I recently found myself in immediate need of a couple of simple benches. So, I sat down and sketched up the quasi-Shaker-esque bench that you see here, sizing it so all of the parts could be cut from one 1″ × 12″ × 6′ and one 1″ × 3″ × 6′. I then headed down to Lowe’s for some “select pine.” While constructing the benches it occurred to me that, apart from a pencil and tape measure, I had used no hand tools of any kind. At that point, I got out a block plane to break all of the sharp edges. (I know what you’re thinking: I should have used a trim router with a chamfer bit. Maybe next time.)
So here’s to all the naysayers out there: See, it really is possible to make decent-looking stuff using only power tools.
It’s a strange world where I need to write a blog entry about this topic.
Recently Editor Megan Fitzpatrick and I have been getting e-mails and phone calls with this basic question: “Why isn’t Schwarz going to Woodworking in America?” Then they ask:
• Is it because Popular Woodworking Magazine doesn’t want him there?
• Is it because I don’t want to attend?
• Is Chris finally getting that gender-changing operation he’s talked about for years?
• And etc.
Here is the real story.
Megan approached me about speaking at the 2014 WIA, and I pleaded for a break. I’ve been a speaker (and usually an exhibitor) at every single WIA since the first one. Whether you know it or not, WIA is exhausting. The month leading up to it is crazy for me – and I don’t even have to help organize it anymore.
I have been trying to reduce my travel schedule so I can spend more time at home. This year I’ll be on the road for almost 18 weeks, and that is an easier schedule than 2013.
So I asked for a year off, and Megan gave it to me.
As it so happens, I have been scheduled to speak to the San Diego Fine Woodworkers Association on Sept. 12-14 for almost two years now (we started negotiating this in 2010 when I was still editor of the magazine). That particular weekend is, you guessed it, where F+W decided to put WIA in 2014.
As a result, the conspiracy theories have abounded: I am snubbing WIA. I purposefully scheduled a conflicting event. I’m not really cutting back on traveling. Those are all false.
I’m going to honestly miss Woodworking in America this year. It is probably the single-strongest line-up of speakers the event has ever had. And it’s in Winston-Salem, N.C., where you can sample Old Salem and the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA), one of my favorite museums in the country.
If you haven’t been to WIA, I recommend it. It’s the biggest woodworking geek-fest I’ve ever attended, and you will make new friends and learn a ton of amazing stuff.
And, as a bonus, you don’t have to watch me rub my nipples (a nervous tic) when I’m presenting. A double victory.
In “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” I call out the thickness planer and the band saw as the two most useful pieces of machinery in a shop that is focused on furniture.
But as someone who builds lots of workbenches, I would be lost (or at least, quite fatigued) if I didn’t have a beefy, accurate and tuned-up drill press. Because of the way I build benches, the drill press is what makes everything come together quickly and precisely.
Here’s why:
1. The mortises are too big for a typical mortiser. So I cut all the mortises with the drill press.
2. If the bench is a knockdown model, all the holes and counterbores have to be accurate to accept the bolts, nuts, washers and crossbolts.
3. Straight holes for 5/8” drawbores ensures there will be a lot fewer exit-wound explosions.
4. Mounting vises (especially those with crossbolts) is easy with a drill press. Holes have to be straight so vises don’t bind. Drill presses also make it easy to install a crochet. Drilling counterbores on a curved surface can be tricky with a brace.
5. Round dog holes are easy with a drill press and a big bit.
6. Holdfast holes are always better with a drill press. The more I use holdfasts, the more I understand this point. If your holdfast hole is even slightly off plumb, then the holdfast is likely to work in only about 180° of the possible orientations of its pad. This is also why a tight hole is better than a loose one. Both of these factors – plumb and tight – make it easy for the holdfast to wedge in the hole.
I don’t have a fancy drill press. Years ago I bought a Grizzly G7944 drill press, a 14” model with 12 speeds. The drill press is powerful enough for building benches (and for furniture, of course), but I long for an old Powermatic or something bigger that has a beefier depth stop (I am always bending my stop, or it loosens too easily).
The only modification I’ve made to my Grizzly is I added a large accessory table and fence, which makes drilling out mortises a snap.
Today I drilled out the first trench for the Benchcrafted Crisscross using some huge sawtooth Forstners in my drill press. Now I have to make the same trench in the leg of the assembled bench, which means I’m going to have to switch to a brace or (if I’m lucky) a corded drill.
Many of you told us that “blue” was not a manly enough color. And so we now offer our hats in battleship gray with black thread.
These hats are – like everything in the Lost Art Press store – made in the United States. The soft and unstructured hat is made by Bayside and embroidered in Indiana. The hat’s size is adjustable by a steel clasp and headband. It fits everyone except Sean Thomas.
They are in stock and available for immediate shipment. The cost is $17.
The old Stanley router plane turned up in the mail from a colleague in the States a while back, the box a little crunched and the threaded adjustment shaft was bent. Not a huge problem, but the thing was that it made it impossible to set the iron for anything less than about 3/8” (9 mm). The question was; leave it as is, or try to bend and risk breaking the shaft? Not needing the plane right then, I decided to think about it…
The bent shaft made it impossible to decrease the depth of cut.
The other day when cutting some tenons for a desk for my daughter Rachel, I decided to try to fix the shaft. I figured even if I broke the shaft the plane would still be usable, as the thumb nut is only used for fine adjustments.
I had had a similar problem on a Record 044 plow plane I bought online a while back. It seemed at the time to be an incredible bargain. When it arrived, I could see why. Sharper eyes than mine… There is a machine screw that holds the irons, of different widths, up against the body and a pressure foot to hold the iron against its bed. Whoever bought the plane way back when seemed not to have understood how the screw and the pressure foot worked together, and had cranked the screw so hard he had bent it. Taking a closer look back at the photos online, you could see the problem, but I hadn’t noticed. The iron couldn’t seat properly and from the looks of it the plane was put back into the box and never touched again. None of the irons had ever even been sharpened.
For the plow plane, I took three regular nuts and threaded them down the screw, aligned them and clamped them in a metal vise and used a big Cresent wrench to bend the screw straight. Worked fine, but in this case, the shaft was a true 1/4” and the 6 mm nuts I have here in France wouldn’t fit. So I knocked together a little jig in 5 mm ply to protect the threads from the vise.
The soft aspen-cored okoume 5mm ply was perfect for the job.The 5 mm ply was the perfect thickness to leave space for the 1/4″ threaded shaft. You can see the slight indent where the wood compressed around the shaft.
Worked like a charm, not 100% straight, but fully functional.
The iron was in pretty good shape, and 15 minutes on the stone got it done.
Rachel’s desk
Oak and black locust, with maritime pine as secondary wood.
I have always liked a low angle for my wrists for typing, so I added an old-fashioned typing tray, wide enough to take a big laptop or a wide keyboard, with a drawer to store it behind the hinged center piece.
I ended up taking it to a joiner I know to cut the profile around the edges of the top on his table moulder. The end grain of the black locust was just too splintery to cut across it with the moulding plane I wanted to use, even with a sacrificial block clamped onto the end to keep it from tearing out. Other than that, I used a thicknesser, and then the rest was hand tools.
There is a reason it is a cliché among woodworkers to speak of the satisfaction of building something for your family that, as long as it lives in a home, will last centuries: It really is satisfying.
Now, if only someone could tell me what eschauffent means…
– Brian Anderson
Brian Anderson is a translator and woodworker living in France. He is translating the woodworking parts of André Felibien’s Des principes de l’architecture, de la sculpture, de la peinture… avec un dictionnaire des terms for Lost Art Press. The book is due out in the Autumn of 2014. Anderson translated Grandpa‘s Workshop for us.
