Finally got all the bits to rescale my first straight -- it's Torrey in fairly good shape but one of the hard rubber (or black celluloid) scales was broken at the pivot pin and honing wasn't working very well with them flopping around and the edge whacking into the scales all the time.
So I found a set of templates on line and picked some out, got the band saw set up and sliced off some roughly 1/8" slices of some old persimmon log I have lying around (it's a member of the Ebonacea, but hardly ever makes black heartwood, it's all sapwood). Pasted the template on, cut it out on the bandsaw (note, a 1/2 blade works for the curves if you ignore the ends), then belt sanded to the line.
Used the disk sander at a 45 degree angle and smoothed it by hand, then finished with a coat of shellac and a couple coats of Helmsman Spar Urethane. You can see the big old run in one of the pics. Not my best job, but I was in a hurry and sort of proving the concept, so to speak.
As you can see in the pics below, I managed to mis-drill the scales while they were still taped together and when I tried to drill the wedge end, will have to work on that, I think.
I also mushroomed out the heads of the pins too much, and left them too long to boot, so it's not a perfect job, BUT:
The blade is tight (won't use those fat brass washers again unmodified though)
The blade isn't perfectly centered, but it doesn't hit the scales any more
The wedge is more like a spacer, should have cut it down more, but it's tight without glue
Hope the next one goes better, I need to switch to my light drill press and get the drill speed up to about 3000 rpm, I think, and I'll probably drill the wedge pin holes before I take the scales off the tape.
Next one should be better, and I'll post better pics when I get my real camera charged, these are from my cell and pretty much terrible.
Peter
So I found a set of templates on line and picked some out, got the band saw set up and sliced off some roughly 1/8" slices of some old persimmon log I have lying around (it's a member of the Ebonacea, but hardly ever makes black heartwood, it's all sapwood). Pasted the template on, cut it out on the bandsaw (note, a 1/2 blade works for the curves if you ignore the ends), then belt sanded to the line.
Used the disk sander at a 45 degree angle and smoothed it by hand, then finished with a coat of shellac and a couple coats of Helmsman Spar Urethane. You can see the big old run in one of the pics. Not my best job, but I was in a hurry and sort of proving the concept, so to speak.
As you can see in the pics below, I managed to mis-drill the scales while they were still taped together and when I tried to drill the wedge end, will have to work on that, I think.
I also mushroomed out the heads of the pins too much, and left them too long to boot, so it's not a perfect job, BUT:
The blade is tight (won't use those fat brass washers again unmodified though)
The blade isn't perfectly centered, but it doesn't hit the scales any more
The wedge is more like a spacer, should have cut it down more, but it's tight without glue
Hope the next one goes better, I need to switch to my light drill press and get the drill speed up to about 3000 rpm, I think, and I'll probably drill the wedge pin holes before I take the scales off the tape.
Next one should be better, and I'll post better pics when I get my real camera charged, these are from my cell and pretty much terrible.
Peter
