Bow Saw

Here are is a photo of the bow saw I built. The hardware, pinned blades, and plans are from Tools For Working Wood. I have lots of small pieces of old hard maple (recycled gym floor) so I used that instead of hickory that the TfWW plan calls for. So far the maple has worked well. But I'm not sure I'm tensioning this down as far as I should. I've used the ping-test - tightening until I can pluck the blade, and it gives a clear note rather than a dull thud. Having never seen a working bow saw, I don't know if this is tight enough, or if I need to gather my courage and tighten farther and really test the strength of these maple arms.

I drilled the holes for the pins in the dead dry, middle of winter. By the time I finished the saw the humidity was rising, and the holes expanded just enough so the saw would not always stand upright. So I glued two small disks of leather, one to the handle, and the other to the frame. When the saw is under tension those hold nicely.

If you're interested in trying a bow saw, there's lots of good info on design considerations at the link above. Their plan is available free from their site, and includes full-size drawings in pdf form. Their brass pins and pinned blades are a great solution if, like me, you want to focus on the woodworking and not have to mess with the metal working that would otherwise be needed to make this saw.

Workbenches book by Schwarz

I have a personal requirement to put at least one photo in my posts about ww. Since I'm without my camera and my iPhoto this week, I'm posting about something other than my own work. Sorry no pictures today.

I've been rereading parts of Christopher Schwarz's book Workbenches: From Design & Theory to Construction & Use lately. In my opinion this is the book to read if you're thinking about making or purchasing a bench any time soon. There are lots of glowing reviews of the book out there. But even though Schwarz is a wonderful writer, what I think is the key to the success of this book has not been mentioned in any of the reviews I've read. And I've read a bunch of them.

The key, imo, is this. If you want to use hand tools, namely planes, on your work, you need to hold the work down to your bench so the surface being worked is facing up. That's not the case if you're using a router or a plate joiner. And there are three kinds of work-holding situations, each needing something different from your workbench. Think about planing each side of a kitchen cabinet door. There are three kinds of sides: the large flat face, the long edge, and the short edge. How would you hold that door firmly enough to plane each of those surfaces? Oh, and on the large face, you need to be able to plane in all directions. Not just along the grain. That's one of the places my current bench really falls down.

Schwarz's book discusses many ways to achieve all of those workholding needs. One of the reviewers I read said, "you'll never look at a workbench the same again." And that's definitely true for me.

Practice Dovetails

It's been too long since I posted. While I've been distracted from blogging, I have been doing a decent amount of woodworking. Back in February and March I got one-third of the way through my plan to cut 30 practice dovetails.

I was amazed at how much I learned and how much things improved while cutting just ten. As the photo shows, I started cutting just two large tails and one center tail - very simple. The wood is recycled oak. Not the easiest for practicing, but it's pretty thin. After five like that I went to three tails and two inner pins. I also started out chopping out all the waste with chisels. Then I switched to cutting it out with a coping saw, and then paring to the line with chisels. That seems to be a bit quicker, and gives fewer opportunities to mess up the "show" line.


Here are my tools. Very basic stuff. Ironically, I don't even have a dovetail saw I like. I have a decent japanese saw. But I don't like the ergonomics on straight-handled saws. I also have a very fine-toothed gent's saw - same kind of handle. Shown is my Simonds cross-cut saw.

Learning From Teaching

I've heard a number of fine woodworkers say they usually learn something while teaching woodworking to others. Last night I saw a small example of how that works. It was Sunday evening and we had a little time in the shop before bedtime. And the Boy thought it sounded fun to try cutting a dovetail.

Let me make it clear that I have no business teaching anyone how to cut dovetails by hand. I think I've cut a grand total of six my whole life, and they've all been of the "practice" variety. But my student didn't care. He just thought it was fun learning to cut to a line.

He cut the tail lines (tails-first dogma taught here) with the saw. We didn't have much time so he just chopped out one of the tail-spaces. He worked nicely on the first side, starting with very small chips so as to not bruise the line that will show. Then he progressed to more aggressive pounding and larger chips until he was about half-way through. We flipped the board over and he started the same process on the other side. He took a couple small chips, then started to take a couple aggressive whacks with the mallet. I thought, "That's too soon. He's going to ruin the line. (That's not the way I've done it on the six joints I cut.)" Another strong whack, and snap, the waste popped out. And the line was still nice and clean. We both said something like, "wow that went fast."

After eveyone else was in bed (even the shop beast didn't visit) I cut practice dovetail number seven, and it went quite a bit quicker than number six.

Fiasco

At this months meeting of the Mn Woodworkers Guild we ... umm, we. Well, I know what was on the schedule. But for a number of reasons I didn't attend the official meeting. Six or seven other guild-members and I went to the wrong building. That building being the site of several past guild meetings. The room we normally use was being used by a running club. The eight of us lost guild members found each other wandering in the halls and then wandered around together being sure we were in the right building, just needing to find the right room.

Apparently eight is enough to start up some illogical mob-mentality. We found a couple custodians, got them to open a room for us just down the hall from the room we usually use. We found a white-board and wrote "woodworker's guild" on it, and posted it in the hall outside our new room. We had started our own meeting, of sorts. By this time it was about half-hour after the real meeting started. So it's unclear to me what all of this was supposed to accomplish.

I am still without a cell phone (yeah me!) so I got one of the guys who had an internet-phone to look up the meeting info from our website. One of the other guys knew the area well enough to figure out that we were at the old Edina Community Center, and that the official meeting was at the new Edina Community Center a mile or two away. Many of the group headed off to the meeting. I really dislike arriving anywhere late. It was snowing pretty hard, and we still didn't know the room number of this other large building. Not liking the prospect of arriving maybe an hour-and-a-half late to an hour-and-a-half long meeting I headed home fairly frustrated.

I got home and had a little time to myself. So the dog and I cut a practice dovetail. That made me feel a lot better.

Mailbox

Finished the latest project: the cute mailbox from this plan at popularwoodworking.com.

It's made from oak scraps left from what my son might call "the evil deck project" for which I used recycled oak timbers. So I guess that could make this doubly recycled.

My client was initially not keen on the decorative detail on the front. The article-writer claimed it was inspired by Scottsman Charles Rennie Mackintosh, which I can see. It has the feel of both Arts & Crafts, and art nouveau, which were his thing. Knowing what my client wants better then she does, I went ahead with the decoration anyway. And it was well-received upon delivery. ;-)

I no longer buy exotic woods. But I had a thin piece of padouk left from before I decided to be strict about that. And padouk is what I used for the red parts of the flower. The green parts were the same oak as the rest of the box dunked in green dye.


It's fairly simple otherwise. Though I didn't pass up the opportunity to use my plow plane, substituting rabbets for the butt joints the plan called for. And even though there are only eight screws in the thing, that was enough for me to break one. Does anyone know of a class on installing screws?

Rotten Eggs

On the mailbox I recently finished there are copper hooks underneath to hold larger things. I made these by pounding one-inch copper pipe flat. My son thought pounding the pipe flat was great fun for a while and helped with that step.

To take the shine off the pipe and give it a bit of age, I used barium sulfide using the recipe out of David Marks' "Gilding and Chemical Patinations" video. My daughter really liked this part. Just wiping the pipe with a towel dampened with the chemical caused it to darken to a grey-purple in a minute or two. Much longer than that and it ended up looking a lot like blued gun-metal. It was a fun little science project for her. But her favorite part was the smell - really strong boiled eggs smell. It was so strong it seemed to me more like rotten eggs.

A Newsletter For Galoots

The folks at Fine Tool Journal have started a web newsletter that looks promising. The plan is for it to be posted quarterly, and this first edition features an article by my favorite ww blogger Christopher Schwarz. It's worth a look for those interested in hand tools.

If you like old tools but are trying to pinch pennies (hand raised), don't click on the "Old Tool Sale" link. You've been warned.

Cherry Spoon

I tried to take a decent photo of my best spoon so far. You might notice a similarity in composition to Robin Wood's nice photos of his even nicer spoons.

This was carved with knives and a little hand sanding. Spoon is about nine inches long, of cherry with linseed oil.

A Bit Of Design

In Wille Sundqvist's (out of print) book Swedish Carving Techniques he says that carving spoons is a good way to learn design. I'm one heck of a design noob. But I think I might have learned something while carving a few spoons. The photos show the progression in my last four, with the most recent on the right. The three on the right are my best attempt at carving in the Swedish style taught by Wille in his book and by Fred Livesay in a class I took last summer. That style has a sort of keel on the under-side of the handle where it is thin just before the bowl of the spoon. The keel allows the spoon to have a nice profile and still be very strong.


When I look at the handles of the middle two spoons, of the end paddle-like part I think they look aimless, like they're not going anywhere. On the most recent spoon, each part seems to be doing something, or to have a point, if that makes any sense.

The left three are of birch, the right spoon is nine inches long, and was made of cherry. All were soaked in food-safe linseed oil.

Magic Green Stick

It's recorded here: I found my darned stick of magic green honing compound. I've bought two of these now (lost them both) and was beginning to think I would be buying a third. But the other day I was sharpening something, and I found this one sitting innocently on the shelf of my sharpening center right where it belongs. Either I'm crazy or it wasn't there the last couple months. I'd wonder about elves except projects are definitely not getting done any faster lately, and the shop is still a mess.

Tool Buying

I still consider myself to be kind of a beginning woodworker. But I've been doing this long enough that I try to focus on the use of, rather than the buying of tools. Talk about buying a specific tool is boring to those who already own one, and boring to everyone who isn't going to buy one. Who does that leave? Well, me in this case. And this was kind of a big deal for me, so hear goes. I'll try to keep if fairly painless.

I bought a mortiser yesterday. And not a little bench-top model, but a big one (for an amateur). For quite some time I wasn't sure I wanted a mortiser. To keep this short, let's just say that I finally decided I should have one. I mean The Schwarz uses mortisers, so I figure it's ok. And for a couple years I've been keeping my eye on them, thinking about how much to spend, and where I would put it in my small shop.

Then yesterday I found what was, until recently, a $900 machine (before taxes or shipping fees), that I could get shipped to me for $380 after $150 in Jet rebates. I had seen this same tool from Amazon last week for $550 minus the rebates. But shipping would have been another $150. I was strong and I resisted. But this deal yesterday was just too much. I think the rebates are good through the end of December if you're wanting to make square holes too.

One thing that wasn't addressed by all these discounts and rebates is where exactly this will go in my shop.