Essentials oils carrying case part 2

Buenas días from Costa Rica my friends

Well, it is a glorious day with the sun shinning, a gentile breeze passing through the shop, and a great cup of coffee by my side.

I had a wonderful morning with my wife, we went to the farmer's market, they have it every Friday here in Sarchi, to buy our fruits and vegetables. I love buying fresh fruits and vegetables that haven't been contaminated with harsh chemicals and such. Eating naturally here in C.R. is so much more easy than in the states, it is readily available and cheap. Speaking of fresh fruits, bananas anyone?

This is my back yard and I actually have four stalks of bananas waiting to be picked. As I always say life is good here in C.R, After the farmer's market I took my wife out for breakfast, just the two of us, and enjoyed a typical Costarican breakfast or desayuno, called Gallo Pinto. It means spotted rooster but had no chicken or meat in it at all. It is rice and beans fried together with a special sauce that is produced here in C.R. There is also sweet chilies and cilantro mixed in. You can get with eggs or just cheese. It also comes with natilla, which is a thick sour cream that they only produce here in C.R. as well. That along with a cup of coffee will start any day off well.

Well, to get back to the project, after rough cutting the parts for the drawers I needed to re-saw them down to 1/2 inch. All the wood here comes 4/4 or thicker. Being a hand tool shop I chose not to use my bandsaw, which is good because it does a terrible job at it. It is a finicky tool that is really only good for general cutting. Nothing special just a 14" woodcutting saw from Central Machinery, which you can by at Harbor Freight. So going about it with hand tools was really enjoyable, and once again I have Tom Fidgen to thank for that. In his last book he did two projects, one being a kerfing plane, and the other a frame saw. I built both using what I had on hand here in C.R., I would love to purchase the saw plates and hardware offered by Badaxe saws but just couldn't afford it right now. I bought a cheap saw from a local hardware store and cut the plates my self. As you can see in the photos the kerfing plane works quite well.

As Tom wrote the purpose for kerfing the board is to create a path of least resistance that the frame saw blade with then naturally follow. When I built these tools  I called them the Wal-mart versions because my skill and ability is no where near that of Tom's. They do work well though, but do have their limits.

(Side note: Hey Tom, the picture of the frame saw in use is for you buddy. Hope you can come down some time and put you in the photo.)The cutting portion of the blade for theframe saw is only 18" so that limits me on how wide of a board I can cut. It works well on small boards but can be difficult when pushing the width.

On one of the boards the blade did start to drift and so I had to flip it over and start from the other end.

The rest of them turned out fairly decent. One thing I noticed is that the kerfing plane seemed to make a wider kerf than the frame sas leaving slight ledge. I don't know if you can see that in the photo or not.

They were from the same brand of saw, but I think what is going on is the set of the kerfing plane is wider than the frame saw. I might try to adjust that, which could be the cause for drift occurring

So once the parts were all re-sawed I planed them down to 1/2" thickness. You can see in the photo I am using a planing board.

I got the idea, sorry for this but once again from Tom in his "Good Doctor's Medicine Chest". He used a planing board for thin items. All I can say is "man do I love it."' It works like a charm and perfect for what I am doing right now. It was easy enough to build. I just took some laminated particle board I had lying around they shop and glued some 3/16 thick plywood to it. It is square to each side and does a great job.

So the sides, fronts and backs for the two drawers are cut and planed to thickness as well as cut to final size. All parts were labeled and are now ready for dovetailing, which will be on the next post.

Well, my friends hope you enjoyed the post and please feel free to comment on my progress, any help will be greatly appreciated.

Take care, hope you are enjoying your day as much as I am with mine, and as always God Bless
Mark Hynek