Can't get my head wrapped around "Retirement"!

[Clockguy]

First of all, my old tires look fine to me and they lasted me for the past 73 years so any "retire" work is out of the question. I am a lifelong student of the fine art of working wood. I find much enjoyment and satisfaction in simply reading about other woodworkers' projects for the time being as I have lost most of my tools and equipment through a series of moves and storms and dishonest family members and so called friends. Now I am living in a small cottage with no outbuildings or nearby caverns to set up shop and start over again ...... so I read and take notes and hope for a better day in the future when I can smell the odor of good saw dust and feel the action of a well sharpened wood plane in my hands again.

I hope to return to this website as often as time will allow and maybe I will find a friend or two who also likes to generate shavings and saw dust.

[Jon]

Hi Clockguy - welcome to HomemadeTools.net

Sorry to hear you lost your tools. But good to hear you are gathering woodworking project ideas. Which are your favorites?

[Clockguy]

Thank you Jon, I am pleased that I stumbled onto this site. I have grown up with my dad making things in his woodshop and I have followed in his footsteps as I endeavored to learn the old ways of woodworking. I have a fair collection of wood tools with no motors and I value them above any new tool on the market today, overall. I was trained by an old Scandinavian woodworker how to properly flatten and sharpen wood tools and other edged tools such as axes, froes, and knives. I grew up a short walk from an old time saw mill that was owned and operated by neighbors of my parents. The man and his wife had the mill as long as anyone in the town could remember and, when they passed away and the town wanted to buy the land for municipal use, some people got together and tore down that old sawmill and stored it east of town in hopes that one day it would be rebuilt as a historic treasure of the town which dates back to 1765.

The sawyer was also a blacksmith, a trade of need for those who built much of their livelihood from scratch using iron and steel as raw materials. I have fond memories of sitting on a chunk of black walnut stump, it had to be almost 3' across, and watching Herman forging different tools and hinges and other needs of the homestead. He was such a unique and interesting man that i still remember more about him and his wife Bess and that old sawmill than I do about any of our other neighbors.

To give you an idea of what challenges me, I decided to build a woodworking bench, one year in my young life, using only rough sawn lumber and no conventional fasteners of any kind for assembly. Hickory pegs and mortise/tenon joints for the most part held things intact. I wasn't into any kind of ego trip so I neglected to take photos of the work so that was my pride and joy until it "disappeared" while stored at a "friend's" storage building when I moved South to Florida back in '01. I only have the moveable part of a leg vise, which I added to the bench using the cast iron ends of a pipe clamp and about 2' of pipe for adjusting the vise. Other than a few hold-downs which I bought later on when my ash bench dogs became a bit worn, those were the only metal parts on the entire bench.

I have most of my old hand tools with me and my son has a few that he has been lugging around for the past 15 years after I moved south. Most all of them are "road worthy" and ready to use. They are quite sharp, regularly oiled, and well taken care of.

So Jon, to answer your question, I guess I have so many favorites that I cannot pick a few out at this time. I am currently doing some utensil carving, wooden spoons, scrapers, a couple of kuksas for camping and hiking, and I am trying to get back into chip carving and deep relief carving. Wood is so rare down here, that would fill the need for grain and cured hardness and texture that I don't find anything locally to fill my needs. And I am on a rather tight budget since I am not working at present, so I do what I can with what I have and go on from there.