Right Depth Holes

When we make a stopped hole, it is always important to determine its depth accurately. A classic method is to use a colored tape wrapped around the drill bit shank at the desired height.

The method works but the accuracy is questionable, being provided only to our eyes. Depth stops for electric drill tips have a cylindrical shape, held in position by a grain screw; even in this case the solution has not great efficiency, due to poor screw sealing on the helix and to difficulty of keeping the cylinder perpendicular to the tip axis.

In addition, these cylinders cannot be mounted on the auger tips we use with a  vintage brace. Of course there is other solutions: here it is a depth stop by Stanley; it consists of two parts that fit perfectly together  around the shaft and it can be easily adjusted by thumb screws for different diameter tips. Quick to assemble and easy to fine tune. Of course it has to be found on the net (ebay). 

 
 I am using the stop for drilling a blind mortise before removing the waste with chisels. I use to do that mainly when I have to make several mortises and where the mortise chisel and mallet job would be quite long. The result is guaranteed. 

 
There is only a downside. Unlike tape, this stop leaves its use traces on the wood. No fear: a block plane shot and everything will return perfectly smooth!

Squaring up a board

Rough boards need to be squared up before they can be used in our project. Here it is my method.

If the chipbreaker does not adhere to iron....

Is ......
likely that the thin chip is stopped between the two irons with
resulting plane mouth clogging. It is therefore necessary to carefully flatten the surface portion  of the chipbreaker that 
adheres to the blade and ensure a perfect fit between the parties. The problem is that sometimes (if not frequently) the chipbreaker is not regular and after the iron screw has been tight the
blade may show non contact areas, despite having flattened with
care.  Being soft iron, we can try to straighten the chipbreaker in the vice but this is a little difficult job. 
Another method is to create a burr on the chipbreaker edge, by which we can close any (small) residual gap. The procedure
plans to keep the chipbreaker with an angle respect to a flat surface on which we attack a sheet of 150 grit abrasive paper. Move repeatedly backwards until the metal burr forms. So
use a small screwdriver (electrician models have
the right thin measure) and pass it along the contact line between the two iron until they adhere perfectly.
The process takes few minutes!

   

Sharpening a Scrub Plane Blade

The  scrub plane blade has an arc-profiled cutting edge, with  more or less  marked radius according to the job required. This profile makes it more difficult to sharpening by guides so many people prefer sharpening it by hand.

I'm not very good at this job, so I searched for sharpening guides available that could serve the purpose. The Record 161 is a guide which is easy to find on ebayUK for few  pounds. It has only one central contact point (a rolling ball in the middle) and this permits to incline to the right and left allowing to follow the cutting edge profile easily.

The  blade is held firmly in place by a clamp screw that allows unrestricted iron orientation, useful even if it was necessary to sharpen skewed blade. The  dark side is that you have to ensure the correct blade position by hand.

For bigger curves the guide can be moved to the sides of the sharpening stone to allow for greater tilt, as seen in the short movie. The result was satisfactory with 35 ° bevel. To re-sharpen exactly to the same  angle I'll use a simple self made jig.

Scrub Plane

A simple tool for levelling rough boards and other jobs. It is a must in any wood shop.