The Renaissance Woodworker

I remember sitting in the Eight Bells pub just outside Stratford-Upon-Avon and sampling some fine sherry trifle while having a political discussion with a local about “nutter American politicians”. Our conversation eventually turned to British politics and the “royal problem”. I was very young and still really wide eyed but I remember this conversation clearly as being a watershed moment when I realized what our revolution from the crown really means more than 200 years later. I’m sure you have heard the expression, “two countries separated by a common language” and I think it sums up our relationship with our cousins across the pond. We are very much like the Brits, but often we are less refined and informal. I have traveled enough outside our borders to have encountered the ugly American epithet and this is not what I am talking about here.

Let’s look at music as an example. With thousands of years of tradition and formal structure to music, it took those crazy Americans to throw away those rules and build the Jazz art form based entirely around improvisation. In the Baroque period, the Pope banished the diminished 5th or tri-tone from music calling it il diablo en musica because of it’s harshly dissonant sound. No one would touch the interval until some crazy American named Bernstein not only used the interval but based an entire operetta, West Side Story, on the evil sound.

Americans have long been about breaking the rules and casting off societal norms. Now maybe we have gone a bit too far these days and I will be the first to admit a yearning for a simpler, more moral time. “Gee Walt, I think there’s something wrong with the Beaver”.

Our furniture was simpler and cleaner than it’s heavily carved and ornate British counterparts. Outside of the metropolitan areas, I don’t think America really left the Queen Anne or Neat & Plain period for the embellished Chippendale. While Federal was well into vogue in Europe and certainly not an American idea, we embraced wholeheartedly the return to basics that this style evokes and latched onto it as our own as a kind of metaphor for our new born republic.

These days, there is a point of pride when you say that this product was made in America (or at least North America) and there is no question that we are making some brilliant tools here on the continent. I own many of them and use them proudly.

However when it comes to mortising chisels let me just say, God save the queen and pip pip cheerio to that! This Christmas Santa sent me a pair of Ray Iles English Pattern Mortising Chisels and they are a revelation! You wouldn’t think that such a simple tool could be so vastly different. It’s a thick piece a steel crammed into a wooden handle right? Let’s take a look at the features of these chisels and what it means to you when you use them.

Handles
At first glance you will notice the handle. It is beefy and not round. I love the tactile feel of a hefty handle and the elliptical shape allows you to “register” the chisel in your hand. I have found that this helps me to position the chisel very quickly and easily merely by the feel of the tool in your hand. There is very little chance of chopping into your stuff at a crooked angle.

Bevels
As they come from England via Tools for Working Wood, the chisel are ground with a really acute primary bevel. I measured mine to be in the 20-25 degree range. This low bevel allows room for the chisel to work deep in a mortise while still providing great leveraging power along that bevel. However, this primary bevel would quickly fold under the whacking you give it while mortising. So to compensate there is a secondary bevel of 35 degrees. Notice I say secondary bevel and not micro bevel. This secondary bevel is a good 3/16″ wide to provide a solid hunk of steel to support your cutting edge. I immediately saw a great difference with the lower primary bevel. I had much more room when approaching the bottom of the mortise to move the chisel back and forth when levering out the waste.

That Crazy Odd Shape
This is something you won’t notice unless you are looking for it, but will immediately feel in use. The cross section of the blade is trapezoidal in shape with a slight wider back than front. The big reason for this is when you are buried deep in the wood a simple pull back on the handle will pop the chisel free of the mortise death grip. Most important for me is the with this slight taper you get some wiggle room when starting the cut and positioning your chisel along your marking lines. I had long believed that parallel sides were necessary to guide the chisel through the cut, but you quickly realize that this has little to no effect as the resulting mortise is determined on that first tap of the mallet. I suppose if I were making very shallow mortising this could make a difference, but for furniture work, it is rare to make a mortise shallower than 1 inch.

So far I have put these babies to the test in Poplar, Maple, Oak, Pine, Walnut, and Mahogany and there really is no appreciable difference. It is very easy to line up because of the oval handle and the trapezoidal shape allows for some flexibility in steering into the cut as you whack it with a mallet. I also have a few eBay finds that I have been using for the better part of a year and there is a difference. While based on the same pattern, the exceptional steel, more acute primary bevel, and the trapezoid shape are not found on these vintage chisels. What I find most exciting is this is a chisel that you don’t need a complete set to be effective. How many sizes of mortises do you really cut right. I have 3/8 and 1/4″ now and I can’t see needing anymore. I have a 1/2″ in my vintage set and I have used those while making my workbench.

So in conclusion, run don’t walk over to Tools for Working Wood and check these out, pour yourself a pint of bitter, put Manchester on the tele, and make some holes in your wood

Hand tools allow us to work in way not possible with a machine. Have you ever glued up a part and then thought, “dang, I should have chamfered those edges at the router table first”. While you can’t run a carcase across a router table easily, you can very easily use a block plane. For that matter you can blend the corners and areas around joints much better with a plane than a router bit. Although not a new epiphany for me, this is still a fact that gives me pleasure every day in my own work.

I was putting the finishing touches on the leg vise to my workbench this past weekend and focusing solely on the functionality of it. I had installed the parallel guide with a through wedged tenon and backed it up by pegging the joint. I was very proud of this very strong and if I may very pretty joint and the vise was working great. I then realized that I still needed to chamfer the edges not only to allow room for working on the outside of the chop but to cut down on weight since the chop is a 2 inch thick piece of Ash. I also wanted to cut a taper on the chop toward the bottom. So much for running it through the table saw or band saw.

Imagine a thick board that is 2×8x35 with an 18″ board sticking out of the back at a right angle.

Now how am I going to cut the taper and the edge profile?

Clamp it to the bench front, and hit it with a frame saw or panel saw filed rip and you have a tapered edge, all the while working around the parallel guide sticking out the back.

Now onto the chamfer. I clamped the chop down to my bench with the parallel guide hanging off the back and held securely between two dogs.

Then it was time to make lots of shaving with my drawknife, spokeshave, and block plane to create perfect 1″ 45 degree chamfer all the way around the coffin shaped vise chop.

This is just one example of the work you can do after the glue up with hand tooling. Call it flexibility, but often it is just me realizing too late that I should have done something before putting glue on that tenon.

Any war stories out there where a hand tool has corrected your glue happy tendencies?

This week I wrap up my chest of drawers project by fitting the drawers, adding drawer stop blocks, installing hardware, and applying the finish. Then I severely screw it up and apply the finish again.

I hope you enjoy it!

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How many times have you heard a fellow woodworker say that they are behind “schedule” on a project or, “I can’t believe how long that took to make!”

I am plagued with this all the time. I did a podcast many months ago on organizing yourself when working on multiple projects. In that episode I was talking about combining like tasks with like tasks like doing all your milling at the same time, etc. Lately I have been building task lists for my projects. I have had a list for my Roubo bench stuck to the wall of my shop for the better part of a year which is great since I dip in and out of the bench so often that it helps me to remember where I left off.

Lately though I have been frustrated with my progress on a few projects because I can’t seem to get even a single task on my list completed. For example, on my Roubo list was the item, “leg vise”.

It seems I have been working on that task for several weekends now and have not been able to gain the satisfaction of crossing it off. It is such a little thing but the act of crossing something off a list gives us OCD types a real warm fuzzy feeling. I think the problem here is not that I work slow it is that there are so many little parts within that one task. I’ll break it down and I think you will see that this applies to just about everything you make.

Workbench Leg Vise

Mill chop stock true and square
Cut chop to final size
Layout for hole for vise screw
Drill hole for vise screw
Layout for internal garter mortise
Cut garter mortise
Cut garter stock to approximate stock
Fit garter into mortise
Mill parallel guide stock
Drill parallel guide pin holes
Finish guide with decorate profile, chamfers, etc
Layout through mortise for parallel guide in chop
Cut through mortise
Flare outer mortise walls to allow for wedges
Cut tenon on parallel guide
Fit tenon
Cut wedge stock
Install wedges and glue up parallel guide
Drill peg holes
Hammer in pegs
Layout chop taper
Cut taper
Layout chop bevel
Cut bevels
Finish plane/sand
Install chop and go to work

This list doesn’t even include installing the vise nut into the leg but you can see that all of these steps go into the single line item of “leg vise” on my list. If you really want to be picky you can break down the above steps even further. Think about all the step included in cutting a tenon. Layout, cut shoulder, cut cheek, smooth and fit, possibly undercut shoulder, etc, etc. Now careful on this slippery slope because you will quickly get into list building and no woodworking. I think the point it clear. If you feel like you are getting no where, don’t get discouraged; but rather, sit down and break down what you have to do. Each one of these tasks can be done with minimal shop time and you feel like you are getting somewhere when you leave the shop after crossing off 1 or 2 of these items.

Maybe you are the type of person who doesn’t need this level of organization, or just doesn’t make lists to keep on track. I still think this post contains something to think about. All of these steps take time and time is money if you are a professional so being able to gauge how long it will take you to build something is your life blood. So next time you feel like you are making no progress and have a customer, spouse, conscience, etc hounding you for results take some time to plan your build so you can really estimate how long it will take and build in some milestones. Remember though, whether you are a hobby woodworker or a professional, don’t forget to have fun. These milestones keep you on track but they should not be a burly bald man with a dog collar beating on a drum in the stern of your shop shouting, “stroke, stroke!”

I know there are a lot of sources on how to cut your dovetails by hand, but I figured I would try to add my own to the mix. It seems as if we can’t get enough dovetails tutorials. I know when I was learning I looked at everything so here is another source from a relatively new dovetailer.

This week I add the dust frame and back panel to the chest carcase and then move on to dovetailing all 5 drawers. I hope you enjoy this episode and don’t hesitate to hit me with questions or suggestions on how I can improve.

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Posted via web from renaissanceww’s posterous

These days I can’t help but examine every structure I see for design and construction hints. I find myself staring at leaves and branches and thinking about how I could incorporate those beautiful lines into an inlay or table leg. So it was no surprise to me when while sitting in a parking lot waiting for a business contact to get his cup of coffee that I began obsessing over this simple rough board fence.

It’s nothing special in construction, just some 4×4 sunk into the ground and 2×8 nailed across them. But look closer and you can see the circular saw marks on the rough sawn planks. I figure the diameter of the saw to be around 30 inches so these cedar planks were obviously sawn at a mill. All of the mills that I have visited in the local area use a band saw for sawing up trees so this must have come from out of the area. In addition, you don’t find a lot of Cedar in the mid Atlantic states.

It was at this point in my reverie that my client came back to the car and I went on with my day, but I can’t help but think about how I look at the world as a woodworker. Have you ever been sitting in a restaurant and wondering how the chair you are sitting in was put together, or noticed that the table top has a breadboard end and wondered how it has held up to the wear and tear of a busy restaurant? George Walker said in his Woodworking in America presentation that observation is the key to design. I think that as woodworkers we naturally are drawn to the “how does that work” of every day life.

So here is where I alienate my non woodworking readers (if they exist). I think that this hyper observant trait makes us more intelligent, open minded, and in tune with our surroundings. We are well adjusted individuals yearning to make something beautiful and thoroughly enjoying the process of making it. You never hear about a woodworker snapping and “going postal” on anybody.

Remember this the next time someone rolls their eyes when you point out the tools marks on a telephone pole or the underside of a table top and just tell them it is your way of paying homage to the craftsmen that came before us.

This was a piece that was commissioned at the end of summer and fortunately I caught most of the build on film. Granted it is all my old camera so the quality is a little lower than what you have been seeing as of late. I skipped most of the initial milling stages since we have talked about that previously and pick up just before the glue up of the carcase.

Not sure how many parts this build will work out to but enjoy.

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Posted via web from renaissanceww’s posterous

One of the things I like most about being a woodworker is our ability to make something from nothing. As 2009 draws to a close it is inevitable to hear talk about new year’s resolutions popping up everywhere. I’ve never been one for making resolutions as I am much better at breaking them but I can’t help but be excited by the prospect of a new beginning. 2009 was a great year for my shop and my skills.

I discovered Chuck Bender’s school and partook of my first official hand tool training.

I attended both Woodworking in America events and got to rub elbows with woodworking celebrities and even to sing Happy Birthday to Christopher Schwarz.

I visited Winterthur, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Colonial Williamsburg where I was awed and inspired by the countless craftsman to come before me.

I experienced kickback on my table saw for the first and second times. I hope for it to be my last!

I poured countless hours into my Roubo workbench, by far the largest thing I have ever built, and finished the year with a fully functional french beast. Granted the bench is not technically finished but as far as Roubo’s initial designs, I have gone beyond that as I have a tail vise and lege vise and Roubo had no vises at all.

I completed my first large project incorporating hand cut dovetails. Video editing is underway on this one and will be in the podcast shortly.

Finally got around to building that little Shaker side table from Woodworking magazine and did it almost entirely by hand. I broke down and used the jointer and planer during stock prep.

I completed an enormous number of small keepsake projects from boxes to pens to the Ark of the Covenant of which more than 75% were actually paid commission projects!

I won my first award for my work on The Sawdust Chronicles 30 day build challenge! Congrats to Rick and company for putting together a tremendous contest and all the hours put in behind the scenes.

I amassed more hand tools and just plain tripped and fell down the slippery slope into galootdom. I also discovered that eBay may not be the best way to purchase these old tools having gotten a lot of junk that I just don’t have the patience to restore.

I lost count of the books and articles of 17th and 18th century woodworking esoterica that I read but I’m working on being able to carry on a conversation with Joel Moskowitz for more than a few minutes.

The Renaissance Woodworker podcast turned 1 year old and during the 52 weeks of the year I produced 62 episodes! Thank you to all of you who read, watch, and listen each week. And thank you to everyone who comments and emails. Y’all make it the hours of filming, editing, and writing very worthwhile and a heck of a lot of fun. I love the comments, hunger for the critiques, and am flattered every time my inbox icon lights up with a new message.

I’m sure I’m missing something but what strikes me is that other than the Roubo, none of these projects, escapades, etc were planned. They just sorta happened organically. Throughout the year I have let this wonderful craft take me where it will and through it I have really learned a lot about myself and the work I enjoy doing. Without question I discovered that the Queen Anne period is my favorite and you can expect much of the simplicity and clean lines from that style to show up in my work. I also discovered that sharing this experience is just as rewarding as living it. I can understand why Marc Spagnuolo does what he does despite the huge amount of time it takes instead of just building furniture.

So what is the title of this post all about anyway? I didn’t get much shop time while I was off work for Christmas. What time I did get was spent thoroughly cleaning my shop and doing some reorganization. What I’m left with is a blank slate, but one that is sharpened and honed to produce some amazing things. It is exactly these endless possibilities that enchant me most about this craft. I really must get my sliding leg vise complete on Roubo so I can officially call that project done. I need to make a tool cabinet for all my precious hand tools not only to protect them, but mainly for organization sake. I’m thinking of experimenting with the Hepplewhite style and building a kind of apprentice’s graduation cabinet for this tool cabinet. Other than that, I am free of “obligations” and looking forward to seeing where that takes me. I can clearly see a Queen Anne styled coffee table coming out of this freedom and I’m sure my wife will be glad to see that project finally make it into reality.

Most of all, I can see a lot more blog posts and podcasts. I am blessed to be so close to so much history here in the mid Atlantic and hope to share it with you all. I have 2 more visits to the Acanthus Workshop scheduled this year and a trip down to Berea to take a class with Glen Huey at Kelly Mehler’s school. So enough talk, lets get this year started already!