Work Bench

I ordered from Lindsay Publications, one of those wonderful "Model Engineering" books written by Henry Greenly in England, and published in 1915. That century old book is as interesting today as it was when it was new. In the first chapter Mr. Greenly discusses setting up a shop for model building; space, tools, machines, etc. One of the highly recommended machines was a hand shaper. Shapers must have become obsolete cause I could not find one, so I proceeded to make my own, by looking at the picture in the book. There were no dimensions given so I just had to guess at them. Therefore I do not know if it is the right size, but here is a picture of the finished "hand" shaper.



Another very important tool was a good bench vise, so I proceeded to make one of those to go along with the shaper.


Then they were mounted on my workbench. As you can plainly see, I'm now ready to tackle any small job that comes along.


Yes, the tools all work! The files for instance, are tips from needle files. The tin snips will cut foils, though its just hard to get your fingers through the handles. The brace actually has a working chuck with jaws like a full size one.
Birk