ANZAC

In the U.S. we have memorial day in Australia and New Zealand they have the “Australia New Zealand Army Corp Day”. ANZAC Day.

It’s April 25th of every year which is the anniversary of when the ANZAC troops landed on Gallipoli.

I’m not a historian or a solider or and officer or in 1915, So I accept this is these are the thoughts of someone not in that life at all. That said, the ANZAC soldiers fought very well and ingeniously as both sides tunneled out the hills they were fighting over.

The Container

Te Papa is the Smithsonian of New Zealand, the national museum. The have an exhibit there for this campaign. It’s had to not walk through it and wonder “why” and “How” for so many reasons. It’s well worth visiting, especially if you are visiting New Zealand in Wellington. The museum is free and so is the exhibit. Weta of hobbit and lord of the rings fame helped produce it, so you know it’s awesome!

The Goal

The Wacky Woodworker asked me to join in with others building projects to celebrate/memorialize the men and women. I hate to be honest here and admit that I didn’t know anything about this day until I came to live here. But after working with the older generations while in New Zealand, I’ve come to see how much they treasure this history. How they endlessly talk about it over tea and biscuits. I wanted to replicate something from this exhibit and bend it to help with these conversations. Bend it to a happier meaning.

The Wacky Woodworkers playlist for ANZAC Day:

Where Did the idea come from

As part of the ANZAC exhibit at Te Papa, which there are a number of larger than life statues depicting real people from the battle. One contains a box that I will scale back down to reality and make into a Biscuit Box *cough(cookie jar). The reason for this, I’m not the biggest tea person around but one thing I really love in New Zealand are ANZAC Biscuits. They are amazingly good!!!

That is what this box is meant for, for the children, grandchildren and relatives of these soldiers will be able to sit and enjoy tea and biscuits while talking about their history, grandparents, relatives and ancestors.

The Build

Cheers All and Happy ANZAC day

clean phil wanted

 

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*I lived 3 miles from the US Marines Memorial in New Zealand. I filmed a lot of the ceremony last year. I will be trying to pull that together so the US soldiers will see how NZ celebrates US service men. I was very surprised.

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My Workbench’s Plans are in this book by Paul Sellers – http://amzn.to/2H0u9t4

*These are affiliate links, so it helps me out a tiny bit when you go over to Amazon from clicking on them for whatever you may need! Even then, the most important thing is to shop around – good cheap tools can be found everywhere!

Building a Simple Fly Fishing Rod Box for the old backup rod!

If there is an opportunity to fish I will take it but, and I don’t mean to brag here, I’m really good at fly fishing. At least at one part of fly fishing. I’m really good at breaking my 5 weight fly fishing rods!

So, a long time ago I learned to always have a backup rod or two in the car. In fact, I remember that day on the Yellow Breaches Creek.  There were 4 of us out there but I rod with my buddy Nick.  Set up the rod behind the car in the parking lot. Put on my waders and boots, stood up and stepped sideways.  I remember a slow motion, “snappppppp”.  Nick had watched it happen in real time, which was far from enough time to stop me.   Most quality rods come with a really decent replacement warranty so all of mine have been sent off BUT that doesn’t help on the stream so out came the cheapy.

It’s really really not a good rod BUT as with most things, it’s how you use it… right? And frankly, if you break it… it’s not an $200-$800 loss. So that helps ease a lot of tension walking through brush! No tension on you builds confidence in your rod and fly. That absolutely means more fish.

I have a good number of rods for all types of fishing styles. That fly rod has easily caught me at least three times as many fish as all the other rods/styles combined. So, after all these years that cheap fly fishing rod is finally getting a home!

The Build

So, this isn’t going to be the hexagon rod box or octagon rod boxes that bamboo fly fishing rods come in. We’ll get there in time. This is a simple box with old school hand tools, planes, saws and jigs. I have really enjoyed my boxing day box build and I really enjoy the new mitre jig. So please check those videos out (in the cards in the video) but first check out this video and enjoy!

Cheers!

Clean Phil Wanted

 

The cheap fly rod:
https://amzn.to/2GziQIr

The Tenkara rod (Japanese Mountain Fly Fishing):
https://amzn.to/2GyU1w4

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Please check it out and keep watching it as I revamp my site to be more useful.

My Hand Tools:
http://cleanphilwanted.com/myhandtools/

 

Tools;

My Large Rip Saw – http://amzn.to/2oM9MIl

Brass Back Saw – http://amzn.to/2oEOo8N

These are links to the sharpening plates in the video:
My Diamond Sharpening Plates:
super fine and fine – http://amzn.to/2tjJV05
medium and course – http://amzn.to/2oTwOyb

This is the Paul Sellers book I got the plans for my workbench, and a number of other great projects! http://amzn.to/2H0u9t4

*These are affiliate links, so it helps me out a tiny bit when you go over to Amazon from clicking on them for whatever you may need! Even then, the most important thing is to shop around – good cheap tools can be found everywhere!

 

 

 

A Plastic Bag Dispenser – or -At What Point is it a Fail.

I think there is always an error in everything. It just depends on the tolerances in those errors that dictates if that ‘thing’ is a failure or not.

I would say the Plastic Bag Dispenser project was a win! But boy, did I fail at filming the joinery.  The finish of the project turned out pretty good as well, though a little over done.

Check it out here BUT please don’t give up on it and watch the second part as well.

I did take photos of this project. Mostly of the finishing process. I will work to get that into an entry here soon. For now I want to get this project live.

Why not re-build the project?

Now, I could have redone the project BUT I opted to go with what I had for a lot of reasons. I’ll just list the main two here.

The first reason, I want this ‘blog’/’channel’ to be real.  This is what really happened. I would love to sugar coat it but I want to be honest. I screw up a lot in a lot of things it’s just a matter of how badly. This one was pretty bad in my book.  Which leads to my second main reason.

I have always learned way faster from acknowledging what I messed up and doing everything I can to resolve it.  I could redo this project and I would learn from it. BUT I will not learn as much as I will from forcing it front and center.   From now on, this focus thing will be at the front of my mind.

If I left it there I would have left everyone hanging as to what was really going on in the joinery.  So, I went out the next day and rushed a simple project through that included most of the ‘fancy’ joinery. I know, “don’t rush”… whatever.

I didn’t mess too much with the audio on this video as I wanted to get it done quickly.  I hope you can see past the issues and enjoy the projects.  I also hope you are slightly inspired to keep fighting a project forward!

 

Thanks for watching and I’ll do better next time!

Clean Phil

The Kitchen Utensil Tote

Here she is!

This is the kitchen utensil tote I just finished.  It’s amazing something so simple can be so dramatic.

This piece is the inspiration for my tote. I got pretty close though I could have distressed it more. I’m not too worried as it will be beat up in its new role.

Be sure to check out the process I used over on my Youtube Channel here!

I am refining a set of plans for this tote. I should have it up here in this spot in the next week.  I tend to just draw plans enough for me so I’m trying to make sure I cover all bases another may need to build this same tote.

 *You should work safely and smartly with the tools you have. Work safely within your limits!!!  If you ever feel uncomfortable doing something stop and think of a different approach. There are ALWAYS many ways to do things and fingers are a great thing to have. Do what you can to keep them!

The why

I love cooking, making bread, and baking.  This kitchen has plenty of storage place but only one drawer for utensils.  This is how it looked!

Yes that is a snowman butt.

I really needed a safe and convenient way to get this mess out of the way.

The wood

I have never used rough sawn wood like this before. Rough wood sure but not like this.

I don’t know how one saws wood to have this crazy textured fuzz. I feel like someone has used beaver dentures.  Still it was fairly easy to clean up.

Side note, this is 25mm stock (25.4mm is one inch). In New Zealand, when they say lumber is a size, it’s that size!  If you got this stock in North America it would say one inch and you’d actually have ¾” stock.   This piece was actually about 27mm and planed down to about 7/8”.  That’s a win!

Once one side is square I use a marking gauge to mark the heights on the sides.  I sawed and planed down to those lines.  When you get to the line you’ll see the feather edge from the marking gauge letting you know you are a swipe or two from perfect!

These finished and squared boards were also easy enough to mark and cut to the lengths needed.

  

The Assembly

Unfortunately, I didn’t take any photos of me using my moving fillister plane. You’ll have to check out the video.  And maybe the previous video where I restored it.   I did have to reshape the skewed iron since that video.  It really made a huge difference.  I guess in that process I hit my knicker on something. The edge it was leaving was rather ragged.  It’ll be simple enough to resolve between now and the next video.

I thought through the glue up and clamped it up.

I really was rushing through this as I was going to be joining my wife on a Friday trip. I really wanted to move forward with it.  So I jumped the gun. The project exploded like a Hollywood prop in a sitcom. If you watch the video you’ll see how I, stupidly, also had the piece in the vice with the handle squeezed into the bench. This put crooked pressure on all the joints.  In the end the lesson is Don’t Rush!

The good news about this is the joints were now sized.  That means that glue had gone into the end grain and made it a bit more solid. Yes, this is me searching for a bright spot in the rush. I also found a better way of clamping.

I also don’t like rustic looking nails and the ones I have easy access too are just not good looking at all.   I have found that simply taking galvanized nails and hitting them with a ball-pin hammer give them a great hand finished look. This texture also takes a finish rather well.

The finish

I tried to keep it simple by aging the wood with a steel wool and vinegar mixture.  This darkened the wood rather well. In the image below you can see the project sitting on pieces of the original board.  I followed this up with a couple coats of boiled linseed oil to add some refraction.  I then protected the piece a bit with two coats of shellac.

Make one for yourself!

Check out the video of the build, download the plan, and make one for yourself!

Thanks for checking it out,

Clean Phil Wanted