Edit: These are once again sold out. I _think_ we’ll have more later this week. The warehouse has just entered into inventory 125 Crucible Dovetail Templates – which means most of the production and packaging processes have been worked out. Whew! (Hopefully, we’ll soon be more reliably able to keep these in stock.)
– Fitz
This month I am headed to Omaha, Nebraska, to build a Dutch Tool Chest over two days for the Omaha Woodworkers Guild, and anyone can buy a ticket to watch. And if you are lucky, you can try to win the finished tool chest in a raffle at the end of the seminar.
The event is May 21-22 and is being held at the German American Society in Omaha. During the session, I’ll build a Dutch Tool Chest using hand tools and discuss all the different hand operations and how you might be able to use them in your shop. Plus, there will be squirrel jokes.
I’ll be covering:
At the end of each day, I’ll also give presentations on other interesting topics – on one day I’ll examine the history of workbenches in Western culture and on the other day I’ll do a presentation on chair comfort and show off one of my stick chairs (I think I have one of those thingskicking around here somewhere).
The admission fee also includes breakfast, lunch and an afternoon snack.
You can register for the event here. You can read more about the two-day seminar here.
This should be a fun weekend event. I’ve never been to Omaha, and I haven’t talked to many human people during the last two years (except for Lucy, Megan and the cats). I’m sure I’ll be a little rusty, but I bet we can all get through it together.
— Christopher Schwarz
Here’s a short movie that shows how to cut 5/8″ tenons with a deburring tool and a plug cutter. The tooling costs as little as $20 total. While this method is slower than using a dedicated tenon cutter, it is much easier to center the tenon on the stick.
— Christopher Schwarz
The following is excerpted from “The Joiner & Cabinet Maker,” by Anonymous, Christopher Schwarz and Joel Moskowitz. The original short, book released in 1839, tells the fictional tale of Thomas, a lad of 13 or 14 who is apprenticed to a rural shop that builds everything from built-ins to more elaborate veneered casework. The book was written to guide young people who might be considering a life in the joinery or cabinetmaking trades, and every page is filled with surprises.
Unlike other woodworking books of the time, “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker” focuses on how apprentices can obtain the basic skills needed to work in a hand-tool shop. It begins with Thomas tending the fire to keep the hide glue warm, and it details how he learns stock preparation, many forms of joinery and casework construction. It ends with Thomas building a veneered mahogany chest of drawers that is French polished. However, this is not a book for children. It is a book for anyone exploring hand-tool woodworking.
In our expanded version you’ll find the unabridged and unaltered original text; a historical snapshot of early 19th-century England; chapters on the construction of the three projects that show the operations in the book, explain details on construction and discuss the hand-tool methods that have arisen since this book was originally published; and complete construction drawings (you can download those files here).
With the glue dry, it’s time to flatten one face of all of your panels. Thomas begins with the jack plane then moves to the trying plane, yet the details of the operation are sketchy in “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker.”
Early workshop practice was to use the jack plane (sometimes called the fore plane) across the grain of a panel. This operation, which Joesph Moxon called “traversing” in his “Mechanick Exercises” of 1678, allows you to remove a good deal of deal without tearing the grain too deeply. Working the grain diagonally in both directions allows you to get the board fairly flat – Thomas checks the board with a straightedge as he works, which is always a good idea.
Note: When you work at 45° to the grain of a panel, you will typically see more tearing in one direction than in the other. This is normal. Just make sure you finish your diagonal strokes in the direction that produces less tearing.
Determining when a board is flat can be a challenge. After some practice, you learn to tell by the way your planes respond when dressing the panel. The shavings become consistent in thickness, width and length all along the board. A straightedge can help. So can winding sticks, which aren’t mentioned in “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker.”
Winding sticks are two identical sticks that are longer than the board is wide. They are placed at several points across the width of the board and compared by eye. When the panel is twisted, the sticks aren’t parallel. And because they are longer than the board is wide, they exaggerate any wind. The author of “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker” has a novel solution: Compare your panel to a known flat panel. If your panel rocks on the flat one, it’s in wind. Of course, the trick is getting that first panel flat. It’s possible to create two panels that are in wind but don’t rock on one another – the high spots of one panel nest into the low spots of the other and result in a false reading.
However, once you get one panel flat, the method explained in the book works well.
We needed an additional band saw for our bench room. We have several chair classes coming up fast, plus we use my old 1980s Rockwell band saw so much that there are times we need to have two band saws running simultaneously.
My first instinct was to buy a second old USA-made Delta band saw and restore it. But I honestly do not have time to restore a machine now.
So I bought a metalworking machine instead.
One of the odd little facts about machinery is that metalworking machines are built far better than their woodworking counterparts (and have a price tag to match). A 14” band saw for woodworking might cost $1,300, while its metalworking cousin will cost $2,300.
I first learned thiskl in the 1990s when working in the Popular Woodworking shop. We had a Wilton belt/disc sander that was built like a tank. All the controls were metal – no plastic. It ran smoothly and was insanely powerful. The machine’s trunnions were heavy cast iron. One day I looked up the machine in a catalog and discovered it was designed for metalworking.
When I looked at the equivalent belt/disc sanders for woodworking, they looked like toys. Plastic controls, sheet-metal trunnions and aluminum where I would have preferred cast iron.
From that day on, I got a taste for metalworking machines. (Manufacturing tools for Crucible also pushed me along this path.) When I bought a belt grinder for our shop, I made sure it was designed for metalworking. Sure it cost about three times as much, but it is more than three times better than its woodworking cousin.
And when I started shopping for a 14” band saw, I went right to the metalworking section. I settled on a Jet 14” band saw that is designed for both metalworking and woodworking. It has massive castings, heavy trunnions, metal controls and carbide blade guides. It weighs 110 pounds more than its woodworking cousin.
FYI, I am not oblivious. For years I owned the Jet 14” woodworking band saw and was completely happy with it. It was the best 14” cast iron band saw I could buy at the time. But its metalworking cousin is another animal entirely.
Why am I telling you this? I love old iron. Most of our machinery was made back when I wore diapers (or my parents were in middle school). But sometimes buying and restoring an old machine is just not possible because of where you live, your skills or the time required to do the restoration right.
When that’s the case, here’s another option to consider: look at the metalworking machines. There isn’t always one available, but in some cases (especially with band saws, sanding machines, lathes and drill presses) there’s another line of machines out there that you might not be considering.
— Christopher Schwarz