Lost Art Press

Category: Handplanes

‘Do you want me to deprioritize my current reports until you advise me of a status upgrade?’

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Here are some short updates on projects in the works at Lost Art Press.

1. “Grandpa’s Workshop” is in its final stages at the printer and should be on its way to us in the next week. Free shipping for this title will end at midnight, Friday, Sept. 28. After Friday, shipping will $7.

2. Leather editions of “Mouldings in Practice” are still at the bindery. They should be ready any day now. When they are released, copies will be $185 (which includes domestic shipping). They will be first-come, first serve.

3. Lie-Nielsen is putting the final touches on a DVD opus I filmed there last year. The four-hour (you read it right) DVD will cover how to build a Shaker side table entirely by hand. This is the Shaker side table from Issue No. 2 of Woodworking Magazine God Rest its Soul. The design is based on a table from Thomas Moser’s book on Shaker furniture.

4. This morning I head up to F+W Media to film a DVD on restoring and tuning handplanes to a very high level. I bought a Stanley No. 4 Type 11 to fix up. It should be a good DVD for those woodworkers who struggle with their planes.

— Christopher Schwarz

Are Winding Sticks Necessary?

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Editor’s note: Today we have a guest blog from John Leko, a furniture maker in Huntsville, Ala. Visit his web site at jleko.com.

When I’m milling rough boards into lumber, I have never employed winding sticks. Instead I have a long(ish) straightedge that is used to try the board in three positions.

First, across its width. I start with the board “cup up” and traverse it with my low-angled jack plane. When I’m taking a shaving across the entire width throughout my board’s desired length, the cup has been removed, and I switch to planing down the long-grain. This proceeds until all of the cross-grain “tracks” have vanished.

To address the long-grain furrows left by the jack, I switch to the jointer, which also happens to be a bevel-up tool. Using good technique (or at least trying to…), I flatten this face, checking it with the straightedge at several points across the board’s width.

Finally, I cant the straight edge skew to the grain, and test along the board’s length first in one direction, then askew in the other. If either direction reveals a gap, the jointer plane is employed to remove material along a perpendicular skew line until the gap closes. Mind the gap!

In this fashion, I have always been able to produce true flat stock without the aid of winding sticks. This method removes any subjectivity from the determination. Can I see a hint of white (on the rear stick) still? For me, it’s a great deal easier to see the gap between the straight edge and the board’s surface.

For really long boards, I can see where winding sticks could be helpful, but I debate theirs usefulness for most other stock. Maybe I’m wrong?

— J. Leko

A Shooting Board for a Simpleton

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For many years I tried to design a shooting board (and bench hook) that would be worthy of publishing in Popular Woodworking Magazine. I tinkered with adjustable fences to dial in a perfect 90° cut, grippy working surfaces and fences with replaceable bits for zero-clearance cutting.

All of my designs were failures.

In the end, the crappiest shooting board that I ever built turned out to be the best shooting board I ever built because I did the following things:

1. Forget the adjustable fence. Just nail and glue the sucker down and adjust it to 90° with a shoulder plane after assembly. Adjustable fences (well, mine at least), go out of adjustment all the time. The non-adjustable fence on the shooting board I made five years still makes airtight 90° corners every time.

2. Forget sanding or finishes. I make my shooting boards out of 1/2” Baltic Birch. Unsanded. Unfinished. And I chop dovetails on them all the time. The result is a very grippy surface. My work doesn’t slide around like it does on shooting boards I have finished.

3. Forget fancy. Every add-on I have added to my shooting boards has been more trouble than it is worth. I could make a long list of mitering accessories, zero-clearance bits and UHMW tape.

The above is not a rant on commercial shooting boards from Tico Vogt and Rob Hanson. They have mastered many of the above problems and produce some sweet shooting boards.

Instead, I’m telling you that if you are like me and make your own shooting boards, keep it dirt simple. The more complexity you add, the less likely the shooting board will work.

The shooting board I use is made from 1/2” Baltic Birch plywood that is glued together. After the glue dries, I true up the fence for the shooting board with a shoulder plane until the appliance gives me 90° cuts every time. Then I use the shooting board until it is completely chewed up.

How does it get chewed up? I use the other side of the shooting board as a bench hook. And I chop dovetails on both sides. It’s a big shop coaster during parties in my shop. And etc.

You can download a SketchUp drawing of the appliance here.

— Christopher Schwarz

Those Aren’t Shavings – They are Micro-adjusters

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Anytime a woodworker starts tossing gossamer handplane shavings into the air that float around like some visible fairy flatulence, we both know what will happen next.

Some grumpy wag will say something like: “Bah, who cares about the shavings? All I care about is the board. You are playing with your garbage!”

I am always quick to correct these killjoys. Shavings of all sizes are extremely useful to the handplane user – and not just as compost.

When I handplane a case side sitting on my workbench, one of the most common difficulties is being unable to plane the very center area of a panel. Even with a short plane, I sometimes cannot get the last little bit of wood planed in the center.

So instead of planing the entire panel for another hour, I lift up the panel and toss a couple gossamer shavings on the bench right where the problem area is. I press the panel against the bench, secure it between dogs and resume planing. Eighty-six times out of 100, this fixes the problem instantly. Sure, it temporarily bows the panel out a bit, but that’s no big deal – the dovetails, back and shelves will help pull it flat.

Second example: I use a lot of wide boards, so I end up processing a lot of stock by hand in my shop. When I begin jacking one face of the board, I usually have to shim under the board so it doesn’t flex under pressure from the plane. This shimming is either in the middle of the board or at the edges, depending on whether I am working on the bark or heart side of the board.

Shavings to the rescue. I first learned to shim my boards using pine construction shims. But after a few near-vasectomies, I switched to using shavings – usually the shavings from a jack plane. These are thick and fill up gaps quickly.

These two suggestions are old tricks that I’ve picked up from books. They work great – saving you time and injury to your privates.

— Christopher Schwarz

Holy Cow, You People Confuse Me

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So I went to dinner with some friends tonight, including Megan Fitzpatrick at Popular Woodworking Magazine. And she mentioned that there had been a ruckus at WoodCental about my review of Veritas’s new steel.

I wandered over there tonight and wondered what upside-down universe I had stepped into.

So if you are wondering what I think about the new Veritas PM-V11 steel, which I have six months of experience with, here’s the short version.

1. Its edge life is longer than A2.

2. It is as easy to sharpen as O1.

That is a positive assessment. You might not like me personally (that’s OK), and you might therefore read in some nefarious side commentary. That is your personal battle. The only things that are true are points one and two above, which were stated clearly in both the online and print reviews.

I love the steel. I think it is awesome. I’ll be buying replacement blades of it for my planes. End of story.

— Christopher Schwarz