Making Shop Bents By Hand – Part One
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 question is why, of course. I looked at his tools. He does have more tools than I have but I have a decent, though basic, set of hand tools. I’ve read his philosophy and approach, all similar to my own views of woodcraft. And when I looked the chapter on “appliances” I found I have all of those too – all of them except a set of “bents.” Voila, that MUST be it! Tom’s secret to being a good woodworker is having shop bents.
And so, with much anticipation of the impending leap forward in my woodworking skills, I descended into the shop to build a set of bents. This was the morning of Dec 31st, 9:45AM.
I point out the start time as I want to talk a bit about wood selection/layout, wood prep and parts creation using hand tools. So often we’re told this is complicated, time-consuming, or downright impossible without burning electrons. I’ll admit that it takes more time than shoving boards through a screaming machine, but that’s not much fun and I can’t hear my tunes. I’ll admit that it requires acquisition and practice of some skills but given the number of table saw accidents, one might speculate that some table saw users would benefit in some training as well. Enough with the philosophy, time’s a wasting. Let’s build bents.
Wood Selection/Layout
I looked through my stash of wood and came up with a couple 5-foot long oak boards. I’m not very good about developing cut lists and such for projects and, frankly, don’t feel they’re as useful as many claim. Sure, you’ve got to have some idea of how much wood you need but because wood is not a uniform material, the real ‘cut list’ must be created after you get a bunch of wood. So, I prefer to do my planning right on the wood as I can work around knots or other imperfections.
I used an old Sharpie rather than a pencil for the photos so I hope you can see what I’ve done for this project. Admittedly, this is a simple project requiring a bunch of 2″ wide boards, six of which need to be 24″ long while four need to be 32″ long. Then you need the top spreaders, which are another two pieces 24″ long. I had a BORG (Big Orange Retail Giant) 1×3 piece of oak and decided I’d use this piece for the these, giving me spreaders a bit (2 1/2″) wider than the rest of the parts. You can see how I’ve quickly drawn where on the boards the various parts would come from. Notice that I’ve worked around the knot in the middle of one board and I avoided a check on the left end of the other. And yes, you’re right, those aren’t very straight lines (grin). As I did this I measured width and length to ensure that the piece could come from the area but those lines aren’t intended to be actual cut lines. In fact, before most of the cutting is done, all of these planning lines will be gone as a result of wood preparation.
For completeness sake, the wider board was slightly cupped but with little wind (twist). The thinner board had a bit of twist in it but was otherwise pretty straight.
Divide and Conquer
Just to make wood prep easier, I cut each of the boards in half. I find that truing up an 5-foot board takes longer than truing two, shorter boards. So, here is the starting point.
Board Preparation
At this point I’d burned 15-20 minutes, most of it pondering. Now it was time to go to the gym – well sort of. Armed with a jack plane (#5), I started flattening a face of each of the four boards. When that was done, I flipped the boards over and flattened the other side. I also brought one edge square to the faces for reference. You need one edge and one face to act as references for all other measurements. As I was starting with 4/4 lumber, by the time all this exercise was done I had boards that were 7/8″ thick.
Burning Calories, Having Fun, and Saving Money
This gave me shop bents that were a bit more robust than if I’d purchased finished lumber (3/4″) at the local BORG and it only cost me $15-20 for the required wood instead of $65 (I checked) if I bought it pre-finished from the BORG. And best of all, I got some exercise, listened to some music while planing, and I know that wood really well. It’s hard to explain how special that last part is. Maybe I’m just being weird about that.
It was time for lunch, a few minutes after noon. At this point I had spent a couple hours of enjoyable shop time. No dust created, though I did quickly sweep all the shavings into a pile.
Creating Parts
After lunch, it was back to the gym… err… shop. I rubbed some wax on my old Spear & Jackson rip saw and created the actual boards.
Normally I would do this on an ‘as I need them’ basis so I don’t spend an hour just sawing. But I wanted to complete this part of the project so I could say, “See, you can do this by hand and you won’t die.” It took me a an hour and a half to rip all the pieces and and true up the edges with a #7 jointer plane. So, the total work time to this point is 3 1/2 – 4 hours, and it was fun, which is why I do this in the first place.
Next time I’ll talk a bit about the actual construction.
Cheers — Larry
An Ad for Woodworking Magazine??
The new issue of Woodworking Magazine is out and I received my copy a few days ago. I subscribe to several woodworking magazines but when Woodworking shows up in the mailbox it’s a good day – a very good day.
The odd thing is that if I describe Woodworking Magazine to someone they look at me and wonder what planet I’m from. Afterall, this is a magazine that comes out only four times a year and only has 32 pages between its covers. It’s done in black and white and uses relatively simple graphics when required, not the fancy color isometric drawings so common in woodworking magazines.
And maybe therein lies the clue as to what makes Woodworking so appealing to me. It’s what isn’t in it. There is no advertising. I’m not opposed to advertising but this explains, in large part, why Woodworking is so thin compared to other magazines. Most of its competition are 3-4 times the number of pages. But those other magazines are at least 45% advertising (only postal regulations limit this), making the difference between Woodworking Magazine and the others to only a few pages of actual text and photos.
What they don’t do with their editorial space is also important to me. I’ve never seen Woodworking show me yet another article for the ubiquitous router table, crosscut sled, push stick or other common jig for lining up wood so you can shove it through a power tool. It’s not that they’re against power tools; they aren’t and use them judiciously in completing the projects they present. It’s just that they don’t seem to feel the urge to repeat, over and over, the basic jigs.
There are no lengthy comparisons like “35 power hand drills”, “Bench Tablesaw Shootout”, “We test 12 Routers” articles in Woodworking. These are great for satisfying advertisers but they hold little interest for me. Woodworking isn’t encumbered by the need to satisfy advertisers.
If you pick up any of your favorite magazines, count the number of actual article pages, and then subtract the sort of thing I’ve just been talking about you’ll see that, in fact, Woodworking provides more pages of hands-on, here’s how you build it, content than most. I’ll admit here that I like working with handtools and so articles, like “Bench Planes: The System of Three”, as appears in this issue, appeal to me but may not to others. Even here, though, the emphasis is on how the planes are used, not which ones to buy. What I can say is that Woodworking Magazine is the only magazine I read cover to cover – issue after issue.
I have only one reservation about making these comments. Is this an ad for Woodworking even if I pay for my subscription? Maybe if I don’t suggest you run out and get a subscription of your own… yeah, that’s it. This is not an ad for Woodworking Magazine.
Cheers — Larry
Tom Fidgen's Made By Hand Book: a Review
“Education is everywhere whether you choose to listen and learn it or not.” – Tom Fidgen
Those of us interested in working with hand tools truly live in a golden age. One wonders what the masters of the 17th and 18th Centuries would think of the wide array of tools we have available currently. And more and more,magazines devote at least some of their pages to the hand tool craft. And we have many books available to us that discuss hand tool use and maintenance.
But we have lacked, until now, true “how-to” project books that use hand tools only. Recently I reviewed Joiner and the Cabinetmaker, which includes 3 complete build-along projects. I’ve got to build at least 2 of them. But Tom Fidgen has provided us what may become THE book for those wanting to venture into hand tools. His book, Made by Hand, has all the presentation quality of your favorite coffee table display book while being packed to the gills with solid information on the use of hand tools.
He begins with short discussions of the various tools and what they’re used for, emphasizing those he’s going to use in the book. This is followed by a walk through some of the hand tool appliances (jigs to power tool users) that he uses to facilitate his work. I found his approach to a simple sawing bench hook interesting as he accommodates both western (push) and Japanese (pull) hand saws. In this section he steps the reader through building a light saw horses, using through-tenon construction. In a way, this is something of a warm up for the larger projects presented later.
At this point he starts your apprenticeship. He teaches basic planning, hand tool style. He discusses how the actual approach to projects differs from those of power tool users. This is something which may be the most important lesson as so often those coming from a power tool background come with the assumption that process is the same only you just use handsaws and plane rather than table saws and routers. Not true and this view can lead to much frustration. Tom describes how hand tool slingers layout, cut and prepare stock, cut dovetails, chop mortises, and create tenons in this section of the book. These basics are built upon in the projects that follow.
And projects there are — six of them in all. And no, these aren’t “make a box” projects. Each of Tom’s projects are real furniture projects that anyone would be proud to own. There may be an intended order of difficulty in the presentation but I’d hate to define it. I suppose the first project, a beautiful maple and walnut portable tool chest would be considered the ‘easiest’ of the projects but this is followed by a hanging cabinet with a curved-front door, a Shaker-like taper-leg table with drawers, a small stand-alone bookcase with Japanese-inspired door panels, a fairly complex cabinet with a door on the left side and 6 drawers on the right, and a sideboard with a fairly modern look and several interesting details. My limited brain power has already rationalized where I “need” two of these projects in my house and I’m working on a third. Life is tough sometimes.
If that were all that Tom provided in Made in Hand, I would lead us all in a big round of applause at this point. But there’s more so hold your applause a while longer. Across the Internet the question is asked repeatedly, “What tools do I need if I want to work with hand tools?” And, graciously, hand tool users try to answer that question, which is not nearly as straight forward as it sounds. In the back of Tom’s book, inset into the cover, is a little DVD case and inside it is a first class introduction to hand tool requirements by Tom himself.
Tom brings you into his shop and lays out tools in groups, explaining what they do and he discusses some of the options to fulfill each of the requirements. I really think this last part is the most important as he objectively presents restored flea-market tools, new fancy ones from Lee Valley and Lie-Nielson, and even puts a couple of wooden-bodied planes in the mix. The impressive thing is that this isn’t your average home movie. It’s very high quality, justifying its place in the high-quality book called Made in Hand. The book is available through Tom, Popular Woodworking, Amazon, and elsewhere. Find it – buy it. You won’t be disappointed. Oh…ok, you can applaud Tom now.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I want to re-read the section on installing knife hinges as I’ve got some to install.
Cheers — Larry
The Joiner and Cabinet Maker: A Book Review
I spent much of the weekend reading the newest offering from Lost Art Press. It was a very good weekend. The Joiner and Cabinetmaker is sold as a reprint of an 1839 account of the life of an apprentice cabinetmaker but it is so much more.
I’m an old book nut. By that I mean I’m old and I like books. It’s also true that I do have a soft spot for old books. Sometimes I like them because of the cover. Sometimes it has more to do with the contents. My favorite “old book” is my copy of Tact, Push and Principle and it qualifies high on both scores. This book, published in 1880, is a guidebook for young men. It has title names like “Success”, “Thoroughness”, “Industry” and “Perserverence” as it attempts to teach the basic lessons of being successful in life. The original Joiner and the Cabinetmaker (JCM) was published in 1839, while the new reprint is of the 1883 edition. Thus, both of these books are addressing the same audience.
I was reminded of Tact, Push and Principle as I read The Joiner and Cabinetmaker as both books speak to how to grow up; how to approach learning; how to excel. The difference, of course, is that JCM teaches these lessons as it explains good woodworking skills and practices.
The 1839 Joiner and the Cabinetmaker was written by an anonymous author. The new book of the same title is authored by Joel Moskowitz and Christopher Schwarz. If you’re unfamiliar with these guys you probably live on Pluto. Joel is the owner/operator of Tools for Working Wood while Chris is the editor-in-chief of Popular Woodworking and Woodworking magazine.
The new JCM is a book within a book. The reprinted book is roughly 100 pages of its 373 pages and some of those 100 pages are extensive footnotes by Joel and Chris. This 1800s text is encased in a wealth of new material. Joel writes an introductory section that presents information about early woodworking practice, including insights into much of the early documentation of it.
This sets the stage for the actual Joiner and Cabinetmaker text, which follows a young boy, Thomas, as he goes through an apprenticeship in a cabinetmakers shop. While numerous projects are part of his learning process, 3 are emphasized. In these, discussions of wood selection, tool use and other techniques are discussed. The pleasant narrative style makes for a very pleasant trip through 1800s woodworking and the array of hand tool techniques that are described.
Clearly, however, Joel and Chris wanted the Joiner and Cabinetmaker to be more than simply a historical text and the last 150 pages reflect this view. With words and photos, Chris steps through the construction of the three projects that Thomas executes during his apprenticeship. Each teaches a set of skills and thus Chris’s “how to” portion of the book is a treasure trove for those wanting to master hand tool skills and/or to see what can be accomplished with them.
To make this book even more useful, there is an associated DVD available that provides Sketch Up plans and narrated slide shows of the three projects. This DVD is invaluable and I highly recommend you buying the book/DVD set.
We live in a wonderful time for woodworkers. Our community has rediscovered the value of hand tools and we’ve finally got companies who produce good quality hand tools, something that was lacking only 10-15 years ago. What many need, however, are books that show them projects, planned and executed using hand tools and The Joiner and Cabinetmaker is just such a book. I highly recommend it.
Cheers — Larry
Jim Tolpin – Still Teaching Tablesaw Usage
One of the best books on how to get the most from a table saw while keeping all your fingers in the process is Table Saw Magic by Jim Tolpin. This book has been around a long time and it remains the most recommended text for would-be table saw drivers. It’s been my go-to table saw book for a long time. These days, though, I’m using my table saw less and less as I’m learning the joys of working quietly and without all the dust that such machines inevitably produce.
When he wrote the book, Jim Tolpin was a professional cabinetmaker, producing lots of furniture, at least in part, on someone else’s schedule. But recently Jim has retired and while he’s as popular as ever as a seminar speaker, these days he’s talking about working without power tools, enjoying the process as much as the product.
I smiled today as I realized that Jim was still teaching me table saw usage as I “used” my table saw today. I was roughing and surfacing maple parts for a cabinet and my table saw was a great place to lay out the parts so I could look at how my grain choices were working out. So, thanks Jim for once again leading the way.
Cheers — Larry
-
Blogroll
6 Comments