Sunday, May 13, 2012

The 300 Dollar Pencil Sharpener

Always up for a challenge, I said sure! I can rebuild your rustic king size log bed to actually fit the mattress and box spring.

The bed had been made years ago for the customer by a high school shop class. Overall it was quite nicely executed. Sturdy and well fitted it was however 7 inches too wide and 4 inches too long.

I only needed to re-size eight stretchers and reshape sixteen tenons. And while I have a lot of tools - I did not own a log tenoning bit. After a fair amount of research I settled on an adjustable bit to eliminate having to re-drill all of the mortices.

When it arrived my first impression confirmed the queasy feeling in my stomach. The idea of spinning an irregular shaped 5" aluminum cutter head in a 1/2" handheld drill, filled my head with all sorts of unwanted outcomes.








The first attempt knocked the clamps loose and pulled the 80" log off the bench spinning on the end of my drill.

 Live and learn!

I cut cradles from some 2x4's and started over.







Safely clamped to the bench the rest was noisy - and felt like jack-hammering concrete -  but the result were perfect.












So now that I own a log rail tenon cutter
 - who need fencing?

1 comment :

  1. Good lord. Did you hear the NPR interview of the guy who wrote the book on pencil sharpening and will professionally sharpen your pencils...for $120 each, I think. Very funny and maybe you could offer this tool to him and make back your money. Then, he could expand his business beyond #2s...

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