If you weren’t at my “60-minute Sawbench Class” yesterday at Woodworking in America, this download might not make total sense to you.
But as promised, below are the illustrated directions for cutting the compound angles on the legs of the sawbench. Plus there’s a tool list and a materials list for the sawbench I built during the class.
Two things I forgot to mention during the presentation:
1. Hammer the points of your nails to blunt them before driving them in. This will reduce the fir’s tendency to split.
2. If you have some woodworking machines handy, Take a few extra minutes to dress the dimensional stock to remove the ugly rounded corners. The sawbench will look much nicer.
Registration is now open at Kelly Mehler’s School of Woodworking for the 2013 season, where I will be teaching two classes. On June 3-7, I’ll be teaching a class on Roorkhee Chairs. And on July 20-21, I’m teaching a weekend class on building precision layout tools.
To register for the Roorkhee Chair class, click here.
To register for the layout tools class, click here.
The Roorkhee Chair class is going to be particularly interesting because of the leatherwork involved. We’ll have an industrial “walking foot” machine with us and riveting equipment so that students can make a very high-quality chair. I think you’ll find the leatherwork skills easy to pick up because a lot of the basics are the same (think: sharpening).
And the layout tool class is always fun – a little inlay, a Roubo try square and a very useful straightedge.
My 2013 teaching schedule takes me far and wide this year – Australia, Canada, Washington state, Connecticut and more. When all the details are final I’ll post a complete schedule.
Most students in woodworking classes fall into three categories:
1. Diligent but slow learners. This is the biggest category, and I include myself as a proud member. Nothing about the craft comes easy to these people. Yet, if they spend enough time in their shops building things and refuse to give up, they improve inch by inch.
2. Golfers. This is a small group, but they exist. Every so often I want to take one of these students aside and suggest they take up golf. Usually this is because of an unholy combination of a lack of dexterity, a lack of gumption and (most confusing) a lack of interest in the work itself. I wonder if these students have been assigned to the class on work-release from prison.
3. The naturals. I hate these people (no, not really). Every so often there is a woodworker who is so at ease with the work that everything comes quickly to them — even if it is their first time picking up a chisel. They cut perfect dovetails their first time with a saw. Their mortises and tenons fit without any tweaking. Their breath is rosy even after a dinner of garlic chicken.
Sam Cappo, one of my recent students at Kelly Mehler’s School of Woodworking, falls entirely into category 3. By day he works in the petroleum industry. But with every other waking hour he’s working on his house in New Orleans or building furniture in his tiny shop.
His dexterity with the tools and the work was impressive. And while you could chalk that up to previous carpentry experience, I think that would be selling him short. The kid is a natural. While everyone else was wondering how they were going to get their tool chests assembled in time, Sam was playing around with different dovetailing techniques that would make his work require fewer hand motions.
To my delight, Sam has started a blog called planedetails.com. It is in its beginning stages, but I hope he will persevere and show us his shop and more details of the historic house he’s rebuilding.
Check out his site, and leave a comment to show more cat photos. It will make Megan Fitzpatrick so happy (Sam and his girlfriend make and sell cool cat furniture).
As a beginner woodworker, I’m always gathering knowledge about the craft. While books have been insightful, and the Internet has been decent, nothing has taught me more than the couple of hours I spent with an old master this week.
Frank Tashiro, an American of Japanese descent, runs a small retail web site and showroom from his home in Seattle. Tashiro Hardware is a place where one can find a good selection of Japanese-style kataba and dozuki saws. This 90-year-old retired blacksmith made chisels, plane blades, knives and chains, among other things. When it comes to steel, you could say he’s got a handle on things.
With its door surrounded by bamboo, you could almost walk by his home/office without noticing the little doorstep, with “Frank Tashiro” lettered on the mailbox. He greeted me at the door and brought me in to see his wares. The front room is his showroom; the back room, his office. His full line of his saws and handles are on display boards, with merchandise organized in racks. He directed me to sit in a chair, and we small-talked for a moment. I told him I was looking for a dovetail saw. He was quick to locate a suitable specimen, then he asked me how much time I had. Because I was a stranger in town with nowhere to go that evening, my night was free.
He posed me a question, “How do you sharpen?” I responded that I used a pair of ceramic stones and free-handed things. He followed up with a, “But do you know how to sharpen things?” Indeed, I thought I knew how to sharpen, but had a feeling he would soon show me the error of my ways. Inside I was giggling like a little girl. “Sit here, in front of the workbench,” he beckoned, as he stooped to grab an old pail filled with tools. “Would you like to see how I sharpen?”
“What does it mean when we cut something?” I did my best to fumble through what I thought was correct, as he grabbed a small chalkboard to illustrate. He drew a row of dime-sized circles, and asked me to think on a molecular level about this.
“Does not the edge of the tool enter and divide the material?” He pushed a wooden wedge through his row of chalk molecules. A light came on in my mind. “Even if it is water or oil, at the moment the tool enters, it has divided the material, no?”
He explained tool edges this way: They all can be illustrated by drawing a mountain with its top lopped off, which is the tip of the tool. He drew this on his little chalkboard on the bench. Some have longer, shallow sloping sides. They are tough and last long before sharpening, but they may not cut the material as easily. (Enter and divide….) Other edges are steep and can cut well, but they may roll over or crumble at the edge.
He then demonstrated how to hold a tool at the correct angle to sharpen using simple handmade jigs. I would illustrate, but will simply say that none of his jigs have moving parts. “The most accurate method is to have no moving parts,” he emphasized. “Nobody can sharpen this better because it is based on a principle.” Another light came on for me.
On sharpening stones: He said it didn’t matter what one used. As long as you can get an edge that is too narrow to reflect light, you are sharp. His stone looked to be an ordinary oilstone. He said a great edge comes together at maybe three-ten-thousandths of an inch (.0003”), if we could measure that.
I also learned how to find square to a surface, using nothing more than a mirror. “You can even set your table saw blade or drill press square this way.” Light bulb.
He challenged me every step of the way, asking questions to make me think. I spent almost two hours mesmerized, feasting on his knowledge. What originally began as a trip to look at dovetail saws turned into a life-building experience. I was able to feel, maybe for a couple of short hours, like an apprentice learning from a dedicated master.
I asked if it would be OK if I made a recording of some of his teachings so I could refer to them later. He said that was unnecessary.
“Once you have been taught, you will know this forever.”
While I have a Benchcrafted end vise on my workbench, I still have a soft spot in my heart for homebrew wagon vises.
I started with a lame homemade wagon vise I made from a veneer press screw. Then I made a better one using a tail vise screw on my Nicholson workbench. Then I “perfected” that one by reworking it a bit – a story I still need to write up for the blog some day.
But last week I saw Will Myers’ homemade wagon vise. His is better.
He put the wagon vise on a near copy of a portable Moravian workbench in the collection at Old Salem in Winston-Salem, N.C. I wrote about this bench here. The original Moravian bench didn’t have a tail vise, so Myers concocted his own using a left-hand-thread Acme rod, some nuts, pipe and other assorted bits he welded together. It’s remarkably simple and works remarkably well.
He brought his bench by The Woodwright’s School last Thursday for the students to examine and use for the afternoon while he settled up some business with Ed Lebetkin in the tool store upstairs.
The bench itself is fantastic, built using common or reclaimed materials, yet with a furniture-maker’s eye and hand. The wood selection and joinery were superb.
I’m not going to yammer much about the bench because Will has done this for me by publishing an extensive article on its construction – including the making of the wagon vise – at WKFineTools.com. Check out the entire article here.
