Easel for Zach

Zach is taking a painting class this semester at Texas State. He wanted an easel to work on paintings at home. I did a search on the internet for easel plans, and found a couple I liked and passed the links on to Zach. He liked the 3 leg easel designs since they have a smaller footprint and can fold up easier to store in his small one bedroom apt.

Front View

I used a thin plywood strip in the lower frame support that can be replaced when/if it gets full of paint. It is held in place with a couple of tacks, and is held between two oak strips. The upper and lower canvas supports slide up and down in a 3/8 inch slot. A 3/8\

Rear View

The knobs are constructed such that when they are tightened, the captured nut is drawn in tight to its mortised recess. The nut recess area is covered so the knob can only be screwed on the bolt in the correct orientation. Otherwise, if it was reversed, tightening the nut will exert force to push the nut out of the mortised recess. The rear leg adjustment is made out of walnut. The bolt can slide up and down in the slot in the rear leg, such that it can fold up tight against the back of the easel front for storage, and can be tightened in an intermediate position to change the angle of front plane of the easel.

Zach and Easel

Zach and Easel

Cleaning Saw Blades

I read in a recent Woodsmith article about using baking soda and water (1 Tablespoon baking soda to 1 cup of water) to clean the pitch off of sawblades and router bits.

Before this I had tried pine sol and 409 on router bits. The Pine Sol disolved the slick coating on router bits, and the 409 didn’t seem to work at all.

Today I tried the baking soda / water solution on a couple of saw blades. I put a rubber washer in the center of an old 12″ pizza pan, added 2 cups of the solution and let the blade soak for two hours. This was sufficient for the newer blade. After that time I scrubbed off the pitch using an old toothbrush. The older blade with more pitch required 4 hours. I scrubbed the teeth with the toothbrush after 2 hours, and again after 4. I was quite pleased on how the blades turned out.

SawBladeCleaning

Router Bits are much harder to remove pitch from than saw blades. I suppose this is due to the higher temperatures generated due to the much greater rotational velocity.

I tried the baking soda solution with limited success, even after letting the bit soak overnight. I eventually used a diamond hone to remove the build up on the cutting faces of the bit.

CleaningRouterBit

Here you can see the straight bit immersed in the cleaning solution while still installed in the router (half-way through a project – I didn’t want to change the plunge settings).