Stuff from the Workshop

Got some much needed time for tinkering in the Workshop this week. I've got a long line of projects that have been languishing on the dusty shelves just waiting for me to get all the boring day to day stuff of life caught up.

Mrs. Paladin bought this old paper cutter, because she and a mess of her friends do Scrapbooking and Cardmaking as a hobby and she likes to mix in odd old stuff with her tools.

She asked me to clean it up a bit and get it working well enough to use as a paper/photo cutter. I cleaned and sealed the wood parts, repainted the metal parts, and sharpened/adjusted the blades.

I've always kind of had a "thing" for vintage pencil sharpeners. I've had these two laying around for the longest time. The one on the right in the pic below was all jammed up because someone tried to use it to sharpen crayons at some point. Both of them have cracked/missing pieces of acetate on the body of the bin that catches the shavings.

Here's one of them, done in red and black. To make the replacement panels for the shavings bins I cut out pieces from the clear plastic packaging from some stuff we bought at the store. I save flat pieces of plastic packaging for just this reason. I use it for all sorts of stuff like radio dial covers, gauge and clock covers, etc.

And here's my favorite from this batch.

I scanned the decal from the original broken acetate piece and then printed a replacement decal to go on the front of the bin. Both sharpeners work well now that they are lubricated and cleaned up.