Time to blog

I seem to have a lack of proper material to blog about these days. Erin is out of the house 2-3 nights during the week between church, class, and social activities. The other nights of the week I may or may not feel like doing anything other than veggin out or maybe tinkering in the garage. Sorry, that is just my life these days. I would love to say that my weekends are productive, but lately the drudge of the week has been carrying over there too. Planning and actually carrying through on those plans is a bit hard with 4 people and the associated activities. Maybe something exciting will happen this weekend, stay tuned.

I did receive a couple of goodies in the mail over the last week or so. I picked up a copy of The Stanley Little Big Book. It is basically a value guide with descriptions for Stanley hand planes. It's kind of like Kelly Blue Book but for planes. It looks to be a handy little reference book from what I have read thus far.


The second item is a nice little bench plane. It is a Stanley No.3 smoothing plane.

It is just a bit larger than a block plane, but heavier and has better handles. This is a WWII vintage made somewhere between 1942 and 1945. It has a heavier casting than the other era planes. Nobody is really sure why Stanley made them thicker during this period of time. I thought that being heavier might make this small plane a bit more stable. Time will tell on that. As you can see from the picture this one is in very good shape. Probably not used much. It even came with the tatters of what was left of the original carboard box. I am not a collector, but I will likely stuff the box remains away somewhere. At any rate it is a nice size plane and I am sure I can find some use for it. It may not be perfect, but it won't require much other than a sharpening to put it into use.

I lamented over my Jointer in And then it hit me. I contacted the supplier and after going back and forth a bit they actually offered to take the spiral knife cutterhead back in exchange for a Helical Insert Spiral Cutter manufactured by Byrd. It uses 38 cutter inserts. Stock it uses HSS, but carbide inserts are available. Looks something like this:

The cutters can be rotated when dull and can be replaced easily. Supposedly these are the cat's meow and Byrd is the top manufacturer of these. So kind of a win win scenario.

Okay, thats about all I got. Oh, there was also a frog! Last night I caught a decent sized frog in the yard. I will upload a video of Austin playing with it, it was pretty funny. Erin did get on my case about inhumane treatment of the frog since I let Austin chase it around the yard for a few minutes when I let it go. Whatever, it's a frog. Take care.