| Blog series by handsawgeek | updated 10-30-2015 01:49 PM | 5 parts | 6159 reads | 20 comments total |
Part 1: Conceptually Speaking
In my last blog post, I related the story of the purchase of an extensive hardware stash at a local yard sale for ten bucks. In the intervening time, I’ve had a chance to go through most of the baby food jars and coffee cans to assess the contents. What I’ve found includes a large quantity of nails, common and finish in all sizes from 3d up to 20d, as well as a number of the same in wire sizes. Wood and sheet metal screws are plentiful in all sizes and head configurations , but scatte...
Part 2: Earth, Fauna, and Flora
That’s just a fancy way of saying “Dirt, Bugs, and Plant Debris”. In working through the newly acquired stash of hardware, it has become quickly apparent that the collection spent most of its life in a more open environment – a shed, most likely, that had little in the way of dirt, dust, and insect control. The nails in the open coffee cans share the space with lots of dirt, pine needles, seeds, dried leaf material, spider web gunk, and a very impressive assortment of dead bugs! ...
Part 3: An Ooey, Gooey Mess!
Today’s post relates a tale of woe concerning one of the coffee cans full of nails recently procured in the Great Yard Sale Hardware Purchase: Upon dumping the contents into the Hudnut Sorter, I discovered that the can had been the recipient sometime in the past of a quantity of spilled motor oil! So, what I emptied out was a lovely mixture of hundreds of 4 penny nails, dirt, dead bugs, and plant debris – all coated with oil! Yummmm !! To remedy this, the whole glob of ...
Part 4: And Now …The Shelf Unit
Cleaning, sorting, and organizing of the newly conceived handsawgeek shop hardware system is now well under way. The next task is to turn attention to the construction of a proper storage shelf to hold all of those gleaming baby food jars full of hardware. In keeping with the handsawgeek tradition of using scrounged material for shop fixtures, it has been determined that the shelf unit should be constructed out of….what else? Pallet wood ! Yesterday, I embarked on a quest that...
Part 5: A Practice Platform
Construction of the shelf unit for my new baby-food-jar-centric hardware storage system is now well underway. I have opted to grace the project with hand-cut dovetail joints on the frame. Why would I take the time and effort to use dovetail joinery on a shop fixture made out of scrap pallet pine wood? Practice, my friends. What better platform for honing this skill than on a knock-about shop fixture where it doesn’t really matter if there are mistakes and mis-cues. Th...
