You see, I have had saw bench envy.  I have a saw bench.  I built it long ago, far away.  See here for details.   I built it when I was more of a hybrid woodworker than I am today.  Back then I used handsaws for all my cross-cuts but when ripping stock I uncovered my table saw and, well, let’er rip.

But now I’m not doing that.  My table saw has become a very expensive assembly table and I’d come to covet Shannon Roger’s split-top saw bench, which is great for ripping stock.  Every time I watched him use it to rip stock in his Hand Tool School, I told myself I needed to build one.   Also, I had come to want a bench that was a bit wider than my original.

And so I began one Saturday morning.  The boards I’d gotten were all 6″ wide, 4/4 rough-cut stock.  All of the boards in my sawbench are about 6″ wide, edges planed flat.  I’m not opposed to using a thickness planer so I shoved the boards through it and followed up with a jointer plane to achieve flat surfaces.  I tried to go light on the pieces that became the bench top and those are still nearly an inch thick.  The others a bit less.  The only dimensions I can provide is that the bench top is 32″ long and the bench built to be 20″ high to match my shop bents.

Those were the only two measurements I made.  The legs are two 6″ boards joined together and the sideboards  cut to allow some overhang on the ends.  It took me a little over two hours to generate the rough parts.

It took another two hours of fiddling around, smoothing the surfaces, though not to furniture grade, chamfering the edges of the top pieces, cutting the rabbets in the legs for the sideboards, and finally screwing it together with 1 3/4″ wood screws.

It was fun doing a project without setting up a camera every 20 minutes.  I’m pretty happy with it.  Anyone want an old, used saw bench?

You know the feeling when you get a new tool but don’t have a reason to use it immediately?  If you’re like me that means you go to the scrapbox, find a willing piece of wood, and apply tool to wood… with no goal other than to play.  I did that with the two new handsaws I just completed but somehow, for saws, this sort of thing doesn’t satisfy in the same way as the scrap box play with a plane, spokeshave, or most other tools.

So, when I realized I was going to need a bunch of thin walnut panels I decided to use my new rip saw.  I didn’t build it for resawing and it may be a bit fine for such things, but…new tool…new task…sometimes a hammer gets used to drive screws.

Frankly, I was surprised at how well this 7 ppi saw worked to cut these panels, each is just shy of 2-feet long.  Took me a couple hours to create this pile.  Had much fun.

Cheers — Larry

larry@woodnbits.com

The rip saw, however, is another story.  The handle was roughed out and even attached.  I’ve actually cut a couple boards with it but it sure wasn’t comfortable as the handle hadn’t been carved.  Have I mentioned that square edges on a saw handle aren’t a great idea?

Anyways, I am finally clearing the decks for a new project and the first thing I’ve done after finding my workbench, and moving all the stuff it was under, was to carve that handle.  I now have a great set of hand saws that are oh so sweet.  Both perform beautifully.  Thanks, Bob.  Now I really can sell my table saw.

For those into details, the saws have 24″ blades.  The cross-cut saw is 8 ppi, 15-degrees of rake, and 25-degrees of fleam.  The rip saw is 7 ppi, 4-degrees of rake, and 0-degrees of fleam.  And yes, that’s a fairly high toot-count for the rip saw.  I already have a nice 5 ppi Spear & Jackson and wanted something a bit finer.  Likewise, I have a nice 10 ppi cross-cut saw and wanted something a bit coarser.  One can never have enough saws, ya know.  That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

At the beginning of the summer my wife and I decided to do some home renovations.  Wood’nBits has evolved into a hand tool blog so it didn’t seem appropriate for me to talk about my new “favorite tools”, my Sawz-All and drywall mudding trowels.  There didn’t seem a place to talk about ripping out walls, replacing walls, redoing floors and the installation of what seemed an endless number of feet of moldings.  And so I didn’t.

It wasn’t that there was no use of hand tools.   When faced with ugly metal and plastic thresholds for our newly installed wood floors, I used

cherry instead, creating a bunch of them using hand tools.  I cut the moldings with hand tools.  It was simply faster and safer than doing it with my table saw.  My Yankee spiral screwdriver is still my tool of choice for driving drywall screws and, of course squares, hammers, and a host of other hand tools found there way into the job.

Once we worked our way to exhaustion, and had the house moderately put back together (there are still some things that need doing) we decided to take a break from being boring adults and started enjoying the summer.  We went bird-watching.  We started doing some art.  I did some writing.  Mostly, we goofed off.  And again, there was nothing to share here.

When I did start feeling guilty about Wood’nBits, however, something occurred to me.  I had disappeared for several months.  And in that several months no ONE person asked what was going on.  Not even one of my “fellow” bloggers.  This seemed strange to me and I can’t help but question why the heck I put time and energy into taking photos and writing these posts.  I haven’t really come up with an answer.  Care to offer one?

Cheers — Larry

Canada Day Sale

I’ve decided to have a ‘summer’ sales of my eBook, Her Book of Shadows . I’m doing this to formally launch the book now that it’s hit most of the distribution points. For a limited time, it will be available for 99 cents here..

If you like to read mysteries without serial killers, sex and lots of violence, you’ll like Her Book of Shadows . This is a mystery that will let you get to know some great characters, let you visit Quebec City, and, it will make you feel good.

Review comments:

“This is such a well written mystery, and full of make you laugh out loud lines. I loved the setting of Quebec City, and the snippets of the French language scattered throughout made it so authentic.” – esldonna

“How refreshing to find that Larry Marshall’s first is a who-dunnit in the best tradition of well crafted stories of crime solving.” – Polystamper

“This is a beautifully crafted book, full of interesting convincing detail and engaging characters.” – Janet Guerrin

Book Description:

In Her Book of Shadows, retired cop, Scott Riker, lives with his wife and daughter in Quebec City where he heads a group of interventionists. Directed by Quebec business mogul and philanthropist, Luc Duchesne, the group uses their talents and resources to stand between people in trouble and the criminal elements who would do them harm.

Riker agrees to find Jodie Burke, a teenage girl whose parents say ran away. But when Jodie’s friend turns up murdered on the Plains of Abraham, it becomes clear that Riker faces something more than just a runaway girl. Time is running out and he must find Jodie and prevent whoever is trying to kill her from succeeding.

Riker struggles with his emotional involvement in the case, caused by the similarities between his daughter and Jodie Burke. This, and his attempts to reconcile his risky business with his role as father and husband add to his internal conflicts but maybe the two roles can be compatible.

There is irony in the fact that in our modern online shopping world, we’re hearing that consumer friendliness is making a come back.  The pundits tell us that online buying is very sensitive to how potential customers feel about the people and stores where they shop.  Odd, isn’t it, that it takes shopping through wires to cause that to be acknowledged.  Truth is, this has always been true and probably always will be.

Some companies take advantage of this fact.  I guess I first walked into a Lee Valley store sometime in the early 90s, back when Lee Valley’s Ottawa store was a smallish affair and their catalog was much smaller than it is today.  Even back then, though, Lee Valley’s emphasis was on quality and customer service.  Rob Lee seems endowed with “the customer is everything” gene that so many of his competitors lack.  Anyways, Lee Valley is now one of the largest sellers of woodworking supplies and high quality tools in the world.  Justifiably so.  And it’s important to note that they haven’t done it by making their products cheaper as many have done.  In point of fact, they done it by continually making their tools better, smiling, and saying “Yes, how may we help you today?”

And that’s why I’m a Lee Valley loyalist.  I have dealt with no finer company on the planet and here’s one example of the sort of thing that keeps me loyal to this company, quite beyond the quality of their products.

The Case of the Missing Contents

On May 10th I reached into my mailbox and withdrew a standard size envelope from Lee Valley.  I love getting mail from Lee Valley so excitement ensued.  Until I opened the envelope.  It was empty.  Odd, I thought.  Maybe it was a package of rabbets or dados that I’d ordered and forgot about.  Some pilot holes, perhaps?

Anyways, I went to the Lee Valley website, clicked on customer service, and asked them what they were sending me.  Heavens, you never want to use a rabbet when you need a pilot hole.  Better safe than sorry.   THIRTEEN MINUTES LATER I received a response from customer service.  They apologized for inconveniencing me (yeah…the guys at Bell Canada never said that when they’ve kept me on the phone for an hour over a problem) and explained that the attached PDF was what the envelope should have contained.  It was sent to me because I owned a Lee Valley router plane.

The PDF was about an upgrade part for the router plane.  They had taken advice from users of the product and changed the depth adjustment mechanism and they wanted to let me know that I could do this upgrade on my own router plane the next time I ordered by adding part number 05P38.11 to that order.  The document went on to explain that it would be sent for FREE.

And, as if I don’t have a Lee Valley wish list as long as your arm, they gave me reason to order something so I could get my FREE upgrade.  They’d also listened to we loyalists whine that we wanted some narrow blades for our router planes.  As a result, they were adding three new blades to the catalog – 1/8″, 3/32′, and 3/16″ and since I was such a great guy for accepting their FREE upgrade I could also buy these three new blades at a discounted price if I did it by June 6th.  I did it, just as quickly as I could punch the keys.

It is now TWO DAYS since I received my empty envelope.  This morning I received a very full one, only this one was padded.  The FREE upgrade is fantastic, though I never quibbled over how the old depth stop operated.  The blades a very welcome addition to my toolbox as I often need to work narrow rabbets and dados.

Thank you, Lee Valley, just for being you.

Cheers — Larry

larry@woodnbits.com

This rocky start to my saw handle project must have been a harbinger of how badly this project was to go and now, some 6 weeks later, I’m here to report that I’ve accomplished something that should have taken no more than a couple hours.  Sometimes life serves you lemons and the proverb says you’re supposed to make lemon-aid.  What happens when life repeatedly trips you up?  Build a softer floor?  I wonder.

Saw Nuts Arrive

It took a while for the saw nuts to arrive as Mike Wenzloff was having some health problems (hope he’s doing ok now).  But they were worth the wait.  On the left are the saw nuts I rejected for use.  On the right are the ones Wenzloff sells.

And as Paul Harvey used to say….the rest of the story

I was excited  to be able to get the handles on the saws so I could try them out, even though the handles wouldn’t be carved.  I ran downstairs, opened my box of Forstner bits, grabbed the 1/2″ bit and the next larger size, and  commenced to drill relief holes for the saw nuts.  This was the result:

Notice the problem?  Yep, the holes for the 9/16″ dia saw nuts are too large.  Guess what?  My Forstner set jumps from 1/2″ to 5/8″ so yeah, if you drill a 10/16″ hole, it’s bigger than a 9/16″ hole.  Woodworking is such a learning experience.  Boy, did I feel dumb.

Quebec City doesn’t provide a lot of choices when it comes to buying bits.  Well, we do have a choice, I guess. I could go to the big-box store owned by people in Quebec or to Home Depot.  The results and choices are pretty much the same.  And those choices didn’t include a 9/16″ Forstner bit.  No problem, says me.  I’ll just order one from my buddies at Lee Valley.  Maybe the most important thing that comes from living in Canada is that shipments from Lee Valley come VERY quickly.  And so I turned off the shop lights and ordered the bit.

The next day I cut a new handle blank so I’d be ready when the bit arrived and when it did I headed for the shop.  I was on a roll now.  The bit showed up and I was back in the shop.  Nothing was going to stand between me and my saws.  Except…

Except that I had eight relief holes to drill with that bit and as I started to drill the fifth one, the bottom of the bit just stopped turning.  Huh?  When I raised the quill on my drill press the top of the bit went with it, leaving the bottom stuck in the wood.  Grrr…grumble…say it ain’t so.

I contacted Lee Valley, explaining the situation, telling them I wanted to buy another bit and wondered if their bits carried any warranty (I didn’t expect they would).  Rather quickly I got an email from their support staff, which is an understatement about what these guys do for their customers.  Rob Lee should be proud.

I was told to pitch the old bit and that they’d put another in the mail to me.  They did.  In fact they expedited that shipment to me so this morning I drilled the rest of the relief holes and this is the result.  Thanks so much to Lee Valley.  It’s so fun to do business with companies that care.

I won’t bore you with the details of my fight to poke holes in sheet steel.  It involved titanium bits, cutting fluid and what seemed to be a stressfilled amount of time.  But I have the handles mounted.

As you can see, I still need to carve and shape the handles but I got to put sawteeth to wood this morning and…   Hey, Bob, can you come in here for a minute?  Yeah…it’ll only take a minute.  Stand right here, Bob and look out at the two people who read this blog.  Folks this is the guy who sharpened these saws and produced the nifty saw nib on each of them.  Take a bow, Bob.

I apologize for not documenting the process better but geez…I was having soooooo much fun.

Cheers — Larry

On can find all sorts of esoteric discussions about micro-bevels, back bevels, metal crystal structure and thest.  Today, all I want to do is separate sharpening from honing when deciding on a method as I think viewing them separately clarifies the decision-making process.  It might even result in some using two systems, one for each process, like I am doing.

Sharpening vs honing

Sharpening

Most debates pit sandpaper, water, oil and ceramic stones against one another and talk about the end result of each.  This is a fool’s errand.  All of these systems work and work well.  That is exactly why they exist and form the banter of so many less-filling/tastes-great debates in woodworking forums.

But let’s look at these from the perspective of sharpening only - the process of shaping and creating a basic edge on the tool. The shaping portion of this might be done on your grinder, of course, but it need not involve one.  Coarse versions of other methods can be used equally well so I’m going to skip the electron-burning step in this discussion.

Scary Sharp (sandpaper)

Using rough sandpaper one can shape and sharpen a tool.  The entry cost is very low.  It’s efficient.  I used to use this method but found I was fiddling with replacing sandpaper too often and it ended up not being so cheap in the long run, but it works.  This method is lubricated by spritzing the sandpaper with water.

Oil stones, Water stones, Ceramic stones

I lump these together when it comes to simple sharpening as any of these methods require a low-grit stone.  Even the problem of having to flatten the stones is mostly the same for these three in their low-grit varieties as the stones are so friable, though it is arguable that oil stones win that contest.

But oil stones do have the advantage of using oil that you apply when you need to use them.  Some find this to be their biggest disadvantage as well.  Water and ceramic stones in low-grit forms require submergence for some period of time before use.  This is not a problem for sharpening as you only shape/sharpen a tool infrequently.  Yes, you read this correctly.  Remember, I’ve separated honing from sharpening, though I realize that honing is simply refined sharpening.

In the end, these various methods are pretty much equal when it comes to getting a bit of camber on your plane iron or rolling up that first burr on a blade.  Scary Sharp and maybe oil have an advantage as you don’t have to submerge the stones but submerging your stones, either storing them submerged or submerging them 10-15 minutes before you sharpen which isn’t a big deal due to the infrequent nature of this activity.

Honing

Honing is a process that a hand tool person does ALL THE TIME!  Once you have a basic edge you will return again and again to fine grits to maintain the blade edge as you work.  Thus, convenience is a big deal, as is the result.  In the debates that rage, only results are debated back and forth and, frankly, for most who have been sharpening so we can do woodworking, these debates are little more than dust in the wind as differences, if they exist are insignificant in practice.  I’m sure I’ll get mail over that statement but I’ll make it anyway.  Maybe your wood is different from mine.

But let’s look at the convenience factor.  In the spirit of full disclosure, I have considerable experience honing with scary sharp and water stone methods.  I’ve never gotten my hands on a hard black arkansas stone so my honing experience with oil is minimal.  And I’ve only recently had the pleasure of using ceramic stones on my own tools.  So, let’s get started.

Scary Sharp: Very convenient due to the spritzing of its lubrication system.  The downside is the rapid turnover of the sandpapers, though the high-quality, plastic-backed honing papers are pretty nice if you don’t cut through them.

Oil stones: I have to make assumptions here but given the oil lubricant, applied in small quantities, I’d have to guess this method is convenient as well.  Oil stones also don’t have to be flattened as often as other stones, adding to the convenience factor.

Water stones: This is the method I’ve used for the last 5-6 years I’d guess.  It works well and produces sharp tools.  It’s a very popular method of honing.  And it’s a PAIN IN THE BUTT when it comes to honing for the simple reason that you have to soak the stones before you can use them.  If you don’t, a spritz of water on their surface wicks into the stone and disappears.  Still, it works.  It’s just not convenient for a process that one wants to do in a minute or so and then get back to work.

Ceramic stones: Honing convenience is where these stones shine in my opinion.  They are my motivation for this post.  High-grit ceramic stones require no soaking.  You can spritz them with water, hone, and be back to work in no time.  Little or no clean up necessary.  In my experience, convenience is the difference between continuing to work with a tool that is dulling and always working with sharp tools.  In short, it’s priceless.

So you’d think I would have bought some long ago.  I tried, I really did.  But getting Shapton stones seemed a task better suited to Indiana Jones than an old fart living in Quebec City.  And to think we used to talk about the limited supply of Japanese waterstones.  Anyways, until a few weeks ago, I had continued using my waterstones for honing.

No more.  I now have 4000 and 8000 grit ceramic stones from Lee Valley and I love them.  You gotta love anything that comes in spiffy boxes like these:

I’ve only used them half a dozen times but they are a dream come true.  I can now hone a chisel in less than a minute and not get wet.  Ya gotta love that.

Like most “where are they” stories I started rummaging through cabinets, opening drawers, shoving stuff here and there.  When I had done that to every cabinet and drawer I stood in the middle of the room, hands on my head, looking around.  Where could they be?.  I repeated the process – twice.  After an hour of looking I said…  No, I’d better not say what I said.  Anyways, I gave up and scuttled off to do something else.

The next morning I decided to take drastic action.  I went to the same cabinets, the same drawers.  Only this time I emptied them onto my workbench.  When that was full I covered my assembly table, that used to be my table saw, with stuff.

When that table was covered with debris I did the only useful thing of the entire venture.  I “invented” a takedown table.  I set up my shop bents and snapped together some tongue ‘n groove pine slabs and created a new table.  I will, forever more keep these pieces of pine around for just this purpose as it works great as a take-down table.

Eventually, after three hours of emptying and another hour of replacing everything, I found my saw nuts.  They were in a ziplock bag, wadded up such that they didn’t look like saw nuts.  They didn’t look like anything.  As Sherlock Holmes once said, “You simply remove everything that is not a saw nut and what remains must be the saw nuts.”  I might be paraphrasing here.  Anyways, victory was mine.

Not exactly victory.  I learned that, as the philosopher said, “time sifts” and in this case, the memory I had of my saw nuts was different from reality.  Here they are in all their, uhm…glory.

As you can see, these are  saw nuts with slotted, ugly heads.  They’re also quite the worse for wear.  The arrow points at one I tried to clean up and it is possible to get them to shine but quite impossible to remove the deep scratches without distorting the heads as to make them worthless, if you can make them any more worthless than they are (grin).

And so I did what any self-respecting woodworker would do.  No, I didn’t make them.  It is certainly possible to do so but I needed half a dozen and without a machine shop, doing them one at a time by hand would take me more time than I cared to spend.  Rather, I headed to Wenzloff & Son’s website.  There I could buy saw nuts that match those in my Wenzloff saws, which are beautiful.  And I did.  They haven’t arrived yet but this is what they’ll look like when they do.

Cheers — Larry

larry@woodnbits.com

As I mentioned in my last post, Bob Roziaeski did me a big favor and made these saw plates for me.   I do want to discuss the whys that motivated this transaction but I’m just too excited right now so instead I’ll talk about making handles, which is why I haven’t done any of the stuff I was supposed to be doing today (grin).

Making a template

The first step was to make a handle template.  I like the shape of the handle on my big Spear & Jackson rip saw so I used that to create a template.  This is a pretty straight-forward tracing task but because of the sculpted handle edges, I had to be careful to keep the pencil tip directly below the most outward edge of the handle, which is a bit harder than it sounds.  I think I got close.

Lay out the parts

I had some cherry set aside for the handles and  I shoved it through my planer a couple times so I could better see the wood grain.  I started with wood about 1″ thick.  While I would have preferred to have quarter-sawn wood, finding it around here is as likely as getting Wall Street hedge fund managers under control.  I traced around the template twice and layout was done.  I’d cut out the finger hole before doing this so I could draw the interior as well as exterior of the handle.

Remove what isn’t a handle

I used Forstner bits to drill a couple holes in the top and bottom  of the finger hole and then stuffed a #12 reverse-tooth blade in my scrollsaw and went to work removing everything that wasn’t a handle.  I could have used my bowsaw, of course, but I could sit down at the scrollsaw and I do enjoy running it as it’s quieter and more relaxing than other powertools.

Adjust saw handle to blade

These new blades are not as deep at the rear as my Spear & Jackson saw and when I put the rough handle on them this became an evident problem.  I admit that this is where I started working without a net as I have no clue when it comes to proper saw hang.  What I did was get every saw I own (not many) out of my saw till and started looking at how the finger hole angle related to the toothline.  I also gave some thought to where it was vertically relative to the the toothline.  For this last dimension I used my 24″ Disston as a model.

The result of all this suggested to me that I needed to remove some of the top of the handle and angle it a bit.  And so I did.  I’d like to provide precise logic and dimensions for this but I can’t.  Aside from looking at my other saws, this was a TLAR (this looks about right) process.

Cut Centerline and slot the handle

There’s a lot of shaping to be done but the need to remove equal amounts of wood on each side of the handle centerline will persist throughout the process.  I set up a rolling marking gauge to mark a centerline and I ran it around the entire handle.  I darkened the cut with a tiny pencil in the hopes that it would show up in the photo.

I used my Wenzloff tenon saw to cut the slot for the blade.  Sorry that I missed a photo of that process but I just stuck it in my face vise and cut to the line.  The saw plate of this saw gave me a tight fit for the larger 24″ saw plates.

I’ve repeated this process for the second handle and now I’m ready to break out the rasps, spokeshaves and maybe a gouge or two and make it a bit more shapely.  Oh yeah…and I’m tearing the shop apart looking for the bag of saw nuts I have somewhere.

Cheers — Larry

larry@woodnbits.com