Thread: What are you working on?

Great looking standing fire pit. Bet its goi g to very nice in the evenings.

Originally Posted by sharptonn

THAT is coming.....The old office will become an extension of an indoor workshop. everything will get moved-around, reorganized. Lots of junk and dust will be gone. Likely some razors as well!

But then you will have touched everything and the clock would start over....

Oh crap, didn't think of that.


Tom just because you touch it to move it or send it to me, doesn't mean you have used it

Originally Posted by HARRYWALLY

We'll most likely only use a couple tanks per year.

Yup! A couple of tanks should be about right!

Originally Posted by Dieseld

Oh crap, didn't think of that.


Tom just because you touch it to move it or send it to me, doesn't mean you have used it

Well, TBH, there are some things.....I will just have to look and see. Sometimes we forget what we have...
Out of sight, out of mind?

I understand that Tom.

I just realized that it's been almost a month since I last posted. I've been traveling a lot for work, which really cuts into shop time. But it's been good while traveling to see everyone else's work.

Managed to do some quick things recently. One was this cute little 6/8" razor. It was pretty rusty but it caught my eye at an antique shop for two reasons: first, it has a Bob-Ross-style hand-painting on it, dated 1960! Just seems like someone put some time into it and while that person's probably long gone, I appreciate his or her work; kind of feels like I got a gift from a stranger. I took the blade out to remove rust and re-pinned it afterwards, but the scales were nice and straight already. Honed up nicely and it's a great shaver!





Second thing is some easy paddle strops I put together yesterday. I found some leather at an antique store and figured, what the heck, I'll try making paddle strops. They were very quick work, but kind of fun. One will get crox, the other will be clean. It's maple, sawn on a bandsaw and then shaped with files, and I did a little checkering file work for the handles.

Nice paddle strops! Those are fun projects, what did you use as adhesive? I've used contact cement in the past with good success. Cool looking handles there.

I used Elmer's waterproof wood glue for the adhesive (it's their copy of Titebond III). I would have used contact cement if I had any -- my last container got too old.

I did something a little unusual with these strops, which is, I put a layer of 3mm or 3/32" plastic foam under the leather. The foam is from a craft store; they sell it in sheets. (I'm pretty sure it's EVA, ethylene vinyl acetate.) I did this because I wanted the leather to have a little 'give' so I would be sure to get the edge on wedges I'd used a few layers of tape on. I have a couple of weird ones like my Henry Sears where the spine varied a lot in thickness and I had to compensate with more tape at the toe. In order to get an even bevel on some of these old guys I've used up to three layers of tape in spots and that gives me a slightly steeper angle on the bevel. So, I want my strop to have a little forgiveness when I lay those razors down flat on it.

Probably for flexibility a rubber cement would have been ideal, but PVA glues like this Elmer's are slightly flexible, and it was late at night and I didn't have any rubber cement, so... we'll see how it is when it cures.

Originally Posted by jmabuse

I did something a little unusual with these strops, which is, I put a layer of 3mm or 3/32" plastic foam under the leather..

There were some makers, Kropp comes to mind, that made "cushioned" strops. Similar concept. Should work fine.