Patina Report

My friend, Scott, and I arrived for the tailgating at 6:30 a.m., a cruel hour, and hustled from seller to seller looking for bargains.

If you go in future, be sure to take a flashlight and wear long johns. It was very dark and colder than a [insert mom-in-law's colorful West Virginian metaphor that would garner this blog an NC-17 rating].

Nonetheless, my first experience at the Patina Spring Auction and Dealer Tool Sale was great fun: tools, tools, tools, and a surprise glimpse of the flash known as Saint Roy.

Roy seemed to be on a tear to buy tools and I spied him on more than one occasion flipping open his billfold. With ninja-like prowess I snapped a few pics, but unfortunately the camera was on the wrong setting, hence the fuzziness. (Or maybe it was just that Roy was moving too fast?)

One guy, who told me he owns 700 saws, overheard me asking Tom Law about his handsaws, of which I know very little, and took it upon himself to escort me around to all of the tool dealers who were selling saws, including a very expensive panther saw ($750).

I asked Tom to help me choose a crosscut saw and he said, "You know how to choose a saw? You pick it up and feel the 'hang'. If it feels right, it's the right saw for you."

So I found two that were not at all pretty but felt absolutely perfect in my hand. Scott asked why I chose such short ones—24" and 18.25"—that his own are quite a bit longer. They just seemed "right", I told him.

Yesterday I tried them out and in using the longer of the two at a saw bench, discovered that it came within an inch of hitting the floor on the downstroke. At my height, I would not have been able to use a longer saw. Turns out Tom's advice was spot on.

Other items that came home with me were a snipesbill plane ($28) and three books ($24).

Will I go next year? Absolutely. I'll be the one wearing the down snowsuit and mukluks.

1923 Woodworking Video

Heinrich commented with a link in the Spoon Carving Knives post of (presumably) Swedish woodworkers from 1923 making clogs, a spoon, and a chair—using basic handtools in a rustic setting.  It is well worth watching.

I was amazed to see how fast these craftsmen zipped through the process of their trades using crude benches and few tools....and was even more amazed that they had all their fingers.  You can even pick up a few woodworking techniques from them--I did!

(Thank you for the link, Heinrich.)

Spoon Carving Knives

The nice UPS lady delivered a much-anticipated order this week: spoon carving knives from Pinewood Forge. They arrived securely packaged—two in hard foam and one in a birch bark sheath—and they are absolute beauties.

Del Stubbs made, from left to right in the top photo, 1 3/4" Hook Knife, Regular Slojd Knife, and #1 Open Sweep Knife (for larger spoons and ladles). The handles fit very comfortably in your hand and the blades are extremely sharp!

Del studied spoon carving in Sweden with Wille Sundquist, author of a hard-to-find-at-a-decent-price book on Swedish carving, and returned to the states to make his own set of tools.

On his website, you will find tons of links to spoon carvers, techniques, and video tutorials. You can also find a number of videos on YouTube of carvers who start with a log and, with hewing hatchet and knife, make a dinner spoon.

I know exactly what I'll be doing this weekend. ; )

The carved spoons below are photos from Del's website.

Dovetailed Shelving Unit

Spring fever has prompted me to try to get more organized in my shop. This means building a storage unit for the moulding planes and other tools that have been making their home in cardboard boxes.

Pine is the wood of choice--it's inexpensive, smells good, and makes you feel like a champ when you handcut dovetails.

I already covered dovetails in an earlier post but here are a few additional comments.

The shelves are nothing fancy, but they do provide a nicer place in which to park my planes.

I decided not to add doors, even though they would help to keep dust out, because I love to visit other woodworkers' shops and see their planes in plain view.

Sharpen Like A Painter

As an art major, I learned:
1. The only thing a group of fledgling artists requires for amusement is a camera.
2. It's best to keep classroom blinds closed if your live nude drawing class happens to line up with the windows of the frat house.
3. Start with broad brush strokes, work the entire canvas, and leave the details until last.

So now I have an axe, or rather hatchet, to grind.

Apparently, a quarter century later, I forgot all about lesson #3 and immediately set to polishing the cutting edge of the hewing hatchet I recently purchased on ebay for $25. I did this without first working the entire blade with coarse grit stones in order to establish the correct bevels.

Focus on the details first, and it will take you forever to finish your project. What if Michelangelo instead of first establishing the painting's overall structure with broad strokes, decided to start with God's eyelashes and continue his masterpiece with that level of detail throughout? He'd have been lucky to finish his beard, let alone the entire painting.

Hewing hatchets should have a flat side and a beveled side. The flat side cuts against the workpiece and the beveled side slices the offcut away.

I had noticed a slight back bevel on the flat side and ground some of it away, but not enough to keep the blade from deflecting off the piece of wood I was chopping.

According to Peter Follansbee, who I consulted when my polished, but incorrectly sharpened blade wasn't working well, the back bevel needs to be completely removed. Also, the front bevel should not be rounded as it is on my hatchet; it should either be flat or hollow ground. Peter flattens his with a coarse, diamond grit sharpening plate he bought from Drew Langsner at Country Workshops, and then sharpens the edge with oilstones.

An interesting discovery on my hatchet is the original price found on the bottom of the handle. At just 29 cents, the original owner got a heck of a return on investment.

Given the current state of the economy, maybe investing in hatchets will enable me to retire early. Now that paints a lovely picture, doesn't it?

Making & Mastering Wood Planes

Good news for those of you who have been unable to find David Finck's authoritative book on making Krenov-style handplanes at a less than exhorbitant cost.

David has announced that the book will be published by Hickory Ridge Press with an estimated release date the end of March and will be available for purchase at Woodcraft, Highland Hardware, Lee Valley, and David's site.

The new cover price is $24.95. Quite a bit less than the current rate [for a new copy] of $120+.

Woodworkers Who Make a Difference

Kay Pomroy (at left) retired from the police force a little over two years ago and opened a woodworking business, called K E Pomroy Custom Woodworking, and later changed the name to Morgaine Rosewoods. Morgaine is the dog/teddy bear clinging to Kay in the photo.

Kay not only builds a number of different products for sale, she teaches woodworking at her two shops and at the local Woodcraft Store (I'm taking her woodturning course), and she provides opportunities for others to learn woodworking through apprenticeships and through a volunteer-supported program she developed that helps people in need, called the Reaching Down Project.

I'm convinced that Kay has been given more hours in the day than the rest of us. Either that, or she has given up sleeping altogether.

When Kay first opened for business, a friend who works for a school told her about several kids whose families couldn't afford beds for them. She offered to build the beds, recruited a few friends to help, and in just a few weeks, had finished beds for all the kids by Christmas that year.

Ever since, Kay has found other people who can benefit from her program. Her current project is for a local family that's struggling to make ends meet. She's building kitchen cabinets for them—something they do not have—and invited the women's woodworking club to spend 2 days helping with construction.

The women learned a number of things including routing dados, using the table saw and miter saw, drilling holes for adjustable shelves, pocket hole joinery for assembling face frames, and attaching edge banding to plywood. That is the closest I've been to an iron in 6 years.

We worked on 3 upper cabinets made from cherry plywood and hardwood, each of which will have 2 shelves and doors.

We didn't quite finish because Kay spends a good deal of time on instruction. It's important to her that people learn woodworking as a skill. So, not only will the family benefit from her generosity, we benefitted from the learning experience and the knowledge that we were helping others.

Kay's constant shop companions, Morgaine (Cocker Spaniel) and Rex (Border Collie) even chipped in to help by sweeping the floors and providing hug breaks.

What Happened to the Links?

In an effort to organize my link list and make it easier to find what you're looking for, I set up another blog for this sole purpose.  You can find a link to the new blog in the sidebar.

Since Blogger is a free service, I don't have the option to include another page, so this seemed like the best solution.

In upcoming days, I'll try to make things even easier to navigate.  

If I inadvertently deleted someone from the list, please let me know.