Jim Whetstone: Talented and Organized Woodworker

Jim Whetstone (how's that for a cool last name?), of New Cumberland, PA, makes and sells woodworking projects which include beautiful gift boxes, complete with wood ribbons.

Jim developed a method of laminating contrasting pieces of wood, alternating their grain direction like plywood, and cutting them out on his scroll saw to look like pieces of ribbon. The alternating grain provides strength where short, weak grain occurs.

The strips of ribbon which wrap entirely around the box are glued into shallow dadoes, while the strips that make up the bow are glued on top of one another. Metal weights and washers are used to "clamp" the ribbons in place while the glue dries.

Jim takes great care to cut the ribbon pieces so they mimic the curls and fluid movement of fabric ribbon, which results in a very realistic product.

In addition to being talented, Jim is the most organized woodworker I've ever met. He knows the exact number of pieces he's made in his career (1,109) and has job folders and notes for each one. He keeps all his templates and photos of his work for future design reference, and has clever ways of storing tools and making maximum use of a relatively small shop space.

All his equipment and work stations are on wheels; wall and ceiling spaces are used for template and tool storage; and hinged partitions hold tools and reference material. When not in use, a box slips overtop of his planer, creating another work surface.

It's always a joy to visit another woodworker's shop, especially one who has so much to share.

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When not in his workshop, Jim is busy with his other passion: photography. His newly-launched photography website can be found here. Some of the photos in this post were provided by Jim and are marked as such.

The Wooden Bowl

I just finished reading The Wooden Bowl, a book written by Robin Wood. If you're not familiar with Robin, he's a woodturner and spoon carver who works wood the traditional way—with a pole lathe and handtools. He's also chairman of the Heritage Crafts Association and the 2009 Artisan of the Year.

Robin has a passion for wooden bowls—especially antiques of the most humble designs, complete with tool marks, that were made in large quantities and saw everyday use—and high regard for the turners who made them centuries ago. His reverence for these bowls was the catalyst for a career dedicated to replicating them, down to the last detail. Robin has made authentic reproductions for museums, theatrical productions, and most recently, the new Russell Crowe film "Robin Hood".

In his book, he provides details about woodturners in Great Britain that he gathered from archaeological reports, Medieval manuscripts, and first-hand study of ancient bowls.

Wooden bowls were the standard eating and drinking container in all of Medieval Europe. Most people owned their own bowl, which would last them a lifetime, as evidenced by the metal staples and other reparative methods that reconnected a split, and the blackened surface and warm patina which naturally occurred from years of use. They were used by everyone from the poorest to the most wealthy.

The earliest lathes (created some 2500 years ago) spun wood reciprocally—backwards and forwards—and include these types: strap, bow, and pole. By the 16th century, continuous rotation lathes—treadle, great wheel, and water-powered—were developed. Some lathes were better suited for small work whereas others could manage large diameter bowls.

Robin includes images of historical artwork and photos of antiques that complement the text. One photo is a shale bowl found in London dated 140-160 A.D. Other images are wooden bowls recovered from the Mary Rose, King Henry VIII's warship that sank just offshore, and lay submerged until the ship was excavated in 1971.

The chapter on 14th-17th century mazers was my favorite. These exquisite bowls were often made from burl and rimmed with gilded silver. Some were engraved with detailed designs around the rims, and displayed circular, gilded prints that were embedded in the bottom of the bowls. These pieces were extremely expensive and were referenced in Medieval wills and inventories.

Turners once held fairly prominent status in the community, since everyone required their skills. But by the 16th century, when inexpensive earthenware pottery was starting to be produced in larger quantities, the decline of the wooden bowl ensued, as did the prestige of the woodturner. By the late 17th and early 18th centuries, turners were forced to find other markets that utilized their talent, so in Britain, they focused on making furniture parts.

Robin concludes with a chapter about the last bowl turners of the 20th century and his determination to continue the tradition of creating the wooden bowls he loves.

The book's jacket says that it will appeal to archaeologists, museum curators, treen collectors and turners. I'm none of those things, and yet I found it interesting and inspiring. So much so, that I'm compelled to try turning a set of bowls for use in my house. And if you know anything about the relationship I have with my lathe, that declaration speaks volumes about Robin's book.

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Disclosure: I do not benefit in any way from the sale of this book. My motivation in writing this post is to shed light on an individual who makes an important contribution to the world and who I hold in high esteem.

If you are interested in purchasing Robin's book and live in the U.S., you will be able to find it this March, when it will be available at The David Brown Book Company in Connecticut, 860.945.9329.

No Winding Sticks? No Worries!

If you're working with long boards, you'll probably want to make a set of winding sticks. But if you're working with shorter pieces, here is the method I use to remove twist and flatten a board.

Lay your board on a dead flat surface—I use my table saw. Touch one corner with your finger and then the opposing corner. Then do the same with the other two corners. If the board rocks with one set of corners, it's not flat. And depending on which corners are rocking, you can tell where the high spots are.

High corners will not rock, low corners will. Remove high spots with your handplane and keep checking the board on your flat surface. Sight along the bottom edge of the board to see where it is and isn't touching the flat surface. This will also reveal high and low spots. Continue to plane and check your board until it no longer rocks when you touch oppposing corners and when the bottom edges of your board lay seamlessly on the flat surface.

In addition, I use a backlit straight edge to check for flatness by laying it diagonally across the board in both directions, and along the width and length of the board, parallel to its edges.

These methods have always worked well for me and actually seem to work most effectively when I use them before cutting the joinery. Go figure.

The Sharpest Tool In The Shop...

...is sometimes the most dull. By "tool" I mean brains and by "dull" I mean mine.

"If you don't have time to do it right the first time, when are you going to have time to fix it?" That's one of my favorite quotes and one I choose to ignore on occasion.

Take ninny move #1:

Today I decided to replace the planing stop on the end of my bench. It had been obliterated over the years, having been too thin a piece of wood to stand up to the beating of handplaning, so I found a beefy piece of cherry to replace it.

The first mistake was in not drilling new holes on the end cap of my bench—ones that sit lower so the top portion of the planing stop would be wider above the holes. The second mistake was in not drilling a new hole that was not so close to the front of my bench. The wood in the planing stop that's closest to the front of my bench, next to the slot on the right, will eventually snap off.

Nincompoop move #2:

Time to fess up. I committed a cardinal sin when I made the dovetailed drawer for my sawbuck table. I did not properly flatten the boards first. When laid on a flat surface, they wobbled like an 8 month old toddler learning to walk. I ignored this and went ahead with construction.

Of course the drawer would not sit flat when checking for fit, and how do you install a drawer bottom when the sides are catawampus? I walked away from that project until I could think of a solution. That was a year ago.

Today I resolved to correct this mistake and put my new planing stop to work. After removing 1/8" from the surface of the side panels and back of the drawer, they now sit dead flat when assembled. The front of the drawer houses half blind dovetails and cannot be fixed by flattening the inside face. If I did that, the tails on the side pieces would no longer fit tightly in the front board and would be as gappy as the teeth on a 6 year old.

I haven't quite figured out how to fix that yet. But I'm hoping that enlightenment won't keep me waiting another year.

The Hook

In pop music, the "hook" refers to the part of a song that is most memorable or catchy. It's the part you wait for—the particular bit that's supported by the other elements in the melody, but that stands out as the best part. You might not even like some portions in the song, but you hang in there just to hear the hook.

In woodworking, the hook for me is in the details. Using handtools—where I'm refining a joint with chisels, carving, doing inlay, chamfering an edge with a block plane—is always the highlight.

The tasks leading up to and following that point can be fun, so-so, or even disagreeable. Non-woodworkers might find it odd to hear a woodworker admit that there are fundamentals of the craft that, in some cases, are most egregious.

Glue-ups for example. I dread them. Countless hours spent building a piece can be wasted with one mishap.

And finishing. Don't get me started. ew.

Bandsawing—fun. Sharpening—pleasant. Using a hewing axe—brilliant.

But there might be more than one hook. For me, it's the pre-woodworking part—the decisions made in size, dimension, design, joinery, developing a cut list, and order of construction.

I've been working on a design for a Swiss army knife of a shaving horse that can be used for shaping, carving, and hewing. It will have several attachments and can be broken down for transport. The brainstorming has been a blast.

But before I can get to the fun parts of construction, I have to mill a bunch of boards, and not one of them is square. Truing crooked, warped, and cupped boards is far from being a hook in my book. Alas, we take the great with the not-so-great. It's all part of the arrangement.

What Were the Redneck's Last Words?

"Hey, watch this!"
(As told to me by a West Virginian with a thick southern accent.)

You know when you're about to do something that you think might not be such a good idea and it turns out you were right?

That seems to be the way many workshop accidents happen. Too often we hear people say "I knew better than to do that" after they have a mishap at the table saw or band saw or other piece of equipment. Cuts, even severe ones, can happen with handtools as well as power tools. In fact the only times I've been hurt in the shop in all my 18 years of woodworking have been while using chisels and a screwdriver.

Until yesterday.

That's when I was planning to photograph the set-up for the "Merry Christmas" post. The layout was on the floor of my shop and I had to be far enough above it to shoot the entire image. That meant either going out to the garage to get the ladder or standing on a shop stool. Unfortunately, I chose the latter instead of the ladder.

At least I was smart enough to slide a tippy 5-board bench next to the stool to use as a step. So with camera in hand, I started my ascent. As one foot was planted on the low bench and one on the shop stool, I realized the stool needed to be moved further away from its current location in order to be centrally located above the Merry Christmas message. Rather than step down and reposition the stool, I decided to slide it with one foot while I balanced my other foot on the low bench.

Well, here's pretty much what happened:

The 5-board bench was crushed, but you can see in the video how happy I was that my camera was not. My only regret is that someone wasn't there to film the debacle. Such hilarity should always be shared with others.*

*Of course I'm only poking fun at myself. Everyone knows that safety's no joke.

Merry Christmas!

And a Happy and Healthy New Year!

Carved Stone Holder: Finished

What I thought was going to be the most difficult part about this project—cutting the cavities inside the box so the lid and base would fit snugly around the stone and line up with one another—turned out to be very easy.

I left the two pieces of cocobolo oversized in length and a little in width and used a trick that Bess Naylor showed me when building a frame and panel, where the stiles are intentionally left long and trimmed after glue-up: strike a center mark on the two stiles, align and clamp them together, and measure outwards from the center mark (rather than measuring from the ends) to make your layout lines.

Once the recesses were cut for a snug fit, I sandwiched the stone between the boards and trimmed them to length at the miter saw. The stone kept the two pieces aligned while I planed and sanded the ends and sides.

Clamping sandpaper to my table saw and sliding the box across it was a fast way to square the lid and base, and flatten the inside surfaces of the box.

After sanding to 400 grit, I wiped one of the boards off on my jeans and discovered a curious thing—it polished the wood. So I tried a piece of leather to see what would happen. It polished it even more, to a buffed sheen. The leather also gently rounded the sharp edges of the box. If you've worked with cocobolo, you know how sharp those edges can be.

There is no finish on the box itself, only the carved portion (with spray poly). I thought that finish might adversely affect the stone, plus cocobolo is an oily, dense wood and is naturally beautiful.

After spending so many hours on this little project, I can only imagine the the original was made by someone who really appreciated his oilstone. Not surprising, considering the close relationship woodworkers had with their tools in past centuries.

Nice to know that some things never change.