Larry | January 31, 2010
When I started this blog my thoughts were to record some of the activity in my shop. To be honest, there wasn’t much thought about that either. It just seemed the thing to do at the time and I had no expectations that anyone would care to read it.
It seems I was wrong. The readership [...]
Larry | January 24, 2010
I’ve waxed poetic, in my way, about Tom Fidgen’s Made By Hand book. I’ve also documented the building of a set of shop bents illustrated in this book. But the good stuff about this book continues. Tom has moved his brilliance from his old blog, Working Wood to a new website called the Unplugged Workshop.
The [...]
Larry | January 22, 2010
You know you’re a left-handed woodworker when you prefer your face vise on the right end of your bench. The photo above demonstrates this. That’s Shannon Rogers, the Renaissance Woodworker, showing everyone his newly completed and totally awesome Roubo-style bench. It’s built from ash and weighs about a gazillion pounds so it’s hard to understand [...]
Larry | January 15, 2010
“The venerable woodworker stood, trembling – looking into the abyss of his ‘to be wood plane.’ What he saw scared him speechless – no cross-pin.”
Yes, this is where the last post, part one of this saga, ended. Finck actually warns you to remember to install the cross-pin during glue up and I was so proud [...]
Larry | January 14, 2010
Sometimes my buying habits are embarrassing. At last count I owned 4 books and a DVD on how to build wooden planes. I have a Hock blade for making a chisel plane, bought as a “response” to the Fine Woodworking construction article. I have a Hock blade/chip breaker, bought shortly after I bought David Finck’s [...]
Larry | January 8, 2010
I ordered Chris Schwarz’s Handplane Basics DVD with no thought that I would learn anything. I’ve been using handplanes for some time and I’ve read pretty much everything Chris has written about handplanes. If his advice hasn’t sunk in by this time, I doubt Chris could do much more than shake his head in disgust [...]
Larry | January 7, 2010
In my last post on this subject I outlined my strategy to become as good a woodworker as Tom Fidgen. Having concluded, from studying his book Made By Hand, that he’s achieved his prowess by having a set of shop bents available to him I decided to build a set of my own, thus improving [...]
Larry | January 5, 2010
Tom Fidgen’s new book, Made By Hand has become my constant companion, at least that’s how it seems. It’s the closest I’ll get to an apprenticeship with a woodworker who works in ways I want to work.
One of the things I’ve noticed is that Tom is a much better woodworker than I am. The natural [...]
Larry | January 3, 2010
Hi everybody! I hope everyone had a great holiday season and got some shop time along the way. I have to confess to becoming what might be affectionately known as a ‘lard butt’ over the holidays, doing some reading, watching my navel and eating way too much.
In one fit of activity I was cleaning up [...]
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