My Favorite Jig

Probably most woodworkers have little pieces of exotic wood that they just can't bear to throw away. But how do you secure a tiny piece of wood to your bench so you can work with it? Here's a simple jig that allows you to do just that.

The base of this jig is .75" plywood 19.75" x 10" (these are arbitrary measurements, so use whatever works for you). Screw to the bottom of the base a little cleat, or keel, that clamps into your vise. Screw a straight piece of wood .375" thick and 1.5" wide to the top & front of the jig. Cut a triangular shaped piece of wood .375" thick that functions as a wedge, and then screw another piece of straight .375" x 1.5" piece of wood to the top & rear of the jig at the same angle as the triangular piece.

The triangular piece of wood wedges the workpiece in between the two thin pieces of wood. Tap the wedge in place with a hammer or mallet and that little piece of exotic wood is ready to be planed, mortised, carved, or chiseled.

Dog survives bone-crushing Grandma-hug

Fortunately, Rosie did live to see another day. Grandma can be a little "too loving" with our pets.

Although this post has nothing to do with woodworking, I did make the little rustic table sitting behind my mom.


(Mom will likely want to kill me for posting her photo on my site, but I can run faster than she can....)

The Woodwright's Shop

Episodes of the Woodwright's Shop can be viewed online. Roy Underhill works only with handtools and his folksy sense of humor adds a personable touch to his program.

Drawer Planing Jig

I built this jig when I was making drawers for my tool cabinet and needed a way to secure them to my workbench while handplaning them. It's just a piece of 3/4" plywood with slots that are spaced apart to match the width and length of each of the two sizes of drawers. The width of the slots equals the thickness of the drawer boards. That way, the drawers don't shift at all when you plane them. This jig also enables you to plane from both directions so you don't tear out the corners.


If you're making drawers that have a bottom that slides in after the sides have been glued together, then it's even easier to plane the sides. Because without the bottom, you can slide the drawer further in from the outer edge of the jig, providing even more support. (see last photo)

By the way, these drawers have walnut sides and cherry fronts and backs. That's one of the backs in the last photo. Notice how much lighter in color that cherry is compared to the fronts, since the backs never see sunlight. The fronts have naturally darkened that much (I only used blonde shellac) over two years.

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.