A New Home For My Old Tools

One of my recent delights was receiving the Christmas Wish List from my daughter and son-in-law, with his portion including the desire for a hand plane. This was pretty much all the impetus I needed to begin the flow of items from my surplus tool inventory. So I selected a mid-century #4 and tuned it up for him and shipped it off for him to open when we were all together for Christmas. Mostly all it needed was to be wiped of and the iron tuned up, fortunately it did not need the full Accidental Woodworker treatment, just a brushing and wiping, a couple minutes on the lapping plate for the sole and sides, and perhaps fifteen minutes on the iron.

Since Lt.R (my new son-in-law) will be traveling for another decade as he and my daughter get transferred another couple of times at least in carrying out his duties as a military pilot, I could not go hog wild in shipping him tool tonnage. Instead for this initial effort I tossed in a set of small chisels and a surplus water stone, one that was 1000/8000 combination which should be sufficient to get him going.

While we were there we planned to have a sharpening session for me to show him how I sharpen, not necessarily the right way to sharpen. To get the ball rolling he and I scrounged a heavy glass plate and bought some wet-or-dry sandpaper at the hardware store. Then we got down to business. Lt.R is a skilled craftsmen albeit mostly in the metalworking realm and took to sharpening like a natural.

I now have a new mission in the shop, to identify his needs for woodworking tools and send them to him, being ever mindful that the selections must be judicious for function, volume, and weight. This will be a deliciously challenging task over the coming years.

But for now I’m just celebrating the fact that he can take an edge tool and make it sharp as can be.