A Japanese-style mortise gauge

To some of my readers, perhaps only the word "Japanese" makes sense in the title. No matter. All will be revealed in good time. A mortise gauge is a device used to mark out the sides of a mortise. A mortise, in turn, is a sort of trench excavated in wood. In this trench fits a similarly shaped peg, the tenon. M&T joints are as old as the hills. This summer's program includes a brand-new machine storage barn. I am determined to do it timber-framed. None of this nailing commercially milled lumber together. We will cut mortises and tenons and peg the whole thing together. It will last much longer than I will, unlike the ticky-tacky boxes they call "houses" these days.

Anyway, a mortise gauge is a layout tool. It will lay out the long sides of the mortise. If this is perplexing, stay tuned. We begin with the slider; it needs a rectangualr hole. I am using wood from a footstool that had fallen apart and been deconstructed.
What we have to do is cut a rectangular hole in a piece of wood. This is the way I did it. First, the dominant dimension in the scrap wood was 19mm, or 3/4" RGU. So we drill overlapping holes 19mm wide, and chisel out the rest so's it's rectangular. Behold the result above. A reasonable rectangle. Now we make the arms. These are nominally 19mm square cross-section, arbitrarily long. I could have made them much shorter than I did, but here is one of them:
That's one arm. The other looks just like it. In the middle there is an aluminum separator strip. This is to keep the arms parallel. The arms have to be planed so they are a tight, but not impossibly tight, fit into my rectangle. It is much easier to plane the arms than to enlarge the rectangle.
When both arms are in it looks like this:
Now, in the arms go the cutters. These things score the wood, and prevent tear-out when you actually make the mortise. I made them out of an old hacksaw blade (never throw good steel away). They were annealed, ground to shape, hardened and tempered. Then they were sharpened. Tedious but necessary. Now we had to make a slot in each arm to accept the cutter. I did this by drilling 1.5mm holes in a line and cutting out the intermediate stuff with one of my miniature mortise chisels (handmade, of course). When we got this done we had a respectable-looking Japanese-style mortise gauge.
There were some details, in which, of course, the Devil always resides. I epoxied copper rubbing strips to the inside of the rectangular hole, which, by the way, is itself a mortise. A through-mortise to be exact. The arms require wedges to hold them in place. But on the whole I am very pleased with my gauge. It cost nothing. Perhaps in the next episode I will cut a mortise for you to show you how it is used, and it has been used, and very, very useful it is. I have a commercial mortise gauge, but this one is much better, because it scores the wood instead of scratching it. This helps a lot; prevents tear-out when you actually cut the mortise. Next episode I may cut a mortise for you to show how it is done.

Rustoration Part two

I am very annoyed with blogspot. They cooked up a new, improved interface. It is no improvement. It is a nuisance. I did not want it. I did not ask for it. They forced it on me, and I am peeved. But no rants. Let's get on with posting.

This post continues the previous one. At the Willow thrift store, I picked up an old breast drill for the sum of $3.50. This baby was not in good shape.
For those of you who have not heard the term before, let me explain. A breast drill antedates the electric drill by, ohh, 100 years. At the right end in the picture above is a sort of tang. It is broken. But to drill holes in metal, pre-electric drill days, you put a drill bit in the chuck, at left, and put your breast or shoulder against the tang, putting body weight against the work. Thus you could drill, by turning the crank in the middle of the thing, holes in metal by hand. It so happens I already have a breast drill, in much better shape than this one. But I have plans for this baby. It was frozen solid when I got it, so in this case what you do is take it apart.
There it is in pieces. There, also, is the tool restorer's best friend, WD-40. Many people say that if WD-40 and duct tape were banned, Alaska would come to a standstill. "If it doesen't move and it should, use WD-40. If it moves and it shouldn't, use duct tape," goes the saying. The toothbrush in the middle is to scrape grunge out of the gear teeth. Save them old toothbrushes, I do. Notice the gears. The thing is geared about 4:1. One turn of the crank gives you 1/4 turn of the chuck. When you are drilling metal this is a distinct advantage. On wood it helps a lot with big drill bits.

So all this needed was to be taken apart and cleaned out with a toothbrush. Well, a dental pick is useful too. Observe it at right of picture. There are days when I feel like a dental hygenist. Only it's gear teeth, not people teeth.

I have plans for this elderly gentleman. As I said, I already have a breast drill in much better shape. The plan is to make ol' elderly here into a drill press, hand operated of course. Stay tuned.

Rustoration

For those of you who might be wondering about the title of this post, a word of explanation. Actually a whole paragraph.

Roger Welsch is an author who lives in Nebraska. At one time he was a regular on CBS Sunday show, AKA "the fat guy in overalls," his words and not mine. His real passion is old tractors. Since old tractors are also a hobby of mine, although not quite as intense as Roger's, we share a mutual interest. You can Google him easily. But the point is, Roger uses the word "rustoration" because he restores old rusty tractors. In my context I will borrow his word to denote the restoring of old tools.

All this began when I stumbled across a reference in a British blog, all about restoring old drill bits and braces. I happen to have a large collection of old drill bits, all of them in deplorable condition, at least for actually drilling holes. A collector would be outraged by my proceedings. Collectors, however , seldom drill holes with their bits. They put them in glass cases. Fie on that. I need to drill holes, and there is no room at Chalupy for glass cases. So I set out to restore the bits. Mr British recommended citric acid, readily available in Britain (not so much in the USA), plus methylated spirits (denatured alcohol to us yankees) plus dish detergent, known in the Isles as "washing-up liquid"). Hmm, said I. A weak acid. What do I have that is a weak acid? Why, vinegar of course. So I made a tray off of the bottom of of a laundry detergent jug, filled it with vinegar, and off I went. I left the bit in the vinegar for four days. I may not have citric acid, but I do have patience. The bit emerged much, much cleaner than before. I am sorry I did not take a picture of the original state. Color it old and rusty.
As you can see, the bit has changed color from very dark brown to something that looks like metal. Here it is, chucked into the Taig for further cleaning. I used the four-jaw chuck because it is impossible to chuck a four-sided object in a three-jaw chuck. The four-jaw is a very good chuck indeed, but it is a pain to set it up. The three-jaw Taig chuck is exasperating, but it self-centers. Sort of. Note my improvised cup center at the right. It is a piece of wood drilled through and cinched up in the tailstock. It holds the leadscrew, obviously impossible with a conical center. An application of sandpaper (the Willow hardware store does not sell emery paper, which would have been much better) the thing cleaned up quite nicely. It is badly pitted. On the pyramid that fits the chuck, we found the number "15," meaning that it is 15/16 inch or about 22mm. Old Gringo auger bits are numbered 4 to 16. The number indicates 1/16s of one inch, about 3mm.

Again, no "after" pic. I wasn't sure it would work. But encouraged by my success, I braved my way out to the shop and collected all my rusty old bits. I bought them for at most a buck apiece. Fresh vinegar and splosh! In they go.
Above is my ex-laundry detergent tray, filled with vinegar. Do use distilled vinegar for this gig; save your wine vinegar for salads. They had marinated about four hours when I took the picture. Be patient. As with other marinades, good things take time. Vinegar is really cheap. After about five days, the vinegar had turned black. Time to unmarinade. The bits looked amazingly like steel.
A bit of work with sandpaper and steel wool, and they are as good as new. Well, not quite. They have to be sharpened. The link will tell you how. The last step in the process is to spray the bits with Teflon lubricant.

There are alternatives to this process. You could use battery acid, which is sulphuric acid diluted, or hydrochoric acid. These are much faster than vinegar. Overnight, in fact. But they are nasty substances, and you have to dispose of them properly. When you live on the north end of a southbound septic tank, as I do, it is highly unadvisable to dump acids down the same. Poison. There is also electrolysis. I may post on this someday. For now I wil stick to vinegar.

Waiting for Spring

Breakup is slow this year! It snowed this morning, maybe a whole centimeter. Gosh. It is now raining lightly. It seems, this time of year, that the snow will never melt. But the other day we went for a walk. Perforce we go on the road, because the snow, even with snowshoes, is impossible. But off we go. Out the driveway. What's this?
Look! Behold! It's the ground. Bare patch in the driveway! Exciting way to start your walk. So. encouraged, we persevere and get on Beryozova, giving Basargin a C- grade. While we are on it, we note the snow has left the roofs. Why that isn't rooves, I cannot say. English spelling, she is erratic.
The unheated shed still has full snow on it. Today, by the way, I went to one of the unoccupied houses in the village. It is roofless -- collapsed by the snow. On we go. On Bery, we have a pleasant surprise.
Nice big patch of bare ground. We amble down Bery about a about a klick and a half ("klick" is, or was, USAF shorthand for Kilometer) and come out on Crystal Lake road. This is a paved (well, chip-sealed) road, so we expect some melting. Indeed:
We conclude that there are indeed some signs of spring. We return home and have a cuppa, reassured that Nature is really doing her job. It is we humans who get impatient.

Breakup!

The dreaded season, called "spring" in the lower 48 states has arrived. If not with a bang, then with a rumble. The rumble is caused by snow sliding off the roof. Our first hint was March 29. The snow came off the shop with a roar, I suppose. I didn't hear it, the house is surprisingly soundproof.
Note that the blocks of snow are piled level with the roof. This, of course, is why in Alaska we call it breakup. We look forward to it and dread it at the same time. The house roof is clear (but not the back porch, it is very gently sloped, nor the ridge on the roof). As I typed this there was yet another roar. I suspect we have lost some ridge snow. We have had a record snowfall, total 1.8m say. It has compacted, so there is less than that on the ground. How long will it take this stuff to melt? Can't say. Never had so much snow, almost 100% over previous norms. It will be "interesting," remembering the Chinese curse: "may you live in interesting times."

Yesterday's ski run convinced me that skiing is over. Snow awful for skiing, either hard ice or slush, and it all happened very quickly.

And today I went snowshoing instead of skiing. In places I went in over my knee. Especially under the spruces. I suppose that since spruce is an evergreen, the snow next to a spruce is not as dense -- leaves turn aside some sow. Maybe. All hypothesis. Anyway, here's to breakup!

The loop in the woods

We have had about 1.7 m or snow, and the skiing is just lovely. With all that snow, the brush is completely buried. You can go almost anywhere, so let's go skiing on the loop. This is a trail I broke out this winter. Since out here there are no groomed trails, you get to do it all yourself. The loop begins at home, of course. We have carved, with the ice axe, a place where I can clamber up on the snow. Our route lies off to the left of the picture, but first we must warm up.
And now I am on my warmup track. The track is the first thing I break out when the first snowfall comes. It goes around my back yard, so to speak. I go around the warmup track four times. In college, the track coach always made us do four laps to warm up. Vestigial memory. We pause at the far corner to see how the house is doing.
There is some buildup of snow where the chimney blocks the natural slope of the roof. Onward. We complete our laps, and branch off to the left of the first picture.
Now we are on the loop. We are headed roughly Southwest, up towards the ghost house. Notice the total absence of brush. It's all buried. Tough on the moose, but it is very nice for us. We now come to the first turn. In the woods, it is hard to ski in a straight line. There are always trees in the way. But this is the real SW corner of the loop. We pull off mittens so that we can operate the camera. Our hands freeze. No sacrifice too great for blog-land.
We note the downed birch at our right, hung up of course. Prime firewood candidate, and we may be able to get the tractor in there come spring. We are turning East, a longer leg of the loop. The leg looks a lot like the rest of the woods. But there are always interesting tracks. Maybe fox or weasel. Maybe even wolverine.
On we go. Eventually we can see Beryozova road. Halfway through now. Another left turn and we are running paralllel to Bery road. Going north now.
No tracks here. Too close for the road. Animals avoid us, and I don't blame them. So finally we get to the last left turn.
The house is but 200 meters away. Can't see it in the shot, center left. I had a shot of the final approach but deleted it by mistake. New interface to DigiKam. Not, in my opinion, entirely an improvement. Anyway, we do the 200m and we are home. It has taken us an hour, but it can be done with good snow in about 40 minutes. This time it took an hour, but we were taking pictures and pulling off mittens and the whole routine. Took a while longer. But the woods are really beautiful in deep snow. So you had a rest form the nanomill, and a nice ski in the woods.

The evolution of a moto-tool stand

Long ago I made a stand for my "Moto-tool" device. These were originally made by the Dremel Company, but nowadays there is a horde of imitations, asiatic and otherwise. Giving credit where credit is due we will call it a Dremel-type tool, or DTT. Dremel offers a huge number of accesories for this tool, and more are available elsewhere. But a DTT is made for hand-holding, and I often find this extremely inconvenient. Especially when I am grinding. So I made a stand for my DTT, which is nothing particularly noteworthy.
Just some scrap wood with a hole big enough to take the DTT. This has given me great service. Drilling the holes to acommodate the DTT is the problem. It can be done with a hole bit if you have one, or with an adjustable circle cutter, which is how I did it. The rear hole is split and held in with a bolt and nut. This is part one of the saga.

Part two was when I made the NanoX table. (It is now the NanoY table.) I did this mostly for the experience, and it's in my posts somewhere. But it moves on one axis. So we have a problem, because it is very difficult to put it just where you want it. Especially for grinding edges on my microforged tools.

Part three when I tried to make a milling vise for the Taig lathe milling attachment. This was a failure. The reason was that the holes were drilled imprecisely. When you are doing metal, you have to work to at least 0.1mm. In wood, 1-2mm will get you by. Another universe, as they say. Can't do it by eye. But I looked at it and thought that if I remade one piece it might work, not as a vise, but as a cross-table for an X-Y table. This is milling machine-speak. A mill is a bit like a drill press with a table on which you put the work. The work is shaped by a rotating cutter. The table can move left and right (X) and back and forth (Y). Milling machines also can move vertically and this, obviously, is Z. Sooo...
Here is the beginning of the thing. At the top, the NanoX table (which has become NanoY now) that I made last year. Below it is the new NanoX table. It has two pieces of square bar, in which a couple of pieces of hardware-store rod about 5mm fit. This came out of the failed Taig milling vise. The white plastic block is a piece of snow machine, found while I walk. I know not its original purpose, but it is some sort of synthetic and very easy to machine, so I drilled holes to fit the rods and tapped the center hole for the feed screw. The NanoY fits right on top of (new) NanoX:
And behold, I have both X and Y movements at the turn of a screw. The real problem in this megilla was scribing the centerline of of the square bar at left. I finally figured it out. I put the thing into the milling attachment of the Taig lathe. This gadget essentially turns the Taig lathe into a mill: X, Y and Z all there. I chucked a scriber in the lathe. With a magnifying glass I registered the scriber at the very bottom of the square bar. The Taig milling attachment has a handwheel that will give you "thous" i.e .001" or .025mm if you wish. Measure your bar with digital calipers. Calculate how many full turns + thou it will take you to get to the halfway point. Hint: 20 turns per inch. So one turn gets you .05". Horrible, I am reduced to RGU. I don't mind it too much. All decimals. It is the fractions to which (not to end a sentence with a preposition) I object.
You do that with the vertical (Z) feed on the Taig. Then with the Y feed (the cross-slide in the lathe incarnation) just draw the scriber across the bar. You have coated the bar with machinist's blue, maybe, but I use a sharpie felt-tip pen. Machinist's blue is hard to find in Alaska. You have a centerline as exact as you can get it. You are limited by the very marginal travel of the Taig cross-slide. Hey, it's a watchmaker's lathe. Don't be too harsh on it. It was made to cut stuff 1cm across. You are demanding 5cm from it. Tough on you. It is a fact of life. No matter what lathe you buy, it will be too small. But it worked. The X-Y feed table, bar a few details, is a done deal.

In machinist-speak, what I did was lay out holes by the coordinate method. Any time you think high school algebra was a waste of time, think of that. In these days of Computer Numerical Control, or CNC, it is even more important that you understand coordinates. If your avocation is poetry, you have no need of them. If you want to make things, then do brush up on coordinate geometry.

And now I have figured out (I think) a feed in Z. I will have made the DTT into a micro-mill. But I haven't done it yet. So I am holding my breath, and my posting, at this point. Stay, as they say, tuned.