Pallet Wood Upgrade for Dad's Workmaster Miter-Box

Back when my Dad was a full time firefighter, he had a second job as a part-time maintenance man for three apartment buildings. One of the tools he bought to make his job easier was a Stanley 19-035 miter-box. After he retired he used this saw on a few projects around the house. About 6 or seven years ago he gave the saw to me, along with some of his other tools, and some tools that had belonged to my grandfather (his Dad). At first I thought I wouldn’t need the saw, and attached it to a cut-off piece of ¾ inch plywood, so I could hang it up in my garage. A coupe of years ago I was having a hard time trying to cut some small molding pieces on my 12 inch powered miter-saw, and re-discovered how much easier it was to get precise cuts from Dad’s old saw. I have since used it for a couple of other projects, as well.

Last month I was re-arranging some of the things in the garage, and took the miter-saw off the wall. That's when I noticed that the pressed board sacrificial base of the saw was cut about halfway through at the most common angles. My first thought was to just flip that piece over and be done with it. I set the saw aside to finish what I was working on, and that night I was thinking about the saw and decided I could make it better. When I returned to work on Monday, I asked one of the facilities guys, who happens to dispose of the pallets we break-up and send out for recycling, to look out for a decent piece of maybe oak that I could use. He asked what I needed it for, and I told him about the saw. The next day he said he had found a piece he thought would be great for the project. It is a surprisingly beautiful piece of black walnut.

Tools and supplies we used for this project:

Safety Glasses

Nitrile gloves

Cut resistant gloves

Screwdriver (#2 Phillips)

Powered reciprocating saw

Tape Measure

Mechanical Pencil (5 mm)

Combination Square

Hammer

Nail set

Powered Miter-saw

Table saw

Random orbit sander

Sanding discs (60, 80, 120, 180, 220 grits)

Woodworking Vise

Sanding block

Sheet sandpaper (120, 180, and 220 grits)

A wet paper towel (for raising the grain after initial sanding)

Tack cloth

Foam Paint brushes

Spar urethane

0000 steel wool

7/64" or (3 mm) Snappy Bit (AKA hinge bit)

I didn’t get any photos of the Pallet breakdown process, so I’ll try to describe it as best I can. The slat needed was cut off of the pallet with a reciprocating saw by cutting through the nails holding the slat to the pallets frame. This did some damage to what ended up being the bottom side of the slat, The up side to using this method is the nails can easily be removed with a nail-set or a small punch, which I did get photos of. I used a nail set and a small hammer to remove them, I placed the slat bottom side up, over a bench-dog hole in my workbench, and tapped on the cutoff end of the nail so that the head of the nail would be raised above the top surface of the slat for removal by the claw end of the hammer. Most of the nails just dropped out with one tap of the hammer.

I removed the four screws holding the saw frame to the plywood, I turned the saw frame over and removed the two screws holding the pressed board in place then had to tap it out of the frame with the handle of the screwdriver,this revealed just how deep some of the cuts in the pressed board were. A little clean-up with my shop vacuum, and I was ready to start working on the walnut.

The pallet slat had some cracks at either end of it that I cut off with my Powered Miter-saw. The next step was to rip a small amount from one edge on the table saw, this would give me a nice straight edge to work from when I cut the other edge to the width I needed. For the second rip cut I set the fence for the table saw 1/8” (3 mm) wider than the width of the original pressed board, this allowed me to sand the width down to a nice tight fit in the metal frame. Next I needed to cut the walnut to length, there were two minor issues I needed to work around on this piece, the nail holes where it had been attached to the center upright of the pallet. I decided I would use small wedge shaped pieces that I removed from the edge of first rip cut I made, and used those to fill the holes. Next I laid the piece top side on the edge of my work bench, and placed the saw frame on top of it with the back stop (upright) of the saw frame against the edge of the work bench. This created a make shift template that I could use to determine where I wanted to make my cross cuts, and marked the piece for those cuts. The cross cuts were made on my powered miter saw, again 1/8” (3 mm) longer than the pressed board as a sanding allowance.

Let the sanding begin. The top and bottom of the slat both had a rough finish to them, as I don’t have access to a planer, and was never any good with a hand plane, I decided to sand those surfaces with my random orbit sander, starting with 60 Grit on the bottom of the piece then the top, till all the machine processed high and low points were no longer visible. Now I knew all along this would not produce parallel surfaces, which I was okay with, as they say in Lean training "Don't let perfect get in the way of better". The rest of the sanding on these two surfaces was just a process of stepping through the finer grits, listed above, till I had a very smooth finish with the 180 grit. Next I raised the grain with a wet paper towel, which also gave me a preview of what the finished piece would look like. The next step was to block sand the perimeter edges, starting with 120 grit to remove the sanding allowance with the piece secured in my vise, width first then length, checking the fit as I worked on the pieces edges. Once I had a snug fit, I switched to 180 then 220 grit. One more wipe down with a wet paper towel and I was ready to do a final sanding of all surfaces with 220 grit.

For the finish I decided to use Spar Urethane that I would apply with foam brushes. Three coats were used over the course of five days. The piece was wiped down with a clean tack cloth, before each application of the finish, to remove any remaining saw dust or airborne particles. I wore Nitrile gloves and applied successive coats of the finish with a fresh foam brush A bit of advice from my Dad about the foam brushes (If you notice any small pieces of foam or bubbles in the finish, “switch to a new brush”). In between each coat of the finish I went over the dried piece with 0000 steel wool. One final wipe down with the tack cloth and the finish was complete.

Assembly was not complicated at all. When I used the frame as a template for my crosscuts I realized something about the frame I had never noticed before, the blade location was offset to the right side of the frame. Originally I was going to have the nail holes on the right side which would have put them very close to the blade location, so I ended up mounting the piece so they are on the left instead. I again laid the walnut top side down on the edge of the work bench, and placed the frame on top with the backstop against the front edge of the bench. I drilled pilot holes with a 7/64” (3 mm) Snappy Bit using the original screws in the original locations. The pilot holes are important, if you don’t drill the pilot holes you will likely crack hardwood if you just power drive the screws in, ruining all your work. Once I had the saw reassembled, I reattached the frame to it’s plywood base.

I showed the photos I took to my Dad, and he really liked the way it came out, but asked the same question that others have asked after seeing them,”That’s black walnut are you ever going to use it now” or "Are you nuts"? Yes I will and I already have, a ¼” thick piece of scrap plywood worked great at protecting a beautiful piece of black walnut. Besides I still have the other half of the slat!

Winter has set in here in New England and my garage is unheated, so I have a couple of thing I want to accomplish once Spring arrives. In the process of working on Dad’s saw I found that Stanley has an archive of instruction manuals for many of their old products ( https://support.stanleytools.com/hc/en-us/article_attachments/360012622457/19-035_Mitre_Box_Instruction_Manual.pdf ). I downloaded the manual for this particular saw, and discovered there is a piece missing (an adjustable stop that can be mounted on either side of the blade. I plan to try and create a new one with T-track or a piece of 80/20. Also I am planning to add a provision to the the plywood base the frame is mounted to, so that I can keep the back-saw with the frame when I store it. I will use curt-offs from the pallet slat ,to make a handle hole shaped hanger with a simple toggle, attached under the saw frame. I also plan to print and laminate the one page instruction manual and Velcro that to the plywood, under the blade of the back-saw, as well. We did get an unusually warm day yesterday so I was able to mock up what I plan to do.