Troy Kitch

I finished my large panel gauge project. It’s the first build I’ve done that incorporates other-than-wood materials (in this case, lots of brass). I cut the boom arm and body of the gauge out of a giant chunk of 8/4 bubinga. I cut two arms and two bodies so I have the parts ready to go to also make a smaller version later.

I had some issues with tear out on the boom arms, but a card scraper got me the rest of the way. Moral of the story here is that I need to do better at taking the time to sharpen my hand planes.

For this build, the boom arm slides through the body via a deep mortise. I decided to drill out as much waste as possible for the mortise, but ended up drilling the holes too close together and had a situation where the outer holes didn’t hold and “collapsed” back in to the previous holes I had cut. This meant I had to chop out quite a bit, so I ended up using a mortise chisel in addition to paring chisels to get it to the lines.

Still, the ending mortise came out crisp and fit the boom arm well.

Next up, I had to shape the head of the gauge to not only look nice, but to shave off some waste to cut the weight down while also shaping to fit my hand. This provided me the first opportunity to use my new bow saw to cut the curves out for the body. I used a French curve to get a shape I liked.

I smoothed it with rasps and card scrapers. Then used a tap to cut out a screw hole in the wood to fit a brass screw. This screw tightly holds the boom arm at different lengths. The brass screw I had was a bit long so I shortened it with the hack saw. Also shown here: a brass fence on the underside of the gauge to register against the wood I’m marking. This is held in place with three brass screws fit flush by countersinking holes in the brass.

I finished it with Osmo poly-wax. And here it is. One other detail I haven’t mentioned: I installed a ¼” brass bar in the boom arm so that the screw can tighten on it without damaging the wood.

On one end of the boom arm, I drilled a hole to fit a pencil. On the other end, I capped it with a small brass bar that serves to hold a marking knife. So I can use either side depending on my needs.One thing that I discovered during this build is that a card scraper works great on brass. My brass bar on the boom arm was a bit proud, so I scraped it right down with little effort. It’s also worth noting that the brass screws are so soft that you have to first set with regular screws and then take those out and swap in the brass. And that’s it. This project is another step in Semester One of the great Hand Tool School run by Shannon Rogers. Joining up with Shannon’s Apprenticeship program has transformed my woodworking. Going on my second year and I’m finally almost done with the first semester.

I now have a bow saw. This was a fun weekend project that involved only two mortise/tenon joints and drilling two ¼” holes. The rest of it was just lots and lots and lots of planing and then (mostly) filing down shapes with rasps. I got the hardware for the kit from Tools for Working Wood. I’m happy with how it came out.

The arms are hickory and the cross-piece and wooden catch (not sure what you call that small thing that keeps the string from unfurling) are koa. Here a few shots. I wish I had taken more photos of the shaping of the arms, as that was the hardest part and I didn’t even take one shot of it.

Here’s a shot of breaking down the stock.

Got the parts all ready here.

Once again, my Raamtang vise came in super handy for holding a lot of small parts.

And here it is!

I have a new fly tying box. The aspect of this that I’m most proud of is that it was made with handtools from start to finish, with one small exception which I’ll detail below. It took about two months from start to finish, working on nights and weekends. I created this because I often tie flies away from home and I wanted a case that was easy to carry and also contained all the essential hardware. I also wanted a box that quickly converts to a tying station.

Here’s the finished product. I used about $50 of hardware from Rockler for the handle and the catches. The box is walnut, lined with cork on the bottom. The top is framed by walnut with cherry in the middle. Here’s the front:

Here’s the back:

And here it is opened up. The raised L-shaped arm on the underside of the top is the tying station. There is also a swing-out arm with hand-made dowels to store/use 12 extra bobbins of thread, tinsel, wire, etc. The last “dowel” that you see in the front is made of metal. This metal dowel matches up with a rare-earth magnet on the underside of the base so it stays secured when swung in for storage.

Here’s the tying station set up for use with the tying vise in place, tools places in the holes in the L-shaped arm, and bobbins stacked on the swing-out holder. I also carved in three concave holes in the cherry base to hold various small tying items, and embedded a strong, long magnet on the insides across the front of the cherry base so that hooks are caught from falling on the floor. Lastly, I cut a shallow groove between the concave holders in back and the magnet in front so that if anything non-magnetic rolls (non-metal beads, mostly), they’ll settle in the middle of the station and not roll onto the floor.

Here’s a walk-through of how it was made.

I started out with a bunch of walnut tongue and groove boards I was given by a neighbor. I had a rough piece of cherry also, not pictured here.

I then drew up a rough plan of what I wanted. I set outside dimensions and the height of the box (it had to be big enough to hold all my stuff and tall enough to store and mount my vise), but I didn’t use a ruler to measure out anything else for the box. I  based every other cut by referencing from other parts.

The hardest (manual) work in creating the box was resawing all the stock with my rip saw and planing it down to final dimensions.

The bottom panel was glued up with hide glue (I used hide glue for the entire project).

Then I cut all the dovetails for the box frame and the grooves to house the bottom panel.

Here’s the box in the process of being dry fit.

And here’s the interior of the box all fit together, complete with the inner carrying compartment. The small compartment is sized to hold the fly tying vise clamp. The odd U-shaped bit and hole on the right side is custom-sized so that it perfectly fits my vise. The rest of the area is for tool storage. The outside L-shape is where the tying base mounted to the box top fits in for storage.

Then I lined the bottom with cork.

The next image shows how much the storage compartment holds: the vise, the vise clamp, all my tools, and a bunch of extra stuff depending on what I might need for a particular session.

Next, I started on the top of the box: walnut frame with mortises/tenons and a cherry panel. Here is the top completed, exploded view.

Here’s the one spot where I had to use a power tool: a table saw. I needed to cut out a really big space to hold the hidden magnet, but it had to cut in a way that the top was really thin so that the magnet had enough strength through the wood to hold hooks and other metal objects on the base. I didn’t try to do this by hand with such small margins. So I used the table saw to cut a deep groove, then used a ¼” mortise to square up the hole so I could fit the magnet.

After the top was completed, I then started working on the L-shaped tying station that mounts into the top. I used a Raamtang vise I made, ideal for holding small parts for shaping and planing down. here’s the L-shaped tying station top, the bobbin holder, and the arms to attach it to the base with the mortises cut out.

I cut out the dowel for the corner arm and the tiny dowels for the bobbin holder using a dowel maker from Lie-Nielsen.I also had to cut in a groove where the clamp fits on the tying station because I made it just a tad to short and there wasn’t enough space to tighten the clamp. So this solved that small error. I finished it all up with Osmo polyx-oil.

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In light of the new Ulysses subscription pricing, I’ve been testing out the Bear writing app for Mac to see if it meets my needs (it’s a lot cheaper for annual subscription). I like it. I’m also using the Unclutter app, from the makers of DaisyDisk.

With Unclutter, it’s really easy to create new notes on the fly. You just move your mouse up to the top of the menu bar, drag down, and you’re presented with a field to start typing in notes. I love this. It’s fast and I don’t need to first open an app. As an aside, Unclutter presents three panes: one holds clipboard items, one stores files, and one is for jotting down quick notes. It’s very handy. But this post is just about the notes pane, which I tend to use the majority of the time.

And the majority of the time, I’m typing in notes that I only need to maintain for a short time. Say, for instance, when I’m on a call and want to quickly log some notes. Those notes remain within Unclutter until I’m done with them, then I delete them.

But on occasion, I want a new note to be copied over to the Bear app. Bear is where I hold longer-term notes. Here’s a very easy way to do that using the Hazel, a brilliant Mac automation tool.

When I create a note in Unclutter that I want to save in Bear, I add a tag. In my case, I call it #.inbox/unclutter. In Bear tagging structure parlance, this means that I want this note to be in my inbox (#.inbox) with the sub-tag of unclutter. This works similar to traditional folders: the note will appear nested in my inbox tag. The ‘.’ in front of my inbox tag ensures that this frequently-accessed tag is sorted (alphabetically) near the top of my list of tags, which is handy since the “inbox” is always where I start when I fire up Bear. It’s where I store items to be further processed. So here’s a note I created in Unclutter (using markdown) with the ending tag: #.inbox/unclutter:

In Hazel, I created a rule to scan for texts in the Dropbox folder where Unclutter notes are stored. That rule searches for the tag: #.inbox/unclutter. When it sees that tag, it automatically copies the text note into Bear. Here’s what that rule looks like:

And once the Hazel rule runs, my new Unclutter note is copied into Bear.

Why do I want to do this? I’m generally using Unclutter as a really fast way to jot down notes. For most of those notes, I don’t want to save them for posterity. They’re just quick single entries for when I need to get some text down with no fuss, without needing to open an app. But sometimes I create a note with content that I intend to either build upon in the future, or want to copy/move to another text note housed within the Bear app. For those notes that I want to save for the longterm, I add just add the tag at the end and it’s waiting for me in Bear.