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hmm........

2nd round of sawing square and it didn't go so well. All four of them were slightly off square. Not terribly OTL (out to lunch) but enough that there would be gaps between the tails and pins.

tails

The angle of tails appear to be consistent. I was expecting this to be different but it looks like muscle memory has the angle down.

made a command decision

Decided to cheat a bit by using a square to layout the tails. I did the spacing by eye which after seeing what I had done needs some work.

like the old days

Several years ago I started to knife the tail and pin layout lines. Before that I used pencil and then sawed on that layout line. Used the dozuki saw for the tails and pins. I find that with the finer TPI it saws easier in thin stock then my Blue Spruce dovetail saw.

I'm square

Paul Sellers used a coping saw to remove the waste and fitted his tails/pins without any chiseling. I used a marking gauge for the baselines and the half pins. Off the saw the half pins were almost dead on according to my dovetail square.

I checked the middle tails after I chopped them and they were about the same. I had to tweak a couple to get them dead square to the outside face.

slow going

I was getting short of breath chopping the tails but I wasn't coughing and I didn't have to stop to recuperate neither. It did take a lot longer to get the tails and pins fitted up. A couple months before this I would have completed it in about an hour. Today It took me over 3 hours.

drats, and double drats

Got an ugly gap on this half pin. The other tails/pins are snug fitting.

gap on lower right

I wasn't expecting to have a gap. For the most part this dovetailing experiment wasn't that different from what I normally do.

the opposite end

This end is kinda better. There are two 'gaps' but I think once I glue it they will close up. 

clean up

I plan on using this after it has cooked. I planed the inside faces of the four sides with the #3. I'll do the outside faces in the AM.

helping hands

Used the clamps to pull the half pins tight. The inside diagonals didn't change and both said 8 1/2". After eyeballing it, I think I will only have to shim two tail/pin connections. I'm also thinking of using Soss Hinges for the lid on this box but that could change come tomorrow.

I won't be trying this experiment again. I don't ever see myself having to dovetail something without doing it the way I do now. I don't see any advantage to this method nor do I think it is a good shop practice.  Could I do it? Yes given more time and maybe a bit more practice.

The shortness of breath is getting worse. I can barely take 4-5 steps before my breathing gets short. That is also now accompanied by me coughing, sometimes quick and sometimes fitfully. Either way, it sucks pond scum through a collapsed straw.

I felt ok working on the box this AM. So far I can work in the shop without any issues which is in my favor. However, the up/down to the shop is also getting worse. I have to sit on the bench in the back hallway for 5 minutes or so to catch my breath. I plan my trips to the shop to minimize any return trips topside. I want the one and only time I leave the shop to be the last trip. 

accidental woodworker 

The intensity of learning anything new is rarely self observed, but I have a few thousand pictures I have taken through the decades that show clearly the dynamic of focus that engages the whole body in its multidimensionality. The intensity of making with your hands is dynamic; unlike most crafts, woodworking is far from a sedentary occupation. You must stand, move around, bend, swivel and twist to expedite the wide range of cuts necessary to develop any project. True is, woodworking is just flat good for the body, but furthermore, it's excellent for developing and maintaining your mental acuity.

I have other crafts I enjoy and because I am so used to bench work I usually find a spot at my woodworking workbench to do this work too. One thing that inevitably happened when I used to hold classes is that the people attending arrived at their workbenches and sat down to work. |So used to sitting at desks, they thought that they could do the same with working wood. Additionally, because they were so unused to using their whole body, they tired rather easily. Most of them were unused to this kind of manual work. A weeklong class was good training for them, enough to develop some much needed and much missing muscle tone, stamina and high self demand.

My work in teaching others to work wood in hands-on classes now spans three decades. Naturally, there is a mix of people so you cannot put them all in a single box and say 'they this' or 'they that'. The images that grab my attention are the ones of people who are so focussed they zone everything and everyone else out by their personal intensity. My fascination for the expressions of intensity is not purely facial. I draw hands every day. That flex and compression, the muscle swell and the relax all play a part of a body language you might never see outside of those working with wood with hand tools at the bench. This too separates the wood machinist from the woodworker at the workbench working with hand tools. Nowhere near one and the same persons.

Were I to draw machinists working their wood, as I do the hands of hand tool woodworkers, there would be very little worth recording. There is nothing to fascinate me about machining wood because not only does the machine do 99%nof all the work in cuts, it also dictates the way wood is fed into it and in some cases it might well take over the feed itself, governing the feed rate and direction of the wood being pushed into some its cutters, be that a bandsaw, tablesaw or jointer and all of which will be pretty much the same. Even the other machines that are pushed or pulled into the wood, the chop-saw, and radial-arm saw, work in a single axis in a direct plane. In essence, it more represents a two-dimensional work rather than the multidimensional dynamic of hand tool making. With hand tools, the options are diverse and dynamic and often even unpredictable. There is only one way to push wood into a machine. The fence guides the straight passage and light hand pressure guides it against the fence for an inline, straight cuts. |what machinists might see as crude cuts with hand saws and planes, we see as organic and stimulating. We do not mind the workout, in fact, we want it.

The students through the years taught me more about teaching than I knew starting out and I learned quickly. No phones, no sitting, not too much relaxing except when they were using excess force where a loose hand and grip would work ten times better in many if not almost all circumstances. How many men did I have to intercede with to get them to be less of the bulldog they thought to approach their woodworking with. I watched as the tried to force the saw in another direction watching them bend the plate to actually do the very opposite where the saw gain was worsening stroke on stroke.

By the end of the week, they learned that woodworking with hand tools was less intenseness and more relaxedness. The no phones, no sitting policy became internalised rather than externally legislated by me. Their intense posturing changed to a more balanced persuasiveness as they positioned their tools more accurately and ultimately, more confidently too.

Imagine taking this load home after three weeks and then some other pieces too. She made a five tier wall shelf and a Shaker candle box before these. Leah came with no real hand tool woodworking knowledge but left with enough to continue woodworking, secure in the knowledge of hand tools and the desire to work only with her hands but now knowing she could.

Drivel Starved Nation!

I have no idea where the time has gone, but the last 5 years has made quite a woosh!  I wish I had a more interesting story to tell you, like my 5 year stint in the Gray Bar Hotel but here’s the truth;

Since 2018 when I handed the keys to BCTW to Harvey Industries, I set out to reinvent myself as a wildlife photographer. In that span, I have taken over 2 million images (the overwhelming majority are crap) but in this last chapter of my life, it has been very rewarding. I’ll share a couple of images at the end of this post.

Eighteen months ago, I gutted my two-car garage and I am pleased to share that for the first time in my life, I have a woodshop on premise. It took awhile but I am making things again. So between photography trips, and making stuff, I hope to publish at least two posts a month covering my experiences with 3D printing in the woodshop, my experiences with Shaper Origin, photography stories, and whatever else the muse suggests is worth sharing.

Currently, I’ve been busy in the shop working on several new projects, ranging from magician illusions to a new 7-day clock movement. I’ll share more on these in the coming weeks. Most of my photography journey has been spent in Africa but last summer I spent 3 weeks in the jungles of Borneo chasing orangutans and birds. It was the hottest place I’ve ever been.

Clearly I am not getting any younger but I still attend AWFS and IWF each year in the Bridge City/Harvey booth and thoroughly enjoy chatting with old customers. And their number one question is why did I quit my blog? I’m grateful for the interest so my answer is:

I haven’t!   

Until next time, I hope you enjoy the following pics!

-John

 

pays to be a pack rack

Noticed this pile of 1/2" poplar while during the laundry. It will do for the upcoming experiment.

the box

I couldn't get a complete color/grain match for the sides.  I eyeballed the long and short sides and squared and sawed them to length.

labeled

I labeled this the way I would any dovetail project. I'm just not laying out the tails with my dovetail jig.

practice first

Used one of the extras to saw the tails first. The big concern was sawing square without a square line to guide me. All four of the saw lines came out square. I was happy to see that. The only one I had trouble with is the right half pin. I always have trouble sawing that way.

This is all I had the energy for today. Last night I had coughing fit when I went to bed at 2200. I coughed continually off and on until 1130. First fit since I got the last Rx round that coughed this long. I finally slept but I woke up 4 times for the toilet trot races. I think the meds are the cause for the trips. Regardless I slept ok - ish and went vertical a little after 0700.

I spent the morning during absolutely nothing. I didn't feel sick but I had zero ambition to do anything. I wanted to go to the shop but I couldn't get myself to leave my desk chair. I didn't even feel like watching YouTube and just sat there and zoned out.

I finally made it to the shop after lunch and it was struggle to get down there. I wanted to do something but I also wanted to go back topside and just veg out. I thought about how I felt today and over the past 2-3 days and wondered if my lung issues are the cause.   

Fingers crossed that tomorrow is at a minimum, a wee bit better.

accidental woodworker 

Those of you that follow my blog probably remember the rabbit hole I fell into a number of years ago when I first started doing Kumiko work — well, I believe I’ve found yet another one; weaving wood to create panels! This all started last Christmas (2025) when my Christmas wish list included a reed basket weaving kit from a company called My Own 2 Hands . I’ve always enjoyed weaving Danish cord and Seagrass for seating and we could use a basket to put shoes in by the front door. Long story short, the company had just started shipping to the USA and the reed they supplied was way too thin and very poor quality. I asked for and received a refund and assurance that they would ship a new kit when available, free of charge. Apparently they haven’t succeeded in that because several emails over this year haven’t resulted in a new kit and so …….. on to another Rabbit Hole we go!

Cutting for splines Splines and Battens for panels in place

Using a rip blade, each panel was mitered to size. The picture on the left shows cutting the groove for the spline. On the right are the fitted battens that will be pin nailed and glued to secure the panels. Something I discovered that you can use a planer to create the spline from 1/4″ MDF. The kerf from my rip blade is about 3/16″. A recommended technique is to have crossgrain spline that won’t expand and cause the miter to separate, that’s hard to do. MDF should work, I know glue may make it expand a bit but shouldn’t split the joint — fingers crossed!

Slight separation at miter Burnished and it’s gone!

Glue ups tend to be stressful, I used Old Brown Glue (my favorite) for longer open time and easier cleanup. Then 3 picture frame clamps but still had a few minor separations; in retrospect maybe a caul may have helped even out the pressure. In any case, when I worked as a carpenter back in the 70’s we would use our framing hammer to “finesse” joints on exterior trim. Instead of the hammer a burnisher worked just fine as you can see.

Spline interfered with squaring corner Pencil, Chisel, & Sandpaper to radius Bottom glue/nailed in place

The bottom is a 1/4″ piece of plywood. Looking back, I could have cut a dado before gluing everything together but didn’t so used a rabbeting bit instead. Usually I’d square the corners but the spline is in the way. Solved that dilemma by drawing the radius with a circle template, chisel to the line, and then refined with sandpaper before installing it — now on to weaving the panels. I’ll leave you with this picture and if all goes well write a final blog about it. I think I’m approaching the bottom of this rabbit hole!

Admittedly, it does look a bit like an aquarium — stay tuned.

hmm.......

First off, the stand offs on the back of the frog had rust on them. Removing the japanning on the frog is being a bit more stubborn than the plane body. I tired to remove the japanning with 4-0 steel wool and nada. The steel wool didn't remove one bit. I next tried a steel wire brush and got the same result on both the main casting and the frog. 

The japanning is scraping off easily but not as easily as I expected it to be. After two full days in the Simple Green bath I thought it would be far easier to remove the japanning. 

This was it for today. I spent the AM running around with my wife keeping her company. It turned out to be a me-steak and a rather large me-steak. I barely survived walking around with her at the first stop. At the 2nd one I had a coughing fit. Luckily it happened while I was alone in the car. 

I did attempt a little bit of walk about at a Star Bucks and kinda survived that. Coughed a little due to me walking but I didn't have a fit and embarrass myself ordering. I was thinking of driving down to NC to see the grandkids but I don't see that happening now. I think my trips are going to be limited to me sitting in the passenger seat with no walk about.

accidental woodworker  

I was not alone in having an absolute miserable night trying to sleep. My wife said that she hadn't slept well either. It has been unusually warm for November and that keeps me from sleeping well. The bedroom was 77F and once the temp gets above 70-72F I sweat and have trouble falling asleep.

Last night I didn't drift off until almost 0230, having hit the rack at 2200. I woke up 4 times after that before rolling out of the rack after 0700. A real crappy night and I didn't feel better once I got vertical. I felt spent and hung out to dry sopping wet. Made for a 2nd blah day in my part of the universe.

hmm.......

Simple Green is working rather well on the japanning. It scraped off effortlessly on the flat areas. The round parts not so easy. At this rate it shouldn't take 3 days for the japanning to slough off. I will have to make a road trip to Wally World to get some JB Weld to fill in the swirl marks on the flat sides.

done

The sides of this 'frog cradle' got scraped clean. The sides will be visible and they are the only part of this I'm painting.

I spent the next hour cleaning the metal sole where the attachment points are. There was a ton of stubborn crud that giggled at me while trying to remove it. This is about all I got done today. Maybe tomorrow I'll have a wee bit more to show for my time in the shop.

I thought of something to do and I'll try doing it tomorrow. I have tried to do it before without any success. It is how Frank Klausz saws out his dovetails. He does it by eye without doing any layout. It makes sense the way he describes it but I haven't been able to duplicate it. I think it is because I'm thinking tails first and his layout is pins first.

Anyway that is what I'm going to try and do. Make a box without doing any pencil layout. Paul Sellers did a box this way so maybe I should follow him as he is tails first.

accidental woodworker 

In these past few months I have spent some of my spare time considering early retirement. Not my own retiring, I'm already well past the sell-by date compared to most, I have been considering how men engage with this period of their lives. The men I interviewed were not necessarily my age but fall somewhere before and after–they have all been retired for between two and fifteen years. Though I have continued full-time working in my temporary space for the last five months, I have experienced some of what retirees faced when work as they knew it ceased significantly and mostly altogether. Closing my workshop in the previous building, selling the property and refocussing my endeavour, has led to a semi-retirement feeling for me in the sense that I am used to much heavier work requiring more pushing, shoving, pulling, lifting and forcing. 90% of my work is what others would call manual work. Everything owned in my former workplace went into storage. It filled a 40-foot steel shipping container from end to end, and it cannot go back now that the new studio workshop is completed.

To make things work for us to keep videoing over the past five months meant vacating the downstairs of the house to use it for my workshop and office. You are important to us and so far, in the last 16 years of producing weekly content to teach with, we have never missed a single week. Add to that a few hundred other videos for online platforms, that's no small thing with a team of five to six. During COVID, when we couldn't get together, I worked to film myself on a range of projects to keep things going. But these recent weeks and months made me consider the reason for the title of this blog.

A few months ago I spoke at a UK woodworking gathering of woodworkers. Three or four years ago I was keynote speaker for Men's Sheds UK. Since then, I have taken a greater interest in talking to jobless men who either retired or found themselves out of work for any one of many different reasons. What was a first for me was my wanting to know and get personally involved in understanding the why's and how's of their personal experience retiring. I'm something of an anomaly when it comes to writing because I like the background noise in cafés, but cafés also provide the perfect venues for interviewing in a less formal way than any other venue. And there are diversely different classes of cafés too. Even in the chain cafés like Costa or Starbucks, Nero and such, you will meet very different people. Here in Britain, there is still a class hierarchy structured according to postcode. Also, and thankfully for me, I so enjoy writing about life, articles and such, my blog; I used to write for a wide range of magazines. When my blog started, it made no sense for me to continue writing for wood magazines any more. Cultural shifts with the advent of digital media means my y blog reached just about the same audience so why subject myself to the edicts of editors who were most rarely woodworkers of any calibre, yet they set all manner of precedents that made no sense. The blog well suited me and kept me writing to an audience I wanted to help.

In this period, I found confirmation of what I suspected and that is that few men planned much of their retirement and rarely got together in cafés for male interaction. Women, on the other hand, seemed much more apt to pair off for a catchup quite freely no matter the age. In any café, you will naturally overhear conversations where you begin to see how there were very few if any flat spots in the conversations. On the other hand, men sat alone made only brief comments and if they were with someone the conversations often seemed doing and why. I wanted to better understand their particular dilemma as lone beings evidently lacking the kind of interaction and camaraderie women seemed to have so easily.

Noticeably, the same issues surrounding not working came up repeatedly in my conversations and I noticed how much they contrasted with women I also talked to and overheard talking in cafés. I'm here trying to express a concern for elderly men who seem, well, quite lost. In most of the situations I came to, the men sorely missed the basic act of waking up with a sense of real and true purpose, a purpose they got out of bed for even if they no longer enjoyed the actual work but did like the interaction they had with other people throughout their day; they only recognised the loss of going out to work after they stopped and lost themselves among the vagaries of the unemployed. Though for the majority of workers there is no compulsory retirement, there is a recognised age tied to receiving a pension that many people adopt as their retirement date. In most cases, this is rarely true voluntarism. There is an expectation that the sell-by date of whatever culture you once thrived in came up, and you were rendered redundant, surplus to requirement and your move was needed to free up space to allow younger people to take a rung on the ladder.

In the cases I looked at most of the men had not altogether planned too much for their retirement. In essence, they failed to see ahead sufficiently well for the brick wall of being more, well, uninvolved in material working. Finding themselves more highly isolated, they experienced a much higher sense of loss than they expected. There was a shock value to it that they never expected. Furthermore, looking at my interviewees, I saw a sadness that I usually saw more in the grieving process following the loss of a family member or close friend, a partner of some kind. My easy and not very deep questioning seemed to unlock their thinking to speak openly of what hitherto they had kept locked up and private. With my simple intrusion, unexpected really, they found themselves dwelling in the moment with a reality no one else had queried; I think this might be because it isolated what was a dilemma they could find no other way out of.

There can be no doubt that women develop long-term relationships even from as early on in life as school, and it's this that then cushions their retiring and enables them to more readily bond with one another for get-togethers in a wide range of social group. These groups include walking, running, yoga, Pilates and spin for exercise to book clubs, scrabbling and then church related associations. I also believe that women make themselves more vulnerable because of natural experiences they share through a wide range of issues that men simply do not have.

Not planning for retirement usually results in having something you may never have known before. The sudden impact of having nowhere meaningful to go to, something that work does give you, can be overwhelming. The impact may not come on the day you retire but within a short period the reality creeps in day by day. Now having time on their hands en-masse and seven days a week for the rest of their lives is becoming daunting. Whereas work in time slots of eight hours, the drive there and back in commuter mode, the weekends off to recover, all took on a different value. One man said he would take a cut in pay just to be able to go to work again. In other words, he would essentially pay them to go back to work.

Leaving work and having time gives you time to do more of what you like doing, but you can only take a run for so long in a day, and visiting a café once or twice, a day here in the UK gets quite costly at £4 a pop on a UK pension. Entertaining yourself is not the same as going in to work for a nine-o'clock start.

Work for most people is a unifying factor we fail to recognise the reality of. I would say that having worked in an environment where camaraderie and team work plays a key role will leave anyone and everyone more isolated, alone and lonely than they ever anticipated. The two environments I have personal long-term experience of are working as a police officer in the Greater Manchester and Cheshire police forces, and then as a pastor and church member for 19 years. Thankfully, in both cases, I could work bi-vocationally, so I never gave up my day job as such. Add to these the six years learning my craft of joinery and furniture making in my apprenticeship followed by four years working with other makers in a different workshop, I was used to living and working in large and small groups and know what it is like to have those relationships removed from my life. The worst one came from the church life I sensed a belonging too for nearly 20 years. There is a resistance in men to show any level of vulnerability to other men, yet they will often do this with their spouse or partner. Most of the men I have known and worked with pastorally are more self-isolating and less able to make themselves vulnerable with being honest about their feelings and thoughts. There is a lack of trust that works against them, and it is usually a long-term issue for them. They like to be in the driving seat all the time until something happens when they find that they have not been so much isolated but self-isolating.

I find that work sustains me, and it always has, but I need the people around me because I care for them and less because they care for me. In essence, they too care for me in my day to day and when I am in any kind of hardship, they absorb things to make life better for me and to support me. This value cannot and never should be discounted and yet when people finish work permanently, this aspect of association ends too. I am learning that there is a grief taking place in men who minimised the need for establishing true friendships. As a male, we tend to establish a hierarchy in our associations that is highly detrimental to us. In many ways, our cultural differences can be processed through various elements ranging from how much we earned, the jobs we did or do, the postcode we live in, education achieved and a vast range of other unhelpful associations that set us into our various pyramidical pedestals. Having worked with those who were isolated by physical and mental disability, I found them with no illusions of status and quite able to enter their workplace of support. Older age can be a disability for a large percentage of men, but these men do not see themselves as disabled and therefore do not seek the help they need. I think this is sadly the condition of our elderly males on a vast scale today. How will it be with generations that follow when we see dysfunctionality in males increasingly out of control?

We are not too good at retiring and this writing is not a platform for others to expound on their successful retirement that serves more to isolate the isolated still more. I post it to simply say it is not always a positive thing to retire into nothingness. There is a value to the word 'together'. Separate the word together out: together, togetherly and togetherness, and you find it comes from two words, to, which means toward and gether meaning to gather. All in all, it equals a companionable place of sharing where we share the same space, atmosphere and company. Here too we find ourselves working for a company, use terms like within our company and what is the company policy. In the military we have a company of military personnel. This body of people has a common interest and purpose. Com is the Latin prefix for 'with' or 'together' whereas 'panis' is the Latin word for 'bread'. Companio literally means to 'break bread' or 'eat together.' Looking back to my youth, the men all gathered together for lunch on stools they each made to eat and commune together amongst the machines. Looking back on those days, I recall the rich diversity of conversations, laughter and even arguments. There was a camaraderie to the whole of it; camaraderie means mutual trust, friendship, a shared sense of purpose and goodwill among people that came through spending mutual time together. Was it the military that drew these men together through a world war?

Work is the single most powerful uniter of people I can think of and yet even in work younger people are more isolated and isolationist than ever. Another aspect of observing people in cafés is to see how if one person in a group pulls out their cell phone, all the others in the group do so too.

got lucky

I went searching for something to soak the compass plane in and found this. I know I have some clear plastic bins somewhere but they are AWOL. I filled it with water and dumped in some Simple Green Concentrate. I'll check it in a couple of days.

no Simple Green

I don't want to soak this at all. I am leery about the attachment points of the steel sole. I am not willing to chance the Simple Green loosening something up there. I will scrape the two outside faces and repaint them. I will soak the main casing, the frog, and the lever yoke.

ta da

I went to a True Value hardware store and I got the last can they had on the shelf. Amazon has pint cans too and they were the next option.

Ran out of gas during the AM right before lunch. I felt blah and after lunch it got worse. I spent the afternoon sitting at my desk with head on it drifting in/out of sleep. Didn't cough much so at least that wasn't adding to my misery. Spent some of that time thinking about what to make next and came up dry. 

At 1430 I made the me-steak of bringing the wife's console/entry table upstairs from the workshop. I did it in one trip with no stopping until I got to the living room. I got so short of  breath that it was 10 minutes before I was breathing normal again. Or as normal is for me now. The upside was the blah feeling went away. Go figure on that BS.

accidental woodworker

Long before the introduction of modern measuring tapes and engineered steel rules, people relied on a variety of instruments to measure distances, establish boundaries and set out their work. Among these instruments was the measuring chain, an ingenious device that played an important role in surveying, construction and the measurement of land.

Although measuring chains are generally associated with surveyors, their history offers an interesting glimpse into the development of measurement and the tools that helped shape traditional trades.

One of the best-known examples was Gunter’s chain, introduced by the English mathematician Edmund Gunter around 1620. It was designed primarily for land surveying and was based on a length of 66 feet, divided into 100 individual links. Each link measured 7.92 inches, with brass markers identifying intervals along the chain.

What made Gunter’s chain particularly clever was its relationship with the measurement of land. Eighty chains made one statute mile, while ten square chains made one acre. This allowed surveyors to calculate land areas using a straightforward system of measurement. It was an elegant solution that remained in use for centuries.

Surveyors using measuring chains to establish distances and boundaries before modern surveying equipment

The chains themselves were constructed from interconnected iron links, usually fitted with handles at either end. Brass tallies were incorporated at regular intervals, allowing the surveyor to keep track of distances without having to count every individual link. Their construction was simple, practical and well suited to the demands of working outdoors.

Brass tallies were used to identify intervals along the chain, making it easier for surveyors to keep track of their measurements.

Traditional woodworking relied on rules, dividers and direct transfer of measurements rather than surveying chains.

It is tempting to assume that measuring chains were once commonplace in the woodworking shop. After all, the ability to transfer measurements and establish dimensions is fundamental to almost every aspect of woodworking.

However, there is an important distinction between surveying instruments and the layout tools used by traditional joiners and cabinetmakers. There is little evidence that Gunter’s chain, or a similar standardised metal chain, was routinely used for furniture making.

Craftsmen had other methods available to them. Wooden rules, dividers, compasses, straightedges and measuring cords all played important roles in traditional layout work. The use of a story stick was particularly useful because it allowed a craftsman to transfer dimensions directly from one component to another without repeatedly consulting a graduated rule.

This approach is worth appreciating. A craftsman did not always need to know the numerical measurement of a component. Sometimes it was more important that one part fitted another accurately.

Measuring chains also had applications in the timber and firewood trades, where standardised quantities were important for buying and selling material. These were commercial measuring applications rather than widespread use in fine furniture making.

An instrument worth remembering

The measuring chain represents an important stage in the history of measurement. Its design demonstrates how a seemingly simple arrangement of metal links could become a dependable instrument for surveying enormous areas of land.

For the traditional woodworker, its greatest interest may not be in its direct application to furniture making, but in the broader history of how craftsmen and tradespeople approached measurement.

We often take for granted the convenience of modern measuring instruments. Yet the principles behind transferring dimensions, establishing reference points and maintaining consistent measurements have remained remarkably unchanged.

The tools have evolved, but the underlying principles of good workmanship have not.

Does your antique molding plane need a new wedge? Here's how! In this video, handplane expert Bill Anderson shows how to make a replacement molding plane wedge for your antique molding planes. Bill will show you how to select lumber for the perfect wedge, how to figure out

 

hmm.......

I let this cook overnight and I was ready to take the clamps off. I was a little concerned with the shelf twisting the bottom stretcher. It didn't happen as all the legs were laying flat. No rocking and no high or low legs. The bottom shelf was tight to stretcher end to end.

walnut Miller dowels

Used 3, one into each end apron and the 3rd one centered between them. This will allow the shelf to expand or contract as it needs to.

2 on, a few more to go

It has been usually warm lately for November and the shellac is drying fairly quick. I will get the next 4-5 coats on today.

changed my mind

I lightly sanded this with 120 grit to gauge the japanning and I decided to strip it. I don't like the circular swirl marks. Ace didn't have any pint cans of black enamel so I'll try Lowes in the AM. 

opposite side

I will let this soak in Simple Green for a few days to strip the japanning. I'll have to find something else to amuse myself with while the Simple Green does its job.

kinda working

This scraper worked well on the flat sides and not so good on the rounded portions. That is why I decided to go with the Simple Green bath.

checked it

The three stand offs appeared to be all in the same plane. The seat for the frog to the left is flat and the frog didn't rock at all. I had lightly filed the 3 of them yesterday.

happy with that

Looking at the chamfer right on and it looks almost rounded. It softens the legs and I think it looks good against the other sharp 90° R/L corners. I like this detail a lot that I'll use again for sure.

FYI to me

I should have sawn an angle of these. They don't look horrible IMO but knocking the squareness back with an angle would have looked better then this.

glamour pic #1

My wife intends to put this by the front door for a catch all - keys etc etc.

glamour pic #2

This is a wee bit thinner than I like but it will fit within the confines where my wife wants it. She measured for it and I did make it an inch wider then she asked.

sigh

I had thought of covering these with a dutchman but didn't. I wasn't expecting the dowels to pop this much and go dark. I'll make sure that these are on the outside with the opposite legs up against the wall. Every project has a wart and this is the one for this.

It has now been one year since my cancer diagnosis. So far nothing else has popped up wanting to shake hands with me. On the ILD health side things are so so. The latest drug regime is over tomorrow with the last steroid pill but I do have 3 1/2 bottles of cough suppressant pills. So far things are wonderful. I still cough but not as frequently and not trying to hack up my lungs. 

When I do cough it is when I get up and move around. But oddly, in the shop I move around too, but I hardly cough at all there which is nice. I still have shortness of breath issues like I can't walk in the grocery without having to rest several times. The shortness of breath is a limitation that I'm learning to work around and with. So far it is mostly me having to go slowly no matter what I'm doing.

 I had given up on making my LAP Welsh stick chair but I am reconsidering it. I managed to whack on the table and I really don't think the chair is going to be any more difficult to do. Besides I can still use electric tools over hand tools whenever breathing issues hit me.

 accidental woodworker

In my very recent blog post about turning between spindles I noted that you are simply peeling away wood perpendicular to the grain. Bowl turning presents a different challenge: as the work turns, the grain of the wood is presented parallel to a the tool and constantly changing direction. This makes the wood splinter out half the time (see picture above).

You can easily find instruction on YouTube to help you develop techniques to avoid this problem. But I couldn't find a single source that explained why the techniques work. For woodworkers like me, learning sticks much better when I understand the "why" and not just the "how."

In the previous post I noted that you will want to ride the bevel if you want a smooth cut. This is also true in bowl turning, but the first step is making a square wood block round. So I don't have a bevel to ride on. My initial steps in bowl turning are rounding the stock and shaping the outside of the bowl. With no bevel to ride, I can control the cut through a steadiness of the position on the rest and as even a treadling pace as I can maintain.

With the tool face up, no matter what you do, it will split out the timber when the grain goes the wrong way.
When you are turning a bowl, any gouge held perpendicular to the ways of the lathe, with the curve of the gouge facing down will inevitably splinter the wood. Even with a gentle and controlled feed, you are turning into the grain half the time. If instead you position the tool parallel to the ways of the lathe, you are in slightly better shape. You are peeling the wood some of the time, but some of the time curve of the gouge facing downwards will cut against the grain, resulting in splintering (figure above).
With the tool on its side, the nose of the tool scores/cuts the fibers of the wood and you get a clean cut.
The solution lies in the geometry of a bowl gouge. A standard roughing gouge is ground with a flat nose - and when you touch the wood, the gouge starts peeling it away. A bowl gouge has a nose that sticks out a bit. With the tool held parallel to the ways of the lathe, and the gouge's curve facing downward as it engages the wood, you will start peeling the wood away and end up with the same grain changing problem.

But what happens if you rotate the tool nearly 90 degrees towards you and angle it slightly tilted up? Magic happens! (See figure above.) The sharp nose of the tool isn't peeling away the wood anymore. The tool is scoring the fibers of the wood, so the bottom bit of the gouge, which is now facing up, can easily peel away the scored wood without splintering - no matter which direction the grain goes.

Turning the outside of the bowl becomes a simple matter of following the outside profile around from the center, scoring fibers and lifting them out. As I have more and more of a rounded bowl I can start riding the bevel and getting a smooth cut (below).
With the tool slightly turned, the fibers are cut, the bottom part of the tool shaves off the cut material, and the bevel on the tool can ride the work, giving a stable cut.

You can use a spindle gouge, which also has a protruding nose, to do the same thing, but the nose on a spindle gouge is longer and will score more deeply before the sides of the gouge can peel away material. The spindle gouge will work, but with less control. Bowl gouges are also typically heavier and stiffer than spindle gouges. This trait is desirable because bowl turning offers many situations in which the gouge is hanging farther off the rest than usual, and you need a stiffer gouge to keep everything steady.

Turning the inside of a bowl provides a similar situation - only more challenging. The grain changes direction on the inside as it does the outside. This turning technique helps, but you have the additional challenge of limited clearance for the tool. Paying more attention to tool position pays off, but requires practice. Scraping tools are routinely used on the inside of a bowl. There are also specialized tools, designed specifically to approach the wood at the correct angle when there is no space for a regular tool. But we'll save a discussion of those tools for another time.

In the photos I am using a 1/2" bowl gouge. However, I discovered that a 1/4" bowl gouge seems to work more efficiently for me on the treadle lathe because because a treadle lathe has limited power. Now that I understand how the gouges work, I am roughing the bowl out pretty quickly. Soon I should have a circular blank ready for final shaping - and then the inside of the bowl. I have noticed that now I know how to use the bowl gouges correctly, my gouges, even when they have gotten duller with use and are cutting more slowly or barely cutting, are not grabbing or causing tearout. And with a quick sharpening, the tools are back to cutting curlies.

With the tool on its side, the bowl stock can be rounded with continuous cuts that give a nice shaving

 I have been playing woodworker for almost 60 years now. I like the build process and hate the final step which is applying a finish. I understand the importance of it with the prep and careful application of whatever the finish is. To me it still sucks pond scum and I don't like doing it. And I've tried a bazillion different types. Initially my go to was Minwax Poly before I discovered shellac. It is now my default, go to finish. It is easy to apply and even easier to reapply to fix a boo boo. That is where I am in the shop and it will probably take me a couple of days to apply the shellac to the console/entry table.

hmm........

It has been a while since I have go to shop after dinner but I made the round trip last night after dinner. Came back to get the 2nd coat on the bottom of the top shelf and the bottom facing edges of the table. I like flipping the project and soaking the ends of the legs with shellac. On a brighter note, I didn't hack up a lung and I didn't get short of breath neither. I'll try a return trip again today after dinner (maybe).

AM

I think I forgot to mention this subtle detail. The chamfered outside edge of the leg when viewed at a slight angle(right front leg) it appears that the right angle edge is rounded. The hardness of the 90° is gone and the edge is softer looking. IMO it turned out much better then I expected it to.

what to do, what to do

Do I glue the bottom shelf first and then slap on the shellac or put the shelf aside and then shellac. If I do the latter I would have to deal with drips and drabs of shellac getting on the bare wood that will be getting glue. 

gluing the shelf won

Decided it best to glue the shelf first. It will be a bit of a PITA to shellac it but it is doable. I will let the glue cook until the AM. I will be adding some Miller Dowels then too because the shelf rocked a teeny bit although I didn't have twist in it when I checked it with the sticks. They will be added insurance.

thinning the herd

I have a couple of duplicate tool from my ' tool rehabbing' period. I don't need two and I'll be passing them along. I'm not going to bother trying to sell them but I'll donate them to woodworking schools?

butt mortise plane (Lee Valley)

This is the only tool that I can think of that I bought, tried once, and never used it again. I tend to go over aboard convincing myself I need a tool but fortunately it only bit me on the arse once. 

Lee Valley calls this a hinge mortise plane and currently costs  $189.00. I might offer this up for a drastically reduced price first ($50?). If I get no takers it get donated.

Stanley #12 scraper planes

The right one is mine and ain't going nowhere. The left one is history. I can't remember which one is older and there are differences between the two. Both are complete with the exception of the irons/blades. I have one Stanley blade and I have Hock and Kunz ones also. I used the both of them scraping table tops where they excelled at working squirrely grain and reverse grain tear out spots. 

left turn

I got this toy to plane circular table tops. Several years back I had made some tables with round tops and thought I needed this to plane them. I only used this on one table and I had intended to at that time to rehab it but never got around to it. Today I am getting around to it.

parade rest

I was surprised by easy it was to take this apart right down to parade rest. Based on my past experiences rehabbing planes, keeping all the parts together is paramount. Especially the teeny pins holding things together.

first use

The offset screwdriver has its own story. When I first got this plane I couldn't adjust the frog and as it was, the throat was too wide. It took me a few months before I found this offset screwdriver. I had bought others but none of them fit or would loosen the frog adjust screw.

I don't have any black enamel paint but I'm not sure that the plane needs to be stripped and repainted. The body is in decent shape with only the screw knob looking a little shabby. I think I can get away with main casting just getting a wax job.

hmm.........

I was surprised by how flat this frog is. Usually I would have to deal with this seat being a wee bit wonky. After an initial stroking with the files, it looked ok with no humps or shallows shaking hands with me.

say hello to Mr Hump

I used my 6" rule as a straight edge and a hump showed up. From past experiences I usually found a hump where the lever cap screw was threaded into the frog. As it is here the top is flat and straight until that hole and then drops off at the bottom of the frog. There is wee bit of daylight at the toe. Right where the toe of the blade meets the wood.

hmm.......

You can remove the lever adjustment. The pin that holds in place is a short, tapered pin. I have removed a couple of them in the past with a couple of boo boos. I cracked/broke one frog installing the pin back in. Another one I lost the pin and bought a parts replacement frog to get a pin. I'm not sure if I want to go through the removal dance steps for this frog. I'll try to work around it for now.

The back of the frog has 3 pads on it that I hadn't noticed the first time I had taken this apart. I'll have to check to see how those pads sit and align in the body's frame.

accidental woodworker 

I’ve spent the last couple months in new role: contractor for my mother’s new addition to allow her to age-in-place gracefully. I’m not much of a contractor, so this has been a bit of a stretch; but it’s now dried-in and roughed-in, and I’m getting a chance to breathe again (praise be!). Just in time too, for I have an apprentice coming this week, which is exciting. More about that soon. And more videos too: I have all kinds of ideas for things I want to share via video. But first, a new class, while there’s still time for you all to register for it:

LOOP BACK SIDE CHAIR, January 11th to 16th, 2027 More info and registration on my Loop Back Classes page.

The post January 11-16th Loop-Back Class first appeared on Elia Bizzarri - Hand Tool Woodworking.

Another bit of preparation for the 32” scale bass that I hope to build for myself “at some point”. I’ve had a beautiful, figured maple top in stock for many years, but at 28mm I considered it too thick and therefore too heavy to use. I finally plucked up the courage to re-saw it by hand……….

The months have passed smoothly since the builders began their work on my studio workshop. It is more than just a place to do woodworking and furniture making, a simple enough shed would have done for that. We are creating a legacy of training, a place to film and edit video content, a space for my artwork and writing and then an office for us all to work from. The other side of that black line is roughly the size of a UK single-car garage, so 3.5 metres by 5.5 metres. It started out looking bigger until I started adding my things.

I've kept you up to date on many things surrounding my new workshop and office. It's time for the final revelation following the grand move. This weekend Joseph and walked my workbench down the curved path to the garage doors and into my garage workshop. I have moved into five garage workshop spaces since 2009 and then five workshop training and teaching centres with four filming studio/workshops for teaching since then too if I include the one in Upstate New York, which I should and have. Our first thoughts in doing what we have started a couple of years ago and possibly ore simply because we were striving for authenticity and not a mere YouTube influencer look. We did the surveys, found what people had to work with, what they did, do and hope for in their woodworking. I recall calling hand tool woodworking 'Real Woodworking' and then too 'The Real Woodworking Campaign' around two decades ago. I also began using the term 'new-genre woodworker' around then too. This workshop is my intended last one. I plan to continue writing, filming and making pieces for the remainder of my life and the house and workshop unite my quest to encourage everyone interested in real woodworking to bring their work home with them. Work is not a dirty word and neither is making things to sell and support dirty either. My new footprint is small. We are a true team, a small team, less than half a dozen in-house, and we work together as friends to create training content for other people as enthusiastic as we are around the world. From this relatively small end-of-the-garden workshop and studio we can now build anything we want to and send it to the four corners of the world. No more stepping stones, temporary locations and temporary workshops, even my personal Sellers' home kitchen has come to an end for filming and making. This week will culminate my journey into a final destination of woodworking masterclasses garage space where I will continue my work creatively from into the foreseeable future.

These shelves re[resent sanity to me. Open fronted, no doors, no pegboard and such like that. Hard to imagine but even in my reductionism I still had half a dozen boxes hold my equipment and tools in my transitioning process.

I first mentioned this possibility six months ago as we dismantled what we called B2 to reduce our footprint in a way that would match our ideology in real woodworking. Only one machine stands firm as my machine of choice. I own no others. This studio workshop parallels my previous version in size and configuration. The most convenient methods of making by hand come best through the evolution of work at the bench. We hand tool woodworkers have no need to drift between a maze of machines staggered throughout our workspace. We make one turn left or right, or move back a foot or two to achieve our cuts, plane and saw strokes and all of that, and yet we still get our steps in though I gave up fit-bitting five years ago because I never got in less than 12,000 steps in eight hours of hand tool woodworking anyway.

I know, it looks like it's a different space, but I assure you there is no tardis involved.

Today, at five thirty AM, I started placing things back in place. That back wall with the conduit and plugs exactly matches the one I left behind when we sold our last building and so well is the positioning that the transferred shelving unit slotted directly into place with no retrofitting and that centre plug in the middle conduit fitted directly into the same rectangular hole beneath the bottom shelf with no refit needed at all. I have things to place back where they belong in that backdrop, clamp racks to go in, a little more shelving to hang and then my wood to bring back into the left wall. We plan to film on Wednesday, so I've got two days to get this together, but I am also culling out some excesses this time.

Reloading yesterday and today has been pure joy. I have moved workshops and homes more times than I care to tell you. Perhaps this will be the last one but who can tell?

We have a few cosmetic things to do inside and out and the electrician has another day or two to finish off before the office can finally be set in place. The deep-dig outdoor work connecting to the worlds infrastructure stirred up a lot of mud, but that has now been buried safely and closed over, filled in, levelled and new turf laid so it looks as though it never happened. The building has total climate control along with filtered clean air. One thing I have loved is the clutter-free walkways, driveway and front parking bays for everyone to get their cars off the road. There is a little block paving yet to complete before we are finally off the road but within this week we should be there. We plan some tree planting in the near future and the raised beds are ready to take planting onboard. The new lawn will take a week or two to green up again and to establish its roots in time for winter.

Now this was what I had when I took over the Sellers' home kitchen.

What you saw in recent videos was a mock-up set. We didn't cheat or deceive anyone we let everyone know what we were doing so if you missed that bit, I'll tell you now, we always bring people on the journey with us. The walls were not brick but corrugated plastic with brick print photographic surface to replicate the look we wanted.

Joseph and I built the faux backdrop from lightweight corrugated plastic stapled to a half inch plywood substrate and a stud wall in front of the existing kitchen wall.

What we have in the new home studio, workshop and office is solid from-the-earth clay bedded and pointed with sand-and-cement mortar. The rafters above came from our previous studio as did the whole lighting rig that spans the whole underside of the roof and is infinitely multi-directional with hundreds of LEDs that enable us to control the light and create whatever ambiance we want. Yes, you might think that that is a luxury, but my video friends are as much artists and creators as I am, and we enable them to be their best.

The house furniture and archived furniture we have made over the last 15 years for teaching and training online are presently and temporarily safe in a 40-foot shipping container.

I recently finished my autobiography, and it is with the editor as I type. My life has always been creative making resulting in intermittent mixes somewhere between ultra-peaceful drama to get me to this point. I recall first hearing the terms 'internet', 'online', 'double u, double u, double u', back in 1984 walking down a roadway that was a dirt road in the dead-end canyon of Reagan Wells, Texas from a friend. It began, "Paul, (pronounced 'Poll' or Paawl) have you ever heard of this thing called . . ." I said that will never happen. How wrong I was. Back then, when I wrote an article for a woodworking magazine, it took months between submitting the article, and it's going on the newsstands. Within ten years that changed and a little after that the same process took only three weeks. The digital age was upon us and the whole of life for everyone everywhere changed.

Yes, I write still in analogue; as it is with hand tool woodworking, handwriting brings us down to earth and works within the limitations of our humanity. I haven't used a screaming power router now for almost two decades and have no plans nor need to use one again, ever

My stepping stones through my sixty years have fed my soul to this point, but now I am ready and settled for the next decade of woodworking. I have planned to rework my first book to make it current and bring it up to date and once my autobiography goes to press I have a book I have been illustrating for the last few years that I would like to see come off the presses before too long. This latest iteration of my workshop is key to my future and the future of the friends and family I work with. But it's more than that. Whether amateur or full-time woodworker like myself, I'm both and have been for over sixty years to date, think a little differently about where you work your wood. Change things bit by bit and work towards the best environment you can. Amateur woodworking never ends. In my purview, taking on a craft you might feel called to but could never do for a full-time income-producing job, is no less important and probably more important than those who do it just for money. Do whatever you can to customise your workspace.

When the First Fleet arrived in Australia in 1788, the tools brought from England were essential to establishing the new colony. Clearing land, building shelters and constructing the early settlements all depended on them. But the tools were already proving inadequate. Within months, complaints were being made about their poor condition, with axes, spades and shovels described as among the worst ever seen. With England many months away by sea, replacing worn-out tools was hardly a practical solution.

Source: State Library of NSW, via Wikimedia Commons.

Out of necessity, the colony began making its own. Blacksmiths became essential to producing and repairing the tools needed to keep things moving. By 1792, local production was already underway, although demand far exceeded supply. Records show that by 1797, blacksmiths and other tradesmen had produced 230 axes, along with numerous other tools. Making and maintaining one’s own tools was already familiar to many English tradesmen, but in Australia it became even more important. They simply could not rely on imported tools to meet every need.

Old Blacksmith of Leongatha, Victoria – 1933. It’s not 1792, but it’s cool.

As the colony grew throughout the nineteenth century, so did the demand for tools. Merchants began importing tools under their own names, while others arranged for English manufacturers to stamp their names onto tools before shipping them out. These brands became part of Australia’s early tool trade, although most of the businesses behind them eventually disappeared.

Local toolmaking also developed, although plane makers were relatively few in number. Those making wooden planes would have had to work with the timbers available locally, rather than relying on English beech, which was not readily obtainable.

Source: Museums Victoria collection

The twentieth century brought another important change. Following the Second World War, Australia’s construction industry expanded rapidly. Returning servicemen, a growing population and the demand for new homes created an enormous need for tools. Local manufacturers helped fill that demand, and Australian-made tools became an important part of the country’s manufacturing industry.

Sutton Tools 1917. Still to this day produce high quality drill bits

But the industry would not last in the same way. As power tools became increasingly popular during the 1960s, demand for traditional hand tools began to change. Overseas manufacturers were also becoming increasingly competitive, making it difficult for local businesses to keep up with production costs and changing technology. Some manufacturers closed their doors, while others were bought out by overseas companies. Gradually, much of Australia’s hand tool manufacturing disappeared.

By the end of the twentieth century, the industry was a shadow of what it had once been. The large-scale production of traditional hand tools had largely given way to imported products, and another chapter of Australian manufacturing was coming to an end.

Yet Australian toolmaking never completely disappeared. Smaller manufacturers and individual craftspeople continued making tools, often drawing on traditional designs and their own experience. More recently, renewed interest in hand woodworking and traditional tools has provided opportunities for a new generation of Australian makers.

Heritage saws made in Melbourne hand shaped exotic timber handles – Vintage Tool Shop

We may no longer have the manufacturing industry that once supplied much of the country, but the knowledge and skills have not been lost. There are still people here who believe in making their own tools, preserving traditional methods and passing those skills on. In that respect, Australian toolmaking is not simply a part of our history. It is a tradition that continues.

Salko Safic handmade this small router plane I made these moulding planes

Part of me knows what it feels like to be a doctor at a dinner party.  In my case, instead of being asked about aches and pains I am dragged off to an obscure corner of a house to admire and provide some consultation for a family treasure.  More times than not “the treasure” is a fake or otherwise unimportant except for sentimental importance to the owner(s).

But every so often there is that truly special encounter.

Recently while in Mordor to visit the grandsons (oh, and their parents) my daughter mentioned that their next-door-neighbor had an antique she would like to show me.  Being the victim of good upbringing I readily agreed.

And what I encountered was an historical treasure, symbolically embodying the emergence of the Modern Age.

The item in question was an intact very early telephone in pristine condition, complete with the original magneto, wiring and schematic note card that would have come with the unit originally!

It was a genuine delight to examine and comment on this artifact, given its near perfect completeness and condition.  This belongs in the lineage of a family that knows and respects history and the artifacts that embody it.  I gave them a copy of SAVING STUFF to enhance their own diligent efforts in continuing to preserve family heritage.

Thanks Ms. J for letting me indulge my own passions for the fabric of the Past.

 I wasn't sure if I would have gotten to this point today. I had an estate planning appointment in the PM and that was constantly in my thoughts while working in the AM. I'll be doing the shellac finish starting in the AM tomorrow.

hmm..........

There is zero room to swing a hammer to get the clip mortises in the long aprons. I will be able to get a clip on the short ends. I only have to do the top short aprons. 

wooden table clips

I am only using two on the long clips. Once the top is secured with these four and if it looks like it needs help, I can add a couple more as needed.

hmm......

Another oops I missed on the first go around. I didn't clean up any of the apron layout markings. 

before I forgot

Marked  3/16" on each side of the leg for the chamfer. I couldn't use the cradle I made but I managed to secure one leg at a time in the vise. No issues planing the chamfers after that.

one down, three to go

I will have to sharpen this iron because there is a nick in it.

the  battle plan

The big boy hogged most of the waste and down close to the lines. The smaller one planed down to removing the layout lines.

2 hours later

After the glue had set for a while I added to two screws to each one. 

centering

Used the bit to get the center for the screw. I had set the top of them an 1/8" down from the top of the apron so it wouldn't interfere with pulling the top down tight to the apron.

chamfers

Top done and the bottom one complete too. I was going to make the bottom chamfer smaller then the top one but changed my mind. I used the same bit but set it a bit shallower then the top shelf.

clean up

80 grit up to 220, smoothing the end grain ends.

ouch

Got a divot that sucks pond scum. As it is here the chamfer is about 1/2 the thickness of the board. One option is to make the chamfer deeper and remove the divot but......

pleasant surprise

Three strokes and the divot was gone. I was not expecting to be able to plane it away. The chamfer width is a wee bit wider where I removed the divot but with a casual glance it is unnoticeable.

last step

Used 120 grit to knock down the arrises and that was the next to last step before slapping on shellac. I will vacuum and tack the table down first which will be the last step.

sneak peek

Eyeballed it for a few to make sure I hadn't missed something. I will shellac the top and bottom shelves first and then install them. The bottom shelf will be the tricky one because I am gluing it to the stretcher to attach it. So I can't shellac it because you can't glue over shellac.

accidental woodworker