Furniture fit for a General

Last April, I read an article in Woodwork Magazine about Joe Cress, owner of Logan Creek Designs, and maker of reproduction Civil War Campaign Furniture. Until then, I never knew there was such a thing.

Over a decade ago, Joe's interest in the Civil War prompted him to visit the Virginia Military Institute, which houses some of the furniture he now replicates. Captivated by one piece in particluar—Stonewall Jackson's field desk—and a chance encounter with the museum's executive director led him to where he is today: a maker of "products belonging to three generals, all under license".

Among those products are Robert E. Lee's Camp Chest, J.E.B. Stuart's Field Desk, and Stonewall Jackson's Deathbed.

On his website is a downloadable pdf file of the Woodwork Magazine article and samples of his work. Of particular interest in the article is the fact that Joe purposely adds subtle inaccuracies in his pieces at the behest of places like the Smithsonian Institution. This, in an effort to derail people who try to pass reproductions off as original.

Joe lives one state away from me, in Virginia. I'd love to drop in on him someday and hopefully he'll agree to an interview. Maybe it would help persuade him if I dress in period costume. Anyone know where a gal can get a bustle?*

*Is anybody else totally creeped out by that last photo?

Sliding Dovetails

Here is one way to cut the groove for a sliding dovetail.

Mark the depth of cut with a marking gauge on both edges of the board. Lay the dovetail piece on top of your work surface and trace the bottom of both sides of the dovetail. Transfer that line to your depth of cut line on both edges.

Now you can see where to position the dovetail on the edge of the board so you can trace its angle. Trace this angle on both edges. Connect these lines across the face of the board and this shows you where to start cutting.

The dovetail plane I used cuts a 16º angle. Bevel a 2x4 at this angle to use as a fence to guide your saw. I keep finger pressure on the sawblade so it stays tight against the fence. Saw down to your depth of cut mark and chisel out the waste between the saw marks. Slide the dovetail into the groove....and you're done!



Because the sliding dovetails on the sawbuck table are so long (25"), I'm not comfortable with this technique, so I'll show another way to cut sliding dovetails in a future post.

Cheap Therapy

Not getting to work in my shop for a week, and I turn into my friend, Scott.....grumpy.

So today, Independence Day, I get some shop time. Next step in the sawbuck table project is to build the table top. I ran out of curly cherry, but have a huge stack of stickered and rough-sawn plain cherry in my garage. The boards are gorgeous and will darken quickly.

However, yours truly, while having spent a great deal of time and care stickering & stacking the boards to allow them to dry (I bought them 2 years ago, freshly-sawn), forgot to put weights on the top boards. That resulted in twisted and cupped boards.

So far, shop time is making me grumpier.

The boards are too wide to face plane on my 6" jointer, so I reached for a plane that gets little use, but sure comes in handy when you need it.....a scrub plane.

Scrub planes have curved irons that quickly remove deep, scalloped chunks of wood, enabling you to knock down high spots and correct twists in boards with little effort. After which, you can run the boards through your planer or switch to a less agressive plane.

An added benefit: you can deflate your bad mood. Plowing through wood and seeing thick chips fly out of the plane's mouth is a real tension-reliever.

And I'm happy to report—the grump has left the building.

Woodworking in America

Only THE handtool event of the year! Registration is open today so don't delay. I suspect tickets will be gone before you can say "Lie-Nielsen Bench Plane." Hope you can go and if you do, please say hi if you see me. I'll be the one with the stupid grin on my face....

Woodworking in America Link

Sharpening a Dovetail Plane

Abe Lincoln once said "Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe."

Well, I spent 6. 5 hours on Saturday fiddling around with the blades on the dovetail plane and got pretty good, but not perfect, results. The blades were easy—too easy—to sharpen. Too easy, because I realized they had not been heat treated. That's fine if you're working with pine, but to plane curly cherry meant having to resharpen blades that were being nicked by the hard wood and which dulled quickly.

Rather than take the time to heat treat the irons in order to produce a clean dovetail—I'm terrified of propane torches and need to spend several days working up my nerve to use them—I forged ahead with planing them, and resolved to make scratch stock to clean up the tearout.

To sharpen the plane blades, the backs first needed to be flattened. I used drywall screen sitting atop a sheet of glass, but you can also use a sheet of coarse sandpaper clamped to a known flat surface, like a cast iron table saw or jointer bed. From there, I polished the back on 1,000 grit and then 8,000 grit waterstones. A veritas gauge helped maintain the bevel angle while sharpening it on the 1,000 grit stone, followed by the 8,000 grit stone.

Sharpening the side bevel was a little trickier. It was rounded over, so I first flattened it with a file and then used 1,000 and 8,000 grit slipstones to polish the bevel.

Scratch stock is very easy to make. The trick is to make sure you polish both sides of the metal as well as the edges. You want very square edges. I rough-shaped the profile with a hacksaw, used a grinder to finalize the shape, flattened the edges with a file, and used an 8,000 grit waterstone to polish all edges. It only took about a half hour to make, whereas, had I elected to heat treat the blades.....well, let's just say, this being two days later, I'd still be trying to bolster my courage.

Dovetail Plane

I purchased a double-bladed dovetail plane from Clarence Blanchard of Fine Tool Journal some time ago. Clarence assured me that while the plane is not a showpiece, it is a good user...and he was right!

My current project has sliding dovetails that attach the top to the base. I have cut sliding dovetails only

once before with just a saw and chisels, so I've been looking forward to dusting off my dovetail plane and using it for the first time. Without any sharpening or honing, you can see in the first & third photos how well it cuts pine. Pretty impressive! It will require some sharpening, however, for the curly cherry —a harder wood with ornery grain—that I'm using for the sawbuck table.

The plane is double-bladed to accomodate reverse grain on a board's edge, but since the pine cut so easily, I sheared both sides of the profile (using both blades) without removing the board from the vise or changing my stance. I don't know if that's the "right" way to use the plane, but it worked great.

In the last two photos, arrows are pointing to the areas of the blade that do the actual cutting and the only areas that will need to be sharpened.

The dovetail joint has been around since the ancient Egyptians, 5,000 years ago, but I do not know when sliding dovetails were first introduced and when dovetail planes were first developed. If you happen to know, please email me or post a comment (Gary—nudge, nudge). I'd love to have more information.

Lie-Nielsen vs. Wenzloff

This is my friend, Scott. Scott is thrilled because his new Wenzloff saws arrived this week and he can’t wait to try them out. Trust me, he’s happy. Regardless of his mood, he always looks like someone just pilfered his lunch money.

My partner and I find Scott’s grumpy disposition highly entertaining, along with his “gut-busting, lol, oh-my-God-did-I-just-snort?” stories about how gay guys hit on him all the time and he can’t figure out why. Scott is 100% straight.

And we’re bringing him with us to the Woodworking in America conference in Berea, KY this November. He loves hand tools so much he might even crack a smile. I’ll have the camera ready.

Scott and I decided to conduct and in-depth, painstakingly-scientific study comparing the smaller of his two saws with my Lie-Nielsen dovetail saw. Both are 9” long, 15 tpi blades.

Here are the results:

Lie-Nielsen
• Larger handle, set lower
• Shorter blade height
• Lighter weight
• Smoother start
• Does not cut as quickly, due to less aggressive set in teeth
• Thinner and less ragged kerf due to less aggressive set

Wenzloff
• Aggressive set in teeth made it cut more quickly
• Produced a wider kerf
• Physically heavier, which aided in cutting more quickly with less effort
• Handle shorter and positioned higher
• Blade is tapered back to front
• More difficult to start due to agressive set

We liked both saws and the shape of the teeth looked identical to our untrained eyes, but Scott preferred his Wenzloff and I preferred my Lie-Nielsen. Since I usually cut thin, delicate dovetails, the Lie-Nielsen works better for me. I also feel like I have more control over the saw because it cuts less aggressively and has a smoother start. However, both handles were comfortable and both saws cut straight lines.

Scott preferred the more aggressive cut and heavier weight of his Wenzloff saw. He also preferred the feel of the handle over the Lie-Nielsen, stating that it felt handmade rather than machined.

Scott has a different sawing technique than I do when cutting dovetails. His is actually the “right” way to do it where you start the cut at an angle and slowly level it out. I start with the saw completely level with the board’s edge to ensure I’m cutting exactly along my pencil line.

One unexpected benefit to practicing sawing with a friend is that you can help each other improve your technique. By observing at board’s eye view from the side, you can tell if the sawyer is making a level cut and is using the entire width of the blade.

In conclusion: Lie-Nielsen and Wenzloff are both great saws!

Tusk Tenon

Accurate layout is essential for a tight-fitting tusk tenon. Start by drawing a line on all four sides of the tenon where it exits the legs. Next, trace the wedge's angle onto the tenon and transfer this line the entire way around the tenon. In so doing, you have a reference line with which line up the angle of your chisel as you chop the mortise.

I used a mortising gauge to mark the long walls of the mortise, defined the shape with an exacto knife and chisel, removed some waste at the drill press, and cleaned up the mortise with chisels.
















In the second to last photo, you may notice that the wall of the mortise that is closest to the leg assembly is actually stepped back a bit. I did this for two reasons: I still have final planing to do on the legs (which will reduce their thickness slightly); and to ensure a tight fit. With the mortise embedded inside the legs, the wedge pushes against the part of the leg that is above and below the mortise. I don't know if this is normally how it's done since I've never seen a tusk tenon disassembled, but it worked, and that's good enough for me. One down, one to go!