New Winding Sticks in My Shop
Have you ever been working, picked up a piece of scrap, incorporated it into a project and then discovered that it wasn’t scrap at all? Maybe it was rail stock for that set of doors you were building. Maybe it was a block that matches the 3 others that were going to be feet on the chest in the corner. Or maybe that scrap was actually one of your winding sticks.
Ok…that stuff only happens to me. And it did. It was such a nice hunk of maple and splitting it in half gave me just the couple of sticks I needed for tie-down stakes so I could tie down my trailer for the winter. It was only later that I realized that it was one of a pair that I’ve used as winding sticks for the past couple years.
Fortunately, there’s no magic involved in making winding sticks so replacement was pretty easy. I decided, though, to make them fancy so I wouldn’t make this mistake again. When I say fancy I don’t want you to give the wrong impression. I’m making two sticks here. In fact, I’m opposed to truly fancy winding sticks for the simple reason that wood moves and when using winding sticks you depend upon their straight and true surfaces. If they get out of whack, you need to resurface/true them. So, fancy in this case simply means that I grabbed a purpleheart and yellowheart board to make them.
The photo above is a poor attempt to provide a ‘build’ photo as once again I failed to take any photos other than this one. Winding stick construction is all about creating two boards that have parallel and flat edges. To do mine I created a true face and edge using hand planes, cut off 2″ from the board with my flattened edge against the fence and face towards the table surface. Then I trued the cut edge and the other face of the stick.
If you’ve driven a jack and jointer plane a bit you’ll find this a simple task. If not it’s good practice. I set a low-angle block plane really fine and relieved the face-edge corners so they weren’t sharp and I applied some boiled linseed oil. I want no film finish on these sticks in case I do need to retrue them in the future.
For those unfamiliar with winding sticks, they have a simple function; they let you see twist in a board. What I found was that eyes are better at using winding sticks than are cameras so I had to find a fairly windy board to show you how these sticks work. A piece of 2×4 did the trick. You position the sticks as in the photo above, get your eyes down to the level of the sticks and look over one at the other one.
Their length emphasizes any twist in the board and indicates where you need to plane to flatten it. Notice the yellow stick is visible on the left but not on the right, indicating the direction of the twist.
These simple, yet important shop tools are a must in a shop, whether you do your wood prep using powered planer/jointers or do it by hand.
Cheers — Larry
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Nice job Larry! I’m with you on not making winding sticks with fancy inlay and adornments. Truing them later has the potential to ruin such things. Yours are perfect. Attractive but simple and functional. Exactly my kind of tool.
Thanks Bob,
Pretty tools are great but functional tools are better
Cheers — Larry
[...] of the rarer or less stable timbers are laminated onto good stable stock such as Mahogany or Oak. These winding sticks are better, but would benefit from being tapered. . Attached Thumbnails [...]