Kerfing Saw Modifications

 

I've made some modifications to the kerfing saw I made a while ago.

I discarded the wedges, which never really worked very well, and added a pair of M6 bolts running down through threaded inserts in the body of the tool, to secure the fence arms. I inset brass plates on the top of those arms, cut down from an old door push-plate, so that the bolts don't chew up the fence arms when they're tightened up.

At the moment I've just cut screwdriver slots in the bolt heads, but one day I may get around to making some more attractive thumbscrews.

All this should make it a much more effective tool. Note: Red beech is a very bad timber for making this sort of thing out of. It works very easily, and it's a nice colour, but it suffers from terrible checking.

More Boxes

 

I've made a couple more presentation boxes for a pair of Annette's colleagues who are leaving.

The one on the left is 265mm long, and made of some reclaimed timber — I think it's Black Maire, but I cannot be sure. The one on the right is 250mm long, and is mostly the same timber, but with a lid plate of Sapele. Both have small copper plaques let in to their lids, and both are closed magnetically. They both have soft, padded floors covered with black needle-cord velvet.

Sapele is often used as a substitute for mahogany, since people started to get concerned about wantonly chopping down all the nice trees in the world. Personally, I don't think it's as attractive as mahogany, but it's certainly cheaper — and that's saying something, since a 2.4m length of 200x25mm sapele cost me a hundred and eight bucks. Jenkies!