Next was a little bronze hammer. I turned the head and made the handle. The dimensions were dictated somewhat by where it is going in the box.

This photo shows all the chisels that I re-handled. Most had none to begin with so no loss there. Despite different iron lengths I made the handles to make them all the same height hopefully to simplify their security in the box. I think this is where they will end up, we’ll see. The 2” paring chisel on the left is a copy of my favorite chisel. Mostly used for trimming bungs, the short round handle just fits in the palm of the hand. It will go along the side of the box where it is, but I still need to fit the upper and lower blocking. You can also see where the egg beater drill is going and I’ve substituted a new brace that fits the width of the box.

The next tool I need/want to make is a little 4” level. I’ll let you know when I get that finished. I should have time to work on the door by the end of next week, so there will be more soon.
Jim

The pin board is offered up to it’s mate to mark the tails. Since there are many to mark I took the time to clamp everything so it wouldn’t shift.

Next came the cutting out. Yes I use the band saw. When I made the samples I cut to the line and assembled them right from the saw, I did no paring. The teak isn’t quite as forgiving, so I left a little wood in the waste side of the line so I could hand fit everything.

First one is done.

Second one is done.

Third and forth are done, but I should have waited till tomorrow. It was getting late and I wanted to finish tonight. I pared just a bit too much and got some gaposis. Not bad where it is and easily fixed, but still wish I had taken my time.

Here is the box assembled.

Thanks for following along.
Jim

Next will be to make the back panel. I’m going to hold off gluing the box together till I make and fit all of the dividers and tool supports, some of which will be morticed into the side.

I’m leaning toward the two on the right, the uniform spacing on the bottom the more decerative not top. The bottom sample is upside down at the moment.
Jim

With all the tools installed. The deepest routing still leaves a 1/4” thickness in the door panel.

That’s all I had time to work on today. I still need to figure out where where the catches or toggles are going to go to hold the tools in place, not just vertically but on occasion the box might lay on it’s back for transport.
Jim

Or this one. I think I like this one better.

I also rearranged the main box. I decided the chisels needed to move to the front panel, I use them too often. I’m waiting on two more chisels before I make that up. This layout also let’s the brace handle lay down flatter.

Mauricio, I think I figured out a way to have a secret compartment. It will be small, but enough to be interesting. Thank you for the suggestion.

I also rough milled the teak for the box and back panel. I won’t mill the door stock till I figure out the layout.
That’s it for today.
Jim

The body of the box is a bit more problematic because there are far more options. This is the first layout with possibilities. There were two others before it. I have two more chisels coming so they are not shown. All the chisels will have matching handles so don’t worry about them at the moment. This is just the back level in the chisel area. The chisels may actually move to the front panel that can be removed and all brought closer to the work. Here is the first rendition. Just a fair warning this is not going to be a quick project so hang in there.

Please join in with comments, suggestions, warnings.
Jim

The bevel board and the sine bar, as good as they are, have one drawback, lack of portability. One was big and the other is a bit awkward to set a bevel gauge. Enter these little tools.

I used them for many years they are good, two of them being Starretts,but they are too small to offer any real accuracy. The scale is only two inches from the pivot and the width of the index lines is almost equal to 1/4 degree. The late Dan Sutherland, a boatbuilder, produced a stainless steel “bevel board”. It is still available from some tool dealers but at the moment I can’t remember which. On gnarlyeriks post he had a link to print a paper one which could be handy. But I was still on the hunt.
This summer I purchased a stainless steel framing square from this company 

http://chappellsquare.com/

I was impressed with the quality and since it is guaranteed square I bought one. Stainless it wouldn’t rust and more durable than the two aluminum ones I used up. I don’t do any framing so all those fancy tables are wasted on me. Plus the size I got was smaller and more handy for me, 12”x18”. The one thing different than any other framing square is the scales are laid out in 20 parts to the inch. No 8’s, 16’s or 32’s. I figured I could get used to it, besides I was going to use it as a big accurate square and some layout, but that was about it. For the record I have no affiliation with that company but I do recommend them.
I knew they could be used to layout angles, framers do it all the time, I just couldn’t figure out a simple way to do it. Thinking of angles in rise over run didn’t work for me when I wanted to find say 26 degrees. My 1923 copy of Audel’s Carpenters and Builders Guide had a chart that listed all the angles from 1 through 45 and the corresponding numbers on the blade and tongue to lay it out. Beautiful I thought but there was no commonality to the numbers. As an example, a 10 degree angle is 3.47” on the tongue and 19.7” on the blade, a 26 degree angle is 8.77” on the tongue and 17.98” on the blade. Nice, but at the time I had a square that had fractional divisions not decimals, there was no rhyme or reason to the list and I wasn’t going to carry that old book around. Then ShopNotes in vol. 19 issue 114 did an article on using a square as a layout tool. This too had a chart with the same confusing layout of numbers but at least these were in fractions, but again I wasn’t interested in carrying around a chart to layout angles.
Then I “found” in one of my book shelves and old 1949 instruction booklet from Stanley for the framing square. As I was looking throughout it on almost the last page I found this.

It is a layout guide for polygon miters. Eureka it was organized and and I saw my original bevel board in the same picture. All angles started at the 12” mark.
Back to my new square and here comes the math. I wanted something I could do easily and now I knew it would be accurate. The sine bar works with a fixed hypotenuse, but this was going to work with a fixed base. So instead of using the sine function I would need the tangent function. Again it is a constant, you do not need to calculate it just look it up in a book or on a calculator, it is the button labeled “tan”. This is where this works great with my new square. The inner scale on the tongue is 10” long, perfect all I need to do is shift the decimal one place. It works nice using the end of the tongue because it is self indexing and I only need to look at one number to set an angle. So this is using this info to set a miter gauge. Only the number on the right requires my attention.

Using 26 degrees again, enter 26 in the calculator then press the “tan” button, and 0.4877 should appear. The base distance is ten inches so I just shift the decimal one place to the right and I get this 4.877”. That is the number I need to index on the blade. Remember I said I wasn’t happy about the scales divided in 20 parts to the inch? Wrong I love it. As it turns out one twentieth of an inch is in fact .05” per division. That means it is now possible to estimate to one or two hundredths. Over ten inches that is a very accurate angle.
If you want to set a bevel square this setup gives options no other method does. One setting, in this case 10 degrees, you get 10, 80, and 100 degrees.

!

This photo shows this method for setting an angle on a table saw sled. There is no back fence on this sled. If there was a fence then the sine bar would be better.

I’m using the long body as the base so the tangent is multiplied by 16.5”. The aluminum angle on the left is not attached and is just used to keep that corner aligned with the edge.

This photo shows the number to layout on the right side for 10 degrees.

Here is the math for the photos above. 
The tangent for ten degrees is .17632 and on and on.
Multiply that number by the length of the base in this case 16.5 and the answer is 2.90939 and more. Round that to hundredths and the answer is 2.91 and that is the number I’m showing.

In this photo I’m setting the miter gauge to 45 degrees. The leg at the top is 14” and stops the straight edge. The right side lined up to 14”. The miter head is loose and just slid up to the straight edge and locked down.

If you have a standard framing square with fractional markings you will have to convert the decimals. Plus keep in mind that if your square isn’t square everything will be off. So either true it up or buy a new one, you can’t lay out accurate angles with a square that isn’t square.

You can also use your calipers to set out the distance.

Sorry this got a bit long winded but it did take me 30 years to get here. So if you want to do something just keep at it and don’t give up. This framing square is the most versatile of the three methods but the bevel board and sine bar both still have a place in my shop. Good luck and I hope this opens up new possibilities for projects with angles.
Happy holidays to everyone.
Jim

The next leap for me in setting angles precisely was the rediscovery of the sine bar. My father was a tool and die maker and although I never worked in his shop I did become familiar with the tools of the trade. The only sine bar I had seen however was 3” long.
Then Fine Woodworking ran an article in the July/August 1992 issue called Simple Instrument Sets Precise Angles by Tom Rose. In it he described how to make a 10” sine bar and use it to set a miter gauge. Ahhhh I was off on my obsession again. I knew it’s application in toolmaking and now I could see it’s value in woodworking. It was an epiphany and I realized a lot of many trades could easily cross over to other trades.
However before I was able to make one of my own the next issue of FWW came out and a couple of letters lambasted the author about his ability and the instructions to construct a perfect 10” sine bar and the needed gauge blocks of exact length. My enthusiasm wained. I still thought it was a wonderful tool and wanted one and continued to think about it. I was after all still happy with the bevel board.
Eventually I bought into the Festool line for their precision and portability and loved the work table the MFT. But to me it was just a work table till I joined the FOG forum and read about people doing things I never imagined. One post commented that the hole pattern in the top was in fact a very precise grid system and could be used to align the fence and the saw rail to 90degrees precisely and repeatably. As good as Festool is the miter head for the table, like most included miter gauges was not very good. The sine bar would be my after market miter gauge. I built a couple and the best one I made was .001” off from ten inches. But here is what should have been stressed in the article and I didn’t understand till later was the fact that it doesn’t matter what the length is as long as it is known. If I was real sloppy and had made the bar 9.834” it will still work perfectly because the sine of the angle is multiplied by the length of the bar. Ten inches just makes the math easy, just move the decimal one place. The angular error ignoring the difference from 10” was insignificant for angles under about 35 degrees, so it was put to use as needed. If I needed 45 degrees on the MFT I used the hole grid pattern, it I knew was perfect. I used a different method for cutting my gauge blocks than the article which I will describe. It alone is useful if you need to cut a piece exactly like another that already exists. I do agree that the method described in the article for the gauge blocks is flawed and not accurate enough.

These are the tools needed. The wooden bar is the sine bar, scientific calculator and calipers. I bought the 12” version from Grizzly and they can handle all the measurements needed. 6” calipers would work if you already have them, it just requires an extra gauge block.

To drill the two holes for the round discs I set up a fence on the drill press with a stop block. One hole was drilled, then the calipers were set for 10” and placed against the stop block to index the sine bar over for the next hole. The profile was then cut on the one side to give it the proper clearance. The discs were then epoxied in what remained of the holes. When that was cured the discs were run against the table saw fence and the top was cut parallel to the discs. On this one the discs are 3/4” aluminum rod. Very easy to sand flush to the wood surface. Before the discs are sanded flush I measured them with the calipers to find out how close I came. That number will be used if it is not real close to 10”.

This photo shows it in use.

Now to calculate the block of wood labeled 26degrees and cut it exactly.
For this example 26 was entered in the calculator and the sin button was pressed the answer is .438… Since the sine bar is ten inches that answer is multiplied by ten (or the actual length of the sine bar). This is easy just slide the decimal over and set that length on the calipers. If this is just a one time odd angle you need to cut you can use the calipers the set the sine bar as in this photo.

But chances are you might want to cut that angle again so let’s make a permanent reference block. Using the miter gauge with a stop block set the block to be several inches longer than the 4+ inches needed and lock it down.

Use the calipers as shown against the stop block to space off a scrap of wood then cut that piece of wood.

Then remove the calipers and slide the small piece of wood you just cut over to the stop block and insert another piece of wood to cut.

You now have a piece of wood the exact same length as the caliper setting because they both occupied the same space at one time.

You now have an accurate and infinitely repeatable reference. This can also be used to set a bevel gauge to set the tilt of the blade also.
If any one is interested in reading how I use this on the MFT they can read my post and discussion on the FOG

http://festoolownersgroup.com/festool-jigs-tool-enhancements/precision-angle-setting/msg195201/#msg195201

Feel free to ask questions.

Start with a square of plywood 32”x32” not much smaller than that. Leave a margin all around and draw a square 30”x30” . Check diagonals and the lengths of the four lines. When you are sure it is square, starting from the lower left hand corner I made a grid of 6” squares I think but they could be any spacing you want accuracy is more important than whether you use 4”, 6” or just one at 15”. Next you will need to draw an arc with a radius of 28 5/8” or 28.625” if you have decimal measuring tools. 

Draw that radius from horizontal to vertical. Every 1/2” measured along that radius is equal to 1 degree. What I did next was layout 10 degrees, measure that distance with dividers and then walk the dividers to the vertical line and see how close I came. Once I had the radius divided into 9 equal spaces they were divided in half and then all the 1 degree marks are added. And of course every 1/8” along the arc is 1/4 of a degree. I never felt it was necessary it add that till I needed it.

I often thought that a vertical and horizontal dado for a miter gauge bar would be handy for setting the miter gauge,but I never did it. 
Hopefully this information is useful to someone and feel free to ask questions if you have them. This is just the first installment on the different ways I handle angles and bevels.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1z_sVZsxug