What Tool Does Kari Need?

I’m feeling sorry for my fellow woodworker, Kari Hultman, aka The Village Carpenter.  Due to health problems her plans to carve wood with a bunch of other folks got scuttled and I suspect there’s been a certain amount of pain and discomforted associated with her health problems.

It may be the case that she’s suffering some delirium to go along with it as today, she wrote a blog post, saying that as a woodworker she “There isn’t a single thing I need, tool-wise..”   I think you’ll agree, Kari is just not thinking straight.

I thought long and hard about this, searching for some way to help her out of her funk.  It’s true that she’s got a beautiful shop.  It’s true that she’s got pretty much one of every power tool in existence.  And its true that she has planes, shaves and saws to make any hand tool lover drool.  But there MUST be a tool she needs, even if she does now own a set of pocket tweezers.

I think I’ve found a tool that she probably doesn’t have but needs.  Several years ago Black & Decker went through a phase where they were creating “innovative” products, like battery-operated C-clamps.  I don’t know if they sold much of that stuff but they did take a certain amount of good-natured ribbing by the woodworking community.

At that time, I was writing articles for a miniatures magazine and I was asked if I’d review some products for the magazine.  One of the products they sent me was a pair of “innovative” electric scissors.  I remember receiving them and as I recall my first impression was to roll my eyes and wonder what I could possibly say about the product.

But there are times when I’m surprised and this was one of them.  I use my electric scissors for a single purpose but they work so well for that purpose that I wouldn’t be without them.  I go through a lot of small “rags”, mostly cut from things like old t-shirts, towels, and wash clothes.  While it’s easy enough to cut up a t-shirt with manual scissors, and if you’re a ‘no-electron’ sort, that’s probably the pure way of doing it.  But the virtue of B&D’s electric scissors is that they come with this bench clamp thingie and you can turn them on and then shove t-shirt at its mouth.  It’ll cut material as fast as you can shove it into its gaping maw.  I can cut a t-shirt into 6″ squares in, literally, a few seconds, eliminated the sewn seams in the process.  I drag it out anytime the rag stash gets thin.  Kari, you NEED one of these (grin).  Oh…I’d say “get better” but you’re already the best.

Cheers — Larry

larry@woodnbits.com

Orbital Sander Is Too Slow For Hand Tool Guy

My last post described me turning to my electron burners to make some Adirondack chairs.  There is no doubt in my mind that I saved a lot of time ripping boards with my table saw rather than cutting the same hundred feet with a handsaw.  As I said, this was a project about the end result so I sacrificed the enjoyment of the process to get it done.

Well surprise surprise.  I learned something about myself and about tool choices.  We all have a feeling for how long something should take us to accomplish something.  I think this is why a lot of power tool guys think they work so quickly as we don’t tend to count set up and clean up in our time estimates.  But I had to chuckle to myself after I saw what had  happened in my shop and I thought I’d share it with you.

I had a significant pile of pine pieces that I needed to smooth on both sides prior to assembling the second and third chairs in this series.  As I did with the first chair, I took my Bosch orbital sander, slapped a 60-grit disk on it and started making noise.  After about 1 1/2 hours I was, maybe, a bit more than half done with this when I said to myself, “This would go faster if I’d just plane the surfaces.”

And that’s exactly what I did.  I grabbed my #7 and a smoother and went to work.  It took less than 1/2 an hour to finish up my pile of parts.  Planing was sooooooo much faster that I regretted not thinking of it earlier.  To make the comparison more clear the boards that had been planed were also shiny smooth, whereas those treated to my orbital sander would need another go with 120-150 grit.

In the end, I could have saved myself at least 2-3 hours by planing the parts for the three chairs rather than using a sander.  I can’t say if this would have completely offset the handsaw vs table saw time difference but it sure would have taken a huge chunk out of it.  Interesting… at least I thought so.

At this point the 3 chairs are ready for paint, and just like it was planned, it’s supposed to rain for the next two days.

Cheers — Larry

larry@woodnbits.com

Process vs Results And How They Relate To Sitting

One of the virtues of being a woodworker is that you can make stuff you can use.  Much to my wife’s chagrin, I don’t take advantage of that fact very often as most large projects I’ve made have gone to other people.

Maybe that’s why I emphasize process as a woodworker.  I enjoy working wood; having stuff made from wood, not so much.  This emphasis on process has sucked me further and further into hand tool use and away from the electron-burning sort of woodworking.  I’ve got things to say about the hand tools vs power tools dialog, that seems endless, but I’ll save those thoughts for another day.

Today I want to talk about shifting from being process-oriented to a mode where the only important thing is the end product.  I’m not recommending this; I’m simply reporting on it.  It’s what I did 4 days ago, motivated by the fact that our outdoor seating had finally died a rotting death and I needed something to replace it.  So process, who cares.  End, in this case a place to put my rear end, the only issue.

The saga starts on the Internet, on Twitter to be exact.  I asked about Adirondack chair plans as those from Norm Abram’s New Yankee Workshop website have been discontinued.  Shannon Rogers and Erik Pearson directed me to Popular Woodworking as they’d done an article on Norm’s chair.  For some reason I couldn’t find the issue (August 2005) in my library but for a few bucks and a few button pushes I downloaded the issue from the Pop Woodworking website.

But a decision had to be made.  Excepting my planer and table saw, my power tools are shoved into the backwaters of my small shop. Was I going to build these Adirondack chairs using only handtools?  No, says I.  I’m no purist; I use the tools that work for me.  In this case, the project didn’t involve high-quality woods or precision joinery and, for me, it wasn’t even a particularly “fun” project.  I would build these chairs (3 in all) from construction lumber and use screws and carriage bolts to assemble it.  Let the dust and noise begin.

I began by making a set of templates from my “favorite” material, MDF scraps.  Finally a use for this modern abomination.  The PW article contains a gridded set of template diagrams and this made it easy to make a full-size set of templates.

Because of my hand tool approach I generally approach projects by rough-cutting pieces (I call this wood selection) and then I cut pieces relative to other pieces as I assemble.  With the Adirondack chairs I went the “make a kit” route.  My thinking is that Adirondack chairs are not precise construction projects and that careful fitting is not required.

And so the cutting began.  I put on my astronaut EVA suit.  Some might call it a respirator, safety glasses, and hearing protection but with all  this paraphenalia hanging on my head I feel like I’m about to do a space walk.  The kit was a result of shoving a lot of  1×6 and 2×6 lumber through my table saw, cutting the curvy bits with a sabre saw (some call it a jig saw), and a whole lot screaming router with a roundover bit.  I’ll spare you the details.  It was not fun by my definition of the word.

I highly recommend the Pop Woodworking article as an assembly reference as it clearly lays out the process.  I just followed their instructions, adding metal to wood until the result looked like a chair.  Then came the hard part.

I needed to add wood plugs to the 52 countersunk #8 screw holes.  I found I only had 11, 3/8″ plugs in my stash.  Not a problem – just run to Home Depot and get some.  They didn’t have any.  Neither did the many other places I went.  You’d think I was trying to locate a mint Stanley #1.  Several gallons of gas and 1 1/2 hours later, I’d found some plugs, paid way too much for them, and I was home gluing them in place.  Sometimes the hard stuff isn’t where you expect to find it.

And so, one down, two more to make.  I have all the wood shoved through the saw for the two more chairs.  There’s some sabre saw growling and router whining that needs to be done.   As Scarlett O’Hara once said, “Tommorrow is another day.”  At the moment, though, I’ve got a chair – it fits my end nicely.

Oh…in the interests of full disclosure, many electrons were sacrificed in the creation of this blog post content.  I think they all died peacefully.

Cheers — Larry

larry@woodnbits.com

168 Holes in a Couple of Small Cabinets?

Only a silly man drills 168 holes in a couple of small cabinets.  Meet one silly man.  The vanities I’m creating will hold who knows what and so I decided that the shelves, which may be wood or glass, needed to be fully adjustable.  I decided that adjustment in 2″ increments would be sufficient but even so, this meant 14 pairs of holes in each of the four side pieces – 128 holes.  I also wanted a 5-dowel join at each top/bottom joint which meant 10 holes for each joint for a total of 40 holes.   Swiss cheese cabinets, coming up.

Hole Jigs

To accurately place the holes I created two simple jigs.  One was a block of wood with a couple pins that projected from both sides and, offset from these, a set of holes to guide a drill bit.  The other jig, for the dowel joints was a block of wood the thickness of the side pieces, a short ‘fence’ on one end, and the 5 holes located where I wanted the dowels to be in my pieces.

Shelf Holes

Notice that electrons were burned in the making of these holes.  I like my egg beater drills as much as the next guy but my electric drill is just as clean, nearly as quiet and a whole lot faster for this sort of work.  I marked out the first two holes 2″ from the bottom of each piece and drilled them.  It’s very important to get these right as the jig depends upon their placement.  Once drilled, the jig pins were inserted and the next set drilled.  Leap-frogging the jig along the side piece generated a nifty set of holes.

Doweling Holes

When I built my last cabinet I was asked how I did the dowel joints; whether I used a _fill in fancy jig name here_ or something else.  I guess this stuff doesn’t get talked about much in magazines or in cyberspace.

Let’s face it; dowel joints are frowned upon by many woodworkers as they’ve concluded them to be second class, while still putting James Krenov on the lofty pedestal he and his work deserve.  I’ll not attempt to explain that paradox but when design leans to having an overhang on the top/bottom of cabinets, without the use of mouldings, dowel joinery is just the thing to make it happen.  I like them and take solace in the fact that Krenov did too.

I clamped the jig to the bench top, with the fence sticking out onto and parallel to the bench top.  I slid a cabinet side piece up to the jig, align the back of that piece to the fence, and clamp it in place.  With everything fixed in place, it’s an easy matter to drill the holes.  I mark the desired depth on the drill bit with a Sharpie marker.

The important thing here is to always put the back edge of the parts towards the fence as the fence is used to orient the jig on the top and bottom pieces by pressing it against the back of these pieces (the front are curved) and lining up the jig to the layout lines.

I’ve seen the fancy jigs, some costing a small fortune.  Personally, I prefer these simple jigs as I can custom create them for each project.

Holes Everywhere

The end result is a bunch of pieces of cherry with some rabbets and a whole lot of holes.  When I put them together they start to look like cabinets…almost.

Cheers — Larry

larry@woodnbits.com

If I Could Put Time In A Bottle….

Apologies to Jim Croce for abusing the opening line of his Time In A Bottle song but don’tcha wish you could? Sure…we all talk/joke about not having enough time for woodworking.

This month’s Fine Woodworking reports on their ‘sander vs handplane’ showdown where they looked at which method could prep a piece for finish the quickest.  They’ve also done a similar “shootout” on cutting tenons by hand vs a table saw.   Fine…fine…I guess this stuff is worth doing… maybe.  But mostly this is because most woodworkers believe that using hand tools is akin to putting on the brakes of productivity.

But I’m here to tell you that I think we talk about time/quick/fast FAR too much.   If you’re paying the mortgage as a woodworker, the adage “time is money” may apply, but why the heck are hobbyist woodworkers so obsessed with how long something takes?

Let’s do a thought experiment.  Imagine that a machine is available that requires a space the size of the average hobbyist shop.  Suppose that as long as you don’t use it to produce things for sale, you can have one for free.  Suppose this machine creates furniture pieces the way it produced Earl Grey tea for Captain Picard?

Do you want one?  Sure…where do I pick it up.  Me first…me first.  But are you sure?  How much hobby enjoyment would you get from saying “Windsor chair from maple” and having it pop out a door?  Would it hold your interest?  Or would you use it and start spending your time in another hobby?  How proud would you be of your Windsor chair.  The point is that whether you focus on the final product or the journey to it, the doing is part of what makes you enjoy this hobby.

But today I did my own “power tools vs hand tools” showdown event.  That wasn’t the intent of course. I was trying to get some work done.  I report on it mostly because it’s been a while since I’ve used power tools and my morning seemed worthy of reporting given the fascination with how long things take.

You see, I needed to put rabbets on 4 rails and 4 styles for my vanity doors.   These will accept the glass center panels.   I struggle with rabbets using hand tools simply because the tool I have, a Stanley #78 has a fence that is very wonky and I’ve never been happy with the results.  It also really slows things down as the fence goes out of adjustment so I spend a lot of time fussing.  I need a Lee Valley skew rabbet plane.  Some day.

Anyways, because I’ve been slow to get moving on these cabinets I thought I’d get those rabbets done “quickly” by throwing a Freud rabbeting bit into my router table and zip, zip…I’ve have the rabbets done.  Ha!

Reality was a bit different.  First I had to pull out the router table and then fiddle to get the bit height set properly.  I put on my moon suit – face shield, respirator, and my ZEM hearing protection.  I hooked the dust collector to the table.  I found a test piece, set the fence to take a shallow cut, and made a trial cut.  It looked ok so I ran each piece through.   Three more passes and I’d created the 1/2″ deep rabbets in all the parts.

The only problem was that I wasn’t done.  There were chips all over the floor and table.  There were some burn marks on some of the parts in spite of my repeated shallow cuts.  And there are several small corner chips where the wood tore out along the inner frame faces.

So, out comes the shop vac.  I sucked up all the chips.  I swept the floor.  I pulled the bit and put it away and moved the table back.  I put the shop vac away…. finally… done.

Well, sort of.  I’ve still got to smooth the inner faces of all those parts to eliminate the few little bits of tear out, but whose counting?  Total elapsed time – a bit more than 1 1/2 HOURS.

Now it may well be true that it would take me 2 hours to do these rabbets with a good hand tool but I doubt it.  These are all full-length rabbets (going to use asymmetric tenons) so they’d be pretty quick to make with a good fillister plane.  The big difference?  I don’t have to look like a NASA astronaut while I do it.  I can listen to music.  It’s less risky, both to the parts and to my person.

Am I a hand tool zealot?  No, not really.  I won’t be creating laminated bench tops using hand tools.  You won’t see hand tool guys turning out cutting boards to give away as gifts.  And it’s a lot easier to buy a router bit to do a fancy molding than to find an equivalent tool in the hand tool world.  But this morning was just a reminder of why I do most of my work these days using hand tools.

Cheers — Larry

larry@woodnbits.com

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