Logan Cabinet Shoppe

Being the cheap wood hoarder that I am, I have trouble getting rid of leftover scraps and offcuts from projects long since completed. I use plane shavings as packing material when mailing out boxes. They also make great tinder for starting the grill or fireplace so I can't bring myself to throw them in the trash. I'll go as far as to burn the excess shavings and put the ashes in the garden or flower beds rather than send them to the landfill, even though they are biodegradable. I still have a piece of 12/4 African mahogany from a project I completed some 6 years ago. The piece has a large diagonal split acros it's end, effetively making it useless for anything but the fire, but I keep holding on to it thinking that someday I'll find a use for this small offcut. Until that time is sits at the bottom of my scrap bin.

One very good use I have found for many of my offcuts is to make tools or small toys from them. Making tools for the shop is a great way to use up some of your small offcuts that would otherwise end up in the fire. I made these try squares from offcuts of different species just floating around the shop. The miter square was made from cherry offcuts of trim pieces from our kitchen remodel last year (the pieces supplied with new cabinets for use as filler strips between the end cabinet and wall). It's also very satisfying working with a tool you made yourself. The wood squares also have the benefit of not damaging your work should you drop them and they have thicker blades, giving a striking knife more to register against.

The adjustable bevel was a fun one as well. I knocked it out is about 40 minutes. I do want to make it sliding however so that it can be used as a drilling guide in addition to a marking tool, so this one isn't done yet.

The marking gauge is a good way to use up thicker but smaller offcuts. This one is based on an article by Dean Jansa in the Dec 2006 Popular Woodworking. It is very comfortable to use and can be adjusted one handed, a feature missing from most commercially made gauges. I have plans to make a matching mortise gauge with two pins on each side of the beam permantly set to 4 chisels in my kit. This will reduce time spent setting the adjustable pins on my current mortise gauge.

I'm still trying to locate a good source of marking gauge pin stock though. I'm not happy with the way modern HSS drill bits work. They can only be shaped on the high speed grinder and cannot be honed on stones or shaped with a file easily. If you know of a source of good pin stock, please let me know.

The plane adjusting hammer was made from scraps of purpleheart and oak. The purpleheart is extremely hard, however, because it is wood, it still doesn't damage my planes or mushroom the irons over like a steel hammer would. The panel gauge has a mahogany head and an oak beam. I took the pin out of this one as I made it from an 1/8" drill bit but wasn't happy with the way the drill bit performed so I need to replace it with something that can be shaped and honed by hand. The drill bits just don't work well.

The taper reamer was fun as well. It was designed by John Alexander. There was a lot of spokeshave work in this one as I do not yet have a lathe. It's obviously not perfectly round, however, it doesn't matter as it only serves as a holder for the scraping blade, which is made from an old handsaw blade from a broken saw. I made this reamer to ream the holes in Windsor chair seats, which I have not attempted to build yet. I did use it to ream the holes for the legs in the bench of my shave horse and it worked very well.

Speaking of spokeshave work, here are a couple I built from offcuts of bubinga. These were fun to build and a lot of fun to use. I have a Stanley #51 high angle shave but my shop made wooden shave is much nicer to use. The hardware is available at most home centers (#10-32 machine screws and matching knurled brass knuts). The blades were made from annealed 1/8" x 3/4" O1 tool steel and heat treated with a simple plumbing propane torch. The travisher still needs heat treating and tuning but I'm not at the point of making my chair seats yet (only due to a lack of time) so I have time.

So next time you have a limited amount of time in the shop, dig through the scrap bin. Who knows what kind of gem you might find in the firewood pile. The possibilities are almost endless.

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