This episode came out longer than I had planned as I really try to keep them under 30 minutes. However, I find that oftentimes woodworking shows can be frustrating by telling you how to do something without actually showing it so I decided to keep in all of my footage of cutting the tongue and groove joints by hand. So I apologize for the 200+ MB download (even after compression) but I hope you will enjoy the show.

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

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Since this footage was shot I have finished the leg vise and you can see it if you look close in one of the opening photos. I’ll post that part soon, but really y’all are caught up to my progress now.

Oh yeah, let me know what you think of my new opening credits segment with episode specific shots.

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I arrived home from the office after a long day knowing that I needed to head back out in a minute to run a few errands with my wife. There was not time to really get into anything nor did I want to sit down in front of the TV knowing that the law of inertia would probably keep me there. Instead I wandered into the shop and looked around thinking I would take in the smell of wood shavings for a bit. Laying on my bench was a the parallel guide for the sliding leg vise of my Roubo. I had drilled the peg holes already and I only needed to cut the detail on the end before joining it to the mortise on the chop.

Such a simple task to saw two miters and clean them up but one that would enfold me in such a feeling a contentment and excited peace.

A quick whack of the mallet upon the hold fast cemented the guide to the front of the bench at an angle, presenting the miter cut in a vertical aspect. Pinch the work and press the shiny saw plate to my fingers. Lift the weight of the saw off the wood and push lightly forward to start the cut. Release the weight of the saw while releasing my unconsciously held breath and the saw begins to cut eagerly. With each stroke I relax my grip on the saw further and the tension of the day eases from my neck and shoulders. The waste of the miter falls away and I take a moment to bask in the glory of a finely sharpened saw and the fine ribbons of wood created with a rip cut saw.

Whack, and the hold fast releases it’s grip on the Ash. I move the piece to the bench top and set it atop another scrap of wood, positioning the freshly sawn edge so that it slightly overhangs the scrap. Turning my block plane on it’s side, I begin to shoot the edge and within a few strokes I have a polished, flat edge that gleams like only planed end grain can do.

My work is done, but not yet prepared to release myself from my meditation, I lean the block plane over towards the work piece and begin to chamfer the mitered edge to give it a little more style. I revel in the minuscule adjustments needed to create an even chamfer on all three sides at the end of the guide and watch the light bouncing off the faceted face until the angles match all the way around.

My wife’s voice breaks my reverie, it is time to go. I put down my block plane and walk away from the bench, not sad to go, but satisfied with work well done. I look over my shoulder one last time before I switch off the lights and smile. “See you next time” I say and walk out refreshed and ready to face whatever comes my way.

Enjoy!

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Make sure you check out Chuck’s blog for complete instructions on how to make your own set of Bender inlay tools.

Finally, a few points on Sulfur inlay that I forgot to mention in the podcast. When cutting the recess for the Sulfur, you should undercut and create a kind of dovetail effect to lock in the material. Once the Sulfur is cool and scraped clean, it should be painted with Shellac to seal it in and protect the color before applying your finish of choice.

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This is a great question from Dirk in Oklahoma…

Shannon,

First, thanks for all the information you so freely pass along to your readers. I have read/ watched your use of jointer planes. I have a Stanely #7 and when I use it to joint an edge the edge rarely comes out square to the board face, it usually cut at a tilt even if I focus on keeping the plane level and square to the board face. Do I need to grind a curve on my iron? Thanks for you time and advice.

Dirk

Here is what I had to say on the topic. A bit verbose but I think I covered it.

Dirk,

This is a good question and an issue that I deal with a lot too. I think a lot of people will benefit from this so I am going to put up a blog on it and probably do a quick audioboo on the topic too.

No matter how hard we try inevitably the board will tilt because we tend to favor a hand unless you are truly ambidextrous. The easy answer is you need to check your board often with a square and assess from there to determine where you need to be putting pressure on the board. Putting a camber in your blade is a great way to level an edge quickly because you don’t worry about where you are putting your weight or tilting the plane. The curve will naturally take a heavier shaving from the middle of the blade so align the middle of the blade where you need to take the most wood off. I do recommend this on your jointer plane but don’t get carried away with the camber. It only needs to be slight. If you have a plane with a heavier camber like a scrub or fore plane you can quickly level the edge and then hit it with your jointer too.

I am a firm believer in learning to do things multiple ways so you have another trick up your sleeve. What if you are squaring an edge on a shorter board and it doesn’t make sense to use a long jointer? You may not want a camber on all your blades or may not want to deal with the extra sharpening effort involved so you should know how to square an edge without the camber technique. Do not tilt the plane ever, you will never get it right on and the chance of changing the angle mid way through the stroke is very high. Place the plane flat on the edge and lean your weight towards the high side. You will actually see that the plane is taking a heavier shaving on that side. This is what I learned at Chuck Bender’s shop and it works great and there is no need to camber your blade. It is very subtle and I’ll give you an example. I am left handed so I push with my left hand on the tote. I will set my plane on the board with right hand on the knob and ready to plane. If the high side of my board is to the left I will take my left hand and slightly twist it to the left throughout the stroke. This is all that is needed to take that heavier shaving and level the board.

I would advise practicing this and you will be amazed at how quickly and accurately you can bring an edge square and there is no balancing act or need to move the plane side to side. This has become my technique of choice now and I actually sharpen by jointer straight across now. The only planes I have with camber are my scrub and fore planes for rough work and a smoother. Although the smoother is so slight that you could just say that I broke the corners to prevent plane tracks.

What are your thoughts? Any other techniques that work out there?

Here are my thoughts from the road.

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Chuck has a great shop next to his house in an old barn. While he has some plans on the drawing board to expand he already has quite a bit of space. Here is a shot across his machine room. Check out the massive planer in the foreground.

Here is the infamous “aircraft carrier” jointer. This things takes more than 5 minutes just to wind down when you turn it off!

Here is the bench room.

To illustrate the simplicity philosophy that Chuck endorses here is a shot of his sharpening jig that he uses for hollow grinding an edge.

And here it is in action while he teaches a student how to grind an edge. Chuck lines up the bevel angle by eye and then drops the stick down to the floor where he plants his foot and holds the jig in place.

Many will shout and decry this method as inaccurate for bevel angles and the slight arc you may get to the edge by pivoting off a central point but all I can say is, look at Chuck’s body of work and ask yourself if he needs to be more accurate with his sharpening.

More to come on the second part of the class.

Posted via web from renaissanceww’s posterous

Enjoy the show!

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Now let’s see how many people I alienate by admitting that I cut my dovetails pins first…

Enjoy the show!

By the way, special thanks to Chuck Bender for showing me the dovetail light!

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Anyway, on with the show.

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What I found striking about this video is that the whole thing is filmed in real time. Rob actually cuts the joint right in front of you and it doesn’t fit perfectly right off the saw. He goes through painstaking detail to refine the fit using several techniques to end up with an incredible fit. I was especially interested in his use of a skew rabbet plane to trim the face of the tenon cheeks to fit. His layout technique is simple and clear and I walked away from this video with an excellent idea of how I could apply it to my own work.

The second DVD ups the ante and Rob cuts a through wedged tenon. This joint has no room for error on the face side and using the same techniques, he cuts the entire joint in real time. The finishing touch is Rob’s simple layout of the wedges and installation.

I definately enjoyed every minute of this series and if nothing else there was some gratuitous Lie Nielsen tools on display throughout with lots of wispy shavings floating on the breeze!

And for those of you out there screaming at me, “get to work on that bench”, I’ll have you know that this was studying woodworking techniques and it is work. Besides, I put it on the shop TV and sat on my benchtop to watch it so technically I was working on my bench, literally!

Check out the link below to this video series.

Rob Cosman Woodworking Series

This episode is for you Rick!

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Other excellent sources for this technique are the videos:

Coarse, Medium, and Fine by Chris Schwarz
Rough to Ready by Rob Cosman

Also be sure to check out Mack’s latest Way of the Galoot podcast, episode 16 where he addresses this same topic in response to the Twitter conversation. As of the time of this publishing, Mack had not put up the blog to go along with the episode but you can find it on iTunes or Blip.tv.

Stay tuned for next week’s episode when I take a straight edge plane blade and grind a curve and hone it for use in a Fore or Scrub plane.

The blog of the week is Fresh Shaving run my Muddler Mike at http://freshshavings.blogspot.com Don’t forget to get your entries in for next week’s pen giveaway sponsored by Penn State Industries.

As always send me an email if you have any questions at shannon@rogersfinewoodworking.com or leave a comment here on the blog.

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http://finewoodworking.taunton.com/item/5453/carve-a-rosette-1-2-3

My dislike of cutting bevels like this has not deterred me from designing projects that need this step, but I find myself putting off the action until I absolutely can go no further in my project. Take the above shot as an example. I am building a mitered frame lid for a box out of Mahogany. This 37″ board is the result of putting a 20 degree bevel on the long edge. What a mess right?!! Sanding this flat and getting rid of the burn marks will take forever. This is true, but why bother with the mess and the muss?

Here is the bright side of bevel cutting and it is called a hand plane. I took this same board and took a few swipes with my jack plane across it to remove the mill marks and most of the burning, then followed up with my Veritas bevel up smoother and voila, we have Mahogany magic!

Who says hand tool work is slower! I would still be sanding and making a big mess 20 minutes later. Best of all this board is ready for finish now!

This week I will walk you through some more mainstream uses for the spokeshave thereby illustrating that this is not just a chairmaker’s tool. I hope you enjoy!

Links for this week:

Brad Ferguson’s site: TreeFrog Furniture for an outstanding look at the Arts & Crafts style
Lie-Nielsen’s show schedule
Rockler’s new mobile tool base
Christopher Schwarz’s new book

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My philosophy on shop furniture varies depending on how anxious I am to get on to my next project. Most of the time I use these shop projects as a practice session to try out new techniques. My drill press cart that was completely recently was one example:

Here I cut all the tongue and groove joinery for the frame and panels using just a saw and shoulder plane. I cut all the panel grooves using a plow plane, and I hand cut the dovetails that connect the top stretchers to the carcass. It was a fun learning experience and only used scraps that were laying around the shop. In the instance of this sharpening station, I really want to bang it out and move on some other projects. So I decided to built the whole thing using frame and panel again to make use of some 2x construction lumber I have left over from an earlier demolition; however, this time I will use pocket holes for the joinery.

I have the Kreg master kit and I find it to be a great tool. When I first bought it about a year ago, the Woodcraft where I got it was having a special that got me the Bench Klamp system for 50% off when you buy the Master kit. Up until now I haven’t done anything with that bench clamp. Recently I ripped out my old countertops and put in laminate covered MDF for more weight and stability. Now that these are in, I decided it would be good to install the clamping plate. The added bonus being that with all the pocket holes in my sharpening station the assembly will be much faster.

(Are you starting to see where the woodworking A-D-D theme of this site comes from???)

So I built a frame that perfectly fits around the clamp plate and double stick taped the frame down to the countertop where I wanted to install the plate. Using a trim router, I hogged out the laminate and MDF to match the thickness of the plate. Then I used a forstner bit to hollow out the center of the inlay to allow for the bolt that the clamp travels on just like keyhole hanging hardware. Next I had to square up the rounded corners. Normally this is a simple process with a chisel but the added difficulty of laminate made things a little more interesting. That stuff is slick and tough, but eventually I was able to get through it and cleaned up the corners. I fitted the plate and coaxed it into place with a mallet and the fit was great all around the edges. It was a little shallow at the top so I pulled the plate back out and hit the inlay with my router plane to remove that little bit of extra material. Now the plate fits snugly and flush with the counter. I installed the four wood screws at the corners and the clamp was ready to go!

Here it is with the clamp in place.

Finally I put it to the test. Normally when driving the pocket screws, Kreg supplies you with a clamp but you have to have the room to get the clamp under the workpiece and it makes it dicey to line up the pieces and keep them flush. In this instance, I was able to align my rail and stile perfectly and just drop the clamp and was ready to drive the screws.

This will save me a huge amount of time and I can already see other areas where this handy clamp will be very useful. Maybe I’ll buy one or two more now and sit on those for a year before installing them!

My family’s trip to Maine is nothing of the sort. Every year we stockpile our books and puzzles for our quiet and infinitely relaxing trip to Maine. An average day starts with a late rise from bed, leisurely breakfast, perhaps a walk around the island with the dogs, then back to the house to get lost in a good book. I came prepared with my sketch book prepared to put down on paper some of the furniture and box designs that have been kicking around my head, some great books, and a small selection of carving chisels and basswood. Inspired by T-Chisel’s period shell carvings and The Village Woodworker’s tusk tenons, I wanted to learn some basic carving as a way to differentiate some of my designs. I do several craft shows a year and I sell a lot of smaller items like keepsake boxes or bowls. I have this idea to add small relief carvings to them as a way to spice them up. (or perhaps to draw attention away from that gap in the dovetail on the back corner)

I got a few carving books out of the library and did some research. Then after a trip to Woodcraft I was prepared with a tool roll of chisels and 2 chip carving knives. This was surprisingly affordable because my local Woodcraft was having a clearance sale on selected overstocked Swiss made tools. (Finally they put something on sale BEFORE I buy it)

I wanted to try both relief carving and chip carving thinking that both would look pretty cool on a small box or as an accent to a drawer front or table top. I will put together a podcast in the future specific to carving and the different types out there and skip that today and just say that there are plenty of great books out there on carving. Check out your local library, bookstore, or Woodcraft/Rockler and you will be surprise just how many titles you can find.

So here is some of what I came up with in my practice. I started with some chip carving and found this to be a lot harder than I thought. Getting all the cuts at the same depth and the walls of the chips to line up takes a bit of practice. Getting the feel for the knives was hard too as it feels completely different from chisel work. Once you get comfortable though, you find it a little addicting as there is no end to the geometric designs and embellisments you can create. Here is a picture of some of the border designs I was playing with that include the traditional dreischnitt and sechsschnitt triangular cuts.

Here is another corner of the board where I was playing with some fan shapes and my first rosette. These were pretty hard because you have the stack the chips up against one another and the wood gets thin in between so I had some tear out in places.

Nest I turned to my chisels to try some relief carving. I wanted to stay away from the geometric stuff and try some more natural designs. I sketched a few things I saw around me on the board. One of which was a fern shape since I was surrounded by a forest full of them. I traced the lines with the V tool and then scooped out the fronds between the lines using a #9 gouge. I quickly discovered that I didn’t need to outline the fronds with the V tool but could scoop them better with just the 9 sweep. Here is the best one I did:

You’ll notice the little Japanese character next to it. I pulled this off one of my sister-in-law’s origami papers. I have no idea what it means. Anyone out there want to venture a guess? I just thought the fern came out with a certain Asian look to it. So next I tried some tall grasses thinking it would complement the design. This is just V tool work.

Finally I turned to one of my books to see if I could take a stab (the puns just keep on coming) at a more complicated design. So here is the main event:

I drew several concentric circles on the board and sketched the petals by hand. Then I outlined everything with the V tool. Next using a #7/12mm gouge I stabbed the outline around the petals severing the fibers around the flower. I relieved (or grounded out) the wood around the flower with a #7 fishtail gouge thereby “raising” the flower above the surrounding wood and bringing it into sharp relief. Next it was just a matter of rounding some edged and scooping out hollows in the petals to give it a 3D look. I carved the crisscross lines in the center using a V tool again.

I am really happy with how this last attempt came out. There is definately some chip out and areas that need to be cleaner but I know that will come with practice. The really shocking thing about this exercise is it was really easy. I think carving is one of those free form styles of woodworking that just scare us into not trying it because it involves artistry over machinery and straight lines. Once you actually put chisel to wood though, you start to have a lot of fun and the wood just peels away and starts to take shape. Even cooler is the fact that you can do this anywhere. I did bring along a couple of ceramic stones and a leather strop to keep the tools sharp, but the bulkiest item I had to bring along with me was the wood.

I hope to do some more of this work in the near future and soon plan to incorporate some simple designs into my work. I would love to hear anyone’s comments or suggestions of designs to take on next. If nothing else take a look around you and observe the shapes in your everyday. You might find yourself wondering how they look carved into the lid of your next box. I admit that my surroundings in Maine did offer up plenty of help in the inspiration department.

The next day I went into the shop to get the book ends so my wife could wrap them to give to my father-in-law. As I walked out of the shop into the sunlight I am met with horrible ugly runs and drips that have dried in the most visible part of the piece. AAARGGRHHH!

Well we have all heard the maxim that fine woodworking is not so much about the work you turn out but how well you cover your mistakes. I had a few ideas, but before jumping into anything I consulted the experts. The Wood Whisperer, Marc Spagnuolo, came to my rescue and did confirm that alcohal would dissolve my finish, but cautioned me that I might take off more than I had planned. Marc suggested that I use a knife or sandpaper to remove it first and then recoat with a thinner mixture.

So I started in with sandpaper, 320 grit, and it quickly gummed up and was useless. I think the waxed shellac is murder on sandpaper. I sanded and sanded and I wasn’t making a dent on the drips. I admit to being scared to try scraping it with a knife for fear I would scratch the whole thing. Therefore, I am resolved to try a little denatured alcohal and if worse comes to worst I take the whole finish off and start over.

So after rubbing some pure alcohal on the runs I was surprised with how easily it came off. However since this is waxed shellac I have the sneaking suspicion that the wax was staying put and everything else was coming off. There was a definately waxy sheen to the Lignum. So what next. I pulled open a drawer to grab a mallet to secure the lid back on the alcohal when I saw my set of scrapers staring at me. Of course! I had just sharpened a bunch of these after I did the final scraping on the bookends. I have several sizes and shapes including a narrow one that fits perfectly into the gap behind the carving. A few scrapes and I was back to bare wood.

This is what a sharp scraper produces: nice fine shavings!

On a side note, you may notice the white pyramid underneath the bookend. I bought these at Rockler during one of their sales. These babies are great for finishing pieces of all sizes and preventing puddles at the bottom of your project.

So I learned from my first attempt that working with this shellac at full strength can build up fast to a nice finish but you have to be careful with controlling it. This time around, I chose the better part of valor and thinned it to about a 1# cut. This time I wiped it on. 3 coats and I am off to the races. I think they came out nicely.

What’s the moral of the story. Take you time and thin your finishes. Personally, the most important thing I learned here is that I need to install some more lights in my shop and possible set up some raking light when I turn to finishing. This problem wouldn’t have happened at all if I had only caught it before it set up. Please post your comments if you have run into this before and how you dealt with it. Any suggestions for lighting out there specific to finishing?