The piece I’m dubbing my Studio Table was the first project I have completed with my Roubo workbench completely finished. After investing so much time in building this bench it was a very affirming experience to build a piece of furniture using my newest and easily most valuable tool.

Granted this little Stickley table hardly taxes the hand tool woodworker with work holding problems and complex joinery but to me what was most rewarding was the simple fact that I didn’t think once about how I was going to hold something for an operation. It all just happened.

When milling the stock I was faced with edge planing, face planing, twisted boards, and out of square ends. The stock just flowed across the bench from end vise and dogs to leg vise to bench top without a thought about how I would accomplish something. On top of that during all of this work, the bench stayed complete immobile. I might as well have been working directly on my concrete floor.

During joinery, I had to cut half blind dovetails, mortise and tenons, and half laps. My chisels sang and shoulder planes hummed. My sawed cut straight and true. Not once did a cut go a foul because of a shifting work piece.

During assembly and glue up the bench was my rock. Flat, never moving, and spacious enough for all my parts, glue, and accessories.

The top is solid, the vises strong, fast, and efficient. I never once stopped working to set up a jig or an operation. This is what our workbenches are supposed to do: allow us to focus completely on our work piece and assist us in our work. In essence I have spent a great deal of time to make a tool that is so effective as to be completely invisible.

Strange praise, but high praise indeed. This past weekend I spent time in Colonial Williamsburg. I chatted extensively with Joiners, Cabinetmakers, Coopers, and Wheelwrights. I saw a different style of bench in every shop I visited. I saw different ways of using those benches too. What I never saw was a craftsman stop his work to set up a tool or secure a piece for chiseling, sawing, shaving, etc. With such a variety of work being done it seems sensible that there would be a variety of workbenches to be seen, and this was certainly the case. What is common between the Cabinetmaker’s bench and the Cooper’s shavehorse is that the tool is suited for the work at hand. I think you would see a lot of standing around and scratching of heads if the Cabinetmaker was trying to build a side chair at a shavehorse, and likewise that Cooper would really be slowed down tapering and bending staves while at the Nicholson bench.

So have I uncovered the holy grail of benches with my Roubo? Not at all. But I did think about the type of work I do and how I do it when I designed the bench at the outset. I listed the tasks that I would go through in a typical piece of furniture and began listing next to it all the ways I would hold the work. From there it was simply a matter of determining which methods had the most overlap and adding them to the bench.

Long story short, I could not be happier with my workbench. Now I’m ready to stop talking about it and just let it disappear and do it’s job. There are masterpieces to be made!!

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 just celebrated by 35th birthday this week and my lovely wife gave me a new 50 degree bevel replacement blade for the Veritas. This was something I was interested in trying ever since trying out some of the really premium planes like Brese and Sauer & Steiner while at Woodworking In America last year. These premium tools have their irons bedded at 55, 60, or sometimes higher for that tearout free cut. With this new 50 degree blade bedded bevel up at 12 degrees I now have a smoother set at 62 degrees.

A very little bit of honing and polishing of the primary and micro bevels and the iron was ready to work. I had just finished up a miter bench hook where I crafted the fence out of a scrap piece of maple turning stock that was 1.75″ thick. This particular piece was cut off a highly figured larger piece so while not heavily figured it had some curly grain nonetheless. I had secured the fence and cut the two 45 degree slots and a 90 degree slot. I secured the fence to the hook using glue and Miller dowels so while flushing the pegs to the surface I really began to uncover the wicked grain beneath. This was the perfect test for my new “premium” smoothing plane.

Schnick, schnick, schnick and with three short passes the pegs were flush with nary a torn grain and beautifully glowing curly maple appearing as if from no where. I immediately turned to the other bench hook I have just created. This one I call my low profile hook because the fence is only 1/4″ high and it is meant for working with small pieces. The fence was crafted from left over Bubinga that was already planed to 1/4″ thick. This stock has wicked hard grain with early and late growth rings intertwining throughout. The wood is hard and unforgiving. I had already planed the pegs flush using my old smoothing set up of 50 degrees and it smoothed it but left some tearout in the expected places. I ignored it because…well…it’s a bench appliance. Flush with success using my new 62 degree setup on the other hook I tried to tackle the beastly Bubinga.

Schnick, schnick, schnnnniiiick again and…WOW! What a difference 12 degrees makes!

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.

Last weekend I made a trip up to Hearne Hardwoods to pick up some 12/4 Walnut for the table I am building for The Wood Whisperer March Guild build. While the Hearne folks were tallying my total I noticed this column that looks like it came off some kind of temple. It was broken at the bottom so it looked like it was just snapped off in demolition. It is elegantly shaped and faceted and I can imagine that the structure it once adorned was a thing to behold. The curves evoke something from Asia and once I looked closer that was confirmed when I realized that the entire column was made from solid East Indian Rosewood!

…Paradigm shifted…

Just because it is exotic and hoarded in tiny parts for pen turning and the like here doesn’t mean that it couldn’t be someone else’s 2×4 construction lumber somewhere else in the world where Rosewood grows naturally.

Suddenly this digitally small world just got a whole lot bigger.

I’m proud to say that since yesterday’s post we have a new guild member who joined through the affiliate link, and I will be adding my affiliate fees to the American Cancer Society donation. Remember click the Join the Guild link above and I will donate 100% of my fees to this cause.

The design is simple enough that even our most novice members can challenge themselves to build their first furniture piece. On the other end for the more advanced members the simplicity of the design allows for a lot of variation and personal embellishment. In my case I want to satisfy my Queen Anne tastes by adding a little southern 18th century charm to it and model the table after a piece in the Colonial Williamsburg collection. More on this later and I will of course share my build process. That is not what this post is about as you may have guessed by the title.

One of our number, Duane, has been fighting with pancreatic cancer for a while now. You may remember Duane from Marc’s steamer trunk build where he helped Duane build an heirloom by creating a video series. Unfortunately, Duane’s cancer is not ready to give up it’s fight and it has taken a strong hold on him lately. He is really excited about this group build but has concerns about being strong enough to complete it. Marc and Nicole, being the incredible people that they are, flew out to Ohio to visit Duane and do some one on one coaching to give Duane his head start on the project.

That was not enough and Marc has dedicated our March build to Duane and for every guild member that completes this project, Marc and Nicole are going to personally donate $5 to the American Cancer Society. In addition, being the savvy business people they are, this dynamic duo has gotten a few companies to agree to match this amount too. All of the guild members are encouraged to donate as well and we of course welcome the general public to donate. I have been in touch with Marc and he is working on getting a donation page up on his free site. I’ll let you know when that is up and link to it as well. Stay tuned, in the meantime…

Now I have recommended that everyone join the guild in the past because of the value it can bring to your woodworking, but now there is a higher calling. Why not join up, learn a lot, make some great friends, build a beautiful piece of furniture, and contribute to a great cause. I make no secret of the fact that I am an affiliate for the guild and if you click the link at the top of this page and join the guild, I will donate 100% of my affiliate fees back to the American Cancer Society for the duration of this project.

Come on, everybody’s doing it. Let me sum up by quoting our Guild master Marc in an email he sent earlier today.

This isn’t just about woodworking as a task, its about woodworking as a
lifestyle, and woodworking as a Community. I want people to be inspired
by what we are doing, and perhaps even donate to the cause themselves.

God bless you Marc and Nicole, and hang in there Duane we’re all praying for you.

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!

Reality check, it’s 2010. Aren’t we supposed to make contact with aliens this year in orbit around Jupiter or something? So when another 4×5x3″ mortise presents itself, I break out my router, pattern bit, and a template. Yes, I am very confident that I can chop that by hand and make it pretty and square and to depth with my lovely chisels. I have chopped enough mortises to say that I can do it, but I have also chopped enough to say that I don’t want to do it.

I’m putting the finishing touches on the sliding leg vise for my Roubo bench and it is time to inlay the vise nut into the sliding chop. I cut the nut down so it is only 5″ long but it is still a huge mortise and one that requires utmost precision so I don’t compromise the strength of the chop. Woo hoo for power tools!!! Turn on the dust collector, turn up the music, don the respirator and hearing protection and let’s chew up some wood.

10 minutes later and I have made a mortise that would make the Grand Canyon proud. I even used pocket holes and a powered drill to make the template. If it makes the galoots out there feel better, I squared up the corners with a beautiful 1.5″ paring chisel.

So before anyone starts calling me a purist, let me also say that I like my TiVo, read a fair amount of Science Fiction, and cannot live without my iPhone. Hooray 21st century conveniences!

…now where did I put my laser marking gauge…

No question that tools do not make the craftsman, but they sure do help. I blame the TSA and baggage restrictions from keeping me from buying one of those saws right then and there. Then in October at the hand tool rendition of Woodworking in America, I cut some tenons again using the same saws. I was not competing this time since I was helping out at the SAPFM booth and therefore ineligible. (Pro tip: this is a great way to get out of a competition, “I’m ineligible!”) I got the use the saws a lot more while hanging out at the booth and let’s just say I had an identical experience. I walked away and vowed to contact Mark and place my order. And order I did. I have been the proud owner of rip and crosscut Bad Axe saws now for 3 months and have had a lot of time to work with them. No buyer’s remorse here and I just love these saws. Let’s take a look at some of the features that make them so great and what it means for your work.

Handle

These saws have a beautifully formed Cherry handle that is modelled after the golden age of saw manufacture. The Cherry is a surprising species with so many fruit woods being used in the past, but Mark is very picky in the blanks he chooses to obtain the most stable cut and pleasing grain. Like the blued steel back, these Cherry handles impart a simplicity that is like comfort food and just feels good to look at it. The handle is carefully shaped to be easy to grip while not interfering with the sawing motion. I have pretty big hands and I didn’t feel like I was crowded at all. The handle smoothly flows into the back with a nice chamfer to rest your forefinger on while sawing. Then as a finishing touch, Mark incorporates these beautiful inset medallions.

Length, Width, Pitch

At first glance both of these saws seem really big and the depth of cut beneath the backer is bigger than any vintage saw I have seen. This height is really valuable in keeping your cut plumb because the whole saw is well balanced and just like balancing a long broomstick on your finger the extra height adds a better center of gravity.

Mark will soon be offering a 14″ version of his saw as well but for now you can get a 16″ and 18″ version of the saw. The 16″ offers a 4″ deep saw plate whereas the 18″ long saw has a 4.5″ deep plate. Like the saw restoration service you can specify how you want your saw toothed and sharpened but Mark recommends to following and this is what I purchased from him.

18″ Rip saw sharpened at 10 ppi
16″ Cross cut saw sharpened at 12 ppi

The saw plate itself is high quality Swedish spring steel and is beautiful to look at as well as durable in use and in regards to tooth strength.

Tooth Geometry

This is where the real money maker is with these saws. Mark uses a few tactics to provide an easy to start, clean, yet aggressive cut.

Progressive Rake: by adding variabiity to the attach angle of each tooth the saws will start smoothly but transition to a faster cutting tooth then relax back to decrease tear out on the opposite face of the board. The transition is difficult to pick out readily but on close examination you can see the subtle change. The following is taken from Mark’s website detailing his filing technique with some photos of my own saws thrown in to illustrate the rake transition.

Rip: I start with a 15-degree rake at the heel for the first twenty teeth, then modulate to 10 degrees for the next twenty teeth. From there, I rake every tooth is at 5 degrees for an aggressive cut. I add five degrees of fleam on every tooth (regardless of rake), which reduces tearout on the opposite side of the cut. The rake relaxes again in the same manner at the toe end of the saw. After conducting the initial filing to set a consistent rake, I then rejoint the saw, establish 20-degree sloping gullets, and file off the points without shortening adjacent teeth so that every tooth does its duty.

Crosscut: The rake modulation for the first forty teeth goes from 20 to 15 to 10 degrees at the heel end of the toothline, then I reverse that for the last forty teeth at the toe end. 20 degree bevels per tooth, and 10 degree sloping gullets. Though ten degree rake for the majority of the toothline is an aggressive cut, It achieves a surprisingly smooth finish on the wood.

The addition of sloping gullets is still a debated technique (one I am for BTW) but in theory it not only provides a little extra space in the gullet to clear sawdust but it can also provide a slightly keener tooth.

Like everything in life, too much of a good thing can be very bad. The same applies to saw filing. Fleam will slice the wood and make for a cleaner cut, but too much fleam will dramatically weaken a tooth. Mark strikes the balance needed in rake, fleam, slope, and pitch to give us a revolutionary saw.

If you weren’t already sold, then remember that Mark Harrell is a veteran who served his country for almost 30 years with dedication and passion. Since his “retirement” Mark has sunk his considerable talents into saw making and restoration and we are all fortunate to have him around to make us all better woodworkers.

Please take some time to visit Bad Axe Tool Works. The site is clean and beautiful and chock full of information and tutorials. Mark doesn’t have any secrets and he lays out everything in his bag of tricks so that the average woodworker can produce the perfect saw too.

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

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!!!

Ironically the piece that sticks in my head the most was shuffled off to the side of an exhibit and I only noticed it because I was assuming the role of husband waiting for his wife outside the restroom. Behind and to the side of a pretty Queen Anne dining chair was this curious little table.

While it was still an exhibit meaning I couldn’t touch it, I was able to get very close and take some snapshots and sketch some of the curves. This later point provoked some rolled eyes as the aforementioned wife left the restroom. There are hundreds and hundreds of these little candle stands sprinkled throughout period furniture exhibits, but this one particularly caught my attention because of it’s simplicity. The turned central column is not overly detailed and it represents the truest essence of the Queen Anne style that I like so much. There isn’t a wide flare into a bulbous base that is so common in this form but a gradual widening that terminates in a small bead. This whole shape adds a very delicate feeling to the table which seems to support the beautifully shaped top as if it were weightless. This is an interesting contrast to the tripod feet that snake down and firmly plant themselves. Many of the designs I have seen like this seem to stand on tip toe but this one has it’s heels planted and I like the curve formed at the ankle because of it. This speaks to the Queen Anne style as well since this was really before the ubiquitous ball and claw came into vogue.

I took a shot up under the table as best I could and confirmed that it wasn’t a tilt top (that would be unusual for such a small piece) but I also want to confirm the joinery points as I was already mentally marking out a piece of Walnut that was sitting back in my shop.

Here is a better shot of the top profile with it’s Porringer-esque shape that beckons you to set your drink there and settle down in your Windsor chair with a good book.

I think this very simple piece embodies much of what I admire about the Queen Anne period and it will definitely get a place on my “to build” project list. The challenge of dovetailing the feet into the central column is something I look forward to as well as the freedom I have to design my own take on that column while at the lathe. Expect to see this piece pop up again in the near future as I already have a spot in my house picked out for it. Maybe while I’m at the lathe I’ll turn some candle sticks or an oil lamp to accompany the table so I can read in the “old style”.

Here is the problem. Woodworking classes are expensive! No question that they shouldn’t be because think about what you are getting by taking one. A fellow craftsman is passing along some serious knowledge and best practices that will serve you for the rest of your woodworking career. The big cost isn’t so much the ticket price of the class, but the time and sometimes travel necessary. A lot of schools have seminars and weekend classes, but I just don’t get much out of those because it isn’t enough time to really cover a topic. Most of the time you sit and listen to a lecture and then get a small amount of hands on time. It is the process of actually making with someone looking over your shoulder and guiding you that makes these classes so worthwhile.

So, OK, you have scrimped and saved the money to pay the class fee, but now you have to figure out how to get to the school and arrange lodging and travel. This can be a very daunting hurdle to overcome. Not only that, but while you may be having a ball, you are away from your family and that is always tough. My wife is a sweetheart and has come with me on a few woodworking vacations. She enjoys the quiet time to read and catch up on some relaxation time, but eventually she wants to get out and do something and with me in class all day she is limited. So no matter what she says I always end up feeling a little guilty for taking time away from her vacation.

What’s my point? I seem to be advocating taking a class, but spending a lot of time shooting holes in the idea. If you can work it out, then do it, it will be worth every penny.

But maybe there is an alternative. The digital woodworking community has never been better and there is this little known site call The Wood Whisperer. Maybe you have heard of it? Marc and Nicole Spagnuolo has put together an amazing community that is full of information. What has been missing is that class feeling you get when you bond with your fellows and get knee deep in shavings and sawdust.

About a year ago, Marc launched The Wood Whisperer guild. This is his subscription only site full of exclusive content and events. I was an inaugural member and the first year has been a lot of fun. You meet great people and we have been fortunate to have some big names come and speak to us on their inspirations and work. Internet technology is a wonderful thing that allows us to have a fully interactive discussion and learn a lot.

Marc is taking this idea to the next level in a few months by starting up a group build project. He is going to present us all with a small table design and build it while we build along with him. This is not a new idea as many of us bloggers and podcasters have encouraged our readers to build along. Marc is going to augment this idea with weekly live guild session to help along people stuck in the build or to share ideas for variations on the plan. With over 500 members already in the guild you can imagine the collected wisdom and experience all gathered together in one chat room. With the live streaming capabilities that web cams offer us, many of the guildees can broadcast what they are building at the same time and we can all advise one another and share in the woodworking goodness.

In other words, this is a traditional guild where you get together with friends and talk wood. Only I suggest that it is better because we can do all of this while remaining in our own shops and building along.

So my point is, if you are not already a Guild member, I urge to to click on the pretty Guild icon up on the top right corner and check it out. It will easily be the best money you have spent on your woodworking education. Now to be perfectly honest, I do get a little kickback if you sign up by using this link and I thank Marc for the opportunity to represent his ventures on my own site. I can tell you that this “kickback” has nothing to do with my endorsement of The Wood Whisperer Guild. It is a great place to be and I am happy to be a member. If nothing else my proceeds will just go back into my own show to make it better.

If you join, make sure to drop me a line and say hi next time you are in the chat room too.

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 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?

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!”

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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.

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!

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.

If you not a fan of book reviews then just follow the advice in the title and skip this post…still here…well then let’s talk about this book.

Joel Moskowitz and Christopher Schwarz make a great authoring team in this work. They are like a good comedy team with Joel playing the straight man and Christopher the comic relief. The opening chapters of the book are written by Joel and he gives us a very thorough account of the trades and environmental pressures present in the early 1800s in England. Joel’s excitement about the revelations found within the pages is contagious and you eagerly dive in ready to be astounded. I’ll admit that you really have to be a scholar of esoterica like Joel to really be blown away, but essentially with his commentary and subsequent footnotes throughout the story of Thomas the apprentice you get a peek inside Joel’s mind and begin to understand why this work is so groundbreaking. By the end of the opening chapter and the story itself the reader has a great understanding of what the apprentice system looked like in the late 1700s to early 1800s from how the apprentice is picked to what is expected of him throughout his typical 7 year apprenticeship. We even get a villain in the guise of another apprentice in the shop who is portrayed as careless, lazy, and one who doesn’t take care of his tools.

For those of you who have dared to read the original Moxon or Nicholson have no fear. The language of the original text is quite a bit more modern seeing as the work was published in the 1830s. What’s more it is easy to follow and really engaging like good fiction should be. The details of each build and the atmosphere of the shop is told in great detail that has you smelling the hide glue and slipping on shavings.

This quaint little story would be reward enough, but the the Lou Costello of woodworking steps up (Christopher Schwarz) and walks us through the build process of the packing crate, school box, and chest of drawers. This section of the book is complete with plenty of Christopher’s trademark black and white photos and his signature small town newspaper man tone with a lot of dry wit thrown into the mix. We get to meet Katy Schwarz on several occasions and discover that this 8 year old prodigy is a better woodworker than most of us which plays nicely as a modern day side story of the apprentice system within the Schwarz household. I have no question that you can take this book as is and build all three of these projects in your own shop with no further instruction.

However, Christopher is packaging this book with an accompanying CD-ROM which has full color slide shows and audio commentary of each project build. If you’re a technogeek like me you will quickly find a way to burn these slide shows onto your mobile device so you can watch them on the go. I was making pegs for draw boring the other day in my shop, a truly boring (pun intended) task especially when you have to make 48 of them. I plugged my iPod into the TV and watched all three presentations (a total of around 90 minutes).

Essentially the projects presented within could be considered your correspondence woodworking course to teach you the ins and outs of hand tool cabinetry. And you don’t even need Sally Struthers to host it!

I read this book in less than a day and was captivated by it. Upon the second read, I picked up a few more tidbits that have me reconsidering how I approach projects in my own shop. I have to figure out when I can fit them into the que, but I really would like to build all three of these projects in order, consecutively, to see how it can improve my own work. I’ll be sure to keep you all informed once I decide to get started.

In summary, if you know a woodworker, get this for them for Christmas. If you are a woodworker, don’t wait til Christmas to get it, there are tools mentioned inside that you will want to make these projects that you can ask for instead.

The book is of course available at either The Lost Art Press or Tools for Working Wood, what are you waiting for???

Happy reading!

Check out the 6 foot long jointer plane!

This is kind of a blend between treadle and great wheel lathe. More footage of it on my YouTube account here.

I love the Victorian styling of this treadle scroll saw

Planes,

and braces,

and benches, oh my!

A peek inside a Joiner’s chest.

Not a woodworking tool, but a tool nonetheless. I just thought it was cool and made me think of HG Well’s The Time Machine or some other Victorian science fiction story.

I did not escape unscathed and this is what you all really want to know… what’d you get???

Here is my booty. I have several smoothing planes but they are all in rough shape. This one is simply beautiful. All I had to do was sharpen the blade. Check out the mouth opening…

The other plane with the upright blade is a veneer toothing plane that I got for a song and I think might be useful for working really crazy grain.

Finally this last little beauty is a Snipe’s Bill plane. I was looking for a set of right and left hand planes but only could find this one. There is a lot of mystery surrounding these planes and their uses but I think Don McConnell has gotten it right in his statement that these planes were used to start a cut on a piece of molding by registering in the gauge line. This could be really useful when laying out the initial rabbets on a stick of moulding when that frustrating moving fillister fence won’t stay locked in place.

More to come on this oddball molding plane as I work with it. In summary, ebay is a great place to find old tools but you never really know what your going to get. The Brown show is guaranteed to give you quality tools and oftentimes the story of their provenance to add to your enjoyment.

Last month while attending WIA in Valley Forge I was fortunate enough to get some time to chat with Peter Follansbee about sources to learn more about 17th century furniture. Peter highly recommended Dr. Robert Tarule’s book “The Artisan of Ipswich” about the Ipswich, MA joiner Thomas Dennis. If you are only slightly interested in learning about how it was done in 17th century America then this book is for you. Not only do we get a bench side view of a chest being built but Dr. Tarule spends a copious amount of time telling us about the history of the settling of Ipswich and how the native Americans practiced sustainable forestry that provided the colonists with such a bounty of resources. In addition, there is an entire chapter devoted to the other artisans throughout the town like Coopers, Carpenters, and Wheelwrights and a discussion about the types of wood they needed and how they impacted on the resources available to the commoners of Ipswich.

I admit to being a bit of a history buff, but when you combine my love of woodworking with a study on the workings of a colonial town you get a great read. Dr. Tarule uses a mixture of non fiction, footnoted writing typical of a doctoral thesis, but then he slips into his side by side retelling of Thomas Dennis making a chest for a patron. What is most interesting is that Tarule’s retelling is not conjecture but highly accurate based on his examination of the actual piece being described. By following the tool marks, scribe lines, and reading the wood, Dr. Tarule can recreate how the joiner made this piece.

A shot of Peter Follansbee’s work from WIA Tools & Techniques 2009

By the end of the book, you are better informed not only of how you take a tree and make a chest, but why it was done that way, and what sociological pressures forced it to be designed the way it was. Finally as a parting treat, Dr. Tarule’s epilogue follows this same chest up through ages to it’s modern day home in a museum in Massachusetts. It puts a nice little bow on your understanding of the piece and how it has weathered the storm of time.

In short, go find a copy of this book. Prices has gone up a bit since Chris Schwarz blogged about it a few weeks ago, but there are still many used sources out there and you will thank me once you have read it.

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Many of my twitter followers will remember my updates of “another power outage” or “I’m in my shop and it’s dark, I’m scared”. It seems that Baltimore Gas & Electric is trying to make me a better woodworker. (yes that is my optimistic view of this). I am essentially a hybrid woodworker with a passion for hand tools. I will try to make everything I can unplugged but I admit there are times when a repetitive task becomes drudgery and I pop over to the the table saw to make some batch cuts, or I hit the router table to cut drawer bottom grooves.

Now if I want to be a really good galoot, what better practice can you get than repeating the same task over and over again right? Well, the lazy American in me often wins. But now with this new energy saving plan my power company keeps pushing on me, I no longer have that excuse.

So thank you BGE for helping me to be a better galoot…could I at least get some power for my space heater though. I’m nostalgic not stupid.

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Made by hand in the Joiner's shop

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