An unheated garage is not conducive to cutting/fitting/gluing/finishing at 10F. I have managed a few smaller projects over the past month or so on warmer days and with the heater going and here is one. I have a Stanley 45 that I have brought back from the edge and it came with most of the cutters.
Long have I wanted to create a “safe space” for the irons. So I decide to create an interpretive reproduction of the Stanley 45 Iron Box. To that end I had acquired some Aspen and it’s been sitting around aging. I had some 1/4″ Aspen in stock so that became my default material for this project.
I got started and completed the project in a day including printing the labels. By the way, I owe quite a bit to the Stanley #45 – 7 forms of fun, Plane Restorations #1: Stanley No. 45 Boxes Reproduction Graphics Blog, and several other fellows at Lumberjocks.com that have restored 45s.
Rough box dimensions were determined by laying out the irons with a playing card width between the measuring. And over to the RAS to make the sticks
Fine tuning the dimensions by laying out the irons.
Then gluing
I cut the tops from the bottoms and then laid out and cut the “window”. A coat of wipe on poly then printed and glued the labels on.
These turned out better than I hope for. They look great and serve to protect the irons well.
I def owe those that preceded me in restoration a debt of gratitude. I would not have executed this project – small as it is – without them.
Check out the chest I made for these on New Oak Chest for a Stanley No 45 Plane
Btw – I did use a Card Scraper in finishing this project off. Check out my Card Scraper Blog and Youtube Video here.
