The day it arrived, I was shown how to dismantle it completely and ready it for use before putting it all back together again.
I rounded off too-square-edges with a metal file, I buffed and polished the flat surface that hosts the blade that I made lethal with first a grinding stone and then sharpening and polishing stones.
I planed a piece of wood until it was gleaming like glass; I then sawed it in half length-ways and planed the newly exposed surfaces perfectly flat so that I could glue them back together again AND NOT SEE THE JOIN. I could - a little - but I was quietly pleased with my first planing exercise.
I have since made a 'scratch stock' and a 'veneer hammer'. I used the scratch stock to put inlay in my shiny, planed, re-joined piece of wood. Nice.
So the next challenge is to make a saw block ... or some similar name... (not good on the requisite cabinet-making vocabulary yet) it involves planing nine pieces of wood on all four sides and sticking them together.
I spent eight hours planing on Friday.
Yet I have only done six of the pieces of wood and only on two of their four sides. Crap. I was doing it wrong.
Then, I inadvertently sharpened my plane blade into a smile. Cabinet-makers prefer straight lines.
My right hand is swollen and numb, my right arm is tight with strained muscle and my shoulder and back are stiffened with the physical exertion.
Tomorrow I'm back at my bench (not my 'desk' as I keep calling it - to the chagrin of John, the Cabinet-maker-in-chief) and I'm going to wipe the smile off the face of that blade and with some more feverish strokes with the Clifton Jack plane I will continue to flatten those nine pieces of wood into something pretty and possibly useful too.
An injury update will appear here soon.
