The Renaissance Woodworker

I added a new toy to the tool cabinet this weekend. An Iwasaki Carving File purchased during the big Woodcraft sale. These files are extremely sharp as they have been chemically etched. Their diagonal tooth pattern cuts much like a plane would cut including a form of tiny chip breaker which actually clears the chips [...]

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Here in the US we tend to be a little ethnocentric. Call it American swagger, call it geographic isolation but we often forget that things are different elsewhere in this big world. So it is nice every once in a while to be shaken out of our preconceptions. Last weekend I made a trip up [...]

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It’s time for another hand tool tip. You have crosscut that board and now you notice it isn’t square or parallel to the opposite end. Yes you can use a shooting board to fix it, but this gets hard with larger boards. A shooting board is really just a jig that makes a fundamental skill [...]

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In typical Wood Whisper panache, Marc has put up a nice video announcing our Guild build and the dedication to Duane. As promised he has also included a donation link at the bottom of the page. Get over there and check it out. I’m proud to say that since yesterday’s post we have a new [...]

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I have mentioned before what a valuable resource The Wood Whisperer Guild is to me. It seems that it is time to give back. Marc Spagnuolo thought it would be fun to organize a group build where all of us guildees could build a simple project and help one another out during the collective build. [...]

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I mentioned on Twitter yesterday that I have been working in Ash for a year now as I slowly build my workbench. Rob Bois, @theboisshop, commented that I must be really good at sharpening after working with such a hard wood for so long. You know I hadn’t really thought about it, but I do [...]

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I know I talk a lot about hand tools on this blog. And honestly I use tools of the unplugged variety much more than the ones with those long tails and pointy plugs…a lot more. My bed time reading is comprised of old tomes of furniture collections and eclectic trade manuals of working styles long [...]

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I first used one of Mark Harrell’s new tenon saws at the hand tool olympics at the Woodworking in America design event last August in St Charles, IL. At the time my dovetailing skills were actually better than my tenoning skills because I had spent more time practicing dovetails. Needless to say I was shocked [...]

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After my trip to Valley Forge for the 2009 Hand Tools and Techniques conference I became a little obsessed with wooden planes. I had a particular interest in molding planes. 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 [...]

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Maybe it is just the circles I run in lately but there are a lot of conversations about not needing this power tool or never using this jig because it is more enjoyable and sometimes faster to use a hand tool instead. It probably has a lot to do with my personal development as a [...]

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