My day job at a woodworking magazine forces me to try out new sharpening equipment all the time, which drives me bonkers. No matter how long you have been sharpening, it takes some time to get tuned into a new stone or guide or system.

However, sometimes all this agony results in some ecstasy.

For example, I've become fond of the small Kell honing guide for chisels. No honing guide I've ever used can produce such accurate edges. Why? Two reasons. The jig clamps from the sides, which prevents your chisel from shifting. However, my old Eclipse-style guide also clamps from the sides. So what's the big deal?

Where the Kell excels is that you can secure the chisel with its unbeveled face against the Kell's guide bars. Brilliant. While my Eclipse guide tends to make my chisels twist, the Kell does not. As a result, it's far easier to hone a straight secondary bevel on chisels (and on straight irons for joinery planes).

The irony about the Kell is that I was introduced to the guide by Joel Moskowitz, the owner of Tools for Working Wood. Joel is an advocate of freehand sharpening. But now I've even more attached to my honing guides because of him. Thanks Joel!

My other favorite bit of sharpening equipment is the little block of wood shown in the photo. I mark common honing angles on it using my daughter's protractor. Then I set it on the end of my bench and use it to set the chisel to the proper angle for sharpening in the guide.

I have tried myriad devices and techniques for setting angles. I have marked up my workbench with dozens of lines for setting a wide variety of irons to a wide variety of angles. Nothing works as simple and brilliantly as a direct reading from my block of wood. And it's portable and I never – ever – have to compensate for the thickness of a tool or its taper.

I had to make up this new block of wood recently because I lost my old one at Kelly Mehler's School of Woodworking. My old one was fancier – it had the radius of my fore plane's blade shaped into the back end. That way I could just trace the shape onto a fore plane blade and grind to the line.

— Christopher Schwarz

Ok I am getting caught up on some woodworking projects.  I have been closing the books for Lost Art Press and getting ready for tax filings…It is surprising how much non-woodworking tasks there are to do in a woodworking business.  I digress.

As promised here is a pic of the Veritas Skew Rabbet plane aka moving fillister, in action.  A Rabbet is a recess with two open sides that is cut with the grain.  A fillister is a cross grain rabbet.  Just like a groove is with the grain and a dado is across the grain.  The moving fillister has a fence to allow for adjustment of the fillister. 

Anyway, the plane works great as you can see.  The wood is figured maple and I didn’t even have the nicker (the blade that slices the wood fibers ahead of the blade) in place.  It was adjusted out of the way when I put the plane back into the cabinet and forgot to set it when I started planing for this picture.

The next pic is an attachment I made for the shooting board so I could fine tune the miter cuts on some boxes I am making.  I took a couple of pieces of a pine 2x12 left over from the trestle table I built.  I band sawed them to shape, glued them together and added a fence. Crude but it works.  I just clamp it onto the shooting board and have at it.  The bar of the clamp is a bit in the way but I will try another clamp or something.

My to do list includes replacing a number of wooden pieces for my brother’s parquet floor, legging up a chair, and trying to get a jewelry box done.  I also got called from a friend who wants help framing his basement and build  a bar and a co-worker who wants shelves built for her new house.  What I want to do is build the Massachusetts Block Front Chest that Glen Huey made.  Don’t we all get grabbed when someone finds out we woodwork?  Yes, I would like to help out but I still have a lot of painting to do in my house not to mention installing a hardwood floor and winning the super bowl on my Xbox 360.  Heck, that doesn’t take into account all the hi-def cable channels and the new blue ray player!  But I digress again…Back to work!

-John Hoffman

Like most woodworkers, I learn a lot about the craft while building projects. What’s surprising is how much I learn about the craft after the project is completed and put to use.

Most of the projects I build for Woodworking Magazine and Popular Woodworking end up in the hands of friends, family and the employees of the publishing company I work for. (The employees have to pay only for the cost of materials – a sweet benefit.)

But I have quite a few of the prototypes in our house, including our dining room table, which was a project featured on the cover of the Autumn 2006 issue. I’d built the prototype in December 2005, so it has now seen at least 1,000 meals. And it has taught me at least five important lessons.

1. Trust antique designs. This table’s proportions, lines and joinery were all taken from antique Shaker and early American forms featured in Wallace Nutting’s “Furniture of the Pilgrim Century, 1620-1720” (Download the entire book for free here.) The table weighs very little; my 7-year-old daughter can lift one end of the 8’-long table with one hand. Yet it is unbelievably sturdy; my 7-year-old routinely vaults herself off the breadboard ends. My wife soils herself every time. I just smile.

2. Leave appropriate toolmarks. I flattened the underside of the tabletop by traversing it with a fore plane. It has deep, regularly spaced scallops across it. I left them there, and I’m so glad I did. Every evening my fingers ride the scallops on the underside, and it’s my favorite aspect of the table.

3. Thin breadboards are good. Because I was worried about my kids vaulting off the ends of this table (a well-founded fear apparently), I decided to make the breadboard tongues 3/8” thick instead of 1/4” or 5/16” thick (the top itself is about 7/8”). That was a mistake. Not only did it make construction more difficult because the mortise walls were so thin, it also made the ends of the breadboards more fragile. One of the corners chipped out during a pre-teen dance party.

4. The finish is never finished. The tabletop has taken a beating. Even though I thought I’d applied enough coats of lacquer, it probably would look better today if I’d applied a couple more. Oh well. If the tabletop gets so beat up that it looks like crap, I’ll refinish it. Refinishing is part of the life of many pieces of furniture.

5. Wedged tenons are as incredible as dovetails. I am stunned at how tight the joinery is everywhere on the base thanks to the wedged tenons. My kids have done everything in their power to tear this table apart.

I can see that the light is failing outside my window. That means it’s time to go downstairs and start making dinner and see if I get another lesson in woodworking from the thing that holds the plates.

— Christopher Schwarz

Well, I got my first commission, sort of.  I mean I was asked to make something for free.  A friend wanted something that would cover an outlet in their kitchen.  They used the outlet to plug in a number of devices like cell phones and a clock radio.  They wanted a box that would allow the cords to come out and they needed to be able to remove the box from time to time.  And….they wanted it to match their existing cabinets.

This was great since I have never made anything this small.  I have spent my time making large cabinets for computers and tv’s.  I also have some great curly maple sitting in my shop begging to become jewelry boxes, so this was a chance to practice.  I recently took the plunge and bought a moving fillister from Lee Valley.  I got a discount from being at the Woodworking in America conference.   I have a Record Rapier plow plane which works great, so the moving fillister was the next big thing.  With these two planes I was able to plow the groove for the top panel to sit in and I used the moving fillister to raise the panel. 

 

The first task was to decide on the thickness of the parts.   I decided to try and get close to ¼ inch in thickness as I thought anything thicker would make the box to heavy looking.  Since the thickness was going to be ¼ inch, I decided dovetails would not be the thing to do.  While writing that sentence, I am thinking I could have done dovetails couldn’t I???  Well, anyway, I did mitre joints, on the table saw.  I wanted to clean them up on my shooting board but the mitre attachment is not right to hold the work in place.  Chris suggested a Donkey’s Ear, I heard Donkey’s Ass, and took it as a reference to my work…Well I got straighten out and will make one soon. 

 

Anyway, here is a picture of the box.  I left the bottom of the box open; see pic below.  I say bottom when looking at the box mounted on the wall.  Not sure if “bottom” is the correct term for this part.  Sorry to confuse.  It is one side of the piece that is a different width.  Now the electric cords can pass through the box onto the counter.  I used a French Cleat to hang the box so it can be removed easily.  I didn’t spline the mitres, just glue.  I did reinforce them with a very small glue block however they were surprisingly strong with just glue. 

 

One last thing.  I proudly gave the box to my friend who seemed impressed.  He had it with him the next day at work.  Yup, I made it a hair to small, so I quickly made another.

 

- John

Thomas Lie-Nielsen sidled up to me with a drink in his hand, a sportscoat on his back and a sly look across his face.

He opened his green jacket to reveal… a stick.

I repressed my urge to pluck it from his jacket because I stank like a monkey’s armpit after hauling four workbenches all over the campus of Berea College for our Woodworking in America conference.

But Thomas (who raises horses and must be accustomed to large, malodorous hairy things) nodded that it was OK for me to grab the stick. I did. Then I squealed like a little girl.

It was a brass Warrington hammer and looked just like my favorite hammer of all time, the little guy shown at the top of this blog entry. I use the round end of this hammer for adjusting all my planes. A few subtle hammer taps adjust the lateral position of my iron with more accuracy than any lateral-adjust mechanism.

I’ll also use the round end to advance the irons of my planes that don't have mechanical adjusters. Oh, and I drive small pins with this end, too.

The flat end, called the “cross pane,” is ideal for starting nails. You pinch the nail with your fingers and use the cross pane to sneak through your fingertips to strike the nail’s head. Very handy.

There are probably 100 other uses for this little hammer because I take it with me whenever I travel with my tools.

So here’s the news: Lie-Nielsen Toolworks is going to begin making this hammer in both steel and brass. I don’t have information on pricing or availability, but who cares? I’m getting a set (or two) the minute they come out.

You see, I have a hammer problem. I probably have 20 or more of them, all different. Most of them came into my hands when I wrote about hammers for Woodworking Magazine a few years back, but for some reason I can’t seem to get rid of them.

But the Warrington’s size and weight have made it my favorite shop hammer (followed quickly by my 16-ounce Maydole hammer). And soon – thanks to Lie-Nielsen – you are going to be able to see if you agree with my assessment.

— Christopher Schwarz

All I'm saying about this photo is that I'm glad it's not scratch 'n' sniff.

This is a picture that my wife told me to get or not come home! Nice to have that kind of support. I don’t know how the kids would feel about her statement since my youngest is the only one that has ever said “no mommy, don’t kick daddy out!” Why tempt fate? So I made sure I got the photo.

This picture is of the second night at the Woodworking in America conference. I was un-stressing from the day. My first assignment was to introduce Mr. Michael Dunbar. Yes, that Mr. Dunbar. A person of legend whom I have never met. I hope I didn’t mess it up. On Sunday, I was slotted to introduce Mr. Frank Klausz another legend I have never met. After hearing him answer a question with “because that is stupid!” I was glad I called him "Mr." Klausz.

One of the great benefits of being Chris’s apprentice is being able to help out and go to these events. WIA was spot-on fantastic. It was hard to pick which seminar to go to. On day two, I was privileged to introduce Brian Boggs. Wow!  I had no idea of how much there is know about wood. I sat in awe as he explained things about wood that I had never heard before.  Hearing the meticulous way he monitors wood moisture and applies hide glue twice, it is no wonder his chairs don’t come apart. In fact one of the people asked him about joint failure on his chairs, to wit he said with sincere humility, I don’t know because I have never had a chair come back.

I got to hear about 18th century chisels from Adam Cherubini and watch him use his four-foot  plus bowsaw. He had to look behind him before sawing so he didn’t take someone out. I watched an attendee from Idaho round the corner and spy Adam. Her mouth opened and her camera came out. I bet that picture was a keeper.

Last but not least is my new international drinking partner, Phil from Phillyplanes in the UK, which reminds me of the only downside to the event. The 8 a.m. starting time.…

— John Hoffman

Sometimes when I look at old pieces of furniture, I can convince myself that perhaps old-growth timber is like melamine. It just doesn’t move with the seasons like modern wood does.

What else can explain the survival of so many pieces of furniture that defy the holy writ of hygroscopic activity? Tabletops are vigorously nailed to aprons without splitting. Stretchers and sides of sideboards have grain that runs contrary – the joinery should have pulled itself apart but it’s still tight. Wide backs that should have expanded and torn apart a carcase are still perfectly fitted.

Sometimes I think we over-engineer our projects to accommodate problems that will never happen.

This week I’m building a dry sink based on a circa 1770 Connecticut piece, and I’m torn between building the piece as it was originally made and building it to compensate for seasonal wood movement.

For example: The 26” x 26 door on the front of the original is made from two wide planks that are joined with a tongue-and-groove joint and battens. When I created my construction drawing in CAD, I drew it as a frame-and-panel door instead. I calculated that a 26”-wide plank door is going to move almost 1/4".

As I milled out the sweet-smelling Eastern white pine, however, I found that I had two 14”-wide clear boards that would make a door that looked just like the original. I held up the two boards and said: It’s worth the risk. The project will look better with a primitive wide-plank door.

Then came the problem with the top and the splash. On the original, the 26”-wide top is captured on all four edges by splash pieces that are nailed on. The top should have split or blown apart the splash, but it hasn’t.

I considered building it like the original, but I decided against it. I’m going to make the top so it floats in a groove in the splash pieces – basically like a solid-wood drawer. The end result will be indistinguishable from the original (except from the back), so I think that is a decision I can live with.

And then there are the hinges. The original has strap hinges on the door, but they are clearly later additions. But I have no idea what the original hinges looked like. And I like the strap hinges. So iron strap hinges are on order and in the mail.

And when the time comes to nail the living snot out of the piece, well, we’ll have to see what happens then.

— Christopher Schwarz

This week I had an unusual visitor in the office. Auctioneer Toot Ewalt loaned me the rare 18th-century dovetail saw that he brought to the Woodworking in America conference earlier this month. I had the saw sitting on my desk for 10 days along with all the other dovetail saws we own.

(If you haven’t heard the wild story about this circa 1770 saw made by John Kenyon, check out my blog entry at Woodworking Magazine.)

Between frantic bouts of editing manuscripts for the February 2009 issue of Popular Woodworking I picked up each saw over and over to get a feel for the differences in the handles. After 10 days I concluded that the Kenyon saw was as comfortable as the saw I’ve picked as my daily driver: the Lie-Nielsen Independence dovetail saw.

That’s good news because Mike Wenzloff at Wenzloff & Sons is building a reproduction of this saw. And if a reproduction isn’t good enough for you, then start watching the action catalogs. The saw’s owner says he’s investigating selling the original saw at auction.

If you haven’t noticed by now, saw and handplane handles are important to me. If the tool isn’t comfortable, it will be difficult to use. Now, as woodworkers, we have the tools to make our own handles. But have you ever tried?

I sure have. I’ve made several saw handles and plane totes during the last decade, and I’ve never been happy with my efforts. I’ve also taken a rasp to a few other handles with mixed results. My tendency is to make the curves too pronounced. And to reduce the handle’s width too much.

I’ve found that handles are much like the seat of a Windsor chair. When I make a seat that is really sculpted, it feels good when I first sit in it. But I quickly get tired of sitting in highly sculpted chairs. My most comfortable chairs have shallow saddles. (Correction: My most comfortable chairs have cushions.)

Same goes for handles. The overly sculptural ones aren’t comfortable after I cut a few joints. But dialing in the right amount of shaping has been a challenge for me. Hence, my obsession with finding saws with good stock handles.

However, if you want to try to make your own handle, then download this tracing supplied to Lost Art Press by woodworker William Duffield.

handle trace.jpg (122.72 KB)

Real Details
The other revelation about the Kenyon saw was its level of fit and finish. It wouldn’t pass muster in a modern shop. Heck, Mike Wenzloff would probably throw this handle on the burn pile. You can still see rasp marks all over the tote that look original (the saw shows no sign of being refinished). The slot for the blade is overcut – a no-no in modern work.

And yet this is the prettiest saw I have ever held. I even like the cringe-inducing hang hole.

My only regret during my 10-day affair with this saw is that I didn’t get to cut a dovetail with its 20 (or perhaps 21) ppi blade. The teeth are in poor shape, the blade has dropped, the handle is loose and the sawplate is significantly bent.

I guess I’m going to have to wait for Wenzloff to finish up his reproductions before I can experience the whole package. He promised that I can borrow one of his Kenyon saws (I thought about buying one, but I need another dovetail saw like I need another smoothing plane). When I get the Wenzloff saw in hand, I’ll file a full report.

— Christopher Schwarz

The waitress rushed up to me at the cash register with a desperate look in her eye. In defense, I held out a $6 tip, but she ignored it and fixed me in her gaze.

“Will you sign a placemat? Or a napkin?” she asked. “Do you have something you could sign?”

I shook my head and started walking to the exit.

“Sign anything,” she said. “The cooks will be so disappointed if you don’t.”

This was the final and odd scene of my four-day odyssey at the Woodworking in America show in Berea, Ky., where 350 hand-tool woodworkers got together during Nov. 14-16, to talk about tools, techniques and history.

The show itself was great fun, and I’ll be posting lots of photos and stories on my blog at Woodworking Magazine (one of the organizers of the show). But for the readers of the Lost Art Press blog, I saved this particular tale. It begins about an hour before getting rushed by the waitress.

After four days on my feet and 12 hours (total) of sleep during that period, I packed up our rented Ryder with all the workbenches, grinders and clamps we’d brought to the Woodworking in America show. Senior Editor Glen Huey climbed into the passenger seat of the truck and we drove north to get some lunch with some of the other magazine editors and John Hoffman, the other half of Lost Art Press.

We met at the Richmond, Ky., Steak 'n Shake, and our party of five snagged a window seat and started looking at the menus.

Our waitress took our drink order and when she returned, she asked: “Are you guys the Oakridge Boys?”

To which Hoffman immediately answers: “Yes.”

I start laughing and tell her that no, we’re not the country/gospel quartet. But she is undaunted.

“The cooks up there in the red ties say you are the Oakridge Boys,” she said, pointing to the rear corner of the store. I look back to see two young guys with enormous smiles on their faces looking right at me.

I point to Associate Editor Drew DePenning at the end of the table.

“He’s 23,” I explain. “He would have been a fetus when the Oakridge Boys were popular.”

She gives me a quizzical look but takes our food order. Glen Huey is chuckling so hard he’s having trouble ordering. Senior Editor Robert Lang is his typical placid and inscrutable self.

After the waitress walks away, I start singing the base vocal to “Elvira” and try to get Bob to join in. He smiles, but he won’t take the bait.

We eat. And as we try to leave, I’m ambushed by the waitress, who insists that I’m the band’s manager. “Don’t you have some posters or CDs you could sign for us?” She chases us to the door.

We all scurry to our cars. I fetch my laptop from Hoffman’s Honda and head back to the Ryder truck.

“Crap!” Hoffman says. “I locked my keys in my car.”

Hoffman calls a locksmith, who promises to be there in 10 minutes. We stand there for a minute and realize it is too cold to wait outside.

“I guess you gotta go back into the Steak 'n Shake,” I said.

“Oh no,” Hoffman said, shaking his head.

But then he turns and heads back into the arms of fame.

— Christopher Schwarz

P.S. After I got home, I looked up a photo of the Oakridge boys and busted out laughing. I can see it: John Hoffman is Joe Bonsall. Glen Huey is Duane Allen. Robert Lang is a better-coiffed William Lee Golden. And I’m Richard Sterban. And Drew? Just another 23-year-old gospel/country fetus, I guess.  

Years ago, we performed a year-long survey at Popular Woodworking to find out what sort of projects appealed to our readers. We were interested in what furniture styles they liked, but we were also interested in what furniture forms (tables, bookshelves etc.) that they most liked to build.

So in every issue we asked the readers to rate which projects they liked. After a year of data, we were shocked at some of the results.

Here was the wildest finding: Our readers really liked and needed plans for over-the-potty cabinets.

It’s easy to turn your nose up at this pedestrian form of furniture. Heck there’s never been a woodworking book titled “Best Dang Potty-Cabinet Plans” or a juried exhibition of studio furniture makers titled “Fine Cabinetry in the Can: Poetry and Motion.”

But maybe there should be.

One of the first projects I was ever really excited about personally was a potty cabinet. I thought it was a million-dollar idea when I came up with it. It’s a simple but fine-looking wall cabinet with delicate rails and stiles. The real cool thing about it is that the bottom of the cabinet dispenses washrags like a tissue box. And the interior guts of the cabinet are clever – the washrags never come spilling out when you open the door. And it has a cool handmade wooden hinge.

My co-workers still mock that cabinet (which is why it’s never been published), though my wife and kids use it every day. I know I still have the router pattern for the opening in the bottom of the cabinet (that took some doing to figure out). And now that I’m editor….

In any case, last week I finished up a new bathroom cabinet for our master bathroom. This was the last piece of built-in furniture I’d planned on building for our home’s addition, which was a project we started on seven years ago.

Because this project was for me, I was free to design it without worrying about co-workers or readers. So I could add details I liked, such as the divided lights in the door, which are just slightly recessed from the face of the door. And I could snitch details from other projects of mine without looking like a Johnny one-note – the top cap of the cabinet is stolen directly from my tool cabinet at work.

I built the cabinet using offcuts from the shop at work. The best part of the project was finding perfectly quartersawn stock lurking in the knottiest and nastiest board in the shop.

For my family, the best part of the project was that I designed it to hold six (six!) rolls of toilet paper, plus toiletries.

Here’s a TP design tip: Design your cabinet around the 5” dimension. A 5” x 5” x 5” space will do a good job of holding a decent-size roll (no promises on the super-jumbo-mondo rolls of paper).

If you’re interested in a simple construction drawing, you can download a pdf below.

Master_Bath_Cabinet.pdf (15.26 KB)

Maybe there is actually a book on this somewhere. Let me first see what Moxon says about potty cabinets….

— Christopher Schwarz