I hear of good people sending Chris tools to help young makers. Most of us have too many tools; I am still buying tools at 66 and giving lots away to students and friends. It’s a great gift, something you have used and worked with. There is a load of romance in used tools. The history of who had it before you were given it, or got it on eBay. Their sweat is burnished into the handle. If you are like me, you hope that a little of their skill will help you do a bit better job.
I put out a general “if you have any tools that you think could go into this chest to help a young maker get going let me know.” Well I don’t know if British makers are just mean or didn’t hear me but the response has largely been from across the pond. Typical is this:
David,
I hope these help get someone inspired to work more with their hands and wood. It’s odd that a nail set or chalk line can provoke something inside. And this something can last a lifetime. Well, these tools are genuine… nothing fancy. Please consider something for the runner-up … to all of us who didn’t make first place.
Bob
Bob asked for his gift to be anonymous, well I respect that, but cannot allow it to go unmarked. (sorry, Bob) The tools Bob sent me, and it cost him $70 to mail it to me, are old, good and useful, and all will go in the chest. I will also take Bob’s point on “failing” to win. Something for the poor devil who will do the final week but not win the chest. They have the courage to try and fail and deserve recognition. So who amongst you, following Bob’s example, have a good shoulder plane that you can give up? Let me know here and I will get back to you.
I have, I must admit, asked Matthew at Workshop Heaven to donate here. I will, where I can afford it, buy tools in, like the panel saws and see if I can upgrade my own tool box. I will then pass one of my saws on to the young person who will get this tool chest. (They only have one more month to apply.) I wanted a No 6 bench plane; what Matthew sent me very kindly was a 5-1/2 Quangsheng. My aim was to look at these planes again. When they first came on the market I reviewed them and was less than happy. They have since revised these planes and they seem to be getting a good place in the market. I am delighted by this. From the point of view of the young maker with shallow pockets, I hate it that good tools are shiny and rosewood decorated, and expensive.
I have got a Lie-Nielsen No 7 in one of the many student tool boxes here that is a strong candidate. It’s in use at the moment so Jon’s No 6 is showing in my images. My comparison is between the Cheap Chinese and the really good Yank.
First a credit to the work of one man. Tom Lie-Nielsen has done more to enable good making to carry on, in my lifetime, than anyone I know. Quite simply he has put tools out there that give you a chance. For years in the 1980s and 1990s I wrestled with steel bananas. Tool-shaped objects created by marketing departments and accountants that challenged anyone attempting to learn to make. What was wrong you, or the tool? That they were patently not fit for function took us some years to establish. I vividly remember one student flattening a Record No. 6 eight times in 12 months and the damn thing was still moving! Tom gave us flat planes, and publicly, I thank you. Veritas followed behind often with “that’s a great solution but what exactly was the problem?” Their contribution should also be applauded. Alan Reid at Clifton gathered the remnants of a destroyed Sheffield tool industry and heroically attempted to enable good affordable bench planes to be made available to us. His forged steel Victor blades were in all planes at Rowden that could be modified to take them. I am desperately sad that these blades are no longer being made and not offered by the new management at Clifton.
The Western bench plane is a precise and complex version of a chisel stuck in a block of wood.
When any bench plane comes into the workshop at Rowden we check the perimeter flatness on a ground granite slab that has been certificated for compliance to almost atomic flatness. I remember it cost me an eye-watering amount of money. They go on this slab and our finest now rather crumpled feeler gauge is tested around the edge. Most planes these days get past this test (or they go back!!). It’s what is going on in middle of the plane surface that concerns us next.
Putting a straightedge across the plane sole from side to side now slip that feeler gauge under the blade in the centre of the plane sole. Tom’s planes generally come out quite well with half a thou being the worst. This we remedy in the time-honoured way with thick sheet glass, checked for flat, well-supported as a surface to work on. We use double-sided tape rather than spray adhesive and #180-grit wet and dry paper and a little water. There should no need to do too much work on the sole to get most of the hollow out. Wearing the abrasive unevenly is a challenge that good technique just about overcomes.
The LN No. 7 was pretty well spot-on, needing a very short dressing, but the Quangsheng showed a good three quarter thou hollow that I told Jon not to spend more than half an hour working on.
The LN No. 7 has a blade and back iron that does a great job. It’s A2 steel, which holds a decent edge for a long time. For stock removal and general work this is a good blade. For final shaving it’s is a little lacking in sharpness. But you would probably not use this plane for that purpose anyway.
The Quangsheng 5-1/2 is a potential finishing plane being small and fitted with a carbon steel O1 blade. I didn’t go and check this plane out as I have a walnut table in my studio being polished. But Jon set it up and got some pretty fine shavings.
In winding this up, to complicate a simple problem. I offer an image of my current bench plane. Chisel in block of wood, but it’s the most sophisticated version of a simple concept. I would not suggest this for the beginner. It’s like driving a Ferrari, you have to be good enough or it will kill you. But I offer it as an idea to those of you who are older and wiser and needing to conserve energy. These light, incredibly sharp tools can be very effective in the right hands. In Summer School I glued up my chest half day after my fastest students, but was able to catch up, by the afternoon, even allowing for glue to set up, as my planes were that much better at final finish.
Thank you Tom, thank you Matthew. Both planes are going in the tool chest for our young furniture maker.
Panel saws, huh? Well I have got a few handsaws. A superb old Disston 10 point hangs on my wall gathering dust. I just got out of the habit of using it; lazy really. The dovetail and tenon saws see a quite a bit of daylight as they are bench saws. I could go to the table saw rather than pick up a tenon saw but I am probably quicker with a tenon saw. And I avoid the shlep. I have a nice, big, well-equipped machine shop just behind the studio here. But it’s a bit of a shlep. So a small panel saw seems to be getting more and more use as I get more confident in using it.
That’s an alarming admission. Yes, I have not used a panel saw as much lately as I did when I was younger. You forget a lot in 40-odd years of furniture making. That is the effect of the machine shop. The band or table saw are just too good, too reliable to not be used in this role every day. And the panel saw takes effort, work, sweat. All of which is pleasant to avoid on a warm sunny day – unless really necessary.
But it’s nice cutting down a line with a small panel saw using a sawhorse properly. No screaming router, just argh, argh argh. I wish I had had one years ago. My old Disston is great, but somehow too big, a small panel saw can become a bench tool, like a tenon saw. Saves a lot of shlepping about.
So what have we got for this young person’s tool chest that will make any sense? The biggest change in saws that I have seen is the arrival of the cheap, throw-away saw. These we have all over the shop; they hang on hooks behind almost every door. These are board saws. They usually have a Japanese tooth pattern and get loads of use quickly ripping up board material or crosscutting the odd bit of solid.
It’s hateful, but we buy them, use them and chuck them away. It’s a scandalous waste of resources that we should be ashamed of, as my daughter would tell me. But saw doctors are getting older and not being replaced. Our saw doc, Brian Mills, is retired now; thankfully he still does all our hand saws and planer blades. Getting them back into shape after we have mutilated them. Don’t tell him, because he would put his prices up, but he is invaluable. I don’t think Brian has trained a replacement, and when he stops, which will never happen, we are in trouble.
First up are the two cheap throw-aways: the Irwin 990 Fine with a 10-point toothline and a disgusting purple plastic handle. There is also an Irwin 880 Universal 9 point with a disgusting orange plastic handle. They are both razor sharp to a state that they can easily cut you very badly. Both these do a great job, and I will not dwell upon them. Our experience is that the toothline holds up so well that you don’t chuck them away as soon as you should. This means you find yourself working much harder with dull saw than you should. Was that not always the way?
I will keep the purple one; it goes with my purple tool chest. So the orange one goes to our winner. What winner? You must have heard? Well, we are gathering tools to fill this tool chest. One Chris Schwarz made when he was here with us at Rowden in the summer. And we are giving it to a young maker under 25. Application details are here.
Now we come to the meat. Two of the best panel saws I could lay hands on. If I missed your saws I am sorry but I can only look at two. These are not “review” saws; I bought these and paid a pretty penny for the Lie-Nielsen 12-point crosscut saw at £174.46 from Axminster Power Tools. The best British saw I could find, and I can’t avoid wanting to support British tool makers, was from Roberts and Lee. Their Dorchester range made now by Thomas Flinn and Co. of Sheffield. This is another 20”, 10 pointer crosscut but at £100.31. Alan Peters had Roberts and Lee saws; my first dovetail saw was Roberts and Lee. So they have history with me. Not all of it good.
These are very different saws apart from the price. One is a stiffy one a floppy. Both are taper ground, meaning the plate of the saw is ground thinner near the top of the saw to give clearance. Both claim to be hand sharpened and indeed both cut very well. The differences come with the handle, the plate and the toothline.
The handle of the LN saw is beautiful, a ripple maple piece of work clearly inspired by Disston. Handles matter. It’s the bit YOU engage with. The junction of handle to the blade matters. This fit on the LN saw is pretty near perfect. The Dorchester saw handle is pretty crude in comparison without the decorative embellishments of the LN. But it fits my hand OK. The fit of the blade to the handle of the Dorchester is tight with five fixings, but the kerf of the cut the plate fits into is still a deal wider than the saw plate. The LN saw seems to be perfectly matched, kerf in the handle, to plate held in place with three brass fitttings.
The plates of these saws are fundamentally different. The Dorchester is a stiff saw with a thicker blade The Lie-Nielsen saw a floppy thin bladed saw in the Disston tradition. You could play a good tune on the LN saw. This is a personal preference thing. Common wisdom was, stiffies for board stuff and floppies for solid, but I don’t think that is totally true. I like the stiff blade of the Dorchester in this small saw, and it seems to cut well for me. Not that the Lie-Nielsen panel saw doesn’t do a great job.
The last difference which makes me sing with happiness is the breasted tooth line of the Dorchester. If you look down the line of the teeth they are not straight but slightly domed. Not much, probably a quarter of an inch. But that for me makes a difference. It’s to do with the geometry of my arm swinging away and the teeth engaging in the timber. Missed a trick there Tom.
Beautiful though the Lie-Nielsen 10-point panel saw is, I am going to put that saw in the prize winning box and keep the Dorchester for myself.
Mike Siemsen at the Mike Siemsen School of Woodworking in Minnesota has agreed to put on a low-cost hand-tool immersion course in June 2016 that is based directly on the two classes I ran in 2015 for new woodworkers who are 35 and younger.
The class will run June 13-17. Attendees will camp and cook on his farm property (just like the class at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking). Also good to know: Mike has bathrooms and showers. The cost is an amazingly low $450 for the week. That includes materials and the camping (bring your own tent). If you are 35 or younger, you cannot beat this week-long experience as a way to get started.
Attendees will be fixing up tools, learning about sharpening and building the same tool chest we built at the New English Workshop in Bridgwater, England, and at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking. I’ve given all my teaching materials to Mike, and it will essentially be the same class, only in a Minnesota accent.
Sign up quick. Here’s the link. Or send an e-mail directly to Mike to secure your place at mike@schoolofwood.com.
Mike is an outstanding woodworker, a great teacher, funny as hell and crazy generous to be doing this. He has an outstanding shop for this sort of thing and a beautiful farm for camping.
As with the other classes, we would love to have your help getting tools and/or cash donations to help outfit the students. Mike has already had offers of people volunteering to assist him during the class – and he could use a few more assistants. I’ll discuss the tools the students need in a future blog post.
Thanks to Mike for picking up the torch on this important way to give the next generation of woodworkers a fast start.
LUCKY WINNER
Boy… the lucky person who wins this tool chest is going to get a treat. Not only a great historic chest made by Chris Schwarz. This one of the very last chests he is making with students for the foreseeable future. Chis is now going into a period away from the classes, doing new work, writing and research, and I wish him good luck; we were very fortunate to get him to come to Rowden this summer.
Not only that, but she gets a whole chest FULL of tools chosen by us here at Rowden with Chris giving input on the side AND a signed hardbound copy of “The Anarchist Tool Chest.” You have heard of that book haven’t you ?? If you haven’t go get it NOW.
There are people out there that YOU know WORLDWIDE. They are 25 or under and busting a gut to become a great maker. It is your job to get them to win this chest of tools ENTER HERE They would need to be able to come to Rowden for a week if they reached the final. We will pay their expenses whilst they are here as our guests but air flights are down to them. Also shipping this baby home if you win.
Measuring Out Tools. Beware the Traitor in the Camp I have put a selection of rules in the tool box. They cannot be too long in the shop most of have three rules: one metre, either a 600mm or a 300 mm, and usually a 150mm. In Imperial measure that would be 3’ rule 12” and 6”. Boy, that was a brain ache. I haven’t thought in Imperial measure for 30 years. They can be almost any brand. The ones shown here are Axminster Power Tools own brand and Rabone.
I have been using Rabone measuring rules all my life, but they are no better that many others. What I tend to council is choose one brand that you like and get your set of three or four rules in the same brand. THEN CHECK THE SUCKERS. Make sure they ALL tell the same measure, check ‘em real carefully; we have binned or returned 10 percent of rules that have passed through Rowden.
Straightedges Top of the photo above is our straightedge. This is an essential piece of kit. A really good 600mm straight edge from Starrett costs an arm, leg and part of your wedding tackle. This is a cheap but not very straight straightedge from Axminster Power Tools. The blade of this edge is tapered to a thin profile SOOO… there is not a great deal of work to get it really straight. (Jon Greenwood, thank you.) Take a really flat surface, we have a granite slab, and wet and dry paper #1,280 grit and carefully, rub then check, rub then check.
Squares I did have a passion for engineers squares in the 1980s. This was when it was common to see very inaccurate wooden stocked squares in workshops. Now we are making our own wooden squares as teaching exercises!
This image below shows common squares in my tool box. It used it be possible to buy guaranteed squares to BS 939 ( for the Americans amongst you that is British Standard, not what you are thinking!) Now we cannot get these as easily so all kinds of inaccurate squares are coming into Rowden. My answer is Starrett. This great American engineering company has been making reliable squares and measuring tools for as long as i can remember. Which is a damn long time, dear boy! I have taken to the adjustable square. This is because it is that much more useful than the fixed square, and, being well made, is accurate enough. We keep one serious square that is not used, or dropped, that is “Workshop Standard.” All squares are checked against this now and again, Daren keeps it hidden.
The maker who wins this will be assembling a small collection of squares, the square I have bought to start this collection is the Starrett 12” below, which is a great tool and one I want myself.
Last but not least this is one of the squares that we will be seeing a lot more of at Rowden. It will be one of the first things a new student makes: two nice mahogany squares, one large one small, with hard-wearing maple work strips. I am taking more and more to light wooden tools as I get older. The benefit of these is they can be relatively easily trued square if they go out of whack.
