6" leather strop wheel fot $15

I've had a small stropping wheel that I bought from Woodcraft years ago, but I wanted a larger one.

After pricing 6" wheels at about $80, I decided to make my own.

I bought the thickest veg-tan tooling side I could find at Tandy leather for $35. It was about 3/16" thick. This was enough to make 4 six-ply wheels with a couple extra discs.

Using a 6" hole saw on my drill press, I cut as many discs as I could from the hide.

Caution: the hole saw frequently grabbed the leather and bound the spindle or burned the leather, filing my shop with smoke. They will be ragged, but I cleaned up the edges on the lathe after glue-up.

I made a simple caul to flatten and align the discs during gluing. Drill a 1/4" hole through two plywood scraps:

I glued the discs using yellow wood glue, three facing up and three down. Once the glue dried, I bored out the center hole and mounted it on an arbor.

I picked this 1/2"-bore arbor from HD because it was sturdy and inexpensive:

Finally, I turned the edges down on a lathe to make them square and sanded them smooth.

Final cost about $15 per wheel.

HF Japanese saw is wicked sharp

I'm refinishing a wooden desk for my daughter, but it has wooden handles that she doesn't like glued to the drawers. I was using a small flush cut saw to remove them, but it wasn't aggressive enough, so I bought the 10" Japanese style flush cut saw from HF. Man, is this thing sharp! It not only cut through the handles like butter, but sliced my hand open twice! Dummy me will be wearing leather gloves next time!