Crate Breakdown and Sword Commission

The wood stove was installed on Friday and I spent Saturday morning breaking down the crate and pallet. Sadly, the Aussies who built the crate used Torx screws—the one profile that I didn't have a drill bit for—so the drill in the picture never saw use.

I did have the required T25 profile in a manual screwdriver though, and took out at least 15 of the screws by hand. Those screws are still good and I'll use them and the crate parts (pictured above) for a garden project this spring. I expect the lower pallet wood, which was lower quality, will be used for kindling. With luck the stove will pass inspection on Monday and we'll be soon be disposing of project cut offs by warming the house.

On Friday I received a down payment on a commissioned wooden fantasy sword. I spent about an hour last night testing a method for attaching the cross guard to the body of the sword. The prototype joint worked. I'll likely need to fettle the router plane for this project, though I may try using a pattern bit in the power router first—the router plane is far from ready to use.