Bevel-Edged Pencil

Marking layout lines with a pencil always leads to "Do I split the line or save the line?" Here's a way to narrow the line, but still be able to see it, and resolve the issue.

Use a piece of sandpaper to create a flat side on your sharpened pencil then ride the flat edge along your straightedge. The line you create will be the exact the location of your cut. I mark dovetails this way and transfer lines from pins to tails. It is surprisingly precise. It does not, however, allow you mark lines in tight quarters, as in transferring marks from tails to ultra-thin dovetails. For that, you need a thin-bladed marking knife. (Or, cut your pins first...but that's another post.)

Using a pencil with a bevel edge leaves a mark that is easier to see than a knife mark. Sometimes you need that, especially if you've reached that 40+ year old bifocal age (raising hand).

Osage Orange Plane

People have written me asking for more information about the little osage orange plane in the side bar, so here are some images and measurements in case you would like to make one yourself.

Body: 4.5" long • 2" high • 1.125" wide
Opening: .84375" wide (13.5/15")
Wedge: 2.625" long • .8125" (13/15") wide • 12 degree bevel to fit
Blade: 3.625" long • .8125" wide • .125" thick

Bed Angles:
45 degree bed • 57 degree shoulder (the portion of the sides that hold the wedge in place) • 52 degree front bed

The plane is one piece of wood, so the most difficult part is chiseling out the wood inside the opening and being careful to ensure that the bed is perfectly flat. Layout your angles on the outside of your workpiece and transfer the angles across the top, down the other side, and on the plane's sole. Then, just keep an eye on your progress to make sure you maintain those angles as you chisel out the opening.

Other woods that make good planes are applewood, maple, bloodwood, cocobolo, and many other dense hardwoods.

Growth ring orientation, according to David Finck, author of Making & Mastering Wood Planes, is unimportant.

Leather Strop

You don't need a grinder and felt wheel in order to keep your knives, gouges, and chisels sharp. Honing with a leather strop charged with a fine compound also keeps them razor sharp. Glue a piece of leather to a flat substrate, like mdf or plywood, and rub a fine grit compound over the surface of the leather. I glued my leather rough side up, but others glue theirs smooth side up.

Slide your knife away from you, with the cutting edge facing you, and keep the blade at the same angle as the bevel. Flip the blade over and pull it towards you, this time with the cutting edge facing away from you. This way you won't gouge the leather. Hone each side of the blade the same number of times.

The lettercarving chisels that I've used for about 12 years have never once touched a waterstone or grinder. I have only ever honed them on a strop and they cut just as well now as the day I bought them. To sharpen a straight chisel, maintain the bevel angle as you slide the chisel towards you, with the cutting edge facing away from you. To hone the back, make sure the chisel is perfectly flat and then follow the same procedure. Always hone each side of the blade the same number of times.

To hone a straight gouge, I use a Flexcut SlipStrop, which has pre-formed shapes that match many types of gouges. Charge this with compound and hone the inside of the blade in the same manner as above. Hone the back of a straight gouge, if the sweep is not too extreme, on the flat leather strop, and rock the blade to match the back of the bevel. I lean the blade to the left and slide it, then lean it in the middle and slide it, and then lean it to the right and slide it. All the same number of times as I hone the inside sweep.

For smaller gouges, I sometimes use a piece of leather that I just bend by hand into a curve that matches the inside curve of the gouge.

Sharpening (Honing) Knives

When I came across a quick way to sharpen (technically, hone) knives a few months ago, I said to my dad, "Dad, give me all your knives and I'll sharpen them for you."

Question: Why do old dudes have so many knives? 40 (that's FORTY) knives, which is what Dad gave me, seems a little excessive. I'm pretty sure I only gave him like three knives total for all his birthdays and Christmases.

Good thing this sharpening system is speedy. Using a 3/4" hard felt wheel, charged with a honing compound, and secured on a grinder*, will put a razor edge on your knife, provided the knife is not too dull. If your knife has a blunt edge, you'll need to spend a little time with sharpening stones first.

Remember that when using a felt wheel, the direction of rotation must be turning away from you—the opposite direction when using grinding wheels. You will have to turn your grinder around so the switch is on the opposite side. If you do not do it this way, the felt wheel will grab the knife out of your hand and you could easily be hurt. Also remember to wear a face mask whenever you use a grinder and make sure that both wheels on your grinder are the same weight, so it is properly balanced. On the other arbor of this particular grinder is another 3/4" felt wheel.

It doesn't take much to hone the blade this way and if you hold it too long on the wheel, it will get hot, so check your progress frequently. I sharpened each knife in 20-30 seconds.

During sharpening, the felt will turn black. That's steel, and it means you need to charge the wheel with more compound. After a while, the compound may become glazed over. To remove it, I hold a block of wood against the wheel as it's rotating. The wood effectively scrapes off the compound and you can charge it with new.

The last photo shows my entire collection of knives. I have a ways to go to reach a total of forty, but then, I have a few more birthdays and Christmases until I'm an old dudette.

*Note: if you do not have a grinder, you can also hone blades and chisels with a leather strop, charged with honing compound, and glued to a board. That's a future post...

Handcut Dentil Moulding

The PA German Hanging Cupboard in the sidebar is a reproduction of a cupboard housed at the Winterthur Museum. I learned how to make this cupboard in a class taught by Gene Landon at Olde Mill Cabinet Shoppe.

The most impressive part of the cupboard is the crown moulding and I think, specifically, the dentil moulding. When those of us taking Gene's class first saw his reproduction, we gasped. And I thought, "How the heck did he figure that out?"

Making the dentil moulding is surprisingly simple. At left are progress shots of the layout and the series of saw cuts. Each tooth is 3/8" square. The pointed part of the tooth is half the height and width of each square and is created by cutting a 45 degree angle from the top two corners of each tooth.

I used a 24 tpi Zona saw, but you can use a scroll saw or coping saw or whatever you like, just so it makes a fine cut. Touch up saw cuts with a small chisel, if necessary.

That's all there is to it! Some clever 18th c. carpenter figured that out and made one impressive kitchen cupboard.

Useless Mallet

A few years ago, one of the guys in my woodworking club suggested that each of us build something using only $5 worth of wood to use in a gift exchange at our annual Christmas party. I thought about making a cutting board in the shape of a handplane but decided to make a mallet instead.

I wanted to be sure the mallet's head wouldn't come flying off someday in use and injure the gift recipient, so I worked out a design where the portion of the handle that fits inside the head has scalloped sides, and fits into a matching dado carved into the head. Since the head was to be laminated, it was easy to cut the channel, fit the handle, and glue it up.

Mallets take a lot of abuse, so to ensure that the laminated parts would stay glued together, I ran square pegs all the way through from one side to the other and glued them in place.

Since this was to be a gift, I chose some nicer woods: apple and walnut for the mallet; and purpleheart and yellowheart for the pegs. And, because I was going to give the mallet away, I went ahead and made two, so I could keep one to use in my shop.

That was four years ago. Notice anything odd about my four year old mallet? There are no dings or dents. Lesson learned: if you're going to make a mallet, don't use pretty wood, or you won't want to use it.

Fortunately, at the Christmas party, I was the happy recipient of a mallet that one of the other guys made. Even more fortuitous, his mallet was built to be used.

Tom Law: HandSaw Sharpening Guru

Last night's woodworking club meeting featured Tom Law, an expert in sharpening handsaws. Tom is well known in the handtool world, and I was excited to meet him in person. He brought with him a bevy of saws and talked about the specific differences in each. He made the cherry handle on the saw, shown below. When you grip the handle in one hand, you rest your other hand on top of the handle and hook your thumb inside the smaller of the two holes in the handle. So, it's a two-handed operation.

I like unusual tools, so my eye was immediately drawn to the saw in the last photo. According to Tom, it was used to make access holes in flooring, by making a drop cut. I thought it looked like something from a Civil War doctor's tool kit.

Tom talked about the "hang" of a saw when you pick it up and grip it to see if it feels right. He said a saw will talk to you when it's the right one for you. So weird...I was just having a conversation the other day with my block plane, Jack, about that very subject.

Prior to the Depression, a variety of handsaws could be found with different teeth configurations, and saws were custom made according to specifications. He swears by the old handsaws for their superior craftsmanship, saying that a saw must be hand sharpened to achieve the best results—that subtleties can be made by eye that can't be made with a machine.

Knowing virtually nothing about handsaws, I was interested to learn that the line of teeth are either in a straight line or have a crown in the middle. The crown adds some oomph when the saw cuts through the wood at the point at which you are applying the most force.

He showed one saw (the one he brings to show how not to sharpen) where the fellow who sharpened it must have been a hair stylist. Because the line of teeth, instead of being straight or with a crown, had a permanent wave.

Tom produced a video on saw sharpening and travels around to various clubs, freely sharing his knowledge with woodworkers. He also teaches classes on sharpening all kinds of tools and on tricks of the trade. I bought a copy of his video. Now I just need to hit some antique stores to find some old saws. I'm not willing to cut my teeth on my Lie-Nielsens.

Lettercarving, Part II

Lettercarving is a great way to enhance your work. To carve a letter "O", or any curve, you must know in which direction to slice the wood in order to avoid tearout. The diagram shows you the direction of the cut on both the outside and inside curves. The horizontal lines represent wood grain, the dotted line is the stop cut, and the arrows show the direction in which to slide the chisel or gouge. When you slice in the correct direction, the wood fibers are continually supported ahead of the cut. If you were to cut in the opposite direction, the wood fibers ahead of the cut are too short to support the fibers you are slicing, resulting in tearout.

In the diagram, the points at which two arrows meet are at the top, bottom, and sides and show where you need to switch the direction of your cut. You can start cutting at any of these junctures and stop when you get to the next one. You will need to feather the junctures with very thin slices in order to obtain a smooth transition.

When cutting a curve, the outside wall is concave, and is therefore carved with a gouge, while the inside wall is convex and is carved with a straight chisel (which is always bevel up).

A gouge requires that you hold the handle at a steeper angle in relation to your work surface. A straight chisel is held at 20 degrees, while a gouge is held at 40 degrees. A gouge held at a lower angle will result in a wider side wall that will reach beyond the middle of the letter. As with carving a straight letter in part I, keep the cutting edge of both the gouge and chisel at 45 degrees to your pencil line.

Where the letter is thinner, in this case the top and bottom, the depth of cut will be more shallow, since you are always maintaining the same compound angle with both chisel and gouge.

Once you understand in which direction to cut, based on the grain, you can apply this technique to any letter or design that has curves.

I used a 12mm straight chisel and a 12mm gouge with a 3 sweep to cut the letter.