This morning I got to spend some quality time in the shop with my favorite apprentice. She's eager to learn, loves to spend time in the shop and loves to help with whatever I'm working on. She's also 3 years old. How many shops full of machines would you let a 3 year old in? To me, this is one of the greatest advantages of a power-free shop. Sure, there are still a lot of sharp edges, but it's much easier to keep them away from her grasp and she knows the shop rules...you must have shoes on to come in the shop and no touching the tools unless Daddy says it's ok.
She has her own areas of the shop that she spends time in when she is not in the mood to help. First is the design area.
This is a very important area of the shop. Here is where new concepts and ideas are put to paper and chalkboard before we take tool to wood. Without this area, we would be flying by the seat of our pants without any idea of where we were going. Of course, when we are ready to start working, it is important for the tools to be organized so you know where to find them. A proper tool box is a must.
It's very important to keep your tools organized and put away when you are not using them so you know where to find them the next time you look for them. You don't want to be in the middle of a project and not be able to find your blue try square. Of course there are times when we need a tool that only Daddy has so in these cases, absolute proper supervision is a must (ok, this is a serious statement). But when we work together, we always have fun. There's nothing like a morning in the shop with a good apprentice.
So what other not so obvious benefits can you come up with for an alcohol powered workshop? I'd love to hear your take on this!
If you've browsed around the internet woodworking message boards for any length of time, you've likely stumbled upon a question titled something like "What are the advantages of a hand tool only shop". Maybe you were the person who posted the question. Last night, as I sliced my finger wide open while wiping the honing oil from the edge of a freshly honed plane blade, I was suddenly reminded of one of those advantages. Had I made this mistake with a table saw or jointer, I could have lost the finger, or worse.
But that go me thinking, that there are so many advantages that go overlooked. Now I'm not going to try to convert you to a full blown, hand tool toting, selling off the Unisaw to pay for a collection of Clark & Williams planes and Wenzloff saws neander. Believe me, there are times when I wish I had a band saw (ripping through 50 feet of 2" thick stock by hand comes to mind). But there are important lessons to be learned in some of the "grunt work" type tasks that need to be done as part of each project.
I'll give you an example. Let's say you're building a simple side table. Not too difficult a task, right? So you buy your lumber, rough cut your parts to length on your chop saw or radial arm, rip them on the table saw, four square the material with the jointer and planer, hog out the mortises with the hollow chisel mortiser, then you decide to hand cut the tenons as you don't have a tenon jig. You mark them out, then start cutting. However, you find it difficult to get straight square shoulders and cheeks so you cut everything fat and then spend an hour adjusting each tenon to fit.
Next you move on to the drawer and you know this can be tricky so you are very careful to mark your cuts clearly. You start by cutting the tails and you saw some straight and some not so straight. You mark the pins from the tails, confident that this will fix your previous errors, then carefully saw on the waste side of the line and again, spend a couple hours paring the dovetails to fit. You dry fit the drawer and it holds together ok, but there are some gaps in the joint that you don't particularly like.
The problem that keeps recurring in this example is the builder's seemingly "cautious" practice of sawing fat and paring to fit. While this may seem like a good way to get tight fitting joints, it adds a lot of time to the process and rarely results in consistently tight fitting joints. The issue is the builder's discomfort with sawing right to the line. To address this discomfort, they saw fat and then pare, which results in inconsistent joint surfaces.
The solution to this problem is to saw straight to the line. However, when one does 95% of their sawing with power and guides (fences, miter gauges, etc.), they don't have the practice or the comfort to do so. This is where hand tool users have an advantage. When you have to do all your rough cutting with hand saws, you have no choice but to practice your sawing. Sure, you can still saw wide of the line and plane to the mark, however, this takes time and, in the case of planing end grain, often results in damaging the piece. The answer is to saw to the line.
When I saw my rough stock, I consider it practice for more critical cuts. When I crosscut, I want to do the best I can to make a straight, square cut so I don't have to adjust it later. I have a shooting board, but I'd rather not plane end grain if I don't have to. Similarly, when I rip a board to width, I follow the line as closely as possible. I don't want to make gross adjustments to the edge, I just want to clean up the saw marks.
Based on this, I do have advise for all of you machine users out there who want to improve your skills with hand cutting joinery. Do more hand sawing. Being able to saw to a line is a skill that takes practice. If you don't do any hand sawing but joinery, you won't get enough practice hand sawing to saw straight consistently. There are a few tricks, like scribing your layout lines with a knife or awl rather than using a pencil, but these do not gaurantee you will saw straight, they just help guide your starting cuts.
So here's my homework for you. Practice your hand sawing skills. I'm not asking you to rip 100 board feet of 8/4 oak, but there are opportunities for you to practice in almost every project. Make your rough crosscuts by hand; these cuts are quick and easy but provide a great practice session for sawing to a line. The final length is typically adjusted later in the project so if your cut is not perfect, it likely won't matter later. Another place to practice your hand sawing is with your secondary parts like case backs, drawer sides, drawer guides, etc. Crosscuting and riping these parts by hand is great hand sawing practice. Most projects have at least some secondary parts not visible after assembly. An added plus is that these secondary parts are typically a softer wood like pine, cedar or poplar so hand sawing these parts is not as daunting a task as ripping through sugar maple.
Start doing more hand sawing like this on your next projects and I gaurantee you will be tracking a line better in very little time. Of course the real benefit of this will be the improvement you see in your hand cut joinery. Your tenon shoulders and cheeks will be cleaner and straighter, your dovetails will be straighter and tighter and you will do much less paring, which saves a lot of time. In short time, you'll be going from the backsaw straight to joint assembly, which should be the ultimate goal in hand cut joinery. Keep practicing, it is achievable.
Do a search on the net or the hand tool message board of your choice and you'll find volumes of information on cleaning, restoring or tuning hand planes...metal hand planes. Most of these articles don't discuss the care and feeding of old wooden planes. In the last few years, I have taken to these old woodies and come to prefer them to my collection of old Stanley bench planes. There's just something about the wood on wood feel, the ergonomics of the old woodies and the nostalgia of the 18th and early 19th century cabinet shops that these tools have about them.
In order to provide assistance to any one else who has been bitten by the woodie bug, I'm going to present here my method of cleaning and tuning these planes. Keep in mind that I am no expert on this, and I am not a collector so my tools are being set up for use. However, I have cleaned wooden planes this way for several years now and they all continue to look nice and, most importantly, perform very well.
The demonstration plane that I'm using here is a 19th century molding plane manufactured by Auburn Tool Co. It is stamped #155, which according to the catalog is supposed to be an ovolo profile (called quarter round in the catalog), however, my plane appears to be missing the fence that would provide registration of the plane as well as the outside fillet on the profile. I suppose that it could have been planed off by a previous owner, however, there is no evidence of this on the plane nor the iron as both appear to be in original, unmodified condition. The profile of this plane looks to be more of a thumbnail with fillet like one would find on period drawer edges. If you know anything about this please leave a comment.
At any rate, here is the plane as received. Dirty and dull with the remnants of a price sticker stuck to the top. Hoever, there are no end checks, no damaged wood and the blade profile looks to be correct. I doubt this plane ever saw much use.
The iron looks to be of the laminated type, which are my favorites. Look closely at the picture below and you can see a dark band of steel at the top of the iron. This is the hard cutting tool steel. The lighter metal of the iron body is a softer wrought iron. This is nice because it makes these types of irons easy to reshape with a chainsaw file if the profile of the iron needs reshaping. This one does not, so I'll leave it alone. These laminated blades are also nicer to hone and work with. You are really only honing the hard steel at the front which makes it easy to do. I really like old laminated irons.
The first thing I do when I receive these planes is to take the wedge and iron out and inspect the plane for damage. This one is in great shape, no cracks, full wedge, no major pitting in the iron. Next I take some 0000 steel wool, an old toothbrush and mineral spirits and clean the wood and iron. I'm not trying to scrub away the years of patina that have built up, I'm just getting rid of dirt, grease and residue left by stickers and such. If the stock has any paint splatters (they often do) I may try to lightly scrape them off with a cabinet scraper, being careful not to remove any wood.
On thing I never do is sand the plane stock. I don't know if I'm just paranoid or not but I feel that if you expose fresh wood, you take the chance that the stock will want to move, potentially warping, which ruins the plane as a user. Besides, I don't want the plane to look new, I like the patina of the old, used tools. It's part of the history of where the tool has been and the work it has done.
Once the plane stock and wedge has been cleaned and the excess solvent wiped away, I apply something to the wood to give it a nice sheen and feel. I'm not really applying a finish per se as I know that any finish will wear away with use, I just like the feel of a nice oiled wooden plane stock. Watever you do, do not put any kind of film finish on them like laquer or varnish and nothing with silicone oil in it (most furniture polishes have silicone oil).
I have used a commercial product in the past with decent results. It is a mixture of orange oil, beeswax and carnuba wax in a solvent base to keep it in a semi-liquid form. It is sold as a furniture wood preserver, though I doubt it does any real preserving.
The probelm with these types of products, I'm told by a fellow hand tool enthusiast who is far more knowledgable of these things than I am, is that they are mostly petroleum distillates. I have a problem with this for two reasons. First, petroleum based solvents are not very environmentally friendly and second, they are probably not the greatest thing for the wood either (I know, mineral spirits is a petroleum distillate, but my local supplier doesn't carry pure turpentine, which I would certainly prefer).
Mr. Shepherd's recommendation is just to use boiled linseed oil thinned 50% with turpentine. Unfortunately, I don't have any real turpentine, so not wanting to leave mineral spirits on the wood, I just used unthinned boiled linseed oil on this plane. The result...
I like the look and the feel very much. I think I will use the linseed oil from now on, though I am going to try to find real turpentine to thin it.
While the oil dries, I work on the iron. This is where I sometimes get a little non-neander. Hey, I said I build furniture with hand tools only, I don't necessarily do metalworking with hand tools only. When needed, I use a drill press with a soft wire wheel to clean the iron, or other metal parts. Be careful not to over do it though, even the soft wheel can scratch if used too aggressively.
This iron only needed the removal of minor surface rust, which the wire wheel removed in just a minute or two of work. Next I polish the back of the iron. I don't worry about flattening the entire back of the iron, I just want to get a nice polish at the cutting edge. I really don't like sandpaper for sharpening, however, for lapping the backs of irons and chisels, it is faster than stones and of course causes less ware on the stones as well. I start with 80 or 100 grit depending on how bad the iron is and work my way up to 600 grit. Then I strop on my leather strop charged with green honing compound.
The final step is to hone the bevel. If the iron needs reshaping, do this now with a fine chainsaw file. It is really not as hard as you think. Color the back of the iron with a black magic marker, wedge it in the stock and scribe the sole profile onto the iron. Then just use the file to adjust the profile to the scribed line. This iron needed no reshaping so I went straight to honing. I hold the iron steady in my left hand and move the slip stone up and down over the bevel until I have a nice polish across the entire profile. I start with a soft Arkansas slip, progress to a hard Arkansas slip and then to a shaped strop or a wooden dowel which I have scribbled green honing compound on to act as a strop.
After the bevel is honed and polished, you are done and ready to take your new plane for a test drive. I'm going to wait until the linseed oil on this plane dries before testing it out though.
If you haven't checked out the current projects page recently, head on over there! I've gotten more of the cabinet build posted. Hopefully, I'll get the rest done by the end of this week. A loft goal, however, I have more projects that will be getting started soon that I want to share here so I'm going to try.
Also, if you have just found the site, browse around, check it out and let me know what you think by clicking on the Contact link above or by leaving a comment in the blog. Hope to hear from you!
It must have been the weekend for late spring cleaning as it seems there was a lot of this going around late last week. At any rate, the shop is clean for the first time in a long time. I had needed a new long shelf to store my ever growing collection of wooden molding and joinery planes as they were just being stored on the bench top. This makes for convenient access but clutters up the workbench and impedes work in progress. So I completed the shelf and got the bench cleaned off. Here's the before.
This wasn't terrible, but the bench top was pretty cluttered on the right hand side preventing me from using that half of the bench very efficiently. This picture was actually taken a few weeks ago and as of last Friday, it was a lot worse than this. Now here's the after. These are recent photos taken Saturday.
What a pleasure it was to walk around the shop after cleaning it up. I can actually use the bench now. My goal now is to try to clean up after each day's use. We'll see how long I make it. Also notice the new wooden twin screw vise which has replaced the old metal quick release. I like it a lot, but that's for another post.
So if you haven't cleaned up your shop in a long time, I urge you to get to it. You may be surprised at how much more efficient you can be when you have a good clean area to work. You may even find that long lost tool you needed on your last project.
Now to get dirty!
I've begun posting my cabinet build that I posted about on the Sawmill Creek forum several weeks ago. I hope to have the full project up within a few days, but for now, parts 1 & 2 are up. To read about the build, click on the Current Projects link in the navigation bar above. More to come soon!
In other Logan Cabinet Shoppe news, I've begun doing some carving in order to be able to add that little je ne sais quoi when the situation calls for it. I've been working on the practice ball & claw leg pictured below. It needs a little more refining before I call it done and I may add a knee carving as well. I'll post pictures of the finished leg when it's done.
For anyone who may have visited my old blog, I'm sorry that it is no longer there. Something happened with blogspot and I lost all my posts so here I am starting over. This time I decided to try a different provider and build a web site as well so I can keep my blog, pictures, articles, tips, etc. all in the same place. We'll see how it goes.
For starters, I'm going to be moving pictures from my recent cabinet build here as I've cancelled my Yahoo! account and therefore I can no longer access my pictures on Flickr. Of course the pictures will stay there until Flickr removes them now that I can't get to them but I'm going to re-load them here anyway.
In time, I hope to add more pictures, articles, tips and maybe even some video if I can arrange to get a camera from time to time. Hopefully this will grow to be a fun place where you can participate. I hope you'll stop by often!
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