New (Old) Planes and Plane Holder

I recently acquired a couple of old planes off of ebay.  The first is an old wooden rabbet plane.  This plane was in good condition when I bought it.  I just put some oil and wax on the wooden body and sharpened up the blade and it was good to go.

The second plane was a Stanley #60 1/2 low angle block plane.  I've been wanting one of these for a while.  It's basically just like a normal block plane, but the low angle allows it to cut end grain, which is nice for flushing up the end of a board from time to time.  It was also in good condition.  All I did to get it ready was to clean it, oil the moving parts, wax the body, and sharpen the blade.

I also built a holder for this plane to go along with my other metal planes,  I started by finding a piece of 3/4 inch thick stock and a couple of 1/2 inch thick pieces.

Then I cut the 3/4 inch piece down to about 1/8" wider than the sole of the plane.

I traced the shape of the front of the plane and sanded to my line on the disc sander.

Then I held up one of the 1/2" thick pieces that would form the sides of the holder and traced the shape of the front of the plane side onto it.

I cut it out on the bandsaw and then traced that shape onto the other side and cut it out.  I also cut off some of the excess length from the 3/4" base piece of wood to form the bottom of the holder.  This piece is sitting at the back of the plane in the picture below

Next I take the lever cap off and trace the tail end of the plane side onto the side.  I repeat the procedure with some 1/8" thick oak scrap I had.  This scrap of oak will hold the plane from falling out of the holder once it's vertical.

I cut out the oak pieces and stick them to the sides of the holder with glue and clamps

I also glue that bottom piece onto the base of the plane holder.

Once those are dry, it's time to glue the sides onto the base.

  

Then I drill and contersink a couple of holes through the base to hang the holder by and put a little linseed oil on it.

 

 Here is the completed holder hanging with my other ones.  It's the one on the top left.

Weekend Odds and Ends

I've been queueing up several small projects over the past few weeks that aren't big enough to justify a whole post themselves, and I'm going to throw them all together here.

Tool holders:

I made a couple of new tool holders.  The first one, for my coping saw, is made from a block with a groove cut in the top of it.  Then a much smaller block with a rabbet cut into the top is glued on the front to form a groove for the blades to sit in.

This holder for my broadaxe from my salvage trip is made from various bits of scrap spruce.  Most of the pieces are around 1/2 inch thick.

This funky little holder is for a couple of marking gauges.  It's just two pieces of scrap joined by glueing the horizontal piece into a groove cut in the vertical piece.  It also features a groove cut into the back of the vertical piece to fit over the rib of the metal shelf bracket you can see behind and above it.

 

Drawer Organizer:

The top drawer of my workbench has been an absolute disaster for nearly as long as it has existed.  It's my default place to just throw something when I need to clear off the bench, and finding anything in there has become almost impossible.  So I made a drawer divider out of some 1/4 inch plywood scrap and cleaned out and organized this drawer.  The pieces are just cut to length, then glued and nailed together with my 18 gauge brad nailer.  There is a little trick to getting these nails to go in straight into this thin plywood that I got from this John Heisz video.