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I enjoyed some instruction classes in the mid-1980s by the late, great Tage Frid at the old Woodcraft store at 313 Montvale Avenue in Woburn, Massachusetts.  That store then was still the only Woodcraft, having moved north from Boston in 1968. Woodcraft started as a one-room shop in Boston’s North End in 1928 and later […]

From "The Village Carpenter" 1938
Although the table saw and planer were invented in the early 19th century, it was only in the 20th century - with the invention of small electric motors and ubiquitous electricity - that professional shops, and later, amateurs, started using saws, planers and jointers on a mass scale.

This development substantively changed the process of sourcing wood. If you're imagining woodworkers buying wood in rough thickness and then substantially planing it down by hand, think again. Woodworkers typically bought material, or had it custom sawn for a specific purpose at close to final thickness. In "The Village Carpenter Walter Rose describes having sawyers saw green wood to the right thickness from the get-go for drawers and carcasses and other uses. It was important that the wood was well selected so it was stable and didn't need a huge amount of hand planning to be flat. With the introduction of machines, that was not only unnecessary, but the selection and seasoning of the wood was no longer critical. With the elimination of finicky steps, processing wood became much less expensive. The savings associated with using machines was huge. No need for labor just to plane things flat. And sawing accurately entailed far less mandatory skill.

The first companies to have these machines were lumber yards. "Sam, an East-End cabinet-maker: the pocket-book memoir of Sam Clarke, 1907-1979," includes Clark's description of laying out material for a bedroom set and taking it by cart (no cars) to a nearby lumber yard to be planed. This was London in the early 1930s.

By the 1950s, the revolution was complete. With the gains came losses. The most obvious losses were the growing use of less stable wood and the steep reduction in the range of sizes of materials. If the wood was going to warp anyway, you needed extra material to flatten the board in your shop, so instead of stable material nearly the thickness you wanted, you bought material in 1/4 increments and planned away 1/8" or so. Easy by machine, but not so easy by hand. The machines also allowed a new generation of hobbyists, ones without years of training, to be able to build work in a reasonable time.

This change represented a massive revolution in the way woodworking was done from ancient times to the 19th century. We can argue the pluses and minuses, but the massive changes in the way furniture is made are here to stay.

We are now on the cusp of another profound revolution. Or revolutions. Additive manufacturer (3d printing) is becoming better and better and more shops are using it for a variety of work. Jigs and fixtures to speed up assembly are a typical use of 3D printing, and 3D printed hardware is becoming more and more common. Some designers are experimenting with totally new forms of furniture, some of which is totally 3D printed. In another area, AI tools, which are filling the headlines these days, are helping designers quickly prototype designs to show clients. More importantly, AI tools have the potential to increase the efficiency of the office work of any shop. How these new tools are changing our work - for better and worse - is an important story I will save for another day.

From "The Village Carpenter" 1938
From "The Bench Saw Jointer and Shaper" The WALKER-TURNER CO 1934

fresh batch

Mixed up some shellac after dinner last night. Brought it to my desk to shake it so it would be ready in the AM.

done

Got the right drawer fitted moving in/out smoothly. This one went quicker than the left drawer did. Next batter was flushing the front face flush with the rail.

ready

The on hole  centers is 3 3/8". Center punched the holes for the screws now. I'll install the pull after I'm done applying the shellac. 

easier

Gravity at my age sucks pond scum. Rather then do my dance steps trying to kneel and slap shellac on the base, I put it on the workbench to do that. It made for a slow day getting 3 coats on it to finish it up.

hmm.......

Attaching the top was so much better and easier then doing Miles's. Predrilling and attaching the table top clips paid dividends. I only had to use this ratcheting wrench on 4 clips. 

Got ahead of myself on attaching the top again. I wanted to get the drawer pull out stops installed before top going on. Totally forgot about them and it is going to be a PITA to do it now. I'm not looking forward to that.

hmm.......

I forget how many coats of shellac I have on the top already. Regardless I smoothed the top with a card scraper first followed up with a good rub down with 4-0 steel wool. Put on a coat of shellac. I'll evaluate it later to see if I'll slap on another one.

hmm......

I got 3 coats on the inside and outside and I'm calling that done. There are four coats on the front and I'll be doing one more before I attach the pulls and calling the drawers done.

Already thinking ahead to the next project. It will either be the miniature cherry chest or a box for my DeWalt plunge router. Or it could be something else thrown in from left center field.

accidental woodworker

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The last several months I’ve been quiet, mostly. I haven’t been posting much, not because I stopped woodworking, but because I’ve been moving a bit slower lately. My back has been giving me trouble and it has made it harder to work the way I normally do, so I’ve had to slow things down quite a bit.

But slow isn’t the same as stopped.

Even so, the passion for the craft is still there. And so is my interest in sharing what I’ve learned over the years.

I was first introduced to woodworking at the age of seven by my father. He never allowed me near machinery for safety reasons, so from the very beginning I learned to do things with my hands. I remember in primary school my teacher was having a baby girl, so I built a dolls cradle as a gift. He thanked my father for it, when it was actually me who built it.

Handwork stayed with me throughout my schooling. My shop teacher placed strong emphasis on hand tool skills, but machinery was off limits to us. So hand tools were what I had, though if I’m honest, I secretly yearned to work with machinery. Not from any real experience, just assumption. I believed it would produce truer, better quality work, and if I’m being completely honest, I thought hand tools were outdated.

That mindset carried into later life, and it shaped the decisions I made for years.

In 1998, I started a clock making business. Back then I owned almost no machinery apart from a handheld power sander, which I admittedly used a lot. As time went on and I saved more money, I started buying hand planes and more hand tools, mostly because they were the more affordable option, and throughout most of my woodworking life that’s how I worked.

My hand tools displayed proudly on the workshop wall cabinet.

Now I’ll be honest. For a long time I still had that high school mentality that machinery would make life easier. I thought once I could finally afford machines everything would suddenly improve.

So eventually I bought them. Nothing fancy because money was tight. A contractor tablesaw, a pedestal drill, a bandsaw and a few other machines. The pedestal drill barely got used because most of the time I could bore dead centre with a brace anyway. The only thing it really helped with was drilling metal. After about twelve months I realised something surprising. They made me miserable. My eyes were now open to the fact that I never actually needed them. Not for accuracy. Not for the kind of work I actually do.

The serenity I had grown so accustomed to in my workshop was gone. The footprint each machine took up was significant and my workshop became tight to move around in. I was covered in dust. My workshop was covered in dust. The thicknesser screamed so loud I had to close all the doors and windows and clamp ear muffs over my ears. I was constantly checking and rechecking whether the saw was cutting straight, and because of that my production actually slowed. In the end, I sold them.

The one machine I do regret letting go of was the bandsaw. That is a machine I genuinely think belongs in a hand tool workshop. It is practical, versatile, takes up less room, and saves an enormous amount of labour when resawing timber or ripping thick stock close to size before finishing with hand planes.

But apart from that, I realised I did not need machinery for accuracy or efficiency. I had already been doing that for years with hand tools.

It’s not that I dislike machinery, I’m just not a fan of dependence on them. For me, handwork is about attaining and then maintaining skill through continual practice and repetition. It’s also about freedom from relying on machinery to do the work for me.

There’s a deep satisfaction in standing back and knowing the work came directly from your own hands and your own effort. That matters to me. Maybe that’s also why I’ve become more thoughtful about what the word handmade actually means.

And this is where honesty comes into it for me, because it’s something I think about more than most people probably expect.

Especially today when I see so many things labelled handmade that clearly aren’t. If timber goes through a tablesaw, jointer, thicknesser, drum sander and everything else, and someone then says it’s handmade because their hands pushed the timber through the machine, personally, I struggle with that definition. To me, handmade means the skill of the hands carved that piece, turned that ornament, or cut those dovetails. Not a machine.

That’s the honesty I’m talking about.

I completely understand why businesses use machinery. If you’re producing work at volume and trying to keep up with demand, then machinery becomes necessary. But for me personally, I realised I wasn’t chasing speed. I was chasing skill. I wanted to know what my own hands were capable of.

And I think that’s why traditional apprentices were often taught by hand first. Because handwork develops skills that machines never can. Things like reading grain direction, avoiding taper while thicknessing by hand, learning how to deal with reversing grain, and understanding the difference between a planed surface, a scraped surface, and a sanded surface. These are things you only really understand by doing the work yourself.

And I think that’s what keeps me excited about going back into the workshop the next day. It’s not about sales. It’s not about filling orders. It’s the handwork itself.

Making something with my own hands, using my own skill and knowhow, and knowing at the end of it that the work came from me and not from a machine. That’s where the satisfaction is. That feeling of accomplishment.

Ripping a board by hand and not wavering in the cut. Planing it true and square. Making sure it’s parallel to the other side. Taking your time in the process and actually enjoying the moment instead of rushing through it.

It’s about being able to execute operations cleanly. If I’m ploughing a groove, for example, I make sure the blade is surgically sharp. I prepare the surface beforehand and sever the fibres first so there’s no tearout. You take the necessary steps to ensure the operation is performed properly. With hand tools, that preparation matters.

With machine work you’re often forcing timber through using brute force. You lose that connection. And maybe that’s what’s been lost in modern woodworking. The connection a craftsman once had with his materials and the tools he worked with.

With hand tools you’re involved in every stage of the process. You maintain that connection with the wood every step of the way. With a handsaw, you’re following the line, adjusting as you go, paying attention to what the saw is doing in the cut. Each tool becomes an extension of your arm. Each material you approach like an old friend, knowing what it likes and dislikes. Because of that, the relationship between the maker and the work changes entirely.

There’s a real tranquillity in it. No noise complaints from the neighbours. No rushing to get it done.

Handwork teaches you to slow down. And it teaches you one very important fundamental, how to work in harmony with the wood. That’s the beauty of hand tools. These days I work more at a hobbyist level, making the things I want to make, not because I have to, but because I enjoy the process. It’s about the journey more than the destination.

I feel that in the modern home workshop, that mindset has almost disappeared. Everything now revolves around speed. How fast something can be produced, how quickly content can be uploaded, how much can be sold. And this is where The Lost Scrolls of Handwork comes into it, but here’s a brief history first.

The Lost Scrolls of Handwork began years ago as a magazine run by Matt McGrane and myself from 2017 through to 2020. The idea behind it was to create a community based magazine where woodworkers from around the world would contribute through how-to projects, articles on various woodworking topics, and showcases of their work, much like how people contribute their time and expertise to open source projects and web browsers like Mozilla. It was a grand idea that had real potential, had people actually gotten involved. Sadly no one did, and the responsibility of running the magazine fell on the two of us to see it through.

Handwork Magazine in the workshop.

The work became exhausting. Building projects, photographing them, writing articles, editing late into the night. At some point it stopped feeling like creative work and started feeling like factory work. So we stopped and went back to our own projects.

But the idea never really left. Because The Lost Scrolls was never about nostalgia for the sake of nostalgia. It was about preserving an understanding of traditional woodworking and reminding people that handwork still has a place today.

Especially when the day is over and you finally make time for yourself. An hour or two at the bench late at night, or on the weekend, with nobody around. Just the tool, the timber, and your own two hands.

There’s a kind of tranquillity in it. And a real sense of accomplishment that comes with it.

It reminds me of something cabinetmaker and author Tony Konovaloff said to me once, and it’s stuck with me ever since.

“What I make is for others, but how I make it is for me.”

A quiet moment at the bench before the work begins.

This article is now available on:

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/47WEVj8A5O8v9ihV1YeiP2?si=z_ECSnEHQVamjVQobAJyng

Youtube: https://youtu.be/JgE-6UeX-gE

 Wasted the first part of my day with a ghost appointment at the VA. The appointment call was in the system but the actual appointment with the doc didn't exist. What a waste of gas and time. At least I was able to straighten out were my missing Rx's were. Got back to the shop a little after nine.

On a brighter note I am getting real close to the finish line on Leo's desk. Just the drawers need to be done, slap on some shellac, and attach the top and fini. I wonder how long that is going to take me?

I got a quote to ship Leo's bureau and the two desks to North Carolina and the estimate didn't disappoint me. I figured about 2500 to 3000 and the estimate came in at 2800. It is making me rethink renting a U haul driving it NC and flying back home. I'll have to crunch the numbers.

blurry pic lead off

The left drawer is glued and square - less than a 16th off. The blurry pic fits in with the start of my day. The tails were snug and I didn't need any clamps.

oops

Had a mind fart thinking it was through dovetails. Easy fix to knife the proper line and then saw and chop the waste again. The only boo boo is the double knife line. One will be hidden in the pin socket but other won't. Not sure if I'll remove it when I plane the sides to fit the drawer opening.

sawing to the new baselines

Easy going - just laid the saw against the existing tails and sawed down to the line. Chopping the waste was super easy too.

hmm.......

What awaits me when I chop the waste? I filled up the voids with super glue - it is the whitish, gray spots. Chopping the same stuff on the other drawer was drama free but this drawer is worse.

hmm.......

No problems so far. This pin socket has most of the defect crappola. No headaches or hiccups chopping the waste out. 

wee bit too snug

I think I could have made it fit but why risk cracking/splitting a tail? I trimmed the pin socket because I could still see a wee bit of the knife line. That eased the fit enough that I left the tail alone.

the other end

Snug fitting again. These I seated and had a small chip out on the right tail. I trimmed the tail this time and left the socket as is. Glued the chip when I glued up the drawer.

back tails

I was more confident sawing the back tails this time. I double checked myself by eyeballing the first drawer before sawing.

off the saw

Snug and gap free even on the half pins.

loving this prefinished plywood

I don't know what the finish is but it shiny (I like) and tough. This has been hanging out in the shop for months and nada. The finish is still pristine and it looks good as the drawer bottom.

yikes

Houston we have a problem. Both sides taper out from the front to back. The drawer bottom is dead nuts square but I couldn't get it to seat in the drawer front groove without pushing the sides out of the front pin sockets.

what I thought the problem was

I would have bet the ranch that the back length matched the front. Obviously I didn't do that. I don't mind me-steaks like this because they are easy to recover and don't involve free flying lessons and making a new part.

happy face on

I only had to do the pins a wee bit deeper on one side only. Both sides are now dead square to the front.

done

Dry fitted and the diagonals are less than a 16th off. Got it glued up and set aside to cook. Like the left had drawer, didn't need clamps on this one neither.

didn't forget

This is something I usually miss and forget to do before I glue up. I only plane in between the tails - I don't plane in or off the board.

back fits

The top/bottom has breathing room but the sides don't have any. 

hmm.......

The front fits on this side but doesn't on the other one.  I'll try and get this fitted after dinner today. That will give this about 4-5 hours to cook.

sigh

I put the left drawer on the bench to start planing it to fit and stopped. It was rocking a healthy amount. I didn't notice and didn't check this after I glued the drawer up. Planing the twist off isn't the problem. The problem is how much I'll have to plane and if that will make the drawer margins too large. I don't have any figured cherry to match this if I have to make a new drawer.

fitting the left hand drawer

I knocked down 90% of the twist off the bottom. I want the bottom to be flat across the bottom of the drawer opening. I left that and worked on planing the sides and the top getting the drawer to slide in/out easily.

took a while

It took about 30 minutes before the drawer slid into the drawer opening. The drawer front fits snug but I'm not entirely happy with the margins. The flops a bit R/L too that is annoying.

hmm.....

There is still a wee bit of rocking but if I address that I think my margins will go south on me. The drawer slides in/out easily as is so I'm leaving it as is.

checked the right drawer

It has a small amount of twist in it but no where near what its sibling had. I'll hoping that planing it to fit will make it go bye bye.

hanging a bit

The drawer runner shifted on me. It is a wee bit out of square and the drawer is binding around the last 2-3 inches of the back of the drawer. The 073 shaved a wee bit off and removed the binding headache

because of the twist?

This was the best I could get trying to flush the drawer to the front rail. It is either caused by the twist or the small amount of bow in the rail. I marked it so I could plane it fit flush.

hmm.......

I installed the drawer stops now so that the taper I have to plane doesn't change on me. I should have used this drawer stop on Miles's desk.

got it

I wanted the large part of the taper facing me. I stood to the right of the drawer pulling the plane towards me. I was better able to keep an eye on the pencil lines this way.

done - ish

Not 100% happy with this drawer. The margins aren't even and change as the drawer slides in/out. The front face isn't quite flush on the left side end and it is a few frog hairs inset on the right end. As I am looking it from 3 feet away it looks acceptable. Big sigh......

accidental woodworker

Yesterday, I did something that I have never done in 20 years of selling antique tools. I set up a booth at the Burlington Antique Show in Burlington, KY.

The reason for my booth was that my wife, Anita, is down sizing her booth rentals at the new antique mall she is in. She’s been renting two rooms for the past few months. While her sales have been phenomenal,  she found taking care of two rooms, filling it up with antiques was too much to bear. Plus, the majority of the sales were coming from the one room by the register.  The furniture she was selling in the back room, she was getting off her Facebook Marketplace ads. She told me she doesn’t need to spend $400 a month in rent if she could just as easily sell it in the garage instead. Makes sense to me.

So Saturday night, we loaded some of the stuff that was still in the back room and shoved it in my truck to head to the antique show in the morning. Since I was going to work the show, I decided to bring some of my tools with me and put them out for sale.

I decided to bring tools that were too big to ship. I sell planes and smaller items on eBay all the time, but shipping large items has always been a pain in the ass. First, it’s hard to find a box to fit the tool, and then  it’s hard to estimate total shipping if I don’t have the box on hand. I’ve been burned more times than not when it comes to shipping big tools.

I woke up at 4:00am and headed out the door at 4:45, arriving at the fairgrounds at 5:30 am. This gave me 30 minutes to unload and set up the booth. I didn’t have too much stuff as all I had was what I could fit in my pickup truck, but hopefully, I had enough to make it worth my time.

I put most of my tools on a white metal shelf Anita had in her booth. On top were big panel raising planes. On the two shelves were smaller tools that I sold for $5.00 each. I’ve found over the past year that cheap tools don’t sell well on eBay anymore. The buyer will pay $5.00 for the tools but will spend $13.00 in shipping. I mainly ship USPS Priority Mail for the free boxes, but I’ve been rethinking about buying my own boxes and switching to UPS.

The tool of the day was this Stanley No 100 Picture Framers Miter Box. I had $50.00 on it, which was a steal. Even though I could probably sell it on eBay for more, the shipping would be outrageous. In fact, I checked eBay recent sales, and one sold for $50.00 with $120.00 in shipping. No thanks! I’ll sell it here and let the buyer save the money.

I sat out all day sitting on my trucks tailgate and spoke to numerous customers. Everybody was nice and thankfully had cash. I don’t have Venmo, so cash was the only payment I would take. I negotiated with customers all the time, making sure they felt they were getting a good deal. A lot of time, if I had $20.00 on an item, they would ask if I would take $15.00. I always said yes and never missed out on a sale.

My goal was to sell $400 for the day. By 10:00 am I was close at $280.00. The $5.00 tool shelves were the most popular as customers were looking for deals. People would look at the panel raiser planes, but no one offered me anything for one. Anita’s stuff was more popular with customers than my tools, but I expected that. Most of my customers were women.

By noon, I hit my goal as I surpassed $400. There were plenty of customers left still walking around, so I was happy to still sit on my truck’s tailgate. Nearing the end of the show, a guy came back to look at the Stanley No 100 Miter Box. He asked me what my bottom price was for it. I told him $40.00, and he took it. It was a little less than what I really wanted for it, but I was glad it was going to a good home.

In the end, I sold $641.00 worth of stuff. Out of that, $263.00 were my tools. There was an old file cabinet and that white metal shelf that came home with me. Anita didn’t want either one back in the garage, so I took it to the recycling center this morning and got $18.25 in scrap metal for it.

Doing the show was a lot of fun. It was nice sitting out and relaxing a little bit and talking to people all day and making new friends. I’ll definitely do it again. In fact, I’m considering buying an enclosed trailer so that I can bring more items with me in the future. If I had a lot more inventory, I think I could sell thousands of dollars during the show. I know several people who do the same.

I've had this Ohio Tool #96 plow plane for a number of years now and I really love using it.  So much so that I haven't used my Lee Valley plow plane since I fixed up the wooden plow.  But recently I worked on a project that required cutting a groove in the ENDS of a board, and the Ohio Tool plow was not up to the task.  It cuts great (usually) when going with the grain, but across end grain was not good.

Ohio Tool Co. #96

Left side view

My set of Ibbotson irons From right, numbered #1 (1/8"), #2 (3/16"), etc. through #8 (5/8")

Probably 99% of the grooves I make are 1/8", 3/16" and 1/4".  The iron that inspired this post is the 3/16".  I'm trying to figure out why it's not performing as well as I would like.

To get a comparison, I pulled out (for the first time in several years) the Lee Valley plow plane to test it making an end grain groove.  It performed very nicely, with the groove having a smooth bottom and walls.

Nice clean groove in end grain - Lee Valley plow with 1/4" iron

So this had me take a close look at the wooden plow.  It wasn't that my irons weren't sharp - they were.  It just felt like the iron was not well supported well.  This hasn't seemed to affect the plane at all when grooving with the grain.  But with the extra resistance plowing end grain, the plane had a really hard time.  And this was true with a very light set.

I had a close look at the business end of the plane and the first thing I noticed was that there was a little gap between the wedge and the iron.

Showing the skate, iron and wedge

Pencil pointing to a small gap

That gap did not go all the way to the other side of the wedge and iron.  So there is good contact for the unseen part.  I trimmed the wedge a tiny bit to try to get a better fit, but didn't go far out of fear that I might ruin the overall fit of the wedge.

Looking further, I saw that there is not very good contact between the iron and the skate.  Most of you will know that the back of the iron has a V-shaped groove that fits on an inversely similar shape on the front of the rear skate.

Showing the V-grooves on the backs of the 1/8", 3/16" and 1/4" irons

This is where I don't have good contact

A piece of paper easily fits between 3/16" iron and skate

I was able to place that single thickness of paper about 3/8" - 1/2" up between the iron and skate.  This gave me an idea.  I stuffed a double thickness of paper between the iron and skate and trimmed it so that it wouldn't get in the way when I tried to plane a groove.

The double paper thickness went about 3/16" up between iron and skate

But it allowed me to plow a better groove in end grain

I decided then to look at the other irons.  I found the 1/8" iron fit well with the skate - no gap at all.  But the 1/4" iron also had a gap.  When I plowed a 1/4" groove with the grain, I could see the telltale sign that the iron is not supported well.

See the juddering lines in the bottom of the groove?

That means the iron is flexing and jumping as it's cutting - it's not well supported.  And while I was able to cut an end grain groove, it wasn't as smooth an operation as it could be.

1/4" groove in end grain

I ended up testing the 3/16" and 1/4" irons with a couple thicknesses of blue tape between the iron and skate.  I got much better cuts, but that is not a good permanent solution.  Somehow, I need to move the rear skate forward or get the iron to move back toward the skate.

If anybody out there has ideas of the best way to handle this situation, I'd love to hear them.  Please leave a comment.