Something that I think is important to new woodworkers is understanding their wood and learning about the species they work with early on in their woodworking. For the general carpenter working in construction, he will generally be working with softwoods like pine and fir, spruce and such. Trim moulding modular homes mass made in factories…
I plane 99% of my end grain freehand, accurately working to my knifewalls on four sides I can’t remember the last time I used a full shooting board. I use that more for mitring. Wide boards of six inches and more end-grain planing is of course the easiest to do. You have a long runway…
When I had hoards of school children come to visit me in my workshop, 7-10 year-olds, several days a week, I developed many ways to show how tools worked on wood to true and trim, smooth and shape. We counted saw strokes together and felt the wood fibres before and after planing and sawing. If…
The steeper the bevel is on a plane or chisel the more resilient the cutting edge will be but depending on how you use the blade will affect how it feels in the wood. Bevel down and with the blade elevated as in a bevel-down plane will make no difference. Bevel up, as in bevel-up…
Was it cost-effective to reharden the plane iron after its many years of service? Of course, it was! Of course, it wasn’t. What made it well worth it is nothing to do with a financial cost but something I see as an intrinsic yet immeasurable value: imprinting. I consider imprinting yourself into an object you…
This is my prototype, though it fully mirrors my final version to a tee. This one was finished last week but it stood there as a box for three weeks glued up, planed, sanded and finished with shellac. In preparing for a final rub down ready for waxing with furniture polish I noticed a slight…
I will start this blog by saying I am a full-time woodworker and that necessitates much part-time metalworking for several good reasons. This extension from my last blog is to bring you up to date on taking charge of to-soon-dulling plane irons be they new or old and described as ‘vintage’ on eBay to give…
Actually, they mostly remain the same as when they were first made, hardened and tempered at the business end. Moving along from hardened steel at the first inch of the cutting end to the softer metal further away inevitably results in reaching soft and unhardened steel. Moving up the steel an inch or so from…
There will be a percentage of you promising makers who are looking for more than I am prepared to give you and an explanation might be helpful. In furniture making, there are many a thousand different styles and anyone studying furniture making will soon discover that there is the simplicity of vernacular furniture made in…
Someone asked if, “…Paul ever cuts any of his tenons to fit directly from the saw?” and I do, if or when I want to. Yesterday I did a couple like that out of the sixteen that I did cut and fit in reasonably quick succession. But when I cut several tenons of the same…