I went a little nuts and bought a 1000 foot spool of paracord. I went from having no rope around the house to having more than I knew what to do with! What to do with it was actually a bit of an issue. The spool stores nicely, but isn’t immediately useful. You have to pull out what you need, cut some off, and then burn the ends to keep it from fraying.

Enter the fast pull rope wrap. It is a simple way to bundle up paracord into neat organized bunches that don’t get tangled, and they let you pull out a little or a lot as you needed. The best way to make one is with a jig. My jig has some neat and novel features you are sure to want if you have to make more than a few bundles at a time. With it I was able to break my spool down into more reasonable sizes that could be sprinkled around to various locations that might need rope.

I recently picked up a Stanley no 45 plane. It has a lot of different blades associated with it. They can make beads, coves, fancy edges, and all sorts of shapes. The trick is that you have to sharpen each one by hand. There really isn’t much in the way of jigs to do the sharpening for you. That having been said, I did have an idea of how to help. A clamp that holds the small blades firmly, and indicates the angle used for sharpening. Finished product first!

There is a long half the drops down into my vice, and a mobile half the opens up and lets me position the blade to be sharpened. I cut the top edges to 35 and 40 degrees. They help provide a loose guide while sharpening. It still comes down to your skill on sharpening, but it should keep me from getting too out of whack.

The build

I started with two pieces of oak and cut their ends to the proper angle. In reality, I cut the wrong angles because I used the numbers on the miter saw. Oops, I needed 90 degrees minus that number. The correct angles show up in later photos.

Next I drilled an offset hole for a 1/4″-20 bolt and threaded handle. My hope was that It would be enough to hold a single blade with out rotating too badly once clamped.

If at first you don’t succeed destroy all evidence you ever tried. I guess by posting this I am not following that rule. I grabbed a piece of scrap oak, glued it to the inside of the clamp opposite where the blade will be, and shaved it down to the blade thickness. Low and behold the extra little part helps keep the clamp aligned and gripped firmly across the face of the blade. I played with it a bit and am happy with the results. Marking the angles will help me set the primary bevel and micro-bevel without confusion. Boiled linseed oil should keep the wood protected.