Painting "Block" Holder

My wife has recently gotten into watercolor painting, and the paper she uses comes in a thing called a block.  There are times when she would like to have the block not flat on the table, but at an angle.  So necessity being the mother of invention, I made a block holder with adjustable angle.  It turns out that the "adjustable" part was a bit tougher than I thought it might be.

The completed project

I had some spare spruce/pine/fir from the potting bench project, so I used that.  The block is 9" x 12" and I'm making this thing 12" x 14".  I had remembered a book holder project that Matt Estlea did on YouTube and I thought I'd make something similar.

The two frames are half-lapped together.  The top one will get a horizontal member that holds the adjustable "kickstand" and the bottom frame gets a third front-to-back stile that has notches cut in it to receive the lower end of the kickstand.

Front frame partially done

Half-lap joints

The kickstand cross-piece has to swivel to allow different height positions.  So I experimented on some scrap with an integral round 3/8" tenon on one piece going into a 1/2" deep, 3/8" diameter hole in another.  This seemed about right, so I went with it.

Prototyping a swiveling part

Here's the real thing - parts connected with a bridle joint
and round integral tenons shaped with saw, rasp and file

The piece in my hand in the above photo is actually hollow.  I made it by plowing a 1" wide, 5/16" deep groove in a 6" x 1 1/2" x 1/2" piece, then gluing on a cover.  This hollowed-out piece houses a 5/16" thick inner piece that slides in and out to adjust the angle of the project.  I had experimented with a sliding dovetail mechanism for the kickstand, but wasn't happy with it.

Before gluing up the two frames, I mortised the bottom pieces for hinges.  It was much easier doing this when the parts were more manageable.

Hinges ready

The lower frame was straightforward - two rails and three stiles half-lapped together.  But I did add notches to the center stile to accept the kickstand.

The lower frame ready for glue-up

Gluing up - you can see the notches in the center stile

Some further touches included gluing on a 1/2" x 1/2" piece as a ledge to support the watercolor "block", drilling some holes in the inner kickstand piece, and making a small pin to keep that inner piece from retracting into the outer piece.

Here's the ledge that will support the watercolor "block"

The pin (made from a bamboo chopstick) and prototype hole

The pin in place showing how it prevents the inner piece from retracting

And here it is all together showing the range of angles it can be set to.  With four notches and three holes in the inner member of the kickstand, there's a lot of adjustability.

Maximum setting is 45 deg

Minimum setting (other than sitting flat) is about 15 deg

And of course, when not in use, it can fold flat for storage

I gave this project three coats of shellac, followed by a coat of wax.  I also added little vinyl feet on the the bottom frame so that it won't slide on the work table.

The tough thing about this project was trying to figure out where in the top frame to put the pivoting kickstand, and how long to make the kickstand parts.  To do this, I hinged together the two frames while they were dry-fit, the top frame with the pivoting arm not yet in place.  I clamped a 45 deg triangle between the frames to set the maximum angle and sort of looked where it might be best to place the pivoting arm.  I was really just guessing here, but it seems to have worked out.

One last thing.  The extending part of the kickstand has a chamfer top and bottom to create a point at its end.  Because that point enters the notches in the bottom frame at different angles, I cut those notches at different angles.  They're not perfect, and I didn't try to make them so, but they hold the kickstand nicely.

You can see the point in this photo

That's it.  For a simple little project, it sure had me thinking a lot.

Rehabbing a Small Incannel Gouge

Back in February I got this small incannel gouge at a tool show.  I cleaned it up and sharpened it at the time, but I didn't really put it through its paces until recently.  When I  sharpened it, I knew something wasn't right.  I just couldn't seem to get a good consistent edge.  It sat on a shelf until this week waiting for me to look more deeply into it.

New Haven Edge Tool Co.

The curve of the gouge is part of a 9/16" diameter circle (9/32" radius).  The cutting edge measures 7/16" corner to corner.  The handle is clearly a user-made job, and it had come loose while I was working on it, so I made a new one.

When I tried sharpening the gouge, something wasn't right.  The wire edge that forms would get too large and end up flaking off more metal than it should have.  One time, when I finally got a good edge, I tried to cut some wood and the edge just crumbled.

Result of using the gouge lightly.  Can you see the chip in the edge?

I figured the tool had lost its temper somewhere along the line.  So I annealed it by heating to cherry red and plunging into a bag of vermiculite to allow the heat to dissipate slowly.

My heat-treating set-up: two torches pointing at a steel can.
The gouge is stuck in the vermiculite at left.

After it had cooled, I hardened and tempered the gouge.  This was the first time I tried to temper a tool by watching the color advance towards the cutting edge.  When the edge got to a straw color, I plunged it into oil to stop the tempering.

You can see the colors here on the convex side of the gouge

After cleaning up the blackened and discolored steel, I gave it a good sharpening.  But I got an equally crumbly edge!  I'm aware that when heat-treating an edge tool that has a sharp edge, the thin cutting edge can get overly brittle.  So I ground back a couple of millimeters and re-sharpened it.  This time I finally got a good cutting edge without crumbling.  I tested it on some end grain walnut and finally didn't ruin the edge after just a single or even multiple cuts.

Testing on end grain walnut

When I was satisfied that the steel was in good enough condition to warrant a new handle, I got a chunk of cherry, sketched a pattern on some cardboard and got out the bungee lathe.  The shape didn't come out exactly how I had planned, but it'll be fine.

Showing the new handle and the lathe set-up

This was my first time re-handling a tanged tool.  To fit the tang into the cherry handle, I drilled successively bigger holes at successively shallower depths.  I had to adjust the hole a bit to get the gouge to align better with the handle.  I used the brass ferrule from the original handle, which had a 5/8" outer diameter and just shy of 9/16" inner diameter.  It was very satisfying when I tapped the handle home up to the bolster.

New handle next to the original

I gave the handle a single coat of BLO, which really brought out the color of the cherry.  Another tool in the arsenal.

Completed

Box for Plow Plane Irons

Until now, I've stored the irons for my wooden plow plane in a roll that gets put in a drawer.  The roll wasn't some multiple-compartment, fancy leather gizmo; it was nothing more than an old kitchen towel.  The irons deserved better, so I made a box for them.

For whatever reason, I often get stuck on design.  I looked online and found a few images of plow plane iron boxes.  They typically were vertical boxes with a lid that hinged to the side and each iron stands on end in its own slot.  While I liked that, I was having a tough time in my head with grain direction of the parts as well as methods of construction.  In the end I decided on a flat-ish box with a horizontal compartment for each iron.  The box has a sliding lid.  It's got 9 compartments; 8 for the set of irons I bought for the plane and an extra for the iron that came with the plane.

Two 10" long sides and a 6" long front and back

Dovetailed and dry fit

1/8" grooves were made top and bottom, starting 1/8" from the edges

Then (8) 1/8" dadoes were cut into the front and back

Cutting dadoes this small can be a real challenge, but it went much quicker after gaining some experience.  I used my homemade mini router plane to get the bottoms to depth.

The bottom of the box fits into the grooves in the sides, front and back.  It's just shy of 1/4" thick, so I rabbeted the edges to fit the grooves.

Getting ready to rabbet using the moving fillister

Here's the box's bottom rabbeted

Here's dry-fitting the bottom

1/8" hardboard dividers in the dry-fitted box

In this picture, you can see that I've cut down the box's front piece to allow the sliding lid to get in its grooves.  It started out the same width as the back for easier marking and cutting during the dovetailing and grooving stages.

Sliding lid

Two more details: the dividers were shaped to allow easier grabbing of the irons, and a thumb catch was carved into the lid to make the box easier to open.

The shaped dividers, with irons in place

Thumb catch on the lid

The glue-up was OK, though I initially messed up - even after a few dry-fits.  The order of putting the components together was key to get it glued up properly.  I gave the box a few coats of shellac on all outside surfaces, with none on the inside.

Here's one last detail.  The front edge of the box's top has a piece of wood glued to its end grain.  This hides the entry grooves and makes the front of the box look nicer.  I realize it a cross grained glue-up, but I've done this before on a similar box which has held up for about five years now.

Glamour shot

And with the lid partially open

Good little project.  The plow plane irons deserved a home of their own.  Now I just have to figure out where the box will live in my cramped shop.