I watch all the free woodworking videos that I can get my hands on, and am very pleased that the world of high-quality woodworking podcasters is slowly growing.
Rob Bois has recently added the videos from his blog to iTunes. For me, this simplifies video watching considerably. He is in the process of documenting a cherry jewelry box.
Another podcaster who I've been watching is Bob Rozaieski over at the Logan Cabniet Shoppe.
He has been documenting a Porringer Tea Table build- all with traditional hand tools. He also has some great episodes about different types of tools, and how to use them.
These are two more woodworkers who are nice enough to take the time to film, edit, and post videos in their shops. Be sure to check them out!
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Monday, March 1, 2010
Workbench Tips and Updates
After working with my bench for a while, I have made some minor changes to it. First I added thin maple springs to my dogs, which is something that I had been meaning to do for a while, but I hadn't gotten around to doing so. 
While working on my coffin smoother (which is almost done!), I cut my hand on the edge of my vise chop. Apparently the chamfers were too sharp! 
So I rounded over the top edges of my chop (except for the side that clamps the work). You can still see some blood on there. 
Next, I drilled another holdfast hole near the left end of my bench. This I will use for doing tasks such as chopping out dovetails an mortises. When I do tasks such as dovetailing, small stock dimensioning, mortising and tenoning, I like to have different stations set up for different tasks. As you can see in the photo, I have the right end of my bench with different stations. From left to right: shooting board and plane, bench hook and crosscut saw for crosscutting, wagon vise for face planing. 
In this photo I have the right end of my bench set up for dovetailing. I have a piece in my leg vise, and a piece ready for chopping on the left. The holdfast is in the new hole.
I also made some purchases. I bought a Hock plane blade for my #4, some forstner bits, and a small float. 
Here are two 1/4" holes drilled by the forstner bit, and a twist bit.
And finally a new project! This is a rough design, I think I will go with the leg on the front right. It will have a drawer, and possibly breadboard ends. I'm not sure which what wood I'm going to use, maybe walnut, cherry, or soft maple.
While working on my coffin smoother (which is almost done!), I cut my hand on the edge of my vise chop. Apparently the chamfers were too sharp! 
So I rounded over the top edges of my chop (except for the side that clamps the work). You can still see some blood on there. 
Next, I drilled another holdfast hole near the left end of my bench. This I will use for doing tasks such as chopping out dovetails an mortises. When I do tasks such as dovetailing, small stock dimensioning, mortising and tenoning, I like to have different stations set up for different tasks. As you can see in the photo, I have the right end of my bench with different stations. From left to right: shooting board and plane, bench hook and crosscut saw for crosscutting, wagon vise for face planing. 
In this photo I have the right end of my bench set up for dovetailing. I have a piece in my leg vise, and a piece ready for chopping on the left. The holdfast is in the new hole.
I also made some purchases. I bought a Hock plane blade for my #4, some forstner bits, and a small float. 
Here are two 1/4" holes drilled by the forstner bit, and a twist bit. 
And finally a new project! This is a rough design, I think I will go with the leg on the front right. It will have a drawer, and possibly breadboard ends. I'm not sure which what wood I'm going to use, maybe walnut, cherry, or soft maple.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Wooden Coffin Smoother
So how many projects can I have going at the same time? Ummm...
Taking a break from the small smoother because I lost a drill bit that I need, and I won't be able to replace it for a couple days, I started a new project: a coffin smoother. It's inspired by the Philly Planes Classic Smoother, and by Bill Carter's Wooden Planes. I am using the rest of the plane blade from my infill plane. The construction will be exactly like Derek Cohen's Jack Plane tutorial. Be sure to check out his writeup because it's much more comprehensive than mine. I'm using walnut with a rosewood sole. To begin, I cut out the pieces for the center of the plane. Since I don't have thick enough wood, I'm laminating two flatsawn pieces to make a quartersawn piece.
This center piece must be slightly wider than the width of the blade you're using. For the side pieces I resawed a quartersawn piece so both boards were 1/4" thick.
Using a marking gauge strike a mark 1/4" from your reference face (the side that is flat) and plane until you hit the mark.
Then I cut the bed angle (50 degrees), and the wedge angle (60 degrees). (Whoa cool shoes!)
The bed must be dead flat and square. I used a block plane and finished up by lapping it on sand paper. 
The front piece is then excavated to provide space for the shavings to escape. I made some saw kerfs, did some chopping and cleaned up with my new Iwasaki float. 
The wedge-holding-thingys are then undercut with a flush cut saw and waste is pared/filed out.
Then I glued it up, and left alone.
Stay tuned for part 2, where I will probably do some more stuff.
Taking a break from the small smoother because I lost a drill bit that I need, and I won't be able to replace it for a couple days, I started a new project: a coffin smoother. It's inspired by the Philly Planes Classic Smoother, and by Bill Carter's Wooden Planes. I am using the rest of the plane blade from my infill plane. The construction will be exactly like Derek Cohen's Jack Plane tutorial. Be sure to check out his writeup because it's much more comprehensive than mine. I'm using walnut with a rosewood sole. To begin, I cut out the pieces for the center of the plane. Since I don't have thick enough wood, I'm laminating two flatsawn pieces to make a quartersawn piece.
This center piece must be slightly wider than the width of the blade you're using. For the side pieces I resawed a quartersawn piece so both boards were 1/4" thick.
Using a marking gauge strike a mark 1/4" from your reference face (the side that is flat) and plane until you hit the mark.
Then I cut the bed angle (50 degrees), and the wedge angle (60 degrees). (Whoa cool shoes!)
The bed must be dead flat and square. I used a block plane and finished up by lapping it on sand paper. 
The front piece is then excavated to provide space for the shavings to escape. I made some saw kerfs, did some chopping and cleaned up with my new Iwasaki float. 
The wedge-holding-thingys are then undercut with a flush cut saw and waste is pared/filed out.
Then I glued it up, and left alone.
Stay tuned for part 2, where I will probably do some more stuff.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Back Story on the Shave
A while back, I bought a small wooden spokeshave blade with the intention of making a spokeshave. I bought an gabon ebony blank, and went to work. I worked on it on and off for a while. One thing I have to warn any wooden spokeshave makers is to not use such a hard and unforgiving wood (such as ebony) for your first shave. At one point I managed to crack the entire front portion off, luckily I was able to repair it seamlessly. On the other hand it makes such a nice shave, the ebony is very hard and dense, so it beautifully takes a polish. This was the first time I had used ebony like this, so I wanted to make sure to not mess up the finish. So I consulted my fellow galoots on woodnet to see what they thought. Here's what they came up with:
What Finish for a Ebony Spokeshave
I chose to go with a combination of buffing, shellac, and wax. This is a picture of the finishing products used.
A buffing wheel charged with brown tripoli (it looks green because I had been using green honing compound prior to the tripoli), dewaxed shellac, and wax. Technically I should include alcohol because I used it to thin the shellac, but I forgot. First I sanded the shave up to 600 grit. Then I buffed it with the tripoli, until it looked good. Then I put on three coats of about 1 part 2 lb. cut clear shellac to 2 parts alcohol, buffing in between. The final layer is a coat of wax, also buffed. I'm really happy with this finish, I plan on using it on more tools.
Now to the blade. The blade comes dull. The bevel and the bottom do not totally meet at the cutting edge as can be seen by this highly advanced drawing:
This is what is wanted:
To achieve this you must grind away the excess to make the sharp point. I did this freehanding it on my grinder. This is a drawing of the most desirable situation. Usually on a conventional blade I would do this step with my honing guide and coarse diamond stone, but the spokeshave's threaded posts prevented me from doing any serious grinding on the bevel.
As you can see, this makes the non-beveled side become like a hollow ground blade on a conventional blade like this:
The advantages of the hollow grind are that it reduces the amount of steel that needs to be taken away to sharpen, which makes the process quicker. After doing this to the bottom of the shave blade, I was able to achieve a sharp edge.
The blade I bought from The Japan Woodworker came with a photocopy of David Charlesworth's article on making a spokeshave. Unfortunately they didn't actually photocopy the entire thing, so I had to go to the library and rent the book the entire article is in. I also used this article by John Gunterman. Both were very helpful.
This tool will prove to be very useful in upcoming projects.
What Finish for a Ebony Spokeshave
I chose to go with a combination of buffing, shellac, and wax. This is a picture of the finishing products used.
A buffing wheel charged with brown tripoli (it looks green because I had been using green honing compound prior to the tripoli), dewaxed shellac, and wax. Technically I should include alcohol because I used it to thin the shellac, but I forgot. First I sanded the shave up to 600 grit. Then I buffed it with the tripoli, until it looked good. Then I put on three coats of about 1 part 2 lb. cut clear shellac to 2 parts alcohol, buffing in between. The final layer is a coat of wax, also buffed. I'm really happy with this finish, I plan on using it on more tools.Now to the blade. The blade comes dull. The bevel and the bottom do not totally meet at the cutting edge as can be seen by this highly advanced drawing:
This is what is wanted:
To achieve this you must grind away the excess to make the sharp point. I did this freehanding it on my grinder. This is a drawing of the most desirable situation. Usually on a conventional blade I would do this step with my honing guide and coarse diamond stone, but the spokeshave's threaded posts prevented me from doing any serious grinding on the bevel.
As you can see, this makes the non-beveled side become like a hollow ground blade on a conventional blade like this:
The advantages of the hollow grind are that it reduces the amount of steel that needs to be taken away to sharpen, which makes the process quicker. After doing this to the bottom of the shave blade, I was able to achieve a sharp edge.
The blade I bought from The Japan Woodworker came with a photocopy of David Charlesworth's article on making a spokeshave. Unfortunately they didn't actually photocopy the entire thing, so I had to go to the library and rent the book the entire article is in. I also used this article by John Gunterman. Both were very helpful.
This tool will prove to be very useful in upcoming projects.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Monday, February 15, 2010
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