It’s back to school time and the gloom that has settled over my wife in the last few days has made that blatantly known. After finally accepting the inevitable, she tells me that we need to visit her classroom on Sunday to do some organizing in the classroom. I also needed to deliver the Hepplewhite book case to it’s place of honor. Heather told me that I needed to build some shelves for an existing book case to store sheet music. Basically she needed 3 more shelves and to replace 2 of them that had bowed beyond belief. (I’m not sure who decided un-laminated particleboard over a 40″ span was a good idea for shelves that would hold books) The good news is that there is already some shelving material on campus that we could use and that I would just need to cut it down to size. I was dubious at this last statement since no further details were given. She assured me that they didn’t need to be pretty, just fit in the space and hold up to boxes of sheet music.

Here is the case after I pulled everything off the shelves.

I took a quick measurement of the sheet music boxes (the black boxes to the right in the above picture) and spaced out the shelves to be somewhat consistent from top to bottom. I then went in search of the aforementioned shelving material. I found it upstairs in the stage scene shop and was happy to see it was a good quality plywood with maple veneer and what looked like a few coats of poly on the surface. The edges had been banded with maple as well. Things were looking up, but I still had to deal with the size. The smallest piece was 24″ wide and 72″ long. My shelves needed to be just under 12″ wide and 40″ long. I knew going into this excursion that I would need to be sawing and I thought it would be great justification for the nice collection of Mark Harrell of Bad Axe Toolworks refurbished hand saws. Since I was traveling I thought I would take my “toolbox” saws AKA panel saws because they are 19 and 20″ long and make for easy travel. They are sharpened for a cleaner cut as I normally use them at the bench for final dimensions of panels and such. I also took along a few clamps, a square, and a block plane.

Woodworking on the road is not so much about having the tools, but having adequate work holding. This is where my clamps came into play. Using the chairs in the classroom I set up a sawing bench of sorts and clamped my pieces down. I was able to use an existing shelf as a template and went to work cross cutting the boards to the right length. My little panel saw performed admirably and soon enough I had the boards to length (and perfectly square, if I do say so myself)

Now comes the fun part. It was time to rip these boards in half to make 12″ wide shelves. Ripping scares a lot of people because you have so much real estate to cover and keeping a straight edge only gets harder over that long distance. Ripping over a 6 foot distance is not only intimidating, it sounds a whole lot like work. To these naysayers, I say, maybe you need to tune up your saw! A bit of positioning with the chairs, enter the clamps, and off to sawing.

After a few careful strokes with the saw at a low angle I determined the path of my saw. I tipped it up to close to 60 degrees and started to work in earnest constantly puffing to clear the sawdust from my line and ensure I am tracking correctly.

I have not had that much time with this little Spears & Jackson saw since Mark sent it to me. The cuts I have done have been great but on a much smaller scale. If I were in my shop I would be using my 26″ saw for a cut this long so you can imagine how shocked I was that this little 9 tpi, 19″ saw was racing through the board. In about a minute I had 2 boards from one.

A little block plane work to clean off the saw marks and a tiny chamfer to kill the sharp edges…

…and I have 3 new shelves installed and ready to be loaded.

This “project” was hardly fine woodworking and with no fit and finish that I would expect from my normal furniture projects, but something about it was thrilling. Leaving my shop to build things rarely happens and to know that I can take just a few tools on the road and complete a job without making a lot of noise, mess, or needing an extension cord is a truly exciting prospect.

Road weary tools back home in their shop

Fine Edges make for nice dovetailin' but painful carving

The problem with those beveled edges is if you ever choke up on the blade you can slice up your fingers pretty easily. I am working on ball & claw feet for my Dunlap Chest of Drawers and I am rounding over the ball using a 1/2″ bench chisel. The straight chisel is really efficient for quickly shaping the ball and needs very little touch up afterward.

I am a white knuckle carver for sure and I grip my chisels tightly and choke up really high on the blade for the best control. I know I could stand to relax, but that will have to come with time and practice. I still have to remind myself to breathe every now and then too.

Well several hours into my carving session I realized that my fingers were starting to hurt and then I noticed a drop of blood on the front claw of the foot I was working on. A quick look at my hand and I had about 12 of what looked just like paper cuts on the inside of my first two fingers. It was then that I realized maybe I was gripping a bit too much.

This is several days later after the cuts had time to heal a bit

If you look at my carving gouges they have nice rounded edges for comfort as I assume most woodworkers choke up for control while carving too. Needless to say I will not be grinding down the edge of my Lie Nielsens because they excel at what they do with joinery. I might just need to re-purpose one of my flat sided firmer chisels or go get a #1 sweep carving chisel.

Now I’m going to go gross out my wife with my lacerated fingers…

Enjoy the episode and like Brian, let me know if something is on your mind that you want to learn more about. If I don’t know the answer, I’ll make up something witty and add music!

Check out Tico Vogt’s site and if so inclined pick up one of these beauties. If you are going to Woodworking in America (and if not, why not???) stop by and say hello to Tico and try out the Super Chute there.

Now it is time to focus on the bead detail that runs on the inside edges of the case. I want to inlay a small strip of banding that sites 1/8″ proud of the case surface. I will round over that exposed edge and each strip will be mitered into the corners. To start I need to cut a 1/8″ by 1/2″ rabbet on all those edges.

The two case sides need to have a stopped rabbet where the sides meet the upper rails and bottom, so I marked out the termination and used a chisel to hollow the area and thus give my rabbet plane clearance in front of the blade to make the rest of the cut.

Now I ran some thin strips of material to make the beading over at my table saw and then cut them to length at the bench hook and then used the shooting board to get them square and to the exact length.

I set these bead strips ever so slightly longer than the rabbet so the center of the strip bows up and away from the case. When you press the center flat it drives the ends into place to ensure a tight fit.

I rounded over the edge of the bead strips using my scratch stock cutter. This is the same process I used to cut the faux cockbead into the drawer front of my Queen Anne Side Table. I have not mitered the corners yet as I need to wait until the case is assembled and glued to be the most accurate fit. Leaving those bead strips a little long also ensures that I have some room to play with when mitering the corners too. I’m looking forward to putting my new Donkey Ear appliance to work that I got from Tico Vogt. Here you can see his Super Chute in action as I square up the ends of the lower trim.

While the glue on the case cures, I turn my attention back to the feet and the trim pieces. You may remember at the beginning of this series I started out by making a template for the curves on the front and side trim. I used those templates to lay out my pieces then cut a half lap joint of sorts that would lock into the back side of the feet and give a strong bond to hold together the lower assembly. The addition of more glue blocks not only strengthen but provide attachment points to the bottom of the case. Here you can see the half lap joint at the feet.

Here is a look at the rough cut curves on the front and side trim. I still need to refine the shape with my spokeshave and a files.

Once the feet and trim are attached to the case I will cover the transition with an applied molding. The details are coming together. I’m also experimenting with some coloring options and I believe I have decided upon a nice color. That however is a topic for another post. Stay tuned!

I had a lot of fun building this piece entirely by hand and it was very satisfying to put my skills to the test this way. Now for the next project, I think I am ready to plug my thickness planer back in and probably my bandsaw too!

Enjoy!

I think you get my point. The explosion of woodworkers today is driven by the armies of office workers penned up in their cubicles by day yearning to make something that you can touch, and possibly break a sweat along the way. As I will illustrate, this is not a new idea.

Article A

This little beauty is a hobby saw from the Victorian period. We have more of these than I can count at the Steppingstone Museum. The industrial revolution brought many advances including mass produced tools. Along with this, we saw the addition of free time to the average Joe. It wasn’t necessarily the dawn to dusk grind to survive anymore so people found themselves yearning for a creative outlet to use up that time. This saw is treadle driven, but lightweight and very compact. The tiny table and throat of the saw doesn’t make it practical for anything but knick-knacks but you can see how someone could have a good time in the parlor making tiny fretwork to adorn their home.

Article B

This little lathe is of the same ilk as the above scroll saw. The treadle pedal (that’s fun to say) is missing and the belt needs repairing, but you can see the diminutive size would not make it very useful for major project work. However, I can see a candlestick or two being turned for enjoyment. This particular model may also have been a salesman’s model. It is the mini-me version of a larger lathe we have in the collection and this leads us to think a salesman may have carted this around door to door to demonstrate the latest “wonder of technology” Regardless, I can also see someone sitting by the fire on a cold night making that perfect Christmas gift for a loved one.

Working around all these treadle powered tools does make me appreciate the simplicity of hard work and the enjoyment that comes from building something yourself using your own power. So respect your table saw and be thankful for the work it does for you, but maybe you might want to pick up a handtool and build some muscle too. Just imagine that when all our natural resources are used up and we need to go back to treadle power just to turn on our lights how well prepared you will be.

If you haven’t read it yet, The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi is an interesting take on a post energy crash world where the treadle computer is an everyday occurrence.

ALERT FOR SHAMELESS PLUG: if you know anyone looking for online marketing help give me a call or drop me a line.

Anyway, I have been slowing getting my feet under me at the museum and getting acquainted with all the tools as well as doing some restoration and tuning to get everything into working order. I came across this odd little coping saw hanging high on the wall above our treadle lathe and took it down to put it through it’s paces. The saw has a chain mechanism attached to an axle at the top that allows you to steer the blade without fear of breaking it because you introduce too much twist. With the axle at the top, both sides of the blade turn in unison really smoothly. Now with this flexibility comes a disadvantage because the frame of the saw turns freely about the handle and you cannot lock it in place.

Interesting Steering Mechanism for your Coping saw

This freedom of movement means that you really need both hands to cut with the saw. In use though it turns on a dime and with it’s larger through capacity and blade length (about 12×8) you can really use it much like a smaller frame saw. I like to call this saw a Steampunk Coping saw!

Stay tuned for more oddities from the Steppingstone Museum tool vault!

After regaling him with my own stories from the shop I was given a provisional Journeyman title. The provision being that I had to prove my skills throughout the day. We then took a tour of the workshop and it’s tools as well as our adjoining barns displays of Farming and Coopering tools. Wade told me that since I was there not only to volunteer but learn that I would not be expected to interact with the guests and I could just keep working as the guests are just as interested in watching the work as they are in asking questions. I immediately shuffled that off and told him that I was most looking forward to speaking with the guests and telling woodworking stories. I was after all a performance major in college. I seem to always be looking for a stage.

During the shop tour I learned a lot about the tool collection. It turns out The Steppingstone Museum has over 40,000 tools in it’s collection so we have to keep most of them in controlled storage and occasionally rotate new ones in. The overriding principle though is that all the tools in the shop be in working condition and ready to be taken down off the wall and put to work. Certainly some of the tools in the collection are rare enough and beat up enough that they stay in storage so as to protect them. It does seem a shame that so many tools don’t see the light of day or taste the wood and sweat of woodwork, but I imagine this dilemma is at the heart of most museum curation. You want to share what you have with the public, but to do so degrades and jeopardizes the artifact. With our shop being open to the elements (we have a roof but only three walls and no AC) the level of protection we can offer is quite small. I did discover a great new “tool” called Ballistal that is used to protect everything. It was invented by a German prior to World War II for German soldiers to protect their gear from the elements. The idea was to have one product that would care for metal, leather, and wood. This stuff is still being made today and is sold as Sportsman’s oil. It applies much like Boeshield T9 but you can also buy it in liquid form. The museum applies this to their tools once a year and that keeps them rust free! Here I am oiling and waxing my planes constantly! I’m thinking a switch may be in order.

Before long we had guests wandering through the barns and I hung back a little to let Wade take up the narration about the farm and it’s history hoping to soak up as much history as I could. We had a family down from Pennsylvania who was particularly interested in the Cooper display and while Wade was taking them through that process, I peeked next store into the main shop to see if anyone else had come by. Sure enough we had several more people pop in so I wandered in to see if I could answer any questions.

Fast forward 3 hours later and you will find me seated at the bicycle style treadle lathe turning beads and demonstrating infinite speed variability and forward and reverse capabilities for smoothing a cut. In the back of the shop are a couple of ripped and crosscut boards, and several boards in various stages of flattening. As my surge of guests moved on and I caught my breath I realized Wade had been watching me from across the shop.

“Yep, you’re officially a Journeyman now.” he said with a smile.

Not a bad first day and I think I hold the record for shortest completed apprenticeship in history now.

Wade Whitlock, the master joiner on the premise introduced me to their treadle saw and I was surprised that it is not operator driven but rather required the assistance of two others to drive the “pedals” on the outfeed side of the saw. Wade explained that oftentimes, local vagrants would be hired for the day to drive the saw and were paid just enough for them to go out and get drunk that night thereby giving this saw the term “alcohol powered”. As one person pushes down on a pedal the other pedal directly across from it rises and then that person pushes down. It was quite difficult to get started and Wade explained that there was close to 600 lbs of iron underneath the table that we were toiling to get rolling. Once it got started though, you didn’t want to get in the way of those pedals if you fell off. A fellow onlooker and I tried it out while Wade went about crosscutting some Beech using a crude miter gauge. My wife took a video of it, but really all you can see is my backside as I jump up and down on an oak pedal. Really not the most flattering angle so I am choosing to leave it to your imagination…for now…

And here is where lies the exciting news oh dear readers. Posted on the wall of the shop was a call for woodworkers to volunteer with the museum. I quickly inquired with Wade and he explained that he is looking for someone to help them out as there are only two woodworkers currently working at the museum. In exchange for my time, Wade and the other master, John Weifenbach, would take me on as an apprentice and train me in the traditional woodworking ways. I could advance as fast as my skills would permit so Wade acknowledged that I might quickly advanced through the basics since I already had some hand tool experience. Regardless of what he thinks, I’m looking forward to learning the basics all over again from a 19th century perspective. So after applying formerly to the museum and some organizational emails, it is official! I will be the newest Joiner at the Steppingstone museum starting this Saturday, June 5th. Wade said he is going to start me on sharpening and see how quickly I advance from there. I guess I had better leave my Veritas MKII honing guide at home.

So if you are anywhere near the Mid Atlantic region, look up the Steppingstone museum near Havre de Grace, Maryland right at the head of the Chesapeake Bay and pay me a visit. I’ll be working weekends from 1-4 and I’m sure you will find me jumping up and down on the pedals of a treadle table saw. If you bring the beer (nod to Chris Schwarz) you can help power the beast too. In the coming weeks we will be hosting a Celtic Festival on June 12th and 13th and then a Blues Festival on June 26th and 27th. Come by for some beautiful scenery (and I don’t mean the tool collection although that helps), good food, and great music. I can’t promise I’ll be wearing a kilt so don’t get your hopes up!

Finally, I have had a few conversations with the museum staff about starting up a blog for them and I am hoping to get this started shortly where I can regale you with tales from the shop and the museum’s other trades and events. Stay tuned for more news on that soon. In the meantime check out this video posted by my local county board of tourism.

Enjoy!

I was only able to capture so much of the process of building a wheel since the Wheelwrights were working on a small cart and actually not building a wheel while I was there. There are some great videos on the Internet that can illustrate the process if you are interested in learning more.

First you have to check out Colonial Williamsburg’s site at www.history.org but specifically their trades section where they have a description of the Wheelwright trade as well as 2 podcasts discussing the trade. Look for a link to those two episodes in the multimedia section in the right sidebar. In addition there is a great slideshow illustrating the process of fitting the iron tire.

There are also a few great videos on YouTube, but this one I found particularly to be a good explanation of the trade.

Finally I make reference in this episode to a post on Stephen Shepherd’s blog about over sharpening. Check it out here.

Not to worry, the Roubo will not go unused. I’m going to cut a big hole in the top and inset a bucket of potting soil so my wife can use it as a potting bench. I’m also thinking about a nice mini fridge on the bottom shelf, and the tail vise will be used to compact cans. You have to keep recycling you know. The whole thing will be finished off with a nice coat of lime green paint and it will have a place of honor in our backyard.

Happy April 1st!

Click To Play

UPDATE:

Dana wrote me and brought to my attention a great article in Fine Woodworking by Will Neptune called “Engineering a Table with Drawers”. This is a much more detailed look at the construction methods that are common among all pieces of this form. In fact he leads out by saying “there is a Shaker table hidden in every table with drawers”. Membership to the Fine Woodworking site is required to read the full article but you can check it out here. Thanks for the tip Dana!

Using a rip saw I was able to cut just outside the sapwood transition line that was really at an angle to the actual edge of the board. Then following a parallel line on the opposite sapwood transition I was able to remove a board wide enough to get my wide aprons and my narrower front apron pieces that go around the drawer. If I had run it across the table saw I would have lost about 2″ of heartwood stock.

This entire exercise just reminded me how much freedom you have with hand tools to work with the grain of your raw lumber. A little hand plane work and I have flat and parallel edges and now the grain is parallel to the edge of the board too for a better flow and visual effect around the table. I think I give the impression of being a hand tool purist in this blog and maybe I’m heading that direction, I do still work with my power tools. I think my point is that when I can work the wood by hand, I pay a little more attention to the grain direction and “story” that the tree is trying to tell me.

I guess I shouldn’t really complain because I am one the masses contributing content and opinions to the whirlpool. I just didn’t want to spend a bunch of time considering how to make them when I had some high quality scrap baltic birch ply sitting in the corner of the shop. It’s flat and already cut in sizes that make sense.

I made two hooks, a low profile and a miter hook. Both are sized to accommodate the average work I would be doing.

The low profile hook has a fence that is only 1/4″ tall and I will be using it for small parts work. This is a quick way to plane small parts by butting them up against the fence and still being able to plane across them. I made the bed of the hook 12″ wide and 18″ long to give me plenty of space the work. I may end up using it as a backer board when chopping dovetails too.

The miter hook is really just a normal bench hook but I made the fence 1.5″ tall and cut two 45 degree and one 90 degree kerf in it. I also stopped the fence short of the left side of the hook to allow cutting there too. With the taller fence I can register a back saw in the kerf and make very accurate cuts. Like the low profile hook the fence is attached to the base using Miller dowels.

Finally I made a new shooting board. My old board was no longer flat and I can never get the fence right. I had screwed the fence in place and with years of unscrewing and screwing the holes don’t keep the fence steady. So here I made the shooting platform out of 1/2″ ply set on 3/4″ ply for the chute. I can shoot wider stock now as more of the plane blade is exposed. The board is 18 by 15 with plane chutes on either side of the board. I am a lefty but my Philly skew miter is made for right handed use. (my oversight, I should have told Philly my gaucheness) No matter and it is still easy to use and works like a dream. I added the left hand chute in case I wanted to square up another end of the board and could keep my same 2 reference faces against the fence. Thanks for the tip Bob Rozaieski!

The fence is hard maple and it is attached to threaded inserts in the base. I drilled over sized holes in the fence so that I can adjust the fence to keep it square.

In use the board works great. I was a little concerned that the fence might shift but so far it is rock solid. I guess if it becomes a problem I can add some sandpaper to the bottom.

So those are my new appliances and I have already gotten a lot of use out of them since I started my end table for The Wood Whisperer Guild Build. I’m sure you will be seeing these boards a lot in the future.

I can’t really put my finger on it, but there is something very calming about working in a semi dark shop. It feels more intimate and just feels wrong to be making a lot of noise like I might wake up someone so it seems that this low lighting actually lends itself to hand work. The weather is still a bit too cold for me to open my garage door and the two windows I do have shed some natural light on things but not quite enough; hence the incandescent task lights.

All of this preamble leads up to an experience from this weekend. I was working in my shop most of the day on my Wood Whisperer Guild build table with only this one light on over the bench. I continued to work until just before the sun went down when I took a break to walk the dog. That led to dinner and a few other things in the house and I was not able to get back down to the shop until it was fully dark outside. As I walked through the door into the shop I was greeted by this sight:

Behold my shrine to hand tool woodworking! How can you not be inspired to produce your best work when confronted with this setting!

I chose the medium cut, round file since most of the time I reach for a file is when trying to refine a curved surface. The edges are safe so that you can cut right up into a corner which I really like when trying to clean up a sharp corner.

My first impressions are that this file cuts really smoothly and just glides across the wood. I grabbed a scrap of hard maple to put the file to the test and before I knew it I was pulling long curly shavings off the wood with little effort. The stock removal was really fast and still left a clean surface that wouldn’t take much to clean up.

I am really impressed with how easily and quickly these files work and I am anxious to try out the fine and extra fine versions to see how clean they leave the stock. The file I currently own will be invaluable for rough shaping and I imagine I could knock out some cabriole legs pretty quickly with it.

The concerns I have at this point is how durable the teeth are over time. At around $30 a piece they are not super expensive but not throw away either. I’ll have to report back on that in time. For now I have some cool shavings to make with my new file.

First of all the cut started easily and powered through the hard Ash with little effort and in no time at all. The cut was dead square and really clean considering the 10 ppi pitch. There is no tear out on the back of the cut because of that relaxed rake on the front and rear teeth.

This will be a visible piece every time I remove the vise assembly but I made no attempt to clean it up because I like the reminder that I cut this by hand with a beautiful saw.

Call me a fanboy if you like, but I am sold on Bad Axe Toolworks! The beauty of this cut is merely another testament to a great tool.

The proof as they say is in the pudding…or the end grain. Last night I was squaring up the end of a board with my block plane. I wasn’t even thinking about it when I realized that the plane was gliding across the end grain and producing shavings.

“Hey, whaddaya know, maybe I have gotten good at this sharpening thing!”, I quietly congratulated myself. I then moved on to planing the 1 inch chamfer for clearance on the top of the vise chop I was working on. After sawing most of the bulk away, I turned to my low angle jack (with freshly sharpened blade) to refine the chamfer to my marking lines. Long beautiful end grain (ish) shavings peeled off the wood.

So let this post be my penance for yesterday’s power tool transgression. I do what I have to do to get the job done, but it sure is fun when you realize you may have actually done it right!

I was lucky enough to come across several auctions on eBay from the same tool chest. Unfortunately I was sniped on one of them, so I missed out on completing the set, but I have a fairly complete set of sizes 1 through 8 hollows and rounds.

Hand cut moldings is an area where I am still very new, but I know enough to know that I don’t need every size to be effective. In fact, like mortise chisels, you may find that you are reaching for the same couple of planes over and over again depending on your penchant for Roman versus Greek molding profiles. This however is a topic for another post.

The coolest aspect of working with vintage tools is the feeling that you are picking up where a long gone colleague left off. While I have many vintage tools, these molding planes have a particular significance as I know a little bit of the provenance. The planes were previously owned by one Cornelius Stout, born in Susanville, CA, in 1849. Cornelius was one of 3 brothers and 1 sister but the only brother to pursue woodworking. His father moved to California from New Jersey along with the great masses in response to the Gold Rush. It is here that Cornelius spent his formidable tradesman years as well as the rest of his life. In addition to making furniture, Cornelius was an entrepreneur who was responsible for a few patents, one of which was a clamp designed for both clamping and stretching actions. You can see his original drawing and patent application from June of 1909 here.

Cornelius worked in the Pomona, CA area until his death in 1925 at the age of 76.

On all the planes you can see his initials stamped into the back

and on the front is the Ohio Tool Works stamp telling us just a little bit more about their history.

Obviously there are still many many gaps in the life of these wooden planes, but I take great pleasure in knowing that with every shaving I am continuing on the work of Cornelius Stout.

And no matter how good or bad my work is, I think he would approve

In this episode I demonstrate how you can add a bevel to the long edge of a board using only your hand planes. Doing this same task on a table saw can be dangerous if you’re not very careful and often results in unsightly burning no matter how sharp your blade. Those burns have to be cleaned up with sandpaper or a plane anyway so why not skip the table saw altogether. You might even get it done faster!

I’ll do my best to get out another episode of Hand Tool Tips soon and they may be great filler in between projects (or when I can’t get the video edited in time on an existing project). Please let me know what you think of these short format shows and please let me know if you would like to see a specific topic covered.

Click To Play

It probably has a lot to do with my personal development as a woodworker as I continue to focus more on the minutiae of joinery and the perfect fit or perfect shape, but I am certainly using my hand tools more and more every day. I don’t want to necessarily espouse one philosophy over another as I think the woodworker needs to do what works best for them. That best practice could vary from day to day and project to project too. There is no need to criticize a fellow for doing something differently because sooner or later you will be in that same position.

For example, I really enjoy using planes to flatten boards. There are several reasons for this and most of them are warm fuzzy, introspective ones. The measurable reasons are:

shavings are great for starting fires (in the fireplace) on cold days
most boards from my favorite lumber mills come in 8″ or wider sizes & my jointer is 6″
I can stand to burn the calories
I have never been able to get twist out easily on a power jointer
I have a really, really, cool workbench

However, we all have those projects or tasks within a project that can only be described at tedious. This drudgery can kill your enjoyment of a project and oftentimes leads to abandonment. Raise your hand if you have an “unfinished project” corner in your shop! Do I want to spend several days working on that task by using hand planes to process the stock when I could zip through it on a jointer in 15 minutes? Not likely. So you can see my point of not criticizing another’s dogma. I can say I don’t use my power jointer anymore and don’t really see the point of such a tool and encourage others to ditch their jointers all day long until that one task comes around and I sneak off to the electron smashing side of the shop. That’s a little hypocritical don’t you think?

My preamble here is a set up to some of my thoughts about my own work and my shop set up. This is in no way a cavalier way of saying do as I do and everything else is wrong. Call it an experiment.

As many of you know I have one of those magnetic mats that covers the table saw to protect against rust. I realized the other day that it has been on there so long that the fine coating of dust on it has hardened in place. I began thinking and realized that it has been well over a month since I used the machine. The same story for my power jointer. It was probably early November since I last used it. Now let me honest: I haven’t been working in the shop every day. The Christmas shop rush was all about the lathe as usual so there was no need for either tool. The ongoing Roubo bench saga is well beyond the point of milling and sizing stock so there was no need there. Even the Chest of Drawers that I built in August saw very little use of either machine. Most of the sizing of stock was done on the band saw and the wider stuff was flattened by hand then run through the thickness planer.

So here is my idea: to abstain from table saw and jointer use for the next 60 days. I would like to see what happens to my work style and time until delivery of finished projects. I say 60 days as I have 2 furniture pieces in que for the next 2 months to start. I probably won’t finish them both in 60 days but I will at least be on to the joinery phase where I spend all my time at the bench anyway. Let me be clear, I am not unplugging completely as I will probably still use my planer to save time when creating parallel faces, but beyond that I feel I can handle everything with just my hand tools. I really want to see how many times I am reaching for these tools and what happens to my skills when I have vowed not to use them.

I can honestly say that if this experiment is successful, I will NOT be getting rid of these 2 tools. Remember what I said in the first part of this post: drudgery is not for me. I can however see myself moving them off to a corner of the shop in a long term storage mode and freeing up a substantial amount of space for dancing.

So let’s throw down the gauntlet! Starting today and until the end of March I will not touch either my table saw or my jointer no matter how badly I screw up a rip cut or flail about with my hand planes. It should be an interesting experience to truly test my hand skills and see what my patience threshold really is.

Who’s making bets!!!

It made me laugh but it is a dogma to keep close to your heart while working with hand tools. Saws run easier, planes slide nicely, bits turn smoothly. Old English cabinetmakers often used tallow to lubricate their planes and that is what really gives most of the vintage tools that lovely patina we see today. The first time you run a block of wax along the sole of your plane and use it you will be shocked at the difference it makes and how much less you end up working. Saws are just the same especially when you get deep in that cut and your arm is starting to burn. A quick swipe of wax and your saw has wings and powers through the cut like a Coon hound on the scent of a prize jackrabbit (that was for you Kari).

Now Adam Cherubini just put up a post recently proclaiming the virtues of the wooden plane and the fact that it needs no wax to glide across its surface and I can’t deny this. In fact I commented on his post my agreement and satisfaction of using my wooden Jack. But I do own a fair number of metal planes that I am not going to stop using because I need to wax the soles. Maybe if Adam asked really nicely and threw in some of his grandmother’s lasagna and a sixer of Sam Adams Irish Red (hey I’m multi-cultural in my epicurean pursuits) then I might consider it. You would still need to keep that wax around for your saws and auger bits. For that matter, have you ever waxed the bed of your thickness planer or table saw? What magic that does to using the tool!

So, I’m sorry for all the tool endorsements that have cost my readers money lately. I will make amends with this recommendation. Go to the grocery store and buy a block of canning wax for a couple bucks, heck you can probably get it cheaper at Wal-Mart. This will change your work for the better. If you run out of that wax in your lifetime as a woodworker, drop me an email and I will buy you another block.

Breaking down stock to rough sizes

1 Rip saw in the 5-7 tpi range
1 Crosscut saw in the 8-9 tpi range

I would use these two saws to quickly break up longer boards in their rough state. The stock would be at minimum 4/4 but likely thicker to the 8/4 range so the tpi needed to be low to accommodate it. The cuts don’t need to be pretty so an aggressive rake would be best to allow for faster work. The set would be moderate here since I would be working in both hard and softwoods. I sent Mark a 28″ Disston D8 to be my rip saw and I have a D23 filed crosscut at 8 tpi currently in my shop ready to go. The large rip saw could also double as an effective resawing blade too.

Dimensioning rough boards to close to final size

1 Rip saw around 8 tpi
1 Crosscut saw around 10 tpi

These two saws would take my planed stock that was flat and to thickness and cut out the parts needed for whatever I am building. Thickness for 95% of my work would be 7/8 and under but speed is still somewhat of a factor especially when ripping so I wanted saws with a low tpi but still capable of producing a somewhat clean cut. My thoughts were to get this cleaner cut with a relaxed rake which would also serve to make the saw an easier starter. The set would be minimal so at the remove much less wood and allow be to work very close to the finish line while saving on plane clean up later. I sent Mark a 26″ Disston D23 to be re-toothed and filed rip and I would use my 11 tpi crosscut 20″ D8 panel saw since by this point in the process most of my parts would not be very wide and a long saw wouldn’t do much for me. This would be where I see growing the nest in the future by adding a 26″ crosscut saw, but for now the panel saw will suffice until I start building large casework and want to saw faster.

Bench Work

1 rip saw filed fine in the 10+ tpi range
1 crosscut saw also fine in the
This is really the last saw cuts that get made. In some instances it could be larger joinery like bridal joints that are deeper than the clearance of my tenon backsaw. It would be final sizing of a panel in a door or case side where I don’t need the edge to be clean since it would be housed in a joint. These will be small and clean cuts. For these operations I would use my existing crosscut panel saw but I would need a finely tuned rip saw to accompany it. I got a 19″ D8 on ebay that was file crosscut so I sent that to Mark to be filed rip.

What is so great about the service that Mark offers is the entire process is a consultation and a peek into the head of a saw expert. I told Mark what I currently have and what my goals were and he helped guide me with regard to pitch, geometry, and size. I did some initial cleaning of the saws to remove rust by following the instructions on Mark’s page and then packaged them up to be sent off to Wisconsin.

Once Mark received them he did a once over and diagnosed problems he saw like bends I didn’t catch in the saw plate and how they fit into the handle as well as the quality of the existing teeth. He sent me his findings and prognosis in an email along with his suggestions on how to set up the saws to meet my goals. Initally, Mark also suggested I contact Tom Fidgen to get his take on the content of a good nest and together, Mark and I factored in Tom’s comments to come to conclusions on the final profile of each of the 3 saws I sent him. It turns about that all of them has bends that I didn’t catch and the small panel saw was really at a point that wasn’t worth the restoration money for the outcome. Rather than leaving it at that, Mark, who is a bit of a collector, told me he had a nice little Simmonds saw that would be a great stand in and in many cases a better performer than my little Disston. I gave him the approval to move ahead with the restore on that saw and I paid the difference.

The final products are all very close to my initial ideas with some minor tweaks here and there in rake and pitch. Throughout this process Mark was highly communicative letting me know his thoughts and his project time line. The rush of orders on the Bad Axe side of the house prevented him from getting to my saws for a few weeks and he was up front with that. I told him there wasn’t a hurry to begin with anyway, All told though once Mark started working on the saws, it only took him the space of one weekend to complete the complete reshaping, re-toothing, jointing, filing, and honing of all 3 saws. The finished saws arrived on my doorstep this past Saturday and they look beautiful. Mark uses mostly recycled material for all of his packaging too.

The saws were clean and beautiful with wicked sharp teeth. My big 28″ rip saw could cut you just by handling it and the set was much less than when I sent it to him.

As is typical whenever shop toys arrive in the mail I have a day of non stop activities outside of woodworking. I did get down to the shop briefly on Sunday and put the Simmonds panel saw to work sizing to width some shelf planks for the lower shelf on my workbench. The saw starts like a whisper and cuts really smooth leaving a clean cut that took only a pass or two with my jointer plane to be ready for tongue and groove joinery.

The saw plate is polished nicely with a clearly visible etch

The handle has a nice chip carving pattern on it and is comfortable in use.

I haven’t been able to try out the other saws but the real test will be when I start my next project and can work the work all the way from the mill to the finish, putting to work all the varying pitches and geometries to good effect.

The nest will cover just about anything I need especially when I add in the 8 tpi rip file bow saw in the foreground for awkward ripping tasks like when I needed to cut my vise chop to shape. Of course I am not including my joinery saws in this post, but know that they are very much a part of the work and I will get into a discussion of those in a future post.

Working with Mark was a pleasure and I felt that I was truly in the hands of an expert throughout. He has just updated his website as well as put a flag in the ground on Facebook where he has some lively saw discussions already underway. In fact there is a great discussion on just what makes up an ideal nest of saws. Head over there and check it out.

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

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 2x8x35 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?