Medicine Cabinet

When I designed the medicine cabinet for our guest bathroom, I did something I've only done once before, and that's to make a full-scale drawing first. Usually, I just draw thumbnail sketches and a few tighter sketches of the trickier parts.

Making a full-scale drawing allowed me to work out the joinery details and the hardware size and placement. I was also able to step back to make sure the proportions looked nice. Normally, I just pull out my tape measure, measure the air and say "yeah, that's about right" when I'm determing outside measurements and hope they look good once the project is built.

Instead of actually drawing a design, a lot of woodworkers use Sketchup. I was an illustration major and am more comfortable with a pencil in my hand. Frankly, I prefer the warmth and personality of a pencil sketch over a computer printout; it's one of the reasons I prefer hand tools over power tools. That being said, I can certainly see the benefits of using a software program to design a piece. For one, you can rotate the computer image and view all sides.

I used Wonder Brads to install the molding. No need to predrill, they won't split the wood and are virtually invisible. I did not dab them with wood filler and no one has ever noticed them.

Scratch Stock

I have made scratch stock in the past, but Garrett Hack taught me how to make a much simpler housing and the correct way to sharpen the blade. The blade is a piece of old band saw blade and the chunk of wood that houses it has a sawn kerf in which the blade fits and a thumbscrew/threaded insert that secures it in place. Sometimes the easiest solutions are the best.

In Garrett's class, I had one of those "Aha!" moments when he explained the correct way to sharpen the blade. Once you file your profile (the one shown has a 1/4" quirk bead and a 1/4" double bead), all edges of the blade including the ends and the shape of the profile need to be sharpened. Once I understood that the edges where the flat sides meet the end of the blade, including the profiles, worked like a little scraper, sharpening was easy. The profile, the ends, and both faces must be perfect 90 degrees and razor sharp. This allows you to cut on both sides of the face. So, you can tilt the scratch stock toward and away from you and cut in both directions. You can see the curls of shavings coming off the blade and the resulting ultra-smooth profile.








On sharpening: I filed the profile shapes with round files, and used waterstones and slipstones to hone all edges. Ideally, you want a mirror finish on the faces and edges and profile.

With scratch stock, you can make any profile you can dream up and ones that can't be made with a router. This opens up a whole new world of creativity that will make your projects unique.

Marking Gauge Part II

If you would like to make a marking/slicing gauge like the one I made in Steve Latta's class, here are the parts and dimensions (in inches):
Beam=7.5 (length) x 1.25 (width) x .5 (thickness)
Body=4.25 (width) x 2.375 (height) x 1 (thickness)
Brass Plate=4.25 (width) x 1 (height) x .0625 (thickness)
Knurled Knob=1.5 (length) x .25 (diameter)

Cut the hole in the body blank that will hold the beam, drill a hole in the bottom of the body and install the threaded insert, screw and glue the brass plate into a shallow rabbet in the body, sand the face flush, and cut the outer shape of the assembled body/brass plate to fit your hand. Round over the edges of the beam and tweak it until it slides through the body with little resistance. Drill holes through the little brass plate and the end of the beam and cut a shallow mortise into the end of the beam so it matches the profile of the exacto blade. Screw on the little brass plate and file flush to match the end of the beam.

Drywall Screens in the Shop

I use Japanese waterstones in sharpening my handtools and here is a simple way to keep your stones flat. Lay a sheet of fine drywall screen on top of a thick sheet of glass, marble or other hard, flat surface, spritz your waterstone with water and scrub it on the screen. It doesn't take long to bring your waterstone back to a perfectly flat surface.

You can also use drywall screen to flatten the backs of old chisels and plane irons. By lapping the back and keeping firm pressure on top of the blade, toward the cutting edge, drywall screens will very quickly remove gunk and flatten a blade.













It took literally 20 seconds to achieve just this amount of polish and flattening.

Snippets on Shakers

A friend and I are giving a presentation on Shakers (or, the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing, as they called themselves) to the Howard County, MD Woodworkers Guild this Saturday, so I'm busy preparing notes and organizing photos.

I have a special affinity with the Shakers, whose religious movement began in 1747 by a woman named Mother Ann (Lee), maybe because some of their basic tenants are in line with my own: honesty & integrity, industry & diligence, prudence & economy, humanity & kindness, cleanliness, order, humility, perfection, and equality of the sexes, to name a few. "Shakers" was a derogatory name ascribed to the Believers because of their worship practices where they were found to whirl, tremble and shake. Okay...probably my similarities with them would stop there.

The Shakers' principles influenced every part of their daily lives, labor, and furniture design. Highly skilled craftsmen built chests of drawers, tables, sewing desks, chairs, and other things, that were based on contemporary designs of the time, but that were pared down to their most basic elements of simplicity, proportion, scale, hierarchy, and pattern, forcing the observer to notice the design fundamentals, unencumbered by ornamentation and superfluous extravagance.

Shaker furniture was built on a scale not seen in worldly design, because it was made for their communities, each of which often consisted of several hundred people. So, we find built-in cabinetry with 860 drawers at the Enfield Shaker Village in New Hampshire, trestle tables over 20 feet in length, workbenches that were 18 feet long (sweet!), and tailoring counters that were 6-12 feet long and 4 feet wide, with drawers on all sides. Highly efficient and industrious folks who possessed exquisite craftsmanship.

I could go on and on about the Shakers, but I'll post more some other time. I will leave you with this tidbit: Tabitha Babitt, a Shaker woman, is credited with inventing the circular saw...

...and these photos: taken on my trip to the Hancock Shaker Village in Pittsfield, MA. (Note to my woodworking friends: Yes, that is THE workbench.)

Pen Making

Here's how I spent my Saturday: turning pens on a lathe—the extent of my woodturning capabilities. There are lots of great pen making articles online, so I won't go into the details of how to make them, but I did take progress shots. A friend of ours commissioned me to make them for Christmas gifts. She chose 5 birdseye maple and 1 marado (sp?). I've also made pens out of other woods such as bloodwood, chakte viga, yellowheart, purpleheart, wenge, padauk, ziricote, walnut, and apple.

Marking Gauge

Marking gauges come in several styles. I own two from Lee Valley and several from antique stores and other woodworking stores. I have altered the points on some by filing one side flat to make a knife edge, which improves their performance. None of them work as well, however, as the one Steve Latta taught me how to make in a class at Olde Mill Cabinet Shoppe. Steve's design works like other marking (and slicing) gauges, but with improvements. For instance, the knurled knob is on the bottom where it doesn't get in the way of your hand and it uses replaceable exacto blades, which are mortised into the wood behind the brass plate. The end of the blade is filed down a bit, so the tip doesn't break off in use. This gauge also excels at cutting thin strips of wood for inlay. Plus, it was fun (and easy) to make!

I Need A Good Comeback

So, I just returned from a trip to the Woodcraft Store to pick up supplies. As I was entering the store, an old dude said to me as he was leaving "Your husband said he'll take one of everything." Obviously, he thought I was there to pick up something for my hubby and never considered that I might be a woodworker.

Now, let's look at how many ways that statement does not apply to me:
1. I've been a woodworker for 15 years.
2. I have a workshop that makes grown men cry.
3. I teach classes at the Woodcraft Store.
4. I frequently give demos/presentations to the two woodworking clubs to which I belong.
5. I'm the president of our local woodworking club.
6. I'm GAY.

Granted, I'm workin' the middle-aged soccer mom look pretty hard, but jeez! I get this sometimes from guys, not as much as when I was younger, and it forever catches me off-guard. I usually just smile in my befuddlement, but I'd love to have a funny comeback. Any suggestions?