Logan Cabinet Shoppe

For new woodworkers looking to start a hand tool shop or experienced power tool users looking to incorporate more hand work into their projects, selecting tools can be a daunting task. There are literally thousands of different hand tools out there to choose from and without at least some experience using the tools, it's hard to know which ones to get first.

In Episode # 2, I discuss my recommendations for a basic set of hand tools that no shop should be without. I based my recommendations on someone starting up a hand tool shop but if you use some power tools in your shop, I've also noted which tools may not be as useful to you for tasks where you would be using power.

My list of recommended tools is by no means all inclusive, but it should be sufficient to give you a good start. You can add tools and skills in the future as your projects dictate and you discover your own favorite techniques and methods.

Well, after a couple feeler blog posts and a long time toying with the idea, I have finally begun making preparations for a hand tool video podcast. I put together a short trailer video just to test out the video hosting service and you can watch that below. If all goes well, the actual video podcast should be up and running in a short while from now, after I finish my current project, a desk for my shop.

Thanks to every one who posted comments to the two previous blog posts about this or sent emails with your encouragement. Without all of your support I probably wouldn't have bothered to even pursue putting this together. Wish me luck and let's hope this all works out well. Stay tuned!

After years of [ab]use, my trusty saw bench is ready to retire. However, before I can retire the old I must make a new. So that was the project this weekend.

The saw bench is an absolute must have appliance for the hand tool shop. A pair is even better, especially if you process long stock in your shop with hand saws. In addition to supporting stock at a comfortable and convenient height for crosscutting and ripping, the saw bench serves a myriad of other uses in the shop. I use mine to sit on when boring with a brace, as a side table to hold tools and project parts when working at the shave horse, as support for case pieces when I'm planing their dovetails flush, as a bench to sit at when drawing at my workbench, as a step to reach the boards on the top tier of my lumber rack, as a place to sit and take a coffee break and as a second workbench for my kids when they are in the shop "working" with me.

I don't like to over complicate tools and appliances for the shop as I consider them disposable. They get used hard and take a lot of abuse so I don't use expensive lumber or complicated joinery. I want something that will be sturdy and will last but won't cost a lot and will be quick and easy to build. The style of saw bench pictured fits that bill nicely and can be built with cheap lumber and traditional joinery. This makes it very sturdy since it doesn't rely on the strength of mechanical fasteners like nails or screws, but it also stays very lightweight and easy to move around or store out of the way when not needed. It's relatively small at about 30" long by about 12" wide and at about 18" tall (approximately knee height for me) it is the perfect height for processing lumber with hand saws. No shop should be without one of these, or preferably a pair.

Check out the Articles page to see how it was built.

With the built-in finally finished, I had some time to work on a few shop projects I've been wanting to do for awhile. The first was the saw vise that I completed a couple of weeks ago. This weekend's project has been something I have wanted to make for awhile now but continued to put off because there were other ways to accomplish the task this tool does. After the recent sale of my old long steel rulers, I decided the time had come to finally make these.

If you are not familiar with them, they are called pinch sticks, pinch rods, and I'm sure several other names as well. Their sole purpose is to aid in squaring up cases. To use them, you place the pair of sticks inside the assembled box, extend the sticks until the points on the ends nest into the inside corners of the case and lock them down with the captured wedge or thumbscrew. If one diagonal is longer than the other, it will immediately be obvious using this tool. You then simply adjust the case until both diagonals are the same at which point your case is square. Of course you could do this with a long ruler, but with the pinch sticks there is no measuring involved so there is very little room for error. I made several sets in different sizes that will let me use them to square diagonals anywhere from about 8" up to about 60".

Here's a closer picture of the middle set to give you a better view of how they work. The middle block is simply a square block with a through mortise bored and chopped through its center. The mortise is sized to the width of the sticks and their combined thickness. I cut all four blocks from a single piece of wood. I bored and chopped all of the mortises prior to cutting the individual blocks apart to provide an area for holding the stock while cutting the joinery. At the top of the mortise for the sticks on the two smaller pair, an angled wedge mortise is cut and chiseled for the captive wedge that locks the sticks at their setting. I made the blocks from ash and the sticks and wedges from oak. The sticks on the two smaller pair are each about 1/4" thick by about 5/8" wide. The wedges are 1/4" thick.

The sticks on the larger pair are made thicker, about 5/16" thick, so they flex less along their long, 30" length. Since the sticks on the longer pair are thicker, the mortise had to be bigger. Because I cut the blocks from the same small piece of wood as the blocks for the smaller pairs, there was less supporting wood left for a captive wedge mortise to be cut. I was afraid that there would be insufficient material left to support the wedging force without blowing out the end grain on this larger pair so I used brass thumb screws cross grain in place of the captive wedge. The difference is that the blocks end up oriented differently when the sticks are inserted. The wedging forces of the captive wedge need to be in line with the grain for maximum strength. On the other hand, end grain does not tap well so the holes for the thumbscrews needed to be bored and tapped cross grain for maximum strength. I bored and tapped a hole centered on each mortise for a #10-32 brass thumbscrew. To keep the screws from marring the faces of the sticks, short sections of 1/8" oak dowel were put in the holes before putting the screws in. The dowels will then provide the clamping pressure on the sticks, not the screws. This picture was taken before the two blocks for the large pair were cut apart.

This was a long overdue project and I see these tools getting a lot of use in the future.

It's not often that I can honestly say I find a gloatable tool. In my mind, in order to be gloatable, the tool needs to meet 2 criteria. It needs to be a special find at a special price. It can be a new tool or old tool but if it doesn't meet both of these criteria, I don't consider it gloatable (i.e. buying a new LN plane at full retail price is not a gloatable purchase in my mind; now if you get one for $50, that's another story).

For awhile now, the only smooth plane in my tool kit has been this one that I made by laminating together two pieces of purpleheart. The two piece design came from John Wheelan's book "Making Traditional Wooden Planes", which I highly recommend if you are into wooden planes. The wedge abutments can be sawn in this arrangement and the design is easier for a first time plane builder to make than a traditional one piece design. Plus, you don't need to find 12/4 stock for the two piece design. You can make do with 6/4. The wedge in this plane is made from a piece of African mahogany. The iron is a double iron made for wooden planes that I purchased from Garrett Wade many years ago (they no longer offer them) and is about 1/8" thick. It's not a bad iron but when I build a new, more traditional plane to replace this one, it will be a single iron version with a laid steel iron from Galoot Tools.

Don't get me wrong, the plane performs fantastically and with it's iron bedded at 50 degrees (York pitch) there are few domestic hardwoods this plane can't handle. It's just not as traditional as I would really like. Prior to building this plane, I used a Stanley type 11 #3 and a Stanley type 9 #4 as my smoothers. However, when I made the switch to all wooden planes and sold off all of my metal planes, my home made smoother became my only smoother. This really didn't bother me because the smoother really isn't used that often in my shop. My fore and try planes are used much more often than the smoother so I was willing to wait for just the right smoother before pulling the trigger on one. I considered the Clark & Williams smoother but my budget just won't allow it. So not needing a new plane, I waited until the perfect deal arrived..

Well, the day finally arrived. While perusing Ebay as I do every now and again, I came upon a smoother that caught my eye. The picture (there was only one) was not terribly good, but there were a few things that jumped out at me that led me to believe that this plane had seen very little use in it's lifetime. The first thing was the crispness of the chamfers. There was very little dubbing of the crisp lines, the wedge looked unmarred and the plane overall looked very clean. The second thing that caught my eye was the height  of the plane. Most old wooden planes are pretty worn and have been reflattened a few times so the plane becomes shorter. This one looked unusually tall in the picture, which to me again meant very little use and possibly a good mouth. Unfortunately from the one picture, I couldn't see the mouth but I decided to take a chance.

Well, I'm glad I did because I was right on all accounts. So, for the princely sum of $11 plus shipping, I got my hands on a basically unused, common pitch smoother. When I got the plane I was very happy at what I found. The bed was basically untouched and still had some soot marks left on it (at least that's what they appear to be to me) where the iron was fitted to the bed (and fit very well I might add). The wedge was pristine with nary a mark. The iron had just a slight hint of mushrooming which was easily removed with a little filing and the iron and cap iron had zero pitting and only extremely minor surface rust. Once cleaned up the iron and cap iron looked brand new. You can actually still see the black left on the iron from the hardening and tempering process.

The plane was shipped with the iron and wedge removed from the plane (which I greatly appreciated) so the last thing I needed to do was put the iron and wedge in and check the mouth. As tight as it was the day it was manufactured. No mouth patch necessary on this baby. I cleaned up the mild dirt and dust (there really wasn't much) with some turpentine and gave her a coat of linseed oil as some parts looked a little dry. It's pretty obvious that this plane has sat indoors on a shelf for a long time. This does bother me some because this sometimes means that the iron was heat treated improperly and won't hold an edge. We'll see about that in a little bit after the oil dries. I'll sharpen it up using my normal hollow grind to about 25 degrees and hone on oil stones method and see what she can do. Even if the iron is heat treated improperly, I think I would send it out to be redone because this plane is so nice that I think it will easily become my go to smoother for normal use. Not a bad find at all.

The built-in doors are done and I ordered the hinges so I've had some free shop time recently. So I've been cleaning up the shop and making a lot of small tools and items for the shop while I wait for the hinges for the built-in doors to be delivered. After putting up some items for sale last week, I was a little surprised that the cast iron saw vise sold as quickly as it did (thanks Dave!). I have had a wooden saw vise on my list of shop projects to build for awhile now. Selling my old iron saw vise caused that project to move up to the top of the priority list so this weekend I cobbled one together.

The entire vise, with the exception of the screw is made from red oak from the B.O.R.G. The top jaw is about 18" wide, twice as wide as the iron vise. This will allow me to file all of my backsaws without constantly repositioning them in the vise. The tops of the jaws stand about 15" above the bench top when clamped in the bench vise. This gets the saw up to a comfortable height for filing while standing up. The vertical member of the front jaw is about 12" long. The vertical member of the rear jaw is about 18" long. This allows the saw to be removed from the saw vise without removing the saw vise from the bench vise (the saw vise is held in the bench vise by the rear jaw only). The vertical member is tenoned and drawbored into the upper jaw with 3/8" oak pegs.

Here you can see how the back vertical is about 6" longer than the front. The front vertical member has a 1-1/2" through hole bored in it and the rear vertical member has a 1-3/8" hole bored and tapped for a 1-1/2" wooden screw. The head of the wooden screw is made from a piece of an old maple hand screw clamp that stripped out. The screw itself is made from a 5" long section of 1-1/2" birch dowel that had threads cut with the 1-1/2" woodthreading kit from Woodcraft. I then added glue to the screw head and screwed the screw into the head. After the glue dried, I drilled a 1/2" through hole through the head and screw for the 1/2" oak dowel handle. After the hole for the handle was bored, I cut the screw head to an octagon shape and filed and sanded it. I bored a 5/8" hole in the bottom of the rear vertical member so the vise can be hung on the wall on a peg when not being used.

With the vise disassembled you can see how the clamping forces work. There is a 1/4" thick piece glued and nailed to the inside bottom of the short vertical member and also to the corresponding location on the long vertical member. I only glued these pieces at the center nail location to allow for wood movement. It's hard to see in these pictures but there is also a 1/4" thick strip glued to the top inside of each jaw. This piece is beveled from top to bottom so that all the clamping pressure is exerted at the very top edge of the jaw. This piece is also planed slightly hollow at the middle so that the outside edges contact the saw plate first and then the compression during tightening of the screw ensures that the saw plate is held securely along its entire length. I finished the entire thing with a coat of Minwax Puritan Pine stain (because I had it from a project from several years ago) to give it a slightly aged look. I may put on some linseed oil tomorrow, however, if I do I will not oil the inside of the top jaw to keep saws from slipping. Mark another one of the round tuit list!