the boss

a very old boring machine, known as "the boss", arrived today parcel post. at first i thought it was an ebay disaster. it would hardly turn, it appeared broken and my heart sunk. but some investigation and careful twiddling and a healthy dose of wd-40 brought it to near perfect operation. i could tell it was happy to be lubricated again. it cried rusty stains from all its joints kind of like the tin man after the rain storm. a boring machine is a turn of the century device to bore holes in timbers. they were commonplace years back but today they're rare. i noticed one sell for $700 on ebay today. a boring machine is primarily used to prepare mortises. you place it on a beam, sit on a paddle that's connected to it, align the auger bit over where a mortise will be cut, drop the mechanism so the bit bites into the timber and rotate the handles. after several turns you'll have a nice vertical hole in your timber and you can move on to drilling another one very nearby until you removed most of the wood that occupies the mortise. the remainder wood, the small sections between holes, is removed with a chisel. with this delivery i'm pretty well tooled up to timberframe. i have three chisels, an axe, two drawknives, a boring machine, two bit and braces, two planes, a couple squares, lots of pencils and a broad axe. i picked up sharpening stones and a strop as well to keep all these razor sharp. i still need a fro. i'm going to be setting up a studio in the mill as a shop for producing the frames for faerie camp destiny. i can't wait to get started!