Posted on

Restoring a $20 Wooden Moving Fillister Plane.

I’ve Always wanted a Moving Fillister Plane (Filletster)

I Think what fascinates me with an antique, like this moving fillister plane, is that there is always a story behind it. When you don’t know what that story is but you see the wear and tear, you know there was a journey. You start to add up the clues of how it got to the state its in. You start to wonder what it’s seen, what it’s heard, what it’s done.

I’ll have video over on my youtube channel of this once it’s up or just check it out here!

*****************************

Yes I know I call it a ‘fillister’ plane and some call it a filletster plane. In reality, I would call it a ‘rebbate plane’ but any which way it’s a sash plane. If you google fillister you get mostly photos of the wooden versions. If you google filletster you get the stanley No.78.
Still, I went with the popular woodworking version from this Chris Swartz article: http://www.popularwoodworking.com/techniques/joinery/essential-joinery-plane-the-moving-fillister

The hand plane I have chosen.

moving fillister untouched

I had a choice of a rather clean, almost mint, moving fillister plane and this one. I didn’t make the choice because of the 100 dollar price difference. I made the choice because of the character this one had. I saw that it was damaged but I also recognized that it was repaired more than a couple times. It was never the best fillister plane but whoever owned it sure did all they could to keep it usable. My goal is not just to have a usable plane but also help it continue its story. I have no intention of losing the patina that tells that story.

It’s time to taking her apart

 

The fence has a crack in the middle which the previous owner screwed tight from the side.

fence screw removed

I’m 100% sure that the depth stop is also a fix for what was probably a brass one. Time has left it pitted but I’m sure it’ll function just fine.

depth stop removed

The adjustment screw and carriage block were both removed with very little effort.

depth screw removed

The boxing is broken in a few spots where it was glued back in place. There is a tiny screw in the boxing just at the side of the mouth. The wood is so stripped it isn’t holding anything anymore.

With a broken wedge, the nicker proved the hardest part to remove. The wedge was loose and would wiggle but there was nothing left to hold onto. Eventually accepting that I would have to replace this wedge I used pliers to remove it.

nicker wedge removed

The nicker blade was bent side-to-side wedging itself in the mortise.  I could tap it a little bit forward but found using a reversed nail head on the blade worked wonderful. This would really need to be corrected.

nail head to remove nicker

 

Cleaning the parts

The metal was cleaned with a vinegar /water mixture for abut 8 hours.  I would lightly scrub the parts with a brass brush to loosen dirt and allow the solution to reach more of the metal.  Wash your parts with water after this to stop the reaction and then quickly cover them with 3-in-1 oil to prevent any oxidation.

metal cleaning

The wood was cleaned a few times with mineral turps (mineral spirits in the USA). I didn’t take the brass guides in the fence out as it proved to be too hard so I brass brushed them in place. I would like to note the patina left by this process versus what you will see with the vinegar/water solution on the other parts.  If you are looking for a show piece or wanted to sell an old tool like this – this is the way to move the price up!

cleaning the parts

I re-finished it with about 4 coats of boiled linseed oil. Left on for 15 minutes each and then wiped off.   ‘linseed’ oil was used a lot by the old masters of oil painting as part of their ‘mediums’ used to glaze paint on their masterpieces.  It causes light to refract between the layers before finally bouncing back to your eye.  It’s a very simple step that adds a lot of richness to anything it’s added to. ‘Boiled’ linseed oil dries much faster which makes everyone like it more (artists would never use it). You just really do need to be wary of the rags you use to apply it. It can self-combust so application rags should be soaked in water overnight afterward.

boil linseed oil application

 

Fixing it up

I used the old wedge as a template and continued the lines out on a scrap piece of hardwood.  I shaped the wedge so it had the cove it in to help remove it as well as make it look more authentic.  I’m not sure of the species of this wood,  I made it from a hardwood teaspoon display I got from a thrift store. An excellent source of wood like this.

new wedge

I used the vinegar/steel wool trick to darken it.  This got the tone much closer to the body of the plane but it was still too clean so from this point on if you have dirty fingers from cleaning or sharpening metal you wipe them off on the piece before cleaning your hands.  That’s how the rest of the plane got to be like that!

dirty the wedge

I used a small nail and slowly filled the hole walls in with epoxy so the threads would again have something to bite on to.  I didn’t flood the hole with epoxy. I just slowly added it to the walls of the hole. I could have just removed this screw and let the plane be without but it added character and showed the extent the previous owner went to to keep the plane working.  This ended up working great!

tiny hole on boxing

I also forced some epoxy into the crack on the fence though this probably wasn’t needed as the screw was doing it’s job well. My clamping forced the fence crooked so I would need to plane it’s surfaces a couple more times.

Fixing the metal parts

I rounding out the corners of the rear of the depth stop since it was now digging into the side face.  Lightly tapping the blades will partially correct the bending that has happened from the years of resetting them. I’m pretty sure some of these kinks were the way the previous owner straightened the edge to the bottom.  I get it, sharpening a skew is not easy but there is a point where you need to restore it.  Of course this would come back to bite me too!

I had not run across any nickers being sharpened like this one had.  I still can’t see how it got to have this step in it. Unless they were sharpening it in place after the wedge broke.

oldknickershape

I began to reshape it into the diamond shape I wanted.   This was done with metal files, small diamond files and eventually my sharpening stones. I’m not sure this is a great idea but I’m doing it anyways.

newknickershape

Even though the blade angle was really steep and the skew was off. I went ahead and sharpened it as it was. I should have reshaped the edge correctly, bevel and skew, as I would eventually have come back to correct this issue.

bothblades

It was a huge bite but still, it was much closer to square than I thought it would be.   This thing is amazing.

therebate

 

The final product

final

Notice how well the new wedge fits in after all the dirty hands!

After a day I came back and properly reshaped the skewed iron and here she is:

Thanks

Again, please check the video over on my youtube channel here, subscribe like and comment!

Clean Phil

 

Posted on

Space invaders | coding trainwreck | challenge #5

Space Invaders for the Coding trainwreck!

space invaders

demo:  here

github : here

I’ve done this one before

When I worked at brady communications I developed a lot of the touch interfaces you might have ran into on Royal Caribbean cruise line ships.  One of those interfaces was a ‘kids cafe’ internet cafe.  The “Royal Caribbean SurfStation”.

Basically there is no email out in the ocean so this is a way the ships allow connection. They can collect everything and send it in bulk via satellite late at night to save costs.

For the one loading screen/game section entry points I developed a simple space invaders game in Flash.  If you have Flash you can check it out on my portfolio site.   but for now this one works rather well in canvas.

Here is a path to that one!

Again it’s a pain to deal with canvas rather than being able to attach events and actions to sprites themselves… only doing it a lot will make that easier.

Outside of that nothing really to learn here.  This was more of re-establishing lessons from previous challenges.   I will probably come back to visit this one again and add some decent graphics and some ‘sheilds’ like the original SI.

Posted on

purple rain | coding challenge | the coding train(wreck)

Purple Rain Coding Challenge (#4)

This is the fourth coding challenge of Dan Shiffmans coding train youtube channel, ‘purple rain’. Well, it’s my version in p5js of his processing code. This is really an experiment in me learning p5js and eventually processing.  I also hope it helps re-motivate myself with ‘fun’ code rather than just endless forms, submits and radio buttons.

So here it is!

purple rain coding challenge exampel

Demo: here

github: here

This isn’t anything new to me.  I’ve done this rain effect thousands of times in the past 15  plus years.   I’ve  also gotten to the point of adding in wind and air resistance in the past. While I kept this simple to keep the flow or motivation going.

This was more of a practice of the mapping function in p5js. I like it though I’ve also lived without it for years so I’m sure it’ll take some time to really incorporate it in my thinking rather than just doing the percentage values myself. I really should test which is quicker.

There isn’t a lot different about this over Daniel Shiffmans version.  He did his in processing while i used js (i’m sure he has a js version somewhere).  The only really big difference is I created a ‘reset’ method in the ‘drop’ class to centralize the ‘resetting’ of a particle. nothing really unusual.

That all said I do believe the best way to learn a new language is to learn a simple particle system.  This is it.

What happened to #3?

Oh I did it. and I made it work on mobile(swiping). it’s on github I just kept working on it for a rediculously long time.  I even made graphic/sprites in sketchup for it.  yup, I made actual 3d models for it.

I did take a lot of time on it. Pretty much I spent too much time on it and did the one thing that I really hate that dev’s do, I made it way more complicated than it ever needed to be.  I also don’t feel that the instantiation of p5js is very intuitive with multiple classes being used. It actually turns into a trainwreck very quickly.

I want to push it further still but I was loosing motivation to continue working on it so I jumped on to the next challenge to get the drive back and to expose myself to more p5js.

The code is definitely a trainwreck so I stopped and started a 3.1 version. That version is more about the UI than the game so far. So don’t worry too much about that.

check it out so far here  (it does say press ‘enter’ – if you are on mobile – swipe to start)

OR as usually the trainwreck could just be me.

Posted on

Clean Phil Wanted | Yes we are back at the woodworking… and coding… headshots… and…

 Yes we are back at it!

It’s been a while but we are back it.  All the woodworking and coding and photography and cooking… all of it.

We had to take a bit of a break to focus on ‘us’.  Not that we are having issues but our landlords were.

We had to move

I’ll keep this short.   I’m glad we had it, amazing views and about 9 houses away from where Sir Peter Jackson grew up. If you watch the movie, ‘Bad Taste’, you’ll understand the scenery. It’s all in walking distance.

Anyways, the landlords bought a house a few miles north of the rental property and soon realized that the old property had to go. So we had to go as well.  It was a bit of an emotional roller coaster but I always stick with family comes first so I can’t fault them (too much).  In the end, it is what it is.

So we found a new place

The average house price in Auckland was over a million last year with some areas having property increases of 29%+ a month in the surrounding areas.  Frankly, I would never want to live in Auckland even though I could find work more easily there, it’s a complete mess.  We would like to stay here longer than our visa will allow but until we have residency we don’t plan to buy anything. So we started looking for rentals that will take Ned.

Eventually, Jill found Chris and Joanne. Thank goodness for that, they are a lovely couple and just as ‘Kiwi’ as you would want. City folk who own a farm, are outdoorsy and unbelievably friendly.  The couple had bought a house with bright orange and yellow walls with green trim.  So, Jill and I moved into, ‘The Pumpkin Bach’. (Bach in New Zealand is pronounced ‘batch’).

The garag-errmm workshop!

It isn’t that big but I broke it in.  I needed a desk and here it is.

 

This is the first video of it:

And here is the second part of it:

I do have a sketchup file for it with ‘rough’ dimensions that I will get up soon.  There will be another sketchup file for A-frame clothing rack since I needed that cleaned up for working out this new build.

Obviously you can check out all the other projects on my channel over here!

What else has been going on?

I’m still on the hunt for a job over here. I’m not willing to apply to everything under the sun. I want something that suits me and I’d be happy doing. Those are the jobs I’m applying for.

I spent some time sprucing up the linkedin page with a nice self portrait I took in the new garage.

I also figured I should put my face in for any extra work in movies or what-not.  So I’ve been working on some head shots.  Helps that I am a graphic designer/dev that spent a quarter of my classes in the photo lab.

I’ve also been spending time coding.  I have strong skills here and I don’t want them to atrophy so I’ve been starting to do ‘coding challenges’ from the Youtube channel ‘The Coding Train’. If you ever wanted to code this guy is a good teacher – over enthusiastic and a knuckhead(meant with respect) but very good.  I

I’ve started posting them on this site and github so they are blogged about.  You can check them out in the nav above OR here!

Conclusion

I’m not sure that the frequency of video posts will be weekly as they were before.  They also won’t be as silly as some of the previous ones (wine box holder).  I plan on making multiple episodes for larger projects for many reasons.  But for now – we are back!

Thanks,

Clean Phil Wanted

Posted on

The Menger Sponge in p5.js

This is the Menger sponge.

well this is MY Menger sponge in P5.js. My Code Demo (NOTE: you need WebGL or this won’t work for ya!)

If you have Flash installed, this is one old portfolio interface I made and never finished. I started to make it in css3 but never followed through with that. Check it out here!

I’ve seen Menger sponges before but never knew what it was called. I also didn’t really every thing about recreating it.  It is Daniels coding challenge number 2 and an opportunity for me to get to know some basics of p5.js’ 3d system/webgl.

This is Daniels original done in Processing. I still don’t know Processing so I’ll be doing this in JS.

Yes I know that Daniel will recreate things in both Processing and in P5.  I’m doing my best to not look at his code or conversions outside of what is in his videos. (Which if you watch the livestreams, is way too much information. It’s still fun to watch though!)

P5 makes 3d primitives pretty easy but they alter the coordinate system from 2D. While this make sense it really threw me off.

Everything fell together with simple logic and class structure. The pop and push before translating also threw me off. Granted I remember having to do these before when I messed with Canvas, it still feels out of place in closure/scope. ‘Works as designed’, right?

I will note that I limited my ‘divisions’ to 3 mouse presses as that is where JS seems to just about call it quits. I do want to learn this in Processing now because I do enjoy things like this.

My Github code

My Code Demo (NOTE: you need WebGL or this won’t work for ya!)

As always, thank you to Daniel!

clean phil