Though I liked high school as much as a three-year-long colonoscopy, there are sometimes when it takes a high school teacher to teach you something.

In this case, it was a high school physics teacher who taught me an important lesson about tenon saws. Here’s the story.

For the last few years, I’ve been trying to explain to people how a freakishly huge tenon saw is actually easier to balance on your work (no matter what the size of your work) than a smaller tenon saw or sash saw.

“It’s the higher center of gravity,” I implored to a room full of blank stares. “It’s higher – that gravity thing – so it’s… easier. You know?”

This is a truth I know in my gut. The Wenzloff & Sons Kenyon-style tenon saw I’ve been using for the last couple years is a breeze to balance. This is despite the fact that the blade is 19” long and it feels like there is almost 6” of blade under the huge and heavy brass back. When you see this saw, your first instinct is to think: That saw is going to tip and stagger like Gunsmoke’s “Festus.”

But once you try this saw, you think differently.

But try explaining that to people. After my feeble attempt, a high school physics teacher jumped into the conversation. He said this is easy to explain: Try balancing a broom up in the air on a few fingers. If you have the bristles on your hand, it’s harder to balance the broom than if you have the bristles in the air.

This, he explained, is why the big tenon saw is easier to balance in the air. Having the weight up in the air makes it easier for you to sense if the saw is out of balance and to make corrections. This, I concluded, is a brilliant explanation.

Back in our shop in Cincinnati I tried this experiment with our shop broom. It really was easier to balance it with the bristles in the air.

So I used this analogy last weekend to explain the tenon saw to a group of 40 or so woodworkers. To demonstrate, I looked around for a broom. No luck. So I picked up my Warrington hammer to show them how this works.

First I put the hammer head in my palm and showed how shaky it was. Then I balanced it with the head in the air. And my precious and very early Warrington hammer plunged to the concrete floor.

Dang. I still dislike school.

— Christopher Schwarz

This is another entry from John who is referring to his previous post Titled "First Class Practice"

As you recall I am making the base of the Trestle Table and am in the process of making notches in two members so when they are glued together I will have a mortise.  After sawing into the waste a number of times, I removed it by hitting it with a hammer.  A good Maydole hammer no doubt, but any hammer will do.  Here is what the joint looked like.  Not only doesn't this look nice but I don't think I am going to get a good glue joint.

So I took out my Stanley vintage router plane and went to work.  Here is the result!




See how much tearout there is on the near-right side?  And this was one of the best examples.  I was planing directly across the grain and boy did I make a mess.  I learned that I could avoid this by canting the plane and paying close attention to the wood that made contact with the iron.  It was kind of like saddling an Elm chair seat with an Inshave.  If I continued to make angle adjustments I could get a good result.  I also used the two top sides of the work as a reference for the sole of the router plane.

I had to adjust the depth a bit deeper than intended but this is the final result.  You can still see where  big area of tearout was, but this will make a good glue joint.




For explanation purposes here is how I used the sole of the router plane on the work.




John

Now that shop class is as common in high schools as poodle skirts, lots of woodworkers worry about passing on our enthusiasm for the craft to the next generation. In my house, I’ve started treating my kids more like apprentices, and it seems to be working.

They help clean the shop. They assist me on projects at assembly time. They can work on their own projects on the side when I don’t need them. And – here’s the odd part – I pay them (a pittance) for their help and swear them to secrecy on the “arts and mysteries” of the craft.

This weekend has been a perfect example. I assembled a large run of shelving that I plan to install in the recipient’s home this week. There was a lot of tedious gluing, clamping and clean-up work involved, so I hired 7-year-old Katy to help.

First, I showed her the “secret” to making the lacquer finish perfectly smooth to the touch – a folded up brown paper bag. We rubbed all the surfaces vigorously, which knocked down any surface imperfections without cutting through the film finish. Katy did the shelves; I did the uprights.

“Cool,” she said. “It works!”

As we were bagging the lacquer, both of us noticed that there were some small dings and scratches in the color. This is was the result of the parts getting moved around more than I like. So I swore Katy to secrecy again and introduced her to the mystery of stain pens. In this case, the best match wasn’t one of my stain pens (which I keep hidden away), it was a black Sharpie marker.

In fact, Katy became incredulous when I took her picture at work with the marker.

“What if someone sees the picture and figures out our secret?” she asked. “Then they’ll know!”

Then we glued up the shelves. I applied the glue. Katy added the Dominos. We both applied the clamps and cleaned the glue squeeze-out. Assembly can be stressful for me, but Katy’s amazement at how the project came together kept my anxiety in check.

We did four major glue-ups this weekend, and by the fourth one, Katy dove into the work like she had been doing it all her life. I wonder if learning woodworking is like learning a foreign language – it might be easier when you are young.

As I added the kicks to the cabinet, Katy worked at the bench at her own project – she’s transforming my discarded shop jigs for this shelving project into a wooden alligator.

Then I paid her (about $1 an hour for the shop time) and I asked her if she’d come along on the installation next week. With hesitation, she said: “Yes! Hurray!”

Next step: Getting the apprentices to fetch the small beer for the master.

— Christopher Schwarz

Somehow, during the course of about five years, I became a math dolt. When I left high school, my SAT scores for math were near perfect – far higher than my verbal score.

But after four years of studying intransitive verbs, subjunctive mood and zeugmas, my math skills withered to the point where – no lie – I couldn’t figure out the formula for the perimeter of a pentagon during a college class we all called “Math for Trees.” My wife still mocks me for this.

So I’ve always been at a loss to explain to readers the different curve required on the blade of a bevel-up smoothing plane vs. the curve required for a bevel-down smoothing plane.

The brain-dolt answer was always: The bevel-up planes require more curve to take the same shaving as a bevel-down smoothing plane. But that was about as good as my explanation got.

A couple weekends ago, David Powell explained the math to me during a presentation at the Northeastern Woodworkers Association’s Woodworkers Showcase. I retained the explanation and formula only until the next morning. (Honest: I had only one beer that night. Perhaps is was the lamb korma.)

In any case, I took notes during the presentation that are useful for the shop. If anyone wants the formulas, you can probably ask Powell himself. Powell was the founder of Diamond Machining Technology (DMT) and is now the maker of the Odate Crowning Plates. The plates are diamond stones with a curve built into them so you don’t have to use finger pressure to create the curve on the blade.

Powell’s numbers assume that the iron has a curve created by one of his diamond crowning plates. The plates are dished to mimic a 37-1/2’-radius circle. Powell’s numbers also assume you are using 90 percent of the iron of the tool during the cut.

So here goes: A bevel-down No. 4 handplane with a 2”-wide iron that is bedded at 45° will take a .002”-thick shaving if it has an iron that is sharpened with the Odate crowning plate.

Now let’s take a bevel-up low-angle block plane with its 1-3/8”-wide iron bedded at 12° and the iron sharpened at 25° (the angle of attack is therefore 37°). Powell says this plane will take a .0005”-thick shaving if you use 90 percent of the iron in the cut.

How about the very popular bevel-up jack plane? It has a 2-1/8”-wide iron and also is bedded bevel-up at 12°. If you have a 25° bevel sharpened on the iron, it will take a .0008”-thick cut. If you have a 38° bevel sharpened on the iron, the plane will take a .0006”-thick cut. And if you have a 50° bevel sharpened on the iron, the plane will take a .0004”-thick cut.

While these numbers don’t tell you how much extra pressure to put at the corners of your iron to make that extra curve, there is a good piece of data here. And here it is: Use the same curve for all your smoothing planes.

A plane bedded at 45° is best suited for mild woods. So its .002”-thick shaving is about right.

Planes bedded at higher angles are used for curly, exotic or just grumpy woods. So the best strategy is to take a thinner shaving (thinner shavings help reduce tear-out in my experience). So a shaving thinner than .001” is an excellent choice. And that’s exactly what you’ll get with a high pitch.

So all that math boiled down to this: Don’t bother with the math. Just stick with the same curve for bevel-up or bevel-down and you’ll be OK.

— Christopher Schwarz

Editor's note: The following blog entry was penned by John Hoffman, my business partner here at Lost Art Press. He wrote this after assisting me during my sawing class up in Sterling Heights, Mich.

— Christopher Schwarz

I am in the process of sawing out large notches for the Trestle Table from Woodworking Magazine.  I have been experimenting making first-class saw cuts. I have used the chisel with the bevel toward the waste and away from the waste as suggested by Chris.  The key for me is to not tap the chisel to hard. I am using Southern Yellow Pine, (an exotic wood to Canadians) so it is not hard, however, I have been able to cross the baseline with either bevel approach if I hit the chisel too hard. The other experiment I have been doing is to see how much of a notch I need to make with the chisel for the saw to ride in. 

In this pic you can see a deeper notch and a shallow notch.  I have tried to keep the shallow notch deep enough to cover the saw set. Noctice the somewhat crocked lines made from my dull marking knife.

The next pic is the result. Again the lines seemed to work out well and it seems that the smaller notch worked fine. Notice the notch in each corner to guide the saw. It was a bit tricky because the work is only 1-1/4" inches thick which put the sawing close to the bench top.



Yes I did run the toe of the saw into the top of the bench, but only once. Really! I then continued to practice sawing to the line to waste out the rest of the material.  This is the result.



If you look closely some of the saw cuts are definitely better than others. I tend to wander off line at the far end of the cut. I have been focusing on watching the reflection of the work on the saw plate to help me stay true. Another trick from Chris, who told me the best thing to do is keep on sawing.

— John Hoffman

Aside from eBay descriptions, photographs might be the biggest fibbers in the world of tools.

I’ve just finished judging a toolmaking contest sponsored by WoodCentral and Lee Valley Tools. During two days, I and two other judges examined, used and quarreled about more than 70 amateur-made tools. Our task was to award three prizes: the best-looking tool, the one that displayed the highest craftsmanship and the tool that worked the best.

As the entries came in, Ellis Wallentine of Wood Central posted pictures of the tools that were snapped by the makers (you can see those pictures here). I checked back every week or so to take a look at the entries and get a head start on judging.

Judging this contest, I thought, was going to be a cakewalk. We’d wrap it up in a couple hours and hit the Irish pub near the Lee Valley headquarters and spend the afternoon yucking it up.

It didn’t work out that way. In fact, the Lee Valley folks had to gently push us out the door after the first day of judging.

Here’s what happened: Photos are sometimes deceiving. Though some tools looked as good as they worked, other tools that looked like a million bucks in photos couldn’t cut a soggy toothpick in half. Tools that looked like they came over on the Mary Rose were so sweet they would almost do the job themselves when you went for a bathroom break.

And then there were the "ugly" tools. The tools that looked like they were made in a style that you had to wear either a black beret or Big Smith overalls (and no shirt) to truly appreciate. These tools managed to bore their way into your heart like a tapeworm in an Arkansas rice paddy.

So we argued about the tools. We almost abandoned any hope of awarding a prize for aesthetics. We were just too far apart. The craftsmanship award, however, was a little easier. There were lots of well-made tools, but some required more varied skills to make than others.

And function? That was the easy prize. When the steel hit the wood, it was quick to see which tools cut the mustard and which should be used only for resawing the mustard. In the end, using these tools radically changed my view of them. I didn’t care if the photos looked like junk or they had been professionally shot. When I looked at the pictures I saw only a tool that worked or didn’t work. As a result of all this, I was really pleased that we judged this contest in person and not via the photos. I think we got it right.

I cannot say yet which tools I personally liked or which tools I didn’t, but I’m including a few photos I snapped during the judging to break up the awful grey page generated by my typing prowess. When you take a gander, just make sure that you remember that pixels can be a crock of poo.

— Christopher Schwarz

The Union Village Shaker community is about an hour north of my home in Fort Mitchell, Ky., but it doesn’t figure large in the world of Shaker furniture like the eastern Shaker communities do.

Union Village was the first and largest Shaker community west of the Allegheny Mountains, and it was the parent community for the western Shaker communities in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana and Georgia.

Founded in 1805, more than 4,000 Shakers lived at Union Village during its peak and they were known for selling herbal medicines, seeds and brooms. The community declined until it was sold in 1912. The site is now a retirement community in Warren County, Ohio.

One of the artifacts remaining from the village is a walnut blanket box with fine lines and tight dovetails. The box is similar in form to many Shaker chests that are extant, but this one has always been a favorite.

I chose to adapt this design because it highlights the advantages of my preferred chest-building method. The fine bit of transition moulding around the plinth is easy to accomplish with this traditional construction technique.

While I retained the proportions and lines of the Union Village original, I used finger joints instead of dovetails. And I used figured maple instead of walnut. These two alterations give the box a contemporary feel.

Statistics:
Dimensions: 21-3/8” high x 38-1/2” long x 18-1/4” deep
Materials: Tiger maple exterior; poplar interior parts
Finish: Custom blend of oil, varnish and linseed oil.
Construction Details: All surfaces are handplaned using traditional techniques. Plinth and box are joined using entirely traditional joinery methods. All the hardware is iron with traditional pyramid-head screws.

— Christopher Schwarz

I almost never get a phone call from the public relations people at the Stanley Works. Perhaps they are too busy selling garage door openers or thinking up double-entendre and obesity jokes to accompany the company’s line of Fat Max tools.

But in 2002, the phone rang, and it was Stanley.

The friendly public relations person had heard that I’d just reviewed jack planes in Popular Woodworking magazine and that Stanley had won the “Best Value” award. Could he get a copy of the review right away? And could they use it in their marketing materials?

At that moment I knew this was going to have a storyline that ended me with telling him that the tooth fairy didn’t exist.

Yes, I reply, Stanley won the award. Yes, I’d be happy to send him a copy of the review. Yes, they could use the test in their marketing materials.

“However,” I say, pausing for a moment, “I don’t think you’re going to want to use the review.”

And so I explained: When I set up our review of metal-bodied jack planes, I included all the major brands on the market at the time: Lie-Nielsen, Clifton, Record, Shop Fox, Anant and Stanley. And then, as a lark, I put a few vintage Stanley Type 11s into the test.

The vintage Stanleys in the test were about 100 years old and were bought at flea markets and on eBay for anywhere between $12 and $35. As you can probably guess, the vintage Stanley planes blew the doors off most of the new planes (except the Lie-Nielsen and, to some degree, the Clifton).

It was a fair fight. These vintage planes needed work. The soles were a bit wonky. The irons and chipbreakers needed work. The frogs weren’t perfectly tuned. But even though these vintage Stanleys should be retired to the old-folks home for cast iron, they were easier to set up than the new planes. The controls were finer. Heck the 100-year-old fit and finish was better than those on the Record, Shop Fox and Anant.

The guy from Stanley Works was perplexed by my explanation. But he still wanted the review for his files, so I sent it to him that very afternoon.

And now bear with me for a second story that begins with my phone ringing.

It is from a reader who wants help choosing a tool – the kind of call I get about five times a week. This guy wants some help buying a bit brace. No problem. I rattle off my standard favorites: The North Bros. 2101A brace and a couple from Peck, Stow & Wilcox. And I throw in a plug for Sanford Moss’s web site as a great place to research and buy the brace of his dreams.

“Um, thanks,” the guy says, “but I wanted to buy a new brace.”

Huh? Why would anyone want to buy a new brace? The best braces ever made are still littering the planet and can be had for less than the price of a tab of Oxycontin (not that I know anything about the price of illegal prescriptives).

“I don’t like used equipment,” he explains. “I want to be the first person who uses it. When I take it out of the box, I want it to be perfect.”

The reader then asked me about three brands of new braces he’d seen in catalogs. We went over the details of each one: junk, tremendous junk and crap-tacular junk. He settled on purchasing the brace that I had the fewest bad things to say. We both hung up the phone bewildered.

Sometimes I forget that there is a certain consumer that won’t buy anything that has been used. With all of the sturdy old houses on the market, they would prefer to buy something new in the suburbs that doesn’t have the same level of craftsmanship or detailing.

I used to get fairly worked up about this fact, but in the last few years, I’ve come to embrace it as a good thing. Here’s why: These people are helping expand the marketplace for high-quality new tools. They are the consumers who help ensure that Veritas, Clifton, Lie-Nielsen and other manufacturers will have a customer base.

Their buying habits have encouraged competition among makers and have exposed more of their fellow woodworkers to the wonders of high-quality modern tool manufacturing. I myself started into the craft with vintage planes and balked at the price of Lie-Nielsen (and later Clifton and Veritas) planes when I first encountered them about 12 years ago. But after using the tools, I think they’re a tremendously good value.

The whole thing is a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation. Does the availability of quality new tools grow the interest in traditional tools? Or does an interest in traditional tools fuel the availability of new quality tools?

I’m not smart enough to answer a chicken-and-egg paradox. But I am smart enough to recognize that the world works in cycles. You see, last week I got an e-mail from a public relations person at Stanley Works….

— Christopher Schwarz

If you own enough books, it's easy to believe almost anything and yet be certain about almost nothing.

Take dovetails. I've seen this joint cut with a wide variety of slopes during the last 15 years. And every person who cuts this joint has a personal or historical preference about the slope they use.

For some craftsmen, the slope varies simply because they eyeball the layout. Frank Klausz, one of the two living dovetail savants I know, says he cuts his dovetails anywhere between 10° to 15° off the vertical. Tage Frid preferred slopes of "about 10°."

Other well-known dovetailers use marking jigs to lay out the joint, which locks them into particular angles. Rob Cosman, the other living dovetail savant, uses 10° for softwoods and 8.5° for hardwoods.

For the last 15 years I've been cutting dovetails, I've used the angles used by my first instructor: 10° for softwoods and 8.5° for hardwoods, just like Cosman. But for some reason, I've become dissatisfied with the way the joints look when they are visible on a piece of casework.

So I hit the library a few weeks ago, and now my head hurts from the bludgeoning. Dovetails might take their name from a bird, but reading about them is a trip down the rabbit hole.

What the Dead Guys Say
To understand how little there is to understand about dovetails, let's take an abbreviated journey through the literature. I promise to be quick like a bunny.

Charles H. Hayward, the mid-20th century pope of hand-cut joinery, suggests three slopes: Use 12° for coarse work. Use 10° or 7° for decorative dovetails. There is no advice on hardwoods vs. softwoods.

F.E. Hoard and A.W. Marlow, the authors of the 1952 tome "The Cabinetmaker's Treasury," say you should use 15°. Period.

"Audel's Carpenter's Guide," an early 20th century technical manual, says that 7.5° is for an exposed joint and 10° is right for "heavier work." No advice on hardwoods vs. softwoods.

"Modern Practical Joinery" the 1902 book by George Ellis recommends 10° for all joints, as does Paul Hasluck in his 1903 "The Handyman's Book."

So at least among our dearly departed dovetailers, the advice is to use shallow angles for joints that show and steeper angles if your work is coarse, heavy or hidden. Or just to use one angle and be done with it.

At least in my library, the advice on softwoods and hardwoods seems to become more common with modern writing. Percy Blandford, who has been writing about woodworking for a long time, writes in his new book, "The Woodworker's Bible," that any angle between 7.5° and 10° is acceptable. The ideal, he says, is 8.5° for softwoods and 7.5° when joining hardwoods.

My Own Eye
One Wednesday morning I laid out and cut a bunch of these dovetails. I ignored the really shallow angles (6.5° to 8.5°) because I wanted to adopt something more angular. The 10° dovetails looked OK. The 12° dovetails looked better. The 14° tails looked better still. And the 15° looked really good as well. (The photo at the top of this entry shows a 15° dovetail with a bunch of alternatives marked on it.)

But I've some defect in my personality that keeps me from choosing the most extreme position, so I settled on 14°. And it's a good thing, too, because a few days after that, the mindreaders at Lee Valley Tools released a 14° dovetail marker (I really should start wearing my tinfoil hat more). I ordered one – it seemed to be a sign.

Whatever angle you use for your joint, you can rest easy knowing that someone out there (living or dead) thinks you are doing the right thing – unless you cut something more than 15°, then you're just nuts (or use a dovetail jig with your router).

— Christopher Schwarz

When I build too much stuff with straight lines, it starts to make me a little batty. So after finishing a blanket chest and a gaggle of sawbenches, I retreated into my quick, easy and curvy place.

No, it’s not a gentleman’s club, but it’s almost as stimulating. (Note to self: I must be getting old to write a line like that.) Today I spent a morning building a set of three Shaker oval boxes as a wedding gift. These boxes are an immersion course in curves, angles, steam-bending and nailing.

I first learned to build these boxes during a 2002 photo shoot with the undisputed master of the craft: John Wilson. After watching him make these boxes, I immediately built the bending forms and bought the copper tacks and some bending stock to make some boxes.

I’ve probably made 20 or so sets, and during the last five years or so I’ve altered some of Wilson’s techniques to suit my tools and way of working. And now I have it down to the point where I use hand tools for the entire process, save one little point when I fit the top and bottom slabs to their bent bands.

If you’ve never tried building these boxes, I highly recommend you give it a try. You can order all the materials directly from Wilson at ShakerOvalBox.com or buy a small kit from Lee Valley Tools. It’s so much fun, it might even keep you out of the strip clubs.

Here, in brief, is how I’ve altered Wilson’s tried-and-true procedures in my shop.

1. Feathering: All the oval bands have to be feathered in thickness at one end so the two ends meet in a smooth curve. Wilson uses a belt/disc sander for this operation. He presses about 1-1/4” of the end to the belt sander and tapers the end to almost nothing. I do this with a block plane. I mark a line about 1-1/4” from the end and plane a taper on the end. Takes but a minute.

2. Drilling: Wilson uses an electric drill with a 3/32” bit to make the holes for all the copper tacks and for the toothpicks that secure the top and bottom slabs to the bands. I use an eggbeater drill. I look for any excuse to use my Millers Falls No. 2, and this is a good excuse.

3. Surfacing: Instead of sanding all the parts, I surface them with a handplane or scraper plane. It works great with the straight-cut stuff that Wilson sells.

4. Cutting the tops and bottoms: Wilson uses a band saw. I use a bow saw. My way is much slower, but I like using my bow saw.

So which power tool will I not give up with these boxes? It’s the table saw. Once you cut out the top and bottom slabs, you need to put a little bevel on the edges so they will snuggle into the bands with a cork-like fit.

I have a disc-sander plate I put on my table saw for this operation. I tilt the arbor a couple degrees and sand away. Someday I’ll switch to a spokeshave for this operation I’m sure.

So how fast is this process? The photos here show what happens after an hour of work. I feather the ends of the bands, cut the “fingers” with a knife and boil the bands for 20 minutes. Then I remove the bands, wrap them around the forms and tack the bands. I put a couple plugs in each band to help them hold their shape and walk away for a day.

Tomorrow I’ll spend an hour fitting and attaching the top and bottom pieces. Then a little touch-up work and I’ll be ready to spray them with a little lacquer.

Because I like my day job, I’ll spray them here at home. Click here for the back-story on that.

— Christopher Schwarz