NWA Showcase

Sorry, no pictures.

I didn't know that I would be able to get up to the NWA Showcase in Saratoga Springs until yesterday sometime.  I was only able to go for about four hours this morning, from 10 to 2, but it was well worth the 2.5 hour drive each way.  I spent about an hour and a half in a presentation by Pete Follansbe, whom I respect quite a bit. 

Sadly, due to the way the room was set up and the audience his presentation was geared toward, I feel that I could have benefited more from Chris Schwarz's presentation that was at the same time.  I say that because I follow Mr. Follansbe's blog, and have spent hours reading the archives, so I was already familiar with 99.9% of what he discussed (it appeared that the majority of the rest of the audience had significantly less background information).  The layout of the room was also what appears to be typical of presentations at woodshows, which more-or-less means that I would have been better served watching it on youtube (which is no fault of Mr. Follansbe).  However, it was great to see him in action, in person.  It was also great to check out a few pieces of his work in person, and appreciate the scale and tactile pleasures for myself.

After that, I explored the vendor floor, and had several terrific conversations with a few different people, including some that I follow online through their blogs.  It was also terrific to experience the wonders of a fine handmade infill plane made by Daed Toolworks, leaving a silky smooth finish on a piece of Curly Maple...planing against the grain!  (Not across it, exactly in the opposite direction that you are supposed to).  I also tried out a couple of planes by Matt at M.S.Bickford Planes, and it was awesome to have a go at putting into practice some of what I've been reading on his blog.  I only made a few cuts because my time was limited, or else I could have spent the whole day doing that.  He invited me to visit his shop, and I imagine I will as soon as I can.  Luckily, he doesn't live far from me.  It was also a pleasure to get my hands on a wide range of tools by both Lie Nielson and Lee Valley.  I really want a couple of new planes, but what I want comes up to about $1100.  I'm thinking a Nielson #8 with a couple of spare blades, and a bevel up smooth from Lee Valley with a couple spare blades.  With my scrub that I already have, I think I would be totally set up for just about any dimensioning or smoothing task.  Not happening too soon, sadly.

After that, I only had enough time to do a blitz run through the showroom, which was a shame because I could have spent a week inspecting all of the incredible work in there.  There was a selection from the A Gathering of Spoons collection, and I did have the chance to get my mitts on a spoon carved by Jogge Sunqvist, as well as a beauty by Del Stubbs.  Both were terrific to hold, I wish I could have spent more time studying them. 

Overall, it was an incredible show (what I saw of it), and I wish I could have spent the whole weekend there.  I hope I can make it to many more woodworking shows in the future.

Oh, and the Silky katana is truly something that needs to be held to be appreciated.

Getting Going

Woohoo!  Yesterday my friend and I drove up to Renwood Lumber in Southwick Mass.  We picked up about 35 board feet of mostly Curly Maple, and one big board of plain Soft Maple.  This will go into the DVD cabinet that my friend commissioned.  I am working on finding a way to resaw the 6/4 stock into 3/4 boards.  I got a steal of a deal on the wood (about $2 per board foot) because I picked my boards out of the pallet stock.  Mostly 8 inch wide boards, with a couple of 4 inch wide boards.  Right now I have it stickered in the basement, waiting for me to start hacking it up.

Still Improving The Shop

Now I feel comfortable calling my little corner of the basement a shop.  Last week I spent a couple of days tearing everything apart and putting it back in different places, which included throwing out a scuzzy old shelf that was down here when we moved in, and relocating the few things on it to a new shelf I built against a difficult-to-use section of wall.  I also built a lumber rack and another shelf unit to get a few things up off the floor and a bit more organized.  After that, I temporarily hung a few saws up to keep them close to hand and out of the way. All in all, I now have something resembling a proper shop.

Right now I'm working on a hanging tool cabinet to keep my most used tools close to hand, and so that I don't have to lean way over my bench to the back wall to reach my planes.  I have the primary carcass put together and hanging up, and I'm mulling over what to do about interior storage allocation.  I also still need to build the door, where I imagine I'll hang most of my layout tools because they're small and light.

I used my new Lee Valley & Veritas plow plane to fit the back panel into the cabinet, which included plowing grooves to accept the back as well as cutting rabbets around the edges (and the ends).  I was surprised at how well the plane did cutting cross grain.  Not as well as a dedicated fillister plane with nickers, but pretty good just the same.  The top of the cabinet is made from two narrow pieces, which proved tricky to hold for grooving.  I ended up using two thinned-down battens held with my hold downs, which worked well and allowed clearance for the plane to pass.

While cleaning out the shop, I decided to throw out of my earliest wood working misadventures.  It was intended as a chisel and screwdriver rack, and made from pallet lumber.  I've had it around the shop for the last few years, and it was time for it to go.  It was tippy and wouldn't hold much. 

Done (For Now)

I finished the main portion of the bench today, and I'm pleased as punch.  In all, it took about 3.5 8-10 hour days of work, so I spent about 28-35 hours on it.  Not too bad, I don't think.  Outside of driving a couple of fasteners with my new impact driver, it was all handtools.  This is the first time I've done so much heavy hand tool work for such long periods of time multiple days in a row, and I could definitely feel the cumulative fatigue in my shoulders especially after boring all of the dog holes in 40 minutes.  The majority of the work was really in the joints to join the legs to the top, after which the mortise and tenons for the stretchers felt like child's play.  It's like Chris Schwarz once said: You know you've been building a roubo when a 3/4 x 3 x 4" mortise feels small.  Eventually I'll be adding a floor and a lid to the stretchers below, and I'll probably add a drawer under the far right side of the bench.  Eventually I'll also need to replace the jaw for the vise, because the Douglas Fir that I used is a bit flexible.  I think I could get a lot more clamping force out of a stiffer wood.

Due to a dumb mistake, I made the frame for the tool tray three inches two short (by forgetting to add the thickness of the sides to the total length of the back piece), and it was easier to cut three inches off the end of the bench than buy more wood and make a new piece.  Good thing I saved my energy by never drilling that last dog hole.  In an earlier fit of dumb, I misaligned the back stretcher so it will take some jury-rigging to make the floor and lid properly supported all the way around.  The back stretcher is about an inch too high, because I marked it off the wrong point of the angles for the side stretchers.  Oh well, it's a workbench.

Now I'm trying to devise some sort of brilliant 5th dimensional portal that will allow me to store all of the clutter in my shop in a void in space to allow me a little more floor room.  I suppose I could settle for some decent shelving of some sort.

Bench Update

I took this photo earlier today when I had finished fitting the four legs.  Since this photo was taken I've mortised the two front legs, half-way finished the two short stretchers, drilled all the dog holes and a holdfast hole, and started mortising one of the back legs.  I'm not going to use an adjustable height planing stop as on a traditional Roubo bench.  I find that on my other bench I always leave it set at the same height with my planing batten across the bench, which is much easier to use than a single point planing stop.  So I drilled two dedicated planing stop holes at the very end of the bench, and I'll probably make a couple of different thickness planing stops that I can drop in there.

The leg joints are nothing pretty, but they'll hold and that's all that matters to me for this bench.  Maybe someday I'll build my dream bench, but in the meantime this is going to be several steps up from my current bench, and I think I'll be happy with it for quite a while.

Yesterday my big box arrived from Lee Valley, which contained a vise screw for the leg vise, a large Japanese cat's paw for work (I have the tiny 6" version, and ordered the giant 14" version), and my Veritas small plow plane with five blades.  I can't wait to put it to work.  I ran it through some scrap real quick, but with my old bench buried under tools (so that I'm not tempted to use it), and my new bench still in pieces, I didn't have any really good workholding going on.  Unfortunately, my canned-ham hands force my knuckle to brush the brass adjustment knob when gripping the plane, but I think I can get used to it or alter my grip sufficiently for it to be a non-issue. 

Today a box containing my backordered holdfasts arrived from Gramercy/Tools for Working Wood, and I'm quite pleased.  I'm questioning whether I really need two of them, now that I've used one for a few minutes for a little sawing and mortise chopping.  Oh well, it doesn't hurt to have extra. 

Oh, and today I tested the automatic flesh detecting feature of my chisel and found it to be less than satisfactory.  While mortising, my chisel became stuck (which happened several times).  I found the easiest way to free it is to lift the chisel and the wood it is stuck in (while seated on the wood) and strike the wood with my mallet.  This worked great except for when I produced the perfect recoil in both of my hands and the chisel took a bite out of the meat on the side of my palm below my thumb.  It's fairly deep but nothing too serious, so I super glued it together and put a couple of little bandaids on it butterfly-style to take stress off of it, but the skin in that area doesn't get stressed too much anyways.

Glued Up Benchtop

Last night I glued up the two 6x6" posts for the top.  First I jointed the two mating faces, they weren't too bad but needed a little straightening and squaring.  I wetted the mating faces and slathered on plenty of Gorilla Glue, then clamped up with my four clamps.  Then I flipped it up on edge, and drilled three pilot holes from the back for 10" Timerlock bolts, then drove the bolts in.  I was just gifted an awesome new Makita impact driver, so I used that to drive the bolts so I could try it out, but I've used my brace plenty of times before, so I know it works fine (and applies so much torque that I could drive these things all the way through the wood).  I put them 4" in from each edge and one in the center.  I'll just have to keep them in mind when I'm drilling my dog holes.  I also was unable to remove two giant nails from one of the posts that are indicators of their previous life as a retainer wall, so I'll have to watch out for those.

While the glue was setting up, I marked and cut the legs to length.  Next step is cutting the joints.  After watching the episode of The Woodwright's Shop where Roy talks about the rising dovetail a few times, as well as a video on youtube where a different person goes through the joint, I am starting to feel confident enough to tackle them.  I will admit that I am not looking forward to dealing with the angled mortise and tenons on the back legs.  I also find myself wishing for a 6" deep backsaw to cut the joints accurately.  Roy's top is only 3" or 4" thick, but he still cut the leg joints with a handsaw.  I may go this route.

Antique Stores

  Yesterday the weather turned nice here in sunny Connecticut, so I decided to get some shopping done.  I needed more socks, and I wanted to see what the antique stores had for tools.  Not a huge haul, but not bad.  At the Junk Shop I found a simple hand drill that was in decent shape.  I almost missed the saw vise, it was clamped to one of the shelves.  It's an interesting one, with a large ball-in-socket that allows you to swing the saw around at any angle in all of the axes, without the need to unclamp.  This will work well for small saws, but for the my new little panel saw, it was a bit of a moot point because I could only clamp half the blade at a time anyways.  There was some rust and gunk in all the corners and screws of the vise, which I figured would take some elbow grease.  I was surprised when I got it home and had it working fine after five minutes with some 3-in-1 oil.  I need to replace the wing nut that locks the ball joint, the wings broke off.  At the antique mall over in Collinsville there was mostly junk and overpriced axes, but I did find this Disston saw in halfway decent shape.  A few minutes with a ball peen hammer and a screwdriver had the plate straightened out and the handle tight.  Another 15 or 20 minutes with a file and it was cutting decently.  I think it might be overset, so maybe I'll flatten out the teeth and reset them.  The problem could also be my less-than-perfect sharpening job. 

I've started building a new bench because the one I've been using has been feeling a little small.  I'm also tired of clamping everything to it instead of using a vise.  I'll be adding a leg vise to my new bench, which will be something like Roy Underhill's Roubo style bench.  The top will be two 6x6" pressure treated pieces 6 feet long, that I already had.  Above is the picture of cutting them to length, after another couple of days I will joint them and glue them up.  I was going to build the legs from the same, but decided it wasn't worth the effort, so I bought some 4x4 and a 2x12 that that I ripped down the middle, because it was clearer and in better shape than any of the 2x6 that they had.  The 2x6 will be for the stretchers and the tool well at the back.  You can see how small my shop is compared to the lumber.  There isn't a lot of space to work in there right now, I'll be glad to make the new bench and get the old one out.  As a side note, I'm planning on taking video of all the steps and showing how I build a bench without already having a bench. 

Storage Solution and a Plan

Up until an hour ago, this is what the shelf against the back wall of my shop looked like, but the box of small scraps was on the bottom shelf.  That poor little cardboard box has been overflowing with little nearly-useless bits of nice wood for quite a while now, and spilling out onto the floor.  Yesterday I finally did something about it and made a drawer for that bottom shelf that would hold plenty of scraps (as well as the small scrap metal box on the shelf in the left corner).  I elected to use some of the wide Yellow Pine boards I got the other day, so I cut the pieces to length, shot the ends, laid out some half blind dovetails on the front and regular dovetails on the back, and went to work with the saw and chisel.  Because this is a piece of shop furniture and I don't really care about appearances, I went fast and the joints show it.  I would have just nailed the thing together, but I needed the practice on half blind dovetails (I've only cut one on some scrap before).  I did nail the bottom in with some cut nails, because I don't have a plow plane (which will need to change in the near future).

The completed drawer in it's new home, being very useful:

 In the above photo you can also see a few things that could be interesting, depending on your interests.  On top of the shelf I have two boxes, the bottom of which holds several axes.  The top box holds my Narex mortise chisels, my Lee Valley scrub plane, my Lee Valley carcass saw, and I have my two favorite axes resting on top.  There is also a plate of glass that I set there to get at something else.  The top shelf holds all of my glues and finishes, which doesn't really amount to much, but there it is.  The middle shelf (from left to right) holds my stapler, the dremel, a box of various drill and driver bits, a box of timberlock screws, some half-finished spoons, and a tackle box holding all of my screws and nails.  To the right of the shelf I have all of my hardwood, mostly Maple that I milled myself, but also a little Cherry and a couple pieces of some mystery wood that could be Mahogany.  Just out of the picture on the right is my hot water heater.

A friend of mine approached me about building a storage solution for her DVD collection, which is currently about 320 strong.  I have been drawing up ideas based on 400, to allow for some growth.  We met up last night to see which of the ideas she likes most, and we settled on a fairly basic frame and panel design.  This unit will end up being about 68" tall and about 36" wide, so it will be no small thing.  Right now we're leaning toward Cherry for the carcass and a high quality plywood for the panels, with glass in the doors.  The curved sides are due to the distortion in my camera lens, all the lines are supposed to be straight.  I'm thinking I'll aim for the main carcass pieces to be 3" wide on the face, with the door frame about 2" wide.  On the scale drawing it looks about right to my eye.  I think I'll want to use knife hinges to keep the clean lines on the front, but I'm not sure what to do about pulls for the doors yet.  Maybe a couple of those things that allow you to press the door in, and then it springs out.   I'm definitely going to need a plow plane for this project.

Goings On

Today one of the guys I work for sent me home with this pile of Yellow Pine flooring left over from a job.  After I plane the backs of the boards smooth they will probably be a heavy 1/2" or 5/8" thick.  Some of these will be 11" wide after I take off the tongue and groove.  Some are as narrow as 6", which is still plenty wide.

I don't know what I'm going to do with it yet, or where I'm going to keep it.  My tiny basement room is already plenty crowded, and a couple of these pieces are still 16 feet long, which wouldn't fit down there even if I could get them down the stairs and around the corner in the first place.  I might make a bookshelf or something, but I don't really need any furniture right now.


Below you can see a couple of new things.  In the middle is my new bowsaw.  I have been frustrated with my coping saw for a while now, and instead of spending $15 on a new one that probably wouldn't be much better, I decided to go ahead and get the Gramercy Tools bowsaw kit, which consists of the two brass pins and one of each of the three blades.  For $25 and three hours of work, I have a good small bowsaw that is miles ahead of  my crappy coping saw, even though I haven't added handles yet.  I made it from Oak, and left the frame a little hefty, so it's not quite as elegant as the Gramercy frame, but I don't have to worry about snapping the frame by over-tightening it.  I also left the frame quite rough, not even taking off all of the original finish from the Oak's previous life as a cabinet door.


At the front left corner you can see a crochet of sorts (one word that I have seen these called, and the only one that is coming to mind right now).  So far the only use it's been is a resting place for my brace.  Normally used to secure the end of a board for edge planing, with a dog in a hole on the front bench to support the board.  The rear end is supported by a dog or a clamp in my case.  It works okay, but I can't say I'm overwhelmed.  Peter Follansbee seems to like these, but he has a screw through his.  I might try that.  I've also seen one of these used to support a board for dovetailing on a portable bench, but the wood kept shifting on me.  Maybe the angle on mine is too open and doesn't pinch the wood enough.  

Thumbs Up Lee Valley

Last week I pulled out my Lee Valley carcass saw, and for whatever reason happened to look at the bottom of the handle where the brass nut belongs.  It wasn't there.  I assume it rattled loose due to the vibrations the travel through the saw during use.  Baffled, I looked around the floor and in the box that it had been residing.  I couldn't find it anywhere, and in all likelihood it ended up in my friend's fire the other night with the contents of my shavings bucket, or maybe it's cavorting in some dark hidden place with all of my missing socks.  The handle was very firm still, so I went ahead and used the saw (though a bit gingerly) and when I was done I sent an email to Lee Valley customer service.  That was Wednesday night, and I received the new saw nut Monday when the UPS guy drove by.  I was very pleased with the quick and friendly service.  If there was any doubt in my mind that Lee Valley would be getting more of my money in the future (there wasn't), it is gone now.  Now I have my eye on their plow plane.