We’ve all used them; the venerable old Bench Hook for sawing. They do the job, sure, but they also have limitations for many situations. Plastic miter boxes too can have their limitations. Height is one and guide wear is another. The pivoting miter box with saw is a cool looking gizmo, and some work well.

The down side of good miter boxes that come with a pivoting saw is that the best ones came down the pike a century ago, and even then they were not all created equal. Many create as many conundrums as they were meant to resolve, the good ones take a lot of effort to find, and there is one saw for cutting everything with them. One saw for all crosscuts does not work well for all situations.

I’ve wanted to develop a Bench Hook that would be a good companion to our shooting boards for some time now, and quite a few of our customers have expressed a want for one as well. My criteria for such a tool was all about the capabilities. I wanted more flexibility, and to remove some of the limitations of the common mitering fixtures and improve the ergonomics of sawing for the woodworker. This required that I take a different approach than the traditional route, and to a degree the sawyers skill is a bit more in play, but I feel the overall gains were worth it!

Our shooting boards and accessories allow woodworkers to shoot a lot of angles, and a bench hook was needed to help with that. Accurate sawing close to the line creates a superior shooting experience. I also wanted to create a fixture that would allow the woodworker to choose the right saw for the work, rather than limit them to just one.

We call it the East/West Saw Hook. It’s the ergonomic Western or Japanese style handsaw bench hook solution. It’s a new approach to an old problem, fixturing work so it can be sawn. We wanted a tool that worked both with the wood and with the woodworker. This fixture helps create possibilities!

One of the biggest barriers to accurate sawing is poor body posture and ergonomics. Sawing at 90 degrees to the work offers the best body mechanics, but as soon as angles are introduced to the left or right, our bodies have to over reach or we have to introduce flex to our wrists that always affect accuracy when sawing. Sadly, it is always in the miter where our want for accuracy is highest

Proper posture and good body mechanics are a large part of why successful sawing takes place. That and a sharp, well tuned saw that is right for the work. Our new bench hook focuses the sawyer on proper body position, always sawing perpendicular to the bench, with no contortions or over-reaching that introduces poor ergonomics and posture while cutting angles. Besides, why not develop sawing skills?

The East/West Saw Hook removes many of the barriers to good sawing technique. With this bench hook, the sawyer guides the saw. The work is positioned to facilitate the sawyer. All the sawyer has to do is develop their best stance, concentrate on good posture and mechanics, then focus on sawing to the line with clear vision of the work at any angle.

The fence is the East/West function of the Saw Hook, and offers that distinction in a couple of different ways.

The fence is located in the middle of the fixture, and can pivot 90 degrees above and below the centerline. It has a fixturing point at 90 degrees, and dual fixturing points at 22.5 and 45 degrees both above and below the 90. There is adjustment in the fence mounting, should one want to set the angle for high accuracy. The pivot and fixture points are threaded inserts set in counter bores and bedded in epoxy. Simply tighten the thumbscrews in place with finger pressure.

Fixturing any angle that is not provided for with fixture points is easy! This fence can be set for any angle +/- 90 degrees from center! All that is needed is to remove the fixturing thumbscrew and position the fence as you require. Clamp it to the bench with an “F” Clamp. The fence is long enough for a clamp to reach at nearly any angle.

Setting the fence for any angle is easy. Like our shooting boards, the fence is designed to be set with commonly found, inexpensive plastic drafting triangles. Align the triangle with the edge of the replaceable insert, and set the fence angle. Then either use the fence mounting screws or clamp the fence in place as based on your angle. Remember handsaw cuts are not usually super high accuracy, and leave a rough surface. Fine cuts that are destined for high accuracy and smooth finish are meant to be followed by a plane on the shooting board.

The other East/West is that both sides of the fence work as a stop for the work, so both Western Push Saws and Japanese Pull Saws can be used with this fixture. The Pull Saws work best when the Hook is clamped in a vise. To add to this sawing versatility, you can choose from any appropriate saw you have for the work you’re doing, So long or short saws, and coarse or fine saws can be used to fit the task at hand. This is important, because the appropriate saw for the job is why there are different saws in the first place.

The East/West Saw Hook is sturdy; it’s made to handle wear and tear. While the fence is set for accurate angles, it isn’t sawn through. This bench hook has a replaceable “sacrificial surface” under the sawing area. There is a line drawn down the middle as an alignment target for accurate sawing.

The fixture comes with three replaceable inserts; one is installed, and 3-Packs of replacement inserts can be ordered as well. No matter how much this fixture gets used, the replaceable inserts help keep it in top condition. The inserts can be changed very quickly with a 5/32 hex key.

Another nice feature of the East/West Saw Hook is it’s size. It is robust, yet low profile, and has approximately the same size footprint as our shooting boards. If fact, when storing, this fixture will easily stack on top of one of our shooting boards and take up little storage space!

When using the fixture, Set the fence to the appropriate angle, position the layout lines on the work over the line on the fixture’s replaceable insert and you’re on target. Plenty of room for leaning the saw to any angle for compound cuts, or focus on keeping it square to the work, then all you have to do is focus on the sawing. Remember, the working stock can be placed in front of the fence for use with Western style “push” saws, or behind the fence for Japanese style “pull” saws.

Whether the work is 6 x 6 bench legs or fine moldings made with hollows and rounds, this is the sawing fixture for it. Choose the saw you have that best fits the circumstance. Again, compound cuts are as easy as cutting squarely. Lay out the lines as you normally would, and pivot the fence to match. Then simply focus on sawing to the line with proper body stance and position.

We build the East/West Saw Hook to last with proper care. Available in Right or Left-Hand versions to help you saw the way you want to. Let us custom make one just for you! We’re taking orders. Please have a look at all our Handsaw Accessories in the Woodworks Store!

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Shooting boards are key to woodworking fit and finish. We lay out carefully, work close to the line with our saws which leaves a rough finish, and clean off our saw marks with planes that bring us right to the layout line, with a smooth finish. Precise and accurate, no matter how we measure it. If it fits and looks good, it’s right.

Our new ‘Ultra Shooter’ is an expansion of our ’Deluxe Shooter’ model, providing seven calibratable angles from which to shoot accurately. It offers all the angles of the deluxe shooter – plus the 75-degree angle – which is very useful for trimming 15 degree wide pie shaped slices of veneer, or thicker stock for use in starburst arrangements, compass points, various inlay designs, or anything else you might imagine.

The ‘Ultra Shooter’ shares the same general design, accessories, precision and attention to detail with all our shooting boards, including the ’51 Shooter’ series.

The seven angles the ‘Ultra Shooter’ fixtures are: 15, 22.5, 30, 45, 60, 75, and 90. You can order a ‘Standard’ or ‘Double High’ fence to match any angle the board can shoot. This board can shoot the angles needed to build most anything, and if you’re like me, you never know what your future woodworking projects may require. With an ‘Ultra Shooter’, you’ll be prepared.

Click here to see the Features and Specifications of our Shooting Boards.

For more information and ordering, please see the ‘Ultra Shooter’ Shooting Board in the Woodworks Store.

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Sharpening. All roads in woodworking lead to it, and there seems to be as many ways to accomplish it as one can imagine. Scary Sharp with Abrasives, Water Stones, Oil Stones, Leather, Steel, Powered, which also employs abrasives, stones, leather, et al. All of the various styles have strengths as well as weaknesses. Many woodworkers often decide to mix and match different sharpening media to optimize the best methods for their kit.

For many years, I have had a continued interested in tool sharpening, as well as how they dull through use, while paying attention to the many trade-offs offered by different sharpening methods. I looked for ways to optimize the sharpening process for better workflow. Along the way, sharpening more frequently, meaning not waiting until blades are unusably dull stood out as very important, and some other ideas became viable as solutions to challenges other woodworkers I spoke with were having. Sharpening needed to be handier, and the sharpening tools tools more effective. The fruits of these studies are coming forth in the Sharpening Aids we are offering through our ‘Woodworks Store’.

We are introducing a Sharpening Station based on Abrasives over Glass, otherwise referred to as “Scary Sharp”. We call it the ‘Sharpening Station 1′ “Scary Sharp”. There are several strengths it brings to sharpening.

Portability is a big strength. Many woodworkers and sharpeners are space challenged, and having a space where this always happens isn’t always possible. This station is designed as a bench hook, so you can either hook it on the edge of the bench, or clamp it in a vise to sharpen. Then remove it so you can use the bench for your projects. It is also very usable on other level surfaces that are not a bench. As a for instance, you could use it on a Workmate, a Festool FMT/3 with the ‘FMT/3 Cleat’ installed, even a table saw if you use one. You could even take it with you as a traveling sharpening solution.

Another strength. Four flat glass surfaces. Many waterstone users lament how much flattening is necessary with them, particularly the coarse grit stones. Much of the stone is worn away flattening, not sharpening. Another downside waterstones have is that as they go out of flat, they transfer whatever shape that is to the tool’s edge. They are also very messy, and have freezing liabilities in cold climates. The coarsest waterstones are mainly used for getting a tool’s bevel established, and to be certain, when good maintenance practices are used in sharpening, the coarse stones are rarely used.

The Sharpening Station 1 can eliminate the need for coarse waterstones, replacing them with coarse abrasives on flat glass when required. No more flattening ever. These four surfaces are flat and stay flat. They measure 3 x 10 inches and offer a lot of flexibility. They are high enough above the bench top for finger clearance when flattening tooling backs or knife sharpening. Load them up with coarse grit for grinding and flattening sessions. Step the grits for working the bevels up to fine sharpness, set them up with fine micro abrasives when maintaining sharpness during fine woodworking sessions.

Many Woodworkers are resorting to different sharpening methods for different parts of the sharpening process. I still use stones here for some work, both Diamond and Oilstones. I like flat stones for knives, chisels and plane irons. The emphasis here being on flatness, that’s what I value the most. They also work well for out-canal carving tools. My observations have been that abrasives on a flat surface, be it on glass or granite, have some niche areas that are too good to ignore, particularly the flexibility and the flatness. Not having a huge mess to clean up is also a big plus. So whether you use stones or mix power and non-powered sharpening methods, the ‘Sharpening Station 1′ can augment or replace some sharpening tools.

A sandpaper cutter for sizing the sheet abrasives to the sharpening station is also built in. At the far end of the station, we’ve incorporated a handy cutter big enough to handle most any standard sheet abrasives available, by length and width.

Simply transfer the size of the glass to the back of the sandpaper, insert the paper, abrasive side down under the cutter, apply pressure with one hand and tear carefully with the other. It’s that simple.

You can choose from self-adhesive abrasives, or use spray adhesives to adhere the abrasives to clean glass. It’s always ready for work.

Flexibility. Our ‘Sharpening Station 1′ shares sharpening modules with our ‘Bench Strop’. It is part of an interchangeable system of tops that we call “Strop Tops”. Currently our Strop Top line up consists of the Glass which is included as standard on the ‘Sharpening Station 1′. Horse Butt Leather, Cowhide Split Leather, and bare MDF can be purchased separately. That’s a lot of versatility, and all it takes is a 5/32nd hex key to interchange them. If you like finishing with a strop of MDF with fine polishing compounds embedded, we have you covered.

The station as shown weighs approximately 10 pounds, measures 14-3/4 inches square and is finished with teak oil. It’s a sturdy tool and it shares a lot in common with other tools we make. Because it does, it offers the same precision and durability enjoyed by other tool designs we offer.

It’s available for ordering now, just follow this link to the ‘Sharpening Station 1′ “Scary Sharp” in the ‘Woodworks Store’.

In other news, we have been working on other ‘Woodworks Store’ upgrades, which will help showcase other new tooling we are offering. As many know, our store has been using shopping cart ordering for some time now, and our web store has expanded from our original shooting board, the ‘Deluxe Shooter’, into multiple categories of woodworking tools and jigs. We have also been working to create better descriptions of our tooling so you’ll have a better idea of what our tools are and what they do.

New to the web store is the ‘New Products’ page, where we showcase the newest offerings in our product line. This means going forward, that if you are wondering what our latest tool and product offerings are, just have a look in the ‘New Products’ section of the store!

The New Product lineup currently has the Sharpening Station 1, as well as our latest shooting board model, The ‘Ultra Shooter’. What is the Ultra Shooter? It has all the angles our Deluxe Shooter has, and we added 75 degrees, so it shoots 90, 15, 22.5, 30, 45, 60 and 75-degree angles with fixtured precision calibratability. All the same attention to detail as all our shooting boards have plus an angle that is handy for veneer and other fine work. The ‘Ultra’ is also available in ’51′style shooters as well.

Other new products include ‘The Any Angle Fence’, which allows you a fence that will self fixture at any angle our shooting boards currently fixture, with full calibratability, and will fixture any angle in between 1 – 90 degrees by clamping. It has two fence faces, a tall one and a short one, that have been precision flattened to .001 to place between the fence base and the work piece to prevent damage at the cut. It will work with any of our Deluxe or 51 shooter style models.

The Glass Strop Top too is a new addition to our product line, and it not only fits the new ‘Sharpening Station 1′, but the ‘Bench Strop System’ as well. It can be ordered individually if desired.

We do a fair bit of cooking around here, and found our spice rack organization lacking. The ‘Spice Rack Tiers’ hold 24 bottles of spice on board and allow another six bottles in front, to enable easier workflow when cooking. These tiers are not just for spices, they have application elsewhere too! Maybe in the shop or for other hobbies. You decide. Please check them out.

Also new, are the ‘Medium’ and ‘Small Drill Squaring Guides’. Many times, we need a perpendicular hole and we can’t leave it to chance. There may not be a Drill Press available, or a hole needs to go where a Drill Press can’t reach. Often we want countersink screws to wind up flush to the surface.

These drilling guides can be used with any drill, hand, battery or corded electric, to drill a perpendicular hole and most any angle the work is at. We drill and ream these to cover all the holes from 5/64ths to 15/64, by 64ths on the ‘Small’, and from 1/4 to 1/2 by the 16th on the ‘Medium’. Surfaces are flattened to .001 on certified granite. They are not a steel bushing based guide. They are made from 6061 Aluminum and meant for starting holes in wood and soft materials that are square to the work. Take a look at them in the store.

Another new item is the ‘MFT/3 Cleat’. It is a replacement Cleat that allows our Shooting Boards and some of our other tools to mate to the edge of the Festool MFT/3 Work Table more effectively. So if you are an MFT/3 user, please check them out! Any of our tools with cleats can be user retrofitted. See them in the Shooting Board Accessory section of the store.

Speaking of Shooting Board Accessories, we have some old items with new ordering capabilities. The ‘Standard Cleat’ is the cleat we spec as original on all our shooting boards and some of our other tools. Now you can order a replacement should you like.

Also, we have created more specific ordering for our ‘Standard Fences’, and ‘Double High Fences’ so they can be ordered by the angle. Traditionally we supply the ‘Standard Fence’ and ‘Double High Fence’ with a 90 and 45-degree angle. We now offer both models with 90 and an option of 15. 22.5, 30, 45, 60, and 75-degree angles. This is great if you want a replacement fence for your original, or want to order fences for any specific angle your board model can fixture! Have a look at your options in the store!

If you are ready for your sharpening sessions to become better organized and more efficient, we have the tooling for that. If you have been considering a Shooting Board, we have many options that have most of the angles covered. Ordering is easy in the ‘Woodworks Store’.

Thanks, and as always, please check back often!

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We now offer a new board in our Shooting Board Line. It’s called the ‘51’ Shooter.

It’s our Deluxe, Basic Plus and Basic Shooters made available in “Chute Style” for the LN 51 shooting board planes.

While we have mentioned similar news of this recently, and have been offering chute adapter kits to be used as an upgrade to our shooting board line, it just made sense to give this series it’s own identity, and make it easier to order.

The LN 51 is a premier plane when it comes to shooting, and many woodworkers are selecting it as their choice for the shooting board. It made perfect sense to give the 51 a great Chute Board for it’s purpose. This shooting board is a precision tool.

The ’51’ Shooter is Artisan Made like all our tools, sharing all the features and specifications of our other shooting boards and tools. It can be ordered from The ’51′ Shooter Page in the Evenfall Studios Woodworks Store.

If you already have a Shooting Board of ours and would like to retrofit it to work with the LN 51, we still offer a Chute Adapter Kit that will turn your Deluxe, Basic Plus, or Basic Shooter into a ‘51’ Shooter. It can be ordered from the Shooting Board Accessory section in our Store. Once you receive it, simply install the kit, adjust it to fit, and wax both the chute and your plane. Welcome to shooting heaven.

It is also important to note that this chute rail is not only adjustable, but reversible with two sides flattened on certified granite. It’s removable as well, so you can still use nearly any plane with our shooting boards, if that is what you wish or need. And if you ever damage or wear out the rail, we offer replacements in the Shooting Board Accessory Section in our store.

We welcome the ‘51’Shooter to our Shooting Board line up. We now offer seven different styles of shooting board in all.

More good things are coming!

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Over the course of time I have had opportunity to observe how many oils and lubricants perform in the woodshop, and the trades. My Father and Grandfather used 3 in 1 oil in their shops, along with other brands of light machine oils available at the time.

They also often used non-detergent 30-weight oil, but it’s terribly messy and doesn’t perform well on a lot of woodworking equipment where exposure to cold temps and sawdust are concerned. In light of what my ancestors did, I found myself thinking about, and wanting better lubricants.

Modern research has evolved some very nice, specific-use oils that work great in targeted applications. Synthetics, Silicones, and so-called “Dry” lubricants. I would be remiss to not mention WD-40 too, but even as it is thought of as a lubricant, it is actually more a solvent with temporary lubricating properties, and although it was named to be a water displacer, it makes a poor corrosion preventative. It is however, a great lube for oilstones and for wet sanding steels.

Oils and lubricants are a field of endeavor that is very hush about it’s formulations. Manufacturers keep their cards close to their chests. Often, there are components of a lubricant that are proprietary information, and the “brand” is hanging on that formulation. It’s very scientific. The makers know exactly what they target a lubricant for, and what they use in it’s bases to create it, exactly. If it works, the manufacturer garners all the profit from being good at what it does.

To the many end users of oils and lubricants, all we know are the brand names, and what the creators target the product to do. We tacitly accept that the product will do what is advertised. For instance, most of us are familiar with penetrating oil, but most of us do not know what all is exactly in it that makes it penetrate and why. After awhile we come to know which brands we like, and which types are for what, and if they work well for us or not. Mostly we don’t need to know a lot beyond that, when all we really want is stuck parts unstuck, or a hinge to swing a door quietly. Rest assured there is a recipe for the stuff, and the maker knows why it works. In essence, we just use the oils they tell us to.

I tried a lot of the different products that have become available, and as I started out to say, observed. I didn’t have any way to scientifically test them, nor was that my aim. I just wanted lubricants that were slick and protective of my bearings and mechanisms where metals had to interface. So I applied them as directed, and let them do their stuff, and after awhile I determined if I liked them or not.

So how did I get to sewing machine oil? For years I was an advocate of the light machine oils, like 3 in 1, and in addition to my own supplies, I had a good supply that had once belonged to my Grandfather and Dad. Along the way I tried some of the modern synthetics out too, to see if I liked the performance. I rejected quite a few because I didn’t like the way they performed in a woodshop environment, or the way they had to be applied was wrong for me.

Bicycle lubricants showed some promise, but I felt the formulations really were most properly targeted at bicycles, and they often didn’t “feel” as slick as oils. Often sawdust seemed to either cling to, or weaken many of them, causing adjustments to feel coarse. Sawdust is going to cling to most lubricants anyway, but my want is for that to not be too clingy, and for the lube to keep feeling like it is working. I had run low on my stash of my old school 3 in 1, so I decided to go after more. It was then that I learned that packaging had evolved to plastic, it was no longer in the old, familiar rectangular can!

I bought a new bottle and began using it on the machines and hand tools in my shop. After a time, I observed that it didn’t seem to be working in the same way I had been accustomed. I did a little google research and read in many different places around the internet, that I was not the only one noticing 3 in 1 had changed the formula some. I also learned that 3 in 1 had also changed ownership sometime back, and some people were speculating about it. It’s still a light machine oil, but in my non-scientific observations I noticed it was evaporating quicker, and leaving behind a yellow waxy film on everything, which it had always done, but this was more pronounced than the old product and it seemed to dry stickier than it had been, attracting sawdust even more than before.

I have a friend in the Sew and Vac business, and one day while we were talking about an antique sewing machine we had in for adjusting, lubricants came up in discussion. As I told him of my observations and dissatisfactions regarding light machine oils, he just looked at his feet and smiled. After I asked about his acknowledgement, he pretty much told me that he’d observed this too, and has repaired many sewing machine’s and vacuums that 3 in 1 had been used in. He said 3 in 1 is not a bad oil, but it’s application when used in sew and vac applications is wrong.

For sewing machines and vacuums, he felt 3 in 1 does evaporate too fast, faster than manufacturer recommended oiling intervals, leaving metal on metal, plastics and nylons. It does leave a waxy varnish build up that clogs, and gums up the works. Not what you want on those machines, and the same thing I was observing with 3 in 1 oil in my shop. I was applying it where I do, and in a week, I felt I had lost lubrication and had a yellow varnish stain to show for it. Varnish from hardened oil paraffin is a future seal to fresh oil and a side effect I don’t want. Oil needs to get where it needs to be and lubricate, not become hard and seal off future oilings. I decided that while 3 in 1 is an adequate product, I wanted something better in my shop.

After he got done singing the praises of sewing machine oil, we left with a bottle for the shop.

Sewing machine oil (or how any oil is actually formulated) is challenging to research. I’m no petroleum engineer, and don’t really need to be, but I know it is good stuff. I can tell you that it is a mixture of three different base oil types- paraffin, mineral and aromatic. It can be found in 5 weight (ISO 22) and 10 weight, (ISO 32) with 5 weight being most common. It is classified as a “white” or clear oil, non-staining for use on fabrics and I’m told light on the paraffin, heavy on the mineral. It is a formulated oil with corrosion inhibitors and other additives that help it do the job as well as possible. (Well oiled machines are rarely rusty.) I find it is plenty slick and leaves no varnish or paraffin residues behind on anything I have used it on.

Like any oil, it needs to be reapplied regularly because there is wear and evaporation. With busy tools I find a drop every 10 – 25 hours of use depending on the application, and things stay good. For the less used items, I go with the feel. If it feels or looks like it could use a drop of oil, it probably does.

We have two old Singer, gear driven sewing machines, which are in the 70 year old range and have seen high usage in their time. They are clean as can be and show little to no wear on the mechanisms, thanks to the use of sewing machine oil. Proof is in the condition of these machines, which have moving parts like a steam locomotive.

It has become my “go to” shop oil. I like to apply it to the spring and quill of my Drill Press regularly, as well as the tilt mechanisms on the Band Saws and Jointers. I really like it on the knob spinners on shop machines. It is great on toggle clamp mechanisms, and I oil all the acme screws on my clamps and vises with it. It is also great on the ball and socket of the clamp pad feet, as these need to spin freely.

I like it on eggbeater drill shafts, and in the chucks of both the eggbeater and brace. It is nice on the brace knob as well. It works wonderfully on plane adjusters as well as a light coat under the frog on the plane base. Try it also as a refreshener on Japanning. Rubbing some sewing machine oil into the Japanning on your planes with your finger, and buffing it off brings luster to the Japanning that looks nice and fresh! I’d even recommend it as an initial protectant on freshly cleaned and sanded metal. It works well as a light honing oil on oilstones if you like. It is great on anything with a lead screw, set screw, or threads that would be ok with an oil lubricant, but before you use it on the Table Saw adjustment screws, consider candle wax there instead due to extreme sawdust.

I’d also like to add that if you don’t find yourself drilling metals often, but need to on occasion, Sewing Machine Oil will work as a good cutting fluid for use at the drill press. As a light machine oil, it is a closely related viscosity to cutting fluids, and will serve you well, but if you are going to be drilling metal as a rule, “Cutting Fluid” would likely be a better formulation.

So if you like, pick up a bottle and be sure to get an applicator bottle similar to the one pictured for precision application. Often a drop will do and go a long way. I’d like to recommend it to you.

While I’m at it, I’d also like to recommend Renaissance Wax (or it’s equivalent) as an excellent corrosion inhibitor. Paste wax as a corrosion inhibitor, surface prep and glue release agent. Candle wax for lubing both screw and machine threads and plane soles. Kroil is an excellent penetrating oil, and here is a Spray Bee’s Wax available from Wenzloff and Sons that really improves the friction factors on saw plates, and helps protect them as well.

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Work to a line. Cut on the waste side of the line and leave the line on the work.

Supporting Tip: Mark which side of the line will be the waste side. The waste side is the part you don’t intend to keep.

This isn’t about measuring as much as it is about marking. Marking exactly that which we want to keep is the best way to assure things fit when we assemble our project’s parts. If we don’t observe this however, it can render our careful measurements powerless. The fitment of our work is what we honor the most.

The lines we mark give clear meaning to our layout. We should always put the lines on as clearly and accurately as we can, and have them represent to us the part we wish to keep. This way if we are called away and return to look at our project later, we don’t ever have to remember what the lines mean.

It’s been argued that you can take the line, split the line and so forth, but those techniques are fraught with problems when you really think about them.

If you saw to the line and take the line, how much over the line did you take? Is there room here for a mistake? Will we always remember to compensate for the saw’s kerf? Will we always be sure? Will it make things too short? Mistakes happen with this method more often than not.

Some have said split the line. If we draw a line with a pencil, the pencil will blunt as it draws, so what then is the standard width for this line? Does it really, truly stand for the part of our project, which we intend to keep? Again, what if the saw can take a kerf wider than the line? How do you split that? I’ve seen people advocate for this but too much is left to chance. Why risk it? Woodworking doesn’t have to require that we be lucky.

Remember that many things we saw are not finished off the saw, the saw is a rough tool, and usually leaves behind rough marks. Often, these marks are so rough that we can’t do further accurate layout on that surface, until after we smooth it up. It is rarely a finish surface in woodworking with few exceptions. It is a better practice to saw a short distance from the line on the waste side, particularly when the saw is coarse.

We must leave room on our work to smooth this rough surface, and we can’t do it if we split or take the line. We can sand, plane, chisel, even use a shooting board or a spokeshave to the line to obtain a smooth and accurate finish. It just depends on how we need to shape that line. More often than not, taking the line will leave you little room to smooth, let alone solve a problem if one occurs.

Good work practices are very important to consistency, so it is always good to be an early adopter of such practices. When showy woods can run from $20.00 to over $100.00 a board foot, we can’t afford to condemn wood to chance. We need to know where we are cutting for the best fit possible.

Depending on the level of accuracy the line needs to represent, we can use chalk, chalk line, carpenter pencils, sharp or fine pencils, even a marking knife with possibly the line darkened or lightened after we strike it, but the line should stay and represent the working limit.

With pencils, a harder lead can help. HB hardness is common; 2H hardness if you can find it works better. Sharpness is everything in a pencil, so be sure to maintain it while working. Red pencil leads show up well on dark woods and are more durable than white. Ballpoint pens will endure layout work, but depending on the project or position, can leave a mark in some woods that could be hard to remove later. Gel pens are good for marking light colors as well, but can be both expensive and fragile. Marking knives actually scribe lines that are more usable when they are slightly dull.

Remember that with dovetail layout, one joinery-sawn board lays out the other. On the board being laid out second, the lines can only be placed on the part which you intend to keep. This is true in many cases when working in joinery, and in joinery, fitment is everything.

Working to the line always allows room to trim if we still need. And all the lines can easily be removed once we have fitment and move towards the finish.

When accuracy in lay out matters, surface quality matters. It encompasses both the initial dimensions as well as the finish dimensions, and one is often used to lead to the other. Being squared up or at a specific angle can matter to the layout line placement. A shooting board can help us arrive at the right fit and finish when working to the line, both in the layout and the finish of joinery, as well as miters and butted boards that will require precise fitment.

Finally, remember as we lay out our work that we orient the placement of our lines so as to keep them where they will remain on the part of the work we intend to keep. This may mean we will need to orient the work so we layout from one or two reference surfaces only, (another good practice) and that the lines will work with the tool or machine that does the cutting, or which hand we use to work. If you like to saw to the right or left of a line for your waste, keep that in mind as you lay out. Think of what the tool will need for accommodations and the boards will arrive at the size needed consistently.

Practice consistency. Work to the line and rest assured that our best work has been done. These tips will help anyone create anything faster and with higher accuracy. The lines? They can be straight or curved. Anything you can imagine. This is a major part of building anything we can design. The bridge from what we imagine, to what we make become real. Now we can create!

Has this information helped you? Would you consider helping support our efforts?

Like any website hosted on the internet, The ‘Woodworks Blog’ has it’s expenses. The main way we offset expenses, is directly through purchases of ‘Artisan Made’ tools and jigs from the ‘Woodworks Store’.

Another way to help support the ‘Woodworks Blog’ is to appeal to the generosity of our readers. It’s quick and easy to make a donation directly to the ‘Woodworks Blog’ by using the PayPal donation button. Your generosity is greatly appreciated!

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Happy Woodworking!

Lie Nielsen released the LN 51 chute board plane in late fall 2010, and reviews of it’s performance have been very favorable. Based on the design of the Stanley 51, this shooting board plane seeks to have all the desirable qualities of enhanced usability and durability. It’s heavy, weighing in at 9 plus pounds and the angled blade skews the cut to the board being trued. While originally made to work with Chute Boards similar to the Stanley 52 Chute Board (which offered a track, or “Chute” for the plane to ride in), it will also work on shooting boards without an enclosed chute.

We are happy to share with you that the LN 51 is already a perfect fit on all Evenfall Studios right hand shooting board models, and if it is a Chute Board you really want, we offer a both a shooting board model called the ’51′ Shooter and a ‘Chute Adapter Kit’ that creates a true “chute board” out of many of our existing shooting board models for the LN 51. This kit fits ALL our shooting board models except the long grain shooter, and the LN 51 will work just fine on a long grain shooter without the chute as well. Most planes that are commonly used for shooting will fit within the enclosed chute of our boards, even with the LN-51 kit rail installed.

Our LN 51 chute adapter is reversible. It consists of one precision-milled baltic birch rail that is flattened to 0.001 on each side, and the three adjustable mounting slots allow adjustment for the nominal 2-1/8th inch width of the LN-51. This means no matter the nominal width of your 51 or if wood should move, the chute can be “zeroed” for a tight clearance fit in the chute.

One reversible chute rail is provided with both sides flattened, creating two wear surfaces for use with the LN-51. Three 1/4-20 stainless steel button head cap screws are included to mount the rail to the chute. This means you can configure our shooting boards for use with or without the chute adapter; it isn’t a permanent fixture.

Specifically, this kit can be fitted to the right chute of the Basic Shooter, the Basic Plus Shooter, the Deluxe Shooter, and the Picture Frame Shooter’s right chute, adding flexibility to the high accuracy, adjustable angle shooting boards we offer. These are top quality adjustable angle shooting boards built to meticulous specifications.

You can read about these specifications here.

There are two ordering options:

If what you want is a “Chute Board” for your LN 51, and you do not yet own one of our shooting boards, our shooting board for the LN 51 is called the ’51′ Shooter. Just navigate to that store page, read up on the details, click to place one in the shopping cart and check out. It’s simple as that.

If you already own one of our shooting boards and would like to upgrade it for use with the LN 51 with this kit, we can supply the kit rail and mounting hardware, and you can either drill and tap the chute mounting points for the machine screw mounting hardware yourself, (recommended) or mount with wood screws instead. We supply complete instructions for the retrofit of your existing board with the kit. The LN 51 Chute Adapter Kit page is here. Even if you don’t know when you’ll have an LN 51, it may be convenient to have your shooting board prepared to work with one in the future.

If Lie-Neilsen releases a left hand version of this plane, this chute kit will have that covered as well.

Again, ordering is super easy. Simply navigate to the appropriate link posted above, add it to your shopping cart along with your order of the shooting board of your choice. Remember this option is not currently available for the Long Grain Shooter. The LN 51 adapter is found in the Shooting Board Accessory Section, where all the other shooting board upgrades are kept.

If you have any questions at all, please Contact Us and we’ll be happy to flesh out any of the details.

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Happy Woodworking!

Woodworkers often ponder what matters to produce the highest quality outcomes in woodworking. Defining quality is the key. It is a combination of tooling and technique to be sure. There are times we can save money; there are times we should invest for the long haul from the beginning. It isn’t always about money as much as it is about how far we want to take our outcomes.

Here are some considerations for bringing high quality to woodworking.

1. Layout tooling is a very big deal. Accurate layout is the first phase of getting where one wants to go.

The subsequent work with tools will diminish this accuracy, so starting as high on the accuracy scale as possible is beneficial. Good layout tools and the skills to use them help provide the ultimate in fit and finish, whether you are going to make a Morris Chair, or a William and Mary Secretary.

Any cut is meant to be to the line, so what quality should be the line? What a line is to a framing carpenter is different to the fine woodworker. This can mean choosing well for quality squares, rulers, straight edges, protractors and bevels that hold their angle. Marking gauges, compasses, curve layout tools. Finally, honing the skills that help you to use them all comprehensively.

Joinery is a huge factor in woodworking. How joinery fits is key, and how good it looks is desirable. Layout is the second step after truing the boards. Always mark the face, waste, and which side of the line to work to.

Remember, a pencil will blunt as you use it, so knowing when to resharpen it, or to use harder leads, a pen, or better, a marking knife (where the line can then be darkened with a pencil or lightened with a chalk pounce) is important. Red pencils can be helpful on darker woods.

2. Sharp tooling. This means that any woodworker must find their path to high-level sharpness for themselves and perfect their ability to provide it to their tools. There is more than one way, but being perfect with one is all that is needed. Saws, Planes and Chisels depend on sharpness. There isn’t any compromise.

3. Quality edge tooling is a combination of edge holding, stability, and ergonomics.

If any tool will not retain sharpness adequately for its needs, consider upgrading its cutting edge. If it is a chisel, replace it. If it is a plane, narrow the problem to its fault. If it is the iron that is failing, replace it. If it is the sole or the adjuster, perhaps you can repair it, and sometimes it isn’t worth the bother.

Even vintage tools can be replaced cheaply enough when you consider the value of your time and what you prefer doing with it. On some old tools, fettling never ends, but if the tool is good, fettling takes well. Do consider any tools’ usability in ensemble with the sum of its parts. If you have to fight a tool to make it perform, upgrading it could be worth consideration.

The better a chisel feels in the hand is a bigger part of how well they do the work than one may think. Too, consider its task. This can also mean that sending a paring chisel to do a butt chisels job can be fraught with peril. Peril you say? Yes, peril. Tools need not be expensive, that’s fine, but consider the specific purpose carefully. Compromising with tools often requires greater skill. Consider next the cost of wood per board foot. What is the cost of your board? Common Walnut runs $7.00. Curly Mahogany runs $100.00 per board foot. Wannabe tools and compromises are risky when a wood stretcher or replacer isn’t available. It always happens when you are almost done.

There are different types of chisels for specific purposes. (e.g. pairing, butt, bench, skew, dovetail, etc.) There are different planing bevel angles required for specific outcomes. It is important to learn these differences what, when and why, as they affect ease of use and finish quality. Remember to observe these differences in different materials and under changing circumstances.

On bench planes, there are also different plane iron sharpenings, mouth openings, and chip breaker settings, if offered, that can inter relate to one another. Some planes are purpose made for specific tasks, like a jackplane, which for it’s usual task wants a radiused iron and an open mouth. Or a smoother that likes very sharp irons sharpened square to the sides and a closed mouth. We have to set these planes up for the outcomes we want them to help produce. Our ignorance of these understandings isn’t something wood will abide.

A thicker plane iron is inherently more stable than a thin one. Some will argue this but I won’t. This has great influence on finish quality. On planes with thin irons like the old Stanley planes, thin irons are aided and stiffened by the cap iron, but depending on the type of work the plane is doing, the cap iron setting cannot always provide stiffness nor it’s connected chip breaker to the correct proximity for both or either to help stabilize the iron.

Modern plane and blade makers have bypassed this concern by supplying a thicker iron that usually overcomes the issue. If the iron is working, then nothing is broke. If the iron chatters or won’t cut well at any mouth setting or depth of cut, consider upgrading it, particularly if using most any vintage plane.

Sharpness is everything, always. Dullness is at the root of most problems with either the tool or the wood. Perfecting the ability to sharpen adequately for the tool to work outcomes that are favorable from the wood is any woodworkers goal.

4. It’s the 21st century. Most woodworkers can buy S4S lumber anywhere. This can save you some time, but it still isn’t ready for fine work. It still has room for improvement. Is it square and flat? Are there grain issues? Is there twist, wind, cupping? S4S often is not fully seasoned or acclimated before it is planed. Time has been given to allow the board to move some more, so choose carefully. Since these woods are so obtainable, do feel free to use them if they help get you where you want to go, but leave the challenging boards at the store. If you like the idea of getting started on a project and you lack a full kit, choosing these woods carefully can really help get you going.

A good first saw for working in S4S lumbers could be a16 inch-ish long, sharp western backsaw or Japanese equivalent is important. If Japanese saws seem right to you, consider the Ryoba.

5. A Jointer plane need not be top of the line, but one should have one, and it should be capable of accomplishing the tasks of flattening and straightening. If you can’t true the work, you can’t expect anything else. It is probably more important to have than a smoother. Any of the jointers from wood to infill can bring this, but in the end, if they can’t, woodworking suffers. For fine work, absolutely zero layout is worth doing if the wood surface has not been properly prepared in advance.

6. Make or Buy. A shooting board is one of the tools that take woodworking accuracy, fit and finish further, and most woodworkers will find the need for this accuracy, both fit and finish somewhere along their journey. It brings qualities to the final outcome similar to that of the jointer planes. It can help you bring finish dimensions to your work that you may not yet be able to achieve free hand. There are other jigs that help. A good bench, because workholding is a big part of refined crafsmanship. Clamps, guides, what-have-you, the list can go on, depending on your desired outcomes.

There is a corollary to 3,4,5 and 6: If number 2 is not observed, nothing else matters. This means, even low price can be high quality if one can make it sharp and it can stay work-sharp.

7. Tooling isn’t everything. Develop yourself. Knowledge is but one thing, ability is another. One is schooling the other is practice. They are parts of the puzzle. We too must be sharp.

Train your brain and body to do this work well.

Learn and practice only the best techniques. For best results, sawing is with the grain first, then across it. Chisel across the grain first, then with it. Observe ergonomics, posture matters.

Observe the outcomes and results from your tools and trust what you observe over what you read in books. This will show one fastest, where improvement is needed or not.

Learn grain reading and what the do’s and don’ts are with grain, including the long, the short and wood movement, as they are hard fast rules. Learn to be patient, let wood move by allowing it to acclimate. Make your big cuts to true it and let it rest. Then after a few days take it to final size, check that it is ready and then work only what you can fit. Preparing all your wood before you work it can allow movement to occur that you can’t correct. It happens. Wood grain is the decider.

Don’t work wood when tired. Woodworkers are not high quality when tired. It’s about safety and the final outcome.

Always consider the safest way to do anything before starting. Consider also what can happen if safe practices are not followed, before starting. Shortcuts are throat cuts.

Have I left a lot out? Yeah. Probably. This is a lot to build on, in ensemble.

Remember, It isn’t just high quality from what we are willing to pay. That is only part of the puzzle for some of our success. Success in woodworking is an ensemble of qualities, from both tooling and technique and the boards themselves.

Has this information helped you? Would you consider helping support our efforts?

Like any website hosted on the internet, The ‘Woodworks Blog’ has it’s expenses. The main way we offset expenses, is directly through purchases of ‘Artisan Made’ tools and jigs from the ‘Woodworks Store’.

Another way to help support the ‘Woodworks Blog’ is to appeal to the generosity of our readers. It’s quick and easy to make a donation directly to the ‘Woodworks Blog’ by using the PayPal donation button. Your generosity is greatly appreciated!

Thanks again for all your support! We really appreciate it!

We enjoy your comments! Please Contact Us.

Happy Woodworking!

We have introduced a new leather strop sharpening system, that uses genuine horse butt leather, for helping maintain the finest edges on edge tools while they work.

Maintaining an edge during the woodworking process provides higher levels of working sharpness from edge tools, promoting accurate cuts and joinery, smoother wood surface finish quality, and saves woodworkers an enormous amount of wasted time regrinding, by avoiding dullness, affordably.

It comes down to convenience. This is very important, because when sharpening isn’t convenient or is too messy, we tend to allow tools to become so dull, that restoring sharpness is a lot of hard work. Dullness is avoidable if we maintain sharpness as we work. Maintaining edge tools should be easy.

Why would we want a strop optimized for our workbench? Most strops on the market today are not optimized for honing woodworking tools well. Some come closer than others, but overall they don’t offer the right combination of leather types, flatness, length or ergonomics all at once. Woodworkers want some options and ease when they maintain their edge tools. Our strop is capable of maintaining tool sharpness, reducing or eliminating the mess, while fixturing itself on the bench where the tools are working.

Enter the ‘Bench Strop’ from Evenfall Studios.

The Bench Strop is a multi piece interchangeable stropping surface, sharpening tool. It is optimized for bench work with a Strop Base that supports the Strop Top 2-1/4 inches above the bench top. This boost in height allows clearances for the hands to hold handled tools and plane irons while stropping both the bevel and the backs.

The Strop Base also has three 3/4-inch deep, 3/4-inch diameter Dog Holes bored in the underside for fixturing the Bench Strop over any Round Bench Dog. It is quick and easy to fixture the strop wherever there is space and an available dog. Need to move the strop? Use one hand and pick it up. It is that simple and easy. Need to fixture it again, place it over the bench dog using one of the three provided holes and that’s it! If there is no dog, or the strop will be used away from the bench, we offer an optional non-skid foot kit that can be installed to the base. This will not impede the use of the bench dog fixturing system at all, and adds stability on other surfaces.

The top of the Strop Base is the mounting point for interchangeable Strop Tops. A hex key holder is integrally built into the right side of the base so the tool for interchanging ‘Strop Tops’ is always at hand.

The Strop Tops are made from dead flat MDF and mount to the Strop Base with two 1/4-20 flat head cap screws. The stropping surface area measures 3 x 10-1/4 inches. The optional stropping surfaces are made from Hard Rolled, Genuine Horse Butt, Cowhide Split Suede, which are the two most popular leather stropping surfaces available, and we offer a bare MDF base for use with diamond paste or polishing compounds. Choose one, choose three, or choose multiple Strop Tops for use with the many different compounds available. It is a system you configure to work your way.

The size of this surface area is over two inches longer than most bench stones and wide enough to easily accommodate the #8 jointer plane iron. Stropping free hand or with a roller jig is equally easy and there is plenty of space for each method. There is a lot to be said about interchangeable stropping materials that are the best available, mounted on a flat surface that stays where you put it and allows space enough for the hands to hold the edge tool as required. Our ‘Bench Strop’ provides all this.

Stropping is super easy! It is performed by dragging the bevel edge of the tool backward on the strop. We recommend preparing the edge tool with your finest stone prior to stropping. Never push the tool on the stropping surface or it will damage the strop! There is no need to press down hard, just register the steel against the strop fully with light pressure only and pull. There is no need for speed or rushing. The surface you choose loaded with the compound you prefer (or not) will do the work. This not only takes the honing of your tools beyond the range of many stones, but also can assure that the wire edge is fully removed from the bevel before returning to the work.

A few other benefits of the Bench Strop are that it’s a clean system at the bench. No water, no oil, no mess. It won’t freeze in the wintertime; it’s just the stropping surface and compound. It’s Dry! If the tool is feeling a little dull, harder to push, simply strop it! Sharpening is quick, easy and at hand!

We want to emphasize here, this kind of maintenance honing will prevent the need to completely rebuild edge tool sharpness. Regrinding will be kept to a minimum through stropping while woodworking.

Stropping chisels and carving gouges is easy. Take the tool to the strop directly. The fixturing capability and strop height above the bench allows you room to pivot skew chisels, carving gouges or contoured irons used in hollows and rounds ergonomically. Straight blade chisels from Butt to Paring length are easy, cranked necked and fish tail chisels are just as easy.

Bench Plane irons are removed from the plane, and If chip breakers are involved, no problem; simply leave them attached to the iron and strop the bevel side. Radiused irons are similarly no problem. Rock the iron from right side to left side alternatively as you pull it on the Bench Strop. Strop squared Irons for the shooting plane or smoother with the roller guide on if you prefer. There is no mess to clean up. Reassemble the iron set onto the frog, replace the lever cap, adjust the iron for backlash and depth and it is back to work. It’s fast, easy and the edge tool sharpness is maintained. You won’t miss grinding steel a bit if edges are kept sharp as you work.

As mentioned earlier, multiple ‘Strop Tops’ can be used on the ‘Strop Base’, allowing flexibility. Configure your stropping system to suit your steel’s needs. Use Horse Butt with different compounds, or Cowhide Split Suede with others. Mix and match. Damage a strop or wear it out? No worries, replacements are available and are quick change. Need more than one base to accommodate the way you work? Add a base. Want fancy or fancier? We deliver. Available woods for bases are Ash, Hard Maple, Cherry and Walnut.

“I like stropping a blade but not everyone does. If you polish with a very fine abrasive, say an 8000-grit stone, you’ll have an edge that’s hard to improve. But something about a gentle swipe on a green chrome-oxide-charged leather strop makes me feel like I’ve done all I can.”

Excerpted with permission, page 110 of the “The Perfect Edge”.
Ron Hock. Owner, Hock Tools, Author, “The Perfect Edge”.

“I cannot imagine working on the bench without my strop handy — right there on the bench, between paring or bench chisel cuts — I can renew the edge. The main benefit with my paring chisels, in my experience, is not taking an edge to a point of failure. If edge failure happens, I need to actually go through my sharpening regimen in order to continue having clean cuts.

The benefit for my other edge tools, such as my smoother, is that I can pop out a blade, strop it, and get back to work quickly and cleanly. With a strop, I can maintain a clean working bench, no water or oil to accidentally spoil the bench or my work.”

Mike Wenzloff, Owner, Wenzloff and Sons Sawmakers.

The strop is an invaluable tool to many woodworkers, aiding the ability to keep the workbench workflow agile and easy, and edge tools sharply working at peak efficiency. We think our ‘Bench Strop’ incorporates the best of all these strengths together into a tool that makes keeping edge tools sharp as easy as it can be.

The ‘Bench Strop’ is available for purchase now from the Evenfall Studios Woodworks Store. Please see the ‘Bench Strop’ Product Page for affordable pricing and configurability.

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Happy Woodworking!

We’ve had some requests for more information about our new ‘Bench End Planing Stop’, because it works a bit differently than what woodworkers are accustomed to.

Our new Planing Stop is the jointer planes helper, engineered to be a complete planing stop, meant to be easy to set up and use. When you wanna plane, you wanna plane! When you are done planing, simply lower the screws and it’s flush to the bench top. Always ready.

Why would we want to use a planing stop?

The main reason to use a stop when planing is that it offers no cramp to the board. By cramp, I mean clamping the uncorrected board so that some of the wind and twist may become compressed. When you clamp a board that isn’t flat before you attempt to true it, you can flex the wood fibers against a natural wind and actually plane more problems into it than out.

This means that clamping boards between the end vise and bench dogs can make it harder to flatten a board if we wrench things into more wind than is already there, and that is all too easy to do. What works best is a stop to plane against and a few wedges under the board to keep it from rocking. This way the board is flattened while all it’s fibers are at rest.

Flatten the top, flip and thickness the other side flat to match. Once faces are flat, chuck in the vise and chase the edges. Then saw the ends to length and shoot. No need to worry about marks in the end grain from the stop because you’ll shoot the ends after. Of course if you are too late, this stop will work with a board between the stop and the work just as well.

The cool thing is that this design looks tough on the bench, and is tough on the bench because it eliminates the short grain breakage issues that are common with the sliding stops most commonly used.

Kari Hultman, from the Village Carpenter Blog outlines some of the limitations of traditional planing stop variations, Here. Our hope was to see if we could overcome them, and we think we have. The screws have excellent holding power, better than planing into a vice or a bench dog, and this offers variable width and height versatility.

What it is.

It’s a fixture that usually mounts on the left end of the bench nearest the edge the face vise is on. Of course if you’re using a left hand bench this would be opposite. It is always 12″ long 1-3/4 thick. Depth or width, depending on how you look at it is optional in three sizes. Small: 1-3/4, Medium: 2-3/4, or Large: 3-3/4 inches.

It mounts firmly with two or three 3 x 5/16th lag bolts, which are recessed flush into counterbores, and has a series of six 1/4-20 flat head cap screws spread over a 10 inch range in 2-1/2 inch intervals that have 82 degree countersink tops which can be quickly and easily raised and lowered to stop any board you would like to plane. Just mount the top of the stop on plane with the bench top or alternatively slightly below the bench top surface.

The tops and sides have a small chamfer on them, so there are no sharp edges where people will usually contact it. The bottom edge has a decorative cove cut into it to help dress up the stop and it’s appearance on the bench. We finish it with Teak Oil. Teak Oil is an amber finish that pops grain and it wears like iron.

We make these planing stops available in three different sizes and four different woods; Ash, (shown) Cherry, Hard Maple and Walnut.

How is it installed?

This is a pretty straightforward install. There are two to three 5/16 holes in these depending on the model. There are counterbores for the bolt heads so everything is recessed into the stop. Nothing protrudes from the fixture to catch on your clothes.

Layout for mounting is optional. As mentioned, the stop can be mounted on plane with the bench top, or slightly below to compensate for future bench flattenings. It can be positioned right on the corner or inset a bit, as based on personal preference.

Once it is positioned where you like, take one of the supplied lag bolts and use it to punch the center points for the 1/4 inch diameter mounting holes. Then drill the holes squarely to edge of the bench approximately 1-1/2 inches deep. If you need help squaring up this drill hole, our Medium Drill Squaring Guide works great for this.

Your favorite socket and ratchet fit right in the counterbore for a straightforward install. It goes on the left end of the bench and near the edge with the face vise. Simply drill two or three 1/4-inch holes (again, depending on the model) into the end of the bench about 1-1/2 inches deep and bolt it on.

How it works.

Lay your board up on the bench as you usually would, inspecting for twist and wind. Prepare to shim the board so it won’t rock as you flatten it.

You can choose any two or three of the flat head cap screws, which are spaced from 1-10 inches apart. Raise them between 1/8th to 3/16th above the bench top with the hex key that stows in its holder on the end of the stop.

Position the board against the stop and plane away, planing the high spots first and work your way down to flatness. The stop is tough, so push as you would with usual planing force. It can handle the pressures of planing. It is equally adept at working with both thick and thin stock because it doesn’t take much height for the stop to hold the work and the cap screws always remain below the plane iron. No damaged blades here!

Adjustments are quick and easy! Simply grab the hex key out of it’s keeper on the lower right side of the stop and use it to quickly raise a couple of the cap screws that seem appropriate for the width of the board and the stop is ready. We find 2-1/2 to 3 full turns on the screws is all that is needed for stopping any board.

It’s an affordably priced upgrade to any bench, that works great and offers planing versatility that a vice often can’t match when jointing and flattening is the task. Please see the Planing Stop product page in our Store to order.

We enjoy your comments! Please Contact Us.

Happy Woodworking!

Over the past few years building shooting boards, our product line has grown through thoughts, ideas and suggestions. We have expanded to six shooting board models and many accessories for them. We continue to work on ways to expand shooting board capabilities.

During this same time, we have developed other jigs for helping take woodworkers further in other aspects of the craft. We listen to what woodworkers talk about when they discuss what they feel is difficult for them, or could be more efficient, and what they wished were easier.

Many woodworkers say they want to spend less time making jigs. Some say that they don’t have enough spare time, others don’t have the tools. We listened. Free time these days for most people is limited and precious, so when there is time for woodworking, most people want to maximize their outcomes making great cabinetry and furnishings.

One might wonder why we would develop tools over a period of time and not release them. It was a tough decision but a good one. It seemed odd to us to have a line of shooting boards and one widget. So we continued to develop more tools as time permitted. The original store on our website had no way to branch into categories, nor any shopping cart. Our clients had to email us to place an order and in all, it was neither a good showcase nor purchasing system. We had to upgrade it.

We developed the Evenfall Studios Woodworks Store into a new store with Shopping Cart Capabilities and Product Pages for every product. It’s easy to see, navigate, and place orders. It was exactly what we needed to showcase all the new categories in our product line. Our growing line of artisan made woodworking tools and jigs are designed to bring capability, ease and speed to the woodworker, helping them make their woodworking dreams happen, by making the most of the tooling they already have. So without further adieu…

First, we introduced the ‘Picture Frame Shooter’ late last year.

This shooting board is specialized for accurate flat mitering where a distinct profile will prohibit turning the work piece over to shoot angles for either direction. Twin Chutes right and left, two calibratable 45 degree fences for dead accurate miters, and a 90 degree fence which can be made either left or right-handed. These also have a detachable fence face for backing both short and tall materials and moldings. It is as accurate and versatile as we can make it.

Please see the ‘Picture Frame Shooter’ page for more details.

Second, we have developed the ’Lie-Nielsen 51 Chute Adapter Kit’.

The Lie-Nielsen 51 has been released and is a dedicated chute board plane. We checked into the nominal dimensions of the 51 and found that our Basic and Deluxe right hand model shooting boards can be adapted to create a ‘Chute’ in much the same way as the Stanley and upcoming LN 52 Chute Board has.

Our kit consists of two precision made rails, and stainless steel mounting hardware. The Rails are reversible; precision cut and drilled, flattened to 0.001 on each side for smooth glide, and are adjustable to compensate for manufacturing width differences. We provide two reversible rails, used one side at a time to compensate for wear which could occur over time. Store the spare for future use.

There are two ways to order. We can make this kit mount to your board with Stainless button head cap screws when you order. If you already own one of our ‘Basic’ or ‘Deluxe’ shooting boards and would like to upgrade, we can supply you to retrofit mount the rail kit similarly with machine screws, or with #10 wood screws depending on how you prefer.

If you need a very versatile and highly accurate chute style shooting board for your LN 51 shooting board plane, we have you covered.

Please see the ’Lie-Nielsen 51 Chute Adapter Kit’ page for more details.

Third, we developed the ‘Shooting Board Planing Stop’.

Safe ways of dimensioning thin stock and short stock are at a premium, and we believe hand planes are the king in this arena. As a bench hook goes, our shooting board is as strong as they come.

The shooting board planing stop was developed to help overcome the difficulties experienced when dimensioning short or thin stock. This is a 1/4-inch thick stop supplied with a pair of 1/4-20 flat head mounting screws. Simply remove the shooting board fence on any of our shooting board models and replace it with this stop. The mounting screws are countersunk and won’t interfere with your plane iron.

For dimensioning stock thinner than 1/4 inch, we recommend placing a piece of 1/8 hardboard on the shooting board base to lift the work up, allowing thicknessing from the 3/16th to 1/8th inch range.

Please see the ‘Shooting Board Planing Stop’ page for more details.

Fourth, we developed the ‘Bench End Planing Stop’.

We are really excited about this fixture! Traditionally, many woodworkers have fashioned a 3/4 – inch thick planing stop that bolts to the end of the bench, and raises into place when needed by sliding the stop up a pair of slots and tightening the mounting bolts. It works, but often fails because the slots create a weak, short grain situation in the stop that breaks due to forces applied from planing. This style of stop often looks less than attractive too, but the concept is handy, and convenient.

Our Planing Stop design approaches this challenge differently. It is a base made from 7/4 material that mounts to the end of the bench, with two to three lag bolts (depending on the model). It has a series of flat head cap screws that are spread over a set distance that can be raised as any pair, to match the width of most any board. They only need be raised a little to hold back even the largest boards. They work great on thin stock as well. You never need raise them higher than the thinnest stock, and your plane irons stay safe.

They come in three sizes and four different woods, offer higher strength, work well on both thick and thin stock and look great! The hex key adjuster stows right in the end of the fixture.

Please see the ‘Bench End Planing Stop’ page for more details.

Fifth we would like to introduce the ‘Rasping Fixture’.

The Rasping Fixture is a bench fixture that is meant to help fixture the work being shaped with rasps and files, improve ergonomics for this process, and protect the bench from damage.

It is simple to use. Just slip it over the left front corner on the bench (if you are right handed) and either clamp it in place or use a hold fast. It extends out past the edge and end of the bench.

Once in place, simply lay the object you wish to rasp over the semicircular cut out in the corner of the fixture. Gravity and finger pressure will hold the work, and then go to shaping. The angle is wonderful for the wrist and arm, and there are a lot of areas one can reach easily from this position.

The other important thing about the Rasping Fixture is that it protects the bench from slips that can cause damage. There are cleats under the edge and end of the fixture that not only help to locate it, but also protect the bench from damage. It is a wonderful accessory, particularly if you want to do work on saw handles, cabriole legs, or other work with compound curves.

Please see the ‘Rasping Fixture’ page for more details.

Sixth, we developed the ‘Disc Sander Shooter’.

The Disc Sander Shooter is a precision angle jig meant to be fitted to the tilt table of the 12 inch disc sander, enabling the sander to work 90’s 45’s and the 22.5 angles to both the right and left of center.

It allows non-square objects to lay on their flat side and be sanded on either side of 90 degrees. We increased the size of the table and the jig is calibrated with plastic drafting squares. Tilt the table down to whatever angle you need for creating compound angles.

The base measures 8 x 20 x 3/4 inches and is fixtured to the table with a miter bar and thumbscrew. It can be slid back and forth to distribute wear across the sanding disc. Like our shooting boards, all the fence mounting points are steel threaded, the fence faces are flattened to 0.001, and the thumbscrews, all three, are from Stainless and Brass.

Please see the ‘Disc Sander Shooter’ page for more details.

Seventh, We developed another jig for the 12 inch disc sander. The ‘Speedlathe’.

A lathe for a disc sander? Well yes, sort of. It is an old Patternmaker’s jig. I have spoken to several of the old patternmakers and they all agree this jig is something they all made and used the heck out of. Some of them referred to it as the Speedlathe.

What it does is make perfect circles on a disc sander. Yes a circle maker. Our speed lathe has 32, 3/16 diameter radius positions and a fine adjust lead screw that can make circles from 5/8ths to 16-5/8th in diameter.

Overall size is 8 x 17 and is also mounted in the miter slot for a pivot point. It is the fastest circle maker I have ever seen. Once you have the circles, you can use them for wheels, custom curve layout, router jigs, or wherever your imagination takes you.

Please see the ‘Speedlathe’ page for more details.

Items eight through eleven are all a series of drilling guides targeted at drilling squarely, when there is no drill press or one isn’t an option.

Often times drilling a hole that is square to the work is important. But many times the hole is located where a drill press wouldn’t help, or we need to be a bit quicker with the task than a drill press would allow. Other times there is just no easy way to jig up.

Sure, there are jigs that help us drill dowel holes, and there are jigs we can mount to a drill, but they are not always the answer either. Our drilling jigs are designed to accommodate the situation where a hole drilled squarely and quickly is needed and most of these jigs will work with either egg beater drills, braces, or hand drills.

Number Eight, The ‘Dog Hole Square Drilling Guide’.

Designed for auger bits, this is two inches of squarely drilled guide that can get the auger started properly. It comes with a nine-inch tang so you can fixture it while drilling. Bench dogs come with a sloped face, so the hole needs be drilled straight for best results. This jig is the squaring device hitting the mark with your brace.

Please see the ‘Dog Hole Square Drilling Guide’ page for more details.

Number Nine, The ‘Forstner Bit Square Drilling Guide’.

For all the same reasons we’ve gone over, even Forstner bits need help getting started squarely. The odd shape of the shanks and their many diameters make guiding these bits a challenge. Fortunately this odd looking jig will trap the bit’s shaft on three side to help keep it square and steady your hand. Accommodates Forstners to 2-1/4 in Diameter.

Please see the ‘Forstner Bit Square Drilling Guide’ page for more details.

Number Ten, The ‘Medium Drill Squaring Guide’.

This guide is targeted at twist drills and brad points, providing 3/4 of an inch of squarely drilled guide that help the bits off to a square start. You can remove the guide quickly once a square hole is started to aid drilling a deeper hole.

This jig is shown as a prototype in Baltic Birch, but will be supplied in Aluminum. The five hole sizes are 1/4, 5/16, 3/8, 7/16, and 1/2.

Please see the ‘Medium Drill Squaring Guide’ page for more details.

And Finally Eleventh, the ‘Screw Pre-drill Squaring Guide’.

This guide is targeted at twist drills and the bits that came with Egg Beater Drills, and is primarily meant for pre-drilling holes for woodscrews, but there are many other adaptable uses. This jig provides 3/4 of an inch of squarely drilled guide that help the bits off to a square start. You can remove the guide quickly once a square hole is started to aid drilling a deeper hole.

This jig is shown as a prototype in Baltic Birch, but will be supplied in Aluminum. The eleven hole sizes run from 5/64 – 15/64 inch, in 1/64th inch diameter increments.

Please see the ‘Screw Pre-drill Squaring Guide’ page for more details.

That’s what’s new for now, but rest assured there are more ideas in the queue that we hope to be able to release in the near future.

Please feel free to go and have a look around in the new store on our website, and see if there isn’t something in there that might be useful to helping you woodwork better and easier!

We enjoy your comments! Please Contact Us.

Happy Woodworking!

For some time now, we have wanted to add a shooting board for picture framing and moldings. It’s new for 2011, and it is available now.

Working with picture frames and moldings in general presents a special set of circumstances when mitering. Often, the bottom and back of the molding are the only surfaces that can be registered flat and square, and so they have to be the ones used when registering them against fences for cutting and shooting.

So it goes that if you can only orient a molding one way, which is on it’s back, a single chute shooting board will only be able to shoot half of the miter. The right hand board will only shoot the left side of the miter, and the left chute will only shoot the right side. A problem if you only have one chute. There are workarounds, but ehhh… They are often rife with as many problems as they hope to solve.

Enter our newest shooting board, the ‘Picture Frame Shooter’. A shooting board with twin chutes, independent, calibratable left and right hand 45-degree miter fences, with tall, removable fence faces to prevent breakout to the top of most plane blades.

Not all moldings are tall, so both the fence base and fence face are flattened to 0.001 when we make them. If the high fence face is in the way for a low molding or workpiece, simply remove it, as it is just held in place by two 1/4-20 flat head cap screws, and use the base for low moldings. The base is the same basic fence we use for the Standard Fence on our other shooting boards. You can remove and replace the fence face as you need.

Baltic Birch Construction. Solid, Hefty, Stable. The best material we can obtain for shooting boards, and hearty in any environment. We figure if old woodies are still alive and kicking after 100 plus years, our shooting boards should enjoy a good run as well. We build them to last. Like any fine tool, this one is precision and will appreciate being kept safe and dry when not in use.

Twin chutes, 2-3/4 inches wide by 14-3/4 inches long. Complete with dust grooves and will accommodate any plane, same as our other shooting boards.

A roomy board lift to place your moldings for shooting.

Individual, and fully calibratable 45-degree left and right fences, offering 5-1/4 inches of molding registration and breakout protection nearly 1-3/4 inches high.

A 90-degree fence, 11-3/4 inches long for right angle work like our Deluxe Shooters, and this fence can be made right or left handed depending on your preference for no additional cost.

Fence faces and bases flattened on a granite surface plate to 0.001.

Stainless Steel and Brass custom made thumbscrews to add durability and corrosion resistance. These mount into steel threads.

The same fence angle calibration system employed on all our shooting boards, which will transfer the accuracy of your finest layout tools to this board as well. We recommend plastic drafting squares. An 8-inch drafting square can be had for less than $5.00 in any office supply, however, if you like Starrett accuracy, these boards can work with that as well.

We recommend that you calibrate before each use for total shooting accuracy. No test shots, no shimming and taping or bumping and fudging. Just calibrate and shoot your miters with confidence.

The rest of the details on the new ‘Shooter’ borrow heavily from it’s older brothers, and you are welcome to have a look at the Features and Specifications page for more details.

As always, the boards are finished to 150 grit smoothness, and offer plenty of traction for the work. The chutes are made square to the work and polished to 400 grit.

Then the boards and fences are given a saturation of Watco Teak Oil, which we have found to offer stove bolt protection in tough conditions, and is easily field repairable should the need ever arise.

Finally the chutes are waxed with paste wax and buffed. The wax is as easy to renew as it is to wax your planes. We find that this is as slick as UHMW and far squarer to the work, because there are no screws to deflect a slick plastic material. We feel it is the accuracy that is wanted most, and the final result in your project is what really matters.

Make no mistake about this board. It is a pure shooting board, every bit as capable as our ‘Basic Shooter’ and then some. It is not sole and only for moldings, You can shoot any rectangular dimensional board.

The ‘Picture Frame Shooter’ is also equipped to address most any board that has a distinct front and back like moldings do. The 90 degree fence is similar, flattened to .001 on both the base and face, both 45 degree fences are treated the same. The big difference is only that when a board has a non flat front, the miters must be addressed from either side.

It’s a fully tricked out workhorse and ready for service whether you build picture frames commercially, or enjoy doing them for yourself, friends and family. If you are looking for high accuracy and durability for fine framing or 45-degree miters of any kind, this is the ultimate shooting board.

If you are interested in a ‘Picture Frame Shooter’, we are taking orders for this and all our products. Please visit the ‘Picture Frame Shooter’ product page, and have a look at the rest of our tooling in the Evenfall Studios Woodworks Store.

We enjoy your comments! Please Contact Us.

Happy Woodworking!

In The Craftsmanship of Dick Proenneke, we looked at how Dick took a number of hand tools into the Alaskan wilderness, and used them to homestead and create all the things he needed to live and survive. It was rustic carpentry from available timber that was felled, seasoned and milled by hand on site. We all got to look over Dick’s shoulder as he showed us how these tools could be used to create most of what would be needed to make a comfortable home and live well in a remote area.

Dick wrote that what he had accomplished was good enough for “rural work” but in reality, he was a very talented user of hand operated tooling, and knew what he could accomplish with the woods he had access to and the kind of durability he needed from them. Rural work did not mean he quit refining the quality of his workmanship, it meant he built the way he did so as to provide utility, endure hard use and inclement seasonal conditions.

Colonial Williamsburg Photo

Hand tools are also very highly regarded as the go to tools for fine work. Work on pieces where tolerances are exacting, or the sizes of the pieces are so small or thin where powered tooling would make it difficult to work safely or accurately.

The biggest misgivings that people who don’t use hand tools have when I have spoken with them about them have been based in what they are unsure about. Not knowing what a tool will do, how to maintain sharpness, and how difficult the application of the tool to the task will be. In other words, to some, hand tools are either Greek to them, or they seem too hard. The philosophy of “seem” is different than the philosophy of “is”.

Colonial Williamsburg Photo

Other times it’s a production issue, but unless we have commercial obligations, most woodworkers are not having production issues. Most woodworkers have the shop machines they need to handle all the heavy lifting, and for the most part are usually not in a production environment. Never the less, some hand tools are quite productive, and are in some cases the only way to do certain things. Those who eschew machinery, are not concerned with any production issue. I know a few furniture makers who are asked on occasion to build commissioned pieces with hand tools only.

Colonial Williamsburg Photo

Sometimes we are afraid to try something we are unfamiliar with, or dismiss something because we don’t know much about it. On the other hand, nothing ventured, nothing gained, and it never hurts to try. I am saying, try them, you will be pleasantly surprised what they can do! They are much easier to work with than you might have imagined.

Colonial Williamsburg Photo

Epiphanies often happen for woodworkers who are new to using hand planes when surface qualities that compare to 600-grit sandpaper smoothness happen in one swipe of a plane blade. Better still, the wood is not burnished and will take stains and dyes really well. Other times the ease of using a hand tool shines when a task is accomplished without noise, projectile sawdust, or without complex jigging and fixturing. It is even more impressive when it happens with great ease and in less time than you thought it would. Hand tools offer a lot of premium advantages to woodworkers if they try to learn their ways.

Colonial Williamsburg Photo

Woodworking is an evolved tradecraft that can trace it’s linage to the use of hand tools. While machines have taken the place of hand tools for many mundane and laborious tasks today, there are still many places where hand tools can shine, and even do the best work possible. We are making a bunch of parts and sub assemblies, then putting them together; we can create them any way we like. Layout for what you want to make, and remove all the material that doesn’t belong to what you are making. Depending on the task, often the hand tool makes an outcome as easy as drawing or pointing. When you look deeply into certain tasks, hand tools offer the most direct way.

Colonial Williamsburg Photo

In 1976, The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation produced a documentary about how musical instrument making was done in colonial times. It featured the use of hand tools in a cabinetmaker’s shop of the era. It is about the making of a spinet harpsichord and a violin. There are a large number of hand tools, even some very specialized tools used, different timbers and materials used, and woodworking techniques described in the movie.

This video is just a taste, Video 1 of 6. If you navigate to the following six links, you can watch The Musical Instrument Maker of Williamsburg in it’s entirety on YouTube.

Video 1 of 6

Video 2 of 6

Video 3 of 6

Video 4 of 6

Video 5 of 6

Video 6 of 6

Many woodworkers may not be interested in making musical instruments and that is fine, but the film will show many different techniques which can be employed to do very fine woodwork with hand tools. Nearly any of these techniques are transferrable to any project where hand tools are used to accomplish the work. Are there skills you wish you had? Are there techniques you would like to employ on the work you do? This documentary may offer the right inspiration.

Colonial Williamsburg Photo

Some of the tools and techniques shown and described in the documentary are:

• Wood bending, using both boiling and steaming methods.

• Properties of various wood species and how reading these variable properties for specific purposes is important.

• Many applications for gluing using hot hide glue.

• Special fixtures for work holding during sawing with fret and coping saws.

• Fixturing for chiseling and carving processes.

• Special techniques for clamping odd shaped items with various forms of joinery.

Colonial Williamsburg Photo

• Techniques for clamping curved work.

• Techniques for clamping and molding woods to the contour of shaped forms.

• Techniques for clamping with various shaped cauls.

• Techniques for clamping with go bars. (A wooden bar that fits between the work and the ceiling to provide clamping pressure.)

• Techniques for clamping with string.

• Special fixturing for gluing curved work.

• Layout techniques for various styles of joinery as well as for use with curved work.

Colonial Williamsburg Photo

• Sawing veneers by hand.

• Planing with toothing planes to avoid tear out to the wood fibers.

• Planing with violinmaker’s planes for thicknessing and finishing tight areas and creating special contours and radiuses.

• Paring and carving operations with chisels and gouges utilizing many different approaches and techniques.

• Methods for sawing, filing and gluing with ivory.

• Many different views of various scraping scenarios throughout.

• Curved purfling inlay work with ebony and holly.

Colonial Williamsburg Photo

• Router plane usage for fixed depth work.

• Shaving curved and straight work with drawknives and spokeshaves.

• Sawing and chamfering the finished edges of holes.

• Layout and planing for fitment to contoured surfaces.

• Marquetry, the lay out, sawing of multiple colors at once, scorching for color toning, and fitment as an inlay.

• Finishing with shellacs, varnishes and polishing out with rottenstone.

• Layout for drilling with awls and various styles of bits, the reaming of holes for proper sizing, and finished edges with chamfers.

Some other things that the film exposes us to, are how different materials are chosen for the specific qualities they have. Strength, appearance and sonic resonance are a few qualities that make the wood adequate for use when none of the other qualities are required.

Colonial Williamsburg Photo

Of note in the film were the many ways the craftsmen fixtured the various forms of work, so as to be able to work with tools safely, ergonomically and accurately. The sharpness of their tooling made the work look as though it was effortless. In reality, it is as easy as it looks if tooling is sharp. Sharp tooling does make the work happen with a lot less effort than one might imagine, and achieving high levels of sharpness on hand tooling is not hard to learn to accomplish.

Colonial Williamsburg Photo

Many of us learn by seeing things done, and it helps to have an explanation as we watch. My hopes are that seeing this documentary sparks interest and imagination. Perhaps it will show a path to finer woodworking to those looking for a way. This documentary helps outline many ways we can utilize hand tools, jigs and fixtures to aid in accomplishing fine workmanship that would be otherwise very difficult to do with power tools and shop machines. Have a look at each of the six videos and see if it doesn’t reveal a trick or two of the versatility hand tools can offer!

Has this information helped you? Would you consider helping support our efforts?

Like any website hosted on the internet, The ‘Woodworks Blog’ has it’s expenses. The main way we offset expenses, is directly through purchases of ‘Artisan Made’ tools and jigs from the ‘Woodworks Store’.

Another way to help support the ‘Woodworks Blog’ is to appeal to the generosity of our readers. It’s quick and easy to make a donation directly to the ‘Woodworks Blog’ by using the PayPal donation button. Your generosity is greatly appreciated!

Thanks again for all your support! We really appreciate it!

We enjoy your comments! Please Contact Us.

Happy Woodworking!

Rechargeable tools ultimately need recharging. Most chargers will recharge batteries in less than two hours. Ordinarily we don’t give this process much thought, trusting that the charger will do what it is designed to do, provided we are using only the proper charger for the battery that we are charging. It seems to have been designed to require little oversight from the end user. Simply plug the battery in, and after a while, it is recharged and ready for more work.

What happens after the battery is charged depends on the brand, style of charger, type of battery, and other things that are too hard for most people to keep track of in a mix and match world. Some chargers shut off, some change modes from fast charge to maintenance mode. Usually the battery is recharged safely, but there have been issues and product recalls on these devices.

Some people have reported on the Internet in various places, that battery chargers can sometimes electronically fail and become the cause of fires that burn shops or houses down. Other people have reported that their battery chargers work just fine and they don’t see a problem. I have personally noticed that I have tool battery chargers that continue to maintain batteries after charging them. When I return to remove a battery from the charger, sometimes a day or more after I put it in there, the battery is warm. This is normal based on the type of charger this is.

For my own peace of mind, I did phone all the manufacturers of my chargers, with the models and serial numbers of the units in hand, and affirmed I was using the correct batteries with them, and that none had been recalled, and learned I was in good shape. It is probably good to affirm we are not using recalled chargers and not know we are doing this. It is also good to affirm we are not mixing and matching batteries, which with some charger designs I have heard can happen. I could be wrong, but why not check to be sure. Anything that can prevent a hazardous condition is better that having one and not knowing it.

Rather than debate or research battery charging safety endlessly, I decided that all manufacturers of these devices are doing their utmost to assure product safety. I also decided that removing power from any brand or style of tool battery charger with a battery in it, after I initiated the cycle and the proper charging interval has been achieved, seemed to be the safest way to charge tool batteries to me. However, I may not be able to remain present for the duration of a charge cycle, as they vary, and may even forget to manually remove the batteries once they are charged. Creating a timer circuit is a good way of limiting charge time, and adding an extra layer of safety to the battery charging process.

Tackling an electrical project isn’t for everyone. It does take some understanding of electricity, designing circuits and knowing what is acceptable practice to accomplish a timer circuit. It isn’t difficult overall, but the fine details of electricity theory and how to wire for safety and to code are really beyond the scope of what I am sharing. Good electrical wiring practices are universal, but all codes are local, I leave all that to those who would like to have a timer for themselves to consider.

If you know how electrical circuits are developed and made, then the following is something you’ll already understand. If you do not, then my recommendation is to take this idea to someone who already understands electrical circuits. It really is the safest way to go. Many DIY oriented people have some electrical skills, and if nothing else, an electrician would likely be more than happy to wire up a timer circuit for a nominal fee.

I went to the orange box store to pick up my supplies.

My intent was to purchase the parts to make my circuit with a design rating of 15 amps. I picked up an Intermatic brand 12 hour timer that has Single Pole Single Throw switching and is rated 20 Amps at 125 Volt AC Capacity, and a 20 amp Plug receptacle. I chose a 20-amp receptacle, because that is what was available as the highest quality part when I purchased the parts. Had they offered a 15-amp receptacle in comparable quality, I’d have bought it instead. It was a color match thing.

The wiring consists of a 15 amp six foot Air Conditioner cord, and I bought a one-foot length of 14 gauge stranded conduit wire for additional wiring I needed inside the box. Overall, based on the amperage rating of the power cord I used, this circuit will be only good for 15 amps, which is more than plenty for running a charger or two at a time. No matter how much you overbuild this, it should never exceed the amperage of its lowest rating, or the rating of the circuit supplying power to it.

The other pieces were the box. I got the deepest box I could find, so as to accommodate wiring behind the thick timer. The cover plate is punched for a receptacle and rectangular rocker switch. The wire clamp to hold strain relief for the wiring inside the box comes in a package of five.

I only needed one, but that is the way they sell them. I have extra for future projects, and that is fine, I have made a number of foot switches for my electrical tooling as well.

Some of the little details will involve breaking off some of the tabbed mounting points on the receptacle. You will find that the timer does not have break off tabs, but some of the extra mounting holes will be in the way for this box. I ground them off with a bench grinder and dressed the rough edges out with a bastard file.

Look at your box and consider where you want the cord to enter. I decided to come in through the lower right for me, but these boxes are filled with options, go with what makes sense for your set up. Once you decide, these precut holes have covers that pop out easily with a hammer and punch.

Mount the wire clamp to the box where you punched the hole, cutting the molded female receptacle off the cord, and threading it through the wire clamp into the box was next. Then strip back the outer grey wire jacketing taking care not to nip through any of the jacketing on the inner wires. You’ll need to consider how much of the jacketing will need removed to properly negotiate all your connections.

Next, you’ll want to mount the timer and the receptacle to the cover. The cover is made so it can be mounted with either the receptacle on the left or right, so now is the time to choose the orientation. You may find that it will be easier to make some of the electrical connections before you mount the timer and receptacle to the cover. I’ll leave you to sort that out. It’s handy to pay attention to the wire stripping guides on the Timer and Receptacle prior to stripping the jacket back to expose the wires.

Remember that one foot piece of wire you bought extra? This is needed to make a jumper from the timer to the receptacle. One more wiring tip. Throughout the circuit, remember to observe polarity.

Now that most of the assembly is ready, there is one more decision before mounting the cover to the box. I made my timer circuit so I could easily screw it to a wall wherever I needed, without having to open the box to accomplish this. You alternatively may have a permanent location, or may even be choosing to build this circuit right into the wall.

I decided to mount my box to a backing board. You can use plywood or hardwood or whatever you like. I used a scrap of Poplar. Go ahead and lay out the mounting points for both the box and the board, then do the necessary drilling and countersinking if you are using a backer board, or mount the box to the wall before you attach the cover. Now you should have a complete assembly.

Before using the timer circuit, I recommend using a circuit tester to affirm you have observed polarity.

Some electrical appliances are not double insulated and prefer that the wiring be correct. Many circuit testers will tell you what is the problem and how to correct it.

Once you have tested and all is well, you now have a timer circuit you can set to shut off your battery chargers up to twelve hours after you set them. While most chargers will require less time, it is hard to find a timer that offers a time which is long enough for most charging intervals. To me the twelve-hour timer seemed a good fit. Hopefully having a timer circuit on your battery chargers will give you the peace of mind mine is giving me.

Has this information helped you? Would you consider helping support our efforts?

Like any website hosted on the internet, The ‘Woodworks Blog’ has it’s expenses. The main way we offset expenses, is directly through purchases of ‘Artisan Made’ tools and jigs from the ‘Woodworks Store’.

Another way to help support the ‘Woodworks Blog’ is to appeal to the generosity of our readers. It’s quick and easy to make a donation directly to the ‘Woodworks Blog’ by using the PayPal donation button. Your generosity is greatly appreciated!

Thanks again for all your support! We really appreciate it!

We enjoy your comments! Please Contact Us.

Happy Woodworking!

Safety is something we should keep in mind always when we are in the shop. The same is true for hobbies and vocational tasks. While I realize there is an established woodworking safety week established in early May, the prime time for most woodworkers to be in their shops is right now, because the holidays are upon us and many are working hard to complete the hand made gifts they want to give to loved ones this year.

Right now seems like an excellent time to remind us all about being safe in the shop.

Power tools and shop machines are usually some kind of rotating oscillator, with some kind of tooling attached that can cut the materials we work with. This means they can cut us too, or hurl things at us. Fortunately, there are several layers of protection for use with these tools. Guards, shields jigs and fixtures that shield us and guide the tools or the work, PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) that we can wear, as well as safe practices and procedures for using them, allow us to be artistic and productive without harm to ourselves.

Hand tools are sharp cutting edges, coupled with hand-eye coordination and physical force applied by the user. If there is a safety issue, usually it is the fact that the tools are dull, or just sharp enough to cut the user, but too dull to do the work, and that causes injury from tools that slip. Other times it is because we are not mindful of where we place our hands, how we use proper posture for the task and technique or the effort we apply.

If we remember that a high level of sharpness, proper fixturing of the work, and putting our hands on the hand holds, handles, and behind the cutting edges, we can develop practices that keep us safe from harm. Experience will remind us that sharp tools push easier than dull ones, and excessive force needing applied by the tool user should serve as reminder, if not warning. The rest is really about finesse, and finesse is not about trying too hard.

Often times, hand tools offer us a safer way of working on small, short, and thin work pieces, when compared to woodworking machines and power tools. Any machinist will tell you that in working metal, secure fixturing is everything. Woodworkers often have a choice between moving the tool or the material, and often with minimal fixturing. We as the users of these tools have to keep all the balls in the air to achieve fit and finish as well as remain safe through the process, and it really does come down to the thought process first and how we carry out that thought process second. Success is possible!

Usually the most dangerous thing in the shop is the person performing work there. Yes, that does mean us. If we don’t pay rapt attention to what we are doing most every moment, the potential for injuries can cross the line and bite us. We don’t have to be interfaced with a tool. Is the path we will carry something large through, and which will obstruct our vision, clear and free of trip hazards before we life and carry? Do we lift with our legs and not our back? Do we keep three points of contact when we are on a ladder?

In practice, our minds assess many things in a moment, and dismiss them if they look usual. Usually if things look acceptable we turn our focus elsewhere, particularly if we surmise what we looked at seems to have a low potential for needing us to revisit it with our attention again soon.

For instance, this is the difference between crossing a street when there are few cars or when there are many. Maybe we know the power cord to our circular saw or router is in a safe place where it will not become a bother. Maybe the power cord will be a bother and we can’t fully mitigate this so we must plan to manage this as we work. We often scale up our awareness as required for the situation. When we are not as familiar with a situation, we are better off to scale up our awareness.

This also means we need to know and be aware of what not to pay attention to while we are focused on a task. This is a balancing act that we learn mostly from practice. I know that it sounds odd to point out that we need to know what not to pay attention to. When you are in the moment that requires rapt attention, distractions to our focus and how we manage distractions become important. We have to mentally override a lot of things that come to mind or call for our attention until we finish a process. Sharp tooling is not artificially intelligent. It is not aware of human proximity. We humans own the entire safety process. Awareness is your responsibility, always. I am saying we have to keep our attention in the game until the procedure is complete. Inattention is unforgiving.

Normally after we leave the shop we think we are safe. It’s true, Most usually we probably are, but will someone else who is not as familiar with the potential hazards be? There are still things like shop cleanliness, trip hazards, making sharp tooling safe by putting it away, unplugging it, making sure rags used for finishing are outside the shop away from the house in a bucket of water.

The same focus that you put into doing your best work is the same focus you need to put into keeping yourself safe. Safety is not one thing, but many things in ensemble. It is knowing what to do and how to do it to keep one’s self from harm. Keeping as much of all this in mind as we can, all at once as we work is Mindfulness.

If we practice using safe procedures routinely, and become accustomed to our awareness as we use them, they become good working habits. Finally, we must promise ourselves to always follow our thought out safe practices.

When moments arise that our mind or self talk says to us, “Oh, I can just hold this in my hand and pare a quick slice off”, or “Gosh, I don’t want to put the sled on the table saw for that little cut”, or “I know this piece is small, but I can route that off if I take a small slice”, please know that these are prime examples of wrong headed thinking and are persuasive. These kinds of thoughts intend to override safe practices to save time and bother, but they will never ever protect us from harm.

We should consider for ourselves all the times our minds offered us this alternative reasoning. If we took our minds up on that alternative, and we managed to complete the task without harm to ourselves or damage to the project, then we should also know we took risks, and got lucky. Safe practices are all about the mitigation of risks, and not relying on any luck whatsoever.

My personal hope for you is a long and happy tenure as a woodworker. If you find cause to consider deeply, how to safely proceed with any woodworking process, I’d consider this a good thing. If after considering things, you cannot seem to come up with a way to do things that you feel mitigate the dangers, then don’t proceed. There is no harm or foul in asking for help. If you have questions about how to improve safety in a woodworking process, please feel free to contact me with your concern and perhaps together we can come up with a safer way, even if it means doing something completely differently, or maybe not doing it at all. Remember, one single unsafe moment is all it takes, and that is worth keeping in mind, always.

Has this information helped you? Would you consider helping support our efforts?

Like any website hosted on the internet, The ‘Woodworks Blog’ has it’s expenses. The main way we offset expenses, is directly through purchases of ‘Artisan Made’ tools and jigs from the ‘Woodworks Store’.

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Several years back, PBS, Public Broadcasting, began showing a few videos that have been produced about the life of Richard L “Dick” Proenneke. (1916-2003) The titles of these videos are: “Alone in the Wilderness”, “Alaska, Silence and Solitude”, and “The Frozen North”. Most people who have seen any of these, have more than likely seen Alone in the Wilderness. This video is of footage shot mostly by Dick himself, with his 16 mm Bolex camera, and the narration is writings from his journals in the book, “One Man’s Wilderness”.

Richard L. Proenneke Photo

For most of us, this was our introduction to Dick, and his life. It is one of the only films ever made that shows the process of making a cabin in the wilderness, using only hand tools. It is a real gift.

Dick was a man whose life took him to a lot of places and exposed him to a lot of things, and those things may have been instrumental in helping shape his abilities for life in the wilderness. Born and raised in Iowa, he joined the US Navy and was a Navy carpenter, a rancher, diesel mechanic and heavy equipment operator.

He originally went to Alaska to start a cattle ranch, and wound up commercial salmon fishing and working as a mechanic. He spent the final years of his working career in and around Kodiak Alaska at the naval base there, until a work accident nearly cost him his eyesight. His life in the ranching business probably helped him understand nature and wildlife on an intuitive level, and his life as a carpenter and mechanic probably prepared him with the self-sufficiency needed for the next phase of his life. He retired at age 51 to Twin Lakes, living as a naturalist, nature cinematographer, and scientific observer in the remote Alaska wilderness.

In 1962, Dick made his first trip to Twin Lakes Alaska, part of what is now Lake Clark National Park, and lies 40 miles North of Lake Clark, 100 miles West of Kenai and about 350 miles West of Anchorage. This area is full on bush country, and only accessible by floatplane in summer, ski plane in winter.

He was originally introduced to the Twin Lakes area, by friends he made while working at the Navy Base at Kodiak. A retired Navy Captain and his wife, Spike and Hope Caruthers, who had a cabin there, invited Dick to the area, and loaned him the use of their cabin. Dick in turn loaned the use of a camper he had to the Caruthers in the Kodiak Area.

Dick set out to live in a way similar to Henry David Thoreau, as he had written about in “Walden” as a test of his personal life and values. During July 1967, Dick spent time harvesting logs At Twin Lakes, from a small stand of spruce near Spike’s cabin, and on May 21, 1968, he returned to Twin Lakes to build his own cabin, where he remained for the next 16 months. He may not have known at the time, but that first stay would evolve into where he would live for the next 31 years. It began as a test to see what he was made of, and became his home.

He lived in Twin Lakes, off savings from his retirement, from payments received for meteorological and wildlife research, photography he did for the National Park Service, and from showings of the film footage he shot in and around the area.

In 1999, Dick returned to the States to live with his brother in Southern California, Returning only once for a short visit during the summer of 2000, to dedicate his Cabin to the National Parks Service. The cabin is now maintained in the state Dick left it, as a historical site and museum.

Among the many things Dick was, he was a very talented woodsman and woodworker. The first forty minutes of the largely autobiographical video “Alone in the Wilderness” depict him building his cabin from the spruce logs he felled the year before. The video is also interspersed with shots of him doing the other things that make up his life at Twin Lakes.

Let’s have a look at Dick and the tools he brought with him to Twin Lakes, as he builds his cabin, furnishings and living accessories. For many, this is an excellent opportunity to see a trained carpenter from the old school, go about his work with hand tools, and without drawings. Knowing what he wants to do, seeing it in his minds eye, using his skills and developing the materials available right there at his cabin site.

This video is just a taste of the first movie in a series of four, Alone in the Wilderness. If you navigate to the following links, you can watch excerpts of Alone in the Wilderness, Alaska Silence and Solitude and The Frozen North on YouTube.

Alone in the Wilderness

Alaska Silence and Solitude

The Frozen North

Recently, Bob Swerer Productions has released Alone In The Wilderness Part II. Here is a seven minute excerpt from Part II:

Both the first and second videos from the “Alone in the Wilderness” series depict Dick woodworking, but I highly recommend watching all four, or even purchasing the videos from DickProenneke.com. If you are like me, you’ll watch them many times.

One of the first things you’ll notice is that Dick has to prepare the cabin site. He clears the brush and lays down a gravel base that he hauls from the lake. Next, he hauls the logs one by one from where he has them stacked to the cabin site. How does he do it? Look closely, he isn’t just dragging them on the ground. He has logs laying crossways in the trail. Dick fashioned an old school skid road.

Among the tools he brought in to build the cabin as well as for survival was a 36 to 40 inch one man tree saw, with teeth filed for softwoods which were predominant in the area, a metal frame style tree saw, a double bladed axe and a hatchet. He has a splitting maul for firewood as well. There is also a shot of him filing an adze, an adze that he was also shown to use like a light sledgehammer when building sawhorses. He uses a drawknife for debarking, flattening and shaping his logs, poles and rough lumber.

Something worth noting about Dick’s axe. He chokes up on the handle often to shave shape and carve. He relies on it for a lot of tasks. He even uses it while hunting. It is hard to see his axe in any shot when it is not in motion, but if you are used to seeing what a good axe looks like, the area near the blade has been filed down to a thinner profile.

Richard L. Proenneke Photo

I am originally from logging country in the Pacific Northwest. We know that many new axes will chop nearly as well as a sledgehammer. The cutting edge is simply too blunt, and when swung, the axe bounces off the tree better than it cuts. You would think it dull, but no. Its cutting edge is just too blunt, and the axe can’t penetrate into the wood fibers to cut cross grain.

What was often done to a new axe by their new owners, was to file or grind that area just behind the edge down some and use a shallower bevel angle on the edge. If you relieve this shoulder a bit, the axe will cut into the wood and not bounce off the wood as you chop. It also makes the blade a lot more versatile as we can see from Dick’s skill with it. This is physical work. Dick knew he needed his tools to work for and with him.

It appears he has at least four handsaws. One is a ripsaw, which he used to resaw logs into planks. He claimed he could rip a log 5 inches in diameter by 42 inches long in 15 minutes. That is not a bad pace when you have a lot of ripping to do, so it was likely in the 4-6 ppi range. There is a shot of it leaning against the planks he had cut. It looked like a 26” Disston D-8.

Dick commonly used both hands on his saw when it was stable to do so, but I couldn’t see a thumbhole on this saw. In the places we see dick cross cut, the saw looks like a D-8 also, but it doesn’t look discernibly different than the crosscut while viewing on the fly. If I am wrong about two D8’s then Dick is using his Rip Saw for some of his crosscuts, and this is doable. He likely dressed most all his sawn edges with his planes anyway.

There was a short cross cut saw, a short panel saw, with no back that looked to be approximately12 inches long, and with what looks like an aluminum handle, as a well as a keyhole saw, used to saw the elaborate latch and lock he made for his Dutch door. It was also likely used to saw out the crescent on the outhouse door as well as make the wooden spoons he carved.

His edge tools appear to include at least a framing slick and gouge, a, block plane and a number 4 Stanley smoother He made many of the handles for tools that needed them from spruce on site, such as the handles for his framing chisels. He likely had more chisels and gouges than just one of each in his kit; likely some of the bench chisel style variety.

There was also what was called a “thin bladed wide chisel” he was shown using to split logs to make boards from for framing windows and doors. It did not appear to have a wooden handle. He struck it with his claw hammer. Something similar to this chisel was seen fitted later with a long wooden handle for chiseling holes in the lake ice for fresh water during the freeze. He had what looked like a wide-bladed, small cold chisel like chisel, likely a brick set, which he used to tack Oakum Moss between the logs while insulating the cabin

His sharpening tools appear to include files, which while not shown would have to include saw files, perhaps a Lansky puck of Carborundum, which he used on his axe, hatchet and drawknife, and likely some other Carborundum stones, which were popular for sharpening in that era.

His drilling tools appear to include a brace, but all we ever see is the collet of that brace while he is drilling handles he made on site for his large augers. It is likely he has a number of bits for his brace, and the large augers we see him use in the timber framing, He likely made the handles for his large augers for a couple reasons. In addition to the leverage he gains, they negate the need for additional braces with different sweeps.

Richard L. Proenneke Photo

His striking tools appear to include a large framing claw hammer, a smaller claw hammer in the 16 ounce range that he used to tack the tarpaper and visqueen on his roof. He made a large wooden mallet carved from spruce. There is also a Crowbar available to him up there, often used for un-boarding boarded up windows for weatherization in winter.

Layout tools include a one-foot combination square, a folding ruler, a tape measure, a chalk line, what was likely a 24 inch level, a pair of dividers and carpenter pencils.

Dick made wooden hinges sawn from seasoned spruce stumps, and made dowel like pins for various joinery needs. He applied glue with a brush in some of these joinery applications. It is hard to say which glues, but they were used outdoors as well as in. In other cases he fashioned round mortises, where a tapered pin went into a hole, much like what was used traditionally in Windsor chairs, but I never saw any tooling that would taper a hole. My guess is that Dick shaved the pins with a drawknife and or whittled them so there would be a friction fit.

Richard L. Proenneke Photo

He made many accessories for living from tin gas cans, so there was likely a pair of tin snips or two but we never see them. There was at least one pair of vise grips and perhaps a pair of pliers. He made baking pans for his beloved sourdough, the starter that he got from Mary Alsworth, Babe Alsworth, his friend and bush pilot’s wife. He made wash basins, other tools for the kitchen. Carrying pans, tin totes and trays, for packing sand, gravel, cement mortar and stones. He made a pail with bail for carrying water from the lake, and covered storage for dry goods.

Dick even made hinges for various doors from these tin cans and nails. From the looks of other metal work for the stove and pipes, as well as flashing and 55 gallon drum usage, he likely had a hacksaw as well. For those without a cutting torch, a cold chisel will take the top off a 55-gallon drum too.

There was also a round point shovel, which he used for gardening and cutting moss for his roof. A hoe he used for mixing mortar for his fireplace and a pointing trowel for cementing the rockwork on the fireplace.

Amongst the tools Dick made were saw horses, a planing horse, which like a Japanese planing beam, had a stop on one end he could plane against. He made a number of different ladders. The spruce mallet, the handles for his augers and framing chisel and gouge. There was also the pack frame for carrying his moss for the roof, which I suspect may have later became the lid to his underground root cellar.

He also made jigs to help make things. The frame he built around the tin box he used to carry mortar and rocks. He made support forms for his rock fireplace chimney and a support form for building its arch. The snow shovel was cut from a 55-gallon barrel, and the bottom of a 55-gallon barrel was used for his cement mixer. He had a shop storage area adjacent to the outhouse where he kept dry wood and his tooling as well.

He made his furnishings. A bunk bed, dining/writing table, chair(s) and benches. He had seating inside and out. He made a couple tables and a carved a bowl from a burl he sawed off a tree. A wall mounted paper towel holder, cabinet next to his bed, various shelves for his dishes, utensils and cooking spices. A kitchen counter appears to have been made from 3-4 planks. He hung his cast iron frying pans on the wall or stored them in an animal proof cache he built outdoors. Even had the use of a cutting board, but did he bring that in? He likely made his snowshoes.

Unfortunately the videos never show all the tools he was seen to use all at once. The logistics of doing this, even as minimally as it was, was something that required a lot of thought and planning. Dick clearly had done his thinking and knew what was needed to use with what was at hand in the Alaska bush country. He had a good friend in Babe Alsworth, helping to fly in the things he needed. Dick was a resourceful man who knew his way around tools and how to use them productively to get what he needed made under a very tight schedule. The Alaskan spring, summer and fall passes by in a very short five months.

What is a self-sufficient craftsman? Fine craftsmanship does not have to be French polish. Is what Dick made rustic? Sure, but it is as durable as the land and stood the test of daily use over 30 years in unforgiving country. If you were wondering what tooling you really must have in your kit, if there is to be nothing other than human power, now you have a good idea.

Richard L. Proenneke Photo

Know that even though there is power from gas and electricity, these tools and skills can still be of great help to us. If you were wondering what skills you need to develop to use them, this too is a good overview. If you need help learning to use tools, and gaining knowledge for building with them, there are many, many titles in the Woodworks Library, which will help address this. Please feel free to go in and have a look around. If you have further questions about these tools and skills, you can also contact me.

If you are interested in some of this tooling, there are some links to many great new and used tool vendors on my Woodworks Tool Source Links page. For some of the specialized timber framing tools, two vendors come to mind. Caribou Blades is a maker of many fine tools for building and surviving in Bush country, and they are truely bush tools, made off grid in the remote bush country of British Columbia, Canada. Scott and Aki have been living this way since 1997. They have been doing “green” since before it became cool. Their tooling is primarily made in the same way Dick made things, from recovered steel, and local woods. Probably the greenest way to go if that appeals to you, and you support people who like Dick did, are living a simplified life, off the grid in a green way. Alternatively, Barr Quarton of Barr Tools also forges up a fine line of timber framing and woodworking tools in Northern Idaho. Both are highly recommended.

The three documentaries about Dick Proenneke and his life are available for purchase from Bob Swerer, the producer of the videos at www.dickproenneke.com They are all wonderfully produced, well narrated and well worth a watch. There are two books, “One Man’s Wilderness”, which is available from Amazon, and “More readings from One Man’s Wilderness”, that is either available from Amazon, or as a pdf download from the National Park Service, Here.

I understand there may be a third book in production from Dick’s journals that will fill the gap between the One Man’s Wilderness of 1968-69 and 1974-1980 where “More Readings” takes over.

Finally for video to go out on, there is a 15-minute clip that depicts Dick in his twilight, in 2000 when he returned to Twin Lakes to dedicate his homestead to the National Park Service.

I hope you enjoy these videos and woodworking insights from Dick, to the world.

“Too many men work on parts of things. Doing a job to completion satisfies me”.

~ Dick Proenneke ~

Has this information helped you? Would you consider helping support our efforts?

Like any website hosted on the internet, The ‘Woodworks Blog’ has it’s expenses. The main way we offset expenses, is directly through purchases of ‘Artisan Made’ tools and jigs from the ‘Woodworks Store’.

Another way to help support the ‘Woodworks Blog’ is to appeal to the generosity of our readers. It’s quick and easy to make a donation directly to the ‘Woodworks Blog’ by using the PayPal donation button. Your generosity is greatly appreciated!

Thanks again for all your support! We really appreciate it!

We enjoy your comments! Please Contact Us.

Happy Woodworking!

If you have been thinking about buying an Evenfall Studios Shooting Board for your own shop, and have wanted to see one in person, maybe even try it out a bit before you decide to place an order for one of your own, then Woodworking in America, October 1-3 2010 in Cincinnati, Ohio will be a great opportunity!

As many woodworkers have learned, shooting boards are one of the magical epiphanies of woodworking, along with sharpening, planing, good layout tools and good technique! I have been amazed with them ever since my granddad showed me how to use his when I was a kid. After all these years, they are still really cool! Many woodworkers have learned that I take no shortcuts when I make shooting boards, I pay attention to every detail. Every board I make must live up to the rigors of quality woodworking, delivering high craftsmanship, to any woodworker, using any plane. It’s built to last.

There will be two vendors, both Infill Plane Makers exhibiting in the WIA marketplace, who will be using Evenfall Studios ‘Deluxe Shooters’ under their infill miters.

Daed Toolworks Photo

Raney Nelson of Daed Toolworks, an Infill Plane Maker from New Jersey, will be exhibiting his infill planes along with Matt Bickford of M.S. Bickford, maker of 18th Century British Molding Planes. This will be Raney’s and Matt’s first WIA conference as vendors, and I wish them both the very best of success.

Raney has been using my ‘Deluxe Shooter’ shooting board in the manufacture of infills as well as other woodworking projects for a long time now. He will be bringing his “Deluxe Shooter” along to demo his miter planes on.

Raney is a huge advocate of shooting boards and has made some very specialized boards for various projects he has built. As such, in his infill making, it has been important for him to flesh out some important infill miter designs. Please feel free to ask Raney any shooting board questions you may have.

Marcou Photo

Phillip Marcou of Marcou Planes, an Infill Planemaker from New Zealand will be coming to WIA to exhibit his planes with Fred West. Phillip has been an Infill plane maker for many years now, and this will be his first trip to WIA.

Many people already know Fred West as one of the Admin Staff over at talkFestool, a woodworking forum for Festool users and including, believe it or not, Hand Tools! Fred is a very enthusiastic woodworker and supporter of many toolmakers. He is a great guy, and we all thank him for helping to get Phillip to WIA this year! Fred will be bringing his Evenfall Studios ‘Deluxe Shooter’ along to demonstrate the Marcou M12 Mitre Plane.

All of these guys are absolutely great people and are very happy to let anyone try out anything they like including the Shooting Boards. Please feel free to ask them any questions you may have!

I also want to thank Ron Brese of Brese Plane, and Jameel Abraham of Benchcrafted for their support of my Shooting Boards at many past woodworking events. Both Ron and Jameel have used my Shooting Board extensively and I am sure if you ask them, they would also be more than happy to field any questions about them that you may have. Unfortunately this year, Ron was unable to get one of his great Shooting Board Planes ready for exhibit in time for WIA this year, but he will have some amazing new Stainless Steel Planes along that you’ll want to check out!

Jameel will be exhibiting two of the finest woodworking vises ever devised, as well as plans for Roubo style Benches. Jameel’s must-see this year is the new “Shaker Bench”, a collaborative design that Ron and Jameel worked up earlier this year. Photos are on Jameel’s Benchcrafted blog. Jameel tells me that complete plans and scale drawings for making this new Shaker bench are forthcoming, but will not be ready for WIA. Be sure to ask him to get on the list for plans to this breathtakingly awesome bench!

For those who want to do a little more homework on my shooting boards, the Features and Specifications page will flesh out a lot of the details that explain my passion for high quality, longevity, and high accuracy. You can read what Chris Schwarz had to say when he took a ‘Deluxe Shooter’ for a test drive. If you like, my current line up complete with pricing and links to detailed descriptions of each item is available in the Woodworks Store.

Please feel free to Contact Me if you have any questions at all about my Shooting Boards and Accessories, or if you would like to buy one and need a quote for purchase. If you are reading this after the date of the event, It is never too late to place an order, 24/7-365. I’d be happy to get a quote to you and make you a shooting board. For those of you going to WIA, have a great time! For those unable to attend, you can still make any weekend a skill building weekend. Check out a few books in the Evenfall Studios Woodworks Library.

We enjoy your comments! Please Contact Us.

Happy Woodworking!

Recently a great question was asked about finish surface preparation for stains, oils, and coating type finishes with hand planes. It was regarding the finish a plane leaves, if sanding is necessary, and which grits are appropriate. It’s a great question. Let’s explore the options.

In many woods, a planed surface will leave a surface quality similar to that of 600 grit finish smoothness, and without burnishing the wood surface. Sanding in this case may not bring much to the table.

Occasionally there are grains that are just too difficult to plane successfully, and so you must sand.

Planing will help wood pores remain open, sanding will often fill them and burnish the fibers so “in the wood” finishes may have some trouble soaking in.

I often follow this ascending grit schedule: 120 – 150 – 220 – 400, I also use 320 but often omit it on softer woods.

If the wood will have a finish that is “in” the wood, smooth is important, but sometimes it is best to sand at 150 – 220, but no finer. Burnishing will foul the woods ability to allow stain in. Staining will raise grain so sand beyond 220 after staining.

If the wood will be finished with a finish that leaves a coating on the surface, sanding the wood super smooth is not constructive. 150 – 180 is fine, then finish a coat, knock the high spots off lightly with 320 or 400, and re coat. Then sand between coats lightly with fine, fine papers. Think 600-grit or finer range. The last coat, you can likely just let dry, depending on the final outcome.

Using a block is important when sanding finishes. You are flattening the finish, it is easy to sand through so be careful there and go really light near the edges and corners.

Other final outcomes; the last coat can be polished using Rottenstone, Simichrome, even auto polishes.

There are different sandpapers for different moments. Getting the feel for this will develop as you watch the finish you like using and how it reacts to what you do with it. Your observations will help you adapt what works best. Eventually you will decide there are finishes you like and others you won’t so much. You may stick to just a few.

If I am working on a blotchy wood, my sense is and observations are that while burnishing the wood may sometimes help me somehow, I have never felt the help was providing consistent results. What I mean is, while the burnishing may be somewhat successful in slowing how some areas of a board take in finish like oils and stains, and how some areas don’t, is still not averaged out enough to look all that great. I still see the blotches.

The reason is that while I am attempting to burnish the places that will wind up looking dark, I am also burnishing the places where it will wind up looking light to some degree. While I may be able to see where I think the problem areas will be, and focus some burnishing, if I try to focus on sanding some areas of my piece more or less than others, then I am not actually sanding everywhere equally and with consistency. My sense is that a consistent sanding is important, likely more important to the overall look than any attempt to burnish a surface as part of the prep or not.

Another point about burnishing. What burnishing is and how it happens is usually what we don’t want to have happen. Often burnishing occurs when we are using the correct grade of sandpaper for the task at hand, but we have allowed the sandpaper to clog with dust, or the grit to become to dull. This means the sandpaper is trying to do something at a higher grade than it’s rating, because all the sharp points have worn off the grit.

Sandpaper needs to cut, not polish. If we use fresh papers or discs, we should not expect too much burnishing at 180 to 220 grit. This is the maximum we want to sand if we intend to stain, because we actually want to let the stain into the wood. Once the stain is in, and the grain raising is done, we can sand more finely if we like, but we have to use care. Stains are usually going to be used in conjunction with a coating style finish, as stains are often made darker than is our goal by using oils with them, so to smooth the wood further would not be worth the effort. When it comes to finish smoothness with coating finishes, our fingers will feel the surface of a coating, not the wood itself.

If intentional burnishing of the wood fibers is what you intend, the best way to achieve this is to stop sanding at a higher grit. If you should ordinarily stop at 180-220 for the usual surface prep, burnishing would be like stopping at 400 or 600 instead.

If the finish is going to be an oil finish, and I mean a fine oil finish, you can stop at 220 for the first coat of oil, and give it a heavy wash. The lack of burnishing will help let the oil into the wood. But once that coat is in, you may proceed sanding finer, and applying more coats of finish. You may even choose to sand in the finish as you apply it in an attempt to fill the pores of the grain some. As you add oil finish coats, you will sand with higher and higher grits, each successively finer than the last. A lot of walnut gunstocks are finished like this. This often has a really deep look.

Some woods will make these choices for us. Blotchy woods are not so easy to use oils and stains with. Oily woods and dark woods tend not to benefit from oil finishes either. These are woods that will benefit from finishing with Lacquer, Shellac, and Poly.

Some woods will be made to look more descriptive, and have contrast added as well as deepening the natural colors by using oils, and since oil finishes are often usually BLO based, the finish will have an amber colored effect. The rest of the finish is mostly a mineral spirits carrier and a varnish that will be carried into the wood grain, allowed to soak a bit and wiped off, rather than allowed to dry on it. It is important to remember that not all woods are helped by an ambering effect, or a darkening effect. They get all they need by just looking clear/wet.

It may not seem like what effect we want from the wood, or which finish we want to use on the wood has much to do with sanding, but my observations are that it has been helpful to understand these relationships of wood variety, surface prep and finish type in ensemble.

If you are planing, then you get some added benefits that come without some of the trade offs in tow. You will get a surface quality equivalent to what 600-grit sandpaper would accomplish, yet with no burnishing; the grain will remain open and unclogged. It will take oils and stains much like sanding to 180 will. If you are using a finish that coats, you are already more than smooth enough.

If you have to make something using woods that tend to blotch, grain selection in the showy areas can help you, but I have found that while I have gotten to where I can spot where I think a spot will look dark, the spots that wind up looking too light are often a surprise.

What I think is the best way to address blotchy woods, is to either consider them paint grade, or seal them with shellac and use a gel stain over the shellac. This will get you a predictable outcome. Also, consider seeing woods that have blotchy tendencies as woods that are best to be part of a non-show sub assembly. Save the showy, more consistent woods for where the looks are.

I hope that fleshes out some of the mysteries a little more. These are just some of my observations and understandings.

Has this information helped you? Would you consider helping support our efforts?

Like any website hosted on the internet, The ‘Woodworks Blog’ has it’s expenses. The main way we offset expenses, is directly through purchases of ‘Artisan Made’ tools and jigs from the ‘Woodworks Store’.

Another way to help support the ‘Woodworks Blog’ is to appeal to the generosity of our readers. It’s quick and easy to make a donation directly to the ‘Woodworks Blog’ by using the PayPal donation button. Your generosity is greatly appreciated!

Thanks again for all your support! We really appreciate it!

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Happy Woodworking!

Granite Surface Plates are the world standard for flatness in any shop. There are a number of places you can get them and the pricing on these tools varies widely. It is important to note that for most of us, they needn’t cost more than necessary.

There are a lot of great things to know about them, but there is one thing that is really important to touch on first off.

The grading of Granite Surface Plates is of importance to the woodworker. Please have a look at the following data:

The following tolerances account for the highest and lowest differences in the flatness of the surface on the Granite Plate.

.000025” for an AA grade plate. Twenty-five hundred-thousandths of an inch.
.000050” for an A grade plate. Fifty hundred-thousandths of an inch.
.000100” for a B grade plate. One Ten-Thousandths of an inch

Now to look at the numbers, you would say that A is double the roughness of AA and B is well more than double the roughness of A. While this is true, the B grade plate is smoother than a baby’s behind and imperceptibly flat to you and I. Please don’t become mesmerized by those numbers, Grade B is amazingly, awesomely flat. I mean if one ten-thousandths is not flat enough for woodworking then, Um, I am not sure what you have planned.

The AA grade plate is a Laboratory Grade plate and is a very expensive precision tool that lives in a temperature controlled precision laboratory . It is used primarily for the calibration of tools that will do high precision or precision work. This is well beyond the needs of most end users. The A grade plate is an Inspection Grade plate which is usually kept in a clean area and used for Quality Assurance (QA/QC) comparisons and analysis. Consider it for companies that need to compare whether the work they are doing in the shop is meeting manufacturing specifications that are required to be met.

B grade is otherwise known as a “Tool Room” quality surface where us folk with grubby hands are allowed to use them. It is the plate used by those performing the work. It is the least expensive and most used, and also the least expensive to replace should it become damaged. Sounds like the one for us, and it is! The grade B plate is more accurate than we, and the tools we have in the workshop will ever need.

What’s even better is that Tool Room Grade B plates go on sale often and we can pick them up for cheaper than river rocks at a renaissance faire. Keep that in mind and just go cheap. Nothing being sold as a granite surface plate and that is cheap at the same time is a bad thing. Just buy it. It is way too easy to purchase these anymore. Surface plates come in many sizes and are on sale quite frequently at Enco. There is often free shipping if you buy enough to meet a very low priced minimum order for that

There are several ways to use a Granite Surface Plate in the woodworking shop, so lets touch on them.

First off, the top surface of the granite plate is the business surface, the sides and bottom of the plate are not certified. The bottom of the stone is generally parallel to the top, and pretty flat. Granite is hard stone, likely harder than what you have placed it on, and also likely flatter than what you have placed it on and what this can mean is that the surface plate can rock if the surfaces don’t match.

Depending on what you use the plate for, rocking may not matter to the end user, or it may matter a lot. There are a few factors happening at once here. If you are trying to work with the accuracy the plate offers, having it rock on you is not going to make for a usable experience. If you are using the plate for sharpening edge tools, having the plate rock and skid may not work well either. The solution for this is affixing rubber feet to the underside of the surface plate.

Adding rubber feet to the underside of the surface plate while solving some problems is not as straight forward as simply just doing it. Granite is rock solid of course, but if it isn’t properly supported, it can sag and warp from it’s own weight, and this can affect the accuracy of the working surface over time. So there is a proper method for locating the feet to the bottom of the plate so this all works out.

First, it takes three feet, not four, because a tripod will not rock, and as such will stabilize the plate on nearly any surface.

Second, locating the feet in a tripod shape and within the right parameters to the underside of the plate is key. Here is the formula for this:

On one narrow side edge, or end of the plate, there will be one foot affixed. It will be located at the middle, 1/2 the width of the plate from each side, and between 1/5th and 1/4th the length of the plate from the ends. I like to affix to the middle, and have the edge of the foot at 1/5th the length from the edge.

On the other narrow side edge, or end of the plate, there will be two feet affixed. They will be located in the corners, between 1/5th and 1/4th the length, and 1/5 to 1/4 the width of the plate. Again, I like to affix them with the outermost portion of the foot just within the 1/5th realm of the spec.

If you want to have a look at the Federal Specification GGG-P-463c which is the standard for which Granite Surface Plates are made and maintained with, I have a copy of it in the Woodworks Library Hand Tool section, just click this link right here.

If you have added feet, then a couple cool things become benefits to you. The plate is now reasonably skid resistant, (great for scary sharp work) it doesn’t rock, you can clean under it, and you can easily get your fingers under it should you choose to or need to move it around in your shop to use or store it. That is great usability!

Some people like to make a carrying tray for making the moving of the plate easier, because you can then add handles etc. If you do this, it’s a great idea, but it is still beneficial to add the feet under the plate to stabilize it, even if you put it in a tray.

Once you have a granite surface plate in your shop, there are a number of uses for it. Many woodworkers buy one for use with the “Scary Sharp” method of sharpening, where sandpaper abrasives of varying grit, or micron size are used to abrade metals for grinding and honing. Even if “Scary Sharp” is not your primary method for sharpening, I have found there are times it is efficient to resort to it instead of stones.

It is important to note here that these plates are very smooth to the touch. The smoothness is a component of the flatness. It is wise to avoid using abrasives on the plate in a way that will scratch it, and it is likely a bad idea to use loose abrasives on a surface plate, because they will abrade the plate and it will lose it’s certified flatness. Many people use a combination of sharpening methods including PSA sanding abrasives and a granite plate to maintain their tools. Wet-Dry sandpaper can also be made wet with water or light oil and the capillary action of the water will help hold the abrasives in place, but the use of a surface plate doesn’t have to stop there.

Many times, just for general sanding on woods, you can keep it simple. Just lay a piece of sandpaper on the plate and sand with one hand while you hold the paper in place with the other. It is really handy on the fly. This is particularly when you need to sand flatten a small surface or joint a short edge for glue up. Think jewelry box pieces, inlays, marquetry, fine fitment of things where close tolerences are desired.

Other uses for the surface plate include using it as the reference standard that it is to evaluate the quality of your layout tooling’s accuracy. It is great for all kinds of analysis. The plate will help reveal the accuracy of straight edges and squares by comparing them on the surface.

If you have a high quality square, you can place it on the surface plate to compare the squareness of other squares to it. 1-2-3 blocks are great tools for comparing squareness as a for instance. Any square nudged up against a 1-2-3 block is square if there is no light seen between them. It is for woodworking, good to know which squares are highly accurate, or just good enough for the job at hand.

It is also a place where you can measure and compare parts with depth gauges and dial indicators. A magnetic stand need not be left out on a granite surface plate. Allow it to hold the dial indicator; the stand is not the accuracy. The dial indicator is set so it is perpendicular to the surface, the tip is in contact with the plate, and the dial zeroed. Anything you place on the plate under the tip of the indicator is measured for thickness. It’s just an idea of what you could use the plate for with a little imagination.

Glue joints are pretty particular about matching well. We often cut things straight and plane things flat so they will mate well. Often times when a small part is too small or delicate to work with common tools, sanding it on a granite surface plate is a great way to prep it. You can achieve flatness to greater than 0.001 while sanding things on the surface plate. You can also contour sand convex shapes on the plate, because the plate is heavy, rigid and flat, and adhesives hold sandpapers to it really well. All you have to do is move the part needing sanded as you sand. It often works with higher control than holding the work piece and sandpaper in your hands.

Finally, what about that big rock in the shop when you are not using it? Granite is a porous material, so leaving any kind of grunge on it might not be a good practice, as it can soak into the granite. Leaving adhesives on it long term can affect how easily they come off later. When it is exposed and uncovered, it is good to make certain then hard things wont be dropped on it, so as to allow it to become gouged or scratched, and piling things on top of it can render it too difficult to use when it would be nice if we could.

Good practices include keeping it clean and dry, and cover it so the dust in the shop doesn’t land on it when it isn’t being used. Keep it ready to go and you’ll find a ton of ways to use it.

Depending on what you use it for, it can be nice to have it ready to use when you need it, and it is wise to remember that any dust on such a flat surface can easily affect the accuracy when precision measurement is desired. Unless it has a full time home where it is placed, covering it and placing it on a shelf out of harms way is always a good way to keep this precision tool ready for the next use we have for it. It is way more versatile than float glass or MDF for many reasons, and can be more versatile than a floor tile or piece of countertop in many cases as well. Well worth having!

Has this information helped you? Would you consider helping support our efforts?

Like any website hosted on the internet, The ‘Woodworks Blog’ has it’s expenses. The main way we offset expenses, is directly through purchases of ‘Artisan Made’ tools and jigs from the ‘Woodworks Store’.

Another way to help support the ‘Woodworks Blog’ is to appeal to the generosity of our readers. It’s quick and easy to make a donation directly to the ‘Woodworks Blog’ by using the PayPal donation button. Your generosity is greatly appreciated!

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Happy Woodworking!

Have you been combing eBay in hopes of finding vintage sets or individual planes of the Hollows and Rounds variety? I’m happy to help get the word out that there is a new plane maker on the scene that may be able to help.

Matt Bickford Photo.

In recent times the desire for these planes has increased dramatically, and the availability of them is scarce. The plane makers who currently offer them have backlogs I’ve read that are over two years long.

Matt Bickford Photo.

Enter Matt Bickford. Matt was recently asked what his focus was on and he said:
“I’m focusing on molding planes: hollows/rounds, snipes bills, I make rabbets like that pictured too. Basically, I make those non-bench planes listed in Builders Dictionary published in the early 1700’s less the plow. I can certainly make specific profiles if you want something out of Chippendale’s Director.

Is there something specific for which you are looking? Please let me know.”

Matt Bickford

The photos tell the tale. Welcome Matt to toolmaking! If there is something specific in this line of tooling for which you are looking, please do let Matt know!

Contact Matt, Place your order.

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Thanks for looking, Happy Woodworking!

Staring at woodgrain
chatoyance dances with light–
the beauty revealed.

~ — ~

What hath brute strength wrought
where finesse has shown cunning?
wisdom, woodworker.

~ — ~

Ponder gnarled grain
twisting, turning, catching light
the path is simple.

~ — ~

The least resistance
sharpness is known to coerce
wood can only sigh.

~ — ~

Sunlight on woodgrain,
Second line jazz New Orleans
such vivid splendor!

~ — ~

Cabriole Bossa Nova
They dance so free standing still–
Femininity.

~ — ~

The Roubo stands strong
Awaiting the woodworkers–
Imagination.

~ — ~

Finesse in silence
unneeded wood whisks away–
Sculpture revealed.

~ — ~

Ying and Yang of wood
Who is the master of which?
Contest never over.

~ — ~

The sharp rasp quickens
woodgrain tamed beneath its grasp–
shaped beauty springs forth.

~ — ~

Inspire yourself
listen, the wood beckons you–
now make some shavings.

~ — ~

Drill Pressed counterbores
Wood chips disappear to vac
Get back to work now.

~ — ~

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Happy Woodworking!

Walt Quattro is a really cool guy who has a really cool used record store in Waterbury, CT that <looks right, looks left> secretly doubles as a vintage tool store. <but please, keep that to yourself, eh?>

Walt’s place is Brass City Records and Tools. Those who know Walt know that he is known to drop into a tool forum with a song lyric that doubles as a riddle that somehow describes his latest tool prowl. Please click here for one of Walt’s riddle answers. Walt’s posts are always a great time and he is great to trade with! So as usual, I like to make a habit of going over to his site to look around, because it is always changing. Me? I am usually late to the party but eh… you know how it goes. His site changes a lot as some of you know. Early birds get the worm, fair is fair. Walt knows this and it works that way to shop with Walt too.

Well anyway, Walt’s haunts are the flea markets of New England, where many a tool he finds are straight out of the heart of where the industrial revolution took place. He is also centrally located near where many of these tools were originally made. These are the tools that helped bring that revolution, and are now sought after by many of us who don’t want those tools to become just another historical footnote. (Thanks Walt)

It happens that Walt has a cool link on his site that points to Pat Leach’s (of Superior Works fame) supertool.com site, that I have looked at many times over the years. While we all seem to discuss tool cabinets around at various forums on the net pretty frequently, I don’t recall seeing anyone really discussing this one for a pretty long time. It is worth a visit, or for some of us, a re-visit.

Photo Courtesy Pat Leach

It is C.A Jewett’s Patternmaking Chest. It is worthy of discussion and so let’s, shall we? The article at Pat’s site is well worth the read. Please follow that link to see all the great photos Pat took of the various attributes of the chest. We are really lucky Pat found this chest, and I feel it is really important to us, particularly since patternmaking is becoming a lost art and trade, and what’s more, artisan craftspeople are in search of tool storage that really works.

Pat is a very anecdotal writer who brings you around to his side of the table when telling a story. I can’t help but agree with his enthusiasm for this chest. If you really look deeply at this chest, you see the beauty, maybe not in the look, but the functionality. Jewett’s design is no display case, and it is quite full. When it comes to working well, I feel this design brings it.

I’m not taking away from H.O. Studley, who’s tool chest set’s the benchmark for craftsmanship, is likely the prettiest piece of work of it’s kind and important to us because of the period it helps us date craftsman’s tools to. For my taste, and this is just my personal position, which is not to say I dislike the Studley chest, but as a working tool in itself, it seems too ornate and too crammed to have a workflow I can get my mind around. I can’t speak for others, but I personally would not want to try and work from a chest of the Studley design.

The Studley is a gorgeous chest, which utilizes every nook and cranny almost too well. So well that too many tools would need to be moved to access many other tools with ease. It is ok to disagree with me on this, but remember it is just my point of view, coming from the want for easy workflow. Alternatively, The Jewett chest is a variant that houses a lot of tools, but without being as ornate, and does so with real functionality. From the looks of the wear on this chest, it was a working tool itself.

For C.A Jewett, this chest probably wasn’t the first iteration, and it was probably something that sort of came together in a happenstance that seemed to make the most sense to him. I am pretty sure he didn’t over think it or even ponder it half as much as I have. He likely didn’t have time, and if he did think it over much, it was while he was doing something else. If we could look closely, we would likely see arrangement alterations for tool upgrades and design changes because the change made more sense than leaving it the way it was.

My sense is that Mr. Jewett valued being able to get to the tool he needed with ease because that is what paid the bills. He also needed to store the tools that were crucial to his trade. He likely went with what had worked well in the last cabinet when he built the next, and he probably had coworkers with chests to draw good ideas from. Not something we as individuals working in our own shops really have in terms of idea fodder. In my mind, what Mr. Jewett evolved is truly a functional dream, or well, pretty close to one.

I don’t personally use a cabinet exactly like this right now, though I do have a couple ways I store different types of tools that work well for me and they flow similarly. My own storage solutions are evolved adaptations that share with this chest the ability to fit plenty in the space I have, while allowing access to the tool I need without upsetting a set of dominoes, or without requiring I move many tools to access the one I need. I am also not completely happy with everything about it either. I am unresolved about some things so I revisit this chest from time to time and ruminate some more.

I am not saying we should build a Jewett chest for ourselves either, even though we could if we like, but I am saying we should take a really hard look at the Jewett chest for several reasons.

Depending upon where you hail from, moisture can be the enemy of your tooling. This is going to mean that pegboard isn’t going to be the tool organization road home, and some of us wouldn’t use it if it were. Building a Cabinet like this can be part of the corrosion solution. A Goldenrod dehumidifier or dry desiccant dehumidifier can be fitted and employed inside a closed cabinet like this to control the humidity and prevent corrosion very effectively. They are practical, not overly expensive and the operating costs are negligible; particularly in light of the tools they help protect.

I’m not pure Galoot, and I don’t advocate that anyone should approach woodworking in any particular way that doesn’t suit them. The way you work works for you and I support that. I am a blended woodworker myself, and I am seeing where the Jewett cabinet offers some silent philosophy as to how I can, and should group certain tools for certain tasks, and while not over cramming, making the most used tools easy to access and the ones not so commonly needed pushed into the nooks and crannies a bit.

If you are a Galoot, and while not necessarily a patternmaker, you could consider this design one on one, and see if you can find clues to how it could improve your workflow if you were to adopt some of it’s design features for your own cabinet. If you are a blended woodworker, consider the tools you have that are a direct fit, and then consider the tooling you use that is not unique to this period, how you may be imaginative and find a way to store those tools that are unique to your workflow. This is not just about the tools you have. Be sure to include some of the tools you intend to become part of your kit over time as well.

Consider how you could utilize the drawers if perhaps you made some of them in dimensions that would work more efficiently for you. One thing this cabinet seems to scream, is that the tools should be easily accessible, yet not waste space. I think that is a scalable and adoptable want in nearly any working storage tool cabinet design.

If you are a woodworker who isn’t suffering from a handsaw problem, you may see that the Jewett cabinet has a small saw till in it as well, and from what I see, there is about six saws in it, maybe seven. I may not be seeing a coping saw that I bet is there, but I do see what looks like a folding keyhole saw stored with the hammers as well.

This cabinet is not going to give one a complete and total end all plane till either, but it will provide adequate storage for the main user planes that one would likely consider needing handy, and a separate plane or saw till could certainly be made separate form this cabinet to store any ahhhhhh, shall we say “overflow” that may or may not be a nice problem you have.

In all, no single tool cabinet can be all things to all people. This one is no exception, but it sure has a lot of well working and adoptable design elements. We all should consider this matter for ourselves. Chris Becksvoort made a tool cabinet that comes to mind when considering the need to personalize for workflow, and his is a wonderful design that I really admire as well. In any case, we all consider ways of making our personal tool storage more approachable, and I wanted to toss a few thoughts out that may get the thinking juices flowing. Pat Leach coined the phrase “marvel of 19th century toolchest efficiency” and I agree, I see it too. I thank Pat for sharing his example with us.

Once you get done tooling up over at Walt’s, I believe if that tooling is available to you and getting to it works well, then the rest of woodworking becomes more transparent and creative. It is then up to skill, imagination, and wood.

Has this information helped you? Would you consider helping support our efforts?

Like any website hosted on the internet, The ‘Woodworks Blog’ has it’s expenses. The main way we offset expenses, is directly through purchases of ‘Artisan Made’ tools and jigs from the ‘Woodworks Store’.

Another way to help support the ‘Woodworks Blog’ is to appeal to the generosity of our readers. It’s quick and easy to make a donation directly to the ‘Woodworks Blog’ by using the PayPal donation button. Your generosity is greatly appreciated!

Thanks again for all your support! We really appreciate it!

We enjoy your comments! Please Contact Us.

Happy Woodworking!

Shooting boards are very handy for fine trims that clean the rough sawn edges left by saws, power tools and shop machines, so the wood is looking it’s very best, and even made as accurate fitting as can be. But even as we do this most commonly on end grain, end grain is not the only place on a board that can benefit from the use of a shooting board.

There are a number of things a woodworker can classify as delicate work. It can of course mean short in length or width, thin stock, veneer, inlays, book matched pieces, and even working with tone woods. Luthiers commonly join book matched boards for stringed instruments, and these boards are very fragile.

There are also the occasions where using a power tool or a shop machine may not be the safest way, or the most accurate way to accomplish a task and so we are left trying to come up with an alternative method for accomplishing the fine work we need done.

Often even the finest blades of a shop machine can leave some tear out, or small nicks on a cut edge, and due to the rotational force and unequal loadings on rotating blades, the attempt to trim just a little can often result in too little or too much. At best, it isn’t often predictable.

Jointers too, are not without issue. Handling small or thin stock on a Jointer can be dangerous due to the size of the piece and the lack of structural integrity the materials can have when they are thin. If we try to joint them we risk damage to both the stock and ourselves, and this is never good either way. There is never a good reason to have the fingers in harm’s way.

Another happening with cutting and jointing thin stock is that if you are not using high tooth count blades on your Table Saw or super thin settings on the jointer, what you get is a bunch of chatter and snipe. You can joint with the router table if your fence will allow this, but in my experience, there are times on small work that I would prefer to remove less that 1/32nd or even 1/64th, yes .008… It is really hard to get most fences to dial this, but a plane will do this easily, and still with power tools some boards will require you to have your fingers way too close to a dangerous area.

Sometimes it is safer, or more desirable to resort to hand tool methods. Yes, this is the Saw Stop method of jointing edges. Fixture the work and use a sharp plane. Planes have none of the characteristics of the rotating oscillator. They simply shear off a layer one thin bit at a time. This is particularly useful on boards that are too fragile or small to safely size with power tools.

Jointing edges of thin stock and short stock is just as important as the larger stuff. Fit and finish are often even more crucial because the small items may be picked up and closely examined. At the same time, gluing and clamping still requires the same tolerances of larger boards. A straight edge, matched in the joints is still important as always.

Often, many Luthiers feel jointing book matched instrument tops and backs with a plane is both preferable and desirable with tone woods, as this prevents any damage to the wood fibers that could interfere with instrument resonance. The rotary cutters involved in shop machines often make them wonder and give them some concern if making a beautiful sounding instrument is possible if wood fibers should suffer bruising. Certainly good, even great sounding instruments are made, but, the question is, can they be even better? Perhaps shooting these edges manually is part of what takes good to great.

So we have established that it is important to joint and shoot the edges of small boards, tone woods and veneers. We may find it less than easy to balance a #7 or #8 jointer on top of a thin board. Doable sure, but it is tricky work, and easier if it is something you are used to doing frequently. Shorter planes can work but there is still balancing the plane for side-to-side squareness. Of course there is a need for truing any stock, and when you build small boxes and drawers, maybe even cleaning up inlays and virtually any board less than 24 inches long or 3/8’s of an inch thick or less, the need is still obvious, but the size tends to change the dynamics of how.

Edge Jointing veneer while balancing a plane on the edge isn’t going to happen, because there is no way to balance a plane on veneer, and this won’t give you the accuracy needed should you want to create a sunburst pattern or well, even book matching of stock that thin.

Enter the long grain shooting board.

A long grain shooting board can be very effective for handling all the difficulties that shop machines, or trying to plane without one can have.

Several woodworkers have approached me about adding a long grain shooting board to my product line this year, and after discussing with them what features would be most desirable in a shooting board purpose designed for long grain shooting, I am now offering a long grain shooting board. It uses a lot of the same Features and Specifications that I offer in my end grain shooting boards.

The major differences are that it is nearly 30 inches long, and offers at least 24 inches of shooting run, a fence that is a 90-degree fence only, but is user calibratable to confirm it is accurately set to 90 degrees.

I have also included a couple anchor points for a caul that is used without the fence that helps fixture the materials you are shooting along the chute at any angle or shape you choose, as long as you are trying to shoot an edge that is parallel to the chute. This way you can fixture materials to be jointed squarely to 90 degrees, or any arbitrary angle you desire.

So whether you work with veneers, or small boxes, or even are interested in Luthery and need a way to joint edges in a damage free way, a long grain shooting board can be a help to you. It is also just handy for general purposes, allowing you to joint the edges of any board and any thickness straight and square, with the safety of knowing a board too short or two thin will not stop you from safely bringing that board to the dimensions needed for your project.

If you are interested in a long grain shooting board, I make them for the left or right-handed woodworker. Please have a look in the Woodworks Store, or at the Long Grain Shooter’s page. If you are interested in a fixturing caul for it, please be sure to mention one when you contact me.

I am always open to discussing shooting devices, accessories and other jig suggestions. Good things are coming, Stay Tuned!

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Happy Woodworking!

Bet you were thinking I was going to associate woodworking with left hemisphere brain functions. Well, depending on how you think of it, woodworking is probably a craft that uses both sides of the brain, so possibly, maybe.

But actually, I was going to touch on some thoughts and problem solving on the left side of the blade. Table saw that is. It really is the unaddressed side of the machine.

I am a hand tool user, and advocate. Heck, I even make hand tools, but I am also a blended woodworker. For those unfamiliar with the term, a “Blended Woodworker” is a woodworker who espouses both the finesse of hand tools, and the production of power tools and shop machines.

I make no bones about it, as each of us should follow the woodworking path that makes us feel content. Whether you are a power tool woodworker, a blended, woodworker, a hand tool woodworker, and even perhaps a collector, it’s all woodworking and that is a good thing! Whichever way you are doing it, your doing it right for you. That is all that matters.

Many with table saws are faced with various challenges. Cut quality and safe practices are always ones that weigh heavily on the mind, maybe even the left-brain. Those who have the space and desire, enjoy a large cabinet saw with a 60 inch fence set up, maybe an outfeed table that will accommodate full sheets of plywood. The rest of us may not need a saw that takes that much space, and so we opt for saws with a 30 inch fence system, or maybe even less.

There is nothing inherently wrong, but there are unique challenges here. The left side of the blade is the off cut side, and because of the limited width to the right of the blade, sometime the width of what crosses the table saw must ride on the left, even when it is rather largish.

Rather largish presents an overhang to the saw table. This overhang is a fun little exercise, one that has had me wishing I had a few extra arms at times. You know, there you are, you, and the saw blade.

The Zen moment is where there is nothing but you the saw and the cut in the whole world. The largish overhang is gaining it’s ability to counterbalance itself on the left edge of the saw with each inch you cut, and as friction from the table overcomes the weight of the oafish off cut, the inability to keep the big beasty under control with just one hand, has you wishing one eye could continue to watch the fence as the other eye watches near to the blade so you can direct the left arm to do the right thing in independence.

Good times!

NOT.

I work alone and there is no one to ask for help. Even if I had help, the helper needs to know the drill really well, because the ramifications have a direct line to the saw blade. Unwanted effects can be immediate. Suffice it to say, I think working alone is better for me, so I thought about work-arounds for a long time.

In some cases, depending on the length to width ratios, a circular saw with or without a guide is a good way to break down the lumber to sizes you can better finish on the table saw. In this case I didn’t have this ratio problem where the length P is many times the width, whereas the width would not be enough to properly register to the fence of the table saw and counterbalance the length component of the board.

I also needed more speed, better production, and the table saw has that, so I had to figure the best ways to deal with supporting my overhangs. Roller stands seemed like a viable answer, and turn out to be both in part, a piece of the problem and the solution to that problem, but by themselves, they are not the be all end all at the left side of the saw.

The inherent problem with roller stands at the left, is that depending on the width of the material you are cutting, the overhang will likely have to transit from one roller stand to another as the cut is pushed forwards through the saw, and as this happens, the problem of perfect coplanarity is hard to achieve with multiple roller stands that are set to support in the rolling direction. What you get is slight bumps transmitted back to the blade and too, it is not the best thing for your Zen moment. So stand good, roller bad.

After staring at the table saw for a while with the sheet of plywood up on it, I came upon, wait for it– a temporary-roller stand-modifier-jig. I call it the roller stand ski. Well yeah, and it isn’t originally anyone’s idea I’m sure, and heck it’s 2009, branding everything is in, so I have to name it something.

I use those workforce roller stands from the big box stores. They are priced right, fold, hang out of the way, set up quickly, are bearing rollers, have slight tilt adjustments, and for me, owning four of them has been about right. I have used them at every shop machine. They come in lots of variations, but these seemed just right in the pocket for me, cost/benefit wise.

The ski has to mount above the rollers with the stands turned perpendicular to the direction of the cut. I wanted it to work in such a way that I set the stands about where I want them, and for the ski to simply clamp to the stand. When not needed, It is quickly broken down, and the stands hang back up, the ski leans in the corner…

How I made my ski, was sort of a happenstance that came from salvage. A few years back I had planned to use some birch 1×2 with a 1/4 inch chamfer on one corner and a 1/4 inch rabbet on the other as a molding, but no matter how I approached the milling, it tore out. So I rejected it and used a different wood and these boards leaned against the pile causing me to ponder their future going forward. Can’t throw even the failures away, because they still could redeem themselves, somehow. (Yes I do have a selection of smallish off cuts, and I surprisingly use many, but I toss all my sawdust. Honest! )

So I took a six-foot length of this molding I had made and trimmed the ends to make them smooth. Then I drilled three 1/4 inch holes in each end. The first hole on each end is at seven inches in, because this equals the half width of the roller on the roller stand, and each additional hole moving toward the center of the rail was on six-inch centers. All were drilled 5/8ths on an inch in from the side of the 1×2 that has the rabbet. Then the holes were milled with an 82-degree countersink for use with a 1/4-20 flat head cap screw.

When mounted, the chamfered edge on this rail is at such an angle that just the knife-edge of the chamfer supports the wood and with finish and a wax, it offers very little resistance to what is being slid over it. So in one way, this cast off molding had redeemed itself. But wait, there’s more!

For the bracket, as configured, the Workforce roller stand has a 3/8’s inch difference between the roller and the roller bracket, so I used 1/2 Baltic Birch as a shim. It was close enough width wise, and from the scrap bin. I used the molding for the bracket as well, so since the width of the molding is 1-1/2 inches, and the place on the roller stand where the bracket is clamped is also, this shim is square.

The shim is then glued and doweled to a length of molding cut to 4-5/8ths inches long. This will be the clamp end. On the other end I glued and doweled a 1-1/2 inch square piece of the molding, but I staggered it off center a little so that the chamfer o n the square block meets the end grain of the 4-5/8ths piece, this way the chamfer sits a little proud. The benefit to this is that the inside square formed by the rabbet on the opposite side rests against the roller, and this offers support. Funny how this failed molding worked out this way…

I then drilled the bracket on centerline, and again 5/8ths of an inch up from the rabbet side, with a #7 drill bit and tapped the bracket with 1/4-20 machine threads. So the brackets just bolt on, from the rail through to the wood bracket and I tighten to when it reaches a friction fit that still allows rotation of the brackets without needing tools.

The finish is Watco Teak Oil and Wax. That is a moisture resistant finish, which is common on boats and great for the shop. The rail clamps onto a pair of roller stands with a pair of Irwin quick grip ratchet clamps, but any clamp that can offer better pressure than a spring clamp would do. It is easy to adjust, just as you would the roller stands normally, but now you are adjusting an entire plane with two points.

The roller stand ski sure has added a lot of safety and production to the left side of the blade for me, and I even found use for some scraps that didn’t work out. Best thing is that it stows in almost no space at all. The next best thing is, that since the roller stands adjust, I can always set it higher to compensate for the thickness of my table saw sled when crosscutting long boards. Hopefully something like this can help others with a similar conundrum. It is nice to have this kind of help when you work alone.

Has this information helped you? Would you consider helping support our efforts?

Like any website hosted on the internet, The ‘Woodworks Blog’ has it’s expenses. The main way we offset expenses, is directly through purchases of ‘Artisan Made’ tools and jigs from the ‘Woodworks Store’.

Another way to help support the ‘Woodworks Blog’ is to appeal to the generosity of our readers. It’s quick and easy to make a donation directly to the ‘Woodworks Blog’ by using the PayPal donation button. Your generosity is greatly appreciated!

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Happy Woodworking!

Shooting Boards and they’re red hot, yes we’ve got em’ for sale!
I have to thank the early bluesman Robert Johnson, for the inspiration on the title here.

Here’s a photo of a pair to draw to. The shooting boards, shown here in left and right-handed models. You could almost call them V-Twins, but darn it, somebody already thought of that…

Back in late March 2009 I revealed I was going to be making a shooting board with an accurately calibratable fence, which can be fixtured in six positions. Woodworkers found this very interesting! I want to take a moment to say thank you to all who have purchased one. It has been a warm and well-received response from the woodworking community. I plan to continue making them, and even have a few ideas to accessorize them as well.

If you are a left handed woodworker, No Problem! I can make a shooting board that works for you. Same price as right handed, just let me know.

The first weekend of May, woodworker and furniture maker Jeff Miller sponsored a Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Event at his shop in Chicago. From what I understand, it was quite the event.

Infill Plane Maker Ron Brese, www.breseplane.com and Toolmaker Jameel Abraham, www.benchcrafted.com/ were both in attendance as exhibitors.

Jameel and Ron with Angie of Lie-Nielsen
Cian Perez Photo

Ron and Jameel have been working together on Infill Plane designs and other cool tools in collaboration with other toolmakers. Ron approached me about a shooting board for his beautiful infill miter plane, which he is soon going to be adding to his infill offerings.

The Brese Infill Miter
Cian Perez Photo

The Brese infil miter on the Evenfall Studios Shooting Board
Cian Perez Photo

Those who made it to the event were able to see Jameel’s bench, featuring the Bench Crafted “wagon style” Tail Vise and the New, soon to be released Bench Crafted Leg Vise Hardware, as well and Ron had the full offering of his Infill Line, and featured his prototype Infill Miter on one of my shooting boards.

Ron’s planes, Jameel’s bench and bench accessories
Cian Perez Photo

Cian Perez was at the event and offered me the use of his stellar photos, showing the shooting board, Ron’s Beautiful Planes and Jameel’s great bench and bench hardware. Some of you may know Cian from his wonderful and super useful How-To Guide, woodworking link sites: The Neanderthal Braintrust, and The Power Index. Thank you very much for offering me the use of your great photos Cian!

I can’t thank Ron and Jameel enough for taking my board along to the show, and if you follow the link to Benchcrafted’s website above. While you are looking at all the cool things Benchcrafted offers, Jameel has a schedule of where he and Ron are exhibiting. They are both great guys, and top craftsmen who are always willing to answer questions and offer great insights. Get out and meet them if you can! Be sure to visit Ron’s website as well!

Jameel demonstrates Ron’s Infill Miter
Cian Perez Photo

The ‘Deluxe Shooter’ Shooting Board with six fence positions, and there are two shooting boards that are completely similar to this design, with fewer, but the most needed settings for most woodworking requirements.

If you would like to place an order, it is pretty simple to get started. Just navigate to the Evenfall Studios Woodworks Store, either here or at the top of the page, and use the shopping cart. Checkout is easy and your order comes straight to us. Shooting Boards in either Left or Right hand models are the same price. We also sell extra fences, and a Board Lift Bench Hook that matches the lift of the shooting board for when you shoot long boards. Just let me know what you would be interested in.

The product line continues to evolve, just peek into the Store from time to time and see what’s new.

Also while you are here, remember it is woodworkers safety time.

So much has been said, all of it is good. For my part, I just want to remind you of this one important batch of thoughts.

Mindfulness is everything. Your brain is the most important safety device you have. Keep your mind in the work. Watch what you are doing. Think about how you do it. Know where your flesh and clothing is in relation to the cutters and tooling. Short cuts are throat cuts. A clean work area is a much safer work area, so clean up frequently and often. If it seems unsafe or risky, trust your instincts, it probably is. If you are working with a hand tool, fixture the work piece. If you are using a power tool or shop machine, jigs, guides and guards are important.

The one time you bypass a safe practice, you invite the perfect storm to find you.

ACHTUNG

Alles touristen und non-technoschen lookens peepers! Das machinen
control ist nicht fur der fingerpoken und mitten grabben. Oderwise
ist easy schnappen der springenworks, blowen den fuses, und
poppencorken mit spitzensparken. Der machine ist diggen by experten
only. Er ist nicht fur geverken by das dummkopfen. Das rubbernecken
sightseenen: keepen des cottonpicken hands in das pockets. Relaxen
und watchen des blinkenlights!

Thanks for everything, and please work safe!

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Happy Woodworking!

One of the coolest things about hand planes is the finish they leave behind. We have all seen the finish quality they are capable of free hand, but when you put hand planes on jigs, a door is opened and passed through where clean, straight, and angular accuracy becomes something that is hard to obtain in any other simple way.

Yes, I am talking about shooting boards.

Shooting boards are one of the gateways to fine woodworking. Sure, there are many gateways, but the shooting board, in its different configurations guide the cleanest edges and end grain cuts to the finest accuracies, the most spectacular fit and finish, and it puts this capability in the hands of any woodworker.

I have always enjoyed woodworking jigs, and have made a number of shooting boards over the years. I have thought about many different designs for a long time. I’d have one that did this, but not that, and wish I had one that did that too, but then, that method can become a stack of shooting boards, and most of us don’t have the space for that. It’s true; there are some very specific types that are meant to cover specific uses. Others are great for general work, but the worry over wood movement and long-term accuracy causes some folks to question how much energy to put into the making of their own.

I decided to try designing a shooting board, using a design that encompasses the many qualities that I felt most woodworkers would most desire and need in a basic shooting board. Reinforcing as many strengths as I could, while diminishing the weaknesses where possible, and offer it for sale to woodworkers who may be interested in a shooting board that can cover a lot of fine woodworking situations, yet may not want to build one of their own. If you are interested in purchasing a shooting board, I’d be happy to build one for you. Please see the details at the end of this article.

My design is a shooting board with pivot fence. Made from Baltic Birch for durability, and stability in most any climate. It’s adjustable and calibratable for square as well as the 15, 22-1/2, 30, 45, and 60-degree radials. The base measures approximately 14-3/4 inches square. The plane chute is 14-3/4 x 2-3/4, and 1/2 inch below the base to assure a firm squaring registration with most any maker’s planes. The fence, 11-1/2 long by 1-1/4 wide, is positioned 3 inches from the back edge for planing stability in the chute, leaving a full 11-1/2 inch surface for the work piece. The base has been sanded to 150 grit overall to improve traction on the bench and work piece. The Chute has been sanded to 400 grit. The Shooting Board has been finished with Watco Teak Oil, a user repairable finish, and the Plane Chute has been waxed to aid smooth shooting operations.

Steel T-Nuts, counter bored, pressed and epoxied into the base provide 5/8 inches of steel threading to assure accuracy and lasting structural integrity through years of adjustable use. The cleat hooks the unit to the bench with four 1/4-20 flat head socket cap screws tapped directly into the base, and countersunk into the cleat for a very sturdy connection.

A dust groove runs along the left side of the chute to help assure that dust and shavings don’t foul the shooting plane’s accuracy during use. The chute is checked to assure it is coplanar with the top of the jig, and corrected before it leaves here.

Steel Button Head Cap Screws with Brass Knurled Knobs assure a long lasting, secure, comfortable way of adjusting and fixturing the fence. Under both knurled knobs, a brass washer protects the fence from wear. The fence has a small-elongated slot machined on the calibration side that matches the pivot radius, so the fence can be calibrated to the drafting squares accuracy in any climate or wood moisture condition.

Fence calibration is easy and inexpensive with $4.00 Drafting Triangles available from nearly any good office supply store in their drafting supplies section. The 8-inch 45-45-90 square and 12-inch 30-60-90 drafting triangles assure the best registration. Other angle finders such as adjustable drafting triangles and various styles of protractors and protractor squares can be employed to find the other angles as well.

Here the fence is being calibrated to shoot in the square position. Simply loosen the fence fixturing knobs. A 45-45-90 Drafting Triangle is positioned between the fence and the sole of the shooting plane. The shooting plane is positioned with the toe end at the fence, and the plane sole is pulled firmly against the left side of the plane chute. The fence is then positioned so that there is a tight fit of the triangle between the sole of the plane and the fence, and the fixturing knobs re-tightened. You can also use machinist squares, combination squares, and vernier protractors with rulers from the edge of the chute. THe accuracy of your set up tooling is transfered to the jig. It just takes a few seconds. This assures total shooting accuracy every time you use the Shooting Board, any season of the year.

Here the fence is being calibrated to shoot in the 30 degree radial position. A 30-60-90 Drafting Triangle is positioned between the fence and the sole of the shooting plane. The same procedures for squaring the fence are repeated.

Here the fence is being calibrated to shoot in the 45 degree radial position. A 45-45-90 Drafting Triangle is positioned between the fence and the sole of the shooting plane. The same procedures for squaring the fence are repeated. This is the woodworking secret to perfect mitered corners, perfectly squared ends, perfected dimensional accuracy in layout.

Here a Lie-Nielsen 62 is engaged in shooting square the end of a board, the angle cut on the fence near the knurled knob is used to shoot at any angle other than square. Simply flip the fence over so this angled portion faces the work piece and recalibrate.

Here is a look at the fence, sole, chute relationship, where the wood if engaged would be being pared square by the shooting plane. A fine adjustment and a sharp blade is desirable.

This is a look at the hand position, fixturing the board to the hook portion of the Shooting Board. A firm grip on the side of the plane body near the blade bed pushes the plane forward while holding the plane against the left edge of the chute.

The Stanley #4 is a viable shooter when sharp. Here is it shooting the end grain of Panamanian Rosewood Veneer. Veneer can be trimmed long grain and on any miter angle using this method. Starburst or mitered veneers anyone?

The Shooting Board can shoot Long Grain to 11-3/4 inches.

As shown, the Plane Chute measures 14-3/4 by 2-3/4, which will accommodate Lie-Nielsen’s #9 Iron Miter Plane and 62 Low Angle Jack, the Veritas Low Angle Jacks, as well as other Infill and wooden miter and non-miter planes. Any of the Stanley Bailey and Bedrock planes are suitable for use, and a even a block plane, particularly a low angle one can also be employed if the wood isn’t too thick.

For the best results when using a plane for shooting, the soles should be square to the sides of the plane body, the iron sharpened to the equivalent of an 8000 grit waterstone and stropped. The side and sole of the plane waxed and the iron set for a thin shaving of .001 or less.

When shooting, a firm right hand grip on the plane on the side of the sole positioned near the plane bed at mid-plane, with the shooting board firmly hooked against the bench or fixtured in the face vise. The left hand fixtures the work piece against the fence.

In order to reduce the possibility of tearout, consider making your first cuts to the work with the index finger only of your left hand between the work piece and the fence near the plane chute, so as to skew the work towards you at a slight angle. Take a few passes with the plane here, so as to relieve a slight amount of material at the back of the area being squared. Then place the work piece full against the fence and shoot the edge, stopping when you have planed to the area you relieved. With experience, you will be able to determine for yourself when this method will be most helpful.

When shooting angles other than square, it may occasionally be helpful to fold an eleven inch strip of 150 grit sandpaper cut 1-1/4 inches wide in half, lengthwise, and place it between the work piece and the fence to help resist slipping. This is particularly helpful when working steep angles.

I am offering this shooting board (the deluxe shooter model is shown) for sale in right or left handed versions, please have a look in the Evenfall Studios Online Store. These jigs are craftsman made by me, built for accuracy and longevity. Meant to be a durable, serviceable tool that helps promote the ability for any woodworker to work at the finest levels of woodworking accuracy.

Custom offerings are possibilities! Please feel free to email me and discuss your needs. We also have some accessories available for the boards, such as taller fences, and a bench hook board lift that matches the shooting board height, as an aid for leveling long work is also optional and made only if ordered. Please feel free to inquire about these and other custom options.

To place an order, have a look in the store at the various models we have available, and simply click to order. Your order will be placed via a Paypal Shopping Cart System. For purchases, we accept PayPal which also handles most major credit cards, and United States Postal Service (USPS) Money Orders. Online ordering is preferred.

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Happy Woodworking!

Welcome Back! I just thought I would let everyone know about recent changes and updates to the Woodworks Library.

The Woodworks Library is a collection of woodworking books, which includes a number of topical books that are not specifically about woodworking, but are related to, and of possible interest to woodworkers.

There are a number of ways to get to the Woodworks library, and likely one of the easiest if you have already found yourself here reading this is to look into the upper margin of this web page, and look for the row of “Brown Blocks” up there that have listings printed in them.

They are all links to other pages related to this site and the one you want is the fifth one from the left entitled “Library”. Clicking that link will take you to a Library Interlink page that will either link directly to the top of the “Library” and it also contains a “Clickable Topic Index” that allows you to navigate directly to the top of the list for 15 different kinds of Topical Content found in the “Library”

Also if you rather the direct link to the Library is: http://www.evenfallstudios.com/woodworks_library/woodworks_library and in a pinch if you have not got a bookmark handy where you are, you can get to the “Woodworks Library” by using Google. It is the Top Link at Google if you use the name as the search term.

A new feature of the Woodworks Library is improved navigation. There are 15 sub topics in the Library and a clickable index at the top of the Library to quickly navigate to each of the topical sections you want. It is a lot faster than scrolling, but you can do that too. There is also a return to the navigation link at the bottom of each topical section.

Additionally, as I mentioned earlier, I copied the navigational index that is in the Library, to the Library interlink page here at Woodworks, so you can go direct to topic from the library interlink page as well.

There have been a large number of book additions to all the topical areas of the Library. Highlights include a Copy of Moxon in Woodworking, as well as many other great texts, from joinery to farm woodworking. The Carpentry section has many great books that will outline most any thing you want, from how to use every way possible when laying out with a carpenter’s square to how to build stair cases. The Understanding Wood section has seen some Forest Product Labs additions on adhesives and wood hardness, and some older texts about glues from a century ago.

There are a lot of new texts on files and saw filing in Hand Tools. If you ever wanted to know what there was published on the use of many files, it is in there. Some interesting texts on sheet metal work in Blacksmithing, Understanding sheet metal work has a lot of application outside the direct application. Books on drafting and lay out in Blueprint Reading, several new additions on painting and finishing, a new topic that includes books on leather work and upholstery, and well as a host of historic texts in the Furniture and Design section, for helping study period furniture, even a book containing a lot of Chippendale’s original drawings.

The Shop Machinery section has a book on the basic operation of most all shop machines that is very applicable to the basic operations of today’s machines. Not much has changed. The books even include a lot of operator tricks. There is also a new book in there regarding the set up of Shop Machinery when run off of a central belt system with leather belts. The Turning section gained a few new-old texts that will be of interest to those who want to know how turning was approached 150 years ago.

The Machine Tools section gained some great machine shop references and there is are some large files in there so prepare for the page loads to take some time. Some of what is in the Pattern Making section may be good information to the machine works as well.

There is so much more there than I have mentioned, and like a good movie, I don’t want to destroy the adventure of allowing you having a look for yourself. So please, feel free to venture over to the “Woodworks Library” whenever you like. It is 100% Free 24/7 and contains a lot of information to help you become a more complete woodworker.

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Happy Woodworking!

I know it seems like an odd name to call the process, but it is based in science, and what happens to wood while being worked isn’t really any different when you are going slow with hand tools.

Planing woods is a process that has a number of considerations, which require their needs met all at once, in order for the process to be successful. It isn’t just one thing happening at a time. There are causes, effects and recognizing which you have. The answer isn’t simple until we understand all the usual suspects involved.

If you haven’t already, read chapter 9 of Understanding Wood By R. Bruce Hoadley. It is a real good primer about how wood reacts to planing and machining to brush up on. Overall, the book will improve your skills as a woodworker. It is available in many places, and both Taunton Press as well as Amazon.com are good sources.

Wood reacts to machining in observably repeatable ways. If we understand these ways and learn to recognize the conditions, our own success in working wood is repeatable as well.

During planing operations, it is desirable for wood to be severed right at the cutting edge of the plane blade. It would seem obvious that this is happening. It is when things go well, but this does not always occur in practice.

When you plane, you make a shaving. Technically the shaving is called a chip. Shavings curl, but there is science behind the curling. The tightness of the shaving’s curl is significant. The tightness of the curl is a derivative of how frequently the chip is broken.

What breaks the chip is the blade bevel angle, just after it severs the wood fiber. The angular change from wood being at 0 degrees on the boards face, cut, then suddenly at the angle the final bevel angle the iron presents, causes the break in the chip. The wood being planed is running into a wall. The steeper the wall, the closer the breaks are, and the tighter the curl. The further the breaks are the looser the curl.

The chip (shaving) is referred to in types. There are 3 types of chip.

Type one is loose curl, and is the result of being planed at a low angle such as 45 degrees, which is known as “Common” pitch.

(Yes there are planes meant to plane at 38 degrees but this is generally meant for planing for end grain, which is a cross grain planing operation, and as such, is not generating a chip, per se. It is severing wood fibers crosswise, and as such is not considered applicable to this discussion, despite possible exceptions to this rule.)

Type two is a medium curl, and is the result of being planed at medium angle such as 50-55 degrees, which is known as “York” or “Middle” pitch.

Type three is a tight curl, and is the result of being planed at a high angle such as 62-63 degrees, which is known as “Half” pitch.

75 degrees is the next significant pitch angle for planing operations, and is considered scraper country.

Now there are a few important considerations going forward.

The lower the angle that the bevel angle the plane severs wood fibers at, the easier it is to push, and this is desirable. Planing is work! But the lower angle that makes work easy, isn’t always capable of getting the desired results in every wood.

Something that can occur when planing, even with a sharp blade, is tearout. Tearout is defined as when the angle of the blade lifts a wood fiber that is supposed to be being cut by the cutting edge, but the chip is not breaking like it is supposed to, because perhaps the wood fiber is too strong, or the planing angle is too shallow for the strength of the fiber being planed.

When the chip does not break at the cutting edge, and instead breaks after the fiber lifts, by riding up the bevel ahead of being cut, it also causes lifting and peeling ahead of the cutting edge. The blade is no longer in control of the depth, and usually the tearing that results from the lifting fibers is deeper than the intended surface desired.

This is at the heart of why planes are developed to plane at specific angles, such as described earlier. The steeper angle is meant to be an alternative available to generate a different chip type. The higher angle, forces the chip to break at a more frequent interval. Every time the chip breaks more frequently, that is a shorter length chip and the shorter length chip does not allow the fiber to ride up the blade. When the chip does ride up without being broken, tearout is likely happening.

The essence of stopping tearout is about understanding wood grain, and the planing bevel angle that will generate the chip type most compatible for the grain type being worked.

The rest of the process of tearout reduction falls to a couple factors. Tool and Human.

Tool wise, The Plane can also help reduce tearout by adjusting for a tight mouth if the plane can be adjusted. Stanley Bailey style planes use adjustable frogs and some steel planes which bed the iron bevel up offer an adjustable sole. I am not going to offer specific clearance numbers here because I want to avoid helping to develop a belief that specific mouth clearances are perfect. If you plane has variable adjustment, then it is best to experiment. You will be working in the .003-.010 range on high-end smoothers.

Another tool factor is blade sharpness. Sharp tools sever fibers. Dull cutting edges tend to blunt them an rip them… Remember, reducing tearout is the want here.

Finally, tool factors wise, Planing depth. Smoothing is a final dimensioning process. You are creeping or sneaking up on things here, so the thinnest shaving is going to offer the least resistance to being cut, and as such, leave the smoothest glossiest surface.

The human factors are about perception and action. Reading the grain is a biggie. If the grain is straight then planing with the grain is usually doable. Just remember against the grain is usually as effective as petting a porcupine, and so it goes. However if planing with the grain is problematic, sometime changing the angle a bit can help.

When changing planing angles, sometime a shallow angle off the grain direction will help reduce tear out, and there is no rule stating that going fully across the grain is taboo, as long as it will provide the finish quality you are looking for.

On flatsawn boards there is a place where tearout can hide, some people refer to it as “cathedral grain”. What cathedral grain is, is where the board was milled and the blade passed through the growth rings and a shallow skew angle. It looks reminiscent of the gothic arches seen on cathedrals. The concern with cathedral grain is that early and the late wood of the growth ring lay right there, and they come up all the way to the surface.

Something common that happens when planing over cathedral grain, is that when planing with the grain, the plane whisks over these areas, and the thin late wood of the growth ring just separates and pops loose. Seems the same as tearout, but it isn’t. It is the late growth ring’s (dark) inability to adhere to the next year’s early growth ring (light) at such a thin and shallow angle.

The trick to approaching these areas is to do it at angles the run closer to longwise with the “cathedral”, with a sharp iron set for a thin shaving and the plane body skewed to the direction of planing. Sometimes a light wipe with mineral spirits can soften wood fibers enough temporarily to assist in this. I have even seen where rays and chattoyance have given similar planing issues, and so again, be vigilant.

In curly grain, many of the same aforementioned strategies will play. Be willing to come at the grain at any angles that will work. However, please reach for half pitch planes in this situation, and don’t hesitate to simply stop and move to scraping planes, even card scrapers if that helps. Sometimes it is simply acceptable to resort to sanding.

Has this information helped you? Would you consider helping support our efforts?

Like any website hosted on the internet, The ‘Woodworks Blog’ has it’s expenses. The main way we offset expenses, is directly through purchases of ‘Artisan Made’ tools and jigs from the ‘Woodworks Store’.

Another way to help support the ‘Woodworks Blog’ is to appeal to the generosity of our readers. It’s quick and easy to make a donation directly to the ‘Woodworks Blog’ by using the PayPal donation button. Your generosity is greatly appreciated!

Thanks again for all your support! We really appreciate it!

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Happy Woodworking!

Got Shop Comfort?

Woodworking season comes around yearly, with Labor Day behind us, many of the summer outdoor oriented activities and chores are soon to be waning. The colder weather will be along soon enough to push us in and keep us indoors.

This is good, it spawns the need to be creative through other ways, and hobbies fill that gap. Problem is, many of us have to use a space for our woodworking hobby that is not exactly comfortable during a good bit of the indoor season. When we are cold, we don’t often enjoy what we want to enjoy as long or as much. We are more in the mode of just do it and get er’ done, rather than enjoying ourselves, where thinking through the process, being in the moment, and feeling like we relieved some stress are all big parts of having a good time. If it isn’t a good time, let’s face it, we generally avoid it.

To add, when you are cold, humans do not think as critically, and can even become distracted from slower thinking. Woodworking, like other tasks that require concentration, really does want your attention in many, many ways, because it is a very detailed endeavor, which can be inherently dangerous as well, so how you help yourself overcome these issues while trying to enjoy the woodworking season is a question that is a good thing to have on your mind.

My want is to help you stay warm in the shop. It was my want too. I bought this as a ‘what the heck’ purchase, meaning I did my research, but I really had no idea if my purchase was the best choice or if it was going to work adequately for my purposes. I do not enjoy being cold, and after asking around, no one really knew what to tell me. Electricity costs in my area rule that out, and Permanent installations are out for me as well. I got lucky on both counts, because this heater did work out for me big time. In fact, it exceeded my expectations. Now that I have used it several years it, I’m sharing my observations with you.

That is the Mr. Heater brand, Big Buddy Heater. In my shop, it is hooked via an accessory hose to a 5-gallon propane bottle. I just use the propane bottle off my BBQ as my fuel source, because both items seem to get the most use during opposite seasons, and as such it just makes sense to use the bottle I already have. I also bought the wall wart DC adapter that powers the small fan in the unit. The unit is user configurable for portability, it can also utilize 2 disposable type propane bottles housed in each side, and the fan can be powered by “D” cell batteries. I did run it off Duracell’s for a while, and the battery life is quite long.

It is a ceramic element heater with built in piezo electric starter. It has it’s own starter with thermocouple, three heat settings that give you 4000, 9000, or 18,000 BTU per hour. It is CSA certified for indoor and outdoor use. It has oxygen and tip over safety switches; you can even mount the unit to the wall to get it off the floor. It would also be a great thing to have during an extended power outage.

My shop space is a 2-car garage. It measures 20×20 so call it 400 square feet, I have 9-foot ceilings so cubed I have 2700 cubic feet. I have insulated walls covered with drywall, and an un-insulated metal garage door. My observations are that the 18,000 BTU setting can raise the temperature in my space 8-10 degrees F per hour on average. Outside was around freezing, my garage is generally 15-20 degrees warmer than outside is in the winter due to the hot water heater and a few other appliances that help warm the space a bit. Once I was between 60-70 degrees, turning down to the 4000 BTU setting would often maintain the temperature or perhaps very slowly gain or lose a degree or so an hour based on the outside temp and the time of the day.

The unit does have a fan, and I do advocate using it. Mr. Heater refers to it as a blower fan. It is not a strong fan; so do not think forced air, because if you do it will disappoint you. The fan is helpful though. The fan does help draw the cold air near the floor, into the heater rather than have it heat the air it can get by it just being a radiant heater. This increases efficiency. I also use a fan in my shop to help circulate the air, and this really was a big help in keeping the entire space in good, comfortable shape. I would definitely use a fan with this heater in the same room, and oh, the fan does not need to be near the heater, all you are trying to do is keep the hot air from stratifying near the ceiling.

Mr Heater claims that depending on the settings you use, and it is going to vary, that the 5-gallon or 20 lb bottle will get you 25-110 hours of use. Not bad really, when you consider the amount of shop time most woodworkers average per setting generally speaking. It is also not bad when you consider that the Big Buddy is making heat from propane pretty efficiently with the fuel it is given, so if heating your space is of value to you, improving your spaces’ ability to retain heat should be as well.

For your own research, I’ll include Mr. Heaters online product sheet of the big Buddy Heater here: Big Buddy Indoor Safe Heater and let you know that the heater, short hose and electrical converter for the fan will run you in the ballpark of $160, though you may find alternative or sale pricing, taxes and shipping from nearly anywhere.

Your space may be just like mine, (400 sq ft) or it may be smaller, larger, with more or less insulation, and your weather may be far more severe. This may be all you need, or you may need two, or less or something bigger. The main things I want you to take from this is that this heater works well, given the range of heating capability it has, coupled with the space and conditions I describe.

You are welcome to think about your own space and how you may need to augment the non-scientific observations I gave for performance to best gauge your own best guess at estimated outcomes. You are welcome to use my comments section or my contact page to ask any questions that you may want help answering, I will give them my best, based on my own observations. Please feel free to comunicate any time. I felt the product is a good fit for a 2 car garage sized space, a good value for the money spent, and I would buy it again.

I own two of these units. I use one to heat my shop everyday, because I work in my shop full time. I have used it going on four seasons now, (as of 2011) three of those seasons daily. I use one in the house as well. I have a Carbon Monoxide detector for both units, 5 feet from the Big Buddy and they have never been set off. I have used them a lot, I’ve had no concerns with Carbon Monoxide. None.

If you are concerned with moisture in the air, as heaters like this can add water vapor in the air to a degree, I recommend using a product like Dri-Z-Air. These are very inexpensive and you can purchase refill packs for them. I have used Dri-Z-Air products many times over the years and they work well. They are popular with people storing boats and RV’s that are stored for winter. There is a list of online retailers on their company website to aid you in finding them. A good choice would be Amazon.com. These will help capture the moisture and humidity, to keep your tooling safe.

Remember always that waxes, oils, contained spaces like drawers and cabinets for tool storage, desiccant dehumidifiers, anti corrosion emitters and even GoldenRod Dehumidifiers are great ways to help insure that corrosion is kept at bay.

After 5 winter seasons of heavy use, this heater has been a real trooper.

So if you are thinking you want to enjoy a warmer woodworking season, a heater with 4000-18,000 BTU capabilities may be just what you are looking for.

Has this information helped you? Would you consider helping support our efforts?

Like any website hosted on the internet, The ‘Woodworks Blog’ has it’s expenses. The main way we offset expenses, is directly through purchases of ‘Artisan Made’ tools and jigs from the ‘Woodworks Store’.

Another way to help support the ‘Woodworks Blog’ is to appeal to the generosity of our readers. It’s quick and easy to make a donation directly to the ‘Woodworks Blog’ by using the PayPal donation button. Your generosity is greatly appreciated!

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Happy Woodworking!

For the average user of a retractable tape, there can be some usages of a tape measure that unwittingly reduce its accuracy. Basically, many people are not even aware of these details. I did say usages, but there are also problems inherent with the way a tape measure is made, that for fine work, render it a tool which is not always the best tool for the job. When we ask a tool to wear too many hats, it fails to do as well by us as we may think it should. It is good to know what some of the weaknesses are so we can learn to accept what are and are not good practices for the tape measure.

It may seem funny to have thought about tape measures as much as I have. As a life long woodworker, and over 25 years of civil construction and surveying experience, I have literally worn out a bunch of measuring equipment from using these tools all day every day. After using tapes in dirty environments where I took well over 100 measurements a day, daily and weekly, I have learned what I value and what has risen to be the best for me. I am just sharing what I have learned with you.

When you are buying a tape measure, there are several available features that you can consider. For shop use, furniture making and cabinet making, you will rarely need a long tape, but the long tapes have features that enhance accuracy. They come with 1-inch wide tapes, which are easier to read for eye relief, harder to distort and are more rigid. Often the 1-inch tapes include more rivets on the hook, which lend themselves to resistance to wear and stretch. Unless you need a shorter tape for handy reasons, I recommend the bigger tape just for its added stability.

Consider the hook of the tape measure. The hook can be worn, bent, or the rivet holes that hold it can be stretched. This can unwittingly induce errors, and many people are simply unaware of this frailty of tape measures. Lufkin has several models with 1-inch wide tapes that include four rivets on the hook. They are the only maker I have ever encountered that installs hooks with four rivets.

All the four rivet Lufkins I have tested and compared have always compared exactly to Starrett steel rulers, even after *very* extensive use, and are trusted most exclusively by surveyors and engineers, meaning, I feel they are trustworthy in your woodworking shop also. I also have a Lufkin twelve footer that is a useful length, as accurate as any when new, but it uses 3/4 wide tape, and has only 2 rivets attaching the hook to the tape. It is accurate when new and well cared for, but I don’t expect its accuracy to be as sustainable as the bigger tapes. I limit its use to the “Handy” instances.

Getting back to tape measures in general, even when trying to be careful, The hook can make any measurement not taken from an edge inherently inaccurate, because the hook will not allow the tape to lay flat on the surface of what it is measuring. When the tape cannot lay flat, it induces an error through forcing a trigonometric path that is like a hypotenuse length, which is not the actual surface; it is instead an independent path above that of the flat surface one. While usually subtle, this is similar to the error induced when you measure from an edge but are not perpendicular to the edge when you read the tape.

That gap we see can equal measurement FAIL.

Speaking of the devil, from the hook on, any measurement pulled which is not perpendicular to the edge of the board will introduce a trigonometric error, which is going to pivot from either edge of the hook. It also can induce a Parallax error when the marks are not right on the surface being measured. Either way, it is slight, but can be enough to be annoying in fine work, especially when the error can become cumulative.

Just when you think you understand all the gremlin’s and their ways, the side to side curve of the tape, which is designed to stiffen it, holds the markings up off the surface being measured by about 1/4th inch, on a 1 inch wide tape, and unless the user is careful to push the marks on the tape down flat to the wood, this too can induce a parallax error when marking.

As an exercise, grab your tape and pull out 2-3 feet. Lock it, and hook it over the edge of the bench. Now examine how flat it lays, and how close the markings are to the surface it will be measuring. See? The tape case itself holds the tape of the surface at least 1/4th inch. It can twist, bend and flex and it needs pulled taught and laid flat to be usable at all. You really need to apply more English to it than a cue ball in a game of snooker. I’ll not even discuss how often I wish I had a third hand or wish I didn’t have to use it upside down and backwards.

For those who wonder, what I mean by parallax error is this. I am referring to parallax in terms of visual perception, particularly related to instruments. We all have a strong eye, which we favor over the other. We do this via habit, we do not think about it. Interestingly, we have two eyes though, and one can tend to throw the other one off when we are looking at a single point at close range when we need to do something precisely.

What this means, is that when we look at the markings on a rule, unless we are super careful, we my actually be looking at the rule markings from a slight angle. In order to measure anything with total accuracy, the measuring tool must have its marks absolutely flat to the surface being measured, the closer to the surface, the better, and the rule must be viewed at a 90-degree angle to the markings. This may mean favoring the use of just one eye when you measure.

If the marks on the measuring device are not absolutely against the surface needing measured, then the difficulty in determining parallax is not being overcome, and will create difficulty for the person measuring to determine.

It is hard to be really certain if the pencil is marking perfectly on line, when it is marking 1/4 inch below the 1/32 line, it is marking for on a tape. Harder if you don’t have 20/20 vision, harder still if there are shadows in the lighting, harder again if it is a precarious situation in the first place.

In carpentry, many things can be fine with some parallax error induced; things close enough are close enough. Much of carpentry is accurate enough if you work to the eighth of an inch. A good bit more of it will forgive 1/16th. It isn’t always critical. In fine woodwork, it is a situation that can leave a board to short or long, depending on the favored eye and the side the line was meant to be cut on. It happens because when we are marking and laying out, parallax errors become cumulative. After a cloud of these errors, which are commonly as small as 1/128th in size, we can easily find we are 1/32nd or more out of alignment. Worse still, the layout is the most accurate part of the work; the cutting will rarely be as precise as the layout, especially with hand tools. This makes good layout all the more important.

Remember that at the fine woodworking level, wood is often more expensive than the tools we work it with, and we may be many surfacing and dimensioning procedures put into a board or boards for fine fit and finish on a project. When errors are induced, starting over isn’t always as simple as grabbing a new board and taking up where we left off. Care and attention to details can make or break our finished product.

Please notice in the photos. The ruler lies flat and close to the work. It can be used to measure anywhere it can fit. This is why it is useful and helpful, though not necessary to have the rulers available in various lengths. I prefer using the shortest ruler possible to measure the length needed. I use the 6-inch rules the most and as long as the measurements are shorter than six inches, they are the best fit. If the measurement I need is greater than six but less than twelve inches then I step to the next size up and so on.

The hook rule is not meant to be used laid flat, it is meant to sit on edge and have it’s hook lay over an edge to reference the measurement, but again, the marks come all the way to the surface of the work. It is the surest way to be measuring exactly from an edge and it cleared up a lot of small errors for me once I started using them.

The trick to this is learning when a steel ruler or a tape measure is the best tool for the job, and how it is liable to induce unwanted errors simply through it’s use. Some projects present these critical situations, and knowing how to overcome them makes your final product better.

Overall, this is why I advocate using steel rulers wherever possible. They are inherently more accurate than tapes not only by virtue of how they are made and what they are made from, but also by the way the way they are made forces them to be used. They are straight, flat, and rigid. The lack of flex and curvature make them inherently more accurate. It is accurate tools and practices, used with repeatable procedures, which create repeatable results. It is by this combination of virtues they are inherently more accurate, even when you are not trying to be. Consider using the tape measure with more care, and the addition of some steel hook and non-hook rulers to enhance the accuracy of your work in the shop.

Has this information helped you? Would you consider helping support our efforts?

Like any website hosted on the internet, The ‘Woodworks Blog’ has it’s expenses. The main way we offset expenses, is directly through purchases of ‘Artisan Made’ tools and jigs from the ‘Woodworks Store’.

Another way to help support the ‘Woodworks Blog’ is to appeal to the generosity of our readers. It’s quick and easy to make a donation directly to the ‘Woodworks Blog’ by using the PayPal donation button. Your generosity is greatly appreciated!

Thanks again for all your support! We really appreciate it!

We enjoy your comments! Please Contact Us.

Happy Woodworking!

Adapting the Thien Baffle to a 5-gallon bucket isn’t hard, and overall; it is going to reduce a lot of the suction clogging dust that gets to the filter of any shop vac. I feel it is a worthy addition to the shop vac portion of your dust collection system, so here is the stuff you need to know.

This may seem a little over detailed for some readers and I apologize, but there was some strange engineering involved, and it is a bit involved regarding the measuring and layout, so I will detail my approach, and leave you, dear readers, to you own devices. Welcome to blaze your own trail or follow mine. For my part, all I can say is I am happy I did it, and feel it can benefit anyone who is inclined to make one, so I am sharing it with you.

First you will need to obtain a 5-gallon bucket, which is available from most any hardware store, and the Woodcraft Mini Dust Collection Separator Lid. (part# 143868), which is of course available from Woodcraft. Once you have those; please take not of the following critical measurements, and double check them for yourself.

The bucket will not be perfectly round, but on average, at the rim, it will be 11-1/16th in diameter, at the least if the bucket is held to nominal roundness. If you find the bucket is deformed beyond this roundness, I would reject it, and get a different one. This is easy to check with something like a telescopic pointer, or magnet, if you have one. Those handle inside measurements really well, and then simply compare them to a steel ruler or tape measure.

The lid and baffle has to seal on the bucket lip, and side. The lid will come with open cell foam on the under side of the lid to seal the separator, and it will work to seal up the device just fine.

From the rim of the bucket, the Thien baffle will protrude down 4-3/8ths inches. I concluded this by measuring the inner dimensions of the lid, the rim ledges, and the inlet pipe protrusion, left a touch of space and added the thickness of the material, which the baffle plate is made from. With the protrusion into the bucket figured out, and the offsets molded into the lid itself, the length of the stand off dowels that connect the baffle plate to the cyclone lid can be found.

For the visual idea, I measured down 4-3/8ths inches from the top of the bucket and made a dashed mark, just to see how much space the device really protrudes. I can say that there is such a thing as a 6-gallon bucket, and it is the same as a five in every way, except taller, and is a viable capacity enhancing alternative.

To make the spacer stand offs, the dowels that connect the baffle to the lid, I selected 3/4 inch hardwood dowels and cut three of them 4-3/4 inches long. Please note, yes, I did say 4-3/4 inches long, because this compensated for the offsets in the lid. Find the center of each end of the dowel with a center finder, center punch this, and drill a 3/32nds inch holes into both ends of each dowel. I clamped the dowels in a small wooden hand screw and drilled them on the drill press approximately 1-1/4 inch deep. This hole size is the appropriate size for use with fine thread drywall screws, fine threads grip better in hardwood, and we need this to be a 1-1/4 inch screw because we are screwing into end grain, and want to elongate the area where we stress the long grain connection. When you are finished, coat these with Teak Oil and Wax

The baffle plate will be made in the same shape as the Thien design. Remember the dashed lines you drew on the bucket at 4-3/8ths inches below the rim? Grab your telescopic pointer and verify that you have a 10-7/8th inch nominal diameter at that point. I did, so that was the major diameter of my baffle circle. This dimension compensates for the taper in the sides of the bucket.

Laying out for the baffle plate is not too hard, let’s go over it. Cut a square of 1/4 inch MDF 11-7/8 inches by 11-7/8 inches on the table saw. Don’t cut it a foot, because you want to have scraps that will be 1 foot by 1 foot and 1 foot by 2 feet, as they are handier sized scraps.

Take your MDF Square and using a steel ruler, find the exact center of this and mark it for a compass radius point. Set your compass for exactly 5-7/16ths inches, set it in the radius point and mark your circle. If you do not have a compass that will swing this radius, small holes drilled on the same hole centers in scrap-anything will do.

Using a protractor, you need to mark the edges of the circle with a tick mark at 120-degree spacings, just as if it were a Mercedes Benz Logo. One at the top and eh, one around 4 O’clock, and 8 O’clock positions. Set a pencil on the radius point in the center of the circle and set your steel rule against it, and locate the opposite end of the rule on the tick marks on the circumference. Measure in 1-1/8th inch from the circumference and draw a line from there to the edge of the circumference in the 4 and 8 O’clock locations.

Reset your compass from 5-7/16ths inches to 4-5/16ths inches, replace it in the radius and position the lead at the 8 O’clock position. Draw a line from the 8 O’clock (240 degree radian) clockwise through the 12 O’clock (360 degree radian) to the 4 O’clock (120 degree radian) and stop. Mark a few “x” marks in the 240-degree area you just drew, as you will be cutting it off.

Using a band saw, or a jig saw, even a scroll saw will work if you have one, carefully and smoothly as possible cut out the baffle plate. Once you have it cut out, carefully smooth the edges with a mill file. If you have only sandpaper, hand sand with a block.

Test fit this baffle at the dotted line you marked in the bucket earlier; it should fit with close tolerance along the 120-degree portion left proud. If you like, sand this with 180 grit and coat it with Teak Oil and Wax, or wait until you are about ready for final assembly.

Now we begin the lid alterations. The lid requires a little fabrication on it, but it isn’t too drastic. However if you choose not to, the Thien baffle is not going to work effectively at all. The lid as supplied will allow the shop vac to suck most of the debris straight through the device. Baffle or no. The problem is that the 5-gallon bucket only has about 18 inches of circumference to decelerate particulate matter in the air steam before the stock lid inlet/outlet arrangement allows the vac to suck the air out. If the inlet and outlet are in line with each other, and they are, then this is not much time to gain on cleaning the waste from the air stream. We need to help buy it a little more time. This is why we need to modify the air inlet and outlet locations and add the baffle.

Turn the lid over and pull the elbow pipe loose. It is just a compression fit. Set it aside. Remover the two screws which hold the handle on the lid. The handle will not be reused, however it is leaving two vacuum leaks in the lid. The simple fix is to get a tube of Amazing Goop Adhesive from the hardware store, and glue a dime in each hole. Yes, a dime is a perfect fit. It adds value to the project too, A lid that was not worth a dime, is now worth at least two!

In the location where the handle was, there is a circular indentation in the center of the lid. Using a 2-1/2 inch diameter hole saw without a center drill, preferably chucked in your drill press, drill this center indentation out. Do not use a center drill. Once you have drilled this out, do not damage the blank that came out.

Using that mill file we used to dress the MDF earlier, clean up the edges of the plastic disc you just made and set it into the top of one of the molded-in vacuum fittings on the lid. See how it rests on the landing in there? Nice eh?

Grab the Amazing Goop, and lay a thin bead on that land, place the disc over that and press, then lay a thin bead of RTV silicone on the top side of the disc along the edge after the goop cures up enough. It will be sealed up nice.

Now that you have prepared the lid, for the new exhaust air outlet, center the Woodcraft 2-1/2 inch Router Fence Dust Extraction Fittings (part# 85O13) over the new 2-1/2 inch hole you just drilled in the lid and mark the hole locations for mounting the outlet with a sharpie marker, just the hole centers is fine. Then, using a center punch, mark them. You can choose to drill these free hand or on the DP, whichever is most convenient. Make the holes 3/16th for 10-24 hardware. De-burr the holes, test fit dry, then spread a thin coat of amazing goop to the underside of this outlet, position it and bolt in on. Set aside the lid and allow the goop to kick, the off gassing fumes during cure are not fun to breathe.

The balancing act, or assembling the baffle went something like this. Why am I detailing this? Well I fooled with it 2 hours before I was happy with the process. I want to share what I learned in hope of reducing your frustration, because, it will be an exercise in patience.

On the underside of the lid, there are two plastic runners cast into the lid, which run perpendicular to the lid as braces, and are parallel to each other on both sides of the center part where the air inlets and outlets are cast. It is best to position the dowels next to the outside surfaces of these runners. You have three dowels, so you need to balance the lid on a tripod. While positioning both the lid and the runner against the dowels, and the dowels on the baffle as best you can. What I felt was the best positioning, looks like the assembled Thien baffle photo I have supplied for study here.

The lid needs the elbow tube assembled back onto it. It is a compression fit so there is no need to glue, in fact, I would not recommend gluing it. I would position it as such so it seems to follow the radius of the bucket side a bit. Find two things about the same size and weight of block planes, (yes, even actual block planes) and have them ready. You will want to carefully set them on the lid once you have the lid up on the dowels above the baffle plate. This is because the dowels and lid will need some precision positioning and this will help stabilize things.

The measurements on mine can be different on mine than yours due to nuance differences in perception and layout. But first thing first is to position the dowels for their permanent mounting on the lid.

Refer to my photo again. See the dowel mounted next to the inlet elbow? That is dowel number one. Dowel number two is mounted at the opposite end of the same runner. The hole centers on my separator are approximately 3-5/8ths inches apart, and are not centered on the lid. They cannot be centered. Dowel number three is mounted against the back runner, and positioned so as to balance the lid. On my baffle, I found this spot to be near the corner on the vac outlet we added to the center of the lid, and on the vac inlet elbow side. When you find what feels like a solid balance for you, and this is a little tricky, carefully reach under the lid with a sharpie marker, because it shows up well, and try to circle the locations by tracing the place where the dowels meet the lid.

Ok that was fun… Right? Still with me? Hope so. Ok in the dead middle of these circles you just drew, use your center punch to mark the center on the circle and drill these for 1/8th inch and de-burr. I used drywall screws with countersink washers to mount the dowels to the lid. Go ahead and use the hardware you like, but remember if you are following these instructions, we center drilled the dowels for drywall screws.

Half done now and continuing, the next step is to position the lid over the baffle plate so as to be in the proper rotation for the air stream and the proper offset so the baffle touches the sidewall of the bucket in the wide section. Again, please refer to and study the photo. Note the position of the inlet elbow above the edge of the wide 120-degree section of the baffle. This is the position I felt would maximize the running room for the outlet, without causing decelerated turbulence in the narrow gap area of the baffle. Consider that everything you suck up has to decelerate along the wall of the bucket and fall through a 1-1/8th slot to get below the baffle. All this in 36 inches of circumference and windstorm.

That is the rotational orientation. You will want to assure that the next adjustment does not alter the rotational orientation. Now we have to tackle the offset orientation. Grab a four to six inch engineers’ square, or a square you have that is nearly equivalent. Stand it upright on the table so that the blade touches the edge of the lid in an orientation that is perpendicular to the radius of the lid and the wide 120-degree portion of the baffle plate.

Next, lay a steel ruler on the table along side the square and affirm that a 9/16ths inch offset is created from the outside edge of the outermost portion of the lid to the edge of the wide part of the baffle below. It should measure 9/16th on average along the entire arc.

How do we know this offset? The rim of the bucket is 11/32 wide. The thickness of the lip on the rim of the lid is 1/8th. The taper in the bucket, from the rim to the location 4-3/8ths inches below is 3/32nds. Add that all up you have 18/32nds of offset, or 9/16ths. Positioned as such, the baffle will touch the inside edge of the bucket circumference, exactly, with the lid on, and this is what you want for maximum efficiency. Now with a pencil, mark the dowel locations by circling them, find the center of those circles, punch and drill them for 1/8th inch diameter, de-burr, and sand the MDF baffle.

Now if you like, go ahead and apply Teak Oil and Wax to the baffle plate, if you chose to wait, or repair with the same from the de-burr and sanding, and assemble the baffle plate on the dowels.

There it is, the Thien Separator Lid for a 5 gallon bucket. this is the last time you will see it clean, and it was a lot to build in a small space, but it will be a good addition to your vac, and help develop your chops for future tougher projects.

If you wonder how this separator works out in the long haul, it has served us well. It now handles separation duties for us on a commercial basis and has for over 4 years. The upgrade was a to a 7-gallon bucket, which is taller than a 5, and that seemed to help efficiency. The separator lid remains as built. It pulls through 20 feet of hose on a daily basis. There is a seven foot connector hose between it and the Vac. We just dump it when it gets full. If you’re worried if it can cut it, We find that under production environment conditions, it does.

Has this information helped you? Would you consider helping support our efforts?

Like any website hosted on the internet, The ‘Woodworks Blog’ has it’s expenses. The main way we offset expenses, is directly through purchases of ‘Artisan Made’ tools and jigs from the ‘Woodworks Store’.

Another way to help support the ‘Woodworks Blog’ is to appeal to the generosity of our readers. It’s quick and easy to make a donation directly to the ‘Woodworks Blog’ by using the PayPal donation button. Your generosity is greatly appreciated!

Thanks again for all your support! We really appreciate it!

We enjoy your comments! Please Contact Us.

Happy Woodwor… er, ah, Vacuuming!

Like most of us in woodworking, the shop vac is generally a rather central figure, and pulls the short straw on helping keep dust and waste collected in the workspace. The shop vac’s primary design is based around vacuuming smallish sized particulates, usually dirt into a canister, with a motor drawing air through a filter while trying to evacuate that air from the canister. Overall, the design works pretty well for most of the uses asked of it. They will even vacuum up liquids.

When I think about it, I have made it possible, directly or indirectly to be able to use a number of my power tools with my shop vac. Specifically, I have a 1/4 sheet palm sander adapted, 5 inch Random Orbital Sander, PC Saw Boss circular saw, DeWalt 621 plunge routers with a no longer available Leigh RVA1 router vacuum attachment, Hitachi chop saw with vac port in the hood, router table fence, 10 inch band saw, even the drill press, all with the ability to utilize the shop vac for dust and chip collection.

Then, there is the general clean up from all the woodworking activities that do not have the direct ability to collect dust. Drilling, jig saws, all the various hand tools and since I consider all the power tools to be efficient with shop vac DC in the 85-90% chip and dust collection range, there is all the waste that escapes that needs to be cleaned up there as well, So you see, without even discussing the high volume uses on the full sized dust collection system, The shop vac is really carrying a lot of the load here.

Woodworking materials present a different challenge to the shop vac. The woodworking tool industry has adapted many tools complete with proprietary adapters to operate with a shop vac hooked to them directly. Sanders, in my opinion, should not be operated without a vacuum attached to them or some form of DC in operation during the sanding process. The atmosphere in your shop will become very unhealthy if you don’t, to say nothing of the mess. Sanders are the generator of some of the finest particulate sizes you deal with in the shop, but the saws and routers create particles in many sizes at a relatively high volume. All dust collection is doable, but there are trade offs that occur and decrease some efficiency.

Two objectives the woodworker has in mind is minimizing a mess, and trying to keep the air in the shop relatively safe to breathe. The problem inherent with shop vac design is that we want it to give us filtered air from the very same filter we are clogging with fine dust, and as the filter fills with dust and clogs, the ability that the motor has to move air through that filter becomes greatly reduced. It has been determined that while it is difficult to completely isolate the filter from dust, we can scrub a great deal of the waste from the air stream before it gets to the filter. By doing this we can run the vac with higher flow efficiency, and deliver better quality filtered air for longer periods of time. This is most productive.

Over time, a number of different solutions have been offered for particle separation in shop vac systems. They run the gamut of high cost – high efficiency, to low cost – low efficiency, and all work to some degree or another. The nice thing about them is that they remove a great deal of waste from the air stream before it gets to the vacuum, and helps keep the filter cleaner and flowing air at higher volumes, longer.

The mini cyclones offered by companies like Oneida, the Dust Deputy and Clear Vue, the Mini CV06 offer the highest separation efficiency to the smallest particle sizes. This is some of the best scrubbing action available, removing most of the waste from the stream before it gets to the filters. Yet the cost to the woodworker can be difficult for some budgets. Another advantage of these designs is that the cyclonic portion of the scrubber is not taking up any of the space in the waste drum, and is separate from it. These units are desirable and a very good addition to your shop vac if you want the best separation you can get.

Going forward, there is a number of trash can lid separators, which are helpful in removing a great deal of waste from the air stream. They all work to a degree but they are realistically just trash can lids with vac hose inlets and outlets, and some take more care in the orientation of the airflow than others. As delivered the lids seem to do an adequate job of removing the large particle waste from the air stream, but a much more difficult time with the smallest particulates, like we see in dusts from exotics and MDF.

My thoughts have been for a while, that if there is any way you can help clean the air a shop vac is pulling without the material reaching the canister and filter is helpful. However, where the trash can lid separator falls short is that it is really nothing more than an in hose line expansion chamber for the shop vac, where we hope the airflow will act sort of cyclonically, allowing the materials in the air stream to fall out. At the same time, the design does little to help the air being drawn from the separator remain free of the filter clogging particulates.

Enter the Thien Cyclone Separator Lid
and Thien Cyclone Separator Baffle. Once you read up on Phil’s Thien’s page, you understand, there is the small budget / small space operation that needs better DC capability and help generating cleaner air for shop vac efficiency. I’ll just briefly say that Phil’s lid has several required design elements. It fits tightly to the container it is meant to seal. It has an inlet and outlet that fits common shop vac hoses. Its inlet is positioned in the right location to direct inlet waste stream around the perimeter of the container in a cyclonic manner. It has an outlet positioned in the center of the lid that takes air from the container in a way that keeps interference to the cyclonic airflow to a minimum.

Phil’s baffle is suspended below the air inlet and outlet about 3 to 3-1/2 inches it has a 1.125 inch slot which parallels the side of the container for 240 degrees of the circumference allowing the waste to fall out of the air stream as it slows, and fall below the level of the baffle. The baffle separates a chamber where vacuum air is drawn from the container so the air leading to the vacuum itself is separated from the waste below the baffle and the waste is not disturbed and re-introduced to the vacuum stream. Phil has a video on his site, which shows that in his 30 pound can design, it works very well, and the design is scalable.

Scalable. Nice. I wanted a 5-gallon version. I contacted Phil and asked him his thoughts. He felt there could be some issue getting the Woodcraft 2-1/2 inch Router Fence Dust Extraction Fittings (part# 85O13) properly positioned on a 5-gallon bucket so he suggested adding the baffle design to the Woodcraft Mini Dust Collection Separator Lid. (part# 143868) So I went to my local Woodcraft and obtained one.

Fortunately for me, my own shop vac was filthy with testing materials. The filter was encrusted with fines, chip sizes ranged from what random orbital sanders and saw blades make… Planing shavings, drilling wastes routing chips, Maple, walnut, poplar, even some MDF dust from jig makings. Throw in a few dead leaves and spider webs, you get the idea. It was real world shop wastes from a bunch of small projects. I dumped it all out on the shop floor and cleaned the vac, filter and all, plumbed up the Woodcraft separator, as supplied in original condition, and tested.

The heavy stuff mostly stayed in the separator until it reached a level where the outlet could get to it – suction wise, and then the rest went to the shop vac. I am pretty sure the highest percentage of all the light material went to the shop vac, and re encrusted the filter. It is such a small space and with only 17-18 inches of circumference to slow waste down in, before the Vac sucks the air back out—with an outlet exactly in line with the inlets air stream the space is just to small to really be effective. I gave the mess a 60/40 split between the Vac and the separator and took note of the particulate segregation.

I re-dumped the mess and tried vacuuming less of the pile thinking I overfilled and caused scrubbing as well as slower feed rates to emulate real world scenarios on a tool and I still got in the neighborhood of 70/30 splits between the vac and the separator. The small space is too turbulent to assure that the outlet will see cleaned air. Anything passing too near gets sucked straight through.

I cleaned the separator and dumped the mess back in the vac. As is, I will say this. Any 5-gallon bucket separator purchased as is, is not as effective as you hope it will be. But hope is not lost. The answer is in Phil’s designs.

I reworked the separator lid based on Phil’s baffle, scaled, and a moved the vac outlet to the center of the Woodcraft lid, using the same part Phil specifies for the full size design. Skip moving the outlet to the center of the lid at your own peril. My initial test proved to me that the biggest flaws the Woodcraft lid had was the inlet and outlet locations being equally opposite, and it did not need a handle. The nice thing about the design is that it is well-made, heavy duty, has most of the plumbing it needs, and fits the 5-gallon bucket very precisely. It needs no assistance to seal when the vac is running.

Testing resumed. I dumped the mess out on the floor and tested with a clean vac and filter. In test one, I sucked up the pile as fast as the vac would take it. This is not realistic; this was abusively ridiculous in terms of real world shop vac use, under all but the most severe mess cleaning scenarios. I lost no suction. I filled the separator to the underside of the Thien baffle.

I estimated the efficiency at 95-96% to that without a separator. The interior of the vac canister had a thin coating of the lightest dust, about 1/8th to 3/16ths inch at the bottom of the vac, mostly MDF and mixed fines throughout, with the heaviest concentration on the filter. Nowhere near the encrusting I observed without the baffle on the separator, and the same waste had thinly, yet fully caked the filter pre separator. The filter pleats seemed to have less than 12% of what had been embedded in them without the separator.

I cleaned and tested again. This time I fed the pile slowly; at about 1/8th or less the speed I fed it the first time, trying to emulate what real world vacuuming might be in dirty circumstances, or heavy waste collection from a tool and filled the separator to the baffle. This improved efficiency again. I witnessed improvement in the Vac by better than half, so call it 97-98%. I did however notice that on these first two tests, there was heavy waste accumulating above the baffle, and reasoned I may be over filling, so I decided to test again.

I cleaned the shop Vac a fourth time. I really am over cleaning it now. Honest. I may dream about it in scary ways though, for a night or two yet. I felt like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, or Tommy Chong going down town to look for a job on the first three days of his summer vacation.

I tested again. I sucked up 1/4th of the pile fed at the same slow feed rate I had in Baffle test two, and then I peeked. Nice. I found nothing on top of the baffle in the separator. The vac was receiving the finest dust only, and like I said, I had been working MDF so I had some tough dust. Generally speaking, most users will not routinely see this type of fine dust unless they work MDF or tropical hardwoods. If those woods are not in use, I would expect to see cleaner filters yet.

My observations based on the first three tests with the baffle, I feel on test three the vac was 98-ish percent cleaner than with no separator in line. These are just non-scientific observations, and I’ll accept no liability for them, as I am just eyeball estimating comparative quantities. I was not able to observe the cleanliness in the vac, like Phil’s video shows on the full size Thien collector with all the additional room it has, which I feel is an attribute that enhances overall efficiency. This was not as clean as the Oneida or Clear Vue products with their true cyclones fully out of the waste container, either.

In the 5-gallon bucket, there is little space for waste with the baffle in there, but the separator lid with Thien modifications really does improve the airflow to the shop vac so much, it is worth using, you just need to monitor it, and dump it more frequently. It is more efficient when not allowed to fill too near the baffle, yet very easy to empty. No fasteners to fool with, just lift the baffle lid off and dump the bucket.

My testing isn’t concluded. I need to just observe and see how well it works under routine usage, in real world collection, working whatever woods and tools I work. I imagine it will be a bit more efficient than I have observed so far in this manner. Keeping airflow cleaner at the filter will be a boon to higher suction overall, for longer periods of time. This means cleaner shop air when sanding, and hopefully now, less sanding dust will find its way to the shop vac filter. I may see collection improvements at other tools I use it with as well, based on routinely having a cleaner filter and higher airflow, this may improve chip capture most notably at the chop saw, saw boss and router table fence.

At the 5-gallon size, this separator with the Thien modifications isn’t going to replace the real shop vac cyclones in all materials. It cleans out larger particulates on par with the cyclones, but it is not near as efficient with fine dusts. However, at around $30.00, the 5-gallon separator with Thien modifications is a vast improvement over a shop vac and a separator without one. It bears repeating, keeping air velocities higher, longer is the key to better collection, and cleaner shop air. I feel, based on the videos I have seen of all three separators, at the 30 gallon size, Phil’s design gives the mini cyclones excellent competition.

After observing its limitations at this scaled size, I would recommend this small Thien modified separator to anyone if you are on a budget, space or money wise.

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During the evolution of a woodworkers development… A development which never ends by the way, a person observes design, considers various methods of joinery, acquires the tools that coincide with their preferences for the various methods of work, develops a style they enjoy as they continue to grow, and accumulates a TON of hardware along the way.

Back in the 30’s, 40’s 50’s and 60’s of the last century, woodworkers commonly used containers named “MJB”, “Hills Bros”, and “Folgers” for the proper containment of “hardware”. The proper methodology for sorting the “hardware” was to sort through the top inch and a half of the can, and then up end the contents on the bench for a closer sort of the needed hardware at the bottom of the can.

A higher tech solution was to use mason jars, commonly used for canning, and errr, other handy and imaginative uses, and all you had to do was deny knowing anything as to where the canning jars were when it came time to put up preserves, and the high tech part was that you could see in advance that the “hardware” you were looking for was at the bottom of the jar.

Advances in baby food preserving had the Beech-Nut Corporation putting 13 varieties of food into glass jars, beginning in 1931, and the resourceful woodworker in fatherhood found this as a boon to “hardware” storage. The thing was you see, the integral lids could be mounted to the bottom of shelves, making use of otherwise unusable space, and the woodworker could simply look from underneath and see the needed hardware at the bottom of the jar, and not have to spread as much on the bench to sort for the needed pieces.

The 70’s brought forth the use of plastics and many innovative storage solutions came to light. Boxes and bins made from plastics that handily held large quantities of hardware, mixed quantities of hardware where the odd sized and weird shapes would fit, and the part you needed would still furrow to the bottom of the bin.

Then there were the tiny metal cases full of even tinier transparent drawers filled with barely any hardware, which would fail if you tried to actually use it, so you tossed the hardware you bought into it but eh, still dumped the contents on the bench because your fingers wouldn’t fit in the drawers.

The steel fab folks came up with some wonderful hardware storage solutions, and when you went to town to the parts houses, you asked for parts and the counterman would reach back and grab a drawer, set it on the counter and open the lid and man, you wanted the sliding drawer storage cabinet worse than you wanted the “hardware”. So you ask the guy behind the counter and he shrugs and says eh? “That comes that way from the supplier”… Bummer.

The Fishing Tackle industry went big on modular storage containers in the 90’s and boy was that stuff great, but… But then you had to choose, because if you used that, what would you store your gummy worms and crappie jigs in? Worse yet, you have the hardware boxes with the worm and lure boxes in the shop, so on the last second phone call from your buddy for fishing excursions, invariably you wind up in the boat with a box full of jewelry box hinges. Wait! Trout hit shiny stuff right? Rig the hinge with some donor leader and some split shot… Of course McFeely’s came to our confusion issue rescue with the Super-Sortment Chest, and Adjustable Compartment Tray.

Problem solved. Right? Well, no.

The Calliard and Bowser Company has been supplying those curiously strong Altoids in metal tins since the 1920’s, c’mon… You can’t throw those perfectly good tins away, can you? Nah, and you haven’t been either. You got them laying around, and saving them up for when there is something you need to store, just in case, or something. Besides, they are shallow, they latch shut, hardware can try to furrow to the bottom but they are (ahem) shallow, and your fingers fit in them! Eh, so why not use ‘em? You can’t save them all for a “what if” situation forever, so stop the hand wringing, and make some of them into hardware storage.

My approach was to use the Altoid tins for organized hardware storage. The costs of having them was almost nothing since they were purchased over time, yet Costco will sell you a dozen full tins for around $13 dollars. That is still so cheap that the costs are nearly negligible even if you throw the mints away.

You can use them just the way they come, once they are empty if you like, or you can give them a bit of an upgrade by getting one sheet of 12 x 24 x 1/8th inch thick cork, and two sheets of 9 x 12 inch self adhesive felt, all for less than five dollars. This is enough material to line 24 tins.

Make some cardboard patterns for measuring and marking the needed sizes from old shoeboxes. It is a heavy and durable cardboard for this purpose. The altoid tins, bottom inside measurements are 3-11/16 x 2-9/32’s inches, and the radius on each corner is 1/2-inch. This will mark your cork. The sides of the altoid tin, after the cork is installed, measure 5/8ths inch wide to under the lip. My template is 10-7/8’s inch long and has some overlap, which is desirable to me. I overlap the felt in a corner.

For tooling, I use a sturdy hobby knife with a fat handle, a 24-inch, straight edge, but a ruler is just as useful, I just prefer the heft and high sides of the straightedge. I also use a 4-inch engineers square. I use these as layout and cutting guides. I also use a washer with a 1-inch diameter to trim the 1/2-inch radius corners of the cork. It may be useful to be able to re hone the blade of the knife as you work.

Once the cork is cut to length and width, the washer is placed in the corners as a guide to trim the radius.

It is a nice press fit to the bottom and since cork compresses a bit, the cork stays put once installed, without needed adhesives.

The cardboard template lays out the needed width for the self-adhesive felt strips, and the straightedge is a great cutting guide. Honing the knife a bit before you cut the felt is a good idea, and you may need to run the knife through a couple times anyway.

Then remove the back and apply the felt to the sides of the tin. I am right handed and decided it was easiest to deal with the lid hinge side first, so I start in the back left corner of the tin, and I wind up with approximately 1/2-inch of overlap in that corner when I finish. The overlap isn’t a requirement, but it works well with big fingers.

Then all there is left is to load up the tins with whatever it is in your hardware storage you want to organize more accurately. Best of all, the size of the tin is such that your part can’t furrow too deep, contains enough for a project and your fingers will fit into while not taking up too much space on the bench while it’s needed. And the tins latch shut very well. All qualities I enjoy in a hardware storage container, and they look cool as well as being a useful way to recycle something.

Oh, there’s one other detail… How are you going to organize all those altoid tins full of hardware? Well, in a cigar box of course! Everyone saves those too, don’t they? I found some that will store a dozen altoid tins stacked on end in two columns, six on each side. The cigar stores sell empty boxes between one to five dollars apiece all the time.

It is just another way of tackling shop organization, and helpful on a budget, if you would rather spend your discretionary income on projects or tools.

Has this information helped you? Would you consider helping support our efforts?

Like any website hosted on the internet, The ‘Woodworks Blog’ has it’s expenses. The main way we offset expenses, is directly through purchases of ‘Artisan Made’ tools and jigs from the ‘Woodworks Store’.

Another way to help support the ‘Woodworks Blog’ is to appeal to the generosity of our readers. It’s quick and easy to make a donation directly to the ‘Woodworks Blog’ by using the PayPal donation button. Your generosity is greatly appreciated!

Thanks again for all your support! We really appreciate it!

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Happy Woodworking!

Yup. The Challenges to Squareness.

You didn’t actually think this was going to be easy did you? Well, it isn’t always, but I think the endeavor of overcoming some of these challenges can make things better, especially if you like taking good to great. Knowing what some of the issues can be, and how to overcome them when and if they arise, can help our results better match our desires.

We learned in The Constructs of Squareness article that geometrically speaking, a right angle is 90 degrees, and if it isn’t 90, then it isn’t a right angle. Everything can be represented perfectly on paper, in CAD drawings and in theory, but in building, milling, and manufacturing there are a number of factors, which can affect the quality of accuracy. Some we have to accept, some we can learn to work with, and knowing the difference is how we approach closer to fine, if fine is the goal.

Things that affect the accuracy we use to build do vary. Goals, philosophy, materials and tooling all play a part.

Goals affecting accuracy are often production oriented, cost oriented, or what the intended use of a final product is. If the Goal is to build a doghouse, it needs done quickly, and the price of materials and labor needs kept low, then, the accuracy of squareness need only be relative. If the goal is to make a jewelry box, where scale is small and appearances will be highly scrutinized, then the accuracy of squareness becomes much more important, because the philosophy behind jewelry boxes is seeing how far craftsmanship can be taken. Close tolerance fit and finish is a very large part of how this type of work will be evaluated.

Philosophy does not always have to do with goals, but is often a party to goal-oriented work. All craftspeople over time develop an inner guide regarding the level of accuracy and craftsmanship that are acceptable for their work. Sometimes it is based on the kinds of work they most enjoy, the styles they work in, the level of patience and time they have to give towards their efforts, and if they are working to requirements which are or are not their own.

Materials are often a factor. Consider many different materials, and the methods that render them into a finished product. Casting, molding, rolling, extruding, machining cutting, grinding, all leave behind a surface quality which can affect accuracy, the very accuracy that may be needed to reach a goal. The layout work for a piece of rolled or ground steel may have a smooth surface and take place on a granite surface plate. This smoothness of the surface qualities are enhancements to accuracy.

Wood smoothness is variable, and dependent upon the state of milling it is in. Cutting marks on an 8/4 board from the hardwood dealer can easily be in the +/- .005 to .015 range, and some board surfaces can be found that are coarser than that. Saw tooth marks, planing snipe and other machining factors are the norm. It is up to us to render woods smoother with our own processes, and some woods are rendered smooth from machining processes easier than others.

Moisture content can also play a role. Beyond the limits, which the cellular structure of the wood itself inherently provides, the smoothness from our milling often determines how well we can do with the quality of accuracy we can render upon it. We can mark it for squareness anytime we like, but the quality of squareness we get, no matter how good the tool can be degraded or enhanced by the quality of the surface we are working with. This is why it is a good shop practice to sneak up on the final sizing you need as the board is milled to final dimensions, the process can become more accurate as you go.

Tooling can be a factor. Tooling is available in a number of levels of quality, and accuracy. The higher the quality, of course the higher the cost, and the level of accuracy is commonly better, yet it does not mean that lower quality tools can not be found to be, or made to be highly accurate. It should be evaluated case by case. There are budgets to consider but I’d like to advocate that when it comes to layout tools and approaches to Metrology, it never hurts to do the best you can, and buy the best tool you can afford.

Straightness is a factor, which I touched on, in an earlier article, called The Utility of the Straightedge. Too, squareness benefits from this same straightness, and angular precision is also brought into the mix. Consider a Starrett combination square. It is adjustable, blades are interchangeable on it, commonly to 24 inches, but 36 and 48-inch blades are obtainable. At 24-48 inches away from the squares head, one can begin to realize the value of having straight edges, and precision angular accuracy coming from the tool very easily. If a square with this capability were to contain error, imagine how amplified the error would become at three to four feet from the reference edge.

High accuracy in the tooling pays you. Even when wood surface quality is poor, the layout cannot be more accurate by any tool that is not accurate. The surface quality of the wood can be improved though accurate machine setups, various cutting, planing and machining methods to enhance layout accuracy, if the layout tool can “bring it” to begin with. This means finer accuracy from layout tooling is possible if layout is performed after the surface quality of wood is improved.

Certainly the doghouse we talked about earlier will not be rendered higher quality by using a Starrett precision square, but the jewelry box will suffer if the square used to lay it out was not accurate. If you choose to tool up well, then you are free to work at any level, choosing the level of accuracy you desire, and often even verify the quality of other tools you may own, so you can be aware of the quality of layout they offer, and you can account for, compensate, or restrict the tool for use where it is adequate for the work it is called upon to do.

Wood movement is often at issue, as a reason precision accuracy is not necessary, or desirable for woodworking. Most often, the argument stems from not knowing the ways which wood moves more specifically, therefore ruling out wood altogether as a material capable of high accuracy and precision. Yet those who endeavor to understand wood movement achieve very high quality, stable results from wood in as built conditions.

Here are a few notable thoughts regarding wood movement.

Select grain structure is important. If wood stability for a project is desirable, consider that quartersawn woods are more stable than plainsawn, because the board grain does not cross the pith;

Quartersawn wood orients the growth rings radially, that is, at 45 to 90 degrees to the wide surface. Wood movement is along the rings, and rings are kept short by half or greater in quartersawn boards than that of plainsawn, and the movement from moisture content expected from quartersawn is half that of plainsawn.

Plainsawn lumber deals with growth rings from zero to 45 degrees to the flat side of the board, otherwise called tangentially, it does cross the pith, and movement in these boards can be expected to be twice that of quartersawn.

Vertical, clear grain boards will be most predictable. Avoid boards with interlocked grains, variable grains, reaction woods, tension woods, and mineral deposits, as seasonal movement from moisture content in boards like these is not predictable even at equilibrium moisture. If the figure and beauty these woods can offer is desired, it is up to the woodworker to design with this in mind, and build into their project the compensations needed for these factors.

Once EMC, Equilibrium Moisture Content is achieved, and considering the common ranges of humidity for the area of the country, as well as where the wood will reside in regards to climate control or not, and whether the air handling has air conditioning which is capable of dehumidifying are other factors.

The good news is, wood movement in a climate-controlled area, such as indoors, often has very predictable movement in select, uniform grained boards. A great deal of research and observation has been conducted over the last century, dealing with the many species of woods that are used as building materials, and the data is freely available for use to the builder. Please see Wood As an Engineering Material, written by the US Department of Agriculture, Forest Products Laboratory as one of the foremost writings on this subject. There is a copy available in the Woodworks Library.

The details can be accurately worked out. Properly sawn, select lumber is also helpful when future predictability is desirable, and most boards will not shrink more than 0.2% longitudinally from green to kiln dry, so most any angle cut on the end of a board will remain accurate, as originally cut over the service life of the piece, meaning the accuracy of squareness, can be made highly precise, and can be counted on to remain that way.

Learn to familiarize yourself with the various appearances of grain in wood, and know where and when to put it to the best use. While they can be very, very beautiful, boards of any variety containing interlocked grains, variable grains, reaction woods, tension woods, and mineral deposits will not move consistently when the seasonal moisture in these boards swings. Cupping, twist, warp and wind are all plausible factors, which will affect dimensional accuracy in any direction and the best way to deal with this is to bring these boards to EMC and let them move all they want as they acclimatize.

Begin final milling difficult boards by starting a bit bigger than the intended final size. Work your way in, so as to relieve any of the stresses these boards may have, correcting as you go, so that when you have them at the final dimension, and in the realm of the target EMC, you have the best chance of knowing the future outcomes, and then design around the seasonal movement they will still require.

Once the boards have been milled to the flatness, squareness, and dimensions needed, the next step often includes joinery, and adhesives. Joinery inherently enjoys flatness, straightness and squareness as components of it’s fit and finish. The need for close tolerances is relatively high. Glues commonly call for joinery tolerances for squareness and parallelism of .002-.005 inch, for optimum adhesion, and clamping forces will not help you achieve better results from improper milling.

If the factors affecting wood movement and surface smoothness are observed, wood should be able to be worked and milled easily to accuracy approaching .001 inch, and certainly .001-.003 inch, depending on grain smoothness. As previously discussed, not every project will require this precision in every way, and it will be up to the builder to decide what works best for the project. However if the tooling you own cannot bring .001 inch accuracy, cutting tools cannot mill to accurate lines, and the bets for precision are off, whether the project would benefit from fine looking accuracy or not.

Has this information helped you? Would you consider helping support our efforts?

Like any website hosted on the internet, The ‘Woodworks Blog’ has it’s expenses. The main way we offset expenses, is directly through purchases of ‘Artisan Made’ tools and jigs from the ‘Woodworks Store’.

Another way to help support the ‘Woodworks Blog’ is to appeal to the generosity of our readers. It’s quick and easy to make a donation directly to the ‘Woodworks Blog’ by using the PayPal donation button. Your generosity is greatly appreciated!

Thanks again for all your support! We really appreciate it!

We enjoy your comments! Please Contact Us.

Happy Woodworking!

The prevalence of the right angle in engineered structure is probably second only to the straight line in order of importance. Engineered structures in wood are often using plane geometry to help describe and document what they are and how to build them.

Much of the way we think about civil engineering, architecture, woodworking, and even some metalworking, call it flat work if you like, is based on previously understood, maybe even taken for granted, notions about geometry.

Every line that goes in a given direction without variance to that direction is straight, all points that lie upon a line, line segment, or ray can be thought of as congruent. At any point on a line, another line, line segment or ray can intersect, begin sharing a common end point, and create an angle.

There are four ways we look at angles… The most basic angle is the right angle, the angle of 90 degrees, which when measured, corresponds to a quarter of the 360 degrees in a circle, or some thing other than a circle that circuitously begins and ends at the same point. The other ways we describe angles are of angles smaller than 90 degrees which are “acute” and angles larger than 90 yet smaller than 180 degrees, which we call obtuse. If the angle is greater than 180 and less than 360 degrees we call it a reflex angle. When working in terms of squareness, we are only concerned with the 90 degree, or right angle.

Classically, a square has four angles and each of those angles is 90 degrees. If we add all four of those angles together, the result is 360. The interesting thing to note here is that in geometry, and fine work, 360 is not acceptably 359 or 361, and considered a fit. It is either square, or not.

Unlike all the other geometric shapes that use right angles, the square has four sides that are of equal length. This gives us two diagonals, which are also equal. When the diagonals are equal, they are equal to 1.41 times the length of the sides, otherwise known as the square root of two, and this value is referred to as Pythagoras’ constant. These diagonals also form the hypotenuse of right triangles, if the sides of said triangles are equal length.

Now, making your head hurt is not what I am trying to do, but you now know that you can check for squareness if the diagonals within the square are equal length. But what if the sides are not equal length? Well if 2, 3, or 4 sides are not equal, then you don’t have a square, and the angles will not be 90 degrees, except in one case, and that is when each pair of opposite sides of the 4 are equal length, yet adjacent sides are not equal length, This too creates square corners, can be checked with equal length diagonals, and Pythagoras’ Theorem is used instead to find the length of the diagonal. and conversely

Did you guess? This squared, non square is called a rectangle.

Square to the builder is simple, it can be the box or the rectangle, but it is most usable as another name for a right angle. Cutting something to square, or squaring something simply means to form an accurate right angle on the end of it.

With that and a tape measure you can square boards, boxes… Power at your fingertips!

The creation of square where there is not square is easy to do, positioned wherever you need it. You need sharp pencil, a ruler and a compass. Follow along with the diagram, hand drawn by the way, just to show that it can be drawn anywhere. Here are the steps:

With the ruler, draw line AB, and make point A on the left end. With the compass point positioned on point A, swing a short arc mark at any radius length you like, roughly off to the right of the intended perpendicular near the 45 degree radian. Pick any spot you like on that small arc line and cross it to mark your RP, or Radius Point.

With the same compass setting, transfer the point of the compass to the RP and starting at point A, draw a circle based on this unaltered radius length.

At the point where the circumference of the circle intersects line AB, establish point B.

Place the pencil at the RP and position the ruler against it. Align the ruler through the RP and point B. Then draw a line through the circle that intersects point B, the RP, and the circumference opposite point B. Establish this new intersection as Point C. This is Line BC.

Position your pencil on point C, and position the ruler against it. Align the ruler to point A, and draw line AC.

Depending on the how and where this is arranged, this creates a right angle every time. Layout lines for square. The process is called Erecting a Perpendicular. Simple, accurate, scalable, uses few tools. Squareness wherever it is needed. You can even draw it upside down and backwards.

Perhaps line AB and AC already forms the edge of a board or panel. That works. If point A is allowed to be the corner, a point B is established along the horizontal, and a Point C is established along the vertical side, and measurements are taken of line AB and AC. Plugging these measurements into Pythagorean theorem, and conversely will give the length of the hypotenuse, and if it does not measure the same, the board or panel is not square.

In any case, the constructs of square have some pretty simple and humble beginnings, and when observed in working, they help things fit. Now we know a bit more of the back-story. The fit and finish of any project is often defining of many things. Squareness often plays it’s part in the mix, and is often what we are striving for.

Has this information helped you? Would you consider helping support our efforts?

Like any website hosted on the internet, The ‘Woodworks Blog’ has it’s expenses. The main way we offset expenses, is directly through purchases of ‘Artisan Made’ tools and jigs from the ‘Woodworks Store’.

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Happy Woodworking.

…Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Honing. (Dr. Strangelove has nothing on us.)

Ok, this is a little longish, but there is no substantial way to provide a sharpening primer in a sound bite. I’ve tried to write about what will work well overall, without getting too focused on too many particulars in any sharpening media. No matter which way you choose to go ahead with sharpening, this advice should be helpful to you overall. It’s a reasonable primer that will put you on the road with usable sharpening skills. So grab a snack and a drink, and settle in for a bit. If you really want to learn to sharpen, reading this will likely be worth your time. Your Questions and Comments are invited as always!

When it comes to sharpening, abrasives are abrasives the world around. They may have particular idiosyncrasies you need to pay attention to, but they all abrade metal. Once you choose the abrasives you feel will work best for you, you will establish your own routine for working with them. All paths are means that will lead to a similar end. Waterstones, oilstones, ceramics, particulates, sandpaper, various styles of machine sharpening etc. The steel does not care; the abrasives don’t care either, as long as the grit equivilents of abrasiveness are appropriate to the goal. Sharpness.

For the sake of this discussion, I am referring to the abrasive grits, as they correspond to the grits common to waterstones. I do this simply for the reason that waterstones are very popular, but I am in no way advocating that waterstones are the best abrasive. Most all abrasives will sharpen, and it is up to the end user to investigate the pros and cons of the various abrasives to determine the best paths for themselves. For cross-reference please refer to this cross reference chart to derive the equivilent grit for the media you choose.

It is important to keep in mind that the goal of sharpness has stages.

Coarse grits are for grinding, heavy material removal, bevel forming, flattening. Initial flattening and bevel angle forming are the biggest jobs and to aid getting the job over with, the coarsest grits should be used to get the bulk of these tasks done.

Fine grits are for honing and polishing. Once you have established bevels and flatness on the backs, you will want to polish it. Removing coarse scratches in steel with finer ones is what creates finer sharpness. Sharpness actually is where the intersection of the two planes formed by the bevel and the back meet. The finer they are polished, the sharper they will be. the act of creating the wire or feather edge happens when the bevel side of the iron or blade is abraded until the dullness has been honed away. This is required to establish a fresh edge on the tool, and can be done with any number of the different honing or grinding grits.

It is up to the sharpener to determine how dull the tool is, and select the coarseness or fineness of abrasive grit needed to restore the edge to sharpness the fastest way. This means, it comes down to how much steel needs to be removed on the bevel side to form the wire, or feather. You must determine the condition of the edge, and the fastest way to restore it. If only a lttle honing is needed to restore the edge, don’t select coarse abrasives when you begin. If a lot of honing is needed, don’t select fine abrasives when you begin, but realize you will have to polish all the way up through the grits to the fine abrasives to restore the sharpness.

It is important to get a feel for the finish your honing equipment will give you as a finish result at each stage of the work. It will aid you to learn to evaluate what is needed, where to start, how long to hone, and when you have reached what was needed. Knowing this simplifies the task and helps you save time. This is experiential– it is learned by using the sharpening tools you have on your edge tools. It is getting to know one another. Call it sharpening intimacy if you will.

A little about flattening the back. Many people take this as meaning they must flatten the entire back of a chisel or plane iron to properly complete this step. Nothing could be further from the truth, but you can be happy if you’ve the mind to. Try thinking of how a knife has a bevel on each side of an edge. Remember how we hone both sides to make a knife sharp? We are simply trying to hone both sides of a chisel or plane iron too, but we want to keep the flat side in plane with itself for the most part.

Flattening the back really only means that you only need a planar surface near the location where the bevel is, and the width of flatness on the back, or in other words how far away from the edge on the backside need be no wider than the bevel is, but you are welcome to flatten more of the back if you like, because sometimes it is easier to hold the tool on a wider surface.

Flattening doesn’t have to kill you or be drudgery, just buy a Kanaban plate and some silicon carbide grit or diamond paste and get it over with. There are a number of places that sell those items, so in all fairness to them, please use a search engine for pricing. That is the fast track to flat backs. It is more important for backs to be a planar surface, flat, than it is to have a mirror finish, but the mirror finish is what we often wind up with eventually anyway.

The bevel side too, the bevel’s actual surface, is a narrow flattened plane. It is the intersection of these two planes where the angle forms. The flatness of these two planes are what help them succeed at being very sharp, at the angle point. In fact it is difficult, maybe impossible to achieve a high degree of sharpness if this planar-flat surface isn’t present on each surface that makes up the bevel.

It is geometric, and has to respond to a couple different things all at once to be most effective. Just like you would hone both sides of a knife to restore its edge, It just happens that on edge tools, the back makes up half of the beveled edge. It is the straightness of these two planes which form a line along the intersection of these flattened and honed surfaces, and that makes this edge. It is also often helpful if this honed edge is square to the side of the blade, unless skew (an angle that is not 90 to the edge) is desired.

Guides are useful for grinding specific angles. Please feel free to use them for the heavy work. Honing and polishing are something often done quicker, which is more useful and easy if you can learn to do it free hand. Free handed, the side sharpening method is likely the easiest to learn and use. The steel does not care, the wood does not either. If you cannot do this well enough, please, feel free too use the honing guide.

I’ll add here that chisels seem great candidates for free hand honing, and I recommend it. It’s quick and keeps the tool really sharp as you work with it. Use the guide to grind though because it is faster. Avoid micro bevels on chisels to aid freehand sharpening. Never back bevel a chisel either, because the back of the chisel is important for registration in the work.

Plane Irons are another matter. I feel micro bevels can really help you here because there is a lot more metal to remove, and the honing process is more involved while getting blades in and out of the plane. I recommend using the guide all the time on plane irons, if really sharp sharpness is important to you while planing.

Back bevels can be useful for getting sharp faster on plane irons. Use them. They have other benefits on plane irons as well but I’ll cover that another time.

Remember, forming a wire or feather only means you have ground, honed or polished past the dullness, depending on how long you allowed things to dull. It means you can now stop grinding and start honing and polishing.

Honing up through the finer grits is how we remove the wire edge created by honing past the dullness. If you hone and do not create this wire or feather, then you have not honed past the dullness. The dullness is the wear on the edge that you want to remove. The wire edge is what you want. It is the indicator that you have abraded the steel enough to have ground away the dull parts. Once you have achieved this all the way across the edge, you can then begin working both sides of the bevel with the grits appropriate to the level they are currently polished, alternately, to hone the edge to working fineness.

When honing off the wire, always hone the backs of the tool with the finest grit you have previously honed the back with. It often means alternating stones from the bevel to the back, but why scratch up the back if it is already polished? Hone both sides on the appropriate grit as you work up through the grits.

While honing or polishing, never push the edge tool into the stone, always drag it. Breaking the wire edge off is easy to do and pushing the edge will increase the risk. Braking the wire edge off is equivalent to dubbing the edge. Instant Dullness. We want to hone the feather or wire off, not break it off. The end result is vastly different. Pull the blade while honing and you’ll be fine.

If you examine your backs and bevels after honing to a mirror finish and see a glint of light right at the angle point, that is a flaw in your work. It should be a complete surface with no glints of light sparkling at you, especially from the bevel angle point. Glints of light indicate dullness.

In most steels, once you have honed through the grits to the 8000 grit stone, you have honed finely enough to pare end grain pine. End grain pine is the most difficult wood to pare without crushing; it really is the toughest task an edge tool for use in wood will ever see. **(Japanese tools often use finer steels and traditionally were used in softer woods, so there may be some benefit in honing good Japanese steels slightly finer if for use in soft woods)**

There are no recognized tests of, or charts with “scales of sharpness”. The time honored test for sharpness has been and always been; if the edge is sharp enough to do the required work in the material required, to the level of result desired, then sharp was sharp enough. I personally contend that with the wide ranges of tooling, sharpening media, and woods to use them on, this test for the woodworker is still good enough to be true.

The only major corollary to this adage is concerning edge-wear. Can the sharpness last a reasonable quantity of time, so as to bolster productivity? That would depend on the environment. Is it one of production or for that of the hobbiest? Harder tooling is wonderful in a production setting where the sharpening media can match the task of maintaining it, but can the hobby woodworker go toe to toe with the price tag needed to buy in? For most of us, common tooling is just fine, and the results of adequate sharpening as shown in the work have always sufficed, once learning what is needed so as to make results repeatable has been established.

You do not have to shave off your hair! Many people contend hair popping sharpness is an adequate test for sharpness. The truth is, it isn’t. Hair is not wood, and shaving a hair from the surface of skin is is a completely different set of circumstances and dynamics happening, that actually do not require the sharpness required to take a shaving from wood.

The sharpness required for shaving is not as sharp as required for paring wood and as such is not an adequate test for pairing wood. I can shave hair with knives coming off 1000 grit abrasives. Since this is true, what if you can shave hair, should you stop honing well before you are sharp enough to do the work you need to? I was able to accomplish hair popping sharpness with spit on carborundum stones as a young kid, so I am not personally impressed with hair popping sharpness.

For woodworking, shaving hair is the equivalent of a neat card trick. Good for show, not much go. This is a long way from the sharpness we need to push a blade through end grain pine with least effort, so as to pare it. I am saying, we are aiming for and achieving a much higher level of sharpness. If you have sharpened to 8000, you are well past the sharpness needed to shave hair. (Read this as, being able to shave hair can fool you, I hope I have made that clear.)

If you visually examine the edge and see no glints of light reflecting from your edge, and you have polished to the 8000 grit level, no tests are necessary. At 8000 and after a little stropping on leather, the tool is as sharp as you will ever need, I assure you. Honing beyond here is a lot of work spent honing with a diminished work time in wood. In other word, the honing takes longer than the dulling does in this range. You can strop on leather with a little honing compound if you like for a slightly finer edge, which is sometimes temporarily helpful in softwoods. Again, if you feel the need to test, the pine is fine.

Much has been and continues to be written about sharpening, and I encourage you to study this subject, and pay attention to your own realizations as you sharpen. This here is at the heart of what you really need to know. It isn’t rocket surgery. Once you get the heavy work done, (flattening and bevel shaping) it is done forever, and “maintaining” sharpness should generally take no more than 30 strokes on most any stone as you hone up through the grits. This means, If it is taking more that 30, you chose to hone with a stone to fine for the work you need done.

Don’t let your tools get too dull before you touch them up. You can easily maintenance hone as you work. It can take less time to keep your edges in working condition if you become a fastidious maintainer. If you have to rebuild edges every time you sharpen, then you have likely waited too long, and that is a lot more work than 30 strokes of maintainence sharpening.

I need to touch on one last thing here. Bevel angles. Commonly, woodworkers like to bevel their tools so as to be easiest to push through the work. I feel there are some hard fast rules that need to be understood.I am going to touch on a common for instances.

In a nutshell, not all steels are created equal. There are trade-offs we have to learn to live with. Here are a couple.

A-2 like any Steel, has a particular molecular structure. In A-2, the hardening process forms carbide particles in the steel which has a high wear resistance. It will stay sharp longer than that of other steels, but it will require you to sharpen it at usually no less than a 35 degree bevel angle in order to maintain an edge that won’t fail. In other words, If you attempt bevels of 30 degrees or less with A-2, the effect will often result in the edge failing and crumbling. This is due to the very carbides that form to make it wear resistant. It also takes longer to sharpen than High Carbon, or O-1 Steel. As such, this steel is not the best choice for low bevel angles where paring is desired. A-2 is far better lasting where the tooling will be struck with a hammer like in mortising, or for people who prefer a lot of chopping with their bench chisels, or when used to plane in abrasive woods like many tropical hardwoods.

O-1 and high carbon steels are considered finer grained and do not form these carbides in them in the same way A-2 does. As such, these steels are able to hold a shallower bevel angle than A-2 commonly can without edge failure, they sharpen faster, some feel they sharpen finer, and lend themselves well to shallower bevel angles that works well with paring and lighter impact work that is common with many american hardwoods.

in any case, watch your edges. If you find them failing it is usually some combination of the steel type and wood hardness coming to loggerheads with the style of work you are performing and the bevel angles you have. Prepare to adjust the bevel angles accordingly.

My overall sense of this as well as my recommendation to you is this. A-2 Steel really prefers most usually to have a 35 degree bevel ground on it for best outcomes. To go shallower than 35 degrees with your bevels is something you may find works, but please don’t have high expectations. While these angles are not good for paring, they are great for rough service, so mindfully purchase O-1 or high carbon steels for the paring tools. O-1 Is not going to hold a lasting edge is really rough service. Steepening the bevel angles will help, but it still preforms better for finer work. Asking one steel to be all things to the various woodworking tasks is not going to happen. The same is also true of the tooling itself, some things simply find it difficult to interchange. Generally Speaking, Rough service bevels are in the 35 degree range, General purpose bevel angles are in the 30 degree range, and light service or paring bevel angles will be in the 25 degree range. The steel you have may require slight adjustments, just realize your steels can not be all things to all situations and you will be well serve when reaching for the right tool for the job.

I hope these tips help get you on the path to maintaining your tooling with the least effort possible!

Has this information helped you? Would you consider helping support our efforts?

Like any website hosted on the internet, The ‘Woodworks Blog’ has it’s expenses. The main way we offset expenses, is directly through purchases of ‘Artisan Made’ tools and jigs from the ‘Woodworks Store’.

Another way to help support the ‘Woodworks Blog’ is to appeal to the generosity of our readers. It’s quick and easy to make a donation directly to the ‘Woodworks Blog’ by using the PayPal donation button. Your generosity is greatly appreciated!

Thanks again for all your support! We really appreciate it!

We enjoy your comments! Please Contact Us.

Happy Woodworking!

Lets face it, sharpening can be a big undertaking. Many edge tools we bring in our shops will benefit from having a flattened back and the optimum bevel angle for the task it is meant to do. Streamlining the process is possible, and most of that comes from organizing the honing gear so it can work the best with your applications.

Sure, That is a very large amount of application options. There are variables such as steel types. Cast steel, hand forged, high carbon, O1, A2, and D2. There are sharpening options. You have scary sharp, water stones, oilstones, and diamond stones amongst your choices for abrasives. There are a number of different sharpening methodologies, various jigs, freehand, even machines.

I use a portable sharpening station designed for use with stones, with both jigs and freehand manner. This helps facilitate the process, contain the mess, protect other shop furniture from damage and helps keep the honing tools organized. It can be used in a couple configurations, and can be moved out of the way when necessary. It is simply stored when not in use.

The base is made from 1/4 inch MDF, cut 19 inches deep by 16 inches wide. It is bordered with 1×2 poplar, mitered in the corners, glued and screwed to the base. It has a poplar 1×2 running along the front beneath the base. It is designed to be a bench hook. The hook registers against the edge of whatever you place it on. You may see in the photos, where I placed a small F clamp on the left front corner to keep the station in place while in use. You could use a holdfast, the bench vise; squeeze it between bench dogs, your option. It is designed to work however, wherever.

On the left side of the base, a riser made from 3/4 MDF, cut 11-3/4 x 4-1/2, is meant to be a stone base, and is glued along the edge rail on the main base. It has a poplar backstop for helping hold stones in place, added to it. The 3/4-inch riser is what is needed to allow clearance for your fingers when holding tools in various positions, especially during the back flattening process.

There is room inside the station for your spray bottle of water, can of honing oil, or the stone lubricant you prefer, various stones, jigs, edge tools, and what have you. If it is dirty from sharpening swarf, this is the best place for it.

For a resilient finish, this assembly was treated with 3 coats of Teak Oil, applied as directed, allowed to soak the MDF, wipe off the residue and allowed to fully dry. It was then wiped with mineral spirits to clean up any residual oils from the oil finish, and coated with 2 rubbed on coats of Poly.

In the front area on the main base, there is also a removable 3/4-inch MDF base, designed as a bench hook, which is cut 10 x 4 inches. This size is the exact size of the DMT brand, Non Skid Mats, and will accommodate most common stone sizes. It also has a poplar 1×2 backstop along the back, mounted to the edge of the base, and a 1×2 hook on the front mounted from the underside. It is finished the same manner the large base is.

The complete ensemble is very water resistant, very easy to clean.

When in use as a 2 piece station, a non skid mat is placed under the portable base in front so it wont skid, and a non skid mat is then placed on top of each sharpening station to help keep the stones in place, a job these mats do very well. You can flatten a wide chisel or plane iron with a stone like the DMT XX coarse 120 grit diamond stone, and the stone does not move. It is very effective.

When used for shaping bevels, or doing major flattening on edge tools, I use both stations in ensemble. The long station on the main base is great for use when using jigs for bevel reshaping. The portable auxiliary station is placed in the front of the main base, and is used for general maintenance honing, and for flattening and honing the wire off while major bevel work is being done. Both stations offer all the finger clearance needed for holding most any tool in the needed orientation for the sharpening.

The auxiliary station is a little more versatile when it comes to various tasks. It is handy for odd shapes like router blades. It will allow the stone to be placed near the front edge in a stable manner. It is also handy for honing off the wire without having to remove the tool from the jig. The sideways orientation is also very useful when honing cutlery and other knives.

For general woodworking, the small station can be used by itself. Just place a Non Skid Mat, or any non-skid material available on the bench, and place the little station on that. Another non-skid mat is then placed under the stone. Simple maintenance honing is possible, freehand using push pull or side sharpening methods, or with simple edge holding or side sharpening jigs. Touch ups only take a couple swipes on the finest stone, and depending on the wood you are working, you can choose to strop or not.

If needed, the little station gets out of the way, simply pick it up. Gravity and the non-skid mat are all that is needed to hold it still. Since it is a small bench hook, it can be used any place on the bench edge that is convenient. The hook can even be held in the vise. It only needs positioned on the edge during the honing process.

Feel free to design a station to meet your sharpening needs. Sharpening is a workflow, and is best made to suit the way you work. If you are still developing your workflow, this may help. You may have just been wondering if there is a better way to organize the process or help contain the mess. Maybe you have a space limitation, and need to move the station in and out of the work area as you go. This is just a concept. If it seems like it could help you, then use it. If you are a southpaw, simply reverse the layout.

For those who would like more views of the station, which can be expanded to much larger, more easily viewed images, please follow this link to the Sharpening Station in the woodworking gallery.

Has this information helped you? Would you consider helping support our efforts?

Like any website hosted on the internet, The ‘Woodworks Blog’ has it’s expenses. The main way we offset expenses, is directly through purchases of ‘Artisan Made’ tools and jigs from the ‘Woodworks Store’.

Another way to help support the ‘Woodworks Blog’ is to appeal to the generosity of our readers. It’s quick and easy to make a donation directly to the ‘Woodworks Blog’ by using the PayPal donation button. Your generosity is greatly appreciated!

Thanks again for all your support! We really appreciate it!

We enjoy your comments! Please Contact Us.

Happy Woodworking!

Precision refers to the amount of dimensional accuracy or incremental refinement used when something is made, and can be attributed to the quality of the layout, workmanship, or machine set up.

Accuracy refers to the confirmation of dimensional tolerances.

Dimensional tolerances differ with the various types of projects a woodworker will commonly undertake. The set up of shop machines and precision hand tools often requires the precision of accuracy to be at the thousandth of an inch level, however most woodworking projects require accuracy at a level which is commonly referred to by fractions, and is often referred to in the 1/32nd (.031) to 1/64th (.016) range.

The quality in our craftsmanship is inherent in our understanding of these constructs, and our personal stake in setting for ourselves, a level of tolerances. These tolerances are the differences between woodworking, and fine woodworking.

It may not seem relevant, but here is an analogy for higher accuracy. A surveyor will set up an optical instrument, and first, sight their back sight. What they are establishing is a couple of different things, but what is important for us to know for this discussion is that the further away the back sight is from the instrument, the higher the precision of accuracy will be when the surveyor makes other measurements that are shorter than the distance between the instrument and the back sight. The practice is sometimes referred to as going long, and is meant to create higher precision.

One of the common things I have heard over the years, is that in woodwork, a high degree of accuracy is not needed, and then there is the ever ubiquitous, “wood moves anyway”. The understanding being overlooked here is that a lot of assumed accuracy is inherent in the process, because it has been manufactured into the tools we buy, as well as a lot of the lumber we purchase, and we take for granted that it is already “there”. Even wood movement is understood and can be compensated for with relatively high accuracy. None of these assumptions fully get us off the hook.

Consider the ruler. Sure, the ruler has the increments we need, the 1/32nd, and the 1/64th… But we rely on the very same precision accuracy at the fractional level to be consistent to the thousandth of an inch, to assure each of those graduations are where they’re supposed to be. Someone in some lab and factory put all that accuracy into our tools. If we want our precision to maintain 1/64th accuracy, it has to be consistently maintained to 1/64th, plus or minus .001-.002, otherwise the eye will be drawn to errors. After the tool has done its part, the rest is up to us.

Unfortunately, not all levels of woodworking accuracy can be assumed. There are some levels that each of us working the tradecrafts are personally responsible for, and things go better when we are mindful of them.

Take for instance, straightness. The layout of lines is many things, but few things in the layout of lines are required to have the precision of accuracy we have come to expect from straightness. From precision straightness, we can evolve precision flatness, and also use precision straightness as a construct of precision squareness. Parallelism is yet another important derivative of straightness. How straight, straight is, is a pretty important matter. It is always best to start from the best we can do, as it will surely be degraded from there.

Think about the tooling we use to create straightness and flatness. It is inherent in the tooling and machinery. It had to get there somehow. We have to accept that the industrial designers, engineers and machinists did their part, and many woodworkers rely on the good graces of a millwright they never met for a lot of built in accuracy, but there is another part, which they left to us.

One of the more important tools a woodworker can own is a good straightedge. You can have them short or long and there are a number of makers offering them, but if you choose only one, a two-foot straight edge offers a lot of well-rounded utility to the Woodworker. Once you have one, what I want to encourage is; the use of it. Sure they are high accuracy, but it isn’t just for hanging on a peg and looking at.

Straightedges in the woodworking shop have a lot of application. They are available in both steel and aluminum, however they all have more utility if they are made from flat bar stock. Steel straightedges are generally made from stress relieved, 01 steel and are hardened. They are precision milled straight and parallel, and often offer accuracy generally to .001 over the length of the tool. The manufacturer will state the accuracy of their tool, sometimes offering a letter of certification as well. They lay flat on their backs for scribing or drawing lines, and stand on their edges for the comparison of surfaces. They are available with or without beveled edges, and with or without graduations for measurement, but these upgrades are not a necessary requirement, and usually add cost. If you can only afford one, it is better to leave measuring to steel rulers and tape measures.

I find the non-beveled, non-graduated types are less expensive and if it is less specialized, then it usually will offer more utility. Another rational is, that the less it costs the more likely a craftsperson will own it, and if you don’t have one, you can’t put it to good use. There is a lot of good use to be had. Longer than the average ruler and better quality ones are thick enough most generally to stand on edge.

For layout work, the straight edge is a heavy, wide tool, which stays where you put it and has a tall side, which is great for the marking of your work. It is very comfortable for use with any pencil, and it really shines while a marking knife is registered against it. It is an excellent way to connect all the straight lines after you have laid them out. It is also a very nice extension for use with the squares you have and will extend the reach of shorter tools when more reach is needed.

To the hand tool user, the straightedge brings a lot of utility. It can be used to verify the soles of hand planes. After you see where the work needs done, you can then lap the soles to correct the issues and verify as you go. Feel free to verify the flatness of your honing equipment. Flattening the workbench with the use of feeler gauges, a straightedge, and marking is a great use of the tool, because the high spots can be found and removed. The flatness of the workbench is a frame of reference for all future work that comes off it.

Is your board, especially when prepped by hand ready to accept the joinery profiles you intend to put in them? The flatness and trueness of boards is crucial for the fit and finish of dovetails. The plowing of slots and grooves such as dados and sliding dovetails, as well as the treatment provided by hollows and rounds are always made to look a lot better on boards that have been properly evaluated as ready by a straightedge. Handwork is a challenging process; why not evaluate the needed quality before moving to the next part of the process? Besides, the evaluation of a freshly jointed board edge, is just a quick quality assurance check, and a savior before you find an error in mid glue up.

The straightedge is also useful when evaluating the cup, twist, and wind in boards as well as evaluating the flatness of panel surfaces. A pair can even be used as winding sticks. Another good use is for establishing the straightness of the chute edge and fences on a shooting board as well as the overall flatness of its surfaces. While you are at it, evaluate your other shop built jigs from time to time as well.

For machine setups, routine adjustments and maintenance, the straightedge is a great tool. It is invaluable for evaluating the surfaces of the jointer beds for parallel and coplanarity as well as the proper calibration of its vernier settings.

The table saw can be evaluated for table flatness, which is not uncommonly found to be less than perfect yet in some cases correctable. There is also the adjustment of side tables, out feed tables and the trueness of miter slots. It is also valuable to know what the relative flatness and straightness the fence faces have. If there are anomalies, you can then compensate or adjust for them.

Miter saws can use the straightedge for evaluating the trueness of the fence, and are also aided by the straightedge when side wings, when used, are leveled with the main surface of the saw.

A straightedge can also be used for the routine set up of roller stands when used as an in feed or out feed support on any shop machine.

The router table is a high precision shop machine which is commonly shop made. There are many uses for the straightedge with this tool. Evaluation of the tabletop is a constant need with some designs due to the weight the tabletop supports. Many designs are under built and table sag is an error inducing issue. The plates often used to fit the router to the table can be ill fitting in their mortise, and require fine adjustments be made, in order to be brought flush with the table surface.

The router table fence is often in need of straightedge evaluation as well. It needs to be flat and straight, if split, it also has a need for coplanarity. It also must be evaluated to determine if it has any tendency for deflection. The router fence is also a candidate for using a straightedge along with 1-2-3 blocks, gauge blocks and feeler gauges for the settings of the fence and router bit height. With these tools in use, on a well-made table, one can expect fully repeatable accuracy from a router table to be in the .001 range.

The evaluation of any wood, which has been prepared for milling, is important as well. Any cup, twist, warp or wind is something that will throw off the fit and finish of the simplest joinery, and even make edge treatments like bevels, round-overs and more sophisticated profiles look awful. Further, these evaluations can make a lot of difference as to how safe a milling process may be. Knowing ahead of time saves a lot of needless frustration. There are few tools available to the woodworker which can assure things go right, and evaluate why things go wrong, with more power than a straightedge.

If I thought about it, there is probably much more which could be said about such a simple tool, but this is a reasonable well-rounded look at it. It may seem to be a cost prohibitive tool to some, but after thinking outside the box with me awhile, you see it has so much application, and with its evaluatory prowess, how much money could it save you in error free or error caught woodworking, even over the short run? In my shop, it has more than earned its keep and continues to, as I find that wood is costly, even more so than tools. In fact, around my shop, the straight edge offers more value than many other needed tools, and if you can get your mind around that, one will serve you just as well. It can touch so many aspects of your woodworking, that is, if you give it a chance!

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Happy Woodworking.

Amongst the many dilemmas facing the woodworker, just a few are what to build and how to build it, but even as those questions seem like early ones in the process, the earlier ones considered are even more elementary.

The nature and ways of wood, joinery, adhesives, and style are all things that need to be dealt with in the “what” to build and “how” to build it. Is it furniture, casework, cabinetry? Will it involve carpentry, as a built in as many elements of Arts and Crafts styling will? will it include some metal work or upholstery? Other leading questions like, will I have the appropriate tools, and can I properly fixture the work for all the different elements of construction? What finishes are most appropriate, and how best to apply them?

You see, it is a lot of questions. Fortunately there are a lot of answers. The art and craft of woodworking is age old, in fact, even our great grandparents and grandparents knew a lot about it, and lucky for us, even as much of an undertaking it was to publish books back in the day, the understandings of the woodworking trades, the methods and the how to with hand and power tools was something they authors of that period wrote about quite articulately. There was a want for future generations to know these things, and there was a lot they understood.

With all things old becoming new again with the resurgence of interest in woodworking as well as some of its somewhat forgotten ways, many libraries as well as groups like Project Gutenberg and companies like Google and Microsoft have taken on the mammoth task of digitizing many of these old texts, of which there were few left in access to the public, before father time could claim them. Fortunately many of these books are now available in the public domain and can be used quite freely by anyone as long as their purposes are not commercial.

The daunting thing I have learned is that it is hard to know what all has been digitized to the public domain, and where exactly to find a particular kind of knowledge, because each place has a bunch of books but none of them has all of them. Harder still the books are not categorized for easy access to the woodworker with a need for specific information. My desire was one amongst others I am sure, to help people find and have access to this old but still completely relevant information. By the time I finished hunting (for now) I came up with over 100 books and nearly 1 gigabyte of collected works.

This collection became The Woodworks Library. My criteria for the library was to only have complete books which were fully clear in the United States as existing freely as public domain. The original copyright holder has not renewed their claims and the book is no longer of commercial value to publishers, this means you can have it, I can have it, and as long as we do not use it for commercial use in any way, then the priceless information within is available to help us all be better at the things we hope to achieve.

The Woodworks Library is organized in a somewhat comfortable fashion. I did not bother with over-categorization of it, because many of the books in it cover a wide range of subject matter. After evaluating each book, I placed it in the list according to what seemed to be the biggest theme of the book. You will find that many of the books will cover many of the same things, topically, but once you wade in, you will see that the books were written at different times and or each author came from a different school of thought, and so the cross comparisons of information will be very interesting.

Read with an open mind and remember the era for which they were written as well as the audience the author was writing to. While it is great to feel a certain book speaks to you more than another, there is something in all of the books and the differing methods and understanding are of note, because it affords us all a chance to walk in that author or editor’s shoes. Wood, and the crafts that are supportive to it, are a many faceted knowledge, and you never know when a knowledge you discount or disagree with today may become your saving grace tomorrow. So just do your best and absorb all you can. Trust me, there is a lot to read and many of these authors clearly made sharing it with future generations it their life’s work.

Is there something in here for everyone? Perhaps a little, maybe not. I’ll leave that up to you to decide for you. That which is here, I’ve tried to organize by listing books and writings in categories which were most directly related yet not overly topical, and as a descending list in an order, which mainly attempted to group like with like without being too constraining.

By topic, we have; Understanding Wood, Furniture and Design, Woodworking, Carpentry, Turning, Carving, Finishing, Patternmaking, Shop Mathematics and Calculation, Blueprint Reading, Hand Tools, Machine Tools, Shop Machinery, and finally, Blacksmithing Welding and Metalwork. Remember, There are over 100 full-length books, and the occasional technical paper, just waiting for whomever to have a look and learn something new.

Feel free to bookmark the Library, and remember there is always a link to it directly on every page here at the Woodworks, so help yourself, and learn what was known about working wood long ago. It is here for everyone to use as a resource that helps us all become better woodworkers. All the information is as valid and applicable today as ever. If you know of any books in the digital realm, which are in the public domain as complete works, and seem like they are a good fit for the Woodworks Library, please fell free to contact me about them and we’ll see what we can do to add them. After all, it’s all for anyone practicing the crafts.

I want to have that little talk with you about, Fractions. Yeah. But the plan is, if all goes well, that it won’t hurt – as much as it did last time. Working in sub inch territory usually involves the use of little buggers. The problem many people have when working with fractions, is that they relate the use of the common fraction to their math education experience when they were in school as children.

Our school systems scared the bejeezus out of everyone by forcing us all to learn a series of mathematical exercises, which evolved around fractions that we would never use again in our entire lifetimes. For many, this often created mental blocks to the entire notion of fractions, even the simple useful ones, because after that harrowing experience, it seemed that nothing pleasant could possibly come from the manipulation of fractions at all. In fact, when people are faced with dealing with fractions, they generally feel some panic along with it. A panic that rates up there with the sound of high speed dental drills and root canals, and it is most likely from their harrowing experience in math class. Folks remember what all the wonky practice of solving mismatched fractions was really like, and relate that it was way, way too similar, and maybe even the diabolical preparation, for diagramming English sentences later on during their high school education.

I hope I can help make this a lot more user friendly!

Fractional arithmetic for measurements within the sub inch territory is much simpler than the nightmare a lot of people conceive it to be, because there is a fixed set of fractions that are in use, and memory tricks which you can learn to make well practiced calculations that you can do in your head. This is the reason why the trades have been slow to discard the use of the inch. The fractions are just too handy for halving, quartering and doubling.

There are just some basic constructs we need to know about fractions. A quick few definitions of terms, and memory tricks for using them quickly, and we can be off and running with this for most linear measurement purposes.

Basically put, a fraction is a division problem, which is meant to deal with components of a unit that are smaller than the unit of one. Within the realm of linear measurement, the constructs used are expressing the halving of the unit from the whole on one end, to what is commonly considered usable with common tools on the other. The tools are made to fit the fractional intervals.

Commonly, the scale by incremental division looks like this:
1, 1/2. 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32, 1/64, 1/128.

In descending order you have a process of halving, and in ascending order you have a process of doubling. Divide or multiply by 2. So there is a memory trick. Get used to doubling and halving units less than one.

Though the numbers in the fractional divisions seem to become larger, it does not indicate the size of the unit, but rather, the quantity of units, which will fit within an inch, so it is best to think of it inversely. The larger the number gets, the smaller the unit is.

The parts of a fraction are worth touching on for a moment.

1 (the numerator) It is the first number or the above number as written.
– Then there is this dividing line, which signifies the division problem.
2 (the denominator) It is the second number or the below number as written.

The dividing line has a name and the name is different depending on how the fraction is written, but the names of the separator do not help you work with fractions easier. So don’t worry about what to call it. For us, “Slash” and “Dash” are fine.

The denominator signifies the sizes that the divisions of one (1 inch in our discussion) are. The numerator signifies the quantity of those denominated divisions we have.

For most of our purposes in linear measurements, these fractions when used strictly as fractions of an inch, will only be added and subtracted to and from each other.

It is important to accept that 1-inch can be expressed as a fraction. No matter what the denominator may say, if you have any quantity of numerators equal to the denominator, the quantity is equal also to one. Such as 4/4ths, 8/8ths, 32/32nds.

For expressing results when two fractions added together create a numerator, whose quantity exceeds the value set by the denominator, then a whole number, such as 1, 2, or what have you, is generated, and the fractional remainder is then expressed with the whole number. This expression is called a mixed number, and is the final expression of your result. As an example you would express 3/4 + 3/8 as 1-1/8, instead of 9/8.

When expressing fractions, they are best expressed in the reduced or simplest form possible. If the numerator is able to be added to another numerator which will derive an even number, the denominator level you are working with may not need to be referred to as a smaller unit, in fact, when numerators added together resulting in an even number, the denominator can likely be expressed as a reduced or simpler unit. As an example: 1/4 + 1/4 = 2/4 = 1/2, and 3/8 + 3/8 = 6/8 = 3/4. It is considered best practice to express the fraction in its simplest form.

A useful property of numbers, which creates a memory trick that we can use, is that if one of two numbers to be added together is an odd number, it will always result in the sum of the numbers being added together to be an odd number. Interestingly, even numbers when added together will result in an even number, and when any two odd numbers are added together they will also result in an even number. Learning to notice this trick will alert you to when the numerator will result in an odd number. When the fractions numerator is an odd number, the denominator cannot be expressed more simply than the finest size being used amongst the mixed fractions, and you will not likely be able to simplify it beyond that resultant fraction. As an example: 7/32 + 1/8 = 11/32. The trick here is that 1/8 has to be converted to its 32nd equivalent, 4/32, and then you can easily add it to the 7/32. The result is as simple as it can be made, because the numerator is an odd number, and cannot be reduced.

Halving all fractions, which are not part of a mixed number is a pretty simple process. Halve the denominator, (multiply the denominator by 2 as this doubles the fractional division making them smaller by half) the numerator remains the same. The result is always half. For example: 3/4 halved is 3/8. 5/16 halved is 5/32. 7/8 halved is 7/16, and so on.

For mixed numbers it is almost as easy. Convert the mixed number into a pure fraction and multiply the denominator by 2. When finished, convert the fraction back to its simplest form, which includes reverting back to a mixed number if that is the simplest form. For example: 1-7/8 = 15/8ths. 15/8 halved is 15/16ths. This is its simplest expression. 2-9/16 = 41/16ths. 41/16 halved is 41/32nds, which is not a simple fraction, so converted back to a mixed number it becomes 1-9/32nds. Please note again, the numerator numbers in simplest expression form did not change from the original expression. Remember when you see the numerator, the trick is that it will still remain the same but the denominator changes by half, leaving little to think about once you remember the trick.

Fractions by the 128th, from 1/128th to 1/4th, as expressed in simplest form. Observe the patterns: 1/128, 1/64, 3/128, 1/32, 5/128, 3/64, 7/128, 1/16, 9/128, 5/64, 11/128, 3/32, 13/128, 7/64, 15/128, 1/8, 17/128, 9/64, 19/128, 5/32, 21/128, 11/64, 23/128, 3/16, 25/128, 13/64, 27/128, 7/32, 29/128, 15/64, 31/128, 1/4. See the interchangeability of denominators?

And finally the last biggie is that fractions only hit specific decimal locations, so sometimes, in order to get to an increment near the fraction you have, you need to convert to a decimal and work it from there. It is simple. Divide the denominator into the numerator for the decimal equivalent. For instance 7/64ths would be converted by dividing 7 by 64, and the result would be .1094, 3/4 would be .750, and 3/32nds would be .0937. How fine is markup to the 128th of an inch? It is .0078 of an inch. Call that about the width of two whiskers.

Why is the fractional to decimal relationship important? Say you are working on adding a shelf to a cabinet project in 3/4 Baltic Birch. This is nice plywood, commonly available, but the thickness is actually metric. 3/4 is close to 18mm but there is a catch. The decimal equivalents are not exact. 3/4 = .750 and 18mm = .709. This is a 41 thousandth of an inch difference, which will need compensation. Usually the compensation is made by working to the fraction nearest to the metric equivalent, which in this case is 23/32nds, but there is a .010 of an inch remainder. This can be an unacceptable gap in some work, so this too is good to know.

Another workaround which creates a better looking fit, could be to disregard the metric size for joinery altogether, and create a 1/2 inch tongue and groove, but in order to center the .500’s of an inch tongue on the .708 inch thick board, you are going to have to subtract .500 from .708, and halve that result of .208 to make it .104, so you know what the shoulders for the tongue will need to measure, in order to center it on the metric board. The nearest fractional increment to the proper size of this shoulder is 7/64 and as you see by dividing 64 into 7 that .109 will make the shoulder too large. The shoulder too large will make the tongue too small. If you cut to the nearest fractional increment here, the tongue will be centered but only .490 wide, and this is a sloppy fit in a .500 groove for very fine work. In fact the same quantity of slop you had working 18mm into 23/32nds. Now you can dial in the necessary compensation.

Knowing how to manipulate the fractions and knowing where the fractions lie amongst the decimals will help you build higher quality into your fine woodworking or machine work, where fit and finish is everything.

Hopefully these memory tricks and conventions will help you to work with fractions faster, easier, and more proficiently with more confidence. The understanding of fractions for use in linear measurements is conquerable, and for the most part is kept pretty simple and doable by the constructs involved with them. One could only hope that much of the rest of fractional manipulation could work as easily.

Going forward, feel free to practice these memory tricks, and if you like, add both a fractional and decimal dial caliper to your metrology tool arsenal, they will help you a ton. For further reference, feel free to use the Decimal Equivilents chart I have provided, as well as the other tools available in the Woodworks Reference Library. They are all printable and ready for use in the shop.

Has this information helped you? Would you consider helping support our efforts?

Like any website hosted on the internet, The ‘Woodworks Blog’ has it’s expenses. The main way we offset expenses, is directly through purchases of ‘Artisan Made’ tools and jigs from the ‘Woodworks Store’.

Another way to help support the ‘Woodworks Blog’ is to appeal to the generosity of our readers. It’s quick and easy to make a donation directly to the ‘Woodworks Blog’ by using the PayPal donation button. Your generosity is greatly appreciated!

Thanks again for all your support! We really appreciate it!

We enjoy your comments! Please Contact Us.

Happy Measuring.

The way measurement is handled in the United States, and to some degree the UK and Canada, depending on the person’s age, is the foot. The foot has an interesting history, and there are a couple different accounts you can go with, but it has its beginnings in the Roman Empire.

Before the world was very big and there was not so much need to measure great distances, measurements were based on what a man had, er, handy! Sure there was mans foot, which is the foot’s namesake, but it didn’t keep a consistent length, so three hands, four palms and twelve thumbs worked better to more consistently derive it. So the Foot became the distance of 12 thumbs, and the width of the thumb became the inch. Welcome to base 12 measurement.

After the fall of the Roman Empire when the Anglo Saxons conquered Western Europe and called their new land, Angle Land (read England) they used the length of 3 barleycorns, as measured from the middle of the ear, placed end to end as an inch, and 6.5 inches was called the shaftment, which is equal to two palms. (Roughly 3 inches)

And so it was, until the Normans conquered England in 1066, whereupon they brought the old Roman system back to usage. King Henry I set the foot at 12 inches, the shaftment at 6 inches, and the yard at 36 inches. The standards for the inch? Three Barleycorns. So we have 36 barleycorn to the foot, and 108 to the yard. King Henry’s standard was made official by an engraving of one foot on the base of a column on the old St. Paul’s Church sometime during his reign. And so using the barleycorn and such, the system ascends upward through the inch the shaftment, foot, the yard, the furlong, the mile… It was known as “by the foot St. Paul’s”

John Barleycorn Must Die.

After the French revolution in the 18th century, the French Academy of Sciences divided the Prime Meridian into quadrants, which is 1/4th the distance around the earth, longitudinally. They then said that 1/ten millionth of this distance will be known as one meter. Going forward since, the want for the most accurate meter possible has become something measured by a standard of light waves in a vacuum traveling one meter as a function of how long it takes.

Descending from the meter we have the centimeter, which is 1/100th of a meter, and the millimeter, which is 1/1000th of a meter.

Because one quadrant, 1/4th the diameter of the earth can be considered such a consistent value, Science quickly adopted the metric system as the definitive method to measure, because all descending units were derived from mathematical divisions of something huge, which offers a real basis for accuracy, as opposed to the foot, which is a derivative of hands, palms, and thumbs, which are defined by three barleycorns.

In 1921 the American Standards Association responded to a request set forth by the Netherlands that a conversion factor be agreed upon between the inch and millimeters. 25.4 was recommended and between attempts by the Ford Motor Company and ASA to get this settled 10 years later, the final installment came in 1959 when the US sealed the deal with the Commonwealth of Nations. The US has been trying to adopt the Metric system ever since.

Since the Metric Conversion Act of 1975, and in many ways prior to that The US Military and many manufacturing firms have gone with the metric system. Despite the mile markers on our highways, many states go with the federal want for the metric system and the roads are built to metric specs.

But is John Barleycorn dead? No. Because the wood manufacturing trades find the good old inch convenient, in it’s fractional ways which can be halved and quartered and such, with the eye being able to see and mark to the 1/64th on average, as well as the way the foot continues to fit well the sizes which Americans like and prefer.

So raise your glasses in auld lang syne to the inch and John Barleycorn. Because ground into your whiskey and your ales, John laughs last, and lives on.

“They’ve hired men with the crab-tree sticks,
To cut him skin from bone,
And the miller he has served him worse than that,
For he’s ground him between two stones.

And little Sir John and the nut-brown bowl,
And he’s brandy in the glass,
And little Sir John and the nut-brown bowl,
Proved the strongest man at last.

The huntsman, he can’t hunt the fox,
Nor so loudly to blow his horn,
And the tinker he can’t mend kettle nor pot,
Without a little Barleycorn”

Has this information helped you? Would you consider helping support our efforts?

Like any website hosted on the internet, The ‘Woodworks Blog’ has it’s expenses. The main way we offset expenses, is directly through purchases of ‘Artisan Made’ tools and jigs from the ‘Woodworks Store’.

Another way to help support the ‘Woodworks Blog’ is to appeal to the generosity of our readers. It’s quick and easy to make a donation directly to the ‘Woodworks Blog’ by using the PayPal donation button. Your generosity is greatly appreciated!

Thanks again for all your support! We really appreciate it!

We enjoy your comments! Please Contact Us.

The big thing about using steel cross dowels for knock down construction is that your layout must be absolutely meticulous. I have, and continue to use these a lot in jig construction, but there are a lot of other great applications.

While a lot can be done with these, a common application is for use in workbench base construction. Real life happens. People move, circumstances change. Sometimes the dream shop in the basement relocates to a garage or an outbuilding. Many of us cannot build a bench with the certainty of knowing it will never need to be easily transported to elsewhere at some future point. This makes the use of steel or brass cross dowels a wonderful option.

While this article is about what it takes to install cross dowels, due to popular demand I have researched and included links to what I feel are the best sources for this hardware in it’s various sizes out there. The links are included at the end of this article.

It is notable that bench building is enjoying a renaissance right now. some great new designs, vises and hardware packages have recently become available.

Amongst these offerings, a top of the line All Steel Cross Dowel Package has been made available by Benchcrafted. They are marketed as Benchcrafted Barrel Nuts, and they are the best product available to the bench builder. Unlike any other cross dowel meant for use with benches, these are all steel for heavy duty applications and the design allows the installer to align them with fingers during assembly. These are top quality, a great value and installation doesn’t get simpler.

Ok, if you already have your hardware in hand, then layout for cross dowels in knock down bench legs works like this. If you have not obtained the parts you need, please consider waiting until you have it in hand.

Lay your two legs and cross piece on the bench, Inside face facing up, already milled, mortised and tenoned, and dry fit them. Clamp them top and bottom to hold the unit together with enough force so that things will not move while you perform the layout, and check them for square. Make sure you have them square.

If you have a Veritas saddle square, or equivalent, that would be handy, but if you don’t, no matter, here is a work around:

Position the leg assembly by allowing it to hang over the edge of your bench and support it with a something like a telescopic roller stand. Take a six-foot length of string line and tie a nut or a heavy washer on each end for weight, and drape it over the leg assembly, along the centerline of the crosspiece. This string line forms somewhat of a double-ended plumb bob, which will indicate the centerline of your layout work and will project these lines around corners. You can eyeball centerline of your work piece or measure. Once the string is located, go ahead and put a piece of blue painters tape on each end near the corners where it drapes over the edge.

The best position for the cross dowel on the bolt is at the end of the bolt with all the threads in the nut fully engaged. The formula for figuring cross dowel hole location from any combination of length and diameter hardware is to take the working length of the bolt (which differs if the cap screw is hex head, allen head, button head or flat head) and subtract half the diameter of the cross dowel from that length to find hole centerline for the cross dowel. The length of the bolt, when you are choosing the length optionally, is best determined by the thickness of what it has to pass through on the bolt head side, plus 1-1/4 inches minimum into the adjoining board for cross dowel centerline.

Now for specific example, if you are using Veritas bench bolt hardware, it measures 1/2 x 6 and the cross dowel is 1 inch in diameter. Take a 4 or 6-inch Double Square if you have one, or perhaps a steel hook ruler, and measure center of your legs on the string line and make a light pencil mark where the bolt heads will be. Consider the exact depth you plan to recess the bolt into the leg, and add that amount to 5-1/2 inches. (remember the diameter of the cross dowels for this application are approximately 1 inch) Measure that same distance in from the edge of the leg, along the cross piece and make a light pencil mark. Repeat this for the other side. Next to your tick marks mark your left and right orientations, remembering you are working on the inside face. Now disassemble.

Center punch all your tick marks and begin drilling. For your legs, begin with a forstner and compensate the hole depth for the thickness of the washer, and the diameter for the washer by 1/8th inch. Stop drill this exactly to the intended depth. Be careful, because you are exactly locating the cross dowel to work with this depth. Then back the drills exit location with waste board and drill perfectly at a right angle. A Drill Press is the best tool for the job, drilling from the center divot the forstner bit left, through the leg. Repeat this for all the legs until finished.

On the cross pieces, drill the bolt hole first. This is a stop-drilled hole. Stop drilling will ensure the outer look of your bench base will not reveal the knock down construction so conspicuously. To find the depth of the hole on the drill bit, measure from the end of the Tenon in to the location of the center punch mark for the cross dowel. That is the depth you need to drill. I like to mark this on the bit with a sharpie marker if I am drilling freehand. Acetone will clean it off.

You can do this in your Drill Press if you have the capacity, that would be best. You can set the drill press depth stop for this depth if you like. If not, Drill a hole through some 2-inch stock as a guide piece on the DP, and use it to help you drill square while starting the hole. Fixture the work, upright would be best, and start your hole. Remove the drill guide when you are deep enough and finish the hole. Squares set at right angles to the drill are wonderful for visual references to keep the hole on course as well.

To drill for the cross dowels, I like a hole to be slightly larger, as this allows clearance for easy adjustment, so I would select a 1-1/8th Forstner. I again recommend stop drilling this hole. To find the required depth, I would go from edge of the top edge of the stretcher to the centerline of cross bolt hole, plus the half width of the cross dowel plus 1/8 inch, and stop drill to that depth.

From there the assembly should fully line up and assemble with ease. Use a screwdriver in the slot to align the cross dowel in the hole for the bolt.

Just remember this string trick as it has a lot of application elsewhere. A plumb line and a square will always make a makeshift level. You can plumb up any vertical board with a plum bob of some sort, and a bob can be made from a bolt or washer, so it needn’t be expensive or high tech. The trick is in the string hang, not the weight, so the bob doesn’t need to have a point. Where the string hangs is where the alignment is.

Also consider acquiring a saddle square. The saddle square is a great way to transfer layout around corners, and is very useful for properly locating cross dowels when the scale is smaller and the placement is random. They are wonderful to have. The layout tool arsenal is your friend.

There are a couple of different sources available for Cross Dowels, though not all places carry the same things and pricing may vary. For convenience sake, here are a few. There may be more, but please understand that retailers reevaluate inventories and update links, so please forgive if these links have expired or the source has dried up over time.

“Veritas Special Bench Bolts” from Lee Valley.

“Bed Bolts” from Lee Valley.

“Bench Bolts and Nuts” from Highland Hardware.

“Cross Dowels” from Woodpeckers.

“Dowel Nuts” From McMaster Carr.

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Good Luck, Be Safe, and Happy Woodworking!

Metrology is defined as the science of measurement. More particularly for the woodworker or the home shop machinist/toolmaker, one of the divisions of metrology, which is of particular interest, is applied or industrial metrology. This is about the application of measurement, the suitability of measuring instruments, their calibration, and the quality of the measurements they produce.

So the accurate instrument is applied to create a needed measurement. The quality of the measurements becomes the layout that evolves into successful production. The gist of it is that the woodworker is trying to produce a thing, and the thing is often rendered from a drawing and plans which include materials and cut list. The go between that takes the project off the prints and puts it on the materials being used are the tools of metrology. The measurement and layout tools.

The heavy hitter in the woodworker’s and home shop machinist’s shop then becomes not only the quality of the layout tools, but the knowledge of how to apply them, and the quality of the results rendered by them, and that trifecta is the system of dimensional metrology.

One of the things I have enjoyed down through the years is the process of laying out the work. It is something I have enjoyed professionally, and something I enjoy as a hobby, because the challenge, which comes from, it is always new. I am sure that for some, the problem-solving component of woodworking is what keeps their hand in it. It is not as much the end for some, as it is the means.

In any case, the subject of metrology, most specifically ‘dimensional metrology’, the tools and the layout strategies that they help employ are something of a fun puzzle for me, and will be a part of what I’ll write about here. It has it’s own category, and I’d like to extend the invite to click into the subject from time to time, just to see if there is something there for you.

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Happy measuring!

Layout work is a tedious and exacting part of woodworking. We select boards for size and grain orientation. We hope this is in part, the “art” of our work that separates our project from that which is good, to that of greatness.

We sharpen our tools and skills, we buy accurate measuring and marking tools all with the hope of accurately conveying our vision. We go to work and accurately lay out the work, checking, and double-checking everything as we go to assure we have everything right.

We cut our wood, taking care to get every cut right and of course they are perfect, except for the fact that the face of the board we loved so much is now going to be the back, because we got turned around while we were trying to be so careful. We did not mark our boards properly to affirm their proper orientations in the project above all else.

Can you imagine being half way through with some half blinds when you discover the orientation error?

Oh Man…

A bummer, but it is avoidable.

Buy yourself some chalk and mark your boards as to the intended orientation. Chalk is a buck for a box and it could save you thousands of dollars in layout errors over time. Wipes off, leaves no trace, keeps you on the intended track

Blue painter’s masking tape and a Sharpie marker is a great adhesive notepad for on board paper brain purposes as well.

As an upgrade to plain chalk, consider getting a chalk holder for your piece of chalk. It keeps you cleaner and helps keep the chalk from breaking and rolling off onto the floor. Keep it in the pocket of your apron really nice, you know, where you may find it and maybe remember to use it!

You can also use the blackboard chalk as a release agent on files so that hardwoods, brass and aluminum do not so easily clog the grooves of the file, and this helps make the files work better, last longer and dull more slowly.

Has this information helped you? Would you consider helping support our efforts?

Like any website hosted on the internet, The ‘Woodworks Blog’ has it’s expenses. The main way we offset expenses, is directly through purchases of ‘Artisan Made’ tools and jigs from the ‘Woodworks Store’.

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Happy Woodworking!

Back in early February 2008, an interesting thread was started on Woodnet.net. Bob Feeser, rfeeser to those who may look for his writings, was asked by a friend to ”provide a list of what tools a well-equipped small, machine-free shop might have”. So he consulted some texts he had on hand and “enhanced” it.

Turned out, the list is quite good. On Internet forums, one good turn deserves another, and so the feedback began. …And the list grew. People came up with some great additions for the list.

I know, I know, the list is a huge bugger, and there are a lot of things on it you do not need, and can get by without, but Bob was asked to go for ‘well equipped’, So he put in the initial time, and by the end of the thread, many other great tool additions for the list were suggested.

I went through the thread and edited further, adding what all was suggested by others. For the most part, I tried to be as inclusive as possible. Depending on your methods of work, there is likely something on there for everybody. So without further adieu, here is Bob’s “Gratuitous list of hand and small electric woodworking tools”, and thank you Bob!

– MEASURING & MARKING –
Awl, scratch, brad, birdcage
Marking knife(s)
Center punch
Transfer punches
Chalk line
Combination squares
Try or engineering squares
Double square
Framing square
Saddle Square
Plastic drafting squares
Bevel gauges
Protractors
Inclinometers
Retracting tape measure
Folding rule w/ sliding extension
Steel 4R graduated rules
Steel 4R hook rulers
Center finder rulers
Golden ratio rulers (phi)
Ruler stop
Precise straight edge
Plumb bob with string
Marking gauge
Mortise gauge
Panel gauge
Dowel centers
Sliding bevel
Dovetail Markers
Compass
Beam compass
Trammels
Pantograph
Drawing bow
Level(s) torpedo, beam
Dividers
Calipers
Dial or vernier calipers
Depth gauge
Pencils (black & white, and/or mechanical)
Crayons

- CUTTING TOOLS –
Crosscut saw
Ripsaw
Coping saw
Fret/jewelers saw
Bow saw
Backsaw
Tenon saw
Dovetail saw
Keyhole saw
Drawknife
Hacksaw
Utility knife
Folding knife
Misc. knives
Carving tools

- CHISELS –
Paring chisels – a set of five or more common sizes is useful
Chopping chisels – (aka butt chisels, may be thicker, shorter, sharpened at higher angle)
Skew chisels, fishtail chisels, dovetail chisels, corner chisels
Mortise chisels – commonly 1/4th inch and 3/8′s inch sizes

- HAND PLANES –
Low angle block plane
Bevel up or down planes
Jackplane
Jointer plane
Smooth plane
Shoulder plane
Rabbet plane
Router Plane
Plough Plane
Spokeshaves
Scrub plane
Cabinet scraper or scraper plane
Card scrapers
Scratch Stock

- BORING TOOLS –
Eggbeater drills
Bits (twist, brad point)
Ratchet brace
Auger bits
Archimedes push drill with bits
Forstner bits
Vix bits

- RASPS & FILES –
Smooth, Second cut, Mill Bastard, Double Cut
Flat rasps and files
Half round rasps and files
Triangular files
Forming tools (i.e. Sureform, Microplane)
Riffler rasps and files
Needle files
File handles
File cards and brass/nylon brushes

- CLAMPS –
C-clamps
Pipe clamps
Bar clamps
Parallel clamps
Deep throat clamps
Clamping cauls
Hand screws
Web clamps

- HAMMERS –
Claw hammer
Soft-faced hammer
Dead blow hammer
Tack hammer
Wooden mallet

- SCREWDRIVERS –
Flat bladed
Philips head
Square tipped
Ratchet screwdriver
Push screwdriver
Screwdriver bits & adapter for brace
Right angle (offset) screwdrivers
Stubby screwdrivers
Screw holding screwdrivers
Jeweler’s screwdrivers

- WRENCHES –
SAE / Metric
Adjustable wrenches
Set of box wrenches
Set of open-end wrenches
Set of combination wrenches
Ratchet socket set
Allen/hex wrenches Regular/ball end

- PLIERS –
Slip jaw pliers
Diagonal pliers
Needle nosed pliers
Channel lock pliers
Wire strippers / Crimpers

- MISCELLANEOUS –
Pencil sharpeners
Drafting supplies
Graph paper
Reference data
Calculator
Magnifying glass
Chalk
Nail set(s)
Paint scraper (removing dried glue)
Pry bar, small
Sharpening abrasives (sandpaper, diamond stones, water stones, oil stones)
Leather strop
Honing compound
Honing guides
Sandpaper in many grits
Sanding blocks in different shapes
Vegetable tanned leather for clamp pads and other uses
Rags
Brushes
Finishing supplies (applicators, finishes, rubbing out materials)
Glues
Rubber brayer for spreading water based glue
Acid brushes for spreading glue
Waxed paper to protect from glue
Veneer roller
Brooms
Dustpans
Screws
Nails
Bolts, nuts, washers

- PORTABLE POWER TOOLS –
Belt sander, sanding belts
Circular saw, blades
Saw guides
Electric drills, 3/8’s 1/2, bits (twist drills (fractional, number, letter, metric), brad point, Forstner or saw tooth, hole saws)
Drill guide
Finish sander, sandpaper sheets
Random orbital sander, sanding disks
Router, edge guide, bits, template bushings
Bench top router table
Bench grinder / wire wheel 3450/1725rpm
Jigsaw, blades
Scroll saw, blades
Lunch box planer
Shop Vac
Heavy-duty extension cord(s)
Power strips

- BENCHES -
Workbench
Holdfasts
Bench dogs (round or square)
Planing stops
Vises, (woodworking and machinist styles.)
Bench jack

- SHOP MADE ACCESSORIES –
Bench hooks
Shooting board for ends
Shooting board for miters
Shooting board for long edges
Miter Jack
Miter boxes
Sanding blocks
Storage for tools hardware and other materials

- SAFETY EQUIPMENT -
Protective glasses
Face shield
Earmuffs and plugs
Filter masks
Half face respirators
Protective gloves (appropriate to the task)
Apron, cloth, leather
Shop coat
Fire extinguisher(s)
First-aid kit including splinter tweezers

Has this information helped you? Would you consider helping support our efforts?

Like any website hosted on the internet, The ‘Woodworks Blog’ has it’s expenses. The main way we offset expenses, is directly through purchases of ‘Artisan Made’ tools and jigs from the ‘Woodworks Store’.

Another way to help support the ‘Woodworks Blog’ is to appeal to the generosity of our readers. It’s quick and easy to make a donation directly to the ‘Woodworks Blog’ by using the PayPal donation button. Your generosity is greatly appreciated!

Thanks again for all your support! We really appreciate it!

We enjoy your comments! Please Contact Us.