Hand Tools

 My truck failed the state inspection. I knew that was going to happen because I had long crack in the windshield. What I didn't know were the problems with the control arms and the back brakes plus a few other minor headaches. Total estimate is $1600 but that is dependent upon how bad the rear brakes are. 

shelf dadoes first

The goal was to get this glued and cooking today.

done

Three coats on the back and four on the front. They are ready to go to Maria in the AM.

left one self supporting

I've come a long way since I starting chopping dadoes this way. I had to plane the underside before it fit. Better that than a sloppy, loose fit.

ditto for the right one

I got both of these to seat fully and especially at the front. I had to clamp them to close them tight.

sigh.....

This router works well for getting the slat mortises to the same depth as the dadoes. However, today it would not stay set - the back screw would loosen and the depth of the iron would increase. The solution is to put a nut to help and hold the iron where it is set. The headache is the locking screw is metric. After faffing about I finally figured out it is a 6mm fine thread. I couldn't go to ACE because the truck was in the shop and my wife was off doing her dead people stuff. I'll come back to this in the AM.

it worked

Used my two small routers to get the dadoes and slat mortises to the same depth. The depth ending up being an 1/8" deeper than I wanted them. Not a big deal but it was an annoying hiccup.

side by side

The left one is for the grandson(s) and the right is the request. The biggest difference is the size of the shelf. I am going to try my best to make both of the ones I'm making for the grandsons to be the same.

side view

The end heights are about the same but the width is 2" more on the left one.

hmm......

This shape is growing on me. Most of my previous ones I made the tops on the ends parallel to the bottom.

finally understand this

When I first got this I had a ton of problems setting the angle. Yesterday and today it just fell into place for me. The key for me was to make the lock handle the reference. DUH.

oops

Made a me-steak here. I should have sawn the angle first and then the cutout for the legs.  I was able to 'fix' it. I sawed the angle and sawed the cutout again.

worked

I had to saw the back half of the cutout again. Rasped and sanded it smooth. No need to go nutso here because it isn't visible.

for the Miller Dowels

This worked well on two builds. I'll add this step to future ones going forward.

goal met

Glued and cooking. I might do the Miller dowels after dinner.

Lowes run

When the shop called with the good news about truck, after I picked it up I went home via Lowes. Picked up  two, four foot 1x12s. Sawed out a clear section from one board to be the shelf for the 2nd grandson's bookshelf.

the ends

As I did with the first grandson's bookshelf, I didn't thickness the ends to 9/16". Instead I labeled the reference face as the inside. The opposite face I just flattened. I didn't attempt to make it parallel to the reference at all. I think it looks good having the ends as the anchors being a wee bit thicker than the other parts. 

left side laid out

If I didn't have to deal with the truck issues today, I might have gotten the dadoes/mortises chopped today. I don't anticipate any hiccups betting it glued and cooking in the AM.

accidental woodworker

 The little guy on my right shoulder says the Pats will win. It is 1644, Feb 8, 2026. I don't know how good the Seahawks are. I only saw a partial game of theirs. The Superbowl has come a long, long way. I still remember Superbowl I 59 years ago. I was only 12 at the time and I wasn't a sports nut. Fast forward to now I'm still not a sports nut and if I can't watch the game I'll survive.

2nd bookshelf

I guess making these again isn't like riding a bike after a bazillion years. I remembered some things and brain farted royally on others. Got both ends of the shelf to be self supporting. At least the woodworking didn't go south on me. 

Lost the rest of the pics for this blog post. The camera SD card has been acting up for a couple of weeks, mostly giving random card errors. Tonight after the first pic I got another card read error when I tired to post the 2nd pic. Couldn't clear it and I got the same error in my two laptops and the shop computer. 

So I went back to the shop after dinner and snapped a couple of more pics to finish the blog post for the AM. I tossed the SD card in the shitcan while I was there. I've been using this one for a couple of years and SD card have a cycle life limit.

2nd bookshelf

Got 3 coats of shellac on the bottom and I should be done with it in the AM.

One thing I did on this one was once the dadoes and mortises were done, I drilled holes for the Miller dowels. No more placement/layout headaches. Got everyone of them right on with no me-steaks.

one of two more

Decided to make two more bookshelves, one each for the grandson's desks. Initially I had enough scraps to make them. I used my last Gurney's sawmill 1x12 for the ends and the slats. I am making these a little bigger than the 2nd replacement one so it will hold school books.

two of two

Got the ends and the back slats. I'll come back to this one after I get the first one glued and cooking.

toast, extremely burnt toast

These were the shelves for the two bigger bookshelves. However, when I was thicknessing the 2nd shelf, I couldn't remove the twist. I see sawed back and forth with it. I would remove some but not quite enough. Plane it a little more and check for twist and see that it was worse than before. It finally got to a point where I was chasing my tail in circles. 

The right one (the 2nd shelf)was cupped and twisted. This board was case hardened I think because I had a difficult time cross cutting it to length. I went back and checked the first one and it had cupped, not as bad as the 2nd one, but enough for it to be unusable.

I had one board I had thicknessed  a month ago to 9/16" that I used to make one shelf. I'll have to make a run to Lowes to buy a 1x12 to get another shelf.

getting there

I had forgotten about these two frames. Glad I noticed them because I still can get them done before tuesday. Monday the Frame it shop is closed but it opens on tuesday. I'll bring them and the brown one then.

Got lucky with the Super Bowl. My digital antenna picked up NBC which is broadcasting it. This was the second time I watched broadcast TV with the digital antenna. I quit cable TV over a year ago and I haven't missed it. Now I watch You Tube and Amazon Prime Video.

accidental woodworker

It's been several months now that I've had problems with Unplugged Shop, the site to which many of us go to read woodworking blogs.  For long stretches the site doesn't update with current blogs, and when it finally works again, it's short lived and then doesn't update for another while.

I'm probably not allowed to use this image, so I'll just say it's trademarked and thank them for the use of it.

In addition, my blog doesn't seem to be included anymore on the Unplugged Shop aggregator.  I've contacted them about it to get reinstated, but I don't know if anyone monitors that site anymore.

I don't mean to be an ingrate because this has been a free service that they provide and I truly appreciate it.  I can only imagine that it takes more work than I realize to keep it running.

Does anyone out there know what is going on with them?  Please comment if you do.

out of the clamps

Everything looked ok - joints were tight and it felt solid. It was laying dead nuts flat on the workbench too. 

layout for the Miller dowels

Two in each end of the shelf and decided to put two in each end of the back slats.

spider sense was tingling

Something wasn't as it was with all the other bookshelves I had made. The alarm bells starting waking up when I saw that the back slats weren't parallel to the back edge of the ends. Not being parallel made it a wee bit more difficult to layout for the Miller dowels.

not bad

Why can't I saw an angle like this when I try 45s? Thought of this to use as a gauge stick to layout the Miller dowels.

yikes

At least this dowel boo boo came out on the bottom. I went 11 for 12 and the mishap was because I picked the wrong pencil line.

hmmmmmm........

This is definitely ain't what I had done with the other bookshelves. The top slat is too forward and not parallel to the back edge. 

toast

I rounded the two front corners and I did them too much. A portion of the round got buried in the dado not to mention there is a )&^@%*_Q_)#@^*_Q)*% gap.

not right

Instead of the shelf titling backwards, front to back, it tilts down, back to front. That means whatever is put on the shelf ain't staying there. Now it has gone from toast to burnt toast and charcoal.

confirmation

The CDs are staying in place but they look odd. It is only 7° but it is easily seen. I can't give this to anyone because of my bone headed, brain fart me-steak.

nope

Tried to salvage this by sawing the bottom legs. That idea fizzled and died because the legs aren't long enough. Thought of adding pads to them and that would have worked but I nixed it. The top slat being inset too much ruins any attempt to salvage it. I will saw off the slats and the shelf and reuse them for another bookshelf.

2nd bookshelf

These bookshelves don't require a lot of stock. Got all that I needed from the scrap pile. It is a wash, rinse, and repeat of what I did yesterday.

layout

Did it right this time. The shelf and back slats form a right angle (at the back and the front). The tilt of the shelf comes from the 7° angle on the bottom. On the first one I had laid out the shelf at a 7° from the front edge and also had sawn the bottom at a parallel 7°. If I had left bottom square to the front/back, it would have worked.

ready to be chopped

Made and caught a potential me-steak on the left end. I initially laid out the slat mortises on the front edge rather then the back edge.

maybe

Didn't get any paint on these today. I stayed in the shop until 1540 and I might get these painted after dinner.

It had snowed on friday overnight and it snowed 3 times today. The driveway and walk got shoveled twice but nothing after the 3 dump. I'll deal with it in the AM. The shoveling outings cut into my shop time and I wasn't able to complete the 2nd bookshelf. Should be able to wrap that up in the AM.

accidental woodworker 

 Today I finally did some woodworking. It was a blessed relief after playing with paint and shellac for seemingly a bazillion years. It was a request project of something I went nutso making several years ago. I still have 7 of them in my house that I use. It was like riding a bike after a bazillion hiatus, I didn't forget how to do it.

done

The brown frame finally got a check mark in the done column. I noticed this poster on a few You Tube vids I saw over the past few weeks. I will bring this one to Maria tomorrow and the black frames next week.

sigh

Two coats of black and it needs one more on the interior. Three coats on the green and it needs at least one more. 

all three

The white vertical lines are the bare plywood peeking through and shaking hands with me. The sides still don't have complete coverage. I expected the plywood to cover better than pine but both have dismal coverage.

raking light

No shellac today. I did one last eyeballing and I saw some white in raking light on the arris of the bevels. Only this frame needed some paint but I'll wait and apply shellac to both in the AM.

the request

I had brought two of these to my niece's house when my sister came up for a visit. She asked if I would make another one for her. This one is perfect for CDs/DVDs or even paperback books.

the measurements

These measurements are not carved in stone. I'll gather up stock from the pile and the size of them will have the final say. 

need four pieces

3/4" stock is too thick for this CD/DVD/bookshelf so I'll thickness the stock down 9/16". First step is to untwist, straighten, and flatten one face and square one edge to it.

done

Got a reference face and reference edge. Two of the boards had humps and no twist. The other two were relatively flat but with some twist.

knife lines

I don't have much to remove - not quite an 1/8". I like to darken the knife lines so I can gauge my progress.

done

Two ends, one shelf, two back slats and one extra for an oops. Took me a little over 30 minutes to plane the five of them to 9/16" (~14mm).

hmm.......

Got the layout done for the shelf and back slats. All the angles  are 7 degrees. This is something I screwed up royally more times than I care to recall. Usually I would saw the bottom angle in the wrong direction. Another favorite screw up was laying out the mortises for slats either on the wrong side of the layout line or laying out the mortise too high or reversing it with it mate on the other end piece. No layout me-steaks today but that was because I double, triple checked my self a bazillion times before committing to knifing the notches and mortises.

hmm......

Thought out loud to myself and had a good conversation and decided to wait on this one. I sawed the angle correctly and before I saw the cutout for the legs, I want to make sure that I don't cut into the notches for the shelf.

shelf dadoes done

Got these whacked out just before the lunch bell rang. 

mortises done

These can be difficult to do because they are only 1 1/4" long. I don't have any routers that will do a flat bottom from top to bottom (or bottom to top). There is a web in the middle that I have to use a chisel to flatten and check with a sliding square. BTW if I made the back slats 1 1/2" I do have a router that would make a flat bottom easy peasy.

dry fit

Two of the back slat mortises are loose and one is sloppy. The other pieces are snug and they are holding it together.

it is square

The depth of the mortises and the shelf dadoes are the same. The length of the back slats and the shelf are the same too. That is what helps to get and keep the whole thing square.

ends are square too

Initially the ends weren't square. I clamped the shelf and that pulled the ends tight and seated the shelf in the dadoes - then it was square.

glued and cooking

The plan is to let this cook until the AM before taking the clamps off. 

Miller Dowels

The plan is use two dowels in each end of the shelf and one dowel (maybe two) in the ends of the back slats. That should help and keep everything together and tight. I have had two of these bookshelves come apart between the ends and the shelf. Fixed those with Miller Dowels and no headaches since.

1/8" Baltic Birch plywood

Got this from Amazon for $53 and change for 12 pieces. 12" wide and 24" long and I know I paid more than this the last time I ordered some. Says it is from Woodpeckers but I'm not sure if it is the same one that makes the Red Aluminum stuff.

came today too

I bought 3 of these pigments, black, blue, and green. Two came today and one is coming tomorrow. All 3 are from the same place so I don't understand why the broken shipment?

pulled the trigger

There were two things I always had on my person when I was in the Navy. The first was my ID card and the second was a Buck 3 bladed pocket knife. Still have an ID but the Buck is taking a dirt nap over 25 years ago. 

My wife had given me a gift certificate from Lee Valley and I got this knife. Bigger (longer) than my Buck and it is probably illegal to carry this on my person. I'll keep it in the shop and use it there. I'm really interested in seeing how well this keeps an edge.

accidental woodworker 

Consider the strength of the end to side-edge joinery which we have put into three categories: mortise pair and free tenon, Domino, and dowel.  When did you see a properly made joint fall? I never have in my work. The dowel joint gets the most criticism regarding strength. Let’s discuss that. As an example, consider […]

Every winter brings about some damage to the waterline for the hydroelectric turbine, a/k/a the penstock.  Usually this is because a tree branch has fallen on some of the 1100′ of 2-inch Schedule 40 PVC, which is cheap but gets really brittle when cold.  I knew from the very beginning that replacing some of the PVC every Spring would be an issue but just accepted it as the cost of doing business. Last year was great, I had to replace and patch only two little sections.  2015 was the worst as I had to replace 600-feet of pipe.

Except for the last thirty feet all of the penstock is above ground.  I did originally get an estimate to burying the entire penstock well below the frost line, but the >$75k+ price tag was a bit much.  My hydroelectric system is more of a hobby than anything else, at least until the EMP or CME or some other grid-down calamity, so that wasn’t in the cards.

This damage was peculiar because it was a compound spiral fracture which is only supposed to happen as a result of water freezing in the pipe and bursting it.  Since I drained the system in November this damage was a head-scratcher.  I am not looking forward to surveying the entire length of pipe once the snow and ice are gone.

I am now rethinking the penstock altogether.  Rather than sticking with PVC I am going to check into industrial irrigation polypropylene line which is continuous and much more forgiving to the forces that bust the PVC.  Since a pressurized/enclosed water line can run down to about -15 degrees maybe I could even keep it running year-round.

Stay tuned.

Elm is one of our more unusual hardwoods in that its whole infrastructure, though reliant on the same essential working components are the same as all other trees, the outcome of what its capillaries transport from root hair tips to leaf top tips is a wood, as in its inner core stem, that's not like any other. That's why I say it is a timber of character, a multi-personality that defies similar means and methods of working when it comes to working it with conventional hand tools. In some ways, I'd say it might better match my own personality, in that its only predictability is, in fact, its unpredictability. Go to split it with an axe for a straight-grain split, even where the grain looks absolutely straight, and within any given inch it will duck, dive, twist and turn a dozen times before dipping where you least want or expect it to. No other western species comes even close. Here in Britain, you'll find it mostly used in vintage chairs where the seats were shallowly hollowed to fit children's smaller bottoms so you'll find it, especially in school seating for children past, not today, of course, moulded plastic replaced wood mostly and then formed plywood as well. It's a rougher, crude and coarse-grained hardwood that's not particularly hard but highly characterful and often loaded with every kind of defect ranging from a mass of diversely different knots to checks, shakes and splits, pretty much the same thing, along with stunted buds from sprouts that never developed into branches or twigs but left an intertwined mass like a knotted ball of sting within the bark of the tree stem. It''s this interlocking that protrudes from the main stem of the tree we refer to as a burr (UK) and burl (USA). Beneath these protrusions, inside the tree, is the stunning and highly sought-after, decorative feature wood comprising a complexity of swirling grain patterns, deep, dark contrasting knots enveloped by impressive grain configurations, and a mass of different 'eyes' caused by localized, abnormal growth.

My deciding to keep my wood pieces in the original profile rather than rip cut width and depth to even sizing resulted in my 'climbing wall' look I ended up with. That being so, this book case will have to be tethered to the wall at the top with a fastening or more likely an English cleat...just in case!

This is my most recent 2026 bookshelf piece, which came from large slabs of elm I bought six years ago. I had brought them indoors and left them stood on end to fully dry in my better controlled workshop environment. Knowing the tendency of elm to twist and turn as long as there is any excess of moisture there in the wood, I needed these levels to be as low as is practicable. This wood had been stored wrongly, but I knew that when I bought it and looked forward to it having added character from the neglect. It did not disappoint.

I often rely on old wooden planes because they offer a completely different dynamic to stock preparation, making it lighter and easier to accomplish. These planes float across wild wood like swans on a lake. No metal plane gives the same feeling or outcome––not a single one, but especially not the heavy weights people selling planes always espouse. Weight, with wooden plane bodies, evaporate with the first stroke.

It was during the COVID pandemic that I started to tame my wood pile. Hard to think how that botched-up control of the world through fear and manipulation caused such a global mess. Politics, manipulation and control freaks! During my self-isolating at the workshop, I found time to take care of things through the newly afforded space of time in the workshop; I cleared up my new wood acquisition by cutting off the excesses of rough bark and heavy rot to better stack and control about forty beams of mixed elm and beech. The beech has been beautiful with such spalting definitive of beech spalting and I have made five sizeable pieces for the house from it thus far.

We made this small office suite for the landing of Sellers'home at the top of the stairway. The corner-fitting desk, the chair and the filing cabinet are made from the spalted beech.

This wood was all rough sawn by bandsaw and needed planing level and smooth to remove warpage. I trued one of the larger flat faces and used that face to reference to my bandsaw table to give me square adjacent faces and parallel widths. The bandsaw cuts the wood easily with no negative flexing as with other woods. I was surprised to have people advise me that planing it by hand with bench planes would be too onerous and problematic. Most woodworkers do tend to exaggerate the hardships of working with some particular woods from their region, but few woodworkers today are used to hand planing their wood and persevering under that kind of hardship. The wood came together just fine, and it really was not hard or difficult to work in any way at all, despite the mass of knots and other defects.

My rip-cut stack starts the beginning of the workshop journey after I ripped off any excesses but prefacing this was a hundred-mile trip to collect it from bad storage under a leaking tarp. This is a mixture of beech and elm. The neglectful storage enhanced the outcome for me with diverse influences of degrade. Most of it is now used up in our Sellers' home projects.

I am expecting some movement when the unit gets anchored to the wall. We will see how much. The thing is this, though. Wood moves through atmospheric changes in exchanges occurring through varying levels of warmth and moisture––it's a given that these changes take place continuously in most home and office environments. In a family of say four, the atmosphere will be more highly charged with atmospheric moisture––showering and cooking will be partly to blame because people hang out in the shower longer or cooking takes more than say for one person, perhaps heating up a ready-meal in a microwave. I shower after work to get clean and free from dustiness, others, most if not all, now shower to go to work or even shower two times a day. My hair is short and is dried with a towel with two quick rubs. Not so for long hair. All of this changes the dynamic our wood pieces must live with, and wood WILL and DOES swell...all the time!

The paleness of spalting and then bug runs and wormholes add to the texture of this particular workpiece and I have kept rather than discarded those bits normally thrown out or burned. It's this diversity that I have retained in the wood's grain for gain in this particular depiction of natural wood decline leading to its return to the earth. I wanted to keep its silent passage as it's all part of the earth's unspoken story.

I am convinced, I could be wrong, that most of my woodworking counterparts would have discarded a lot of the pieces I chose to work with and keep. I wanted the character marks of various decline phases as influences on the wood. Now that I am old, I saw elements of my own personality reflected in my elm. Sometimes the wood seemed just a tad grizzly, but I kept those bits to work on my own stubbornness. Then there were the cracks and fissures; some were caused by the drying process and the lack of climate control to even out the pace, whereas others came when the tree was dropped. I recall two years ago when the mean-spirited man attacked me from behind and broke three of my ribs. This tree was dropped and when that happens the shock in the fall, the crashing to the ground caused cross-stem-fracture which is not the more generally accepted cracking along or with the grain.

There's a lot to take in on this journey, and even in an eight-inch jag like this we have lots to learn. The bottom corner where the first housing dado accepts the shelf has a typical gathering of small 'dead' knots to contemplate before any actual cutting takes place. Two inches above is a cross-grain fissure that passes from this side to the other. This was not caused by shrinkage, but by shock when the tree was initially dropped.

And then there are the remains of the spike showing the root of rootedness of a branch in the main tree stem at the top. Shifts in colour, grain configuration all track the history of the tree over many decades. Pollution, atmospheric shifts in climate, factor into our trees and the dendrochronology, the science of analysing and interpreting the growth evidenced in the tree stem over decades and centuries that determine what took place and when according to its scientific evaluation. Through this, we have been better able to establish a more precise environmental record, allowing researchers to study past climates, ecological events, and date archaeological sites or wooden artifact. Think of these trees as passengers on the earth. Stagnant in distance moves, but on board the ocean of soil polluted by our greed and poor stewardship.

A swirling mass of variation characterises elm in business. The hidden joints will hold flatness and eliminate the risk of twist over the coming century of use. It's the signature joint of all bookshelves, and I have made thousands upon thousands throughout my life. It's no exaggeration to say perhaps at least a hundred thousand of them and all hand cut with saws, chisels and hand-router plane.

My fingers trace the passage of my refining work now that the finish is on, and I have settled the matter of taking the rough-sawn tree slabs to the house. The two coats are so thin they don't measure by human touch. I feel now that I am touching the wood in all of its glory. My first sealer coat was 50/50 dewaxed clear shellac and denatured alcohol. It's also a perfect sander coat, so sanding is done in seconds to the silkiest glass smoothness you've ever felt anywhere. My first-level topcoat for this project is Osmo Polyx hard wax clear satin oil. Of course, we use all kinds of terms like 'oil' and 'resin' when many such terms are erroneous, often intended to mislead, present s natural, really. But you can mix any fluids you like together and call them 'Danish oil' (nothing to do with the Danes) or 'resin' or just 'oil' and sell them as such if you want to. Without data sheets, we really don't know what we are working with.

Grain, for us makers with hand tools, is not a surface-skimming snapshot, but an in-depth, inner-fibre play investigation every time we plumb the depths of a joint, or plane and saw into it. I have added no colour to this wood. All I did was plane, scrape and sand the wood to 250-grit and apply clear shellac as a sealer/sanding coat to lock the fibres ready for the Osmo oil.

There is no stain or colouring in the finishing material I applied, nor anything applied to actually colour the wood as a base colour. Put either the shellac or Osmo on on clear glass, and you can see through it with only the very slightest opacity and zero colour.

These medullary rays reminded me of the billions of stars of the night skies that just go on and on forever. Quite spectacular. Stunning, altogether too marvellous for words.

The plexus of joints and joinery complicate the simplicity of looks as I work through my choices surrounding the uncomplicated use of housing dadoes. Seventeen joints deliver roughly 50" of shoulder lines for lateral stability, but the amazing element is this: measuring corner to corner after the glue up and clamp removal. The corner to corner diagonal measurements are exactly the same. The significance? I didn't check because I wanted to know if it would be square, but so I could briefly discuss it here. It's a personality issue. I knew that I had worked accurately enough on each knifewall shoulder with my hand tool methods alone to delivery a dead square project because of the mass of shoulder lines. Factor into all of this about 120" of dado length, and you see that working with hand tools is indeed a character-building exercise for good mental and physical health. This is soul-strengthening work rather than soul-destroying work, in my view.

The joinery making in elm using hand tools is not hard at all, actually, it's easy, but I often think elm is born without lignin; the wood sometimes seems to have no lignin uniting the fibres, the bio-plastic occurring naturally in plantilfe is the glue that gives it rigidity and also has growing applications in bio-plastics and carbon fibres. The issue then is that bits fall off in the short grain of say dovetails and such. That point right on the corner.

At this point, I have assembled and disassembled about five times, with an average on each joint somewhere about 7 times. This is essential to ensure every joint seats well at first, but then that no one joint compromises another in the grand assembly and before gluing up. Does that mean gap-free togetherness? I'm afraid not. I thought that I did have all the joints full seated but found a couple that I should have clamped and missed. I slid in a slither and glued it in place. The final place may never be seen, but the slither neatly placed and trimmed definitely looked better than a gap, for sure.

The clamps consolidate the mass until those thin films of plastic glue unite. Taking off the clamps is to 'bring the work to rest.' There's always a settledness to this sense of preeminence over my wood, my tools and the overall completion of work. Oh, see the bent stick of plywood between the underside of the top and the top of the lower shelf. I think it's worth noting. This applies pressure where a clamp had a negative effect.

Did I use screws? I used four. Why? I missed gluing one of the housing dadoes for one reason or another. When I took the clamp off, it came apart by half a millimetre. I did squeeze in some glue but had no idea where it spread to, so I predrilled the holes to guide two long screws from underneath that bottom shelf into one of the sides and plugged the holes with wooden plugs. One of the uprights was not wide enough so I glued and screwed an added two inches in width. The screws were so I could keep working and didn't have to wait a few hours for glue to dry. Not impatient, just time saving.

My knowledge of woodworking from tree-dropping to finished pieces in the hundreds tells me that this fissure is a shock result occurring most of the time when the tree is dropped from standing rooted to the earth it grew in for two hundred years in this case. In other words, it did not occur during the growth of the living tree but in its felling. This is cross-grain splitting, where the sheer weight of the tree was too much for the stem. The fissure was in adjacent slabs either side and there was no degrade through the kind of rot that would have been present in a growing tree or a standing dead version.

You will notice that in my remedial steps it was because I really had no other option. Yes, there were compromises. I'm a practical and pragmatic maker, I have to be, but then making videos for teaching and training (and entertainment too) adds the extra dimension that often interrupt the flow of thought and the work patterns I always work to that generally disallow such issues.

Alongside my slender, sliver of a gap-filler are the original sawmill bandsaw marks I retained as evidence for the year 2126 so their forensics can paint their own picture on an earth-borne tree of magnificence but long since extinct.

When it comes to the joinery, some things might not be too obvious at first glance. Yes, they are all what I would refer to as housing dadoes. Why housing dadoes? Never really heard of it? Well, transitionally., in my changing continents to live, experiencing life in woodworking there and having done the same in the UK, I discovered that we in the UK referred to dadoes as housing joints and never at that time referred to housings as dadoes, whereas in the UK a recess going with or across the grain would be a housing. In the US, a dado is a cross-grain channel, whereas one running with the grain would be a groove. I decided that housing dado fit the description better, and I continued to consider other recesses as housings, as in hinge recesses, lock recesses and so on.

The only real consistency between the various joints is the depths of the housing dadoes, which are all 3/8" (10 mm) deep.

My joints are variations on the theme. Some are through and some stopped. Another has a dovetail to the front end; we use these when we need an added mechanical aspect as a 'pull-resistance' factor: I've used them often on the cross rails between drawers to pull the cabinet sides in to bottom the housing dadoes out.

Life is like wood, it comes with knots in it. But it also comes with woodworm, spalting, full punky-rot, cracks, shrinkage and expansion along with other more negative susceptibilities. The alternatives are not acceptable to me and to my audience. We are not so much tolerant as accepting of the occasional inevitable realities of working with natural materials. I have accepted good quality plywoods but not low-grade alternatives, but I doubt that I will ever accept MDF or pressed fibreboard.

Elm is one of our more unusual hardwoods in that its whole infrastructure, though reliant on the same essential working components are the same as all other trees, the outcome of what its capillaries transport from root hair tips to leaf tips is a wood that’s not like any other. That’s why I say it...

Source

 Another boring day in the shop mopping the finishes for the frames. I think I'm done with the big frame, thankfully. The two black frames will probably be done on saturday. So that means it will be next week at the earliest before I get them to the Frame it Shop. Fingers crossed on that happening.

ready for shellac?

I got the last coat of black paint on both this AM. Since then I eyeballed them every half hour or so. No dust nibs to raise my blood pressure and no holidays neither. I'll let them rest and I'll put on shellac starting in the AM. 

yes it if finally done

I didn't feel that way in the AM. After I had applied what I thought was the final coat of shellac, I saw a big waterfall drip on the left long side in raking light. I had to scrape it with a mini card scraper. Initially I had sanded it and slapped some shellac on it. That did absolutely nothing to hide/cover the drip. Scraping it did and much thanks to shellac as a finish. The shellac I applied after that melted and blended in seamlessly.

hmm.......

I painted these four at 0800 and at 1500 the green ones were still a wee bit tacky. The black one dried to touch in about 15 minutes. The green frames have two coats on them and they definitely need at least one more. I expected this being a dark colored paint, that two coats would do it. I was wrong boys and girls.

I found 4 places in Rhode Island to buy hardwoods. Only one had 4/4 cherry (no 8/4) in stock. The other three only had 8/4 slabs. That would have worked for the legs but too thick for the rest of the needed stock. It is looking like I won't be able to avoid driving up to New Hampshire. Highlands has 5/4 and 8/4 cherry in stock. 

accidental woodworker 

 I have two projects in the shop, one done and the other almost done. Both of them combined are being a Royal PITA. The two of them are hogging about 40% of the available shop space. It is impossible to walk around the shop where they are. I also have to be super duper careful moving stock around so I don't hit either one.

The bookcase is the one that is finished and it won't be leaving until my wife brings it to North Carolina. I would put it in the boneyard but my wife is rearranging things there so it sits in the shop for now. 

The frame for the wood poster is the one I want to be done with. At least with that one I can bring it upstairs and leave it in the living room. After this frame was glued up it has been difficult (&@%Q(_%&#@Q^%*)_+)_ to ignore. It is tippy and it would fall off whatever I had it laying on. It will be a huge relief to have it out of the shop ASAP.

hmm......

I didn't happen boys and girls. I thought I was going to be putting a check mark in the done column with these two. There were a ton of dust nibs on both sides of both of the frames.  My workbench is under the living room and walking there showers the frames with dust etc etc. Another Royal PITA. 

Sanding the frames with 320 initially didn't work that well. I had to use a mini card scraper first to remove the nibs and flatten them. I also went a wee bit postal scraping a few more drips in the corners I missed previously. And there were a few more paint build ups along the edges from the last application of paint. After the scraping I sanded the frames, front and back, with 320 grit. That evened and smoothed out the finish.

prepping

I had 5 colors to pick from for painting these shadow box frames. I chose green because it was high gloss enamel. The other choices were either satin or semi gloss. I'm leaving the backs natural with shellac. The rest of the frame will all be painted green.

3 green and one black

The frames on the right are green and the bottom left one is black. Same thing with the back natural and rest black. Not sure what or if I'll use this because it is an odd size that doesn't match standard small photos.

3 down, 1or 2 more

I got 3 on the back and that is done. The front has 3 coats and I'll put on at least one more. I'll check on it in the AM and decide then whether or not it will need another coat.

This is all I got down today. With limited space to maneuver and waiting for shellac and paint to dry I couldn't get much done. I'm still on the fence about driving to New Hampshire too. I've been searching on line for closer Hardwood sellers without any success. It sucks pond scum that Highlands isn't open on saturday anymore. 

accidental woodworker

I started this blog in 2007 to share and talk about my woodworking and guitar making. I am very grateful that my blog has been on the two best woodworking aggregators: Norse Woodsmith and Unplugged Shop. Thanks to them the word got about my work.

The other day, I noticed that Unplugged Shop didn’t share my last post and took down the previous post on their website.  Since this happened I have noticed that the number of visitors to my website are down. I  submitted a request to have my website appear on their aggregator, I haven’t heard back from them. 

I wonder if the AI robot that assists their website doesn’t consider a guitar maker to be a “woodworker”? Is it because I don’t make stick chairs or turn bowls anymore? And that I don’t post much “how to” about guitar making? I’m a little baffled by Unplugged Shop’s action.

I hope that norsewoodsmith.com continues to share my and other woodworkers blog posts, I am very grateful for that old school aggregator. Thanks!

I've just added to the store three interesting chisels. By "three" I mean I actually only have three. The story behind them is interesting, hence the tale.

English toolmakers make two kinds of of "mortise chisels": the oval-handled mortise chisels of the sort that we stock by Ray Iles, which are designed for deep mortises and are tapered front to back so they can loosen themselves in a deep joint. The second kind are sash mortise chisels, which have parallel sides and round handles. They were used for shallow mortises, specifically window sashes. The advantage of having parallel sides is that they are simply less expensive to make. There's no real advantage for registration or anything like that.

Continental Europeans have never really cottoned to the oval bolstered mortise chisel. Instead they use are very large sash mortise chisels, which are typically tapered front to back. These tools have round handles, which makes them harder to register and use - but they are less expensive to make.

The great American tool company Stanley, which made all sorts of wonderful chisels, never actually made a real mortise chisel, sash or otherwise. So imagine my surprise when one of the owners of my local hardware store (more in that later), told me he had something special to show me - three Stanley sash mortise chisels, made in France and England, probably in the late 20th century. These sash mortise chisels are not in any of my catalogs. And I only have three in metric sizes. If you're interested, you can click on the product description here; if you act fast enough, you can actually buy them. They are perfectly good great tools, properly hand forged. When I say hand forged, I don't mean by hand banging on an anvil. I mean, with a power hammer, with a human organizing the blows. It's a real skill.

Before we go back to the history of the chisels, let's talk a bit about this hardware store. Warshaw Hardware Store on 3rd Avenue between 20th and 21st streets in NYC is run by its third generation, Eddie and Carl Warshaw. It is typical of the small neighborhood hardware stores that used to be all over New York City. It has everything. In other words, when I need 1/4"-20 bolt 1/2" long I can order a box from McMaster and have them the next day or I can go into Warsaw and buy three 1/4"-20 bolt 1/2" long for probably about a buck. For a tinkerer, and a guy trying to run a machine shop, this is a godsend. Your sink breaks, you need a weird washer: they got it. The fact that they are conveniently located is a godsend.

Back to the chisels. If you're running a hardware store for three generations, the chances of finding stuff in weird corners of the shop is 100%. So Eddie called me and said that he had found these chisels, had no idea what they were for, and thought of me. Did I want them? Of course I was intrigued. So I stopped by I took a look and saw that they were sash mortise chisels, which made no sense.

Eddie said "In the 1990s, one of my distributors went out of business and we bought their entire inventory. Over the years I sold everything but these chisels because they're not really our thing and they ended up being pushed aside."

I'm guessing the chisels are from around the 70s or the 80s and were sitting in the distributors warehouse a long time. They might have been a marketing experiment by Stanley, to import some of the more woodworking friendly tools that were available in Stanley Europe into the United States to see if they would sell to hobbyists here. Apparently they didn't.

In case you're wondering how I know that they are forged and handled mostly by hand, it's because the forgings aren't perfectly symmetric, a mark of an open die not a complete drop forge. When you hand forge chisels, the balance isn't always centered correctly on the tang. To address this problem, when you put the chisels into a handle - the job of the cutler - you compensate so the chisels weight is perfectly balanced and symmetrical. But visually it may be off slightly - and that's the case with these chisels. The mark of somebody paying attention. Two of these chisel still have their fancy store hanging display hoops on.

 Temps here about have been in the single digits overnight and barely getting above 20F/-7C during the day. Today it hit 37F/3C and the snow mountains actually melted a wee bit. My happiness will be that what we have piled up along the driveway will melt before I get whacked with another storm.

almost

There were a few holidays on the brown frame that I had to touch up. The black frame has two coats on the back and one on the front. I will have to wait a couple of days for the paint to cure out before I put any shellac on them. The goal is to get the 3 frames to Maria on saturday.

toast

This is the second 5x7 shadow box and it is toast. It is twisted too much to plane it flat. The first one was twisted too but not as bad and I was able to flatten it. I had to make another frame.

nope

This was the 3rd panel I made for the frame and it was also the 3rd frame that was twisted. I thought I could keep it flat while I glued it but nixed it. I didn't want to chance it going wonky on me.

last one

The 3 previous failures were all 1/8" birch plywood. All of the plywood panels were visibly twisted. The frame wasn't strong enough to straighten it. The final panel is crappy 1/8" plywood from china. It was flat and the dry fit laid flat on the tablesaw. Glad it worked because I ran out of both the birch and chinese plywood. 

I'm dreading buying more 1/8" plywood. The price had jumped a lot the last time I bought some. With the way prices are spiraling upward, I'm sure the plywood will be higher too.

hmm.....

Couldn't get this setup to work. The clamps would not clamp on the flat of the red 45. I tried 3 different clamps and nada. I wanted to use these because I could see if the clamps twisted the frame with pressure applied. Onto plan #2.

Plan #2 was the band clamp. I eyeballed it all over a bazillion times making sure it was seated down fully on the metal corners. I thought maybe the band clamp caused the twist in the previous 3. Maybe, but 2 were definitely due the plywood being twisted.

splines

I noticed when I tried to twist the frame flat, one of the miters broke apart. Wasn't expecting that at all. I put two splines in each miter on the first frame.

3 hours later

Normally I would have waited until tomorrow but I had to check it out. The frame is laying flat on the tablesaw. There was zero rocking on any of the corners.

splines

I used red oak veneer for the splines. I'll be painting both of the 5x7 frames. I didn't do any lay out for the splines - I just eyeballed them. 

came today

I like reading history like this. The book on the right was published in 1984 and the second one in 1992. I did a cursory page check and both books are different. Both are still about New Jersey toolmakers and not just woodworking tools. I especially like reading the ads. It is like reading a foreign language even though it is my native english. 

accidental woodworker

Last week I talked about life working wood that few might know today. A journey through youth to adult life, maturing through migration to live and work as a maker in the USA. No one could have imagined my life. Not one ounce of it would have matched anything of their world, nor any other I ever knew of. Looking back on my own unfolding life, I never met any others that took anywhere like the one I took. Most people are worried about risk, looking foolish to their friends and colleagues, and would never sell up their entire family home and belongings, nor go to live permanently on a continent 5,000 miles from home without the secure promise of some kind of future life elsewhere. Life for the majority is clearly about self-safety, low- and no- risk enterprises, with mainly a gym-safe security for health exercise rather than whitewater kayaking, freeclimbing rock faces over 250 feet and real mountain climbing without Sherpa guides rather than dropping trees in a Texan wilderness, deserts really, nor are they about driving penniless to shows two thousand miles through four other states in a beaten-up 30-year-old Ford Country Squire station wagon with 400,000 miles on the clock and, dare I say, on threadbare tires. Monarch Pass in January snow blizzards, just over 11,300 feet, puts Snowdon's 1,000 into foothill realms, and the magnificence can never be compared with hills you never see the top of for thick cloud.

Even in summer, snow often remains in pockets, but in winter, the story is very different. One of my trips was in January when the roads were bad enough for me to pull over to fit snow chains when I found those that came with the old car were not for my size of wheels.

Yes, my Life is somewhat more sedately paced in some ways, but I am still impressed to keep encouraging my fellow man even when they insist on comparing handwork to machining wood, the two of which have only the barest minimal of connections when it comes to skill building and the whole immersive experience I get from hand work. It bothers me all the less which methods people use, what might irritate me the more is any consideration that the two are one and the same, and it's just a matter of choice. My world is far more diverse, much healthier and absolutely richer. No question. Unless you have truly developed hand skills to a substantial degree, and that means a couple of weeks full on in terms of time, not all at one go, you cannot understand that of which I speak. In most cases, when `i speak of what I know about handwork, the eyes of machinist woodworkers glaze over in a few seconds. At best, they try to extrapolate some kind of legitimate comparison to persuade me differently. About five magazine editors over the last three decades have tried too, the truth was, they didn't know either. They often developed their knowledge by reading, writing giftedly and only minimally doing. Sorry, but that comes from personal interactions and relating to them!

This adventure launched us into online teaching, and our early videos were filmed from inside the castle walls. Imagine being given a handful of ordinary tools, about ten, and a workbench and walking out with a beautiful rocking chair.

So, here I am in a small village of 4,000 called Odiham at a woodworker's venue called Cross Barn and will shortly be surrounded by a mass-congregation of woodworkers making me feel settled and very much at home. It's been a while since I gave any kind of public talk, but meeting Trevor a few months ago and him asking whether I might consider speaking sparked something in me. He had recently come to my workshop, and he intrigued me as we talked about his input into the lives of younger people himself. He's one of the few people that took my investment and started reaching out to them by teaching hand work. Trevor is a gentle soul, kindly, easy to be with. He seemed to know everything about me through following our online work. Our exchange revolved around woodworking, woodworking with children, and then his association with an association of woodworkers just over an hour's drive from me if the weather's good and outside of connecting arterial roads to city lives. When the day came to travel, in heavy, incessant rain there and back, it seemed like a good idea at the time. I was thankful for Joseph volunteering to come with me. The journey is shorter with company, and satnavs often need a nudge at complex intersections on unknown routes.

This was the Men's Sheds talk I gave a few years ago. I enjoyed that talk too. One day, I hope to do this again. These organisations need our support all the more.

The days ahead of my visit prompted me to be more thoughtful about what I might want †o say. I prodded myself with thought-provoking considerations, thinking of the significance woodworking had had on me throughout my life, but then three and more decades trying to dismantle the commercial impact that changed woodworking to become machine-only practices where everything made now came off a rotary cut from carbide-tipped cutterheads and blades of all kinds. The effect on people wanting to just make an occasional piece, a coffee table or perhaps a wedding gift of some kind, every now and then, something for a granddaughter, something like that, has been quite remarkable. Imagine, needing five machines of different types just to make a few pieces every few years! I know, I'm exaggerating some here.

Snowdon will always have a special place in my life. It was where I spent my younger days climbing and beachcombing with my family. I also had some special neighbours living in the Llandygai Village next to the Penrhyn Castle where I had my UK woodworking school workshop, New Legacy.

My life experience as a full-time, lifetime maker of 98% handmade pieces seems to me, at least, to be unparalleled in that I haven't really met many, if any, who have actually spent as long as I have working wood in self-employed ways, travelling through life as a maker and then going most of it alone much of the time. On this evening I didn't want to be just an interesting 'guest speaker', though that's important too. Time is important to me, and I wanted this Southern Fellowship of Woodworkers to feel inspired enough to investigate other options where needed. I was altogether sure that these woodworkers would be like all the others I ever meet, and by that, I mean in my more amateur realms rather than so-called 'professional' ones—those fascinated by possibilities, interested in every new discovery and no matter how small, excitingly interesting, considerate in passing on any ability and knowledge they might have to others. That sort of thing. No trade secrets here!

My work teaching in the US ended with a cluster of hands-on classes in and around 2012. This New York class was a beginner class, but we did complete a month-long workshop that enabled many woodworkers to transition into full-time making.

Another key difference in my world was the reality that children these days are highly unlikely to experience real woodworking of any kind, even machining parts of it. Children can not work with or near to ultra-dangerous machines, and that, by its very nature, leaves 98% of them outside the workshop doors during the most critical era of formative learning. If that was true in my day, how much more today with the advent of mobile phones and total access to the internet twenty-four-seven? The competition for things of interest today is unparalleled in history. It's all about the scarce recognition that we rarely have enough time to PAY FOR ATTENTION! Also true, another reality, The majority of those youngsters wanting to do woodworking would be held firmly outside the machine shop doors for obvious safety issues that must never be ignored. The simple reality is this; it's not just the machinist-user who is in danger. Those standing or working within close proximity to machines, mostly a single-car garage-sized space and such, are in equal levels of danger. Anything that can wrong will likely go wrong for everyone and wood and splinters fly, when wood explodes from the impact of a three-horse-power motor, wood splits without warning and people can forget where they are and become disoriented. Furthermore, which young person, when having access to a mobile device of any kind, wants to stand around listening to the scream of machines watching someone else make all the cuts for them anyway? School woodworking and D&T (Design and Technology UK). It's no wonder we have seen half a decade of rapid decline in woodworking around the whole world. I recall not too long ago the racks in every UK supermarket and bookstore having several linear feet of dedicated space for DIY woodworking magazines for sale. But it was the editors that shot themselves in the foot by prioritising machine methods in 98% of their pages. How short-sighted they were. For the main part, they simply regurgitated the same old, same old every few months. There are only so many moulds you can make with a power router and so many straight cuts from a tablesaw.

Another adventure unfolded when I started my UK school from an old farmyard on the Isle of Anglesey as the snow started falling on my wood and the only place I could use machines outside.

Funny enough, I think, the majority of richer, machine-only woodworkers actually believe that these others, the ones yet to discover woodworking for themselves, could own machines like they do; that this was available to all, and that it was really the only way forward. Owning a few dedicated machines and a workspace large enough to house them does speak of being well-off and better off than the majority. My outreach is to both the well-off and those not well-off. This is based on my reality that my work will indeed equal the cuts made using a chop saw, power planer, and tablesaw but that it takes real effort and skill to do it and that it is well worth the cognitive development of making three-dimensionally and probably 4D. With time, many cuts actually become quicker––even with the need for further refining with a second or third tool. Starting from scratch, any dovetail I make will be faster than machining it, and it will always fit straight off the saw. But I know that if I need a thousand identical dovetails, a power router and jig will repeat the process a thousand times faster. But, go ahead, ask yourself, who needs a thousand dovetails outside of industry anyway? Machines have the capacity to always deliver dead-square cuts and that could never be achieved using hand tools in the same time, but there is much more to woodworking than the square and straight cuts you get. And it's this that my audience wants. It's the realness of high-demand woodworking.

It feels like I could just have made about a thousand of these but lost count. I made on in every box-making class alongside the students I taught, and that is thousands of students.

It's easy to forget that machines demand big-foot footprints and dedicated spaces around each piece of kit, volumes of investment, and more beyond. I have spent 30 years proving that 98% can't and never could or would have access to such wealthy woodworking, and that once that thoughtful consideration passed, the minute was lost, and those looking for the new hobby moved on with a sense of loss and impossibility. We're talking thousands upon thousands of pounds, whereas hand tools might cost less than £300 for a complete kit and a relatively compact workbench will make every stick and stem to furnish a home with 60 pieces of high-end furniture. 98%, that's my using the reference ninety-eight percent, is a favourite number in percentages for me—it's arbitrary, of course. I picked out what I could from my lived life as what others refer to now as an influencer. Actually, inspirer suits better.

This is roughly what a month-long class looks like. Absolute success and no school in the world had expectations like this: a dovetailed box, a wall shelf, an oak end table, an oak coffee table, a pine tool box replete with raised panels and two drawers, and an oak rocking chair in 26 days with all the students having minimal or zero hand tool experience. Oh, how we have dumbed down expectations for hand tool woodworking.

Success usually speaks positively for itself because mostly the unsuccesses rarely get a mention. Of course, we must take care not to give the impression of total success when ten failures prefaced the reality of the risks you took for your one eventual success. The truth is, success can be staged performances based on small gains through lesser failures at each successive rather than successful level––most of them are simply serendipitous bolt-ons. You persevered, of course you did. It's all too easy to give others the impression that you planned the whole thing and that there were never any failures, that you planted each stepping stone to get where you are, whereas for me, failure seems always to undergird some measure of ultimate success in someone who didn't give up. It's one thing letting go of something and another being discarded, and it's one thing discarding something and another recognizing it's your time to move on. But I fleshed out ideas that seemed to expand positively from time to time. Rarely, if talking about wood to woodworkers, will I ever be stuck to relate to others on common ground somewhere, and that's because my woodworking comes from a wholly lived life of daily experience. If I took any one-year span of my life, I could relate to others through the wood in it, simply because it was the life I'd lived. Any given year would give me sixty diversely different woodworking topics, from making mesquite birdhouses to mesquite credenzas for the Cabinet Room of the White House.

Joseph and Kat joined me in New York to help with the class. It's always special having them along with me.

Joseph coming with me to Odiham was nice for me. I think our relationship is remarkable. The deep gutter-water, hydroplaning, and such made the trip interesting, but we arrived safely and dead on time and at the right place. The evening dark surrounded us as we parked by the Cross Barn venue. We were to meet with a smaller group at the Red Lion pub for a tantalising menu for choosing supper. The ten or so of us sat for a good hour, discovering our common ground across the table. The venue was a five-minute saunter through the village.

This is Hannah's work I took to show off at the venue. Everyone loved it and all were surprised it was total handwork

My mixed feelings about presenting this night quickly evaporated with the crowds hovering in hospitality to greet both Joseph and myself. I was glad for his company and support, but he too has his own unique story that few fathers and sons working together through life have. It seems to me at least that he and I have been partners forever and in so many ways. I'm not really nervous about talking to a crowd, but more feeling that what I might share is more important to me than I first thought. You see, I am on the other side of the uncertainties early life can be paved with, the other side of unsuccesses the other side of seeking the approval of others. I'm not saying I have arrived, and then again, I feel in much of my life, I have. Living my kind of success is measured far less alongside famed people we might generally acknowledge as successful and more about the sense I have that I have actually achieved something quite substantive, an important objective through my isolation and ambition. To be 'there', after living 'out there', we must shed lots of the excess baggage we usually accumulate from many sources along the way. This often begins in childhood and passaging through life, we accumulate and accumulate like we do possessions. As I said, my life as a maker has never had bolt-ons in my designer-maker living designing many a thousand pieces and then doing 98% of all work using hand tools rather than machines. As a result, I have taught a thousand children how to work wood in traditional ways and then ten thousand woodworkers to strive for the more real experience of high-demand woodworking I consider to be hand tool woodworking. Take any segment of a working man's life with hand tools in it, and a story exists that most other woodworkers will be interested to hear of it. I had considered a couple of things, but critically I wanted to reach out to those there to reconsider their amount of handwork and to see how it might relate to others––people like those I had trained three decades ago when they were kids and then those in recent years, people, unusually, like Hannah. Hannah has been my only ever serious female to go through apprenticeship.

I enjoyed the evening. It went well.

Last week I talked about life working wood that few might know today. A journey through youth to adult life, maturing through migration to live and work as a maker in the USA. No one could have imagined my life. Not one ounce of it would have matched anything of their world, nor any other...

Source

Any time I rehab an old tool, I think about whether or not to leave as much patina as I can.  In the past I've been more in the camp of trying to make it look like new, shining up the brass and other metal parts and cleaning the wood thoroughly.  Lately though, I've been more apt to just make it useable and keep it looking like it is 100 or more years old.

With this old moving fillister, though, there was enough work required to get it fettled properly that I decided to clean it up all the way.  This is a #68 Sandusky moving fillister plane that initially looked like it was in pretty good shape.  The only thing obviously wrong was that the nicker iron was missing.

Overview

Markings on the front

Close-up of the right side showing depth stop and the dado that should house a nicker

The heel end stamped with former caretaker H. W. Campbell

The 1 5/8" wide iron was in pretty decent shape

This shows the angle of the cutting edge required due to the skew of the iron in the plane

There was a little damage to the aft end of the boxing - not enough for me to worry about

I started with the body of the plane, specifically the sole.  I was mainly checking to see if it was flat, but what I saw was a HUGE amount of twist!  I had to plane that out and it didn't take long.  Then I looked at the right side, which I wanted to be square to the sole.  It too had a HUGE amount of twist, so I planed that out, too.  Planing those two surfaces and making them square to each other had the additional benefit of crispening up the corner between the two.

Plane held in vise upside down, winding sticks showing twisted sole

Plane lying on its left side and winding sticks show twist on right side

Got both surfaces twist free, flat and square to each other

While I was planing, I also flattened the fence (only the face that mates with the plane's sole) and made the edge that rides on the work square to that face.

Squaring up the fence

Cleaned up the brass inserts and screws

Planing the surfaces that I did leads to predictable consequences.  First, since the fence is now a little thinner, the screws holding it to the body bottomed out in their holes before tightening the fence completely.  I didn't want to deepen the screw holes, so I added washers that would bear against the fence's brass and that fixed the problem.  But now the screw heads protrude just a little bit beyond the bottom of the fence.  Not really a problem - it just doesn't sit upright as stably as before.

Second, planing the right side of the plane body made it so that the dado that would hold the new nicker iron was not as deep.  Before planing I had measured it at .137" deep.  The steel I'm using to make a new nicker is .125" thick, so I thought I might have to use a shim to get the cutter to be at the level of the plane's surface.  But I planed enough off the right side that the .125" thick nicker would have been proud of the surface.  I ended up routing the bottom of the dado to make the cutter level with the surface.

The dado for the nicker.  Note how it is tapered in its length as well as its depth, getting wider at the bottom.

Some notes about how to make a new nicker

Getting the nicker close to the right shape

But because I planed the right side of the body, the nicker sits too high

So I used a small router to deepen the dado.

To complete the nicker, I hacksawed and filed a notch that allows one to remove it from the plane

Then shaped the cutting edge on the grinder

Then heat-treated and tempered it and gave the edge a final honing

The plane's rabbeting iron didn't need too much work.  After removing any rust with abrasives, I reshaped the cutting edge to mate well with the plane's sole.  Another consequence of planing the right side of the body was that the iron now extended too far out the planes' side.  So I had to grind and file that back to be in line with the plane's side and the nicker.

You can see how much the iron extends past the planes' right side (top in photo)

Grinding a new cutting edge was tricky due to the angle of the edge

You can see the laminated iron in the bevel

First test cut: rabbet cut along the grain - nicker removed

Second test cut: nicker used here to cut a cross-grain rabbet

A couple of test cuts gave nice results.  But I really had to be diligent about pressing the fence against the workpiece when cutting with the grain to avoid getting a rabbet of tapered width.  The small test rabbet cross-grain using the nicker was great.  It really worked well.

After all the work was done, I gave the wood two coats of BLO.  It's been drying 2-3 weeks now, and here's the final product.

Glamour shot

After I use it a while, I might find that the wedge needs work to fit better.  There's a slight gap down near the iron's cutting edge.  It didn't seem to affect the test rabbets, but I'll keep an eye on it.

 Today flew by and before I knew it I was killing the lights in the shop at 1458. I didn't get any major t hings done but I did whack a bunch of little things. I like that time went by so quick I didn't notice. As usual I let my limited attention span drive me down all the side streets today. Thinking my next project will be a desk for Miles. Not looking forward to driving to New Hampshire on a week day. Boston traffic is a PITA and terrifying at the same time. Oh well stercus acidit. 

done

Got the disastrous milk paint frame repainted. Got two coats on the back and front. Tomorrow I will slap 3 coats of shellac on it. Then it will be off to the Frame It Shop. 

sigh....

Shouda, woulda, coulda, but didn't. If I had looked at this frame earlier I could have fixed all the boo boos. I was ready to put shellac on this frame but I found too many hiccups to ignore. Most of it were drips and paint build up on the edges. Scraped the drips, etc and then sanded the frame with 100 grit and repainted it.

hmm.......

Thought of using a sawthooth hanger but nixed it. I would have had to use epoxy to fix it and I didn't have any.  Decided to use screws instead.

it fits

Vertical space of any kind is super tight in the shop. This fits here and there is another space above the thermometer for a sibling. I'll start looking for a couple more of these.

done

I have no idea what you would call these two. Refrigerator magnet art? I bought these somewhere in Maine 10-12 years ago.

this will work

I was going to use a sawtooth hanger when I thought of this instead. I glued the short piece at the top to the back and screwed it to the long bottom piece.

almost ready

I had to file all four screws to shorten them. The two at the top just needed a wee bit and the two in the long bottom piece needed about a 1/8" filed off.

surprise

The screws were solid brass. I was expecting them to be brass plated - that is what I find is prevalent now. Solid brass files easier than the brass plated crap.

hmm......

Happy with how this turned out. Thinking that maybe I should attach a strap or something similar to limit how far the back leg would open. The hinge I used is a stopped hinge that opens to 95°. It is steady as is and when I thumped the bench with a hammer, it stayed in place. I can revisit it if need be so for now it is sans a strap.

two new shadow box frames

Got confused again and plowed the groove before shooting the miters. I should have done the other frames with a groove for the back. 

I like

Dry fit to check the margins and they were spot on. I showed these to my wife and she asked if I was going to mat them. I hadn't considered that at all but I did muse about it for a few. I'll ask Maria about that when I bring the other frames to her. 

glued and cooking

Debating whether or not to paint these two or leave them natural with a shellac finish. Maybe I'll paint one and shellac the other.

Lie Nielsen vise screw

The leg screw was been adopted. I threw in the handle because I don't have any need for it. I don't have anything to fill in the void - I used up all I had shipping out the planes. Bubble wrap at Wally World is $16 and the S/H is going to high enough without adding that to the mix. I'll have to check around the house and see if I can scrounge up some more packing material.

quickie

Whacked a simple shelf before the quitting bell. Made it all with scraps I dug out of the shop shitcan. 

close by now

This is the Stanley depth stop do dad for  auger bits which are right above this. Thinking now that it is done that maybe I should have made it longer R/L?

accidental woodworker

In the aftermath of the snow/sleet/freezing rain/ice/snow adventure of last Sunday you could definitely say we were disheartened at the sight of the collapsed greenhouse.  The broken internal structure was clearly evident, in one place the end of the snapped off arched beam had poked through the plastic skin.  Mrs. Barn rightly insisted on clearing off the ton of ice to assess the damage and get a plan for the reconstruction.

One thing we did not want to do was wail away at the shell and damage the skin even more than it was already.  Finding the right tool was a conundrum.  She tried with one of her gardening tools but it was a poor fit for the problem, plus she was too short to get up high enough to get much done.  I’m taller and with my spiked boots I could get up on the snow/ice dam along the edge of the building.  And fortunately I had just the right tool.

Many years ago my woodworking pal TomS gave me my favorite walking stick, about shoulder length with a bulbous knot near the top.  Since the knot was gentle in shape I could stand and whack the ice until it broke up without risking more damage to the plastic skin.  After about an hour of careful work the last of the ice slabs slipped off and the arched structure popped back to its original shape.    Hallelujah!  You can see that slab leaning up against the greenhouse, it was about six square feet of four-inch-thick ice/snow composite.  It is several hundred pounds.   So even though we have not seen each other in more than a decade, TomS saved the day!

I found just a couple of punctures to the plastic skin and repaired them straightaway.  I still have to build four new laminated arches, but the necessary repair is much less than anticipated.  I’ll get to work on the repairs as soon as we get a bit more warming.

I just checked and the outside temp is 16 and inside the greenhouse it’s nearly 60.

PS.  Here’s a glimpse of what we were dealing with.  We estimate it would have taken a month to clear the six inch thick ice slab on driveway with a pickaxe and shovel.  It was brutal work for us septuagenarians.  Thank goodness for hearty mountain men willing to work all night long in frigid temps with their monster machines.  It was well after 10pm when we finally got to the top of the list.  They finished with us and moved on to the next name on the list.

PPS   A fellow at church told me he had seen some of the Amish kids skating in a field.  Who needs a pond or rink?  We certainly could not navigate our place without snow cleats.