You know you’re a woodworker when...

You cut yourself with a chisel and you’re more concerned about not getting blood on your workpiece than you are about the laceration.

You inexplicably find sawdust in your drawers. And I’m not talking about furniture.

You can say “crotchwood” with a straight face.

It has caused you great pain to pay money for furniture that was poorly made.

You have dropped to your knees and looked beneath a table in a museum, a gallery, an historic home, or a friend’s house.

You know the difference between a tendon and a tenon but you sometimes use the words interchangeably.

You cannot resist the temptation to lift the lid on a wooden box.

You secretly think “measuring tape” suspenders are pretty cool.

You can talk to your partner/spouse/significant other for HOURS about woodworking despite the glazed over look in his/her eyes.

You have wondered what it would be like to own a woodworking business.

You can spend an entire day in your shop, accomplish little if anything, and thoroughly enjoy it.

You know exactly where everything is in your shop....except for a pencil.

You have said these words: “I can build that in two weeks.”

You have built more projects in your head than in actuality.

Your spouse/partner/loved ones/pets know not to bother you, and sometimes choose to run for cover, when you are gluing up a project.

Even if you don’t work with it, you love the smell of fresh cut pine.

You either love or hate the smell of fresh cut walnut. There is no in-between.

You remove more splinters from your hands in a month than most people do in a lifetime.

You can correctly pronounce Padauk and Lignum Vitae.

I'm not making this up.

I'm building a project in my workshop this morning (surrounded by a sea of woodworking tools) when my partner walks in and asks, "Where are your tools?"

And she was serious.

Huh?

(Translation: when a person who is not a woodworker asks where he/she can find your "tools", he/she means they need a wrench, hammer, pliers, or drill).

Mini Groove

Here's one way to make a 3/32" groove for a very tiny box lid and bottom.

I decided to build a box for the reference ruler, but working with 3/16" material can be a challenge, unless you're a miniaturist.

Since I learned to make scratch stock, it's become the solution on a number of occasions.

One benefit to using scratch stock is you can make profiles that do not exist in router bits. Or, if they do exist, they risk tearing out the wood on such a delicate project. With scratch stock, you can work in both directions, so you are always working with the grain; you can work slowly; you won't burn the wood, as is the case sometimes with router bits; and you can cut multiple profiles on the same blank by utilizing each corner.

For blanks, I use old band saw blades I picked up—for free—from a lumber yard that was throwing them out.

With a tiny profile like this, it was easier to use the edge of a file as a saw rather than a hacksaw to create the 3/32" wide tooth needed to rout the groove. You can use layout fluid to mark your shape, but a pen worked fine in this case.

Once the profile was filed, I honed the shape flat on all surfaces with waterstones. You need very sharp edges for scratch stock to work well.

It took about an hour to make the cutter, but routing a groove takes only minutes.

Reference Ruler

I've always liked Stephen Shepherd's wooden reference ruler he places in his photographs so that readers have a sense of scale. So I decided to make my own out of cherry and bloodwood.

You can cut the 1" pieces by hand, but I used a crosscut sled on my table saw* along with some scrap pieces—one used as a stop block and one to protect my fingers.

The jig I had built to make some picture frames worked well at keeping the pieces square during clamping. A sheet of wax paper between the jig and the workpieces kept the two from being glued together.

The ruler is thick enough to stand vertically without toppling over but thin enough to be positioned relatively close to the object I'm shooting.

After glue up, I handplaned the ruler smooth using my favorite jig.

Cherry and bloodwood when first planed are contrasting in color, but over time, if left in sunlight, will both turn a dark reddish brown. That diminishes the effectiveness of the ruler if you can't see the line of demarcation between each inch.

So, I plan to build a special little box for it.

I just hope my metal rulers don't get jealous.

*Be sure to use the blade guards and safety features that come with your power equipment.

Wish I Had A Plow Plane

The sawbuck table I'm reproducing has a drawer with runners that slide within dadoes that are cut into the sliding dovetailed stretchers.

I wasn't able to tell from the photo of the original sawbuck how the runners were applied to sides of the drawer and I wanted to try to be as true to the original as possible.

Roy Underhill brought his workbench to the WIA Conference and as luck would have it, a little drawer was to be found beneath the work surface like the one on the sawbuck table (Roy's bench, top photo). I figure that Roy's drawer runners are historically accurate, so I'll make mine the same.

I laid out the dadoes with a marking gauge and had planned to cut them with a router plane as I've done before, but as a seeker of variety, I wanted another option.

"Sure wish I had a plow plane."*

Then I remembered a tool I had bought at a farm auction for $25 about 15 years ago that I had never used. When I bought it I had no idea how to fix it up or sharpen the blades, but it was a cool-looking tool at a cheap price so it followed me home. And lucky for me the guys at the auction were more interested in plows than in plow planes.

I found out later that it's a Sargent Combination Plane—a cheaper version of the Stanley Combination Plane. There are 21 cutters with different profiles, including ones used to cut dadoes. For more information on combination planes, check out the Cornish Workshop, here and here.

The plane and cutters need to be cleaned of dirt and superficial rust, but I took it for a test run nonetheless and it worked very well. Some of the cutters look as though they've never been used.



*I wonder if I wish for a Lie-Nielsen jointer plane I'll suddenly remember that I have one!

Woodturning is Like Softball

I played third base in fastpitch softball for 26 years.

During that time, I snagged line drives that were travelling so fast, bystanders were looking in the outfield to see where the ball had landed, not realizing it had been caught.

I hit pitches that were screaming toward me at 85 mph from only 40 feet away. I dove for grounders, slid headfirst into bases, and was bloody most every game.

People thought I was fearless.

And then came the game when both of our catchers were sick. I was asked to fill in. No prob, right? Wrong. I gained new respect for catchers that day.

When a batter swings a lethal weapon in front of your face as a ball the size of a grapefruit is careening toward your head, you'd better have nerves of steel. Or be wearing adult diapers.

But because there were onlookers and because I would never let my team down, I hung in there and didn't embarrass myself, but I sure was glad when the game was over.

As a newbie turner with very few hours of lathework under my belt, I had never had a mishap.....until a few days ago. The gouge I was using snagged the wood and the workpiece snapped in two and came flying toward my face (I was wearing a mask). It missed, but my nerves were shot.

I'm back at the lathe today but pretty jumpy. What should take a half an hour to turn is taking hours.

The lathe has made a girl out of me.

Maybe if I had onlookers or better yet, catcher's equipment, I'd at least be able to fake fearlessness.

Or maybe I should just buy some Depends.

Friday Fun with Roy

Here are some photos of Roy Underhill (man of a thousand expressions) on set in the Woodwright's Shop and on a roadtrip to Berea, where he visited Don Weber and Warren May.

In the first few images, the men with Roy, Marcus Hansen and Ed Wright, both of whom are finish carpenters at Colonial Williamsburg, are using a fancy ellipse machine. To see one in use, check out Stephen Shepherds's video and read about it here.
















In mid-September, Roy visited Don Weber's shop where he got a first hand look at Don's reproduction 12th c. Viking chest (at left). You can read more about it on Mitch Roberson's blog.

Warren's May's shop is the last photo, where Roy is examining Warren's dulcimers.

Enjoy!













Photos are presented with kind permission from the Woodwright's Shop's cameraman & photographer, Mike Oniffrey.

Workshop Bling

We spend so much time in our shops....might as well make them pretty!

The wagon maker sign is from an antique store in Asheville, NC
and the newest shop accessory is from Highland Hardware.