I am making a rustic mallet as a joke for a friend of mine. The wood was rescued from downed hickory branches.
Last nite, I started with the handle and started taking a few knots off with fro and chisel. As i pounded away, i began thinking about my new 850 bench mount and adjustable fence. The more i thought, the lazier I got and decided the best way to rest up would be to try smoothing the short branch would be to run it across the 850. Voila!!! It did a great job.
from there, i got even lazier. Why not try trimming down to a good circumference by running across the 850.
I set the fence at a random angle (At this point, i reset the fence to meet bottom of fence to planer table.) I made a series of cuts with the blades set at about 4mm until i had a fairly even circumference. i then reset the fence to a little flatter angle and completely around a few more times. this left me with close to round, but obviously not round enough. From there, it was an easy project to go at it with my low angle block plane. i am thinking to leave the part of the handle most likely to be held while working as it was left from working with the 850. The head end of the handle will take a little more work with the block plane.
I had originally thought to do the rounding and smoothing with one of my old hatchets, but that would have meant considerable time at the sharpening station before hand. The 850 with bench mount and adjustable fence saved a lot of work.
I just wonder what i was thinking when i bought the 850 without the bench unit and fence. i now use it for almost every project.
Tinker
