Evenfall Woodworks

Usable Hand Tool Storage? Thank Mr. C.A. Jewett.

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 [...]

Woodworks Store Updates 11/09

It started out as just one model. I wanted a shooting board that would provide calibration, accuracy, overcome wood movement, and allow the user a choice between more than one shooting angle. It took some consideration. I wanted a platform that was durable and stable, big enough to support the usual work most [...]

The Case for Long Grain Shooting Boards

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 [...]

Woodworkers and Toolmakers

Sorry it has been so long since I checked in! I have been kept really busy in the shop making shooting boards, and have not really had a great deal of free time to write. My Bad. I have had a few folks step up and ask me to take the time to write more often, [...]

Musings from the left side

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 [...]

Not Fade Away

Not fade away… A nearly perfect Buddy Holly song… Today, as I try to write this, Monday June 29, was a tough sad day. I had to say goodbye to a well-loved friend, and one of the coolest spirits I have ever known. Boomer. 1997 – 6-29-2009 A cancerous abdominal tumor began growing in his abdomen [...]

Shooting Boards and they’re Red Hot!

Shooting Boards and they’re red hot, yes I’ve got em’ for sale! I have to thank the early bluesman Robert Johnson, for the inspiration on the title here. I have been getting some email reminding me to come up for air and write a little bit here, as I have been working with my head down. [...]

Introducing a Shooting Board from Evenfall Studios.

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 [...]

Recent Updates to the “Woodworks Library”

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 [...]

Tearout and Wood Machining… By Hand!

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 [...]

Shop Space Comfort

Got 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 [...]

The Foibles of Tape Measures

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 [...]

Building the 5-Gallon Thien Separator

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 [...]

Improving Shop Vac Dust Collection

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 [...]

Creativity in Hardware Storage

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 Challenges to Squareness

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 [...]

The Constructs of Squareness

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 [...]

Sharpness Flatness Godness Agnes!

…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 [...]

A Portable Sharpening Station

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 [...]

The Utility of the Straightedge

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 [...]

A Tour of the Woodworks

Hey all! Thanks for stopping by! It is nice to see so many people dropping by and looking around. The Woodworks here is a work in progress and will grow over time. I thought I would take a few moments to show you around, so that while you are here you will be able to [...]

The Woodworks Library

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 [...]

Understanding Fractional Accuracy

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 [...]

John Barleycorn Must Die.

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 [...]

Using Cross Dowels

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 [...]

Metrology

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 [...]

Chalk is cheap!

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 [...]

Tooling up

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” [...]

Pulling the Trigger

After giving much thought to many woodworking questions over the years, it occurred to me that there are many, many questions. Now that would seem an obvious duh, but wait, it’s fine! Because people are all over the map at the various stages of the learning curves they are on, and who knows where they started, or what exposure they’ve had.