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.

My Top Ten Woodworking Books

Here is a link to my list.

Some people have emailed me and suggested that I read the books by James Krenov, George Nakashima, and Eric Sloane, but I'd like to hear your recommendations as well. 

What books are your must-haves and why?

Beveled Drawer Bottoms

Why bevel a drawer bottom? No one sees it, right?

Maybe not, but if they do, it can be an impressive discovery.

Beveled drawer bottoms that are fitted into grooves are found in some antique furniture, but I have also seen flat and beveled boards that were nailed or pegged to the bottom edges of the drawer sides.

I can think of 4 possible reasons why woodworkers might have beveled their drawer bottoms, but if you know for sure, please feel free to comment.

Beveled drawer bottoms:

1. Feel substantial. Rap on a thin drawer bottom and it sounds hollow, and may even rattle if it's fitted into grooves, but a beveled one feels and sounds solid.

2. Add an elegant and finished look.

3. Take less time to make than it would if you had to reduce the thickness of the board along its entire width with a handplane.

4. May have been a signature design element for some cabinetmakers.

Moreover, they are simple to make.

Begin by laying out pencil lines on the face of the board that indicate where the bevel will terminate (I use a combination square). If you use a marking gauge on the face, you'll create scratches, and pencil lines are more easily planed away. Use a marking gauge along the edges to mark the final thickness, which is determined by the width of the groove into which it must fit.

I always start with the long grain and plane away the area between the pencil and marking gauge lines . If you start with the cross grain, it's possible to create tearout on the long grain edge that can't easily be repaired.

Planing crossgrain toward the bevel you created along the length of the board avoids tearout. (photo #3)

I use two planes for this task. One has a more open throat and can take a bigger bite. Ironically, it's the smoother plane I made, but because it's applewood, which twists and shifts like a little kid during church service, I have had to flatten the sole enough times that the mouth is too wide for a fine shaving. I could patch it and reopen the throat, but it's beneficial to have a designated plane for faster stock removal.

My jack plane (maple) can produce thinner shavings, so once I'm close to the lines, I run it across the bevel a few times to leave a finished surface.

For the drawer itself, if you build it so that you can slide the drawer bottom in from the back after the drawer is assembled, you can use a drawer jig to clean up the outside, easily remove glue from the inside walls, and add finish to the drawer bottom before you slide it in place . A small brass screw at the back edge adds the finishing touch.

The last photo shows 2 drawers from my tool cabinet that was built almost 4 years ago. The back and bottom of the drawers (on the right, and made from cherry) never see light. And notice how much lighter in color they are compared to the drawer front. In just a few years, the drawer fronts (also cherry) are nearly as dark as the walnut sides, even though the drawer fronts themselves rarely see light since there are doors on my tool cabinet.

PATINA

PATINA is the Potomac Antique Tools and Industries Association, Inc., an antique tool club, located in the Washington, D.C. area. The cost of membership is just $12/year. That includes bimonthly meetings which start with some tailgating (around 10:00 a.m.) and a short tool auction at 11:00 a.m., followed by guest speaker. The most recent speakers were professional furniture makers who presented some of their pieces and demonstrated woodworking techniques.

With membership, you also get a bi-monthly newsletter that recaps the previous meeting.

PATINA also hosts a yearly Spring Auction and Dealer Tool Sale in Maryland, this year on Saturday, March 14. Admission is FREE and the dealer sale/auction is open to the public. The dealers' sale starts at 9:00 a.m. and the auction starts at 2:00 p.m.

My grumpy friend, Scott, says that one of the best parts of the event is the tailgating, where you can find some great deals.  Among other things, he bought an antique turning saw, in pristine condition, for [I'm pretty sure] $25.  Tailgating begins prior to the dealer show, whenever people show up, usually around 6:30 a.m.

I'm going to try to make it to the tailgating this year but that requires getting up at 3:30 a.m. I didn't even know there was a 3:30 a.m. Maybe see you there! I'll be the one with half-closed eyelids and a can of Diet Code Red Mountain Dew in both hands.