Troy Kitch

My new keyboard set-up:

Here's a weird little project that took only a few hours and solved a unique problem. Here's what my computer keyboard set-up looked like before my project:

Backstory: I use an ErgoDox EZ split keyboard with an Apple trackpad in between (yes ... I use a trackpad and a mouse, for reasons). One problem: I'm pretty particular about my keyboard layout, so I like to have the angle of each side of the keyboard and the wrist rests just so. But each wrist rest and each keyboard half are free floating so they are always moving around. This is especially annoying when I need to move this stuff out of the way to clean underneath, or to use my secondary mechanical keyboard. Another problem: the trackpad in the center is too low, weirdly placed, and is just not great. So I came up with this odd thing:

This was an interesting little challenge to create using hand tools. But it was worth the effort. Now when I need to move my rather elaborate keyboard set up out of the way to clean underneath, or when I want more desk space for a non-computer task, or to switch keyboards, I can quickly set things back up with the exact spacing and angling I want. I start by placing the wrist rests:

And then place each keyboard half against the wrist rests:

And then place the trackpad on the raised, angled stand in the middle. The cable that connects the two keyboard parts tucks neatly under the trackpad. I wanted to keep this as minimalist as possible, so I made it so that the trackpad front edge rests on the stand, but it's angled so that the trackpad back edge rests perfectly on the keyboard edges. This is the minimal width to fit the trackpad and the spacing is just right (for me) for typing. It is very stable and feels solid.

So I'm going to use this for a few days and make sure I like it, then I'll finalize everything, glue it up, give it a coat of Osmo. Based on a few hours of usage, I think this will be a good solution. Everything lines up just so and it just takes a few seconds to get all assembled. It also looks much neater.

So I purchased the metal hardware to build a frame saw and kerfing plane from Bad Axe Tool Works. This was, for me, an intimidating project to build these tools using only hand tools. The plans I used are from Tom Fidgen's The Unplugged Workshop. The plane, in particular. Here's how that went.

I started with a small slab of Koa. It’s a special plane, so I decided to use some of the special wood I had bought when I had lived in Hawaii. I printed out the plan for the plane body at actual size and traced it out. I placed the plane blade here so I could better visualize what I was doing.

Here’s what it looks like all penciled out.

I cut out part of the body with a Carcase saw and my bow saw. Then came the scary part: carefully drilling out the holes for the special screws (forget the name of these) that would hold the blade in place.

You have to drill two holes on each side so that these screws sit flush. Not easy to do with with a hand drill, I discovered.

Here’s a View of cutting the inside handle hold with my bow saw.

And then some heavy and tedious filing to get everything down to the lines and smoothed out.

The threads in the plane body and the threads for the bolts are created with a thread cutter.

And here is how the screws are made for the arms. I used walnut because it’s pretty easy to work with, relatively speaking.

Rough cut for each wooden bolt. Then file them out to round them.

The completed arms with the bolts. These fit into the plane body like so, using the threads I created.

The most terrifying part of the plane build was cutting the kerf to fit the blade. It had to be perfect, so I created a jig to guide my saw and went really, really slow.

So I created this fence for the plane and glued it up, then realized I had made a terrible mistake. It’s way too thick. It needs to rest against the blade, but this fence hits the plane body and was a total fail. Not sure how I got to this point, but there it is. So what to do?

I could have started all over with the plane fence, but I decided to salvage it. So that’s why you see these interesting light colored things that look like joints that don’t joint anything. I installed a proper smaller fence arm. I tried to make the mistake look like a feature and not a bug. Here, you can see the blade is installed.

A view of the final plane from the another angle.

Here it is in action, cutting the kerf on a board that I’m going to resew with the frame saw. The wooden bolts lock the fence in place to get the desired line.

And that kerf gives you a good line all around the board to help keep the frame saw cutting true.

The result is resawed boards that are far better than I’d get than without using the Kerfing Plane.

So I purchased the metal hardware to build a frame saw and kerfing plane from Bad Axe Tool Works. The plans I used are from Tom Fidgen’s The Unplugged Workshop.

Here’s my documentation for the frame saw build.

Here’s a small project designed to hold a utility knife, presented as a going-away gift for a work colleague. It’s the smallest box I’ve ever made and was an interesting challenge.

Here’s the documentation:

I started with some ¼ inch walnut I had leftover from other projects. I used my combination plane to rabbit an edge, which will hold the base and the lid.

I cut the pieces to size with my carcass saw and then squared up the cut edges.

The dimensioning was all done by sight, using the knife case as a guide.

While I used the combo plane where I could, I still ended up doing a lot of fine chiseling, especially on the crossgrain little pieces.

Using the combo plane on such a small piece was a real challenge for figuring out how to hold the work. Here, I use the birds mouth and holdfasts.

Here are all the sides of the box. I didn’t do any fancy joinery, just rabbets and grooves.

The sliding lid of the box has an inset NOAA pin, where we work. This is a lapel pin, so I snipped off the back and removed the frog.

Creating the inset hole for the pin was a slow process, using carving tools and a ¼ chisel. I used a similar process to create a small thumb-sized divet on the other side of the box lid.

The glue up. Again, this is just grooves and rabbets. I figured it was a display box and wouldn’t be subjected to a lot of stress, so the glue would be adequate.

Here is the final box. The lid slides out. I tried to keep it a bit tight on the lid so there was a bit of tension, and then waxed the inside grooves. The walnut box is finished off with Osmo. Some of the edges are a bit rough, but I thought that was OK as it matches the rustic or rugged feel of a box that holds a utility knife.

I made a small serving tray to hold my teapot and cup. The design is from Fine Woodworking, which I adapted to use only hand tools. I also made a few other minor design choices that altered from the plan.

Here's an overview of the build process:

Here was a challenging project from a few years back that I neglected to post. It involves some difficult joinery.

This is a weird little item, created from a bit of walnut I had no idea how to use: I friend gave me some duck body and head blanks. As I’m not a carver, I’m still figuring out how to use these. For one duck head, however, I decided it was a nice shape for a business card holder. I made this for a colleague who transferred to a new job. As we work for NOAA’s National Ocean Service, it occurred to me that the duck head shape had a bit of an ocean wave flare to it. So that’s what I hope it evokes.

Woodcraft sells a simple Ulu knife kit. A while back, I picked up five of them because they were on sale for something like half off. Not much to these. Just a blade and some optional rivets. The only mildly difficult part is creating the tiny little mortises where the handle will sit.

What is a Sector? Here’s an excerpt from Lost Art Press, where free instructions and template are available to download:

If you haven’t heard of the sector, it probably means you aren’t an artillery officer or a ship’s navigator working in the 17th century. An invention attributed to the great astronomer Galileo, the sector was a calculation instrument comprised of a pair of hinged plates engraved with a variety of scales that – coupled with a pair of dividers – enabled the operator to calculate proportions, polygons, trigonometric and numerous other table functions.

— Lost Art Press

While I could have made one out of paper and laminated it, I decided to make one out of scraps of poplar.

That’s it. Not much to it, really. But what an incredible tool for laying out stock and accomplishing other dimensioning. Someday, I may splurge and get a professional model. I found this beautiful Sector from Acer-Ferrous Toolworks that is both pricey and beautiful. Here’s another lovely Sector from burnHeart.

I recently “upgraded” an old 2009 Macbook Pro with Elementary OS, a fantastic Linux distribution. This led me down the distro hopping path, exploring way too many different Linux distros on my primary 2013 Macbook Pro using Parallels.

Then it occurred to me that to try out Linux on my iPad, just for kicks. Turns out it works great, provided you have a tool to run virtual machines and a Luna Display adapter. Above is a screenshot of my iPad displaying Pop! OS via my Macbook. Maybe this isn’t the most useful thing in the world, but it’s pretty cool to use my Apple pencil on Linux.

As an aside, my forays into Linux have been so enjoyable that I’m strongly considering switching to a System76 machine when my Macbook Pro kicks the bucket. I hope to hold out until System76 launches their first in-house designed laptops.

I bought an Ergodox EZ Glow ergonomic mechanical keyboard in 2019 and I’ve grown to love it. It took me some time to adjust to a split keyboard, and even more time to nail down my personalized layout across three different programmed layers. The unmarked keys on the board did not take as much time to adjust to as I thought they would. I purchased the black model with Cherry MX Brown switches, and upgraded to Blue Zilent switches and gray/blue keycaps. Dreamy.

But after months of using this keyboard, there was one thing I could just not get used to: switching layers to get to the arrow keys. I never realized how often I use arrow keys until they weren’t easily accessible. My solution was to get a tiny six key customizable keyboard from TechKeys. It fits perfectly in between the two keyboard halves. In addition to the arrow keys, I programmed the top left and right keys with an extra shift and space, because it’s often quicker to tap the tiny board when arrowing around. I think it’s an amazing set-up.

Now I just need to get some custom keycaps for the tiny board. I’m currently using leftover keys from my Vortex Race 3. Why two mechanical keyboards? I have a standing desk station and a sitting desk station. I use the Vortex while sitting, the Ergodox while standing. Excessive? Perhaps. But the Ergodox is not the easiest keyboard to move around, so this works for me. Plus … I just love mechanical keyboards. It’s a bit of an addiction.

I made some handy bench hooks based upon the teachings of Sloyd (which I don’t know much about, but discovered is quite an interesting thing). Actually, learning about Sloyd may be the most interesting thing about this project. Anyways, these bench hooks are really useful to hold wood of different lengths on the bench for, say, cutting dadoes, or to hold up long pieces level when crosscutting on the hook I use for sawing, or for holding wood for paring. 

Over the past few months (July-September 2018), I created a display case to hold a fly rod and reel for the Potomac Valley Fly Fisher club, of which I’m a member. The fly rod/reel this case is designed to display is raffled off once a year. The person who wins the raffle gets to use it for one year. The prize comes with a small book to log fishing experiences. At the club’s annual banquet, the person who used it for a year gives a short presentation of his or her experiences. 

To get me started on this rod/reel case, I was provided with some photos of a similar box from a fly club in Pennsylvania. That rod case has been in circulation since 1963! I like to think that the display case I made will also be in circulation for many decades to come.

The following is a log of how I made the case. What this doesn’t show is how much trial-and-error was involved in the process. I spent a lot of time testing out different ways to hold the rod and reel in place, in particular. It also doesn’t show how much help, guidance, and inspiration I received from fellow woodworking members from the Hand Tool School.

So I needed a new shooting board. My old one was created over a year ago and I skimped and made the fence with douglas fir, which didn’t hold up well at all. Plus, it just wasn’t that well constructed and I wasn’t able to get great results with it. As I’m about to start a project which will require lots of shooting, I decided to do this now.

So I did a search for “shooting board designs” and came across this one, which is a plan I didn’t purchase (but the photo on the page was enough to inspire me). I made the base with good plywood and the fences with hickory lined with wenge. The guide is also wenge. I choose hickory because I have a lot of it left over from my bow saw project. I choose wenge, because when I visited the Lie-Nielsen shop and saw their demo shooting board, it had wenge incorporated in it, and the person working there told me that wenge is a good choice because it stays true. That was enough to convince me, and I happen to have wenge.

I thought I was going to have buy some parts to make a detachable miter fence, but then it occured to me that I already have a couple of featherboards for a router table that I NEVER use, so I could steal the hardware from that and use it for my project. By chance, I already had a couple of longer carriage bolts that fit perfectly:

So here is the completed shooting board without the miter fence:

Here it is with the miter fence: And here it is on edge, in storage position (added a groove in the front to snuggly hold the miter bits.

I did some test cuts today and it’s great. I’m quite happy with it. One thing about it: the board is smallish. Not a big deal for squaring an edge with long pieces because it’s easy to stick in some support on the bench. But when shooting miters on longer boards, the ends are going to hanging in the air of the table. So the way I’m dealing with that is with my shop bent. I didn’t glue up the top piece in my bent so it can be removed:

The “standard” height of it lines up with my bench top, but I can swap it out for different heights. So now I just need to make a new top piece that is a few inches taller for when I need to support longer pieces for miter cuts. As an aside, I made the bent this way because my other small bench in the shop is a different height, so I have a top part that matches the height of that for those times I need to support things on that surface.