Norse Woodsmith Blog Feeds

The chance to see and touch and investigate so many thousands of square feet of Early Oak carving, in one place doesn't happen every day. So, I took the day today for a trip to Paul Fitzsimmon's - A Life in Oak auction viewing.

Every inch a joy. For a carver and furniture maker, like me, the opportunity could not be missed.

To see the backsides, the underneaths, the details which may not be shown in full photos. A few hours well spent.

Somewhat sad, but infinitely interesting were the lots I saw last; collections of parts. Spare bits from a life in oak. Maybe they will find their missing bits one day, or someone will make the missing parts once more.

Well done Paul, for all your hard work; collecting, researching, contributing so much to the understanding of Early Oak furniture!

 Over the last 3 days the snow dumped by the blizzard has finally melted down significantly. I can see about 20 feet of my front sidewalk. Tomorrow it is forecasted to be 63F/17C so I guessing my entire sidewalk should be clear. Looking forward to not having to shovel it. The good news is I think we won't have any more of the white stuff for about 7-8 months.

happy with this

Got 3 coats on the new screw boxes. I separated the two of them - one has only flat head screws and the other has round and oval head ones. 

I'm calling the miniature chest blue paint job done. The coverage still isn't what I wanted but stepping back, I am ok with it for being milk paint. Decided to go ahead and make up a batch of red milk paint for the lid. I am can be a wee bit stubborn about some things and I just can't walk away from this milk paint hiccup.

I plan on using the quark right away for the red and I am not going to obsess about how much water I use. The blue batch actually started to look and lay down like paint when I added water. Fingers crossed on that and I'll be trying that in the AM.

why not

I measured each screw and put a tag in its compartment. I did it for all four of the #5 & #6 screw boxes. Thinking that I should also do it for the #4 screws. The rub on that one is that 16 of the compartments are flat head with two being oval head. hmm......

platform

I keep the screw boxes on top of my version of Roy Underhill's multi drawer cabinet. There is enough room on top for the 4 boxes but not for the current 6. The two cleats on the underside will fit in between the top moldings and keep the platform from moving/shifting.

top of the cabinet

This is where the platform will go. The platform is 16 x 19 and will easily hold the 6 screw boxes plus two smaller boxes. These two hold loose screws and brass brads.

done

I didn't want the platform to overhang on the R/L. Instead I put the overhang out at the back. 

Another slow day. It is getting easier to get my right shoe on but the right foot is still swollen. Walking is slowly getting better but not as fast I want it to. Some things I have zero patience for but I'm forced to have it with this. 

accidental woodworker

 Debating whether or not to do the red milk paint. After the results of the blue milk paint it ain't looking good for the home team boys and girls. I read the book again and I spent a lot of time on You Tube watching milk paint vids. Nothing I saw addressed the the paint turning it a big blob of jello milk paint. The only thing about the blue milk paint that I didn't have any hiccups with is the pigment dye. But that is only 1/3 of what makes up milk paint.

sigh

The milk paint got underneath the grain and it lifted. Having this pop up here and now sucked the wind out of my sails. I don't want to plane it but I can't leave it as is. I'll try sanding it with 120 and give it an eyeball after.

surprise

I was expecting to find a blob of blue jello but it is liquid. Not the the consistency of loose pancake batter, just a wee bit thicker. The shelf life of milk paint is short. Depending upon who you listen to it is anywhere from 24hrs to maybe 3 days if it is refrigerated.

I have to cover the spots I painted and I don't want to mix up a batch of new blue milk paint so I'm going to try and use this. I'm encouraged by the fact it is somewhat liquid.

hmm.....

Of course the first coat sucks. I can't leave these as streaks so I'll wait until it is dry to the touch and lay on another one. Fingers crossed the paint stays liquid.

hmm......

2nd coat and it looks a wee bit better. The paint is covering just like it did when I painted the chest. I did notice that it covers just a little better if I brush it on against the grain. With the grain the paint appears to slide over it without covering.

nope

The hinges I'm using for the new screw boxes requires a #3 screw. I have #3 screws but they are all flat head and I need a round head. I drilled out the screw holes on the hinges to accept a #4 RH screw.

one down, one to go

I am becoming a fan of the 90° stop hinges I used. They are flush mounted and more than adequate for these screw boxes. I don't like flush mounted hinges but for shop projects my OCD stays quiet.

lid first

I tried to clamp the box and the lid in the vise and apply the hinges to both. It turned into a real shit show on the first screw box from many moons ago. It is a lot saner for me to do the lid first, clamp the lid/box in the vise, and secure the hinge to the box.

done

Both boxes are hinged and have the first of 4 coats of shellac.

Only made 3 trips to the shop today. My right foot blew up to the size of a watermelon and it did the same today. I know I should be resting and keeping it elevated but I can't sit and do nothing. But I did manage to limit my time in the shop and how many times I had to go up/down the cellar stairs.

 PS - Who knew? I was totally oblivious to the time change. Wee bit of a shock when I got up this AM. 

accidental woodworker 

  Pedderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12692353908068506678noreply@blogger.com0

This article was written in April 11, 2018 for or on behalf of finewoodworking I’m not sure, but it is an excellent article.

Few things inspire a collision of opposing thoughts in my head quite like a beautiful tool chest. Every time I see one there’s a simultaneous burst of “Oh I really want to make something like that” and “why would anybody spend that much time on a tool chest?!” Because I’m in the midst of designing and building a traditional cabinetmaker’s chest, the noise and impact of these clashing thoughts has intensified. The potential for headaches is high; thanks, in part, to my own indecisiveness and to a mysterious man named R.F. Matthews. Writing his name amounts to telling you close to half of what I know about him.
The other half is that when Mr. Matthews emigrated from England to America in the early 19 century, he brought his neatly fitted-out chest of tools with him. It’s still here with many of its original tools in the collection of Colonial Williamsburg.

Photos by Bill Pavlak with permission from The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation

Though I often copy original pieces directly, I wanted to make a tool chest that was uniquely my own while still within the parameters of historic examples. This is, after all, exactly how so many 18th-century cabinetmakers made their tool chests. The Matthews chest is stunning and unique in some ways, but in a lot of ways, it’s just like many other tool chests from the era (its overall size, general interior organization, and decoration are all pretty standard). There is one feature of the Matthews chest that I couldn’t resist borrowing and that’s its saw storage system.

Photos by Bill Pavlak with permission from The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation

Sure, there are simpler and equally effective ways to build saw storage into a chest till, but a dovetailed box with saws sticking out of it is undeniably cool. When I started designing my own chest, I wanted to keep its decoration fairly austere – show off nicely figured mahogany, but no elaborate veneer work – and its organization straightforward – no mechanically activated, secret compartments. Nonetheless, like so many originals, I wanted my chest to have some features that transcend the purely practical and that could become small points of pride going forward. The pull of the Matthews saw till was irresistible, so let’s take a closer look at it.

Photos by Bill Pavlak with permission from The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Photos by Bill Pavlak with permission from The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation

As the above photos show, the saw box is built like a traditional drawer, but turned on end – half-blind dovetails and primary wood (mahogany) up top, and through-dovetails in secondary wood below (spruce on the original and long leaf pine on mine). The partitions in the middle are dadoed to the underside of the top and secured to the bottom with wedged through-tenons. These partitions solidify the box (remember it will be sawn nearly through several times) but also support and restrain the toe end of the shorter joinery saws. The slots for the saws run deep to keep the saw handles below the plane of the box top. In both the Matthews chest and mine, there is a till above the open till where this saw box is kept, so nothing can stick out above it. The saw box should be made to fit your saws, so I’m not going to get into measurements here other than to suggest an overall length between 16 in. and 20 in. One more word on the structure of this saw box: It’s weak all by itself – some of those saw slots undermine its strength laterally. It will, however, last at least a couple of centuries if it’s kept snugly in another box that will
prevent it from flexing to the side – the larger till in both the Matthews chest and mine.

Though the construction is straightforward, the building process requires a few special considerations.
The layout of the half-blind dovetails is dependent on saw placement. Matthews was careful not to saw through any of his fine dovetail pins, but rather place them between the saw slots. This approach means you first need to figure out where the saws will go. To do this, I simply cut a couple of scrap boards to the overall width of the till and experimented with where to place each saw so that there was enough room around each handle for my hands to get in.

Once this was done, I could confidently lay out my dovetails and proceed with all of the joinery. You may have noticed that the saw box top has half-tails instead of half-pins on its outer edges. While this might offend the sensibilities of woodworking writers from the past century and a half, it held up quite well, so don’t worry about that – half-tails show up regularly in period work.

If you want to glue up your box and then cut your saw slots on the tablesaw, skip this paragraph. If you’d rather cut your handsaw storage slots with your handsaws, there a few things to keep in mind. Before I glued up my box, I dry-fitted it and made sure that all of the parts (except for the bottom) were perfectly coplanar on one side. I marked this edge as a reference on each board then knocked everything apart. While I knew it was a terrible idea to completely saw the slots into the parts before assembly, I also felt that at least starting the cuts in each part would help keep things far more accurate and easier later on.
The only risk in starting the cuts prior to assembly is that they might not line up perfectly (misalignment would result in storing the saws with bent blades). This is where the aforementioned reference edge comes into play. With a marking gauge riding along this edge, I scribed the location of the saw slots on
each board. Next, I clamped all the boards together, face to face, with the scribe lines perfectly aligned and cut the first 2 in. or so of each saw slot all at once. For each backsaw I made three cuts: one for each side of the spine and one in the middle for the blade. On my box, because only two of the saws go through all four vertical pieces (the ends and partitions), I had to remove pieces from this clamped-up stack as I went along.

Once everything was glued up I connected all of my saw cuts. Sawing a nicely dovetailed box is likely to test your nerves, but the starter cuts will guide you and go a long way toward making everything come out great. In general, I used a saw with a larger kerf than the saw that was going to live in a particular slot so things wouldn’t be too tight. For the wider backsaw slots, I used a coping saw and chisels to finish up the stopped ends. With the slots that run all the way through the box, I started my cut from one end and after I made it a little over halfway across the top, came in from the other side.

When you get right down to it, the scraps I used to figure out saw placement could have been fixed into my saw till and might have done a fine job keeping my saws safe for a lifetime. There’s nothing wrong with something so simple and practical, but there’s also nothing wrong with treating yourself to some impractical cabinetmaking every now and then.

couple of hours later

Went back to the shop after dinner to get a 2nd coat on the chest. It was about 3 hours after the first coat and the paint was not like it was for the first go around. It had the consistency of hard peanut butter - like it had been in the refrigerator for a while. 

I stirred it but it didn't go back to the loose pancake batter consistency. I put a little water and stirred it in without much success. It got a bit better but was still too thick to apply with a paint brush. I doubt I could have spread it if I had used a trowel.

whizzed it up

This and a little more water, got me back to the pancake batter. I wasn't expecting the paint to go into La La Land on me like this. Got it thin enough to apply another coat with a paint brush.

not a happy camper

Not getting a warm and fuzzy with the 2nd coat coverage. It is barely better than the first one which was disappointing. In some spots, as you can see, the coverage was good but most of it is streaky. The paint just wasn't grabbing and laying down completely. The batch of milk paint, although it has a better color, isn't any better than the paint job on the first miniature chest.

hmm.......

Milk paint on poplar. Thinking maybe the eastern white pine I've been using is the problem. The paint coverage on the poplar wasn't shouting back at me. It is streaky and the coverage was just as poor and spotty as on the pine.

cherry

It is looking like to me that this milk paint doesn't give a rat's arse what it gets slapped on. The coverage and look is the same. So far the only thing giving me a happy face is the pigment - the color is good and without being splotchy. 

this sucks pond scum

It is the AM and the milk paint is a blob of a nice looking blue color. It wiggles like it is jello with the same consistency. I stuck, or rather tried to put a stick in it and nada. It was like it was rubber and I had to put some oomph into getting the stick inserted in it.  

No way this could brushed on. I tried putting some water in it and got nowhere. Stirring did nothing and I just ended up with a big blue, rubbery blob on the end of the stick.

whizzing it again

I started with 4 TBSP first and only a small portion was liquid. I had to dump in about a 1/4 cup more of water before it whizzed up into a smooth, but thick consistency. 

better but......

I was hoping for a better build with this after the 3rd coat. I have had latex paint act like this milk paint but this sucks pond scum result wise. The coverage is still not at the level I want. It has some good dark coverage spots but still has way too many streaky spots.

screws came in from McMaster-Carr

I don't have any room in my current screw boxes. Decided to make two more for #5 and #6 screws. These two boxes will be just for flat head screws. The current #5 & #6 boxes will hold round and oval head screws.

current screw boxes

#2 &#3 (in one box), #4, #5, and #6 screws (atop the big cabinet).

hmm......

I'm using the original ends intended for the current miniature chest. They were 11/16" thick and I had to thin them down to 1/2". This chunk popped off when I planed the board straight across.

two boxes there

The sides of the boxes are only 1 3/4" high so I'm using a single dovetail at the corners. I'll glue a 1/8" plywood panel on the bottom of each box. Got the dovetails done on each box. The next batter is doing the 1/2 pins.

1/2 pin sockets done

Next up is the part that always gets me revved up. How will it fit off the saw? I did both at the same time whereas I usually would do these one at a time.

first dry fit

Good fit and after a few pulls and tugs, got the diagonals to agree dead on.

glued and cooking

The dovetails were snug enough that I didn't need clamps. I had enough stock for the sides and one lid. The back box needs another piece. I'm not a fan of glued up lids but with my 4 other screw box lids, two of them are glue ups.

almost

Found a scrap of pine more the large enough but I had to thin it down to a 1/2". I left it a wee bit proud and I'll flush it after the glue has cooked.

dividers

I only did a groove for the two long dividers. The ends of the smaller cross dividers I'll secure with super glue. I already know that each of the compartments will hold more than a 100 screws.

one down, and one to go

No hiccups or an oops with the first egg crate dividers. My other boxes have 18 compartments and these two will have only 15.

 

shooting for 2 for 2

I got the half lap sawn on the long ones. I set them down on the cross dividers as far as they would go and marked them.

mark both sides

When I sawed the half lap I positioned the saw blade centered between the layout lines by eye.

two dry fitted

Happy that this came out without any me-steaks. I can easily finish this in the AM with the exception of slapping some shellac on them.

Slow going today and I didn't get as much done as I had hoped for. A couple of days ago when I took the desk top out of the clamps, it fell off the clamps and smashed down on my big toe on my right foot. I hopped around on one foot, screaming expletives for 10 minutes. 

The toe blew up and turned some rather interesting shades of purple, red, and black. It took me 5 minutes to get my boat shoes on the next day but I was able to do it without passing out. The day after I dropped the top I woke up to a huge blood blister on the big toe. Popped it and the toe felt a little better. Still walked with a slight limp. 

Yesterday I repeated the dropped desk top exercise on the same right foot. Didn't drop it on the big toe again but on the next two adjacent toes. Now those are an interesting shade of purple and black. 

The big toe swelled some more along with the two other toes. This AM it took me seemingly forever to get my right shoe on. The limp is more pronounced and I can't bend/flex my toes while walking. Walking flat footed very slowly and I had to rest and sit a lot while I was in the shop. Chopped the tails and pins sitting down which is a first for me.

I think it is going to be a few days before I will be able to do a full day in the shop. I will try to confine my movements/walking while in the shop as much as I can.

accidental woodworker 

I ask the question and then ask, 'Could you?' I believe that most people could and can if they were to want to and then train for it like I did, have and continue to maintain my body and mind every day for eight hours of my full-time woodworking. Some say I am privileged. I am, but not by accident. This wasn't happenstance, it was a calculated, you see. I didn't want conveyor belt, consumerist production. It was my utter and absolute intention, and I spent a day on it. I'm not 'lucky', as some might say, neither do I indulged myself like an amateur, but I do what I do from my intentional amateur status. Always have and always will. Anyway, no matter, I enjoyed the minutiae of even the most undemanding elements, and when it was done, I told myself it was good.

It's the crispness of a joint should and a tight-fitting joint I always strive for. No creeping up on it as some dumb advocates say you should. These come straight off the gent's saw because I keep my saws pristinely sharp all the time. I disallow dull tools. They can never give me the precision good joinery relies on. In sharpening any saw, it should never take more than half a file stroke length of filing per gullet. No more, ever.

That's how it is with amateurship, you see, there is nothing you need to prove if you are truly an amateur. The love of it is enough. You volunteer into it altruistically and though reward of satisfaction becomes a payment, you didn't do it for even that because you didn't even need pay nor did you do what you did to that end. You just went out there, on your own (on your tod), picked up a tool from a clustered group of favoured hand tools and made a wastepaper bin from some cherry and some quarter inch plywood and magic begins to happen by such things, just like that.

The cherry wood came from kept scraps. Offcuts. I often keep them for a few weeks, and some are kept for longer because the grain seemed worth the waiting. All you see here came from hand saws and planes, basic chisels, a plough plane and not too much more. In other words, it's all hand tool work. I have to say that because at a glimpse people might think it's all machining. I don't even own one machine that could do any of this.

I know that they don't understand not using the machines, but to be honest, nothing I could have done by machine would have given a better result in quicker time or easier fashion. And, hey, this is just the practise run...the prototype. The wood and plywood were nothing more than short offcuts of scraps I was about to give away to my friends who come twice a week for a bagful of firewood for the stove on their narrow boat on the Thames, a quarter of a mile away from where I'm working.

Two tricks in this one. The sacrificial spruce backer on the outcut stops the cherry for splitting and breaking at that critical corner. There is no question of it. It would. Because the wastepaper bin is tapered, I used taper pieces either side to compensate for the discrepancy so i could hold it in the vise. The masking tape holds them in place while I secure things in the vise.

My shoulders to small tenons are all perfectly cut to dead-on angles using only an ultra-sharp knife, a small but significant vintage Starrett 6" combination square (all of my hand tools have qualified to become vintage now), a vintage sliding bevel that's served me for over sixty years, but it's another sixty years older than that and then too a fine-toothed dovetail saw which I only allow myself to sharpen and have done so on this particular gent's saw along with my other half a dozen saws throughout six decades thus far. Imagine this though, it takes me four minutes to do that, and the same for setting the teeth. In no more than eight minutes, I am back in the saddle and on with the task. It seems I need to do it about every two months per saw, or so. I like too that I don't need a £250 fancy saw with Bubunga handles to achieve first class work. Nothing prissy, exclusive or snobby about ordinary joinery with my own choice of working man's working hand tools here. Facts are facts, I've been selling off anything fancy of late. The tools I don't use just clutter the place and distract my thinking and my work. Usually, that means they were too big, too heavy, too oversized, too clunky.

I sharpen the majority of my saws for a rip cut pattern because 90% of sawing in my work is rip cutting. Think tenon cheeks and dovetails. But finer-toothed saws with a ripcut pattern will crosscut just fine too.

Not much to it, saw sharpening, for me, not these days, nor was it ever. I sharpened my first saw with George looking over my shoulder (laughing) when I was 15 years old. Never was much to it, really, so I am not much given to it when you think about it. I just find my shop stool, the one I made a long time ago now, with my hand tools, the one with the scalloped seat, sit myself down, position my saw at the bench, my body to the work, my hands to the tool and start filing away the slightest dullness. Remember this if you remember nothing else. I learned it with my first saw sharpening over sixty years ago; light cannot shine of a sharp edge. When you are sharpening anything, you are simply filing or abrading off the light that reflects dullness.

It cuts on the push stroke. I will never use a pull stroke saw because 98% of them are throwaway saws that cannot be sharpened and that is as intentional as the safety razor for shaving was back in the late 1800s. The idea Gillette had wasn't to make shaving safer, it was to get you coming back for a packet of five razor blades. Once you lost the skill of sharpening a cut-throat razor, it was too late for change.

Before I know it I'm using the saw and I have the finite crispness that cuts the pristine shoulders and cheeks to perfect levels of sharpness. I move with the action of a locomotive using the locomotive linkage between hand, wrist, elbow and shoulder. My brain and body link and synchronise to perfection, and the saw glides through the cherry effortlessly. What am I feeling in my now living confidence? Well, for decades now, I am not thinking, 'I hope I can get those right.' I'm living the confidence and security of knowing it will be perfect every single time.

Shavings tell a story like words on a page and translate selflessly into all languages no matter what.

I feel the smoothness of the finished cut that leaves no need for chiselling to trim and fit and look good. I've lived a long time now through changed times. Sixty years ago, I knew many men who did such things and got paid less than a £1,000 a year working 45 hours a week to feed and clothe a family of four to six people. My family was eight people. Good old mum and dad; an amazing provision through a team-pair who never knew a day without working and raised me the same way and never knowing a single day without work. I doubt that I know a single so-called carpenter who can or has ever sharpened a saw in their lifetime any more. Funny thing is, though, I have taught and trained many an amateur to do that and know amateurs who do do it with confidence and without hesitation. Doesn't that seem odd to anyone else?

One of my tenon saws. It's a fourteen inch R Groves that hasn't been made for a hundred years now. It was used for the bulk of a hundred years to get that much patina just from a man's sweat-equity. Now, it's aged, like a good wine, to perfection. I still use it every day. The plate is an inch narrower than when it was made. Imagine that.

And here's another funny thing too. I now know more amateur woodworkers who use handsaws and planes, sharp chisels and such than I do so-called professional carpenters and yet, many professional carpenters speak disparagingly of amateur woodworkers. I watched this trend happen, worked with men who were proud to offer their chisels to a belt sander to get a sudden fix to their over-dulled chisels and planes and thought that they had the smarts. Somewhere in the mid-nineties, these men started losing something and within five years they just thought that they knew more and were smarter than the retiring makers when they had lost everything but didn't even know it or recognise it. Along comes the amateur, takes himself off into his shed, her basement, the garage, pulls out their few hand tools and makes a Windsor chair from some riven oak, or a spokeshave they needed to fashion it with.

I plane 98% of my work level, square and smooth with just two very common bench planes. Stanley #4 and #5. I have never had any need for longer planes, and certainly have no need for heavyweight models that are really a waste of muscle power unless you are in resistance training. My everyday eight-hour days at the bench are enough of a workout for this man.

So I spent a good day making a wastepaper bin in my self-proclaimed claiming back of my amateur status, and now shamed by anyone using the term carpenter to describe me. Fact is, I no longer stand for it. It's too loose and meaningless a term and means less than it should. Woodworking is not standing roof trusses and hanging prehung doors in a framed wall or atop it and air-nailing them in place. That's carpentry. When someone, anyone says, "This is Paul. He's a carpenter." I say, "No, I'm not, I'm a woodworker or a furniture maker or joiner or whatever suits me in the minute."

If you don't own a plough plane, you can run a tenon saw along two gauge lines and chisel out the waste in between. I have done this many a time. It's all too easy for the rich of us to assume everyone always has access to power equipment or even just a plough plane if they 'just work hard'.

I have worn the same shirts and jeans in of plain denim, Wrangler jeans bought in the USA and Superdry short-sleeved shirts and not one of them has the white smudges of caulking that seem to be the qualifying badge of merit construction workers wear today. I bought ten pairs of jeans and ten shirts that year. I found what I liked and decided I didn't need to change my work clothes for a different style every day. I'm relaxed without wearing a tie and suit to prissy up for work. Where oh where, and when did we make the distinction of going to work as a fashion model? I understand, wanted to look nice for a celebration. I went to my neighbours' funeral last week. Brian passed away and he was such a nice person. I wore the suit I went to Buckingham Palace with to see the King of England last year. I enjoyed both events because they seemed to me at least to declare success. Brian was 91 and lived an exemplary life. My suit wasn't to strut out in in any way, it was to mark the day of celebration with respect.

I'm less in my comfort zone in a suit and tie but no matter of concern. It's nice now and then, but can't imagine doing this just to got to work.

My wastepaper bin design is complete. It was an idea, really. A mere thought the day before, and then I made it so simply with my usual combination of hand tools; an ordinary cluster if you like. Imagine this, though, I used the all-powerful power tool woodworking of complete human effort without any electricity inserting itself between me and my tasks and nothing I did would have come any the faster or more efficiently using any kind of machine. I needed no protective equipment; no dust extraction and protective headgear. I breathe the same air as my team working alongside me and the music plays in the background, we are all free of dust masks and breathing fresh, clean air, we need no eye protection, hearing protection, such like that, and we continue discussing anything we like as we are working alongside each other.

I use tools I made in the everyday of my woodworking. A mallet or a hand router plane, a round-both-ways plane and such. These are the special tools I rely on all the time now, but not just because I made them so much as I made them to suit me.

In the north-west of England, I might have said to my mates, "I'm dead chuffed with that!" My wastepaper bin is standing on my bench with the tools around it, a few shavings nestling above my and around and in my hand tools. This is a work of art. What I am looking at and living in is art in action. It's as pleasing to me today, aged 76 as it was back in 1963 when I first encountered shavings and sawdust from my tenon saw and bench plane.

Is this a strong joint? No. Useful? Yes. It is helpful where connection is otherwise awkward and high strength is not needed.  It does not make the show for looks either. Yet sometimes that is no factor at all because it lives unseen. A veneer table top is a nice example. Screw the top to […]

Hi, Everyone!

Check out my latest Substack post!

Stay tuned to this blog! I plan on updating the layout a bit and talk about some new woodworking ideas!

 

from the boneyard

After seeing the price of screws yesterday, I salvaged more from the sewing machine cabinet I broke apart. I took all the spare wood I had in the boneyard and loaded it into my truck bed. I'll bring it to the town recycling friday or monday. By filling up the truck it will force me to get rid of it. 

over 2" thick

This an ash glue up I did several years ago. The plan then was to make this into a sharpening bench but that never happened. I couldn't bring myself to toss it into the truck bed. Maybe I'll get inspired to use it in the coming months.

still mounded

I got lucky and the epoxy fill didn't shrink over night.

flushed

Got most of the epoxy flushed with a block plane. I still have a ways to go before it is done.

almost

The black spot]on the right isn't part of the knot hole fill. I will have to plane that area until it is gone.

99.99%

The knot is flushed and within a frog hair of being done. The right spot is being stubborn. I hit both spots with the #12 and #122 scrapers. It is slow going but at least neither scraper was chattering on me. There is no need to get this completely done today but I was curious about how the epoxy fill would look done.

Wally World run

Got some containers for the paint along with some spoons, I ran out of them last week. Getting ready to mix up a batch of milk paint.

hmm.......

My quark turned out to be 8oz exactly. The quark is hard - ish. I used a quart of fat free milk plus one cup to get the required amount. 

ta da

This milk paint is so much better than my previous attempts. This one is smooth and has the consistency of a loose pancake batter. This batch matches close to what the author says it should be. 

The quark didn't whiz up easily. I put a couple of TBSP of water in it and whizzed it again. Difficult but it smoothed out when I added the lime. Got a smooth consistency then.

Rinsing the quark this time yielded better results. I was more patient this time and rinsed it until the water ran clear. A lot clearer than my last batch for sure. I think for the next batch (red) I'll use the quark right away. I won't wait and let it set up overnight in the refrigerator. The paint should whiz up quicker and easier than doing it as hard as the quark was today.

so so

The first coat of paint. Better coverage than the previous blue dye I used. Still not the coverage I was hoping for. 

other two sides

Kind of happy with the batch. I will slap on another coat after dinner. I don't want to see any wood with this milk paint. I want the chest to look like something close to if this was painted with latex paint. Fingers crossed I'll have a happy face on in the AM.

accidental woodworker 

 

making quark

Before I went to the shop I made a batch of quark for the blue milk paint. I will make the 2nd batch of quark for the red paint after I get this one done.

hmm......

The open knot on this face (the down side) is almost an inch and a half at the widest and 3/4" at its narrowest. Undecided about whether or not to fill it in on this side. It is on the underside and won't be seen - the drawers will cover it.

#4 1/2 with a 55° frog

The proud was not quite a 16th and I couldn't flush it entirely with this plane.

#80

Got it almost flushed with the #80 within a frog hair. I had problems with the #80 chattering a lot more than I expected.

got a hump

I got all 3 of the glue joints dead flush and it is flat on the opposite diagonal and there was a hump this way. The hump is right on the swirling bullseye grain. The 4 1/2" didn't have any problems planing this area without tearing out.

toothing iron

This is the third time I've used this iron. I've had it for almost 20 years. Using the jack so I could feather out the hump area.

almost

This wasn't as awkward to do as I anticipated it being. I have two stops on the workbench, one at the end and another on the left side. I pulled the planes toward me while standing at the end of the workbench. It took a while before the hump got flattened.

love the depth of the black color

I stuffed the knot hole with a bunch of cherry shavings so I didn't have to use gallons of epoxy to fill it. 

2nd application

About 20 minutes after I initially filled it I put some more on. One spot had dipped down below the top. Fingers crossed that come tomorrow it will be still over filled and not sunk down.

quark is 99% done

I think I did better on this batch then I did with the previous ones. I know I did better with rinsing until it ran clear. I put this in the refrigerator to dry out and drain any remaining liquid.

hmm.......

Got this yesterday from Amazon - 10 feet of plumber's chain. I wasn't sure here if it will work as a chain stay for the miniature chest.

not smooth sailing

As I smoothed one set of chatter marks, I made a new set. Tried all the tricks I knew but without success.

stubborn spot

I had smoothed this area of chatter marks but I had to take one more swipe. My reward? Three more lines of chatter. This one area was an absolute nightmare trying to smooth out.

the smoothing trio

The scraper plane (Stanley #112) was the only one that didn't chatter. The Stanley veneer scraper (#12) chattered a couple of times. The #80 was the worse. The scraping planes left behind a glass smooth surface, much better than the #80 did.

ornery spot

This area was a PITA to smooth out. It didn't tear out exactly but certain strokes left a fuzzy line.

been a while

I thought I had two #112s but it is two #12s. The last time I used these was when I made the cradle for Miles. Hard to believe but that was almost ten years ago. BTW I only have one Stanley scraper iron in these three. After searching I finally bought replacement irons from Hock. I bought two toothed irons from Kunz - I emailed the US representative and bought two from him. Had to wait until Kunz in Germany made a batch of them. The fit with both the Hock and Kunz irons was perfect.

it works

Setting the hinges using super glue. Two dabs on each hinge with a little weight for 10 minutes holds the hinges in place long enough to get screws started.

underside

No leaks. The blue tape is still down tight and it isn't bulging neither.

two screws

Got two screws in each hinge. Unfortunately for me, I didn't have any flat head, slotted, #6 screws in the length I wanted. I went to ACE but two things stopped me from buying screws there (and having an involuntary bowel movement). They had brass screws in the size I wanted but they were phillips head (a no no for me) and the cost took my breath away. 50 screws in 1/2" was $17 and the 3/4" size was $19. I don't remember screws costing this much the last I bought a pkg of 50. 

I ended up buying the screws from McMaster-Carr. Bought two boxes of 100 each and the price was almost as much as the ACE pkg of 50 screws cost. I'll have to start watch vids on making without any fasteners like screws and nails.

hardware is done

Got the chain stay installed without any hiccups. The hinges are all set to be reinstalled once the paint is done.

shellac time

Got 4 coats on the interior of the chest (done) and two on the back doohickey thing. 3-4 more on it and it will be done.

accidental woodworker

Game Table. NY 1760-1790

A recent visit to the furniture collection at the Metropolitan Museum really emphasized how profoundly furniture-making has changed since my youth - and even in the 25 years since I founded TFWW.

I grew up reading Popular Mechanics, and I imagined that I too would engage in their home improvement projects when I grew up. Build a den; build a media center; build a kitchen cabinet; stuff like that. On top of that, the magazine offered tons of material on building reproductions of colonial style furniture, usually with the latest power tools. Home repairs, like car repairs, were within the grasp of ordinary people with mainstream skills and tools. DIYing was a popular hobby and for the average guy, (and I mean guy at this point in time) practical classes in Shop class in school gave you the foundation to make things.

I also began reading Fine Woodworking in 1976. (I missed the first two issues and started with Issue No. 3.) The magazines focus on fancy techniques like wood bending and a high valuation of the craft were real eye openers for me. Fast Forward to now. The major area of business for modern cabinet makers is in architectural woodworking - re-fitting kitchens, building interiors, stores, bookcases and other millwork. The popular expectation of dressers, tables, beds, etc. is inexpensive and disposable, made by IKEA and IKEA-like companies.

Fewer people now than ever before would consider themselves amateur woodworkers. The interesting part is that the ones who are doing it are doing it to a higher standard than ever before. They are no longer constrained by the mass market. If youre going to the trouble of making a colonial style high boy, youre probably doing it because you want to dive into that kind of piece, even if that means learning how to veneer, learning how to dovetail, learning how to carve details. All sorts of wonderful skills - which is where the challenge and interest lies.

Getting back to the museum: While the Metropolitan Museum of Art has the second largest collection of American furniture in the US (after Wintertur), most of the vernacular stuff they have is in the study collection, not in the fancy exhibition halls. The period rooms almost all have fancy rich furniture - items that highlight and show off wealth rather than comfort and function. The pieces are all beautifully made with great skill, but very few things are relatable nowadays. People aren't looking for a chair with fancy decorations and inlays. They want something that conjures up the image of a traditional chair - and the vernacular stick chair world does that in spades.

For most people interested in traditional skills, the direction seems not to copy the stuff in museums, but rather focus on the kinds of vernacular furniture that frankly was too downmarket to interest bigtime furniture collecting. I'm talking about stick chairs and other folk work. People are following this path for two reasons: first, while you need much fewer tools to make a stick chair, the craft demands the same rules of design and proportion so its still a fun challenge, and second, vernacular furniture is a lot more relatable in a modern house than the fancy furniture we see in museums.

Note: the Metropolitan Museum of Art has remounted a lot of works in their American Wing. They're mounting furniture in a way that asks you to look at it closely and see the details. They're trying to create an appreciation of the design of traditional furniture, or should I say, traditional high-end furniture that has largely vanished. I think a lot of people look at the furniture in the American Wing, and say, My word! That stuff looks dated! and never look past this unrelatability to the details. (This is especially true when whole rooms are preserved.) They therefore dont enjoy or appreciate the craft that went into making fancy furniture. Of course the museum pieces were expensive luxury items. But theyre still wonderfully proportioned; theyre elegantly made; and a pleasure to examine and well. A lot of them dont fit into a modern lifestyle, i.e. a place to put your laptop, a sofa you can watch TV from (and sadly nobody these days is coming over to play games). But this doesn't mean the works aren't extremely elegant in the context of their original use - and we can still learn from them.

Note: We stock a lot of detailed, accurate measured drawings by Carlyle Lynch of early American Furniture, some fancy,some not.
We also stock "Welsh Stick Chairs" a wonderful book and we have a few copies left of The Stick Chair Journal.
For a more philosophical look at chairmaking you might want to look at "Chairmaker's Notebook" by Peter Galbert.

 

hmm.......

First change is with the top. This one will be about 36x24. I got four boards to choose for the top. That will be whittled down to a 3 board top. My desk top is 44x 25.

maybe not

This is the cherry bookshelf I made for Mile's desk. It looks a wee bit too big IMO. I pictured this being used for reference or school books (CD/DVDs too). I'll be rethinking this - I have two smaller cherry bookshelves waiting in the wings that might look/fit better.
 

took a while

I went back forth with the four boards and I ended up using the one with a knot. I like how the grain flows with these three boards. The knot goes straight through the board. This face has the smaller opening with the opposite face over twice the size. I am going to fill it in with epoxy dyed with black pigment. 

can't dutch it

I was thinking of covering the the knot hole with a dutchman. I didn't have any cherry off cuts with a circular grain pattern like the knot has.  First option was cherry and then I thought of using walnut. Nixed both because of the grain.

jointing the top boards

This is about the only time I use my #8 Stanley - just for jointing boards for edge gluing. Checking for the edge square to the face. Used a 48" straight edge to check the edge was flat and straight.

hmm......

There was a slight gap here due to a hump. It took a few plane and check steps before the gap disappeared.

sigh

I dry clamped the top 3 times before I glued it up. All three dry attempts I had problems flushing these edges. However, I didn't have any hiccups get it flush when I tightened the clamps. That changed when the glue went on. It was flush initially and when I finally got all the clamps tightened down, I saw this. By the time I saw it and tried to fix it the glue had already set. This is the major reason I went with 5/4 cherry for the top.

glued and cooking

I used the Bessey clamps to keep the joint lines flush and tight to the clamps. Got a surprise when I checked the joint line from above again. It had closed up a little more. I should be able scrap away what it is now there with the Stanley #80.

Real crappy day here in RI. The weather seers said it would rain, sleet, and snow off and on all day long. Some rain, no sleet as of this blog typing but it did snow for about 20 minutes. The seers said that none of the precipitations would accumulate. 

accidental woodworker 

The biscuit joiner just slightly makes the list of techniques for edge to side-edge joinery. It is not a strong or deep joint but it is easy to do. It does have a useful role. A machine for this can cost less than a $100 if you dare, $250 for a good DeWalt, or a […]

My intermittent spoon carving has resulted in six more spoons available for purchase. These were carved from branch crooks. All surfaces are straight from the cutting edge and all have been treated with pure linseed/flaxseed oil and kiln-cured. Ready to … Continue reading →

 I haven't forgotten about Miles desk. I have decided to make a copy of the desk that I use. Mine is red oak and Miles will be cherry. For that matter, Leo's desk will be cherry too. I wanted to finish the current plate of projects before jumping into the desk build. Now that the miniature chest woodworking is done, the first thing on the desk agenda is making the top. I have the measurements of my desk but I won't be following them exactly. They will be subject to whim and what I think looks good.

hmm....

I applied wood putty to the dings and divots on the chest yesterday. The chest will be rustic looking but I don't want to see all the boo boos under the milk paint to come.
 

hinge mortises done

I had three sets of these hinges, two in bronze and one brass one. The brass one was buried in the hinge goodie bin. Got the heebie jeebies thinking I was losing it again but I found it. 

chamfer done

I stopped the chamfer 1 1/2" from the back edge of the lid. I did this with my battery operated router. 

looks a wee bit rough

This is making my OCD tingle a wee bit but I'll try to get over it. The mortise is shallow leaving the hinge is 1-2 frog hairs proud.

prepping for milk paint

The last milk paint I used the last miniature chest didn't cover/stick to the wood putty well. So I applied shellac to them and the end grain of the front and back. Not sure how milk paint will do on end grain but the shellac sealed it and it should act as a primer coat.

done, for now

Decided on how the back doohickey thing will be attached. The lid will be painted red and the doohickey will be finished with shellac. I attached it with 5 screws and I will remove it before I paint/shellac it. Once the finish is done, I'll screw it back on.

finger grabbie thing

The lid overhangs the front of the chest only about a 1/4". Decided that wasn't enough to ease opening the lid so I added this to help out.

ready for paint

Spent about 30 minutes with my head buried in my arse searching the shop for some window sash metal chain. I know I had some left over but as usual I can't remember where I hid it. I'll search/order some from Amazon. I have time before I'll need it.

sigh

Well, boys and girls, they ain't done yet. The cherry one was borderline but the two walnut ones needed some help with the top edges on the ends. After dinner I'll eyeball them again and more than likely they will get another thin coat of shellac.

I had to go the VA after lunch because one of my meds ran out. The doc will review it and I'll  get the refill in the mail. In the interim I got a ten day supply. The streets leading to the VA were a complete mess. I thought the side streets were I live were bad but the ones in Providence were way worse. A 5 minute ride through them pre blizzard took me 20 minutes today. Thankful that I don't have to go to the VA for an appointment until next month.

accidental woodworker

 

The electric mandolin (e-mando) is now complete! In this video, I give a “guided tour” of the instrument and a demonstration of how the pick-up system works.

And a few photos below.........

Hope you like it!

Cheers Gary

This is a short post to summarize the glue joint distribution of dowel joinery that was discussed in detail in the last post and with excellent commentary from readers.  Dowel joinery, properly done with good dowel layout and distribution is certainly strong enough. This has been well shown online, notably by DowelMax testing. Some, certainly […]

The isolation of my early handwork prepared me for the hard slog going against the ever-advancing tide of machining wood that almost rendered craftwork dead. You might not know this fact as the reality of the day, but handwork in professional realms was actually gone and in amateur realms it was hanging on by a shaving. In magazines and colleges, the demise took a mere decade to disappear, but they kept a token nod to the past by offering a 5%. Today, that's no longer demise, but real future for the real woodworking we almost lost. My work reestablishing hand methods enabled me to meet the unknown need of future. We paved the way for others, and though it certainly wasn't without great cost in time, financial expense, and so on Other costs were incurred; I spent months travelling away even to other continents, leaving my home and family. Today, we have recharged the world of woodworking with hand methods that defy the world of plugged in only woodworking. Did you know that we own Unpluggedshop.com? Worth mentioning, I think. It's enabled hundreds of other bloggers to put their name out there.

Finding the right bench height for you had been lost to stupidity because so-called experts gave the wrong information to establish it. They said you needed to "bear down on the work from above and overhead" to get the plane to work. You didn't! I gave all the answers and tested my theories through 6,500 students in hands-on classes––my theory has now worked for hundreds of thousands of woodworkers to date.

I have to say something here, though. There is this strange belief in the saying that "you get what you pay for." and i question how many are just paying through the nose far too highly, hence my last blog post speaking about the Democratising Workbench Logic post. What we want and what we need are often two very different things. I want a workbench to work and to actually work well as soon as possible because I want to hold, support and work my wood solidly using hand tools and hand tool methods and not only as an assembly point for machined wood parts. If I don't have one, I just make one, and I go the most efficient route to making certain I can make and make quickly. A workbench with a good vise is both the third hand and the anchor to which my worklife is so far irrevocably hinged. My workbenches, I have made about fifty of them for students in my hands-on classes through the years, have stood firm in the face of fancy and overkill status pieces depicting something intended to be more symbolic or to give some kind of validation to the woodworker. I have used a couple of these fancier workbenches and have found them somewhat lacking because of their clunkiness. None of them were a match for my basic bench. Believe me, twenty studs gets you there and a couple of good days sweat-equity means you will be in a machine-free woodworking saddle.

This picture is dynamic i9n terms of the whole body being engaged with visible muscle and sinew synchronised in action that exposes the power of real and active woodworking. What's the difference between this and most woodworking pictures? It's not posed, whereas the other pictures will be halted and waited on by necessity.

Other things strike me as democratising too. My theory of working with ten hand tools and three woodworking joints to make almost anything from wood is a truism. In the last ten years, I have built well over a hundred full furniture pieces without machining beyond a bandsaw for resizing. My long-term plan is to never touch a power router again. It's foolish to call it a power tool anyway you look at it. 98% of users use it to mould their stock with classic moulds and rounded corners. The rest of their time is making jigs and more jigs. By using bench planes, I eliminate 85% of all sanding because to sand would be to sand rough and not sand smooth. That's a new way of looking at things, isn't it?

My benches do not have any holes in them and I do not use dogs. The bench stop, that's the metal rectangle in the bottom left of the picture, is one I installed and never used. In practical terms, the clamp in the vise deals with any and all securement if it does not work in the vise. Totally practical and efficient. Again, real woodworking by a woodworker constantly in the saddle.

Hard to imagine the flack I got stating that Aldi chisels back in 2010 were as good as it gets, but I did, and that's because I took the risk. Sixteen years on, I have yet to find and use a chisel that exceeded the quality of my then four-piece set. In fact, they were so good, I bought another set to resize for the in-between sizes I felt were missing like 3/16", 5/16" and 5/8". Of course, being at that time in the EU, the chisels were all metric so 6mm, 10mm, 12mm, 19mm and 25mm. Would I ever pay £100 for a single piece of any kind of chisel? Most likely not. A fancier and more expensive chisel will not make you anya better woodworker. Restoring or reshaping and reworking a chisel probably will, though. The self disci-line of doing such things is never a waste of your time, and you learn so much doing things like that. When I paid £10 for four chisels that I still use every day, I see no reason to spend over £400 for a set that does no more. And then there is this The chisels I bought from Aldi are made with highly substantive tangs that will never turn loose, bolsters that totally and firmly absorb and support every type of work, and they have indestructible hornbeam handles no other wood can beat. I cannot understand anyone using beech or ash, bubinga and so on.

It can be a difficult for any new woodworker reading material saying you need this or that chisel for this or that task. In my 61 years of woodworking, I have only ever relied on a basic bevel-edged chisel. Mortise chisels were made for deep mortises in the days when a man would stand at a bench and make mortises for doors all day long. Who does that any more? When you have half a dozen deep mortises to cut, a basic bevel edged chisel works just fine.

So why speak of what you can no longer buy? Well, they did stock them for several years. But I have also run MHG chisels that are made in Germany. These chisels have also proven to be excellent value for money and whereas they offer some of their chisels with hornbeam handles, they also offer more finely polished versions with ash handles. In my view, hornbeam beats ash hands down. Several years ago, I bought their six-piece chisel set because they had everything I wanted in a chisel. I have also used all of these in the everyday of my life and cannot fault them. What is great is that they also offer 2mm and 4mm sizes. These are lifetime chisels, they take a keen edge and hold their edges too. A boxed set of six pieces, sizes 6, 10, 12, 16, 20, and 26mm costs £99, and you can add in the 2mm and 4mm along with other sizes if you want to. These cost only £10 or so and are very hand chisels for several tasks.

I have been accumulating a variety of chisels throughout my lifetime of woodworking. Which of these do I use now. None of the ones pictured. I rely on a simple set of half a dozen bevel edged chisels. I can recommend MHG's set for their excellent quality, taking a keen edge and edge retention. I have tested them for ten years and they have never failed me. For around £100 you will get a good set (six in a box) of lifetime chisels with hornbeam handles.

Deep or shallow, hardwood or softwood, my chosen chisels have yet to fail me. My nudge back in the day meant Aldi sold out in every one of their stores here in the UK. Unfortunately, they had to stop stocking them. So why do I say what I say? Well, the sellers of hand tools go to much trouble reasoning out why you need a set of chisels for this kind of work and then another type for that. 98% of them you just do not need, no matter the work, the shape or the size of it. The men I worked under as a boy apprentice through to a journeyman, two different companies, seven years in all, had a half dozen bevel edged chisels on the benchtop, never pulled out a massive mortise chisel for the deeper pockets, never used square edged firmer or registered-pattern chisels, and they got along day in and day out throughout those years just fine no matter the task nor the wood. These men democratised in their day in the same way I do now. The cost of my working chisels over a hundred years come to 00.oo2083333333r of a penny or cent a day.

This is my democratised, nuts and bolts workbench that surpasses the expectation of any woodworker and furniture maker. You can see it being built in my back garden when I lived in the UK's North Wales. I add various components to customise it for functionality. But for £70 you can be working at it in just a few days, no more than three, I'd say

I started selling my excess of hand tools to put the now unused back in circulation. These were the ones I used in my hands-on classes, and then those you just can't pass up. I posted a very nice Stanley #4 1/2 on eBay for £25 and had no takers. I was surprised but hey ho. I did at one time go to the wider #4 1/2 and #5 1/2 planes. I realised that people were copying what I did, and that for 90% of those new to woodworking, these were too bulky and prohibitively heavy for them. Even before that, though, I found myself reaching for my #4 Stanley almost every time. That small width difference of a mere 5/16" makes a big difference in both weight and sharpening to a man working full-time and making 98% by hand only. I'm a machineless woodworker, aside from a single bandsaw. A #4 weighs in at 3.68 lbs pounds and a #4 1/2 at 4.8; that makes the latter about the same as a Lie Nielsen #4 BedRock, that's not so small an increase, and it would make a huge difference, and especially to those not used to upper-body work for long periods.

An MHG 1" chisel honed to perfection removes the arris as a leading edge for the tenon into the mortise hole. Keep it real, keep it simple and keep it low cost using a tool made for working people to get the action they truly need.

You do not need weight, but you do need sharp!

The Stanley #4 is a light in weight in some measure, but it's no lightweight in performance in any way. The fact is this: this plane, not the BedRock version but the Leonard Bailey common-or-garden one, is not just iconic but the most perfectly designed of all all-metal versions through the last century and a half bar none, and that's for a wide range of tasks. Beefier bulldogs might like to persuade you otherwise but that's the difference between riding an Arabian stallion where you can twist, turn and flip to task in a heartbeat as opposed to plodding along on a heavy draft like a Belgian draft or a Clydesdale. A kayak can flip, roll, twist, twitch and switch on a sixpence or a nickel, but an oil tanker might take a good half day or more to even stop, let alone turn end for end. So even within the same overall size, the copycat BedRockists of our new era, new generation bench planes made by plane makers now makes even a #4 size heavy-metal plane prohibitive and of little if any intrinsic value. So I weighed three modern-day versions made by so-called premium makers and compared them to my now 61-year-old Stanley, the current one I have been using every single day over my ten-hour day days, and the weight difference between an average of these and my basic, non-retrofitted #4 Stanley makes them quite, well, sluggish. You see, metal soles on wood do stick more than their wooden counterparts, enough to feel about ten times heavier. The heavyweights make that feel like twenty times heavier, I can tell you, and that is what makes them less versatile.

Currently, working my two planes side by side through the decades, and despite the fact that I don't grind the bevels using any grinding machine, two plane iron lasts me for about 6 years. Here I show the point at which you must abandon one.

Another issue that is never mentioned, so I will do it here because makers never do and owners don't even know it: The advantage makers and users extol is that you can adjust the mouth opening without removing the cutting iron assembly as they say you must do with a Bailey-pattern frog in the common Stanley's, but you actually don't. . .read my book Essential Woodworking Hand Tools. 1. You rarely if ever need to adjust the throat opening on a bench plane. I never alter this setting, and that's because with a sharp and well set plane you DO NOT NEED TO. 2. If you do that on a Bailey pattern, you do not alter the cutting depth. Now on a BedRock pattern plane, when you are advantaged by not having to remove the cutting iron assembly, you are then majorly disadvantaged because the depth of cut is changed, and you have no idea by how much. So, for around £20 you can buy a secondhand Stanley #4, spend an hour fettling it and bringing it out of hibernation because it went dull, and you have a lifetime plane. And think about this; if I have used my #4 every single day for 61 years, gone through six cutting irons yet I don't grind them of grinding wheels, how long would it last you using it for a couple of hours a week?

In functionality, there is no difference between the three heavier planes and there is no maker offers a new and innovative invention on any of them to improve innovatively. That says a lot and speaks very positively of Leonard Bailey, who developed the whole of the bench plane bodies for Stanley stable back in the late 1860s, doesn't it. In 150 years since Leonard Bailey had the concept, no one has changed a thing. Imagine!

The three heavyweight BedRock #4's averaged 4.7lbs, whereas the Stanley comes in at 3.6lbs. That's what I call refinement with the user in mind. Nothing prissy about a plane that works for a man like me for six decades of daily making with hand tools, I'd say. These makers could learn a thing or two about listening to their customers rather than telling them what they need. It mightn't seem much but believe me, those heavyweights would translate into many a dozen tons over a 61 year daily-use span of someone like me.

My initial concern is prohibition. As a new woodworker starting out would I want to spend £400 on one tool that only planes wood after I have learned to sharpen and set the tool up. For a new woodworker starting out, it is but a temporary benefit to buy a plane that might be ready to go out of the box. Within an hour, they must resharpen and set the tool, and therein lies the issue. Why not just put your boots on and get in the saddle straight off at one twentieth of the cost. A Stanley number 4 will cost no more than £20.

So there it is, my faithful friend. We shake hands with poise and class every day and all day whenever we meet and get to work. We work as a perfectly balanced team, you see. How clever is that! We've settled many a twisted stick stem and board together.

And then I see some of the dumb things elsewhere too. Imagine anyone, people woodworking, spending upwards of £150 for what is no more than what we once called a "toffee hammer", 4 ounces of metal that is. The supportive comments matched the weight of the hammers I looked at. My best shot is the pretension of it all. One author started out saying, "You really don't need one of these..." and the pretension all went downhill from there. I use a couple of cross-pein hammers in my day to day, A 12 ounce Warrington version by Stanley gets me there on all types of plane iron adjustment, including tightening wedges and shocking them loose in wooden or metal planes. My 12 ounce drives panel pins and metal parts. And then there is my 6 ounce "toffee hammer" made by Stanley here in Sheffield.

Wood on wood works remarkably well, and you would be stunned if someone gave a wooden plane, freshly sharpened, to true up even a wide board of oak, maple or walnut. It took Stanley Rule and Level 50 years to persuade the ancients to switch to metal-soled planes, and that wasn't because they refused progress, but because the metal planes stuck like glue to the wood by comparison with the wooden planes they were used.

These hammers are clearly winners for me. Nothing wrong with using a steel hammer to set your plane irons with or adjusting wooden plane iron depths on moulding planes either. The wide face of the hammer head has nothing prissy about it, and the cross pein fits in to the tight corners right where you need it. Oh, and did you know that the cross pein enables you to drive 1/2" pins between your forefinger and thumb no problem?

Here you have the reality of a tool in use. The cross pein is perfect for starting tiny pins between the thumb and forefinger and then seating it with the bell side.

The cross-pein Warrington in different sizes is available as a vintage version secondhand on eBay. This remarkable cast steel hammer is a lifetime tool, and I have three sizes that I have used throughout my daily work life.

My 6 ounce Warrington still drives pins but also helps to set and align plane irons in wood-bodied or cast metal planes. I perfect synchrony without any compromise. But then a heavier version does the same. I have three weights of Warrington hammers 6, 10 and 12 ounce.

For adjusting all of my planes, moulding planes, cast metal and wood versions and so on, I use this 6 ounce Stanley Warrington hammer. I bought this one new in 1965.

 

now they are done

No home for either one of these. I'll ask my sister Donna if she wants them. If not I'll give them to my sister Kam. I still have to get a hold of her for day to bring the boneyard goodies to her.

3 more done

The middle cherry one is for Miles desk. The two walnut ones are homeless for now. But I am thinking of gifting one of the walnut ones to Maria at the Frame it shop.

hmm....

Got the moldings in and the two long ones are a few frog hairs higher then the short ones. I had checked them and it looked to me that they were all the same height. I'm leaving it as is. I just nailed the moldings in place with no glue. I didn't glue the plywood bottom to the bearers neither.  

I hand nailed one short molding and pin nailed the others. There was barely any room for the hammer head to hit the nail. Nailing it off with the pin nailer wasn't much better but I managed to get it done.

hmm......

Thinking about how to attach the back doohickey thing. Clamp and nail it, or use screws? Also, do I do it before the hinges are attached or do it after? Good place to kill the lights and head topside. This was all I got done today in the shop. Spent the rest of the day watching old Star Trek shows on Amazon Prime. I never saw the first few years of any of them.

accidental woodworker