Rust Never Sleeps

The other night I noticed some rust spots creeping in on the corrugated sole of my jack plane, due to the damp nature of the basement. Drawing inspiration from Jim Tolpin's most recent book "The New Traditional Woodworker", I decided to make an "oiling pad."




So I took some cheap fir "firewood" from the bundle of cutoffs that I got from the lumber store and joined two 2.5" pieces together. I then added a beveled edge, glued some scrap carpeting to the top face, and rubbed some vegetable oil into the green pile. Now I can simply run my planes or chisels over the lubricated carpet before putting my tools to rest for the night.




This is my completed oiling pad. It is much smaller than Jim Tolpin's but I have a much smaller workbench than he does.

NO MORE RUST!
(at least that's the idea.)

Aaaaand just for fun I decided to hone my Google Sketchup skills and create a 3D model of this simple little project. I even threw in a little bottle of oil from the user-submitted google 3D warehouse just to be thorough.