Some office furniture I made recently...
Tuesday, July 26, 2016
Monday, April 11, 2016
Thinking inside the box...
Well, whatever, I still like a box. I think it is artistic in its own right, though I know it's so very common or perhaps banal. It's ironic that trees being so full of free form shape, curves, and angularity end up as rectilinear lumber. It's because of the way we have to put it together, not just into boxes and planes, but how we actually join the material to make it hold. Stones for example are different. We can dig up random shaped stones and they surprisingly can lay nicely together in a wall in all manner of attitudes and positions, because they can naturally interlock, especially if we add mortar into the assembly. The resulting product is interesting, artistic and rarely would any two walls ever look the same. We actually can do this with wood, but the variations are far fewer and the assembly is essentially the same every time . We take trees in their natural shape and butt them to other trees and end up with a log house. Or maybe the wall to a fort to keep out the wild Indians and protect the people inside. Either assembly looks basically like a bunch of cylinders side by side.
Strange, how we take the free form tree and reduce it down in stages, and at each stage it gets more orderly and linear. From there, the process of joinery kicks in and the shape of the beginning boards makes sense as it lends itself so perfectly to linear forms, right angles, and voila, the box. The box emerges and becomes something essential to human living. When you consider the joinery, even that process lends itself more to the box with its right angles. If you stay in linear forms, but work with acute and obtuse angles, wood becomes challenging to join well, if at all. Glue surface area becomes the operative element. Glue surface area can actually increase but the complexity of the joinery will often increase as well. For example, if you introduce a compound angle to a dovetailed corner, the glued area is equal or greater, but the joint complexity increases just to maintain equal strength to its 90 degree counterpart. Picture the box above with splayed sides as opposed to the straight forward corner it has and you get the idea. Sometimes I see designs that obviously increased the complexity and difficulty of the joinery and I have to ask "to what end was that done?"....is there a real benefit in the usefulness or beauty of the piece, or is this an overly complicated joint done just to impress others and otherwise serving no real purpose. If the box above were splayed (remember Roy Underhill's tool tote in the intro to the show?) you could at least argue that design allowed for more convenient access to the usable volume of the tote, or something, making the splay have a valid purpose. But complexity for its own sake is no virtue in my way of thinking. This point may seem obtuse or irrelevant, but consider this when you build your next workbench. Function and simplicity should carry the day. I think you could honestly say that in woodworking, complexity of design breeds further complexity. The point I'm really trying to make is this: complexity for its own sake is problematic and unappealing, whereas complexity for a greater good or overall simplicity is sometimes the only answer. I think this must be what the shakers thought as they eschewed ornamentation, though their pieces on the other hand are far from simple...they only look simple. And wonderful they are or we wouldn't still be copying them yet today. Another example comes to mind to argue my point. Consider a breadboard end. We know from old pieces it is prone to failure when done the traditional way and glued end to end. The percentage of failures is too high not to say this. The design is wonderful and simple looking though and understandably desired. Here is where it takes additional complexity to avoid the traditional problems and achieve a desirable design result. We introduce a top with a more segmented and stable glue-up, then we incorporate a breadboard design that allows for the movement we get. More complex for sure, but worth the effort in its results. Incidently, I built a sofa table in clear pine in 1988, did the traditional breadboard end T&G. glued it end for end and to this day it looks fine with no rupturing in the main top and no shrinkage of the top as opposed to the ends. I think the material was very dry in the winter months when I made it and the breadboard sealed the endgrain from then on preventing moisture from re entering to any significant degree. Wood doesn't always act in the way we think it will but there is probably a good reason why. In modern times, though, I see an odd trend at work. I see joinery for its own sake. I look at dovetails outlined in dovetails and scratch my head. I can only ask "to what end?" Modern marvels of machinery and jigs make this possible, but why would anyone want that? I guess it all depends on the era you live in. i wonder if the craftsman of the day questioned the gilded pieces for kings and queens of Louis 14th, 15th et al. Odd...ornamentation for its own sake and complexity unquestioned. Well, to each his own. For my part I like understated and subtle and I think I always will. In that, I find it hard to think outside the box.
Friday, February 27, 2015
""PLANE TALK" ABOUT SHARPENING
Sharpening frustrates me to no end, but...not because of my own struggle, but the struggle I see in others throughout youtube and the internet. It may be the quintessential example of the madness of our day in the woodworking world. True to our times, people have turned sharpening into the most obsessive and misunderstood subject filled with misinformation and unnecessary paraphernalia imaginable. It wouldn't be so frustrating for me if I didn't so often watch people using obviously dull tools. How often I see people comparing expensive bevel up planes to simple #4 planes and you can tell neither is sharp, especially the simple #4. You also rarely see someone using a plane set correctly for the task at hand. Whenever I see someone talking about the unsuitability of standard planes for endgrain work, or bragging on the ability of a low angle plane for endgrain, I invariably see them working with far too heavy a set on the standard plane. Then they take a rather thick shaving off endgrain with the low angle plane. What was the need in the first place?...To shorten the board, or smooth the end? Planing in the first place should have been done to merely smooth the cut edge down to the knife walls which are only a tiny fraction (<2000ths?) away. I sometimes wonder if users who are disappointed with standard planes think there is only one setting and then no adjustment. Watch a skilled user and you see them constantly rotating the knob throughout the planing of anything. Only does the setting stay the same if it is perfect for the task at hand on the next cut. There is literally no time in which you plane and aren't making adjustments to the depth knob.
Sharpening plays into this discussion in a massive way, with the point being that sharp tools are no fix for incorrect technique. With that said, sharpening is the single most important skill in using tools, especially when using hand tools. If sharpening isn't understood, then woodworkers need to cease all activities and projects and immediately identify and separate all dull tools in their shop, and then learn what, when, and how to sharpen those tools. I cannot stress this enough!...stop everything right now and learn to sharpen all your tools! If you find you simply cannot sharpen a certain tool well... then as a last resort, you may have to resort to paying for a sharpening service. With few exceptions, I refuse to own tools I cannot sharpen. And if sharpening a particular item is a hassle, I may abandon that tool and find a better way of doing the task. This is in effect what I have done with a machine jointer and machine thickness planer. I figured out that by the time I spend fiddling with removing, sharpening and reinstalling those blades, I can have it done as quick and even better with simple hand planes. Does this mean I never use the machines? ...no but I sure use them a great deal less and could probably get rid of them altogether. I definitely would rather hand joint glued panels, and thickness planing is done for a modest fee at most suppliers of rough sawn timber provided there is sufficient amount involved. If quantities are low, then what's the big deal anyway? just do it by hand and get a better quality finish with less redundancy of work.
I used to say sharpening is an art, but I was wrong. It is a learned skill. There simply is no art to it, just the clarity of understanding of what sharp is and what will sufficiently achieve it. Mind you, I was criticizing some for being obsessive with sharpening, I am definitely obsessed with having every tool I have be razor sharp, including my household items as well. What I'm criticizing is not that obsession, but the obsession to have the latest innovation in equipment, the obsession to find some other way than the time proven and irrefutably effective methods, and often methods that are the simplest and cheapest. I don't want to jump ahead or get sidetracked on costly equipment, but I have to quickly say that I'm well aware that some things, while costly at the outset, end up being the cheapest overall. Diamond plates cost more than simple abrasive stones especially simple india stones. In the end, after very heavy use, they probably dollar out the cheapest over the life cycle of use. For avid woodworkers, small businesses, and other very heavy sharpeners, diamonds may in the end be the least money spent. This is especially true if they are the first and only item bought by the user and consistently used thereafter rather than changing methods. Are you starting out and have about 200 bucks? Then go with diamond plates and never look back. Use glass cleaner or a watery solution of Dawn dish soap as your lapping fluid and you'll do well. I do not advocate dry sharpening because in my experience it simply does not work as well. If you use any other system, dry sharpening is definitely out of the question.
So back to the subject of sharp. The question is and remains "what is sharp and how do I know I have achieved it (or how do I measure it)? I must give credit to Mr. Ron Hock for this quote that I personally like for its succinct and enlightening clarity: "sharp is the intersection of two planes with zero radius at the intersection". Picture any cutting edge where the edge is the intersection of two planes meeting with zero radius . The planes may actually start as curving (convex) surfaces, but where they intersect, they have as little radius as possible, or none at all. This very simply is sharp. Now begins the attending issues of how do I know I have that and how can I measure it? With these enter in the issue of the performance of the tool itself based on the quality and the integrity of its design. Also, other factors play into a tool's performance such as edge geometry, quality of steel, overall condition of the tool and possibly other important considerations, e.g. rockwell hardness, heat treatment and tempering, types of steels, types of material being worked on, etc, etc. We can discuss these briefly in overview, but it is probably beyond our scope here to cover all that in one posting. Indeed, it is the stuff of future postings to be concerned with the design and quality of a particular tool being written about. But back to the matter at hand, which is the essential characteristics of sharpness. Let's take for example the classic, basic stanley #4 plane. We can observe the design has long since been proven unparalleled. We know the thing can cut all kinds of woods and admirably (in the hands of a skilled operator) handle a variety of odd grain. We know it can handle endgrain with ease. With a cambered (curved) cutting iron, it can scrub off impressive amounts of wood. With a regular iron (well sharpened, and well set) the tool can cut shavings 1/1000th of an inch and leave a glassy smooth surface.
If your experience with a stanley #4 makes you doubt any of these statements, then I submit to you that your plane iron is not sharp. If you are positive it is sharp ( i.e. it is 25 degrees and easily shaves the hair on your arm? or slices newspaper effortlessly) then I submit to you the plane is not set correctly or is set way too deep. Flatness of the sole in my judgment should be the least of concerns, though you wouldn't know it from all that has been written and said obsessiing over flatness and squareness. By far, I have spent more time evaluating and tweaking the snugness and precision of the fit between the chip breaker and blade than I have spent on flattening and squaring the sole and sides. I have restored about dozen planes and it's possible I may change my stance on this after I tinker further on more planes (but I doubt it).
Now...for the basic steps of sharpening a blade such as a plane iron. I know I have spent considerable words to get to this point but I am sensitive to the fact that I or anyone should lay a solid foundation to any teaching they push on others. We have enough misinformation now, without me adding to the confusion. Here is my procedure....it's not new or innovative, just tried and true and very effective:
1. Remove the iron from the plane and the chip breaker from the iron.
2. If you think the primary bevel is at or near the 25degrees it should be, then practice placing the iron on the stone or plate and sensing the flat primary bevel in flat and solid contact with your sharpening stone. This is essential that you get the feel for doing this.
3. lay the blade on its back and rub the back flat againt the stone to test and evaluate the flatness of the back. I only involve 1 inch or less of the total area of the back from the edge upward. Some advocate tipping the blade with a shim such as a micro thin steel ruler or some such thin item to shim the iron off the surface and hence only rub the stone near the very tip of the blade near the edge. This creates a tiny back bevel. I don't advocate this but some swear by it. I don't like it because it changes the edge geometry and changes the cutting angle of the blade. A simple stanley/bailey plane was designed around a 25 degree "chisel grind" with no other angles involved. Why not stick with this? If you have more than one iron for a plane, you could try both ways and see which one you like.
4. commence sharpening after you flattened the back. (the back should never need flattened again but is worth checking now and then and touching up if necessary.) As you sharpen, feel for a tiny burr, or wire edge that forms when two surfaces intersect at a zero radius. You have two options before you proceed to the next finer grit you own. You can flip the blade on its back and drag the iron backwards and drag off the wire burr, or you can simply leave it and proceed to the next grit and sharpen it away. I drag it off, because I want to feel myself recreate the burr again on the next grit I use. There is a theory that when you drag it off, you create a jagged rough edge (at the microscopic level) that requires more work to smooth away.
5. Go through the grits you own, but don't feel like you have to sharpen to ridiculous fineness such as 15,000 etc. Paul Sellers has proven essentially that planes and chisels perform more than adequately at low grits of around 400. He said growing up and through his early apprenticeship they never sharpened with anything but a two grit india stone which is 250 on one side and 400 on the other( I have one and I know myself it is adequate). They probably stropped though but I'm not sure. I have an old india stone by Norton, and it works fine but it is not my preference. I actually like the cheap 4 sided diamond stone from harbor freight and really only use the 400 and 600 most of the time. I then use my old hard arkansas stone with oil to smooth things over and then I strop with green polishing compound on a piece of leather glued to a wood block.
I do have japanese waterstones in two grits, 800 and 3000, but seldom use them for plane irons and chisels. It hardly seems necessary since the stropping straight from an arkansas stone produces a mirror finish. The mirror finish is not required but you can feel less resistance to the tools as they cut when you have that polish on the edge. With chisels I often just strop them and that gets me back to work in seconds and then sharpen later on at some point when the stropping isn't producing the sharpness needed. Carvers strop alot and only sharpen when absolutely necessary. But they often aren't working in rock hard woods that dull tools as badly.
Sharpening plays into this discussion in a massive way, with the point being that sharp tools are no fix for incorrect technique. With that said, sharpening is the single most important skill in using tools, especially when using hand tools. If sharpening isn't understood, then woodworkers need to cease all activities and projects and immediately identify and separate all dull tools in their shop, and then learn what, when, and how to sharpen those tools. I cannot stress this enough!...stop everything right now and learn to sharpen all your tools! If you find you simply cannot sharpen a certain tool well... then as a last resort, you may have to resort to paying for a sharpening service. With few exceptions, I refuse to own tools I cannot sharpen. And if sharpening a particular item is a hassle, I may abandon that tool and find a better way of doing the task. This is in effect what I have done with a machine jointer and machine thickness planer. I figured out that by the time I spend fiddling with removing, sharpening and reinstalling those blades, I can have it done as quick and even better with simple hand planes. Does this mean I never use the machines? ...no but I sure use them a great deal less and could probably get rid of them altogether. I definitely would rather hand joint glued panels, and thickness planing is done for a modest fee at most suppliers of rough sawn timber provided there is sufficient amount involved. If quantities are low, then what's the big deal anyway? just do it by hand and get a better quality finish with less redundancy of work.
I used to say sharpening is an art, but I was wrong. It is a learned skill. There simply is no art to it, just the clarity of understanding of what sharp is and what will sufficiently achieve it. Mind you, I was criticizing some for being obsessive with sharpening, I am definitely obsessed with having every tool I have be razor sharp, including my household items as well. What I'm criticizing is not that obsession, but the obsession to have the latest innovation in equipment, the obsession to find some other way than the time proven and irrefutably effective methods, and often methods that are the simplest and cheapest. I don't want to jump ahead or get sidetracked on costly equipment, but I have to quickly say that I'm well aware that some things, while costly at the outset, end up being the cheapest overall. Diamond plates cost more than simple abrasive stones especially simple india stones. In the end, after very heavy use, they probably dollar out the cheapest over the life cycle of use. For avid woodworkers, small businesses, and other very heavy sharpeners, diamonds may in the end be the least money spent. This is especially true if they are the first and only item bought by the user and consistently used thereafter rather than changing methods. Are you starting out and have about 200 bucks? Then go with diamond plates and never look back. Use glass cleaner or a watery solution of Dawn dish soap as your lapping fluid and you'll do well. I do not advocate dry sharpening because in my experience it simply does not work as well. If you use any other system, dry sharpening is definitely out of the question.
So back to the subject of sharp. The question is and remains "what is sharp and how do I know I have achieved it (or how do I measure it)? I must give credit to Mr. Ron Hock for this quote that I personally like for its succinct and enlightening clarity: "sharp is the intersection of two planes with zero radius at the intersection". Picture any cutting edge where the edge is the intersection of two planes meeting with zero radius . The planes may actually start as curving (convex) surfaces, but where they intersect, they have as little radius as possible, or none at all. This very simply is sharp. Now begins the attending issues of how do I know I have that and how can I measure it? With these enter in the issue of the performance of the tool itself based on the quality and the integrity of its design. Also, other factors play into a tool's performance such as edge geometry, quality of steel, overall condition of the tool and possibly other important considerations, e.g. rockwell hardness, heat treatment and tempering, types of steels, types of material being worked on, etc, etc. We can discuss these briefly in overview, but it is probably beyond our scope here to cover all that in one posting. Indeed, it is the stuff of future postings to be concerned with the design and quality of a particular tool being written about. But back to the matter at hand, which is the essential characteristics of sharpness. Let's take for example the classic, basic stanley #4 plane. We can observe the design has long since been proven unparalleled. We know the thing can cut all kinds of woods and admirably (in the hands of a skilled operator) handle a variety of odd grain. We know it can handle endgrain with ease. With a cambered (curved) cutting iron, it can scrub off impressive amounts of wood. With a regular iron (well sharpened, and well set) the tool can cut shavings 1/1000th of an inch and leave a glassy smooth surface.
If your experience with a stanley #4 makes you doubt any of these statements, then I submit to you that your plane iron is not sharp. If you are positive it is sharp ( i.e. it is 25 degrees and easily shaves the hair on your arm? or slices newspaper effortlessly) then I submit to you the plane is not set correctly or is set way too deep. Flatness of the sole in my judgment should be the least of concerns, though you wouldn't know it from all that has been written and said obsessiing over flatness and squareness. By far, I have spent more time evaluating and tweaking the snugness and precision of the fit between the chip breaker and blade than I have spent on flattening and squaring the sole and sides. I have restored about dozen planes and it's possible I may change my stance on this after I tinker further on more planes (but I doubt it).
Now...for the basic steps of sharpening a blade such as a plane iron. I know I have spent considerable words to get to this point but I am sensitive to the fact that I or anyone should lay a solid foundation to any teaching they push on others. We have enough misinformation now, without me adding to the confusion. Here is my procedure....it's not new or innovative, just tried and true and very effective:
1. Remove the iron from the plane and the chip breaker from the iron.
2. If you think the primary bevel is at or near the 25degrees it should be, then practice placing the iron on the stone or plate and sensing the flat primary bevel in flat and solid contact with your sharpening stone. This is essential that you get the feel for doing this.
3. lay the blade on its back and rub the back flat againt the stone to test and evaluate the flatness of the back. I only involve 1 inch or less of the total area of the back from the edge upward. Some advocate tipping the blade with a shim such as a micro thin steel ruler or some such thin item to shim the iron off the surface and hence only rub the stone near the very tip of the blade near the edge. This creates a tiny back bevel. I don't advocate this but some swear by it. I don't like it because it changes the edge geometry and changes the cutting angle of the blade. A simple stanley/bailey plane was designed around a 25 degree "chisel grind" with no other angles involved. Why not stick with this? If you have more than one iron for a plane, you could try both ways and see which one you like.
4. commence sharpening after you flattened the back. (the back should never need flattened again but is worth checking now and then and touching up if necessary.) As you sharpen, feel for a tiny burr, or wire edge that forms when two surfaces intersect at a zero radius. You have two options before you proceed to the next finer grit you own. You can flip the blade on its back and drag the iron backwards and drag off the wire burr, or you can simply leave it and proceed to the next grit and sharpen it away. I drag it off, because I want to feel myself recreate the burr again on the next grit I use. There is a theory that when you drag it off, you create a jagged rough edge (at the microscopic level) that requires more work to smooth away.
5. Go through the grits you own, but don't feel like you have to sharpen to ridiculous fineness such as 15,000 etc. Paul Sellers has proven essentially that planes and chisels perform more than adequately at low grits of around 400. He said growing up and through his early apprenticeship they never sharpened with anything but a two grit india stone which is 250 on one side and 400 on the other( I have one and I know myself it is adequate). They probably stropped though but I'm not sure. I have an old india stone by Norton, and it works fine but it is not my preference. I actually like the cheap 4 sided diamond stone from harbor freight and really only use the 400 and 600 most of the time. I then use my old hard arkansas stone with oil to smooth things over and then I strop with green polishing compound on a piece of leather glued to a wood block.
I do have japanese waterstones in two grits, 800 and 3000, but seldom use them for plane irons and chisels. It hardly seems necessary since the stropping straight from an arkansas stone produces a mirror finish. The mirror finish is not required but you can feel less resistance to the tools as they cut when you have that polish on the edge. With chisels I often just strop them and that gets me back to work in seconds and then sharpen later on at some point when the stropping isn't producing the sharpness needed. Carvers strop alot and only sharpen when absolutely necessary. But they often aren't working in rock hard woods that dull tools as badly.
Monday, February 9, 2015
WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT ALFIE?....
WHEN I STARTED WRITING this blog, I wasn't completely sure of everything I wanted to include in it but I knew several things for sure. I knew I had over thirty years of working in carpentry and woodwork bottled up inside me in the form of memories, experiences, projects and relationships. Added to that are past employment experiences-mostly bad. I knew I had inside me highly developed opinions about how the work should be done as opposed to how it often ends up. I wonder if some readers will think I'm a little angry about something. I'm not very angry, but I do have some amount of emotion that exerts itself in the form of tangental and ancillary observations. I try to include enough factual evidence to back up my points. Personally, I look for outside validation of these reactions I'm having to a world that's changed and is changing. You can tell in my posts, I am not impressed with the changes I've seen just in my lifetime, which aren't few but are many and wide sweeping. Are you impressed with the world you know? Are you excited or infatuated with the things you've seen change, often quietly and undramatically, in your own lifetime? I don't mind if you are, but I would ask you to explain it. [*see addendum 1 at bottom of essay]
I would have to know how this could be, and how your perspective grants you this feeling and the attitude that not only are things ok, but are in due course getting better. Or have I gone too far in saying that? Maybe you concede things aren't getting better, but still insist that they are not getting worse. Also, I don't really begrudge anyone if they say it's a moot point. They may say "it is what it is and there's little to nothing you and I can do about it".
Wait a second, actually I do begrudge that attitude. I think it's an excuse to let our culture dilute down to nothing but servatude to a nanny state and widening chasm between the highest tiny percentile of wealthy and a vast lower class of citizens robbed of fruitful productivity, meaningful job experiences that create things of enduring value. In short, they are robbed of meaning. In time, the few that will be allowed to live, are meant to maintain the power grid, serve meals to the rich, and perhaps mow the grass (which will eventually be done robotically).
What in the world does all this have to do with the world of woodworking or carpentry, or what does all this have to do with work in general? A lot, and I see it on both sides of the partition I use to divide the craft. I put a wall up dividing the craft into those who have to make their living from it, and those who dabble in it for hobby or recreation. These two sides are not inseparately divided, but rather there are portals that enable some to enter one side from the other, and back again. In fact the divide may not be a partition at all, but more like a thin curtain. Afterall, very few in woodwork ever got rich from it. They mostly did it for the same reason a sailor works on ships his whole life-essential joy in the work and overriding desire to be at sea. This is why anyone does anything their whole life. The only exception I can think of is the person who does something his whole life, while dreaming of another life. Then one day he wakes up, looks in the mirror and says behold, now I am old and this is my life, there is no other. That moment can be explosive in the lives of some people.
On the other side of the curtain is the recreational side. We expect those people to pursue the work for the pure fun of it. I did this for about 5 years when I was young and I stumbled into the portal to the other side as people began requesting I make something for them for a sum of money. Always wanting extra money, I usually agreed. That sent my hobby into overdrive and clouded my vision as to why I ever dabbled in it to begin with. For a while, my woodworking was defined by transactions with customers and dollars and cents and what I didn't have that was preventing me from getting more of both. . It no longer was defined by the joy I derived from the craft. Alas, being a better woodworker than businessman, my joy turned into misery. Gone were the erstwhile things of evenings in the shop, listening to nice music, crafting some little thing, often with a good bit of pleasurable handwork and curiousity about what lay in the wood or in a new species of wood I was experimenting on. Those erstwhile evenings turned into nights spent out in the shop as the ending to a long day in the shop, pressing to make a deadline, to frequently achieve a design I was neither ready to tackle, nor had the space and equipment to do, to get more and more production out of a shop that never was, nor ever could be a production shop. Faster, faster, I must get this done, so I can get paid, so I can get on to the next customer waiting. Dovetails? No way. Half blind router dovetails maybe, but never anything of real craftsmanship. Faster, faster, more power machines, more dust, more noise, wood scraps piled everywhere, stuff piling up in my house and garage. I dare not let my kids near me or the shop for fear of injury. But there was a pot at the end of this rainbow, right? Wrong. Happy customers- yea, I think so without exception, or at least I never had anyone back out of a deal or say anything negative. Out of maybe 120 customers, I think one and all liked their stuff and went on their merry way, and many reordered more stuff. And that was my life for about a year-cranking out stuff, stuff and more stuff (one piece every 3 days). Added to that, I was also working another job, in the construction industry, and chasing an income there (performing rather poorly I might add). One day I said to my wife "enough is enough" and I stopped taking customers and set the tools aside for awhile. I stopped serving two masters for about 5 years and waited until I could go into my own business-still not properly, but serving only one master: me. I really didn't even want the master to be me, but rather me serving God who owns it all anyway, and what I felt was most acceptable to Him. I decided what work I would chase and get, I decided what hours I'd work, I decided what was not right for me and when I was not right for the job. This allowed me to pursue a variety of work, most of it in the way of everyday carpentry, some dipping a bit deeper into real craft and woodwork. The carpentry paid the bills, and the craft kept me interested. I had grown up a little, had less wide-eyed passivity to the whims of whatever a customer wanted, and pursued things overall with more common sense.
Here is where my ship really came in, right? Wrong. I still chased dollars and cents, and was always chasing my next customer. I had to be salesman, designer, estimator, professional craftsman, close out person, and bill collector. I know I am just one of many who work this way everyday and work as hard or harder than I did. They too know it's hard and the work is usually hard. The difference is when you take charge of yourself and befriend truth and reality. If you do that, you won't hate it, and you may even like it. When you wake up and realize soberly and calmly, "I will never get rich at this, but I can make a living, and do something I and others can be humbly proud of ...this is my reasonable service to God and others" ...that is a good day for you. There are other versions of this statement that would be equally beneficial to other craftsman at a slightly different stage or level or oriented in a slightly different direction. For most, it might be to say this: "I will never make a living at this, but I can make something for me and my family that is carefully made, that will last, that has value, and that I can be proud of and that I enjoyed making". I will make the startling assertion that 90% of craft-types that you see on youtube, blogs and elsewhere at large, need to get over into this category, and get in it in such a way as that they can make that last statement. They need to stop all the madness of clamoring after machines and power tools, huge shops, giant roubo benches costing thousands, and other high-end tools that many commercial shops (which are shops that exist to make money) don't even have. They need to let their passion for the craft be what it should be- and what they sought after in the first place, and that is the pursuit of the joy of genuine skills, patient steady creativity and creation, and continual discovery. I wish they would stop the madness of the quest for more machines, more ease, more speed, and instead seek more true hand skill, economy and thrift (which are real virtues). Ironically, I should add regarding economy, I see no end to the number of ways guys are trying to make one thing be another, in the interest of saving big money, but still cheating themselves. Suddenly a router becomes surface plane, a drill press becomes a sander or something, something else becomes a lathe, a tablesaw becomes a dovetail machine and every other machine that the user assumes he needs, and on and on with jigs and fixtures all designed to fill the interim until the guy can get the tool he covets. How can I not like all this? Well, despite the loud squealing, and mountains of dust, I actually do like a decent small router and a few jigs. But here's the problem....it wouldn't take 1/3rd the effort expended, 1/10th of the creative energy, and probably about the same or less cost, to achieve better results by forgetting about both the clever inventions and the proper machines they are intended to replace or postpone. Just simply and deliberately learn the actual hand skill required and acquire the few and modest hand tools needed for the task. You want nice through dovetails? Then get a little saw, a vise or some clamps, a chisel and a pencil and get to it. What is it about that which makes so many reject and go the other way? What do they find so repulsive in the simplicity of that approach? Want more tools? Well follow those instructions first, and then we'll find or make any tools you want such as a marking gauge, knife, etc etc. And we'll find you some more nice chisels in several sizes as well. What is so repulsive about this to so many guys? Mind you, I'm talking to a million men not making a dime from the craft but supposedly doing it for a "hobby". Mind you, I am also talking to a million guys who love reproducing a period piece, but care nothing for the period it came from! Just imagine such a mindset! Again, to my question, what is repulsive about the simplicity I speak of?
You can't tell but I paused a long time to let them answer. What I heard them say is all manner of excuses and perplexing arguments: "Hand work is for fools", "doing it by hand is antiquated and old fashioned" , or another says..."Hand work isn't up to today's standards" . Or they say "doing it by hand is too much work!" "doing it by hand takes too long" It goes on and on and on. Not an honest one in the bunch... except two sheepish fellows way in the back who quietly say two different statements that are linked in a way. The one says "I am a commercial guy,... I have to make a living if I can, and I can't do very many things by hand, but I sure wish I could.... I look all the time for ways I can incorporate hand work and still make my margin or increase the value of the item" The other fellow says this "my hand skill isn't too good, but I would like to learn , ...would you show me how?" I can accept gladly these two guys. A third guy I have in mind is barely tolerable, but I guess I have no choice. He says "what I do is for my own pleasure and I like machinery, so leave me alone and shut up!" I say to him: Ok, fine....make sure you have on your safety glasses, gloves, ear muffs, dust mask, head covering, proper clothing, goggles, facemask, safety toe shoes, and cell phone just in case. Oh, and don't forget to put all blade guards back in place because they were "removed for clarity."
*addendum 1: Early on in this essay, I am asserting that I am confounded and disgusted with changes to the world I know, and work in, just in my lifetime. There is a certain vagueness that appears to me as I read that, and I am assuming older readers know exactly the kinds of things I'm alluding to, but younger readers may not. Young readers up to say the age of late thirties, may be puzzled as to what I could possibly be ranting about. If that is you, consider for example the following facts to add context to my assertion:
My memory is strong and accurate as far back as the late '60s, and in my midwestern US experience I have seen the following in just the last 20 years...
1. Gasoline and Diesel fuel quadrupled in price, 92 cents in Mar '99 up to $4 in 2013 ( way back in '69 it was 30 cents!) The price has dipped lately but we've been promised a big rise later on.
2. Other energy costs tripled in price,
3. Lumber has remained stable, but cabinet grade sheet goods are about 30% higher and all other bldg materials have quadrupled, In 1982 nearly any tool I could buy in the US was US made. By 1992, that would be more like 50% of the tools would be US made, and now, nearly any tool I buy is NOT US made. The tool from 82 (or '92) costed less and was made better compared to now.
4. From 22 years ago until now, my wage in the const industry has been essentially frozen... and back then I got good health insurance provided, company truck and fuel, and other benefits. I earned $22/hour in 1992 and earned 23/hr in 2008, with no benefits and a struggle to get even legit mileage reimbursement. The taxes on the later earnings compared to early '90s were in many categories double. I kept alot more of the paycheck in '92 and dramatically more back in '82! In '86 I bought a new ford ranger for 8k. Try to find a good used one today for about 5-6k. I have not bought a new vehicle since 1991 for myself, currently borrow a vehicle for work, and the last new car for my wife was a leased minivan in 1999.
5. From the mid to late '90s until now food prices have quadrupled. So if you look at a frozen wage/earnings in light of the income actually buying 1/3rd to 1/4th of what it used to buy, we've been squeezed from both ends!
6. In companies I worked for in the '90s a worker might be rewarded with some paid time off or cash bonus. Lately the only rewards of any kind are your photo for 'employee of the month" on the website, or the possibility of getting a little overtime!
7. In as recent as '97, my portion of health insurance cost in my pay was $71 dollars a month and it was great insurance that really helped a guy with wife and kids. At present, I haven't even had health insurance for over 8 years and during times of self employment there's absolutely no way to afford it. Many times you would assume I qualified for medicaid, but actually the rules only allowed for some of my children to be covered,intermittently, and they skunked me and my wife because my income was just a tad too high. ( and I dared not accept the rare opportunity for overtime, though I desperately needed the money, because it would tip the balance in my income and cause me to loose medicaid on my children, including a special-needs child that needs coverage the most). Now don't think for a minute I support Obamacare, because I don't. The US healthcare insurance/care cost&delivery system is BROKEN, and Obamacare will only make it worse in my judgment and understanding of the complexities of the situation.
8. The facts I'm stating here are just a tiny slice of the total rotten pie, and I am mostly mentioning something usually called INFLATION, but is more accurately called DEVALUATION OF OUR CURRENCY chiefly done by a central bank called the Federal Reserve System, which has secret, private ownership over the issuance of our currency, that is, our currency has not been controlled by the US citizenry via elected representation (as required by the original US Constitution) since 1913. The so called "gold standard" ended shortly thereafter by 1933, but wasn't complete until two more events, the silver legislation ending silver after 1964 and the conflict with France over gold in 1971 during the Nixon administration. If you want to talk devaluation of currency, consider that a nickel bought in 1912 what a dollar bought in 2012! And whatever that 5 cent item they bought in 1912 was, it was undoubtedly US made, tasted better, lasted longer, looked nicer, worked better, and benefitted our homeland more, than the "comparable" item bought in 2012! Here again, I'm talking about "inflation", but I could as easily be talking other problems in our land such as : IMMIGRATION ABUSE, NARCOTIC AND PRESCRIPTION DRUG ABUSE/PUSHING, CONSTANT ATTEMPT TO DISARM U.S. CITIZENS WITH GUN CONTROL LAWS, DETERIORATION OF PUBLIC EDUCATION (we're 26th in the world folks! and we historically were 1st or 2nd), 51 MILLION BABIES ABORTED SINCE 1973, THE EMBRACING OF ISLAM AND OTHER FOREIGN RELIGIONS AND CULTURES WITH ATTENDING REJECTION OF OUR HISTORIC JUDAEO/CHRISTIAN CULTURE & VIEWPOINT, RISE OF LEGALIZED PUBLIC GAMBLING AND ATTENDING RISE OF NUMEROUS CRIME SYSTEMS AND SOCIAL DISEASES SUCH AS BANKRUPTCY AND DIVORCE, PORNOGRAPHY ADDICTION OF 20-30% OF ALL U.S. MALES AGE 15-45, GAY/LESBIAN AND MANY OTHER ACTIVIST MINORITY GROUPS THAT ARE SEIZING MAJOR CENTERS OF CULTURE WHETHER RELIGIOUS, CIVIL, JUDICIAL, EDUCATIONAL, OR POLITICAL CENTERS OF POWER THROUGHOUT THE U.S. ....Am I done, well I could go on to other things such as abolition of posse comitatus, loss of constitutional right to security in your person, papers and property, loss of general property rights and usage of property, Loss of right to due process if the gov't labels you a terrorist, loss of privacy rights, misuse of IRS power and abuses aimed at individuals and organizations if they oppose the gov't, voter fraud and criminal vote tampering in every U.S. major election of senators, reps, and presidents since 1948, well documented as far back as the Box 13 scandal with LBJ for Texas senator. If I haven't convinced you by now with these notes that the world we know in the USA is CHANGED AND CHANGING MORE, and not for the better, then I don't know what you need to read or see to agree.
I would have to know how this could be, and how your perspective grants you this feeling and the attitude that not only are things ok, but are in due course getting better. Or have I gone too far in saying that? Maybe you concede things aren't getting better, but still insist that they are not getting worse. Also, I don't really begrudge anyone if they say it's a moot point. They may say "it is what it is and there's little to nothing you and I can do about it".
Wait a second, actually I do begrudge that attitude. I think it's an excuse to let our culture dilute down to nothing but servatude to a nanny state and widening chasm between the highest tiny percentile of wealthy and a vast lower class of citizens robbed of fruitful productivity, meaningful job experiences that create things of enduring value. In short, they are robbed of meaning. In time, the few that will be allowed to live, are meant to maintain the power grid, serve meals to the rich, and perhaps mow the grass (which will eventually be done robotically).
What in the world does all this have to do with the world of woodworking or carpentry, or what does all this have to do with work in general? A lot, and I see it on both sides of the partition I use to divide the craft. I put a wall up dividing the craft into those who have to make their living from it, and those who dabble in it for hobby or recreation. These two sides are not inseparately divided, but rather there are portals that enable some to enter one side from the other, and back again. In fact the divide may not be a partition at all, but more like a thin curtain. Afterall, very few in woodwork ever got rich from it. They mostly did it for the same reason a sailor works on ships his whole life-essential joy in the work and overriding desire to be at sea. This is why anyone does anything their whole life. The only exception I can think of is the person who does something his whole life, while dreaming of another life. Then one day he wakes up, looks in the mirror and says behold, now I am old and this is my life, there is no other. That moment can be explosive in the lives of some people.
On the other side of the curtain is the recreational side. We expect those people to pursue the work for the pure fun of it. I did this for about 5 years when I was young and I stumbled into the portal to the other side as people began requesting I make something for them for a sum of money. Always wanting extra money, I usually agreed. That sent my hobby into overdrive and clouded my vision as to why I ever dabbled in it to begin with. For a while, my woodworking was defined by transactions with customers and dollars and cents and what I didn't have that was preventing me from getting more of both. . It no longer was defined by the joy I derived from the craft. Alas, being a better woodworker than businessman, my joy turned into misery. Gone were the erstwhile things of evenings in the shop, listening to nice music, crafting some little thing, often with a good bit of pleasurable handwork and curiousity about what lay in the wood or in a new species of wood I was experimenting on. Those erstwhile evenings turned into nights spent out in the shop as the ending to a long day in the shop, pressing to make a deadline, to frequently achieve a design I was neither ready to tackle, nor had the space and equipment to do, to get more and more production out of a shop that never was, nor ever could be a production shop. Faster, faster, I must get this done, so I can get paid, so I can get on to the next customer waiting. Dovetails? No way. Half blind router dovetails maybe, but never anything of real craftsmanship. Faster, faster, more power machines, more dust, more noise, wood scraps piled everywhere, stuff piling up in my house and garage. I dare not let my kids near me or the shop for fear of injury. But there was a pot at the end of this rainbow, right? Wrong. Happy customers- yea, I think so without exception, or at least I never had anyone back out of a deal or say anything negative. Out of maybe 120 customers, I think one and all liked their stuff and went on their merry way, and many reordered more stuff. And that was my life for about a year-cranking out stuff, stuff and more stuff (one piece every 3 days). Added to that, I was also working another job, in the construction industry, and chasing an income there (performing rather poorly I might add). One day I said to my wife "enough is enough" and I stopped taking customers and set the tools aside for awhile. I stopped serving two masters for about 5 years and waited until I could go into my own business-still not properly, but serving only one master: me. I really didn't even want the master to be me, but rather me serving God who owns it all anyway, and what I felt was most acceptable to Him. I decided what work I would chase and get, I decided what hours I'd work, I decided what was not right for me and when I was not right for the job. This allowed me to pursue a variety of work, most of it in the way of everyday carpentry, some dipping a bit deeper into real craft and woodwork. The carpentry paid the bills, and the craft kept me interested. I had grown up a little, had less wide-eyed passivity to the whims of whatever a customer wanted, and pursued things overall with more common sense.
Here is where my ship really came in, right? Wrong. I still chased dollars and cents, and was always chasing my next customer. I had to be salesman, designer, estimator, professional craftsman, close out person, and bill collector. I know I am just one of many who work this way everyday and work as hard or harder than I did. They too know it's hard and the work is usually hard. The difference is when you take charge of yourself and befriend truth and reality. If you do that, you won't hate it, and you may even like it. When you wake up and realize soberly and calmly, "I will never get rich at this, but I can make a living, and do something I and others can be humbly proud of ...this is my reasonable service to God and others" ...that is a good day for you. There are other versions of this statement that would be equally beneficial to other craftsman at a slightly different stage or level or oriented in a slightly different direction. For most, it might be to say this: "I will never make a living at this, but I can make something for me and my family that is carefully made, that will last, that has value, and that I can be proud of and that I enjoyed making". I will make the startling assertion that 90% of craft-types that you see on youtube, blogs and elsewhere at large, need to get over into this category, and get in it in such a way as that they can make that last statement. They need to stop all the madness of clamoring after machines and power tools, huge shops, giant roubo benches costing thousands, and other high-end tools that many commercial shops (which are shops that exist to make money) don't even have. They need to let their passion for the craft be what it should be- and what they sought after in the first place, and that is the pursuit of the joy of genuine skills, patient steady creativity and creation, and continual discovery. I wish they would stop the madness of the quest for more machines, more ease, more speed, and instead seek more true hand skill, economy and thrift (which are real virtues). Ironically, I should add regarding economy, I see no end to the number of ways guys are trying to make one thing be another, in the interest of saving big money, but still cheating themselves. Suddenly a router becomes surface plane, a drill press becomes a sander or something, something else becomes a lathe, a tablesaw becomes a dovetail machine and every other machine that the user assumes he needs, and on and on with jigs and fixtures all designed to fill the interim until the guy can get the tool he covets. How can I not like all this? Well, despite the loud squealing, and mountains of dust, I actually do like a decent small router and a few jigs. But here's the problem....it wouldn't take 1/3rd the effort expended, 1/10th of the creative energy, and probably about the same or less cost, to achieve better results by forgetting about both the clever inventions and the proper machines they are intended to replace or postpone. Just simply and deliberately learn the actual hand skill required and acquire the few and modest hand tools needed for the task. You want nice through dovetails? Then get a little saw, a vise or some clamps, a chisel and a pencil and get to it. What is it about that which makes so many reject and go the other way? What do they find so repulsive in the simplicity of that approach? Want more tools? Well follow those instructions first, and then we'll find or make any tools you want such as a marking gauge, knife, etc etc. And we'll find you some more nice chisels in several sizes as well. What is so repulsive about this to so many guys? Mind you, I'm talking to a million men not making a dime from the craft but supposedly doing it for a "hobby". Mind you, I am also talking to a million guys who love reproducing a period piece, but care nothing for the period it came from! Just imagine such a mindset! Again, to my question, what is repulsive about the simplicity I speak of?
You can't tell but I paused a long time to let them answer. What I heard them say is all manner of excuses and perplexing arguments: "Hand work is for fools", "doing it by hand is antiquated and old fashioned" , or another says..."Hand work isn't up to today's standards" . Or they say "doing it by hand is too much work!" "doing it by hand takes too long" It goes on and on and on. Not an honest one in the bunch... except two sheepish fellows way in the back who quietly say two different statements that are linked in a way. The one says "I am a commercial guy,... I have to make a living if I can, and I can't do very many things by hand, but I sure wish I could.... I look all the time for ways I can incorporate hand work and still make my margin or increase the value of the item" The other fellow says this "my hand skill isn't too good, but I would like to learn , ...would you show me how?" I can accept gladly these two guys. A third guy I have in mind is barely tolerable, but I guess I have no choice. He says "what I do is for my own pleasure and I like machinery, so leave me alone and shut up!" I say to him: Ok, fine....make sure you have on your safety glasses, gloves, ear muffs, dust mask, head covering, proper clothing, goggles, facemask, safety toe shoes, and cell phone just in case. Oh, and don't forget to put all blade guards back in place because they were "removed for clarity."
*addendum 1: Early on in this essay, I am asserting that I am confounded and disgusted with changes to the world I know, and work in, just in my lifetime. There is a certain vagueness that appears to me as I read that, and I am assuming older readers know exactly the kinds of things I'm alluding to, but younger readers may not. Young readers up to say the age of late thirties, may be puzzled as to what I could possibly be ranting about. If that is you, consider for example the following facts to add context to my assertion:
My memory is strong and accurate as far back as the late '60s, and in my midwestern US experience I have seen the following in just the last 20 years...
1. Gasoline and Diesel fuel quadrupled in price, 92 cents in Mar '99 up to $4 in 2013 ( way back in '69 it was 30 cents!) The price has dipped lately but we've been promised a big rise later on.
2. Other energy costs tripled in price,
3. Lumber has remained stable, but cabinet grade sheet goods are about 30% higher and all other bldg materials have quadrupled, In 1982 nearly any tool I could buy in the US was US made. By 1992, that would be more like 50% of the tools would be US made, and now, nearly any tool I buy is NOT US made. The tool from 82 (or '92) costed less and was made better compared to now.
4. From 22 years ago until now, my wage in the const industry has been essentially frozen... and back then I got good health insurance provided, company truck and fuel, and other benefits. I earned $22/hour in 1992 and earned 23/hr in 2008, with no benefits and a struggle to get even legit mileage reimbursement. The taxes on the later earnings compared to early '90s were in many categories double. I kept alot more of the paycheck in '92 and dramatically more back in '82! In '86 I bought a new ford ranger for 8k. Try to find a good used one today for about 5-6k. I have not bought a new vehicle since 1991 for myself, currently borrow a vehicle for work, and the last new car for my wife was a leased minivan in 1999.
5. From the mid to late '90s until now food prices have quadrupled. So if you look at a frozen wage/earnings in light of the income actually buying 1/3rd to 1/4th of what it used to buy, we've been squeezed from both ends!
6. In companies I worked for in the '90s a worker might be rewarded with some paid time off or cash bonus. Lately the only rewards of any kind are your photo for 'employee of the month" on the website, or the possibility of getting a little overtime!
7. In as recent as '97, my portion of health insurance cost in my pay was $71 dollars a month and it was great insurance that really helped a guy with wife and kids. At present, I haven't even had health insurance for over 8 years and during times of self employment there's absolutely no way to afford it. Many times you would assume I qualified for medicaid, but actually the rules only allowed for some of my children to be covered,intermittently, and they skunked me and my wife because my income was just a tad too high. ( and I dared not accept the rare opportunity for overtime, though I desperately needed the money, because it would tip the balance in my income and cause me to loose medicaid on my children, including a special-needs child that needs coverage the most). Now don't think for a minute I support Obamacare, because I don't. The US healthcare insurance/care cost&delivery system is BROKEN, and Obamacare will only make it worse in my judgment and understanding of the complexities of the situation.
8. The facts I'm stating here are just a tiny slice of the total rotten pie, and I am mostly mentioning something usually called INFLATION, but is more accurately called DEVALUATION OF OUR CURRENCY chiefly done by a central bank called the Federal Reserve System, which has secret, private ownership over the issuance of our currency, that is, our currency has not been controlled by the US citizenry via elected representation (as required by the original US Constitution) since 1913. The so called "gold standard" ended shortly thereafter by 1933, but wasn't complete until two more events, the silver legislation ending silver after 1964 and the conflict with France over gold in 1971 during the Nixon administration. If you want to talk devaluation of currency, consider that a nickel bought in 1912 what a dollar bought in 2012! And whatever that 5 cent item they bought in 1912 was, it was undoubtedly US made, tasted better, lasted longer, looked nicer, worked better, and benefitted our homeland more, than the "comparable" item bought in 2012! Here again, I'm talking about "inflation", but I could as easily be talking other problems in our land such as : IMMIGRATION ABUSE, NARCOTIC AND PRESCRIPTION DRUG ABUSE/PUSHING, CONSTANT ATTEMPT TO DISARM U.S. CITIZENS WITH GUN CONTROL LAWS, DETERIORATION OF PUBLIC EDUCATION (we're 26th in the world folks! and we historically were 1st or 2nd), 51 MILLION BABIES ABORTED SINCE 1973, THE EMBRACING OF ISLAM AND OTHER FOREIGN RELIGIONS AND CULTURES WITH ATTENDING REJECTION OF OUR HISTORIC JUDAEO/CHRISTIAN CULTURE & VIEWPOINT, RISE OF LEGALIZED PUBLIC GAMBLING AND ATTENDING RISE OF NUMEROUS CRIME SYSTEMS AND SOCIAL DISEASES SUCH AS BANKRUPTCY AND DIVORCE, PORNOGRAPHY ADDICTION OF 20-30% OF ALL U.S. MALES AGE 15-45, GAY/LESBIAN AND MANY OTHER ACTIVIST MINORITY GROUPS THAT ARE SEIZING MAJOR CENTERS OF CULTURE WHETHER RELIGIOUS, CIVIL, JUDICIAL, EDUCATIONAL, OR POLITICAL CENTERS OF POWER THROUGHOUT THE U.S. ....Am I done, well I could go on to other things such as abolition of posse comitatus, loss of constitutional right to security in your person, papers and property, loss of general property rights and usage of property, Loss of right to due process if the gov't labels you a terrorist, loss of privacy rights, misuse of IRS power and abuses aimed at individuals and organizations if they oppose the gov't, voter fraud and criminal vote tampering in every U.S. major election of senators, reps, and presidents since 1948, well documented as far back as the Box 13 scandal with LBJ for Texas senator. If I haven't convinced you by now with these notes that the world we know in the USA is CHANGED AND CHANGING MORE, and not for the better, then I don't know what you need to read or see to agree.
Sunday, February 8, 2015
MY FIRST TRY AT A FRAMESAW...
In keeping with ...the flavor of this blog, which often turns a microscope on the tools of a wood shop, I thought I would post a little exhibition of my shopmade framesaw. I have loved these since I first read articles in Fine Woodworking in the 80's showing Tage Frid sawing his tenons and doing other joinery with his "bowsaw" as I think they called it. With the abundance of articles, videos, and published information out there, I thought it would be easy enough to make a quick trial version of this time proven tool. For a long time, what stopped me from trying was not having any type of blade for the thing and just not having the ambition to order one from somewhere. (Traditonalwoodworker.com has them)
I think the project logically starts with the blade itself, the distance between holes at the ends, and other various dimensions you need to know before you just start hacking out the parts for such a saw. The general design can stay quite raw, literally doing no shaping to the parts until you're satisfied the thing will cut and perform like it should and you know it was worth your effort. After that, then have at it with any sort of shaping, curves or visual enhancements you may want. I tend to bypass the embellishment of my own homemade tools putting function far above appearance. Later, I sneak little refinements into the fit and finish of items seeking a tiny bit of panache in the aesthetics. You will see right off, I haven't got that far with this project.
Last summer I was passing through Tennessee to South Carolina and I stopped in Sevierville at the Smoky Mtn Knife store as I irresistably do if I'm within 50 miles. Across the street, for some years now, there is a tool discount store with every imaginable type of tool and equipment you can want. With an assortment of both decent brand names down to the rankest junk (some of it curiously desirable?) from our friends in the orient. You can find things you didn't know you wanted or needed. That is where I saw a pack of blades that looked like butcher saw blades to me, but said they were 22 inch hacksaw blades. They didn't look at all like bimetal nor induction hardened teeth, and for about 7 bucks, I thought "what the heck" perhaps they would work for this tool project. I also thought they would file if I wanted to sharpen/shape them myself.
So I mapped out the size and shape of the thing, cut mortises for the frame, made a makeshift pin holder system by running a screw through the factory holes in the blade and tied paracord for the tightening mechanism that is based on the traditional design of turning the cordage with a slat of wood and tucking beside the frame to hold the tension. To my surprise the saw cut decent right off the bat. The blade is similar to one you might order called a "turning" blade which simply means its a narrower blade than standard rip or crosscut blades. It allows you to turn or twist as you saw to either keep you on your layout line in stubborn grain, or lets you twist as needed to cut curving lines in pieces that you could generally cut with a saw such as this having of course a limited clearance between blade and frame crossmember (about 6 inches on my saw as it ended up). Turning blades also compliment Turning Saws, which allow the entire blade to rotate just as a coping saw does. Just picture an oversized coping saw and that's basically what I've ended up with, though I don't have a turning framesaw, but just a regular framesaw. One other tidbit that should be obvious, but may not be, is that the mortise joint has to have a little "swivelling slack" so the uprights swivel on the crossmember enough to pull the blade taught. It will surprise you how tight it can be made, taking any twist or kink completely out of the blade. The mortises have to stay unglued, but I guess they could be pinned with a dowel (no glue) but I didn't see the need.
As usual, I felt the teeth were too straight up and down, with too passive of a rake angle for my liking. There's something in me that when I pick up a handsaw, I want the thing to cut, and I don't really want to mess around. To my narrow mind, there's no point, or enjoyment, to hand tools if they work merely mediocre. If we demand high performance from a power tool, as the woodworking world is known for being obsessive about its tooling, then I guess I fit right in by wanting a handsaw to just glide through wood (because I know for sure they can!). I am willing to adjust my need for speed when I desire a fine finish on the cut, but even then a saw shouldn't be sluggish (pull saws are quite fast and some of them leave very smooth faces).
I chucked the blade in my sharpening setup and commenced filing, in three quick steps. I started with a slim taper file, giving three rubs to each gullet, then switched to a taper file the next size smaller giving each tooth 1 rub. From there, I gave each tooth a very light pair of rubs with a mini diamond file from a Kobalt brand set. I felt this gave added refinement to the back of each tooth on the tiny chisel cutting edge and it seemed to deburr the leading edge of each tooth on its face. I like the leading face to be free of burrs, but if possible have a little curl to the front giving it a nice angle to "chisel" in as it cuts. I vainly imagine myself creating a blade with 200 little sharp chisels that are perfectly angled to bite into the wood. As usual, I also peened out some of the set from the factory giving the blade a tendancy to rip nicer and handle angle cuts, but reducing the crossgrain tearing ability needed for better crosscutting. I am coming to the stubborn conviction that many handsaws can have a dual personality, but even so, each must have a dominant cutting efficiency, either ripping or crosscutting. You just can't have everything in one saw: it has to excel at something or it will be mediocre at everything.
If you watch the video clip, you can see this saw glides down smoothly and powerfully. and to my surprise, it cuts very straight. You may have to tinker with the set or adjust a few teeth to take out a snag or a "pull" to one side or the other as it cuts. These blades are cheap and the steel no doubt has its limitations. I do think there is a smidge more performance to be had from this whole setup, and I'm confident I can improve the cutting on future sharpening. In the world of sharpening, I've found you can't ignore the angles involved nor is there a substitute for rightness of technique. Once you start to attain what you're after, the other big mistake is stopping just short of your best edge, which you discover on later sharpenings....perhaps your very next sharpening. With larger blades, chisels and plane irons, though elusive enough, it's still much easier because you can often feel the wire burr that's created at the intersection of two flat planes when you sharpen. Then you know you have done all you can at the abrasive grit you're working with and you move on to finer grits. With tiny surfaces like saw teeth, I can only judge my success by how it cuts, and then speculate how or if it could cut better. Anyhow, I'm calling this attempt at a framesaw a success and I'm encouraged to keep making some of the tools I don't want to (or can't) purchase just yet. And, if you succeed in making something, why not save the money for wood?
UPDATE TO THIS POST...2/21/15
The blades I show are hard to find on the web for some reason making me wonder if they have been discontinued. I pictured someone reading this and trying to find these exact blades which are cheap and able to be filed and used in the manner I demonstrate. The website on the package (iittools.com) does not seem to have them anymore so the nearest thing I could find are meatsaw blades or "butchersaw" blades which is what I think the blade I used in this post actually is and not a "hacksaw" blade as denoted on the packaging. Alas, the best option of all is to obtain actual bowsaw replacement blades or as they are also called framesaw replacement blades. You can find these as I note above from traditionalwoodworker.com and I'm sure other sources as well if you search on google. These I'm sure will be of better quality than the blade I used and be far better to you in the long run if you set about making the saw in this post. If you do make this saw, I know you will not be disappointed because I find myself using this saw increasingly and this style of handsaw will in time be a staple item in my work. It is a powerful rip saw especially and it negotiates irregular grain easily. I find it easy to use when I need slightly curving lines such as in spoon making. I can cut away waste areas on a spoon quickly and safely without ever going to my bandsaw and sawing close to my fingers. For carvers, this saw would be a must have item, especially with a narrow turning blade.
I think the project logically starts with the blade itself, the distance between holes at the ends, and other various dimensions you need to know before you just start hacking out the parts for such a saw. The general design can stay quite raw, literally doing no shaping to the parts until you're satisfied the thing will cut and perform like it should and you know it was worth your effort. After that, then have at it with any sort of shaping, curves or visual enhancements you may want. I tend to bypass the embellishment of my own homemade tools putting function far above appearance. Later, I sneak little refinements into the fit and finish of items seeking a tiny bit of panache in the aesthetics. You will see right off, I haven't got that far with this project.Last summer I was passing through Tennessee to South Carolina and I stopped in Sevierville at the Smoky Mtn Knife store as I irresistably do if I'm within 50 miles. Across the street, for some years now, there is a tool discount store with every imaginable type of tool and equipment you can want. With an assortment of both decent brand names down to the rankest junk (some of it curiously desirable?) from our friends in the orient. You can find things you didn't know you wanted or needed. That is where I saw a pack of blades that looked like butcher saw blades to me, but said they were 22 inch hacksaw blades. They didn't look at all like bimetal nor induction hardened teeth, and for about 7 bucks, I thought "what the heck" perhaps they would work for this tool project. I also thought they would file if I wanted to sharpen/shape them myself.
So I mapped out the size and shape of the thing, cut mortises for the frame, made a makeshift pin holder system by running a screw through the factory holes in the blade and tied paracord for the tightening mechanism that is based on the traditional design of turning the cordage with a slat of wood and tucking beside the frame to hold the tension. To my surprise the saw cut decent right off the bat. The blade is similar to one you might order called a "turning" blade which simply means its a narrower blade than standard rip or crosscut blades. It allows you to turn or twist as you saw to either keep you on your layout line in stubborn grain, or lets you twist as needed to cut curving lines in pieces that you could generally cut with a saw such as this having of course a limited clearance between blade and frame crossmember (about 6 inches on my saw as it ended up). Turning blades also compliment Turning Saws, which allow the entire blade to rotate just as a coping saw does. Just picture an oversized coping saw and that's basically what I've ended up with, though I don't have a turning framesaw, but just a regular framesaw. One other tidbit that should be obvious, but may not be, is that the mortise joint has to have a little "swivelling slack" so the uprights swivel on the crossmember enough to pull the blade taught. It will surprise you how tight it can be made, taking any twist or kink completely out of the blade. The mortises have to stay unglued, but I guess they could be pinned with a dowel (no glue) but I didn't see the need. As usual, I felt the teeth were too straight up and down, with too passive of a rake angle for my liking. There's something in me that when I pick up a handsaw, I want the thing to cut, and I don't really want to mess around. To my narrow mind, there's no point, or enjoyment, to hand tools if they work merely mediocre. If we demand high performance from a power tool, as the woodworking world is known for being obsessive about its tooling, then I guess I fit right in by wanting a handsaw to just glide through wood (because I know for sure they can!). I am willing to adjust my need for speed when I desire a fine finish on the cut, but even then a saw shouldn't be sluggish (pull saws are quite fast and some of them leave very smooth faces).
I chucked the blade in my sharpening setup and commenced filing, in three quick steps. I started with a slim taper file, giving three rubs to each gullet, then switched to a taper file the next size smaller giving each tooth 1 rub. From there, I gave each tooth a very light pair of rubs with a mini diamond file from a Kobalt brand set. I felt this gave added refinement to the back of each tooth on the tiny chisel cutting edge and it seemed to deburr the leading edge of each tooth on its face. I like the leading face to be free of burrs, but if possible have a little curl to the front giving it a nice angle to "chisel" in as it cuts. I vainly imagine myself creating a blade with 200 little sharp chisels that are perfectly angled to bite into the wood. As usual, I also peened out some of the set from the factory giving the blade a tendancy to rip nicer and handle angle cuts, but reducing the crossgrain tearing ability needed for better crosscutting. I am coming to the stubborn conviction that many handsaws can have a dual personality, but even so, each must have a dominant cutting efficiency, either ripping or crosscutting. You just can't have everything in one saw: it has to excel at something or it will be mediocre at everything. UPDATE TO THIS POST...2/21/15
The blades I show are hard to find on the web for some reason making me wonder if they have been discontinued. I pictured someone reading this and trying to find these exact blades which are cheap and able to be filed and used in the manner I demonstrate. The website on the package (iittools.com) does not seem to have them anymore so the nearest thing I could find are meatsaw blades or "butchersaw" blades which is what I think the blade I used in this post actually is and not a "hacksaw" blade as denoted on the packaging. Alas, the best option of all is to obtain actual bowsaw replacement blades or as they are also called framesaw replacement blades. You can find these as I note above from traditionalwoodworker.com and I'm sure other sources as well if you search on google. These I'm sure will be of better quality than the blade I used and be far better to you in the long run if you set about making the saw in this post. If you do make this saw, I know you will not be disappointed because I find myself using this saw increasingly and this style of handsaw will in time be a staple item in my work. It is a powerful rip saw especially and it negotiates irregular grain easily. I find it easy to use when I need slightly curving lines such as in spoon making. I can cut away waste areas on a spoon quickly and safely without ever going to my bandsaw and sawing close to my fingers. For carvers, this saw would be a must have item, especially with a narrow turning blade.
Saturday, February 7, 2015
A DARN GOOD SAW FOR ABOUT $11...
WHETHER OR NOT YOU DELVE DEEPER INTO A hand tool approach to woodworking and carpentry, there should still be a place in your kit for one or two handsaws. I suggest you try a pull saw of the ryoba type which gives you the benefit of two cutting edges, one with ripping teeth and the other with crosscut/universal teeth. There are some good buys out there but for my money the Vaughan/Bushnell brand of Bear saw is the real deal. Wow, what a good cutter! Hardwoods, pine, plywood, whatever, it just works smooth and fast. I use mine regularly for cutting dovetails by hand in the shop (on the rip side) and for tenon cheek cuts. I haven't found anything as good as this saw and if you could only carry ONE, this is the one (vaughan #250 bearsaw).
Close behind the vaughan pull saw is another saw that caught me by surprise-big time. Name a saw on the market with solid feel, carbon steel teeth that you can sharpen (as opposed to induction hardening which only sharpen with diamonds) and that is readily available nearly anywhere you go in the US. Additionally, the saw costs about 11 bucks. Yes, its a Kobalt back saw and it will surprise you as it did me after you file it once or twice.
1. clamp two strips of wood sandwiching the teeth in the middle and with about 1/4 inch above the boards. You have to support the flexible edge so you can file without undue vibration.2. File the teeth as shown in the Sellers video using an extra slim taper file which sells in most stores for under 5 bucks and lasts a long time.
3. Essentially, you want a passive tooth angle for the first little bit, say 2 inches worth of teeth. Then you lay the 3 sided file with one face aiming up and toward the front of the saw. If you think of a clock it would be about 2 o'clock. The idea is that you are making another face plumb to the teeth. If you enlarge the close up picture at right, you will see the rake angle on the teeth which is close to straight up and down on the leading cutting edge of each tooth
4. Now the easy part...as you file, just hold the file level with the floor, 90 degrees to the saw itself, Again, the file is crisscross to the saw any which way at a 90 degree angle. No funny tilt, and no "fleam" grind, no special angle, etc etc. After one or two filings, you have effectively turned every tooth (except the first little bit) into a mini chisel. The saw comes with "set" in the teeth. Set is the term for having a tooth slightly bent out past the plane of the steel side. The teeth alternate meaning every other tooth bends to the same side. Set in the teeth creates a kerf that is slightly wider than the saw itself and helps the saw not to bind in its own sawkerf. As in the Sellers video, I came back at the end of the process and very lightly peened the set flatter. This makes the saw (from what I could feel) more of a rip style cutter and slightly less of a crosscutter. That is, it rips very well and clean, but now it crosscuts less cleanly though still fairly well and fairly aggressive.
Now think about that last statement for a moment and let it absorb in your mind. The saw comes from the store labelled as a "miter back saw". If you think about it, it came with a split personality at best, and at worst, it means the saw wasn't really good at anything. In western tradition, a miter saw was a back saw (a saw with a metal "back" stiffener) meant to be used in a "miter box" at either right angle cuts or some angle up to 45. Depending on the quality of the saw, the care with which it was filed, and the user skill, the cut would be made with varying levels of smoothness and ease. File it a certain way, that is with angle or "fleam" and set the teeth out nicely, and the saw might make decent crosscuts, but probably would get more stubborn towards the miter or 45 cut. File the saw and lessen the set, as described above, and it gets more effective at the 45 cuts and ripping.
In my estimation, a back saw (called a tenon saw in the UK traditions) never was a good miter saw and never will be regardless of the filing and set. The finished cut always relied and still relies on the use of a miter shooting board to give a glass smooth finish needed to fit moldings and wood nicely together at mitered joints (at least in furniture grade work it does, and maybe a little less perfect in millwork jobs). So here is the main point of this discussion. What do you want your tenon (back) saw to do the most and do the best? If you are like me, you want it to be a good performer at tenon cheeks, dovetails, and angular cuts. Cuts I make at 90 are almost always someting I will do more work on such as dovetailing (and ultimately planing) tenoning, or perhaps will be hid in the assembly with other parts. If so, you want to follow the above summation of the Sellers method of sharpening a saw of this size and type. If you hand saw anything with regularity, then chances are you know the resulting cut surface is not done. You know you'll be making a swipe or two with a plane and cleaning up that cut edge surface. This is the essence of nice work in this category of cutting tasks. In reality, every cut is likely to have further work done on it, It's a matter of having smoothness where it does the most good or saves redundancy of effort.
In the machine world, it's no wonder guys have been clamoring after nicer cutting power miter saws.and smoother cutting blades for years. This has been driving the market for 30 years in the production carpentry world. When I started in the early '80s, it was quite something for the average carpenter to even own a power miterbox and it was usually something in the way of a 10 inch single bevel saw or perhaps he was bigtime and had a 14 inch saw like the old makita saw. I remember us using a block plane carried in our nail apron to clean up cuts when the cut was a hair off angle, or a hair rough. We made a swipe or two just freehand in midair on the joint and nailed the piece up. Very rarely did an architect or anyone else complain on the fit and finish of our millwork, so it must have been acceptable. I think they were as picky back then as they might be today.
I think you will be pleasantly surprised with this Kobalt back saw if you file it as described. It can cut acceptable dovetails depending on what you demand as a finish surface and your skill level with a saw. My saw has improved as a cutter with each successive sharpening. At some point, you may want a bit more set in the teeth and you'll need a saw set which you can buy new, or find cheap on ebay as I did. You may only have one or a few teeth that need straightened and the saw set comes in handy. All together, what if you have 11 bucks in the saw, 5 in a file, and 10 to 12 in the saw set? That's 28 bucks total and now you can make nice hand cuts for many years to come, When you get a back saw or any hand saw with "induction hardening" you have all the same issues I've described, and you can't do much about any of it unless you want to buy diamond files and other diamond cutters such a dremel wheels. If you try to bend set in a tooth, you may break the tooth since they are so hard they're brittle. Yes the saw stays sharp longer (well, really it stays in the state it is for longer which hopefully was sharp but not necessarily so!). After the saw then dulls, it is progressively less effective to use, and then is basically a throw away. That may be a good deal for some, but for me I'd much rather have something I can sharpen and maintain. I admit I might want a tough, cheap throw away for something nasty like laminate, but even then I would try hacksawing first, which I know from experience works well in the courser cut blades. (14-18 tpi)
In reality, the induction hardened hand saws make more sense to me for the softer woods like basic construction lumber (just don't saw into nails!) That way you maximize the value of the long tooth life, rather than smashing into something wicked like formica and synthetic materials that dramatically dull any saw and turn your induction tooth saw into a throw away. On a regular carbon steel toothed saw, you could in reality wear the teeth down to nothing and recut them again restoring the saw and almost getting a new tool. (Paul Sellers does this in one of his videos by filing all the teeth flat and cutting new ones and then sharpening them. He does the whole process in maybe 2 hours or less!) I carry a DeWalt hand saw for construction lumber type cutting and it does a great job and shows minimal signs of dulling.
I should also mention that the mitering and crosscutting function in moldings and finish wood is an area where Japanese pull saws really REALLY shine. Start with either the Vaughan or Shark brand and I can almost guarantee you'll love them. Here again, they end up being throw aways, but they cut so nice and so fast, there is nothing like them and it seems to be worth it. You can get replacement blades in most brands at lower cost than the whole saw, and the blades change out in seconds. I think for a field carpenter, away from the shop environment, Japanese saws are a must have item for finish work. Gosh, how many times have I marked cuts on finish product or a door trim and made the cuts free hand and I ended up with tight, SAAWEET looking miters or joints. No cords, no miterbox, no noise, no mess, just quick, clean and professional. Much of what I have written here is old news to some of you, but hopefully I threw in something of use to you.
EVERYDAY PLANES FOR EVERYDAY WORK...
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I CAN'T THINK of a tool more fun to use and more integral to a woodworking project, especially with woodworkers that enjoy and appreciate the benefits of a hand plane. I am yet a hybrid shop, using a blend of handtools along with a tablesaw, jigsaw, and router. (and a bandsaw, though it works mediocre as a resaw machine which is what I really need it for). I consider it a compromise in that I cannot use only hand tools but would like to; and that inspite of having sanders and a thickness planer, the fact remains that it would be unthinkable to me now to not use hand planes. It's now irrelavent whether I enjoy using them or not, because I could not now go back to the quality of work I had before I used them on every project. Planes have become essential to the kind of work I want to do and I feel I need to do. On a daily basis, I am increasing my use of hand tools and am still floating between various tools I like and dislike. Sometimes the competition is close between tools and I can't bear to totally put one aside. But in reality, shouldn't one good tool in each category should be enough? For me, I'd have to say hardly. Another complication that leads to having so many tools or redundancy in types of tools, is the fact of where and how you do all your work. I am not content, and never have been, to only have tools in a vehicle that get dual use between shop and jobsight. I greatly prefer separation to a wide extent as compared to alot of guys. For example, shown in the photos are hand planes that sit on my little bench all the time and get used alot. However, in my work vehicle, I have a japanese-style carpenters tool box loaded with more woodworking and carpentry tools. In that box, all the time, I carry another Stanley #4, an old Millers Falls #7 low angle block plane, and another standard block plane with adjustable mouth similar to the one in the middle in the photo below. That's all I carry for planes in the truck and it's always been adequate. In the shop I have many more planes, more than what's shown here. In these photos are all I ever really need for nearly anything I would build. For years in the field as a carpenter, I only carried a stanley 12-247 and used it alot and yet I was rare in that I was the only one I know of who carried a plane at all. This says alot about the trade of carpentry since the 1980's and later (and the guys were actually fine carpenters to boot). If I were really a minimalist, I could do with three planes: I would have a #4, #5 and a very standard block plane such as a 220 (such as the sears clone on the left) or better yet would be the plane on the right which is a Sears model which I can't at the moment remember the model #, but is basically a 220 clone variant. The little black plane I bought new myself around 1990. Of the three, the green plane is the best cutter, nicest to use and performs exquisitely for such a modest model. .JPG) |
| 3 block planes (sears) I love, especially the green mystery model |
The real workhorse in any shop should be the #4 size, and for me that's certainly true. I believe the teaching that says you should become so adept with a #4 that for furniture and cabinetmaking it would tend to be all you must have.
The planes at right then are the real workhorses for me. At left is a stanley 12-204 which is the newer variety and has the plastic tote and knob. I got it for free but it had no iron in it, so I bought an iron and sharpened it with a pronounced camber so as to make it into a scrub plane. It works well for that on the occasional rough sawn piece I plane down for use. Next from the left is a late 60's craftsman very similar the scrub plane with plastic tote and knob. I got it in pristine condition off ebay for around $20 with its original box. When sharpened, it cuts clean and nice, though curiously still not as fine and smooth as a stanley. For curiousity sake, I should switch the iron with the stanley and see if the stanley at left cuts nicer. Well, I guess I can't really try that because if you look close, the free stanley has the wrong size chip breaker (I think from a no 3). Third from left is a Millers Falls no 900 which in fact was a kind of "handyman" series for Millers Falls. Being MF, it would have to be 1960's vintage since the company died not long after that. I like the plane alot because of a super nice cut, good adjustment like a stanley though with more travel in the thumbscrew (called backlash), and the largest tote of any other model I have, At far right, the record has the smallest tote and is noticeably less comfortable to use but cuts the nicest of the four, though no better than the stanley #4 I carry in the truck. I bought the record new from garrett-wade mail order around 1993. The quality is very high and the cut/adjustment very fine. The only drawback is the tiny tote handle (and I have small hands!) Bottom line: buy the mllers no 900 if you come across a clean one with original iron (mine was from a flea market) and if you get it for 25 bucks or less. Otherwise find a genuine stanley circa 1940's -1960's and you'll be set for life. Of course, if you see a good deal on the higher end millers in 4 or 5 they are great planes as well. I have the no 5 size called in MF designation a 14CB. CB stands for corrugated bottom I think since that's what mine has. It was my grandfathers and I think he got it in the 40's or 50's. Wow, what a beautiful and fantastic cutter!
AND YET, does it perform better than a stanley, such as the decent #5 I have in the picture at top? Well, maybe, but I can't really say concretely. To be fair, the stanley is not a corrugated sole, so there is that slight difference. My stanley #5 is clean and decent and a great find from a local flea market, however the no14 Millers is in nicer overall shape. It's about a tie when both irons are fresh and sharp. This proves to me that I need never look elsewhere than a good older stanley, or stanley bailey for sure, and that includes with or without a corrugated sole. I doubt the necessity of a corrugated sole in any particular situation, meaning that the flat sole is fine for all applications. Some people may justifiably disagree on this point, and I suppose it may be in regards to final planing on very slick and smooth wood where the corrugation breaks the vacuum feeling you get? As to other planes, I have a late 1980's ECE wood plane in the smoothing size and without the depth adjuster. I learned to tap it gently as needed to make any adjustment needed and can get nice clean shavings from it, but I still prefer an iron plane for nearly all types of work. The wood plane feels light in the hands though the iron is thick wonderful German steel. I grab it more for a "scrubbing" type use and it gets scant use at that. I will revisit this topic of handplanes many more times in the future, I'm sure, at least to finish talking about my own collection and their pros and cons.
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