Panel Gauge

I recently acquired a couple of old tools from eBay.

New stash.

So I went a bit nutso (thanks for the term, Ralph). Sue me.

I'll get to more of these treasures in future posts, but one particular gem from this batch is one of the panel gauges. I couldn't see the pattern on the auction listing, I just thought it was a nice size.

It turns out, it has some style.

I am not sure of the species of the arm, but the head seems to be beech, and it has a boxwood wedge. There is also a boxwood insert on the cutting edge. Unfortunately, when the original cutter wore down, some yahoo drove a nail through the arm which caused a small split.

I think it looks very cool! It seems also to be comfortable in the hand, too. Plus, it will be easy to make. I think I'll make one at some point when my list of things that need to be built dwindles down some.

In case any of you would like to give it a whack first, here is a scan. The arm on this one is a bit over an inch wide, and is rounded on both the top and bottom, requiring the oval mortise seen in the scan.

Send a photo if you make one, and let me know what you think.

Celebrity Deathmatch! Toolerable: 0 - The Frau: 1

You'll never guess what kept me out of the shop today.

I was busy building furniture.  Or, more accurately,  a furniture-shaped object.

SWMBO (She Who Must Be Obeyed) has been bugging me for years for a new shoe cabinet.  We have been thinking about a design, it is just that shoe cabinets over here in Germany tend not to be the most convenient things to put shoes in.

Our old shoe cabinet we got at some discout store somewhere.  For as big and ugly as it was, it didn't really hold that many shoes.

I have been meaning to make one, essentially in the style of a bookcase with some doors.  Except for shoes.

I think knocking it together with some nails would be just fine.

The problem is I have about 25 different things on my list of things to make that are in front of this project (most of which I'm not too excited about).

The Frau wants a new shoe cabinet, NOW!

She picked out a couple from a catalog, and I begrudgingly picked one out with her.  It was delivered yesterday, so today I took it out of the box.

Some assembly required.

I hate this stuff, but at the moment it is necessary.  I would really love to have a household full of beautiful furniture that I built myself, that will last forever, but we just aren't quite there yet.

My big problem with this stuff is that it is designed to last about two years before it totally gives up.  That's fine for an apartment dweller who moves every once in a while.  I like the idea of more permanent stuff.

And I also thought this was a laugh:

Doesn't this make you feel happy and green?

I could build a cabinet out of endangered rosewood that would last forever and have a lower environmental impact than this cabinet.  This particle board is supposed to be thrown out after two years when it dies.  A decent piece of furniture from my bench should last generations.

Anyway, here is the final product, it should make The Frau happy.

It will probably motivate me to make a proper shoe cabinet.

15 Minute Project

I know, I know.  I usually post about the projects I do with hand tools from my tiny shop.

Well, I needed a split nut driver for some saw handles.  There are a couple commercial ones out there - Lie Nielsen and Gramercy come to mind - but I didn't want to wait for shipping and my local Dictum store doesn't carry one.

So, I decided to make one.  I saw on the internet that someone else had made one from an old 1/2" spade bit.  It turned out beautiful, and didn't look too hard.

So, on my way home from work the other night, I stopped in the Army woodshop on my post and came up with this in the 15 minutes I had available to me.

My 15 minute wonder.

How did I make this in 15 minutes with hand tools, you ask?

I didn't.

I ground the tip off of a 12mm spade bit with an electric grinder, shaped the tip on the small belt sander attached to said grinder (until it fit the split nut that I had), ground the notch with a dremel tool, chopped a bit of scrap maple to length with the electric chop saw, drilled the hole in the handle with a drill press, inserted the bit with a friction fit, and shaped the handle freehand with the monster belt sander.

Then I hopped in the car and drove home.

All I did by hand in my shop was my latest favorite finish:  burnish with a polissoir, dunk in the boiled linseed oil, wait a day and follow with a coat of Dick wax.

Now I can get on with some hand-tool work.

Polite Disagreement

Today I read a blog post by Paul Sellers that I would like to offer an alternate view of.

If you haven't heard of Paul Sellers, he is one of the big names in hand tool woodworking at the moment. He has schools in both the UK and the US, and seems to be making a lot of converts to hand tool woodworking by cutting out much of the B.S. and marketing prevalent in many publications today.

I'll not argue with his results.  I'll not argue with his vast experience. I'll not argue with his success, nor the success of his students. I really don't want to argue with him at all!

Paul Sellers is good for woodworking today, as he has been able to reach a lot of people. I love his YouTube videos.

Paul Sellers is a big fan of the Stanley #4. Older ones, not the new ones. I can't argue with what he does with that tool. One of his best YouTube series is about making a workbench in the back yard with home center lumber, and the only plane he uses is a #4. Brilliant.

His blog today has a question from one of his readers on whether or not a bevel up plane is a good first plane, as many state. He argues that a woodworker's first plane should be a #4, that it is much more versatile than a bevel up plane, and argues with the fact that a 25 degrees is much too low for a plane like this.

Here is my take. I advocate a first plane being a jack plane, and a bevel up jack is a more-than-valid choice. But not the only one. You can read about why I think this in a post I did a while back about what I think should be in a beginner's tool kit. Essentially, you can fudge both smoothing and jointing with a jack plane without too much new to learn.

I think jointing with a #4 smoothing plane is something that a beginning woodworker may have a little more trouble getting the hang of.

Oftentimes for beginners, cost is also prohibitive. Here is where Paul wins big points. An old, rusty smooth plane can be purchased for the fraction of the cost of a new Lie-Nielsen. But, let's look a bit closer. He also advocates in this article getting a #5, a #4 1/2, and a #5 1/2. I'll agree that in the UK you can get these four planes in good shape for a lot less. But, in the US getting these planes in the kind of shape that you will be able to get working as a beginner might cost quite a bit more than a brand new bevel up jack. I think the big advantage here goes to the premium manufacturer.

My Veritas BU jack in action

If you get a BU jack made either by Lie Nielsen or Veritas, you can reasonably expect to go straight to work with this tool right out of the box only having honed the blade. You can't say that about a vintage tool no matter how new it looks. Don't get me wrong, it isn't hard, but it is another skill you need to acquire as a beginner, and I think you should learn woodworking first.

Also a word about the 25 degree thing. I grind my BU jack blade at 25 degrees (or so). The reason I do this is because of the way I sharpen. I think that this is probably what most BU enthusiasts also do. I sharpen and hone a microbevel at 30 degrees. This is the angle that Paul Sellers recommends. His method for sharpening is a lot different than mine, but we both get to the same angle when the blade hits the wood. I know people who use and swear by his method. If it gets to sharp, and you can do it, then you are doing it right, in my book.

The real versatility with this BU jack is the fact that it is so easy to make that microbevel any angle you want. What I do is have a few different blades sharpened at different angles depending on what the application is.  Changing the angle on a bevel down plane involves back bevels.

In conclusion, I think I will say there are many different ways a beginner can go with a plane intended for multiple uses.  The argument for a bevel up plane is valid because in my opinion there is no better way to turn off a new woodworker than for him or her to think that it is too hard.  Indeed there are skills to learn in order to build furniture (part of the fun), but adding skills needed to set up a finicky vintage tool to the mix might be one hurdle too many for the average newbie getting their only information from the internet. There isn't only one way to learn woodworking.

What are your thoughts?

Crashing the Party

Last week when Christopher Schwarz was here, I only got to attend his bowsaw class.  It was fantastic.  There was a couple of extra spaces in his class for the Roorkhee chair, but unfortunately I could not get out of work.

The good news was, I had a couple of mornings during that class where I could sneak away.  I totally crashed the class, and snapped a couple photos for the couple of hours I was there.

Chris started the class with a presentation on Roorkhee chairs.  Many of us had already sat through the presentation at the beer garden the night before.

A word about marking parts.

You can totally tell who has seen this presentation on sharpening before.

Chris started out one day with a primer on sharpening.  This photo is funny because there are several people in this class that have been in Chris' previous classes at Dictum.  Everyone in the back who looks like they aren't paying attention have heard this class before.  Don't misunderstand, it is more like they are making room for those new guys who haven't seen it yet.

I really wish I would have been able to take this class, the project looks like a lot of fun, and I have zero experience with leather.  I think I will make one of these at some point, though.  If I get stuck, I know a couple people that were in the class that can show me what to do.

One other amusing anecdote from the class, one day Martin, a student that was also in the bowsaw class with me, was setting his tools up when he arrived.  I started to make fun of him a little bit when he was carrying his tool kit around in a blue IKEA bag.

My mouth dropped when he showed me what he was carrying in there:

Chris wrote about these planes on his Lost Art Press blog.  I didn't get a chance to use them much, but I could hardly quit gawking at them.  These are some seriously heavy planes.  And pretty.

Martin's tool porn wasn't only relegated to planes.  He also had a beautiful Two Lawyers saw.  It turns out this saw is on their homepage, as their header.  Lucky thing, because I forgot to take a picture.  It is spalted Correlian birch, with 17 tpi.  It is just as stunning, if not moreso, in person.

It turns out that Martin is WoodWurm, and has his own webpage where you can see much of his tool porn. 

I think this is one of the great things about taking woodworking classes, you never know who you are going to meet.  A few of the woodworkers I have been to classes with over the last couple years have wood blogs.  Check them out:

Mulesaw
The Plane Doctor
Wood & Glue

I probably missed a couple, so feel free to post links in the comments.

Bowsaw Class - Final Day

Too bad this was only a two day class.  It was a lot of fun.

Chris designed this project to be a one day class.  I'm glad we were there for two, as I don't think I would have been able to finish this project in one.

My completed bowsaw.

Dictum had a nice supply of elm for us to make this saw.  I hadn't ever used elm, so I looked forward to it.  On paper, this should be a fantastic wood for a saw due to it's strength and flexibility.

In reality, this wood is fairly difficult to work, which left most of the shaping up to rasps.  I have to say that I am a lot better at rasping to a line now than I was before.

I also took advantage of a few machines that were in the shop since I was there.  I used a bandsaw and the spindle sander to get the parts cut out after laying out the patterns.  I also used a drill press for the hole that the handle went in, and also for the handles to mount the hardware.  Lastly, I used the lathe (for my first experience turning) for the handles.

The rest of the work involved rasping the parts to the layout lines, filing the rasp marks smooth (maybe use some sandpaper to finish that job), and scraping the sanded part smooth.

My saw was a bit unique from the rest in that my bench partner had some boxwood scraps that he gave me (thanks, Andreas!), so i turned my handles and shaped my toggle from boxwood, and I didn't like the look of the synthetic strings that were provided for tensioning the saw, so I used some old twine that must have been left over from when you wrapped postal packages with this stuff.  I think it looks a bit more traditional this way.

Watching the first completed bowsaw take a cut.

I did have one problem with mine.  After final assembly, the handle rotated way too freely in the saw.  CS and I were both stumped as how to fix it (this only happened with my saw).  We tried a few different things including coating the hole with epoxy, filling it up with saw dust, etc.  Finally, the only thing that seemed to work was to place a piece of tape over the hole and jam the brass bit in over the tape.  It seems to hold now.

I think what happened is the inside of the hole was contaminated with wax after I finished it.  I think you could avoid this problem if you were careful.  Alternatively, you could wait until the saw is finished before boring the holes for the hardware.

The class was great.  Nearly everyone left with a completed saw.  No one accidentally stabbed themselves with a mortise chisel.  

I wish I had more pictures of the second day, but I was really stressing that I wouldn't finish this project, so rather than dink around taking pictures all day, I was on a mission to finish this thing.  The only other photo I got was of a couple other vintage bowsaws that were brought to class:  my Swedish bowsaw (a gift from Jonas), and a beautiful English bowsaw that fellow student Bernard brought with him.  

This bowsaw was a great project, and it is a project that could easily be done in your shop.

Bowsaw Class - Day 1

My turning saw course  at Dictum with Christopher Schwarz has begun!  Yesterday was the first of this  two day course, and so far it has been great.

CS actually designed this class to be a one-day class, so there is plenty of time.  I think I like this pace, as there never seems to be enough time at woodworking classes.  Both of the classes I took before (the tool chest class and the workbench class) found me in a constant state of feeling I needed to hurry up because I was  a bit behind.  It's great to be motivated and to stay busy, but half the fun of these things is wandering around BSing with fellow woodworkers, and looking at their tools.

Dictum, as always, has been great so far.  The stock they chose for us to construct these saws from is elm.  I find this wood a bit of a challenge, but it should be fine wood for a saw.  The location is not bad, either.  Due to the flooding at their shop in Niederalteich, this year's class was moved to the shop in Munich.  This shop is a lot smaller, but we are making due.  Indeed, I find a few benefits to this shop, including the fact that it is within walking distance to my house.  Also, the Dictum retail shop is right across the hall. 

For anyone who is interested, there are still a few empty slots for Chris' Roorkhee chair class starting Wednesday.  Contact Dictum for more details.

A little cramped, but I think everyone found the space they needed.

My progress at the end of the day.  BTW, I think I will buy some new files and rasps.

Some of the most fun happens out of the shop.