Random Tidbits

A couple random things before going into the shop to record a review of a lot of great things from SenecaWoodworking.com (yes I had to wait for the A/C to bring it down a few degrees... 108º+F today!)

First, Mark Harrell of Bad Axe Tool Works let me preview an article he wrote for a magazine on how to tune your saw.  Loved the article since it explained everything you need to do for 99% of the fixes he does as a Saw Doc.  The article assumes you're not into posturing by chatting about saw fleam angles over coffee, which is great because I could never learn the secret handshake of that social group.

The article isn't published yet and I can't tell you where or when it will be (I was sworn to secrecy over a table of fleam angles), but he followed up with a great article about re-tensioning a backsaw's spine posted to his site.  This may or may not be similar to part of the secret article <wink>

If you score a nice backsaw at a fleam-arket (ah I get it now...), this article will walk you through re-tensioning and straightening out the plate.  The right margin on his site lists other DIY articles including one on unlocking a frozen nut; handy for our Canadian readers.

Next up, a magazine article I was behind on!  My friend Rutager West wrote an article for Popular Woodworking's December 2012 issue (this is for the print issue, which may no longer be available when you read this).  In the article, Rutager shows you how to inlay a checkerboard pattern on a curved radius.  The plane in the lower-right photo is the HP-6v2 mini multi-plane I love; that profile is the corner bead although the corner cove (or any of the corner profile!) would look equally exciting on a box.

The article is a "corner bead" version of a well-documented thread Rutager did on the Bridge City forum where he put the inlay on a face bead (this is the profile I used for the Onyx frame in No Comment #2).

Other good threads on using the HP-6v2 profiles for inlays include revealing a wood under the multi-bead; I've used this many times after reading this; an excellent effect.

Last of the OPT ("other people's tidbits"), Scott Meek makes nice wood-bodied planes. He's decided to auction off this smoother with at least 50% of the proceeds going to the Moore, Oklahoma relief fund.  Might be a great way to get one of these for less than retail!  I have a watch on this.  Hopefully the bids will be out of my range so I don't have to do that nervous last-minute-of-auction sniping.

EDIT: Here is the updated eBay link; eBay had erroneously deleted Scott's auction since they are being cautious of any auction for "Moore charity" since so many were false.

For me, my list of videos to roll has grown almost too fast this past week.  That said, over the next two months, I should have 4 new Festool reviews along with the very interesting Seneca Woodworking reviews I'll be rolling after hitting publish.  This without forgetting to finish the No Comment #2 build videos and get the drawer assemblies in place on Angle Madness.  I need to quit my day job!

Speaking of videos, thanks for letting me hit 3,000+ subscribers on YouTube!

WIA'12-Pasadena: Day-0 Vendor Setup with Bridge City

This year again, I volunteered to be a customer demo guy for Bridge City Toolworks at Woodworking in America 2012 in Pasadena, California.  As a demo guy, I got my hotel stay taken care of along with several excellent dinners and social events (in as much as woodworker social events are excellent... this isn't Mardi Gras in Rio de Janeiro!)

We got there early Thursday morning only to end up hanging out with Lee Valley people for awhile since the convention center floor wasn't ready yet.  Great group of people; I was with Chris Wong who works with them.

This video is a collection of short clips taken throughout this first day setting up.  As a warning, my arm makes a terrible camera tripod especially with the coffee I needed to get there at the crack of 9am!  There was this bright thing in the sky...

The start shows some setup shots, some other vendors in progress of setting up, some impromptu overview of the new Bridge City precision fence system for the Jointmaker Pro, a quick tour of the toy box Bridge City brings to the show with numerous out-of-production tools, and some video of a social evening we had at a friend's shop.

At the social, Lee Marshall of Knew Concepts unpacked a made-to-order power saw he makes for the jewelry industry; if you do inlay with shell or bone, this will do so much better than a scroll saw for lack of blade oscillation.  You'll also see the next version of the titanium fretsaw (the "birdcage" saw).

Voilà, the video (haha, I nearly forgot to paste it in...)



More clips on the way... stay tuned!

Making the After-Earthquake Detector with the Jointmaker Pro and HP6v2

At last year's WIA'11, I was invited to do demos of the Jointmaker Pro (JMP) from Bridge City along with three other Jointmaker customers.  The event itself was a whole lotta fun.  While all of us use the Jointmaker in different ways in our woodworking, we did a simple-ish demo piece at the show to highlight some of the whacky cuts you can do easily on the Jointmaker that are very difficult otherwise.  The demo piece was the After-Earthquake Detector.

It's a fun demo and a funny project so I've wanted to make a podcast of it ever since and this is it.

After the introduction, there's a section on dimensioning the stock by hand.  Now if you don't have a Jointmaker or any interest in it, there's a good deal on dimensioning small stock with hand planes that may be useful to you; this is that "thickness planing" technique you may have seen in "No Comment #1" for dimensioning small splines.  I'll go over how it works and some caveats... this time with comments! :)

Next up is preparing the profiled base using the HP6v2 Mini Multi-Plane.  That plane is a lot of fun when a clean profile starts coming off of stock and you'll get a good time-lapse in high-speed of a stepped ogee on a board.

Lastly, the work on the Jointmaker.  I had some fun using a close-up camera for side-views to make seeing the work more interesting.  I'm planning on using this camera more for future videos so let me know if it works for you.

The video is longer than usual clocking in a little over a half hour.  Normally it would be shorter by putting tool work in high-speed, but the only way to "get" the Jointmaker is to see it in action.  So... maybe make a bigger bucket of popcorn.



Lastly, here's the link to Chris Wong's videos for making your own Br'all.

It has been slow on the blog since the start of the year since I've been doing a 'house purge' of excess 'stuff' in my house.  Not really podcast material; not really woodworking.  With that out of the way, it's back to the shop time so we'll be starting a new project soon and a couple tool reviews.  Thanks for watching!

Benchcrafted Moxon Vise Kit - Cleaning Up Drawers

Tonight I decided to get back to those drawers I was making, oh, awhile ago :)

I never had a decent place to plane drawers; typically I'd clamp the drawer to the side of the MFT with a milk crate under it acting like a deadman 'platform'.  No wiggle since the MFT is anchored to the wall.  But it was slow to adjust the drawer and definitely not as stable on the side far from the MFT.

So... I made that little table on the back of the Moxon vise for my dovetail saw, chisels, and rubber chicken.  It is 24" wide by 11" deep measured from the front of the fixed jaw.  Turns out that I can easily straddle the table and clamp the drawer on the outside of the right acme screw. It's easy, very fast, and super stable.  This. Was. A. Winner.

Note that I scooted the vise over so the table portion was hanging off the side.  The piece of Maple you see sticking out the inside of the drawer is the piece that is normally clamped to the bench to hold it stable.  With the table being 11" to the back, I could take care of one side of the face, flip, repeat very easily.  Only the narrowest drawers for the top couldn't straddle as they are 8" wide.  For those, I clamped it in the jaw with the drawer out in front of the vise.  The 2" thick front jaw gave enough stability to clean them up, too, with care.

In these pictures, I'm showing planing the back.  Note how I have two pieces of scrap in the middle of the vise sticking down.  I did that to prevent the vise from moving back as I planed forward.  Thing is, I didn't need it; I removed them after the second drawer and it didn't budge at all.  If you look in this picture, I clamped the vise to the bench from underneath there.

What I also did later was take a piece of similar thickness scrap and set it in the vise above the far acme screw to set the parallel thickness (remember this needs to be done since we are on the outside of the rightmost screw).  I just left it there and could easily scoot in and out the drawers quickly and cinche them in place with a quick quarter turn.

This is the first time I enjoyed cleaning drawers.

Sculpted Mahogany Vanity - Panel Glue-Up

In this episode, we make up the large Mahogany panel to wrap the bottom segment. Some tips for using the Festool TS tracksaw for panel jointing are explained and shown.  This is really a great technique even if you have a jointer.

You'll also see a 7'x2' panel get jointed (surfaced) by hand with three hand planes.  I'm a fan of diagonal and perpendicular planing so that's what you get. :) (Remember, 'normal' is a synonym for 'perpendicular'...)

We'll go over why the panel gets wrapped so early before sculpting and how we'll anchor it there.


Next episode is marking, pre-sculpting, and sculpting... it's the one I've been waiting for :)   Co'mon Saturday!

Lil' Boxes for a Jewelry Box with the JMPv2 - HP6v2 Tour and Profiling

Continuing on with the little boxes for the jewelry box started in part one, in this episode, I'll show you more about the HP6v2 multi-plane and use it to put a cove on the inside edge of the boxes as well as plow the groove to accept the panels.
It's less JMPv2 and more HP6v2, but as long as you have a 'v2', you're stylin'.
Hmm, how many days until Mother's Day?  Good grief...

Spooky Scary Sharp (in Three-D!)

Bud Decker, a friend of mine decided to make a quick video demonstrating the Scary Sharp method for sharpening chisels and plane irons.  The video is quick so pop over to his blog to give it a look: Scary Sharp 2.  I have to admit that my sharpening regime is, uhm, lax.  This isn't to say my planes won't make lovely curlies or flatten large panels without tearout, but I'll still say 'lax'.

Next week, I'm attending a 3-day hands-on seminar with Frank Klausz.  If I showed up with dull chisels and planes... 'nuff said.  I used Bud's video as a motivator to sharpen all my chisels and a select bunch of the plane blades.

 Now you did go watch Bud's video so here's how I did mine as there are a couple differences (and by now you caught the in 3-D reference :)

My procedure was as follows:

1. My chisels and plane irons all needed their backs addressed.  Normally you do this once in a blue moon after the first time, but I wanted to make sure these were flat.  Remember, I was lax.
2. Once the backs were flat, I used  a Veritas MKII honing jig to have a consistent angle throughout the grits to clean up the main bevels.
3. I then used the jig's micro-bevel setting to put a micro-bevel through all the grits.

This is what I used.  First up was a DMT 220 diamond plate.  I love this plate for hogging off material.  All it takes is a spritz of water rather than a full-on soak like water stones (and it doesn't dish).

Next, sheets of wet/dry paper in P800, P1500 and P2000 grit.  I didn't have any float or plate glass available so I used spray adhesive to tack the sheets to a scrap of solid-surface material that I verified was "as flat as I need it today".  In the future, I'll have a wider variety of grits as it makes for less work between grits.

Lastly, taking care of the wire edge and stropping.  The plate in the front is a DMT diamond plate at 8000 grit.  The leather strop is charged with green (visible side) and white (other side) rouge.

After sharpening the main and microbevel, I work off the wire edge by carefully pulling the chisel off the 8000 grit plate; I only do the back.

Next, place the back of the chisel (or plane iron) flat on the green rouge strop and pull back.  Do not press hard on the chisel or the leather will 'wrap' over the trailing cutting edge and actually dull it.

Flip the strop and repeat with white rouge (which, for French speakers, sounds like an oxymoron :)

Lastly, prove it.  It should easily shave hair off your arm.  Man, my arm looked stupid that night...

More action shots! This is a scrap of Poplar.

...and just because it isn't a chisel, you can do your Veritas Striking Knife and you'll be able to easily shave end-grain with it.  Fun for the whole family!

I sprayed the chisels with a dry lubricant to displace the water.

After the chisels came the plane irons.  I messed up on this plane's iron as I took two strokes on 220 with the bevel angle set at 25º when it's a 15º blade.  That took a lot of swipes to correct later, but it still pulled off basically a lace doily of Poplar.

Maintenance?  Who wants to pull all this out.  Granted, it was fast and I was doing backs, correcting bevels, and putting a micro-bevel.  That's everything!  Normally you'd just touch up the micro-bevel when you need to.  What I actually do during use is keep the green/white strop handy and strop the back of my blade gently; it makes a difference.  I did that before trying this scary sharp method so I'll continue now with likely better results.

Now get to sharpening!

Hand Planing Small Parts (Part Deux)

I've blogged about a make-shift small parts planing board that was specialized for mitered boards, but the point there was making something disposable for a special purpose.

For straight boards, I usually just make a quick fence of 1/8" hardboard or underlayment backed by 2 dogs and go to town.  This isn't the most stable and take awhile to find that &*%$ hardboard scrap from last time.

So while making my shooting board, I took some of the scrap to make a less-blingy planing board.  Basically, I hand planed some cherry scraps to 1/8" and 1/4" thickness then lined them up across the end of a board; these act as the fence and give me some options for thickness.

You'll notice that I used hide glue for the fence.  During use, it'll get shredded.  Once it's too bad, I can use a heat gun to quickly remove the fence and attach a new one.

I also planed two scraps of cherry to about 1/8" that I keep with the board.  Sometimes when you are planing something long and narrow, it wants to move on you.  Just clamp one of these sticks to give some light edge support and the stock will stay still.  I didn't want to put sandpaper on the board itself since I'd likely scratch up the plane more than anything else.

Now it's trivial to trim up some thin stock without hardboard moving on me (or just plain hiding better than my finding abilities!)

This is a super trivial addition to your shop; make one now.

Scrap Shooting Board

The recent issue of Fine Woodworking magazine had a great article on different bench hooks and the use of a shooting board.  Now, I've had building a shooting board on my list since lists were invented, or at least since my waaay backordered Lie-Nielsen miter iron plane arrived.  As you can see in this picture, it's helping me out.

The week when I decided this, my car was in the shop for a new transmission (read: lots of tool money).  That said, I had no way to go buy wood for this so I hit the scrap bin.  This photo is a mockup of what I was gonna make.  The main board was oak-banded 12mm oak ply leftover from a patio cabinet, the front banding is sapelé ogee molding from a built-in dresser, the plane's "track" left over home-sawn sapelé veneer, the fence board a walnut off cut from I don't know where.  It all sits on a birch ply substrate, origins unknown.

The fence board wasn't thick enough so I found two more sapelé off cuts and decided that looks gauche to glue them up thick, so I sliced some walnut from that scrape to put between them.

I also glued the banded oak working surface to the substrate so I could get on with banding and putting the plane's track.

Banded the widest side of the shooting board with the sapelé veneer (here flush trimming it off with a hand saw... yeah, I know, you can't make that out so it didn't happen...)  You can see that at this point, I had the molding on the front, plane track in sapelé down, and a scrap of walnut from my flooring inlay on the narrow side.

Here's the unfinished board ready for several coats of Seal-A-Cell.  The bench hook has a piece of transition molding I made for that floor with a multi-bead profile.

...and after the Seal-A-Cell!  Bling, baby!

The knurled brass knobs are for aligning the fence and are not installed here... you didn't think I'd put a plastic star knob on it, did you?  It's my garage; got standards to maintain... :)

Spring Fresh Hand Planes?

Tonight I was creating transition molding for my entryway from Walnut.  I planed all four face sides before applying the profile.  -grumble- ...every shaving was clinging to the plane tenaciously from static cling (it's dry here).  Flip the plane and they'd stick or cling to my arm.

I fought back.

Recalling my previous tip to eliminate static cling from floor mats, I took the dry version.  Make that the dryer version: a used dryer sheet.

I rubbed down the plane with the dryer sheet, especially the mouth and sole, and the shavings no longer stuck to the plane.  Flipped upside down, they fell from the plane and mostly didn't stick to my arm.  Joy!

The secret is an anti-static chemical in the dryer sheet.  Rubbed on the plane, it neutralizes the charge from the shavings as they come off.  Remember: used dryer sheet.  New ones have a lot of waxy substance on them to distribute "Spring Freshness".  Used ones do not.  Used ones still have enough chemical to affect the magic.

Down side is, I'm single. That sheet is probably from last year!  And here, a gratuitous shot of the planed molding.  (The multibeads go all the way across, but I couldn't get a raking light to show that well.)

To the old curmudgeons crying foul that somehow this anti-static chemical will alter the ultra-precise alloy's composition and negate all benefits of the cryogenic hardening... chill.  It's just iron.

Canadian Mosquito Wings

Nothing crazy happening in the shop today; had company over :)

I did, however, grab a 12"x12" chunk of crotchy walnut and jointed one face flat with my Veritas Low-Angle Jack plane.  I have it set to a 37° attack angle and it seems unstoppable (as is the A2 blade).  Coincidentally, my friend Bud also posted an entry about the same plane (he had always eye-balled the Veritas low-angles, but my raving might have pushed him over the edge :)

This block was resawn long ago before I had a clue what I was doing with the bandsaw.  As such, the cut was wavy and rough.  The left half I jointed with the Jack plane while the right is still off the bandsaw.  You can see there's a lot of nice swirly grain and a nice crotch bookmatch that will need a special project.  These could be further resawn to make a nice four-way bookmatch and I'll consider that after I get them jointed then planed.

As for the Canadian mosquito reference... the provincial bird of Manitoba is the mosquito.  As such, they are big.  Most people talk about taking mosquito-wing shavings with their plane, but I find that takes forever to level a hilly board like the one shown.  Instead, I take Canadian mosquito wing shavings... 0.019"

The board isn't completely smooth yet, but there is almost no tear-out despite the crazy grain.  The side is flat and I'll wait until after I have these two resawn before taking it down to a smoother and, maybe, scraper plane.

Now, a project...

Galootish Tendancies

So I get labeled a Normite since I have a couple powertools and will dovetail drawers with a router jig before whipping out my favorite Dozuki to do them by hand.

Behold, photographic proof that I know how a hand plane works.

This 30"x30" panel of QS ribbon mahogany was jointed flat by hand on the underside.  The top surface was hand processed with the exception of the progressive tapered cove cut in by table saw using a jig I came up with and a program to print out the math involved.

The 2" wide band on the side of the cove is a flat area and the sides bevel down to 1/4"; since the inside edge of the bevel is along a tapered cove, it is tapered adding to the fun. This is a picture after I finished and swept the board.  Keeping the bevel even and the flats coplanar was half the fun of doing this by hand; at the widest, the cove is wider than my plane.

Here's the other angle showing the hamster bedding everywhere.  Note the ribbon curl.  Normal planing techniques tear-out like nobody's business.  I'm happy to report absolutely zero tear-out; not even a little tiny corner that needed sanding.

Da bucket... there were more on the floor.  Yeah, I know this isn't dust like my table saw generates, but a DC takes care of that.  This you have to sweep.  SWEEP!! Oh, my...

Here's the resulting board with the hand-shaped handles, done with a spokeshave and occasional scraping.

The result after 3 highly diluted coats of Seal-A-Cell rubbed in (handles aren't yet attached).  Glass smooth.  Drawer fronts will be cut from this and applied to the drawers I hope to glue-up tomorrow.

This whole drawer front stack was an original design and so far, I'm pretty happy with it.

Now, gimme back my damn power cord...

Planing Small Parts

I'm inlaying a French knot of walnut into cork flooring.  As you can see, there are a lot of short parts between the long runs.  Small parts are 100-300mm typically with a miter cut on one or both ends.  Parts are just 5mm thick  (BTW, the picture shows the parts sitting in the recess... they aren't pushed down yet... I ain't done yet!)

The strips were cut on the bandsaw from a scrap piece of walnut.  That piece was so bowed you could poke someone with it from around a corner.  Normally, I'd cut a strip on the bandsaw then plane the exposed surface to remove the bandsaw marks then cut another.  Planing this piece was awkward so I decided to do it after the pieces were cut.  Now, how do you clamp such a thing to a bench to give it a swipe of a block plane?!

What I did was take a piece of MDF and routed a groove about as long as the longest piece in the knot (longer pieces between knots can be done in segments on a bench).  The groove depth is about 2mm leaving 3mm above the board.  Clamp this block to the bench however you like and set the small pieces in it for easy planing.

Note that I intentionally routed the groove longer on the two outside edges so the mitered end could poke into the void and not damage the point.