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Hand Tools
Scorching Sand
I am in need of some scorching sand for heat shading veneer and for hardening goose writing quills. I got a couple of cups of sand from a friend, it was left over from an out door cook oven. It is coarse construction sand and was in need of cleaning.
I first ran it through a coarse sieve [12 wires per inch], the stuff that didn’t make it through went into the garden. I then ran the sand through fine brass screen [20 wires per inch]. The stuff that didn’t make it through I separated out and saved it for future use, thinking I would still need to wash it when I was done.
Everything that fell through the fine brass wire screen contained all of the fines and dust, which I assumed I would have to wash it and dry it out. As I was pouring the sand from one container to another the wind blew some of the fine dust away. Now I was winnowing the sand and in about 15 minutes it was very clean. I didn’t have to wash it after all.
The size of the sand really does not matter for scortching wood or hardening quills, but it is nice to have two different sizes of winnowed sand.
Stephen
The world's fanciest sock drawer?
Stopped dados and runners
I decided that I would have (approximately) two 3" drawers, two 2 1/2" drawers and two 1 1/2" drawers. The bottoms of the drawers are going to be in slips, and they will use up 1/2" of the depth.
I am still thinking about the drawer joinery. My question is this: Am I really going to create 6 half-blind dovetailed drawers for a tool chest? I watched a video of Rob Cosman making one half-blind joint in seven minutes. I am not that proficient at them and they would definitely take me a whole lot more time than that and possibly more than one try in some cases. By the way, here are a pair of videos with some really innovative techniques for making half-blind dovetails that I ran across:
Half-blind dovetails, part 1
Half-blind dovetails, part 2
It would never have occurred to me to use a scraper and drill press this way.
Here's a thought. I have no aversion to using quality baltic birch plywood for the drawer bottoms and there are obvious advantages to doing so. They can be glued in solid and, in so doing, will add tremendous strength to the drawer. On drawers this shallow, a glued-in bottom would take a lot of load off the corner joinery. I am not sure that sides pegged in a rabbet in the front wouldn't be more than strong enough. I admit to a vague feeling that they would be uncraftsmanlike. A disadvantage is that this design requires making a rabbet on the edges of the undersized plywood so it will fit precisely into the groove.
What would you do?
Saw Parts Suppliers
I remember years ago when I first started making saws and how hard it was to find parts. No one sold brass backs or saw hardware or saw plates. If you wanted to make a saw you had to fabricate the parts yourself, or scavenge them from old saws. And neither is too much fun when all you want to do is make a saw and not get an internship in a machine shop.
Fast forward to 2013 and the wonderful reality that is the 21st Century American Hand Tool Renaissance.
Thanks to a small number of enterprising people, and the growing demand to resurrect and revitalize our appreciation for meat powered tools, we now have several commercial sources of excellent quality parts and supplies for saw making.
I use parts from all of these suppliers and can personally vouch for every one. These are the same parts that I use every day in my shop. They ALL offer top quality and awesome customer service:
Saw Plates, templates, plans and more: TGIAG.com
Complete saw kits, backs and fasteners: BontzSawWorks.net
Saw Kits, split nut fasteners and driver bits: ToolsForWorkingWood.com
Saw Fasteners, supplies and filing aides: BlackburnTools.com
So what are you waiting for….get building!!!! Any schmuck can build a saw. Believe me….if I can make one, so can you. And if you’re a bit nervous about jumping into the whole project then you’re in luck again, because I also teach a two-day class at the Connecticut Valley School of Woodworking on making a backsaw from rough components.
And starting with this next class in July, we are now offering students the option to choose the size of their saw! That’s right…..thanks to Ron Bontz at Bontz Saw Works, students now order their saw kits directly. You can pick any saw you want, from a tiny 8 inch dovetail saw to a monster 18 inch tenon saw (though I recommend starting with the 12 inch backsaw kit). Let Ron know your preferences when you place your order. Then just bring the kit with you to class and I’ll show you how to turn it into a top-notch tool. It’s a blast. And you certainly don’t have to take the class to buy a kit from Ron, or parts from any of the suppliers above.
Check out the details on the saw building class: Build a Backsaw July 20-21st
And just to make the whole experience a little more fun, I’ll now be adding a ’Gallery’ section on the blog to post pics of saws made by students, readers and fellow saw lovers.
So get building and keep in touch.
-Matt
Make your bed

Greg Knopp had contacted me earlier about fixing up a Japanese plane that he had. From the photos he sent me, it looked like it was in nice shape, except for one thing: the blade protruded a good ways past the mouth.
As it turns out, I have a Japanese plane that does the same thing.

This sometimes happens with Japanese planes. What I think happens is that the body shrinks over time, which effectively lowers the bed as the wood moves away from the position that it originally was in when the blade was fitted to the plane. As the bed lowers, it allows the blade to sink further into the grooves that hold it in place, resulting in the excessive protrusion you see above.
There are three ways to deal with this situation.
1. Make a new body for your plane blade. My guess is that’s more work than you want to do. It certainly is more work than I would want to do to fix this issue.
2. Grind down the blade so that it no longer protrudes out of the mouth like that. That would be a bit waste of a good portion of your blade, and you would have to do a lot of grinding, resharpening, and tapping out the blade. That’s also a lot of work.
3. Raise the bed by gluing a thin shim in place. A thin piece of cardboard has often been used for this. Some people swear by copier paper, business card stock, or index cards. Others would resaw a thin piece of wood. Once you do that, the blade shouldn’t be able to go all the way down. Then start rescraping the bed to allow the blade to drop down again.
I decided to go the thin piece of wood route. I’ve tried paper and cardboard before for this task, and found that when it came to rescraping the bed, the scraping was much less predictable than I liked. I’d often try to remove a small bit of the paper or cardboard, and come away with a bigger chunk than I wanted.
The first step is to get a thin piece of wood. I had a scrap of hard maple available, and resawed it to get a thin piece that was a strong 1/32” thick.

As it turned out, the shim was not quite even all the way across, but that’s not critical. I’m going to be shaving away at it anyway to fit the blade when this process is all done.
Next, I needed to cut it to fit the bed of the plane. The first time I tried this, I did a lot of trimming, then fitting, then trimming again. Eventually I realized that I already had a template for the shape of the bed.

I used the plane blade to trace an outline on the shim, and cut it out slightly oversized. Then I trimmed the edges with a plane until it fit nicely in the bed.

I used a liberal amount of hide glue, and set the shim in place. To apply pressure, I used the plane blade, and tapped it in with a hammer.

The plane blade now sits a good 1/4” short of the mouth, even with vigorous tapping with a hammer. In the above picture, the shim can be seen past the end of the blade.
I checked the shim around the mouth of the plane from the underside just to make sure that the shim was seated on the bed. Once the glue dried, I could pop the blade out, and start rescraping the shim to fit the blade to the plane just as I would if I was setting up the plane for the first time.
Wood Talk No. 131
On today’s show, we’re talking about restoring a cupped table top, a box for severed fingers, using router bits with shapers, t-slot miter bars, compact table saws, bevel angles on bevel down planes, jointer options, dado blade safety, and designing difficulty.
Around the Web
Kickback
The scale also has the instructions printed on it, which will be especially handy when years of breathing epoxy fumes degrades my ability to remember basic instructions or do simple math.
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The World Turned Upside Down
It falls through the Sawing and Axe Violence,
The fresh, joyful free Forest;
What Wonder, when at last the Tree takes revenge.
And his Murderer is sawed in Pieces.
The World is inverted!
Fliegende Blätter – 1852
An illustrated weekly magazine published in Munich.
-Jeff Burks
Filed under: Historical Images
New Model - The Side Bead
We're pleased to announce a new addition to out line of planes - the Side Bead. I love these planes, very simple to use, and you dress up a simple project into something very sophisticated quite quickly. Drawers, panels, corners - you name it, there's an opportunity for a bead!
Megan Fitzpatrick of Popular Woodworking magazine ordered one recently and placed a little review here - I think she was quite pleased with it.
The planes are initially available in 1/8" and 3/16" sizes, perfect for most smaller scale cabinet work. Price is £150 each or the pair for £280, available now on our website.
I Want to Give You ‘Go Fever’
In some high technology circles there is an expression they use when engineers move too quickly to launch a project. They have “go fever” and are willing to overlook horrible mistakes in order to launch a product. When teaching woodworking – especially casework – I find that most students need to take down their protective netting, … Read more
The post I Want to Give You ‘Go Fever’ appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.
A George I Simulated Tortoiseshell Girandole – Part Three
As has been mentioned here before, imitating tortoiseshell on furniture has been achieved with varying degrees of realism down the centuries. The tortoiseshell backgrounds of japanned work often consisted of nothing more complex than daubs of opaque black paint on an opaque coloured (predominantly red) ground, while original standalone testudinal painted finishes usually exhibit more artistic accomplishment. As with grained wood finishes, a proportion of absolute painted tortoiseshell finishes developed into an art form in their own right.
All the same, great strides were made by a number of artists to more accurately recreate natural tortoiseshell, which process involved laying metal foil (brass, gold or silver) on a substrate over which were laid numerous coats of coloured translucent varnish.
Venetian born Joachim Becher developed a method of extracting tar from coal which he used (in conjunction with asphaltum and pitch) to tint varnishes for simulating tortoiseshell.
The ‘projecting genius’, Thomas Algood, (d. 1716), a Northamptonshire Quaker, applied brown lacquer [presumably asphaltum- or tar-based] over irregularly shaped pieces of foil to imitate tortoiseshell.[1]
John Baskerville of Birmingham took out a patent for his simulated tortoiseshell in 1742, describing it as “An imitation … which greatly excells Nature itself both in Colour and hardness.”[2]
The finish on my William and Mary chest of drawers adhered to the practice of building up layers of contrasting paint and translucent varnish to simulate tortoiseshell; however, this girandole attempts to replicate the work of these latter craftsmen using asphaltum and other naturally tinted varnishes over metal foil.
Due to the complexity (and presumable cost) of foil-and-varnish tortoiseshell, it was normally reserved for smaller, more intimate objects for the bed chamber and parlour.
While my chest’s distinct painted finish displays considerable depth and a charm all of its own, it can’t compete with the chatoyance of the girandole’s finish. It’s quite mesmerising and virtually impossible to describe in words or portray in pictures. In the early morning sunlight, the deep scarlet flickers to searing yellow with the merest shift of the body.
“It’s just a jump to the left…”
“… and then a step to the right.”
The frame and looking glass have been sympathetically aged and I’m just awaiting the arrival of the candle arm castings to complete the girandole.
Jack Plane
[1] HUTH, Hans, Lacquer of the West – The History of a Craft and an Industry 1550-1950, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1971, pp. 111-112.
[2] JONES, Yvonne, Japanned Papier Mâché and Tinware c.1740-1940, Antique Collectors’ Club, 2012, p. 43.
Filed under: Mirrors & Girandoles Tagged: asphaltum, foil, girandole, Joachim Becher, John Baskerville, pitch, tar, Thomas Algood, tortoiseshell
On Sale: A Manual Of Wood Carving by Charles Godfrey Leland, 1891
Black & White Ebony with bronze or steel?
One of the more common questions I get is people looking for recommendations for infill materials and what the best sidewall material would be - from an aesthetic standpoint. That is a really tough question to answer - most infill wood will look great with either bronze or steel. So I usually ask them if they have a preference for steel or bronze or if there is a particular infill wood they are after. The answer to either of those questions can help the process.
In 2004, I found a stash of Ebony commonly called ‘Black & White Ebony’. There was one piece that stood out to me - it had great definition between the black and white sections and had that wonderful pillowing that Ziricote is known for. It was just large enough for 2 XSNo.4s and I roughed those sets out as soon as I got home. As soon as the dehumidification kiln was completed, they stayed in there for a few years and then back out onto the storage shelf waiting for a home.
After a recent conversation about pairing infill wood with sidewall material, I noticed these 2 sets on the shelf and decided to make these 2 planes to show the difference between steel and bronze with a common infill wood. I made a few ‘spare’ planes a couple months ago and the response was very positive, so decided the risk of making 2 more was not too high. Besides - I was curious to see them myself.
Here are a couple more photos of the pair and then some photos of the individual planes.
XSNo.4 with bronze sides and Black & White Ebony infill. The plane is 5-1/2" long, has a 1-1/2" wide, high carbon steel blade with a 52.5 degree bed angle. The price is $1,700.00 Cdn + actual shipping costs.
XSNo.4ss with steel sides, a stainless steel lever cap and screw, with Black & White Ebony infill. The plane is 5-1/2" long, has a 1-1/2" wide, high carbon steel blade with a 52.5 degree bed angle. The price is $1,850.00 Cdn + actual shipping costs.
Ipe Ki Yay...
There's been a fair bit of progress on the Japanese Lamp project, without, I'm happy to report, any dire or assorted 'cock-ups' , which for me, dear peruser, is a bit of a bloody miracle!
The first pic above shows the various smaller components hanging from a line and if you've ever been to Naples, you'll know exactly what they remind you of. Masking off the pre-glued Doms and suspending them from a cord means that I was able to finish all sides in one hit, using a couple of thin coats of matt Osmo-PolyX (great stuff by the way)
Once all the interior surfaces were dry and waxed, it was time for a trial assembly of the lower panels, made in Ipe, or Brazilian Walnut (band sawn veneers over 4mm ply). No real Doms used here, but 5mm bits of ash cut to the right size.
Having checked it all, there were three gluing stages to get to the point above, where a long 22" jointer was used as a 'super-smoother' to level each of the sides, after which the....
...router could be used (with an extended base) to make the rebates all round for the shoji panels. With the corners squared out, the exterior frame was polished and waxed. The eight little stubs were then individually marked with Roman numerals using a 3mm chisel...
...and if you click on the pic to enlarge it, you can clearly see the markings. This means that by aligning the 'III' on the shoulder with the 'III' on the frame, the stub, once shot in and sanded, will fit...
...exactly with no 'step' or overlap.
Clever, ain't it?
Once the stubs were hung out and polished (as before) they were glued in place...
...a pair at a time.
However, that's not quite the end of the saga, because I had a small parcel of Ipe left over and I found that it's one of the nicest cabinet woods that I've ever used in a long time. Being somewhat of a parsimonious old git I decided not to waste it, so I made a small...
...box out of it.
Box Shaped People
I bought a new push lawn mower the other day, and like a two year old at Christmas, I had much more fun playing with the box than with the mower.
I've spent lots of time thinking about the shaped of the spindles in the backs of chairs and because I use spindles, it's easy to get stuck thinking vertically. But the shape of the human body doesn't follow a singe vertical curve at every spot. So I started thinking about the relationships as they proceed horizontally. With the hardy cardboard, I mocked up this chair back by aligning four curves. It is surprisingly comfortable and sturdy.
Each curve is actually slightly cones shaped. It was easy and took only a half hour or so, but it confirmed a lot of what I have been doing with my spindles and encouraged me to go even further.
Here is the view of the back. I started by pinning the piece together with drywall screws and adjusting them as I saw fit.
Then I took the small blocks of plywood and spun the screws until the plywood was sucked tight to the cardboard. The single board clamped to the workbench puts the support in just the right spot so I can rest my weight on it. From there, I mapped out the spindle shapes and will be making some patterns and dummies to further test it out. We will be working with this more to design some chairs at the class that Greg Pennington and I will be teaching at Kelly Mehlers in a couple of weeks.
As you can see in the chair below, I have been highlighting similar shapes in the flat spindles of my chairs for some time now.
This is my first walnut rocker with hickory spindles. Over time, the hickory will mellow to a lovely amber and the walnut will lighten. I didn't know exactly how I would feel about the contrast, but it is striking in person and quite pleasing.
I've accentuated the chamfers on the spindles which adds a lot of interest to their blonde color.
And spring is here, so we've got some new chicks in the house!!
Ten ladies should keep the whole neighborhood in eggs. The are growing like weeds, it's almost disconcerting.
And I opened up the goat paddock into the woods so my kids could climb rocks and eat shrubs.
In case you don't see them, here they are, livin large, just like the rest of us.
The Magnificent Seven
This photo was recently sent to me by antique tool dealer Jim Bode. We were having a conversation at a local tool museum last Sunday when he mentioned a photo that was given to him by one of his customers. The image shows seven carpenters posing in a field with their tool chests circa 1910. These were full service country carpenters who could build a house from the foundation to the roof. They have the usual selection of handsaws, planes, bit braces, breast drills, augers, spirit levels, hammers, steel squares, mallets, chisels, etc.
The specialty tools reveal the range of their carpentry activities. The boring machines, framing chisels, lifting jack, and adzes show that they were still building mortise & tenon timber frames during an era when most of the country had long since converted to balloon framing. The expensive miter boxes and combination plane show that they were also doing exterior trim, cornice work, and possibly interior trim & flooring as well. The slate ripper is only used for roofing and siding.
The planes are a mixed group of cast iron and transitional. The wooden soled planes were often preferred by site carpenters because they dramatically reduced the weight of the traveling tool kit. Most of the transitional planes in this image are stock models, but one of them appears to be a user modified plane. It looks like somebody took the hardware off of a Stanley No. 26 Jack Plane and added their own custom four foot sole to make a super jointer.
As for the date, I suggest circa 1910 because the miter boxes in this photo appear to be Stanley models with patents issued in 1904. For that reason the photo can not be earlier than 1905. Several years ago I put together a research paper on miter box patents. If you need help with the identity or age of a miter box, then this document can help.
Miter Box Patents – (2812 pages – 160MB pdf) Right Click – Save As
- Jeff Burks
Filed under: Historical Images
Down the Rabbit Hole III
“Ornament is an act of love – or at least a token of esteem. We embellish what we revere. We adorn that which we love. We do not decorate the hero, returning from the wars, to make him pretty – we decorate him to pay him honor. Ornament is deep stuff, greatly misunderstood in recent years.”
— Alvin Holm
This quote above is from an article you can link to by Alvin Holm (Ornament) .
Much of our rabbit hole material comes from the thoughts of architects and scientists. Here’s a few thoughts about ornament from an architect. I find it also applies to furniture. Hope this proves insightful and helps you to see in a deeper way. Feel free to share your thoughts.
George R. Walker
College of the Redwoods, indeed. Photo by Michael Nichols, from...
Timber Harvesting: Day One

After working the most gorgeous week of the year on the most gorgeous private island in Maine (no seriously… check this place out > Nautilus Island), Mike and the boys came over on Saturday for some tree felling fun. Mike did most of the felling, Casey did the limbing, Kyle ran the excavator for brush and lifting the logs onto the trailer, and I… well, I walked around with a tape measure and cut list directing traffic. I worked through my plans several times over making sure I had a complete list of all the pieces I need. There are about 150 pieces to the frame including braces, purlins, joists, etc. Having not done a project like this from standing trees to complete finish, I was a bit nervous about knowing just which pieces to select for each timber.


Jon Ellsworth has been helpful to me in our discussions about what to look for in size of tree. I trust Jon’s advice. He takes his draft horses up into the woods behind my current studio pretty frequently and takes down trees that he brings to a local sawyer for all the frames he builds. He’s been doing this a long time. I will truly miss hearing the clack clacking of the horses on the road and the subsequent chainsaw in the distance while I am working.


Julia had been busy all week preparing food for the big day. After french press coffee and country store donuts in the morning, we devoured her burritos for lunch, and grilled barbeque chicken with homemade macaroni for dinner. It was so amazing. Thank you Julia!

On occasion throughout the day, Julia would bring Eden up to watch the work from a distance. He, of course, loved it. He frequently talks about how he wants to be like Kyle and run an excavator or like uncle Mike with a chainsaw.






I think the first highlight of the day (besides the sweet fellowship of my brothers) was the take down of the large spruce tree for my 24’ 7 x 7 tie beam in the center bent. All the rest of the 24’ spans I will end up scarf jointing, but this beam is a little more critical. It was pretty cool watching these guys take this down so efficiently. After a little struggle, Kyle’s excavator finally loaded that beast onto the trailer. Cheers abounded as he laid it in place.


The second highlight was the take down of the smallest tree. First Mike, as a professional arborist, put on his climbing gear and worked his way to the top. We had a crew of three guys pulling on the rope from below as he cut the top off. Finally, Casey notched and took down the rest with a little help from the excavator. It was nothing short of ridiculous. And good fun for the end of a long tiring day.




We got the trailers loaded to capacity and only had about a third of what was needed. The plan from here is that Kyle and I will very soon mill what we’ve got and we’ll schedule another work day to get the rest. Next time we will have more hauling capacity so that we can hopefully get the remainder in this second load.

I am so thankful to have such an awesome family. Mike, his brother-in-law Kyle, and Kyle’s brother Casey were so generous to offer their help on this project. I am indebted greatly to these dear brothers and I look forward to helping them fulfill their each of their dreams someday. Thank you, guys. Thank you.
Art History v. Experimental Archeology
I have often found it beneficial to sketch furniture while examining it. Unlike a photograph, a pencil insists a form be understood to be reproduced. But my sketches don’t always look like my subjects. My failing can be attributed to both my lack of skill and lack of understanding of the subject. I’m not convinced … Read more
The post Art History v. Experimental Archeology appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.
A photo finish
Sadly, this marks the end of this project, but have a few concepts already in mind for the next one. In the meantime, I'm thinking a proper shop tour is long overdue, and it might be the perfect intermission to the next big thing.






























