That is, until one night when you‘ve been drinking with a close friend.
“ Steve, if I tell you something you won’t … y’know spread it around will you? It’s just that lately I‘ve been thinking … I’d like to try something a fraction bigger than the 3/8.”
“Yeah, well that’s what your 1/2” is for.”
“No Steve, you don’t understand, just a tiny bit bigger, like, oh I don’t know… say …7/16.”
“But the 39 doesn‘t co.…what are you saying?”
“Think about it Steve, what if we could make any size dado we felt like, when we felt like it... wouldn’t that be really something Steve ….wouldn’t it?”
“Jesus Stimp, I mean…well… look, I‘d better get going, times getting on.”
The next morning you wake and realise what you’ve done, you feel so ashamed you want to call him and say you didn’t mean it and the 1/2” is great, but you can’t find the courage, so you avoid him, the weeks pass and one day you hear that Steve and his wife have moved away. A long way away.
There is a very simple way to avoid the above unpleasantness, either keep your avant-garde ideas about fractions to yourself and live the lie or buy a Stanley 46. It was originally sold with a selection of cutters, when I bought mine, it had just three or four left. I ordered a shiny replacement set from the very pleasant Bob at St James Bay Tool Co in Arizona, they arrived after several long phone calls, a few emails and about six months, none of which really matters unless you’re desperate.
Bob is a talkative craftsman living in the desert city of Mesa and the only person in the world to make these cutters. This sounds like the helpful information given by a dying mystic to a goat-herding, sandalled and unlikely hero, who then has to overcome terrible obstacles throughout his tortuous journey to Mesa and persuade Bob to make him a set of cutters so that he can slay the Hydra; and rescue the girl with the piled-up coiffure. It would have been perfect if there were nine cutters in a set, but what were the chances?
The beauty of the 46 lies in the fact that just like the 39 it has two spurs, skewed cutters and a flat edge to run along a guide, but the width of cut is obviously variable. Therefore, behind closed doors you could carefully grind down a 1/2” cutter to 7/16”, ensuring you retain the side profile, then simply order another 1/2” and wait.
While you wait, why not listen to “Silvan’s Night Train Trip” by Silvan Zingg, and wonder, if like me you occasionally disturb the piano, what if I could do that? I would also wonder why there is a skewed match cutter, is there a cross-grain version of this joint? If, however, it was intended to just do the conventional cut along the grain I feel a bit let down, that’s not the destiny a skewed cutter was born to fulfil. The Stanley 46 is very versatile in it’s way, you can cut all your housings of say ¾”, then just add your floral fence, adjust this and the depth stop to reduce the ends of your chunky shelves to fit. All done with one tool and no need to go searching for a specialised special that only cuts a certain type of cut in a certain way and then only on a Friday….suddenly it loses some of it’s allure.
How are any of these planes better than an electric router that you just plug in? Well, for one thing they are quiet, if you have a workmate-type folding bench you can actually set yourself up and cut dados right beside a sleeping granny, just brush the shavings away from her air ways as you go. Bear in mind, if she does wake up she will think a lot less of you, and you’ll have to live with that until she forgets.
I think that comprehensively covers the whole subject of making a trench across a piece of wood, other than the multitude of multiplanes, which are naturally non-specific so can't be included. The dados that the 46, and the 39s and the woodies make are all through as opposed to stopped. Such is life, and just like them, I’m all through as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment