Tool Shopping

Today I went on a bit of a tool shopping spree at Lee Valley and Rockler. The initial motivation was to replace a pair of Crash Scissors I misplaced at Pennsic.

Of course a trip to the tool shop is never safe, even if just on the computer. I ended up finding a list of clamps I had jotted down a few months ago after I read Hand Tools: Their Ways and Workings, so I got those and (oh yes) some hones I've been intending to get since Beauty is using dull knives in the kitchen and I'm carrying a dull knife in my pocket. For good measure I got a dust hood to install on the Radial Arm Saw. So here's the complete list.

From Rockler:

• Tabletop Dust Fitting
• 2 10" Rockler Brand Wooden Hand Screws (at $4.99 each!)

From Lee Valley:

• Sportsman's Hone
• Lee Valley Ceramic Honing Kit
• 2 8" Jorgensen Hand Screws
• 2 12" Jorgensen Hand Screws
• 2 3" C-clamps
• 2 4" C-clamps
• 3 Pairs of Crash Scissors
  

The damage for both purchases combined was about $187. Ouch. I hope to resist buying tools for a while: Christmas is coming and Beauty gets mad when The Beast uses up her good gift ideas.

Photo courtesy of Lee Valley.

First Rabbets with the Moving Fillister

Here's the moving fillister plane with the wedge inserted correctly. Also shavings and a half-decent rabbet (my fifth of the night) as evidence that it works. Seating the blade properly challenged me quite a bit since I'm used to the incremental adjustments on the metal bench planes. When I finally got it seated with a light enough cut, it turned out to be skewed slightly, so in profile this rabbet has a slight slope, like half of a sliding dovetail. That's nothing a chisel won't fix until I get the hang of this tool.

Just a little more playing around, and I'll feel ready to try this on something that matters.

Moving Fillister and Painting Project

As my big summer vacation approaches, I have less time to write. There is such a limited time to complete the projects I have. So I'm going to let pictures speak for me. First: the moving fillister arrived. Perhaps the blades need honing, as Patrick said, but they are the sharpest blades I've ever received on a used tool. The previous owner obviously used this tool, and cared for it well.

Second (and unrelated to woodworking): I've been working on the new shield (someday I'ld like to try making one of these using bent laminated wood, but right now it is T6 aluminum that has been curved with an English Wheel and covered with glued-on canvas).

I'll be working on this for a few more days, finishing the painting, shellacking over it and rigging it to fit comfortably on my arm. The painting you see took me most of yesterday afternoon. What remains is painting the white areas with the finish paint (what you see is the gesso) and touching up of some of the lines. I'm really happy with how this looks; it will be a shame to see it scuffed once I put it to use.

Fettling a Jointer Plane

My shop contains few working power tools. I'm not really a Neanderthal, but the shop has developed accidentally with an emphasis toward hand tools. This is partly because of my penchant for getting things used or free, and partly just bad luck.

For example, I would love to have a working jointer, but the little bench top model I bought for a "bargain" was setup incorrectly by its previous owner, and so far I've been unable to release the blades to adjust them properly (the man must have been a beast, because those screws are not budging, even after multiple WD-40 and Kroil applications). There's no point in trying to joint with blades that are set out of square.

I believe learning a task with hand tools teaches me more about power tools than learning it with power tools teaches me about hand tools. This may or may not prove useful some day, but I've been betting that it will. Hand tools also fettle more quickly than power tools (are power tools fettled?). My band saw, for example has much larger parts and labor requirements before it works to a fine standard than a any bench plane will.

So when it came time to glue up the bench tops for my bench project and I had a choice between driving the three hour round trip to my friend's house to use his power jointer or spending the time fettling my jointer plane and doing it by hand, you can guess which one I chose.

The plane had promise, but it needed some help.

My sole aim was to have both sides of the mouth in the same plane. Right, well even if the puns are unintended, I wanted to make sure the front and back of the mouth would contact any board I'm flattening. To ensure that, I made reference marks in front of and behind the mouth using a Sharpie and started flattening the plane on my "reference" surface.

The reference surface is a cutoff piece of marble that I got free at from a local granite counter manufacturer. It works well as a flattening surface and is heavy enough to hold a length of Klingspor Gold Cloth Roll under the ends using just gravity as an adhesive. The Klingspor sand paper is fairly expensive, especially at this width, but it is so worth the cost. It can be torn to an appropriate length using just a straight edge, it has a good tooth, and you can vacuum it clean and keep using it for quite a while.

With the plane assembled—no blade of course—I planed the surface flat on the sand paper. Here it is: flat enough, with just a hint of the mark left at the front of the mouth (all of that is in a scratch pattern that would take ages to sand flat, so I called it "flat enough").


The blade had apparently been sharpened and polished by its previous owner on a grinder with a felt wheel. Even though it looked good with a finely polished surface, it wasn't good. I had to flatten, square, joint, and resharpen the blade to get it going right.

I'm not going to comment on how this was done, except to say that I don't have a grinder (remember my lack of power tools?) so almost all of this was done on the Gold sandpaper. Ages ago I had purchased a sharpening jig from Lee Valley, and this made it easier to redefine the bevel at the correct angle. I also acquired a really thin metal ruler last year, which made polishing the back of the blade much easier than it might have been: I used the David Charlesworth trick of laying the ruler on one side of the oil stone to hold the back of the blade at a consistent angle and focus the polishing on the end of the blade. It was the first time I had done this, and it worked wonderfully. I'll cheerfully do it again when flattening plane blades, which don't get used as reference surfaces.

After honing on the oil stone, I hoped for the best. And fine, frothy shavings emerged. Success. I was ready to start jointing.

Moving Fillister Purchase

I've been planning to pick up a moving fillister plane for some time, so what better way to celebrate the return from a week-long vacation than to buy one from Patrick Leach. No, I was not fast enough to get WP3 (apparently you need to be quick in this town), but true to his word Patrick has others stock. I'll soon be joining rabbets by hand.

The moving fillister is a flexible solution for cutting rabbets, both with and against the grain. Since it has a built in nicker, it can cut across the grain without tearing out hunks of wood, and can just as easily cut with the grain. If you want to read more about it, Christopher Schwartz extolled its virtues on the Woodworking Magazine blog at the beginning of May.

The Promise of Pinch Dogs

This week I conducted a quick experiment: I jointed a couple of warped scrap bits to see how the pinch dogs I received last Christmas would work. The first thing I learned is that pinch dogs want roughly even surfaces: I knew they could go around corners (for mitered joints or more difficult multi-angle glue-up), but it didn't seem likely that they would work on the ends if the surfaces were not relatively coplanar.

Out came the hand saw (it was late and children were sleeping) and I cut down the longer board to roughly the same length as the shorter board. Then I smeared both edges with glue and started pounding in pinch dogs.

Thats when I learned that this tool could benefit from a little help when being applied. I would have liked to have a couple straight pieces of wood clamped together on each end of the work piece to keep the boards in the same plane. It also would have worked better if the boards were lightly held in place on the bench and had not been cupped (and therefore more like a rocker than a pedestal).

Even with these challenges, I managed to clamp the boards using these glorified staples, and set the assembly aside to dry. That was Monday night. When I came back to it this evening, I set it on the bench and it looked like the picture at the top of the page. The joint looked tight in spite of the trouble I had during glue up, but the rough cut surfaces and misaligned edges could be hiding the reality.

To get a closer look at the joint, I planed the surface down until the joint was revealed. Sure enough, the pinch dogs had done their job and held the joint tight. If you look closely at the picture below, you might see the joint, but it is tightly glued. The holes are visible where two pinch dogs held the joint together on the surface, but there will be many projects where that holes like that will be concealed. I expect to use these for the bench project I'm working on now: the holes won't be visible on the underside of the benches, and I've rough cut the stock long enough that I can trim off the ends after glue up.

Pounce Wheel and Pounce Bag: Another Marking Technique

Christopher Schwartz wrote an article about pouncing a while ago, over at Woodworking Magazine's blog. This is a technique that seems like it could speed the process of transferring dovetails. Probably not significant in a basement shop, but definately relevant to makers who may be laying out and cutting multiple dovetail joints.

In the comments on the article, someone mentioned a pounce wheel:

I've used a pounce (pronounced pöns, I believe) bag before, but never for dovetails.

My usual use for one is to transfer curved patterns from paper to full size templates. The technique is to lay the paper plan onto the template stock, and trace over the line with a pounce wheel. A pounce wheel is a spiked wheel on the end of a stylus. It sort of resembles a Texas cowboy's spur, in miniature. Anyway, the pounce bag is bounced on the row of tiny holes, and a clear dotted line shows up on the template stock, ready to bandsaw to shape.

This is a very cool way to transfer curves from a full-sized paper pattern to a template or workpiece. The pounce wheel is something I've seen when browsing the tools section of the fabric store while my wife improved her stockpile of fabric, so if you want a pounce wheel and don't know where to find it, try calling your local fabric store.

Round Over Edges for the Tensioner

I learned the basics of using Follow Me in Sketchup, and it solves the problem of creating round overs on the tensioner plan I've been struggling with. Now that I know how to use this tool, it's fairly easy. This task that has occupied at least 5 hours of my time can now be completed from scratch in under 5 minutes (with several mistakes). Here's how I do it:

1. Draw a rectangle 1.5 x 6 inches.
2. Using the line tool draw a section 1/2 inch long at the tip.
3. Using the line tool draw a section 1 inch long on the right side.
4. Draw a line connecting the two sections.
5. Delete the resulting triangle.
6. Using the Push tool, extrude the shape to 1.5 inches.
7. Orient the object so I'm looking right at the square end.
8. Using the tape tool, drop a reference line 12.25 inches from each side.
9. In the top left corner, use the arc tool to draw an arc that runs between two intersections and tangent to the sides.
10. Do the same in the bottom left corner.
11. Select Camera, Standard Views, Iso.
12. Orbit slightly if necessary to get a good view of the arc and the area it defines.
13. Select Tools, Follow Me.
14. Click on the small section formed by the arc and the corner.
15. Move the cursor to follow the four edges that want a round over and click when they are all defined.
16. Select Camera, Standard Views, Bottom.
17. Select Camera, Standard Views, Iso.
18. Repeat steps 13 – 15 for the bottom.
19. Select Tools, Dimensions.
20. Add dimensions as needed.

Having learned to do it so quickly and easily, I'm almost embarrassed at the amount of time I spent trying to do this with Intersect Selected and other means. But I'm super excited about the Follow Me tool, which will allow the creation of custom moldings and other details that I couldn't do before.

Quick Victory Celebration: Using Follow Me

You may recall that a few weeks ago I wrote about trying to use Sketchup to draw the tensioner for my inkle loom and again about how I learned a method for visually faking a round over. Well, I think that tonight I figured it out how to make the edges actually rounded. I'll try it tomorrow and if it works, I'll post about how it was done.

Mystic Seaport Shipwright's Shop Tour

A few days ago I posted about our trip to Mystic Seaport. Even though the shop wasn't running, I found it thrilling to walk through the observation deck of the shop and see a tall ship being built (or repaired?) right there. You might also have gathered that I was amazed by the Ship's Saw: a giant bandsaw on which the table remains level and the saw itself is adjusted to create the desired cutting angle.

If your mouth watered at all during that short photo tour, then you'll find a feast at Tom Daniel's blog, A Shipwright in Training, and especially in his blog entry about leaving Mystic Seaport, where he worked as a full time ship wright this past summer. The bandsaw shown above is another ship's saw in the Mystic workshop. The photograph is part of a verbal and visual tour Tom gives of the work space at Mystic. Enjoy!

photo copyright and courtesy of Tom Daniels

Beautiful Old Lathe

A friend picked this up at a yardsale for ten dollars.

It's a nice little Goodell-Pratt lathe with good bearings and almost no rust. Sadly, it will not be used in his shop. Too nice. Too old. Happily, it will not spend time unloved in a leaky barn. Welcome to retirement, little guy.

Boat Sighting at Sauer & Steiner

Konrad just posted pictures of his latest battleship. At least I think that's what it is.

Photograph copyright and courtesy of Konrad at Sauer & Steiner

2008 Woodworker's Gift Ideas - Part 1

Every year I make a short list of gift suggestions, things I believe most woodworkers would enjoy receiving and that I know I would appreciate. If you're shopping for a woodworker, the good news is that there are so many different tools and utilities you'll likely never run out of things to give. But remember: quality matters in the shop. So if you have the choice between giving a bunch of throw away tools or one really marvelous tool, opt for the one.

Without further ado: 2008 Woodworker's Gift Ideas (Part 1)

1. A Marking Knife
   Especially if your woodworker does any handwork, a marking knife is a marvelous tool, and one that can be appreciated in multiples. Lee Valley offers very nice and affordable knives for this purpose, including beveled marking knives and an ultra-affordable, so-called woodworker's knife. Another affordable and excellent option is the Hock marking knife, which can be used as they are or with the addition of a handle. If you have a little bit more to spend, try looking at marking knives from Blue Spruce Toolworks or Superior Works.
2. A combination or engineer's square
   Precision woodworking requires a lot of layout, and a good square allows for careful checking of handwork, not just as a square, but also as a reference surface and a gauge. This is one tool you should not get from your local Home Depot or Lowes, since they generally carry cheep aluminum squares that are easily damaged by the inevitable hardships of being in the shop. If you can, go with a hardened steel version from a reputable maker like Starrett or Brown and Sharpe. The Starrett 12-inch combination square is a reliable choice for mid-sized work. It can also be handy to have a 6-inch combination square and a 4-inch double square.
3. Safety gear
   What can be more flattering than telling your friend or spouse that you like them just the way they are? Safety equipment can help keep them that way. My suggestions include a half-face respirator or a full-face respirator with filters appropriate to the job (you will need different filters depending on whether you are removing solvent fumes or small particles, for example). Another excellent safety option is for ear and eye protection.

That's it for this edition of gift ideas. I'll have more suggestions later.

Photo copyright and courtesy of kellyhafermann.

Review of the New Veritas Small Plow Plane

Alf at The Cornish Workshop has posted a review of the new Veritas Small Plow Plane. Philly also has one of these planes in hand and posted a pre-review of the plane with a promise to post more later. Looks like a solid and usable plane, even if Alf doesn't like the feel of it.

Picture courtesy of Lee Valley Tools and Veritas

Three Lists of Essential Tools

Over at Lumberjocks yesterday, Tim Dorcas put up a blog entry about what tools a beginning woodworker might want to buy if the spending limit was $1000. It is primarily a power tool list, but a great exercise in prioritizing shop tools. I posted a comment about what a more minimalist shop might look like, but in principle I agree that Tim listed a set of tools that allows a wide range of work and will get you started.

I always enjoy this kind of list because it gets me thinking. Another great example is a list that Christopher Schwartz posted a while back. This won't fit a $1000 limit, but it gives a sense of what might be important in a more blended shop.

Finally, while trying to dig up Chris's post, I found another from Robert Lang that you can ponder. Enjoy!

Photo of violin maker's tools courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and Just Plain Bill

Faking a Roundover in Sketchup

I continue to work on learning Sketchup as a tool for creating my woodworking plans. Last week I posted about the difficulty I'm having creating a roundover on the tensioner of my Inkle Loom plans. I've concluded that "Intersect with selected", while it works in theory, is not the easiest way to do this. Follow Me seems like should be easier, but I haven't learned to use the Follow Me well enough to achieve this.

While browsing Design. Click. Build., I discovered a trick that looks right, even though it isn't: edge softening. For many woodworking plans, this method is good enough for indicating a roundover, as seen in the picture above. Even though the edges on the white tensioner aren't rounded, they appear to be. The lack of rounding is only evident at the corners: notice the rounding of the back corners on the blue tensioner, and the squareness of the same corners on the white tensioner.

Here's how this fake roundover was accomplished:

1. I drew a new tensioner without the round edges. This was easier than trying to remove the rounded edges on the first tensioner.
2. On every face I wanted to look rounded I used the offset tool to add an offset 1/8" from the edge. This gave a stopping point for the softening effect I planned to use.
3. Using the Erase tool, I softened the edges. To do this I positioned the eraser over an edge that needed softening, pressed [Ctrl], and clicked the Eraser on the line. This hides the line and softens the edge
   
4. After all the edges were softened, I used the Select tool to select the offset lines, right click, and select Hide.

The results are good enough for my application, but I'm going to keep working on edge rounding until I can apply a real roundover if I ever need it. Many thanks to Dave Richards at Design. Click. Learn.!

Sketchup for Woodworking Plans

Until recently I drew all of my woodworking plans in Visio, a process that was often time-consuming and difficult to execute. On the LumberJocks site and in a Taunton community blog, called Design. Click. Build., there was a lot of chatter about using Sketchup instead. So I installed the free version of Sketchup about a month ago and started rendering plans with the new tool.

"Started rendering plans" sounds easy, and Sketchup does make many drawing and dimensioning tasks as easy as hammering a nail. But, as they say, the devil is in the details: the tool has a full and flexible feature set that suggests myriad woodworking design applications, and tempts you to include complex moldings and finicky details (like the brads that hold on a moulding or the threads of a screw). Adding these details becomes as challenging as cutting your first dovetails.

I'm attempting a plan for the inkle loom I built several years ago. With the body of the loom built in Sketchup, I'm working on the arm that adjusts warp tension on the loom. This has proved more challenging, and I've finally given up on rendering it exactly as I want it: the back edges should be curved in the same manner as the front edges, and the full end should be rounded over. Using a combination of the Follow Me tool and Intersect tool I know it should be possible to do this, but I can't seem to do it without losing skin on the curves.

In spite of the challenges, I won't be going back to Visio.

Here's a copy of Tensioner.skp. Feel free to play with it, and if you know how to round those other edges, please post a comment to let me know.

New Blade and Continued Adjustments

I've continued work on setting up the Radial Arm Saw, and it is getting close to complete. On Wednesday morning I picked up a new blade (8 1/2" thin-kerf finishing blade, appropriately from DeWalt) and I'm anticipating the first cuts (which will be on the MDF for the sacrifice table top).

Last night I continued adjustments to the machine so that it will be precise in its cuts. First, I adjusted the 90° setting by pulling out my combination square, releasing the clamp for lateral adjustment, and carefully aligning the blade trajectory with the square. I think this came out well, but we'll get to test it once the sacrifice table is on.

Then I started making the first of two horizontal blade settings: front to back. This took a while because I misunderstood what Wally Kunkel was describing in his book, Mastering the Radial Arm Saw. I found the three allen screws on the yoke, loosened them as described, and spent a while wondering how this was supposed to modify the angle from side to side. Once I realized that I was supposed to be monitoring the front to back angle, I could actually judge my progress and I got the saw blade lightly touching the reference block on both front and back, as shown in the photograph above.

Next (and perhaps last) I will be adjusting the side to side angle so that the horizontal blade setting will parrallel the table in all axes (plural of axis, not plural of chopping implements). Hopefully I'll get some time Sunday after our camping trip.

Radial Arm Saw Table Partially Installed

Removing the Old Table Levelling the New Table

About a year and a half ago I bought a Radial Arm Saw, but I have never used it because the table was in such rough shape. In January, I started the project of replacing the table. The old one was removed and brought up to New Hampshire, where I worked with my freind, Sean, to assemble the new "Mr. Sawdust" table for the saw. On Saturday, Sean brought the Radial Arm Saw's table down from New Hampshire and left it on my front porch. On Thursday I figured out proper screw placement, drilled the holes and attached it to the supports.

So today, when I had the day off, I decided to work toward completion. The stand (as I mentioned last week) needs to be replaced, but I made do by installing a shelf for increased stability (and storage). I also wanted to raise the table height above the benchtop next to it, so I cut and attached a plywood top where the saw used to just sit on top of the 2x4 legs. After a trip to the hardware store for bolts, I attached the saw base to the new stand top and attached the table supports to the base. The picture here shows the arbor turned toward the table for use as a fixed reference for relative levelling. After about two hours fidgeting with it, I have it to the point where the arbor rides about a paper's width above any point on the table. We're nearly ready for blast off!

Bench for the Radial Arm Saw

Soon I will have the table mounted back on the Radial Arm Saw, which for now is the only stationary saw in my shop. Once it is mounted, I'm going to build a new bench for it that does not wobble and places it at the same hieght as the workbench it sits next to. I'm thinking I'll build it like the low cost benches being built by Robert Lang, at Popular Woodworking.

Portable Workbench

Just found a workbench that will be useful for woodworkers who have to set up on sites that are not their home shop. Check this out:

http://www.blumtool.com/pages/benchhorse.html

"New" Chisel Set on the Way

This set of chisels (most of them) were my grandfather's and handed down to me by my father. The box used to have metal clips to hold the chisels in, and it hurt my ears and and my heart every time I put one in or took it out of the box.

When they came to me, the chisels weren't in good shape and the box was held together with duct tape. They were somewhat rusted, poorly sharpened (if at all), and I have a strong feeling I might have opened a paint can with one of them when I was a teenager. A couple of the handles were unsalvagable. I wanted to have these available for use sooner rather than later and didn't have the time or equipment (lathe) to restore them. Those of you that know Scott out in Happy Camp: the case refit and the chisel refurishment was his work. He also had a chisel that completed the set and added in a scratch awl to fill the box.

Can't wait to get my hands on them. Thanks, Scott!

Building the Radial Arm Saw Table

One common reason why woodworkers don't like their radial arm saws is the condition or quality of the table being used for a worksurface. Gauranteed, if the saw has been used more than a few times, the table top has saw kerfs in it that compromise its flatness and functionality. A well-built replacement table eliminates that headache and adds to the usability of the tool.

Construction started yesterday on the table for my radial arm saw. The design comes from Wally Kunkel's book, How to Master the Radial Arm Saw, which can be found at www.mrsawdust.com.

Here's a summary of the construction: one 3/4" and one 1/2" layer of best quality plywood laminated together with steel supports epoxied into cut slots—this adds rigidity to the table and has the added benefit of keeping the layers lined up. On the front section, where saw kerfs generally become a problem, glue or tack down a replaceable layer of 1/4" MDF.

Properly done, the sub-table should be flat and rigid enough that the table can be used as a reference surface (just like on a table saw), and the MDF skin protects the structure and allows easy repair whenever the surface gets too dicey for accurate work.

1/4" Hardboard: extinct?

The local big box stores have stopped carrying 1/4" hardboard. It now seems to be a choice of 3/16" hardboard or 1/4" MDF. So I've substituted 1 @ 2' x 4' x 1/4" MDF on the list of radial arm saw table parts.

Radial Arm Saw Table

With the help of my friend Sean, the parts list for the Radial Arm Saw table is complete:

1 @ 24" x 48" x 3/4" Finnish Birch Plywood
1 @ 24" x 48" x 1/2" Finnish Birch Plywood
1 @ 24" x 48" x 1/4" Tempered Hardboard
3 @ 6' x 1/8" x5/8" Steel Strips
Bottle of Wood Glue (at last, something I have just lying around)
2-3 packages of 2 part Epoxy.

I also need to check how the old table is attached. I might need 4-6 threaded inserts for mounting the table. The list is the easy part: now I need to run around getting all this stuff and put it together.

Fibonacci Series and Fibonacci Calipers

During a gift exchange in which I participated, one of the recipients received a cryptic object: four pieces of wood, three of them pointed, all rivetted together into a type of caliper. This turned out to be a Fibonacci gauge, used for laying out the ratio of roughly 1:1.618 (also called the Golden Mean).

This got me wondering about the Fibonacci series. A quick browse around the Web returned this marvelous video explanation of the Fibonacci Series, the standard Wikipedia entry, and an entry from Linsay Staniforth's (sadly inactive) woodworking blog. All are "fun with numbers", even if you aren't a mathematician. But the caliper is a practical application of that fun, allowing you to find and create golden ratios quickly and easily.

You can buy a premade Fibonacci gauge, but you can also make your own using this simple plan. Once you have the gauge, take a quick spin of the Wood Magazine video on using a Fibonacci gauge. I almost gaurantee you'll be as excited as I am about making or otherwise acquiring this little tool.

Picture by Keith De'Grau, courtesy of handamerican.com

P.S. Found another good post on the Golden Section.