Yet Another Use for 1-2-3 Blocks

Today I was making a rolling rack for plywood and other sheet goods. The base required me to rip frame parts with a four degree bevel along their lengths, so that the plywood will lean back safely against the center of the cart and not tip over.

I needed the central frame members (joists?) to be narrower than the outer ones, to accommodate the four degree slope. As luck had it, the inner joists needed to be one inch narrower. Easy! Just move the fence over an inch for the last two cuts . . . except . . .

What I Did on Summer Vacation 2020

On Friday I got home from my place near Rib Lake, Wisconsin. Since the autumnal equinox happened during the last few days of the trip, technically we can call it a late-summer visit to the woods. Temperatures were warm for September. A few nights were cool enough that I was comfortable inside my shack with a fire in the stove, but most nights were fine to sleep outside in the hammock.

Despite the warm temperatures, the sun was no longer high in the sky, as in July. Daylight hours are shorter, and the leaves turned color while I was there. Early on there were patchy bits of color here and there:

. . . but by the time I left we had sights like

Videos Worth Watching: Workholding Without a Vise

This is one of my 10 favorite woodworking videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvhn-PAfEW4&t=10s

Why do I hold it in such esteem?

1. Mike Siemsen is clearly

Videos Worth Watching: "Medieval Wood Riving"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BE2klxBE8QM

A museum team in Sweden shows excellent axe techniques for felling, bucking, riving and hewing as they duplicate 40-foot-long rafters in a medieval Swedish church.

The segment on controlling the riving is my favorite. Early in the video you can see that the tree used for the original rafters has considerable twist, and the crew shows how to overcome that.

Lately I've been following the "Finnish Vintage Axes" account on Instagram, and  now I see what all those long-headed axes are for. It also looks like "mortising" axes have a more general use during the controlled riving.

The best woodworking videos give me an itch to get busy. This one does that, in spades!

Stacked Birch Bark Knife Handle: New Video

I recently made and posted this video to YouTube: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2zDllohj-Q

The process of making the handle was quite enjoyable, and the result is wonderful. The handle is grippy, resilient, and warm in the hand. Even when wet! I will be making more.

New Video: Torsion Box

Not a detailed how-to tutorial, just a quick check. We've heard they're rigid, and they FEEL rigid, but can we measure it?

https://youtu.be/2JkNi7jIkRE
I compared a very simple torsion box to a pine 2x10 by putting them across a 30" span (one at a time) with a dial indicator underneath, and stood right above the indicator.

Results? Torsion box deflected .03 inch, 2x10 deflected .1 inch. So yes, torsion box is nice & rigid.

In case it matters, the skin of the box is 1/2" plywood and the core grid is 3/4" plywood on 8" centers. The box was assembled with glue, plenty of clamps, and 16 gauge brads shot in with a pneumatic nailer.

I like torsion boxes.

Seal the Ends of Green Lumber

When you get lucky and score a bunch of nice fresh wood like this black cherry, seal the end grain before it starts drying out.

Moisture leaves wood most easily through the end grain, less easily through the long grain, and least easily through

Spoon Blanks by Hammer and Chisel (Without a Hatchet!)

Unrefined spoons, just captured in the wilds of northern Wisconsin!

Let's say you have

Miller Dowels Replacing Screws

The workbench we build in the “Workbench in a Weekend” class is made up of five assemblies that are glued together, with #8 screws holding the parts together as the glue dries.

The screws in the leg assemblies might seem unsightly to some. (They do to me!) And the screws inside the top and side assemblies might be

If You Can't Start at the Ending, Repeat: One Lesson from Drew Langsner

Several years into my professional woodworking life, I read an older man's account of being hired on at

Dovetails Again

Here is an excellent, short video that mostly is about cutting dovetails.

There is an astonishing quantity of b.s. propagated about dovetailing. So much so, that when I saw this, I decided to share it - - yes, I'm reblogging somebody else's work - - in the name of giving a boost to the good stuff so that the b.s. can begin sinking to the bottom.

Chris Hall's blog is worth following, too.

That's all!

Iron-On Veneer

Here's a simple technique for applying veneer to flat panels. I have used it with bandsawn veneer I made myself, with paper-backed commercial veneer, and this week I'm doing it with some camphor burl veneer purchased from an online supplier. 

These particular panels will be

Long Workpieces on a Short Workbench

If you don't have a long bench but need to work on the edge of long boards, here's a trick (or what the computer-semi-literate call a “hack”). I have a good iron tail vise on the end of my short but heavy bench. This works well for the typical work I do and the space I have to do it in. The photo shows how I handle workpieces too long to rest on the bench lengthwise.

Pivoting Joint for Folding Furniture: A Quick Prototype

After work today I tested a concept I thought of recently. It possibly solves a problem posed by Sally Schneider on her website, The Improvised Life.* Sally wrote a post about the folding mechanism of chairs and tables by Roger Tallon.

She went looking for the hardware and couldn't find it, so has been seeking a viable substitute. 

It might be possible to do the job with a plain old butt hinge, but doing that gracefully and attractively is fairly difficult. So I mulled it over in my daydreaming time, and came up with

Test Driving Chris Black's Router Plane

Yesterday's mail included a package from Chris Black in North Carolina. Late last week I realized I have been thinking about getting a router plane for a long time, but never pull the trigger. Looking forward a few months, I have some projects in mind that involve lots of dadoes in pine or poplar, so I called Chris. In addition to the tools he makes for sale, like an awesome birdcage awl and the best sanding block (seriously, when my partner saw it she tried to steal it!) Chris usually has a small pile of really nice old Stanley and other equivalent tools that he's restored for sale. I called him up and asked what he has on hand.

Turns out everyone and his siblings have been asking for router planes lately, so Chris has decided to make his own wooden version. He offered to let me have a look at his “Mark II” prototype. I sent some money by PayPal, he shipped it, I received it. I like it!

Kiln Rebuild in the Works?

This weekend I had a chance to visit my friend Reed on his farm about an hour's drive from here. Reed has been everything from an advertising art director to a publisher to a woodworker. Before I started my present job at Fernbank Science Center, Reed and I built some cabinetry and furniture projects together, and we also built and operated a solar lumber

Ian Kirby's Sharpening with Waterstones

In the time I've been writing this blog, I have shied away from doing book reviews, because I want this blog to tell you what's going on in MY shop. But sometimes, what's going on in my shop is that I'm reading, to help jog my memory about a technique or construction method or tool setup that I want to use. For me, woodworking and reading about it have always been paired activities which make each other more interesting and rewarding. It's about time I shared some of my thoughts on a few books, blogs and magazines.

I

Some Books I Like

In 1998 and 1999, Cambium Press (later taken over by Linden Press) issued four books by Ian Kirby: The Accurate Router, The Accurate Table Saw, Sharpening with Waterstones, and The Complete Dovetail. These books are physically different from typical woodworking books, with a smaller format: 6 by 9 inches and 140 pages, compared with 9 by 12 and around 200 pages for most woodworking offerings from publishers like Taunton, Sterling, Fox Chapel, Popular Woodworking; and other titles from Cambium/Linden. So they're half the usual size, but also half the usual price, at $14.95. I like them all, and they're among the books I recommend students in my classes read.

The illustrations are all

Drying Wood in the Microwave: or, the Cursed Spoon

Three rounds of 30-second exposures in the microwave oven, with a few minutes outside in between to cool off, will dry most spoons enough to be ready for finish sanding and oiling. And that would have worked for this spoon too! But nothing about this spoon was easy. It probably shouldn't even exist. It resisted being created at almost every step of the way. And I refused to listen.

How to Sharpen a Veneer Tape Trimmer

I don’t use veneer tape very often. When I build frameless cabinets, I usually face the exposed edges with solid edgebanding cut from leftover wood, so my edges will match the drawers and doors. Once in a while, though, it makes sense to take advantage of

New-Old Class

I have been teaching classes at Highland Woodworking long enough that there's at least one class which another great teacher developed, and then I taught several times after he left, and which I then quit teaching, and now we're bringing it back. But it's been so long since we've run this class, that I don't remember a thing about it!

I've forgotten how to teach this class SO COMPLETELY that I am basically starting from scratch. I have forgotten the size, except for a single dimension: 5 inches, which is the width of the apron. How wide was the top? How narrow was the taper of the legs? What was the total height? Heck if I know! I've made a few guesses and drawn a police-artist type "reconstruction" with SketchUp. 

(Artist's reconstruction)

What I do know is this: it's a very handsome Shaker-style end table. Jason Howard, now at Hardwoods Incorporated, designed both the table and the class, which was very popular in the early 2000's. The mortise/tenon connection between legs and aprons was done back then via Beadlock, which I'm not sure exists any more. The class always built it in cherry, which was very much in vogue in the 90's and 00's.

This is a great beginning project if you'd like to try your hand at solid-wood furniture. It is small and simple enough to build in 3 (admittedly intense) nights, and take home in your car. If you're new to woodworking, you'll learn some important basic skills like gluing up a wide panel, a fundamental wood joint (mortise & tenon), organizing work flow, and switching between machines for brute basic shaping and hand tools for finishing touches (both shaping and surfacing).

We're doing it next week. Join us if you can, as we rediscover one of Highland's great classes! We'll be building it in cherry (old school!) but I'm not yet decided on the joinery method. Not by hand, not by Beadlock. I guess that leaves Leigh FMT, Festool Domino, or floating tenons via my home-made mortising jig.