitachi drills as the new kit may end up on a job with me and it probably is a little overkill for the shop.