Sauer & Steiner

Vancouver bound!

2012-01-30T09:59:00.007-05:00

This is just a quick announcement for anyone in the Vancouver area. I will be joining Lie Nielsen for a hand tool event being hosted by Dan Clermont at Clermont’s Ultimate Tool Supply in Burnaby BC. It is this coming weekend - Feb. 3rd and 4th - here are the details.

The last planes of 2011

2012-01-21T07:45:00.000-05:00

2011 was a rather amazing year. It was the tenth year of Sauer & Steiner Toolworks and while there was not an official celebration - there were wonderful things happening all year long. The first Damascus sided plane, the pair of Bayfield planes, the rebate panel planes the K13 and my dream bandsaw - the Y30 snowflake. In my wildest dreams, I could not have predicted such a year.

As I walk across the yard to work every morning - with a coffee in hand, my camera over my shoulder, I am already smiling by the time I get to the door. I often stand on the landing just inside and look around. A mountain of wood - and the most beautiful bandsaw greet me - what more could I ask for.

Thank-you to everyone who has made the last 10 years possible. Your encouragement, support, insight and generosity have allowed me to continue. It has been a staggering adventure thus far.

Curiously - the last 4 planes of 2011 were all unhandled smoothers and all SNo.4’s.

This is a SNo.4L - 7" long with a 52.5 degree bed angle and a 1-3/4" wide high carbon steel blade. Desert Ironwood infill.

Next is a SNo.4 - 6-1/2" long, 1-3/4" wide blade, 52.5 degree bed angle and Honduran Rosewood infill.

These last 2 are a matching pair, and have a really great story behind them. They were commissioned by a friend of mine who wanted a gift for a life-long friend. This friend had helped him out during a difficult time in his life and this was his way of saying thank-you. Not only was this a great feel-good project - but they were picked up in person by both the person who commissioned them, but also the unsuspecting friend. That was a pretty great moment.

These SNo.4’s came from the same piece of Desert Ironwood.

2012 is already looking very promising - two more ‘K’ series planes are in the early prototype stages and I am working on a large furniture project that has been on my bucket list for a very long time.

Magnificent - with apologies to Jill & Stan’s daughter

2012-01-07T05:50:00.022-05:00

(a shot of the upper wheel covering for Al)

Stan arrived during the holidays with a bright and shiny white box, some wire, testing tools, a laptop and and a hair dryer. Everything made sense but the hair dryer.

We mounted the VFD to the wood clad steel column behind the bandsaw and then started with the wiring. Everything made sense until Stan wired the hair dryer and placed it on top of the bandsaw table. He said it was to test the brake. Sure enough - when he cut the power - the hair dryer started up. He asked me to check to see if there was warm (or hot) air coming out of it. No - not really. Hmm he said. Fired up the laptop and started reading.

Now I have to admit - I was completely out of my element here. My very basic understanding of VFD’s came from Stan the week before. I had no clue what the hair dryer was really doing - but it sounded like a clever cross-check to me.

There was a blade on the saw now, so we had a real-world set-up. We took some readings as we started and stopped the machine. We delayed the start up to 6 seconds to lower the start up draw and then focused on the brake time. Stan was reading furiously and changing things on the VFD and every time we turned it off - the hair dryer would come on. But not always in the same way. One time, it came on with such force that it launched itself backwards and almost into the path of the slowing blade. That could have ended badly. Another time, it gave a bright red blast of really hot air.

There was something more to this hair dryer than I was aware of. So I asked. Stan said that he had looked into braking capacitors and they were at least several hundred dollars for a suitable one. As he was pondering the function of the brake capacitor he realized a hair dryer could accomplish the same thing. So he ‘borrowed’ his daughters hair dryer (checked the Ohm’s), to test it out.

Stan was not quite sure what was happening and checked the specs printed on the hair dryer. He asked if we had one and if we could use it. I said sure, ran into the house and grabbed the dryer. He wired it up and turned on the bandsaw. When he killed the power, the new hair dryer blasted red hot, sparked, and then gave a last breath of smoke. It was cooked. There was a pursing of lips, then a slight smile and a knowing nod. Not a word was spoken and the other hair dryer was hooked up again.

All the adjustments he was making to the VFD had to do with controlling the manner in which the brake was applied. The feedback was the hair dryer’s response. It was at this point that Stan commented; “I am not sure if the hair dryer will fit with your aesthetic or not.” This is the point where I fully appreciated the situation - the hair dryer was the brake capacitor!

I just smiled a slow smile as this all sunk in. Are you kidding me - your daughters hair dryer as a vital part of the Y30 - this is going to be wicked! I told him I would have no problem with it - there would be a way to make it look good.

In Stan’s words - here is what is happening;

“The hair dryer is working as a braking resistor. When given the command to slow down, the VFD turns the motor into a generator and the kinetic energy in the bandsaw wheels is converted into electricity, and then heat by the blow dryer.”

The ideal situation was for the hair dryer to come on for several seconds as the bandsaw stopped. That would indicate that it was functioning properly and dispersing the heat. After some further tinkering, We had the blow dryer running for several seconds and the bandsaw stopped within 13 seconds. The hair dryer came on with an even blast of heat - not red hot, and not a strong blast. We had found the sweet spot.

It was at this point that Jill came into the shop, hair wet and asked if I knew where the hair dryer was. Stan and I looked down at the dead dryer on the shop floor. It was all we could do not to burst into laughter. I explained the situation quickly followed with, “I will pay for a new hair dryer”.

It was getting late in the day and we were out the door to go for dinner with some friends, so Stan packed up and left me to wire up the on/off switch and deal with the hair dryer.

The next morning, I got up early, excited to finish the installation. It was too early to go to the hardware store to get a surface mounted electrical box - so I decided to work on the hair dryer. I made a plywood mounting bracket and placed the dryer just above the VFD.

We had taped the switch in the on position.

Onto the low voltage switch. Stan has said a light switch would be sufficient, but I was a little worried about it accidentally being bumped on or off. A push button switch made more sense to me. As we have been renovating our house, we have been replacing the original push button switches with ones that are up to code. So I called my electrician to see if he thought I could use one of the old push button switches from the house. He reminded me that every woodworking machine must have a magnetic switch (so if the machine is running and the power goes off and then comes on again - the machine will stay off). The VFD is a magnetic switch so I was covered that way - and he thought the old switch would be perfectly good.

It felt pretty neat to be re-using one of the old switches on the bandsaw - somehow the 100 year old brass plate seemed like a much more suitable solution than a plastic or galvanized plate.

Here is a quick shot of the VFD with the dryer.

One of the other things Stan and I tested was the amperage draw as the saw was cutting. Stan asked if I had a large piece of scrap wood to test it with. I handed him a large piece of scrap cherry (several inches thick) and he shoved it through the saw faster than I have ever cut anything in my life! At full running speed, the saw was drawing 5 amps and the needle barely moved as he slammed the wood through.

I have been using the saw for almost a week now and I have to say - so far, it is exceeding my expectations in every way. The first real work I did with it was cutting the perimeter of a chair seat. This is something I could not have done with my Laguna bandsaw - the table is not large enough to support the 20" seat and there is not enough room for the seat to fit between the blade and the column. And the cutting action is completely different. It is a little hard to explain really. It is incredibly smooth, there is no vibration to the table at all and even the sound is different. The blade tracks perfectly, cuts perfectly and seems to be taunting me with “is that all you got little man?” All I have to say is the 10" thick rosewood is coming soon enough.

Magnificent

2011-12-22T20:02:00.019-05:00

For years now, I have been talking about - well, belly-aching about, finding a large bandsaw. My current bandsaw is a 16" Laguna - the first model with the ceramic guides. While this saw has been a good little saw for me, it has many limitations. Most of these limitations have to do with capacity and are not really a fault with the manufacturing. Most modern bandsaws tend to have really large re-saw capacity, but woefully inadequate table sizes. They also tend to have welded steel frames and are much lighter than vintage machines. And a personal pet peeve - they have very poor dust collection - more on that later. Vintage machines on the other hand, tend to be massive beasts, with huge tables and very limited re-saw capacity. I suspect the idea of re-sawing veneer was a crazy notion 60+ years ago - you could easily buy thick ‘real’ veneer. This was my great conundrum. Do I get a really big new machine with way more re-saw capacity than I will ever need in order to get a large enough work table, or do I look for a vintage machine that has the rare feature of a large re-saw capacity?

Here is my quick list of criteria.
- re-saw capacity of at least 16" (to match my 16" jointer)
- enough power to re-saw 16" comfortably
- tables at least 24"x30"
- at least a 28" wheel to give me decent cross cut capacity
- dust collection that actually works

I had narrowed it down to 3 machines (in no particular order).

The Agazzani B32 has great specs. Large table, great re-saw capacity, plenty of power and all the modern features one would look for. I had tried an Agazzani a few years ago and noted it seemed nicer than my Laguna. Dust collection - not so great.

A Zimmermann. This is a very rare bandsaw and I was only made aware of it by a friend of mine who has one. These were patternmakers saws and have similar specs to the Agazzani, but made to an even higher standard (so I am told). They are almost impossible to find used so it quickly fell to the bottom of the list due to availability.

A Yates Y30 ‘snowflake’. These are usually pre-WWII machines and are about as easy to find as a Zimmermann. They are called snowflakes because the upper wheel cover is perforated and looks like a snowflake. As soon as I saw a photo of this saw - it was placed that the top of the list. All things being equal... this machine is the most aesthetically stunning bandsaw I have ever seen (that also meets current safety standards).

So the hunt began.

The Agazzani was an easy find. Jesse at Eagle tools was a great help and was able to get all the information I needed - and then some. This very quickly became the only new bandsaw I was considering.

I put out a few feelers for a Zimmermann and eventually found one. The asking price was $10,000.00 which was more than I was willing to spend.

In February, I came across an ad for a Y30 and was directed to Pleasant Street Machinery and this link in particular. I called Pleasant St. and spoke with both Joe Snider and Ben Rock (the owner). Within 20 minutes, I knew I was at the right place. They both had a passion for vintage machinery the way I have a thing for planes. Everything felt right. One of my requests was that the machine be overhauled and any restoration work (other than new paint) be taken care of. This is a massive saw and I do not have the space, or frankly the expertise to know how to do it. I also asked that the tires be replaced. Over the course of the next several months, Ben or Joe would send me updates on the progress. They even posted a few on YouTube - here and here. It was at this point that I was grateful that I had not taken on the restoration!

There were a few setbacks and delays, but on December 5th - I was told it was ready to ship.

There is another whole side to this adventure that I have not mentioned yet and it has to do with the limitations of my workshop. I have an pair of doors that give me access to our parking spot behind the shop (below the bell shaped light).

Trouble is, these doors are not as big as they should have been (not a word Raney). The opening was 7'1" from the bottom of the header to the concrete floor. When I made the doors, I used some re-claimed white pine from the drive shed of our first house. They were a little under 7', so I had to fill in some space at the top of the door. I am sure you can see where this is going. The Y30 is just over 7'6" tall with the upper wheel in its normal position. The upper wheel does come down quite a bit - to just under 7'... without a pallet.

So, on my 40th birthday - I spent most of that unusually warm Saturday taking the doors off and stripping it down to the framing. I then re-assembled everything and put it back in place with a few strategic screws. The plan was to be able to pull the screws out and knock out the top trim work and gain the much needed 5" of extra height. That was the plan anyway.

Ben and Joe were very aware of my height restrictions and the thought of tipping a 2,300lb machine to wheel it in was pretty much out of the question. So they made a special pallet that was just high enough for a pallet jack to squeak under. It was made from oak 2x3’s and was constructed in such a way that the sled feet could be removed if we needed another 3/4".

I watched the Y30 makes its way from outside Chicago to a terminal in Cambridge Ontario - about 25 minutes from here. From Cambridge, we had made arrangements to have it transferred to a lift gate truck so it could be lowered to ground level. In a perfect world, the truck would back up to the shop, lower the machine and we could wheel it in with a pallet jack - easy-peasy. I called the shipping company in Cambridge to request that they call me an hour ahead of time so I could prepare the area and remove the door trim - I did not want to waste the drivers time. I also mentioned that they should bring the shortest lift gate truck they had as maneuvering might be an issue. The next day, while on the phone, there was a knock at the door. I went downstairs to find the truck driver standing there - in front of an 18 wheeler. So much for planning ahead.

And it was raining.

Thankfully, my friend Terry was available to help me out and he arrived within 10 minutes. I took the truck driver back to the shop to show him the situation. His first comment was “why didn’t they put it on a smaller truck?” My thoughts exactly. He thought it was worth a shot though. I knew what we would have to do. There was no way he could back up to the shop door, so Terry and I started building a platform on the gravel driveway so we could keep the saw at the same height as the shop floor. We laid down a piece of plywood and then a layer of 2x10’s and then another 2 layers of plywood. In the rain. The truck backed up to within about 7' or 8' - that was as close as he could get. Then he opened the truck door. They had put the Y30 onto another pallet to make it easier to move. We were now at least 5" too tall to clear the shop door - the bottom pallet had to come off. So we unloaded the whole thing onto the plywood platform and watched the truck pull away. Still raining.

Keep in mind, this is a 2300lb bandsaw, and while it is not as top heavy as most bandsaws - it is a scary looking monster when resting on a plywood and lumber platform on a gravel driveway and all you have is a narrowish pallet jack. There is a very short list of people that I would be comfortable helping out with a situation like this - and Terry is the top of the list. He is likely more safety conscious than I am - which was perfect.

The first challenge was to remove the bottom pallet. We raised the whole thing with the pallet jack and cut off as much of the lower pallet as we could. Through a process of raising everything and blocking in various stages, we were eventually able to remove the lower pallet completely.

We took a deep breath and moved it into position. Sadly, we were so focused on getting this done that I did not take any time to take any photos - which is too bad - it kinda looked like a war zone with pallet parts and blocking everywhere. This is the first photo I took...

... showing the whopping 1/2" of wiggle room we had to work with. But... the saw made it into the shop safely.

Here is another shot of the saw which shows the oak pallet. Despite all the rain, the saw was totally dry.

And the saw unwrapped.

And the back view.

I had previously downloaded a copy of the manual for the Y30 to find some of the specs. This is when I learned that the blade length was 17'2". I contacted my blade supplier and ordered some blades for the saw. They were to arrive within a few days.

(the motor plate)

One other major issue was power. The Y30 has a 3hp, 3phase direct drive motor. No chance of swapping the motor or getting 3 phase power, so I had to choose between a phase converter or a VFD. Phase converters are great if you are running multiple 3 phase machines - one phase converter will do an entire shop. Plus they are quite economical. This is my first and only 3 phase machine though, and there were several aspects to VFD’s that were intriguing. They offer speed control and you can make a lot of adjustments to starting up and shutting off.

Stan - a childhood friend of mine, is a bit of an electronics wizard. Actually - he is a wizard on many fronts - his machine shop is pretty amazing. He also sells and modifies VFD’s and was willing to help me out with this project (he also lent me the pallet jack to move the Y30 around).

Stan came over on the weekend with a 15hp VFD. His experience with old motors was that the stated hp was usually a conservative estimation and that this one would act more like a 5 or 6hp motor. The 15hp VFD would be able to handle whatever the motor threw at it. We pulled the plug from my Laguna bandsaw and used it for the Y30. We connected it to a dedicated 30 amp/220v receptacle and turned it on. The lower wheel came to life and within a few seconds it was up to speed. It barely made a sound. The motor was drawing 5-6 amps at full running speed. We turned it off and the wheel was still turning 20 minutes later. Granted - there wasn’t a blade - but still pretty impressive. We started it up again and measured the draw on start-up. It was in excess of 20 amps on start-up so we turned it off again and Stan re-programmed it to start up slower - he added about 4 seconds to the start-up time. This time, it maxed out at a 10 amp draw. That was pretty cool. Stan also noted that from a safety perspective, we should strive to have the wheel stopped within 10-15 seconds of hitting the off button. This could be done by reversing the flow of electricity and using it as a brake. Ok - this was really cool! He also said we may want to consider a braking capacitor. This would add further braking capacity to the VFD. We also recognized that all these numbers and readings were likely going to change once we had a blade on the saw. The blade would add resistance, but connecting the upper wheel could potentially speed things up given the added weight. But this first trial was very encouraging and I committed to a VFD over a phase converter.

One really nice benefit of the VFD is that I could remove the 3 phase magnetic switch box from the back of the saw. you can see it in the above photo of the back of the saw - that massive green box in the bottom right corner. With that gone, I could move the bandsaw 10" closer to the post and regain some much needed space.

Here is a shot of the 3 phase box removed and the gap it created. You can also see the 15hp VFD on the floor beside it.

This is the 3 phase box. I will certainly keep this in case the next owner of the saw (Riley or Lucas maybe?) needs it.

The next task was to move the bandsaw into position. I was not able to use the pallet jack for this so I decided to use a crowbar and some blocking. I cut a notch into the oak sled foot and used blocking and a crowbar to slide the saw along.

Once I had the bandsaw backed up to the post, I wanted to move it over a few inches to line up the inside edge of the frame with the edge of the post. I placed 2 long maple runners under the bandsaw in the other direction and moved it over.

Here is the Y30 in its final position. I placed it on 3/4" thick pine feet just in case I ever needed to get under it for any reason. There are notches cut into the feet so a pry bar or jack can be placed under the main casting.

There are several features of this saw that are quite astounding when you consider it is over 70 years old.

The first, and maybe most important one is dust collection. It is my impression that dust collection on bandsaws is always an afterthought - even on European machines where safety and health concerns are usually a little more important (think Festool). My Laguna bandsaw is a perfect example. The only dust port on the saw is in the back, bottom left corner - as far as you could possibly get from where the dust is actually created. I ended up building a plywood box that encloses the entire area under the table just to capture the dust.

It work very well, but the whole time I was making it I grew increasingly annoyed that I was doing this, and not the designers and engineers at Laguna. And not to pick on Laguna - this same lack of attention to dust collection appears across the board.

Contrast this with this 70 year old machine. There is a dust chute fully integrated into the main casting of the Y30. When I first opened the stove doors to the lower wheel, I noticed an unusual area just above the wheel.

It only took a second to figure it out - the dovetail on the right was the best clue. It is a slot which is meant to hold a piece of wood that deflects the dust into the chute. Brilliant! I grabbed a walnut scrap and with the blade removed, fit the dust deflector.

By manually rotating the wheel, I was able to cut the zero clearance kerf into the deflector. I also made a zero clearance insert for the table and will make new pairs of inserts and deflectors as I explore different blades.

The dust chute is a straight shot down the inside of the casting and ends up at the bottom corner just below. The outside diameter of the outlet was a perfect fit for a 6" flex hose.

Which brings me to another aspect to the saw - which is related to dust collection. I knew that the trunnion on the Y30 and Y36’s were massive, but this was the first time I had seen one in person. Massive is an understatement! The trunnion on the Y30 is 13" wide!

This is totally overkill, but I suspect there is a hidden benefit beyond the obvious. The trunnion is so massive, it completely encases the underside of the table including the lower blade guides. The effect is the same as my plywood box under my Laguna - the dust is captured.

Here is a shot of the front of the bandsaw and the cover plate to the trunnion.

With the cover off, you can see the lower blade guide. With the trunnion being so large, there was ample room to comfortably adjust the lower guide.

Once I had put my dust collection system back together, I turned it on to see how much suction there was. It was able to pull sawdust off my hand in front of the walnut deflector. Finally, a bandsaw with decent dust collection.

At this stage, all that remains is to get the 7.5hp VFD and install it. Given that it is 2 days before Christmas, I think I will have to wait a little bit longer before I can take the first test cut.

I used to hate sapwood...

2011-11-13T14:58:00.003-05:00

... until I was roughing out this Desert Ironwood set.

I have only seen one or two planes where sapwood was used effectively (as in, did not detract from the plane). But the grain on this piece of Ironwood is so graphically strong, that the white sapwood did not seem out of place or overpowering. Truth be told... I was hoping to keep as much of it as possible.

There was also a corner of sapwood on the blank for the front pad. I was not expecting any of this sapwood to remain... but did have my fingers crossed.

Only the tiniest dot of sapwood remained on the front pad. It was sad to watch it disappear as I was doing the final shaping, but I was not about to sacrifice the shape of the pad in order to keep it.

Desert Ironwood has become a very popular infill material. Here is another Ironwood filled K13.

This plane has some incredible burl in it. Here is a close up of the front pad.

More amazing burl.

There are some highly reflective gold flecks in the handle. It is almost impossible to photograph, but they are wicked in the sunlight.

A K13a - the original commission

2011-10-27T15:28:00.001-05:00

The original commission is completed. The prototype was designed without an adjuster, but the original commission was for a plane with an adjuster. There were several modifications to make - some minor - some major.

The obvious ones are the inclusion of the adjuster and the cap iron - but I also had to modify the sidewall profile so the blade would still be tucked behind the ‘corner’ at the top of the sidewall. I also modified the front curve of the sidewall (between the pad and the lever cap) to allow for a bit more room so the lever cap would actually fit. One other modification was to eliminate the stainless steel button in the cap iron and tap the cap iron itself. This reduced the amount of room required under the lever cap for the blade to be removed.

The handle was pushed back a bit to create more room to cover the stem of the adjuster.

The main stem of the adjuster was also shortened so it would look better with the shortened blade.

(curly African Blackwood!)

A few weeks ago, I started fitting the stainless steel lever cap. I installed the adjuster, put the blade assembly into the plane and just about barfed. I had made one of my typical cap irons complete with perfectly straight chamfered edges on the sides and across the top. It looked horrible. It was late - about 10pm. I was awful tired - but deep in my gut I knew what I had to do. I removed the cap iron, grabbed another piece of 01 and started making a new cap iron. I was a little embarrassed that I was at this stage when I caught this blunder.

The solution was a no-brainer - chamfered curves instead of chamfered strait lines. I was just about to dust off my french curves from college, when I looked down at the K13 sidewall template lying there. Huh... it might just work.

I hand drew a quick radius on the cap iron blank, and then positioned the template - looking for a segment of the sweep that matched. Bingo - there it was. An hour later - I had a new cap iron and not only did it match the plane - it actually enhanced it. No barf-bucket required.

I have the good fortune of being able to hand deliver this plane next weekend in Ottawa. I can’t wait.

Speaking of Ottawa - I will be attending another Lie Nielsen handtool event. Here are the details. Please stop by and say hello if you are in the area.

The next two K13’s are also completed. Interestingly - they are both infilled with Desert Ironwood. Here is a sneak-peek.

Re-visiting weight - an A1Ti panel

2011-10-20T16:24:00.034-05:00

Titanium sucks.

Well... it sucks to work with at least. It does not like to be cut, filed, bent, piened or lapped. If it was not for a very good friend asking me to make this - I don’t think I would have. This is not my first Ti plane - I made a small XSNo.4Ti a while ago. It was a nightmare too.

There were several reasons for making this plane. My friend is doing some extensive restoration work to a Mahogany sailboat and is working by the ocean. The sea air makes rust free tools mission impossible. He also wanted something lighter in weight. I was curious to see just how much weight could be reduced simply be changing the sole and side materials. That and the fact that the idea of a titanium panel plane sounded pretty cool.

Dovetailing the XSNo.4Ti was a total nightmare so the thought of dovetailing a plane 3 times as long felt insane. So I didn’t.

It is welded.

My friend Hugh Black from True North Cycles makes wicked custom bicycles - often with Titanium frames. He was willing to try welding the shell for me. The welded shell sat around in my shop for a few months and everyone commented on how amazing his welding job was.

As a point of reference - it normally takes me about 3 to 5 minutes to pien a typical 01 tool steel cross pin (the pins that hold the infills in place). It took at least 15 minutes to pien each end of the 3/16" titanium cross pins. I was worried they did not pien properly to be honest. I decided to switch to 303 stainless for the cross pin that holds the lever cap. There was no way I was going to risk trying to pien a 5/16" titanium pin! The 303 pin worked perfectly and while it is tight - you can see it because it is a different material.

Lapping took 4 times longer, required 10 times as much abrasive paper and three-quarters of a water cooler bottle. Half way through the lapping, I became keenly aware of just how good Hugh is at welding... the evidence was completely gone. Thanks again for an amazing job Hugh.

When all was said and done, it felt noticeably lighter than any other panel plane I had made, and I was dying to know just how light it was.

My A1 panel plane is infilled with Ebony, and has bronze sides. It weighs 3.914 Kg’s (8.629 Lbs). This A1Ti filled with Rosewood weighs 3.04Kg’s (6.702Lbs). It is somewhat shocking that this plane is a full 2Lbs lighter!

This got me thinking (again) about the weight of planes. When most people talk about infills, they usually comment on the weight and how much heavier they are than non-infill planes. This perception of weight is usually identified as a benefit, and that it adds to the plane’s function. I am not convinced that weight is a desirable thing, and - I think we are usually confusing weight with what we are actually experiencing - how solid the plane feels.

One of the things that makes an infill ‘feel’ the way it does is that there are no moving parts and the blade is so securely held by the lever cap, that the blade has no choice but to take a shaving. I would describe this feeling as solid - heavy does not necessarily factor into this. The best example of this is how a plane from Old Street Tools feels. If weight were really that important - these planes would feel horrible. But they don’t - they feel amazing to use. This is because they have some similar characteristics to infills. Namely, that there are no moving parts and when the planes bed, the blade and the wedge are precisely mated - the plane feels really solid. This solid feeling also comes from the fact that most handled infill planes have closed totes. A closed tote is not only stronger, but it also means there is no flexing when the plane is being used. This translates into improved feedback and a tactile sense of the wood being cut that is pretty amazing. I am also realizing that I wrote about some of this last year and will end before I start sounding like a broken record.

Another interesting side note to plane weight. Many people have commented that they are pleasantly surprised by how light the K13 is, and I am often asked how much it weighs. Until this morning - I have never been able to answer that questions. My K13 weights 2.704Kg’s (5.961Lbs).

Two pics added for Pete - the welded shell;

Dining room furniture in the rough

2011-10-09T08:05:00.003-05:00

Over the years, a few people have commented that I must have a horseshoe when it comes to finding really great wood. The truth is, that horseshoe has everything to do with not leaving a single stone unturned and following every single lead no matter how unlikely it might seem.

Every once in a while I will do a lumber search on kijiji just to see what is out there. I found an ad for live edge walnut slabs. There was an email address and a phone number. No prices, no photos and a location I had never heard of before. But it had a 519 area code - which is the the same as mine, so I figured it could not be that far away. So I sent off a quick email to inquire about the walnut. A few hours later the phone rang and I spoke with the seller. Mostly flitch cut walnut, mostly 8/4 or thicker and a price too good to be true. Only 35 minutes away too. So I called two friends who might be interested to see if we could make an outing of it.

A friend of mine makes live edge furniture and has been looking for good walnut for almost 2 years now. When I called him and gave him the details, he reminded me of the old adage that if it sounds too good to be true - it usually is. He also shared that he had been on about a dozen of these lumber scouting trips in the last year and everything was crap. His last comment was “... but you never know”, and with that, we set out.

When the door to the barn opened - we knew this was not crap. In front of us were stacks of flitch cut walnut trees - some 16' long. It was all we could do to keep calm. We must have looked like ants on sidewalk bubble-gum as we swarmed around the various flitches.

It was my friend Wayne who spotted what would turn out to be a spectacular find. Wayne has been harvesting his own furniture wood for several years now and has insight into sawn lumber that I do not have. I always learn a tremendous amount from him. He called me over to a skid of 8/4 sawn walnut and said “this is what you need for your dining room”. He then told me to pick up one of the boards on the top of the stack. It felt twice as heavy as any walnut I have ever encountered. I quickly put my moisture meter on it - 10% - it was pretty dry. And then the zinger - despite the poor lighting, you could make out a bit of curl.We quickly tore into the entire stack and quickly realized we could shut our eyes and tell by the weight of individual boards which ones came from the same tree. In the end, over half the stack had been pulled out... all incredibly dense and full of curl. 223 board feet in total.

On the drive home Wayne explained to me that this must have been a very old tree. Partly because of the weight (and density) of the boards, but also because of how it had been cut. You could tell from the marks on some of the boards that this log was split with a chain saw first and then cut on the mill. His explanation - it must have been massive if the mill could not handle the whole log.

The stack of curly walnut. The widest board is 22" across, most are well over 12". They are all just under 7' long.

It was only after returning home that I realized just how amazing this walnut was. It did not look like our typical black walnut. There was tremendous color in it - blacks, purples reds and golds - it looked like Claro to be honest.

The next morning, I took one of the smaller pieces and ran it through my jointer to get a better sense of what it looked like. The photo below is the most accurate color wise - it was taken outside in natural light.

There is an ironic twist to this tale. I had initially inquired about the walnut as a possible material for our much needed dining room furniture (chairs, table the whole 9 yards). Chairs scare the pants off me - and I am gearing up to face this fear and build some mock-ups. When I was initially given the price for the walnut, I realized I could afford to use it for the mock-ups (I too was not expecting much for the price being asked). The problem is - I still need to find some 8/4 mock-up wood.

Totally unrelated - thanks to everyone who commented on the blog or who sent an email with regards to the mystery test plane in the previous post. The feedback was great and I will be preparing part II in the coming weeks. But before that happens... there will be a post about an African Blackwood filled K13a and a A1 panel plane with a titanium body.

Seeing - part I

2011-09-21T18:13:00.003-05:00

Several months ago a friend of mine stopped by with his typical ‘goodie’ bag. Some of it was for sale, some was just for show & tell, and some was part of the ongoing lending routine (for which I am very grateful). This plane was one of the ‘lenders’. There were 2 reasons he brought this plane. First was because of the very unusual marking on the lever cap (which we were both pretty excited about).

The other, closely related reason, was to get my thoughts on who might have made it. I had an opinion on the maker question immediately. He had concluded the same thing. We compared notes about why we concluded the same name - it was an interesting exercise. What was most interesting is that we were both looking at the form of the plane - the lines, the shapes and the design details. We used that information to identify the maker (as opposed to a great big SPIERS or NORRIS stamped in the lever cap).

I have been thinking about this issue for a very long time - what details distinguish one makers work from another? I have talked about this topic with a few other planemakers over the years and it is always fascinating and informative, and is something very near and dear to our hearts.

I don’t want to let the cat out of the bag too fast here (as tempting as it is), so I would like to get some feedback from anyone who is interested. I have taken several photos of this plane from a few different angles to offer as much detail as I can. I would love to hear from you as to who you think made this plane, and most importantly - what details of this plane did you use to help identify it (or were you considering when identifying the maker)?

I should also mention, that as far as I know - this plane has not been positively identified or attributed to a known maker, so there is no right or wrong answer here. Depending on the interest in this topic, I am willing to venture further out on the plane design limb.

So... who do you think made it?

The below two photos have been added as per Peter McBride’s request.

End of summer report

2011-09-01T20:52:00.011-05:00

It is hard to believe it is September already.

We had a good (and busy) summer this year - here are some of the highlights.

I had the great pleasure of attending the Lie Nielsen 30th anniversary open house on July 15th and 16th. I took a somewhat indirect route - Maine via New Jersey. I know - sounds kinda weird, but it was a perfect trip. I flew to New Jersey and connected with my friend Raney Nelson of Daedtoolworks and we drove to Maine together. We stayed at a wonderful B&B - Blue Skye Farm with fellow toolmakers, Ron Brese, Tico Vogt, Jameel Abraham, Father John and Huna and Peter Follansbee for good measure. The setting was wonderful, the food was fantastic and every evening we sat around enjoying each others company. It was marvelous.

This was the first time I have been to Lie Nielsen, and I was very impressed. Everything was well organized and everyone at Lie Nielsen was extremely helpful and generous in helping us get settled in. They took great care of the demonstrators and I am sure all the people who attended received the same level of attention. From the wood fired pizza, to the lobster bake, to the tour of the facilities - we were all well taken care of. My deepest thanks and congratulations to Thomas Lie-Nielsen and the rest of the fine folks at Lie-Nielsen. This trip was a highlight of my summer.

Another highlight was an opportunity to work with my friend Noriko Maeda. Noriko is a Japanese calligrapher of the finest order. I have gotten to know Noriko over the last several years and jumped at the chance to collaborate on a project with her. She has an exhibit at the Warm Springs Gallery in Charlottesville, VA. Part of the exhibit includes a series of 6 lamps. Noriko explored the word Asobu, which means “to play like a child”. She produced the paper shades and I had the honor of creating playful bases for them. It was a wonderful project that I thoroughly enjoyed.

The shop has been a busy place too. I have been working on some planes with very striking and unusual infill material. Here are 3 of them.

First up is a Snakewood filled XSNo.4. This was my first experience with Snakewood and it was a real pleasure. It is a strange wood beyond its appearance. The wood itself is very brittle and I can imagine would produce some horrific slivers. It works beautifully and the end result is quite spectacular. The customer and I had a really tough time deciding between a bronze lever cap or a stainless steel one. We were both on the fence about it and could not make a call. I threatened to let Riley decide.

Riley chose bronze.

It was the right call.

The bronze really highlights the lighter tones in the snakewood and helps connect the infill to the metal. I think a stainless steel lever cap would have left the infill somewhat disconnected.

This next plane is a Desert Ironwood burl filled SNo.4. I have worked with Desert Ironwood before, but this was a particularly nice piece. The lever cap for this plane was a no-brainer.

And last, but certainly not least, is a Black & White ebony filled SNo.4L smoother. The “L” in the name is because this plane is 1/2" an inch longer than the standard SNo.4. It has the same blade width, but is just a bit longer - 7".

I have had this Black and White Ebony for years and have been dying to try it out in a plane. These photos were taken after the 8th coat of french polish was applied. It is amazing how the color has changed as the french polish has built up and as the wood has been exposed to light. My understanding of Black and White Ebony is that the cream colored sections will darken a bit in time, but will retain most of the light color.

Working this material was really fun. It works just like Madagascar Ebony but without the annoying coal dust everywhere and has a softness like English Boxwood.

For some reason, I looked at the clock on July 10th at around 8:20 and was immediately struck by the fact that exactly one year ago at that moment, I was in the hospital waiting for my finger to be stitched up. It was a strange realization, and I have to admit the rest of the day felt a little odd. I was keenly aware of every activity in the shop and paid extra special attention to being safe. I breathed a sigh of relief as I crawled into bed that night - injury free.

August 16th - the much anticipated opening of the Lee Valley store in Waterloo. I have a running list of Lee Valley items on the chalkboard in the shop, and I held off on ordering in anticipation of picking them up in person at the new store. The store opened at 9am and I figured I would geek out and see how close to the front of the line I could get. Riley and I were the 4th people in line. Rob Lee was there to keep us company as we waited (he capped Riley’s Timbit quota at 10 - I re-negotiated it down to 8). I have been back several times already - it is so great (and dangerous) to have a Lee Valley store less than 10 minutes from home!

The grand opening of the Waterloo store is being held the week of September 19th and there are a few of us that will be demonstrating at the store. I will be joining Dan Barrett of D.L. Barrett & Sons and Chris Schwarz from Lost Art Press for demonstrations and seminars on Thursday the 22nd, friday the 23rd and Saturday the 24th.

The following week, Joe Steiner and I will be driving to Cincinnati for the 2011 Woodworking in America conference. Last years conference was an amazing experience and I cannot imagine this year will be any different. We are looking forward to seeing everyone again and please stop in and say hello if you are going to be attending.

I am working on the first 2 K13’s right now - one infilled with African Blackwood and the other infilled with some incredible Desert Ironwood. I should be posting photos shortly.

New plane number 3

2011-07-07T08:16:00.000-05:00

“More wood... less metal”

Those were the instructions. And the only instructions. Last December (or there abouts) a good friend of mine called to talk about the design of a plane. He said that he liked the size of and the idea of a panel plane.... but did not really care for it aesthetically. He then threw down the gauntlet and challenged me to re-think it. All of it. With more wood and less metal (and less clunky looking). And that was that - gauntlet thrown!

We talked back and forth for the next 6 months and he periodically asked if I had thought about the new panel plane at all. My answer was always the same “no, not yet - but it is bouncing around in the back of my head somewhere”. He always accepted the response and was in no way pushy (for which I am eternally grateful).

I was filing some dovetails when one of those rare light-bulb moments happened. I put down the file and walked over to the chalkboard and drew. The above photo is what came out. I stood back and looked at it and slowly walked back to my filing. I quickly realized I had better just put the file down before I wrecked something.

I ran into the house, grabbed a stack of tracing paper and was immediately thrown back into my pre-computer college days of design school. Papers flew, pencils wore out - and within 24 hours, I had a set of working drawings.

With drawings in hand, I made a mock-up of the shell. I used 3/16" Baltic birch ply for the sole and 1/8" BB ply for the sidewalls. I wish steel bent this easily!

I was quite happy with the shape and form of the mock-up shell - enough to proceed to the real thing. Oh, there were a few decisions that were made instantly - the first being that this plane had to be steel sided. Scratch that - it could only have steel sides. I know that seeing the dovetails is pretty cool... but on this plane - it would ruin it. This plane has speed and visible dovetails would be like adding 9 anchors to it.

The steel shell went together without a hitch so it was time to address the infills.

Once again - I made mock-ups - this time out of Basswood. Good gravy is this stuff easy to work.

The mock-up allowed me to resolve 2 key areas that I left hanging from the working drawings, and showed me one of the biggest challenges of making this plane. How do you hold infill pieces that do not have any flat or parallel surfaces? And what are the reference surfaces if everything is curved?

The two areas I had to resolve were the chamfer across the inside of the front pad, and how much of a radius to put in the compound curve of the rear infill as it transitioned into the sole of the plane.

The shape of the Basswood front pad came out pretty well - close enough that I was comfortable to proceed. The radius of the rear infill designed itself as soon as I added the chamfer to the end of the sole.

Now... what to infill this with....?

The next two photos are a bit of a sidebar, but I thought I would share a very common issue with old Rosewoods. I roughed out a wonderful section for the handle but was not 100% sure what would happen at the top edge of the piece. There was a great bit of curl that I wanted to keep... but there were also a few checks.

I traced the handle outline twice - once in white pencil crayon and again in blue. I cut out the negative space to see where the checks went.

If I had not done this, I would have wasted a handle blank and that is not something I am ever prepared to do. Not only because this is valuable material, but because it is so tremendously wasteful.

It was also around this time that I started waking up at 5:30 in the morning out of sheer excitement. I fought it for the first few days and tried to get back to sleep. No such luck, and I quickly embraced the moment, giggled quietly down the steps, put on a pot of coffee and skipped out to the shop. This plane was turning my entire process upside down - and I was loving it.

Here is a shot of the piened together shell with the chamfers to the tops of the sidewalls.

The rear infill fit to the shell.

The compound curve of the rear infill (notice that the heel of the sole is not yet chamfered).

Here is one example of creative clamping. This particular set-up allowed me to plane the bed flat and true. Long live the Tucker vise!

I started having “digestive issues” the day before I was going to shape the front pad. In hindsight, it is kinda strange - I love shaping infill parts... but this one was completely new and I was worried I would screw it up. And... if I screwed it up... I was doubly screwed... the pad was already installed in the plane. So I gave myself some white pencil crayon guide lines and started into it. I went slowly, very slowly - taking the plane out of the vise several times to check the feel of it. Marked the areas that needed more work and those that were done. Two hours later I had this;

This is a very unconventional front grip... but I immediately found it to be very comfortable. One of the many considerations was to make this front grip easier to “pinch” for edge jointing. The pad is much more squat than a typical front bun, and your thumb fits quite nicely on top while your finger tips grip from below.

Even something as simple as french polishing required a new approach. Typically I clamp the infill pieces in a vise and french polish away - easy-peasy. These infill parts could not be safely clamped this way, so I screwed a 3/4" maple block to the bottom just so I could hold them securely in the vise.

One of the most painful aspects to this plane, was the fact that I had to wait for the blade to arrive from Ron before I could actually try it. This was not at all Ron’s fault... it was totally mine. I was not 100% sure on the final length of the blade and held off on ordering it. Truth be told - Ron was very generous in getting the blades to me in record time... my deepest thanks Ron.

During those 3 weeks of waiting - I must have “air-planed” (think air-guitar) my bench 30 times a day. I even made an Aluminum mock-up blade just so I could get a sense of how it would look and feel.

The next 10 photos are my typical balcony photos.

The plane has a radius across the front and is angled forward slightly.

My friend Tracey took these next shots.

(all metal, no wood)

The pair of Bayfield rebate planes and the rebate panel planes (No1R) were also coming to life as I was working on this plane. I know for certain that they each contributed to the others success. It was a rather incredible few months as all this was going on.

The last, and somewhat comical challenge to this plane, was naming it. For lack of a better name, I started calling it the “coffin panel plane” (which is ghastly). This is an unconventional plane, and needed a name that matched. Which was fine by me... I did not want to follow the non-sensical Norris, Spiers or Stanley naming/numbering system (this is the subject of a blog entry all on its own). This new plane will be called the K13. K13 because it is 13 long.

The first outing for the K13 will be Lie-Nielsen’s 30th Anniversary Open House on July 15th and 16th. I am thrilled to be attending this event and visiting with fellow toolmakers and woodworkers. If you are in the area, please stop by and say hello and take the K13 for a spin.

I would like to thank my friend Derrick for tossing the gauntlet in the first place. He clearly knew something that I didn’t, planted the seed, and waited patiently. He continues to show incredible patience as I am just getting started on his Blackwood filled K13.

Hmm... I wonder what a K7 will look like?

New plane number 2

2011-06-17T21:33:00.013-05:00

(the paper mock-up)

I am not exactly sure when I saw my first Bayfield rebate plane - but when I was asked to make a reproduction of one, I was thrilled. This plane rattled around in my head for some time - there were quite a few execution details to work out.

I am by no means a plane history buff... but the Bayfield strikes me as the missing link between a traditional wooden rebate plane and the infill versions by Norris or Spiers. The Bayfield has a traditional mortise running through the wooden body of the plane, the blade is bevel down, and has a conical side escapement. Spiers and Norris rebate planes use the metal sidewalls to define the edges of the “mortise”, they are bevel up and have an escapement that is perpendicular to the sidewalls.

The original Bayfield plane bodies were cast - which instantly informed how they made this seemingly impossible plane. I was going to make a dovetailed version instead. I also decided to make a rosewood “test” plane before working on the customers birds eye boxwood version.

Chopping out the mortise. I am glad I had the Rosewood plane to test my mortising on - Boxwood is much tougher.

Here is the plane assembled and ready for lapping.

With the sole and sides lapped and square, it was time to cut the mouth.

With the mouth cut, I focused on the bed of the plane and then the leading edge of the mouth. This was a tricky spot to work, but the fact that it is a bevel down plane, meant there was enough room to use some of my thinner profiled files to smooth the leading edge.

I left the boxwood infill proud of the sidewalls so I could file the cone shaped escapement. The pencil line notes the center of the infill. This is the line I filed to.

The above photo shows the filed cone shaped escapement. The blue tape is there in case the file slips:) This type of file work is something I love doing. It is an exercise in control and precision handwork, but is still a fairly organic process. You file some - take a look, file some more, take note of how the reflections change and file some more. Pure bliss.

The finished escapement. Oh - there is one other change from the original plane. The original Bayfield has a skewed blade and the client asked me to keep the blade square to the body. I was quite relieved - not because it is simpler to make, but because I am not convinced that rebate planes need to be skewed. Maybe my left-handedness was creeping in there too. Anyway - I filed the cone shaped escapement from both sides to meet in the middle - making it a left and right handed plane.

This is the set-up I use for filing chamfers.

Here is one side chamfered.

And some photos of the finished Boxwood filled Bayfield.

(Jill suggested I mention that the green in the chamfer is a reflection of our tree and not mold)

Curly birds eye boxwood... whoda thunk it?

Some photos of the “test” Bayfield infilled with rosewood.

A few shots of the pair for good measure (these were taken before a coat of oil was applied to the boxwood).

And a hint to new plane number 3;

The phone rang...

2011-06-07T18:52:00.046-05:00

... which led to a magical question;

“what have you always wanted to make, but have not made yet?”

I have to admit - it took me a second for the question to sink in. It is not every day that someone asks that question. I replied; “A version of a Spiers rebate panel plane as featured in Nigel Lampert’s book (Through much Tribulation: Stewart Spiers and the Planemakers of Ayr)”.

The caller was not familiar with the plane, so I described it and offered to send a photo of the page it was featured on. Further discussions followed and we agreed that the plane should be made. In cases like this, I typically make 2 planes - one as a “prototype” to work out any bugs and the other as the customers plane. We decided that they should be a matching pair - steel sides, bronze lever cap and rosewood infill. They would be 15-1/2" long and have a 2-1/2" wide high carbon steel blade.

There were 2 serious issues to resolve. The most significant was to re-think the sidewalls. I cannot imagine that the original was very sturdy as there does not appear to be very much metal connecting the front of the plane to the rear section. The sidewalls look to be about 1/8" thick - which is the standard thickness that I use as well, but in this case I thought it was too thin. I increased the sidewall thickness to 5/32". I also increased the width of the area above the escapement - the original Spiers plane looks to be very thin in this dimension as well.

(tracing paper overlay showing the evolution of the area connecting the front section)

The second issue was the lever cap. Spiers used two metal studs attached to the insides of the sidewalls. He then created a recess on each edge of the lever cap that captured the studs. This was pretty ingenious really as it allowed the lever cap to be removed (which allowed the blade and cap iron to be removed). To my eye though - this is not very aesthetically pleasing on such a large plane. Not to mention that removing the lever cap, then the blade and cap iron is a rather tedious job, and requires some serious acrobatics to get the blade in or out safely without damaging the delicate corners.

I have yet to see an elegant solution that allows a lever cap to be removed - so why remove it at all... eliminate the cap iron! This would mean the blade could be installed into the plane from below. Which in turn means the lever cap could be fixed on a pin... the cleanest and most elegant solution. It would also eliminates the possibility of damaging the blade in the process. Loading the blade from the bottom started looking really appealing and we decided that I would try it on the prototype to see how it worked.

Full steam ahead.

These next 2 images show the cutting of the tab that connects the front sole section to the rear sole section.

Once the tab has been cut, there is a fair amount of clean up to be done - including blending the inside of the front bun to the sidewalls and sole. The below photo shows what it looks like.

Working on the shoulder of the front bun to flush it with the top edge of the sidewall.

The matching pair of rebate panel planes with the infills fully shaped and ready for french polishing.

Between coats of french polish, I started chamfering to the top edges of the sidewalls.

The chamfered shell and the shaped, stamped and polished lever cap ready for installation.

These next 2 photos show the infills installed. At this point I can complete the remaining work to the bed.

With the bed completed, I can fit the lever cap and install it.

This shot shows the fit of the blade to the bed and the installed lever cap.

Next step... lapping.

I was quite pleased with how well the lapping went to be honest. The extra thickness to the sidewalls ensured that there was no deflection between the front section and the rear section. Here are a bunch of photos of the finished prototype.

And the final test - the first shaving.

Loading the blade from the bottom ended up being a perfect solution for this plane. The lever cap is quite snug, and even when the lever cap screw is loosened - the front edge of the lever cap still holds the blade in place. Not that I would ever rely on it - but it was nice to see how well it held.

There are 2 more brand-new planes which I am just finishing up. I will post about each of them shortly.

Another guessing game & a Seymour obsession

2011-06-02T07:40:00.013-05:00

It appears that my “guess what this is?” photo was not nearly as challenging as I thought it would be. Most people guessed it right away - a rebate panel plane/carriage maker’s plane/No.10. I am waiting for the blade to arrive and will post photos of it as soon as they are completed.

In the meantime - here is another guessing game;

I have always loved American Federal furniture, and the work of John and Thomas Seymour in particular. There are a few reasons for this - the first is their use of truly exquisite materials. I can think of only a few other makers who could combine such strong grain, figure and color and do so in such a harmonious way. And this touches on another one of their great skills - design. The proportions of their work is, for all intents and purposes - perfect. Part of that perfection comes from the balancing act between basic (and complex) proportions, but also the consideration of the materials they were using. Take a sideboard for example. I have seen examples of their work where the entire surface is covered in quite dark woods - mainly Mahogany and lots of Mahogany crotches. The drawer fronts across the top were likely scaled in such a way as to take into account the overall “gray value” of the piece and proportioned accordingly. Switch those drawer fronts for ones with Satinwood or Birch crotch, and you will have an entirely different look - and one that might not be as pleasing. The proportions may need adjusting to help lessen the effects of such graphically strong drawer fronts. This speaks to a really challenging part of design - knowing just how elastic the “rules” really are. The Seymour’s are a perfect example of makers who knew all the rules - and only then, the knowledge of how to break them.

So as I build up the courage to build a Seymour inspired piece(s) - I have begun collecting the materials required. Satinwood crotch appears to be out of the question, but there is a very good substitute - Birch crotch.

I have been collecting small sections of Birch crotches from various firewood piles over the years and a few of them were seasoned enough to open them up.

This is a rather small piece - maybe 5" wide and 12" long, but it is exactly what I was hoping for. I should be able to re-saw at least five, 1/8" thick pieces from each half. With the success of this crotch, I have increased my search to a fevered pace, and am collecting much larger crotch sections.

A few weeks ago we were up at the family cottage and I noticed that someone had cleared out a large number trees in an adjacent vacant lot. I walked through the forest to find quite a few birch trees were taken down and they had only taken the trunks. The forest floor was littered with branches and crotch sections. As I skipped back to the cottage my mind was filled with visions of drawer fronts dancing in my head. We were without a chainsaw - but no matter - we had a small handsaw. My brother-in-law Jeff helped me with the cutting, and we saved this rather amazing section. It is 14" wide and a little over 24" long. Drawer front madness!

The hardest part is going to be waiting for it to season. Once it is though - I should have everything I need to start.

More Desert Ironwood

2011-05-20T07:00:00.006-05:00

The mouths still need to be filed on these 2 planes - but otherwise, they are completed. The A5 is infilled with Desert Ironwood and is a mate to the Ironwood filled A5 from a few posts ago. They came from the same piece of wood.

A knot appeared out of nowhere in the bottom of the handle. There was absolutely no indication that it would be there when I roughed out the blank... I am just thankful it was not 1/4" to the left or right - that would have made a real mess of things.

There was a great bit of burl on the cheek. It made for a tricky fitting process - but it was well worth the efforts.

This XSNo.4ss is filled with a darker Desert Ironwood - Burl this time.

It was a rather grey day when I took these photos but there was a bit of light during this last shot. It was tricky to capture, but the lighter flecks look like gold in sunlight.

This last shot is a detail of a plane I am working on. It is a variation that I have wanted to make for several years now. Any guesses?

2 upcoming shows

2011-05-10T17:38:00.019-05:00

It has been a while since I have attended a woodworking show, and now I find myself going to 2 this month. Both of these shows have been arranged by the fine folks at Lie Nielsen, who have generously invited many of us small toolmakers to participate in their shows.

The first show is this weekend - May 13th and 14th in St. Louis. It is being hosted by Dr. Kent Adkins in his shop. Kent’s shop was featured in a recent issue of Popular woodworking magazine, and I know I was not the only one with a serious case of shop envy. There is an incredible line-up of guest demonstrators at the show. Ron Brese from Brese Planes, Jameel Abraham from Benchcrafted, Bob Zajicek from Czeck Edge Hand Tools and Matt Bickford from MS Bickford Planes. I am really looking forward to visiting with fellow toolmakers and seeing some of the fine pieces of furniture that Kent has been making.

The next show is being held in Montreal, on May 27th and 28th at the Rosemount Technology Centre. This is likely going to be a smaller show, but I am very excited about this one as well. This is my first trip to Montreal and I am looking forward to finally meeting a few customers in person.

The format of these events is perfect. It is very informal, and everyone is encouraged to hang around, bounce from demonstrator to demonstrator, try out a bunch of fine tools and talk with the actual people who make them. There is always a strong element of education at these events - which is evident by the sharpening station always being busy.

If you are close to either of these locations and have some free time on the weekend, stop by and say hello.

A pre-Christmas furniture piece

2011-04-29T18:50:00.006-05:00

(the original sketch)

This past December, I took some time to build a furniture commission. It was a coffee table based on a prototype I built for Jill for Mother’s day last year. The client saw the table in our living room and asked if I would like to make another.

The table itself is based on a sketch I did several years ago at the family cottage. I wanted to explore a few ideas in this project. I wanted something with very simple lines but a unique texture. I played with the idea of a surface that clearly looked like a natural piece of wood but started coming apart in an “unnatural” way. I also wanted to explore chatoyance, and the two seemed to compliment one another.

One “leg” of the table would be a solid piece of wood and as it wrapped around to form the top, there would be some rectangles or squares that would be flipped 180 degrees - causing an interruption to the pattern of the grain. As it flowed across the top, the number of flipped sections would increase and eventually lead to some of the squares being removed entirely. This would continue as it traveled down to form the other leg with the number of holes increasing as it went.

In very short order, I knew this would be a great couple to make this piece for. They were engaged and interested in every aspect of the project - from minor changes to the design, to the dimensions and the materials. They had seen the Morse code in our living room floor and asked if I would be willing to put their family name on the piece somewhere.

One of the biggest challenges to making this table was finding a single slab of wood large enough. I took a few trips to local sawmills and eventually found several pieces to choose from. Well... I bought all 3 (I have a bit of a wood issue) and brought them home. I invited the client over to see if they had a preference for one of them. I planed a small section of each of the boards - the photo below shows the one we decided on - curly soft maple.

Here is a shot of the plank - you can see the curl on the edge.

The Festool track saw was the perfect tool for squaring up the edges.

The next step was to cut the slab into strips. I used my high school drafting square to act as a story stick. It allowed me to keep track of the strips that were going to have sections cut from them - and which ones would be left alone. One of the changes we made to this table was to alter the widths of the strips. On the first prototype table, all the strips were the same width, but we decided to make the strips with the flipped and missing sections a little narrower than the solid strips.

Here is a shot of all the strips cut and the board put back together. Organization was the key to this project. I ended up labeling each strip “A” through “O”. I then numbered each individual piece one through however many pieces there were. If a piece were to be flipped - I would write the code on the “up” side and draw a circular arrow to note that this piece was to be flipped.

I did a rough layout (to scale) in Adobe Illustrator. I printed this out and used it as a guild to help keep track of everything as I was going. The darker grey squares are the ones that are flipped.

The above photo shows all the individual pieces cut, flipped and put in the correct spot.

This project was also a lesson in glue-up strategy. If I recall - there were over 40 glue-ups in all.
Each of the strips was planed flush after it was glued up. The above photo shows one of the segmented strips. I took 3 passes off each side in order to keep everything consistent.

The Morse code inlay was made up of 1/8" tall squares and dashes. Thankfully - they have a short last name. My 1/8" Japanese chisel was perfect for this task.

I ended up using tweezers from my splinter kit to remove the waste from the holes.

The 420 was the time when I glued in the ebony pieces.

The finished code.

With the top and legs glued up, it was time to plane everything flat.

I used the Festool track saw along with the MFT table to cut the 45 degree corners.

I am always amazed at the quality of the cut from this saw. It is better than my tablesaw or any other motorized tool I have ever used. I used the Domino to cut a double row of slots in each end.

I glued each corner individually and made special cauls for the task. Each caul extended to the ends of the pieces and wrapped around the corner.

This photo shows the end of the caul wrapping around the mitered end of the table top. You cannot see it, but there is a shallow rabbet cut into the block so the crisp corner of the miter is not damaged.

The glue-up went very well with minimal clean-up required. I used a small file to put a slight chamfer on the edges of all the holes in the table. The clients stopped in as I was doing this (I had invited them) and asked what I was doing. At that point, I had the chamfers on the top completed, but was still working on the leg. I suggested that they pass their hands across the top to see how it felt. I then suggested they do the same thing on the leg. They understood what I was doing right away.

Here are a few photos of the finished table. It was amazing how the light caught the squares differently depending on the conditions.

(photo by Tracy Schlosser)

The curl in the leg was pretty amazing. When I was laying out all the strips, I was careful to line up the curl instead of the grain. There were a few strips that where shifted up or down by about 1/8" or so.

This was a fun project made great because of the client. They were wonderful to work with, enthusiastic, and involved during the entire process. It made my job all the more enjoyable.

A set of shoulder & rebate planes

2011-04-24T08:16:00.001-05:00

I have recently completed the largest set of shoulder & rebate planes I have ever made. They are infilled with Honduran Rosewood and have bronze sides.

The rebate planes are 1", 3/4" and 1/2" wide and 9" long. They are all bedded at 28 degrees.

The wedges were all successively cut from a single piece of rosewood. There was a great “turn” in the grain that matched the shape of the wedge perfectly.

There was a bit of figure in the front infill blanks, so I shifted them forward or backward to catch as much of it as I could.

The two shoulder planes are 3/4" and 1" wide and are 8" long. These are bedded at 20 degrees.

These two wedges are also matching and have a similar grain pattern to the rebate planes.

The front infills of the shoulder planes were also cut from a single piece - the above photos shows the grain flowing from one plane to the other.

I am just finishing up 2 more planes right now - more Desert Ironwood later this week.

Happy Birthday James.

2011-03-25T06:12:00.021-05:00

This is the last child in a family of three. The other two were completed before Christmas - this one is arriving in time for a birthday.

Other than the incredibly figured Rosewood - there are a few interesting features to this A5 type smoother. The first is the bed angle - 52.5 degrees. This is the highest angle A5 I have made to date and I have to say it is really comfortable and well balanced in use.

The other feature is the front bun. There is a radius across the front of the bun instead of being flat like most of my other A5’s. This radius is also on the A1 panel and the XSNo.4. It makes for an extremely comfortable grip when you cup the plane across the front (as I do).

I have been working on re-designing a familiar plane, and this front radius found its way into the new design. Now that this A5 is done - it confirms that I will absolutely keep the radius on the new plane.

Here are a few more photos.

I sent this photo to a friend of mine and he commented that he wanted to eat it (thinking caramel & chocolate). I emailed him back adding that not only does it look edible - but it smells edible too.

I included this photo because it clearly shows the radius across the front of the bun. It also shows the rough layout lines for shaping the front bun. These lines are really rough guides - the final shape is much more complex than these lines would suggest.

Here is a shot of cutting the shoulders for the over-stuffing. This is (still) a pretty nerve wracking cut.

A collection of recent planes

2011-03-13T22:05:00.014-05:00

The last couple of months have been really busy. In that time, I have had the good fortune to work with some sensational materials - and not only wood this time!

First we have another Honduran Rosewood burl filled plane - a No.4 smoother. This one has a 2" wide blade bedded at 52.5 degrees.

I never get tired of working with Honduran Rosewood burl.

The next plane is an African Blackwood filled A5. This plane has a 2" wide blade and a 50 degree bed angle.

This plane was another reminder that the coldness of steel can still work with a warm wood like African Blackwood. The first all steel plane I made was infilled with Ebony and I could not imagine another infill material working as well. This plane proved me wrong.

This was my first experience working with Damascus steel. I have wanted to try it ever since seeing Brian Buckner’s stunning Damascus steel sided planes in Feb. 2005 at a Planemakers gathering hosted by Popular Woodworking. I contacted Brian to see if he would be ok if I used Damascus in a plane - I did not want to step on his toes. Thankfully - he kindly agreed.

This is a No.4 smoother with a 2" wide blade and a bronze lever cap and lever cap screw. The ebony infill is quartersawn. This plane was tougher than I thought it would be. I started this one as a “spare”. The infills were installed and I was pondering the lever cap. I had fit a Naval brass lever cap and screw and then other more pressing work took me away from it. It sat on my bench for a few weeks. I looked at it several times every day and could not decided if I liked the Naval brass or not.

Then the phone rang.

And the plane was no longer a “spare”. I sent the below photo to the customer. The Naval brass lever cap is on the far right. I quickly duplicated the image in Photoshop and simulated a stainless steel lever cap and a bronze version.

The customer preferred the bronze and I have to say - I am so thankful, because the plane really does look the best with a bronze lever cap.

This next plane is one of those planes that will likely stand out in my memory after I retire from planemaking. The infill is Desert Ironwood, and while I have used Desert Ironwood before - this Ironwood is truly remarkable. Watching the color and grain come alive as I was working on it was amazing. I was pretty excited when I found this piece of Ironwood - but I did not expect it to be this striking.

It is also tricky wood to work with. It is extremely hard but there is a brittleness to it not unlike Madagascar Ebony. Add in all the burl and figure and it was a slow, nerve wracking process. In the end though - it was totally worth it.

This next plane is a Birds eye Boxwood XSNo.4 smoother. Steel sides and a 52.5 degree bed angle.

The infill was soaked in oil for 4 days and left to dry for a week or so. It is finished off with a coat of paste wax.

And last, but certainly not least - a curly Rosewood filled SNo.4 smoother. 1-3/4" wide blade, 52.5 degree bed angle.

I have 4 new planes in the works. One uses a crazy material, one is a variation to a plane that I have been dying to make for several years, and two are planes that have been on the list and am finally getting around to making. 2011 is shaping up to be an amazing year.

Completed A2 jointing plane

2011-03-03T11:00:00.017-05:00

Monday was a “gut-bustin” lapping day - but well worth it. It is still amazing to watch the somewhat rough looking sides transform into perfectly polished sidewalls. De-Smurfing is another highlight... seeing the relationship between the wood and metal for the first time. Here are some pics of the finished jointing plane.

I filed 4 mouths on Tuesday - it was about all I could muster after lapping the plane. The other 3 planes are quite spectacular and I will be posting photos of them in the next few days.

Shaping an A2 jointer front bun

2011-02-24T19:08:00.036-05:00

This plane is not finished yet - I have another 4 coats of french polish to apply to the infill before I assemble the plane, but I thought I would do a short sequence on shaping the front bun.

I start off with a solid block (in this case Honduran Rosewood) and mark out the rough bun shape. I always leave plane parts about 1/8" over sized to give myself some wiggle room. In this case, there is a void in the top corner that I am hoping will be removed during the process... but I do want to stay as close to it as possible - there is a great bit of burl right beside it.

The fitting process is pretty simple - plane to fit. I am always thankful that I have infills to make infills.

Here is the block for the bun, fit to the shell. It is a very snug fit - I could take the plane out of the vise and pick it up by either the block for the bun, or by the handle.

The next step is to establish the shoulder where the infill transitions into the top edge of the bronze sidewall. This is done with chisels and then refined with a scraper and sandpaper.

A close up of the shoulder.

The above photo looks like I skipped a bunch of steps, but all this shaping is done on the bandsaw. I use my bandsaw a little like a shaper because it is very fast and accurate. I cannot imagine doing this type of work with a router or shaper (or any rotating cutter). I suspect the nature of their cutting action would mean I would have to work with fairly bland straight grained wood.

At this stage, I have done a fair amount of file work to refine the shape further. I have also started some of the sanding.

Here is the finished front bun. Below are some detail shots showing some of the amazing grain.

And a few photos with 8 coats of french polish..

Hide glue & hammer veneering - round I

2011-01-28T20:37:00.022-05:00

About 6 months ago, a good friend of mine in Oregon called to ask if I had ever considered the adhesives I use in my woodworking. I could tell by the pace of the question that he was a bit concerned about it. I told him that for furniture I usually use PVA glue - “why do you ask?” He proceeded to tell me about a conversation with one of the conservators at a pretty well known museum. The conservator said he was amazed by the quality of the fine furniture being made at some of the fine woodworking schools... too bad they rely completely on modern adhesives as the pieces will not last more than 2 generations. It was his opinion that many of these objects will literally fall apart because they rely totally on modern adhesives for their structure. “It is a shame that no one uses hot hide glue anymore”.

This prompted a very long conversation. We noted that North Bennett Street school might be the only institution we could think of that still promotes the use of hot hide glue. We talked about the fact that many of us might have visions of our furniture outlasting us - and that our grand-kids will be fighting over it. I know I certainly do. And I think many of the students who have attended any of the fine woodworking schools would feel the same way. We both agreed that we really ought to explore using hot hide glue.

Not long after hanging up the phone, I jumped onto youTube to see if there was anything to do with hide glue or hammer veneering. I came across a familiar name - Rob Millard. I have admired Rob’s work for years (I have a bit of a thing for Federal furniture) and seeing his name was like seeing a familiar face at the airport. I watched his 2 part series on hammer veneering.

He made it look very straightforward, almost easy (and I know that as soon as someone can make something look easy... they are really good at what they do). So in typical fashion - I jumped in up to my neck.

I ordered a glue pot from Joel (tools for working wood). As I was waiting - I decided on the first project. Our sunroom has been mostly done for a few years now. All that was missing were the 3 lift up doors in the upper cabinets. These doors were to hide the “ugly stuff’. The doors were going to be veneered with Macassar Ebony. What stopped me from making them was the fact that I had a hard time wrapping my head around work with mdf or chipboard. I was not sure how any fasteners were going to hold in any of these materials and to be honest - I cannot stand working with them. What was so appealing about hammer veneering, was the fact that Rob uses a solid wood core. This instantly appealed to me. I have always collected quarter sawn material whenever I find it. It is perfect for drawer sides and all sorts of other applications. Rob usually uses quarter sawn poplar but he suggested that most any wood would work. I went to Rob’s site to see which of his DVD’s I might get for further instruction. He suggested Making a Federal Inlaid Candlestand.

As I was waiting for the glue pot and DVD to arrive, I realized I needed some glue and a veneer hammer. I considered buying a veneer hammer for about 3 seconds and thought making one would be more fun and much faster. Once again I followed Rob’s advise and used a piece of UHMW plastic for the edge. Here is my veneer hammer made from scraps from the Shaker bench restoration.

A luthier friend of mine generously donated a bucket (literally) of ground hide glue. Thanks again Mark. Once the pot arrived - I was set to go.

This is the Macassar Ebony veneer. I had already inlayed some of it into the visible ends of the upper cabinets - I wanted the veneer to wrap around the entire built-in. The rest of the sunroom is done in cherry, so it was a no-brainer to veneer cherry onto the insides of the doors.

Here is a shot of the quarter sawn core.

One of the tricks to successful hammer veneering is to use a layer of cross veneer. This layer is placed perpendicular to the solid wood core. It is also a great opportunity to test out hammer veneering before you use the good veneer. I used some quarter sawn Sapele for the cross veneering. You can see the cross veneer in the above photo as well as the off-cut from the core. Another critical tip from Rob was to apply a coat of sizing to the flat surfaces and a few coats of sizing to the end grain. This was a great tip as I would have never thought of doing this. It made veneering the edges quite easy.

I edged the visible end and bottom edge of the door with some of the Ebony.

Two ends showing the face veneer continuing around the corners.

2 of the doors ready for the pulls.

Just when I was feeling all proud of how well everything went, I screwed it up in the finishing stage. I applied a coat of varnish directly onto the Macassar ebony. Three days later - it was still a bit tacky. I sent a sheepish email to Jameel to see if he had any advise. His response was something to the effect of “dude... I always put a coat of shellac on first! Are you nuts?” I have put finish directly on Rosewoods and ebony many times, but this time it clearly did not work.

Thankfully - I was able to remove the finish in less than 10 minutes and I was back to square one without damage to anything but my pride. This time I did apply a coat of shellac and the next day, the finish went on perfectly.

Our sunroom is quite small so I had to take 2 separate photos and splice them together. The lighting is not ideal, but you can at least see how the doors fit into the cabinets. On the left side you can see how the Macassar wraps around the cabinet.

(And a shot taken during the day)

(the door pulls)

In hindsight - I was kind of an idiot for cutting my (hammer veneering) teeth on 11" wide Macassar Ebony veneer - but it worked wonderfully. Here are some observations about hide glue and hammer veneering in general.

First - get Rob’s DVD. The first disk alone is well worth the cost of admission. Rob has a very no-nonsense manner about him and watching him work is an incredible education. He works methodically and is very good at explaining everything that is going on - including what to do with cracks in the veneer or if they develop part way through the process. I thoroughly enjoyed the DVD.

Hot hide glue does not smell bad at all.

Getting the correct consistency of the glue is very important. As I was mixing my first few batches I was running back and forth from the house to re-watch the DVD to get a sense of the consistency of the glue running off Rob’s brush. It was only after I stopped running back and forth that I realized I could have just brought my laptop into the shop.

Making a veneer hammer is really easy compared to making planes.

Working with hide glue is really quite pleasant and I will absolutely try to switch over as time permits. As my friend Mark said as he handed me the bucket of ground hide glue, “be careful... you will find yourself just gluing stuff together just because you can”. He was right - I was gluing all sorts of stuff to see how it bonded. It was very impressive.

In Rob’s DVD, he often lightly sprays the veneer to keep it from curling. As I was working with the Macassar - I was having to apply at least 3 times more water to keep the veneer flat. But... it did work and the veneer went down very well. I should also mention that this veneer was very thick - it was not the typical “spit-through” veneer that is available now. I am sure that increased the need for more water.

You can successfully plane veneer if your planes are set for a light cut.

I would like to offer my deepest thanks to Rob Millard for all his email correspondence during this first adventure with hot hide glue. He was very generous with his time and advise. If you have any interest in working with hide glue but are not quite sure where to start - watch his youTube video as a primer and then pick-up one of his DVDs. That will get you well on your way.

Photo fiasco

2011-01-18T19:44:00.008-05:00

(new camera on the left - old camera on the right)

I have had the same point and shoot camera for almost 10 years now. It is a great little camera - it has taken all the photos on this blog. It is a true point and shoot camera in that I do nothing with any of the settings of the camera other than turn the flash off and toggle between the macro feature for close up work and the “normal” picture mode. When I first got the camera, I changed some of the settings - the image quality, the image size etc. but nothing too involved.

After I take a shot, I plug the camera into my Mac, turn on the camera, the camera pops up on the desktop and I copy the images onto the desktop. I delete the images from the camera and unplug it. I open the images and crop them if I need to and label them accordingly. That is it. No muss - no fuss. Easy-peasy.

The camera is a Nikon Coolpix 4300 and is very basic.

About 2 weeks before Christmas, the camera started to die. The mechanism that moves the 3X zoom lens in and out was making some sad noises. I knew its days were numbered. I managed to squeeze a few more shots out of it, but I knew it was time to replace it. So I jumped in the car and drove to Henry’s to get a new camera.

I should back up a bit. Ten years ago when I bought this camera I went into our local Henry’s in Toronto. I had a plane along with me and walked in and told the sales person that I was committed to buying a camera today as long as I would be able to photograph this object (the plane) and see how the images looked in Photoshop. No problem he said, and proceeded to show me several cameras. The Nikon Coolpix 4300 was the clear winner by a long shot.

Fast-forward to a month ago and I went to our local Henry’s to repeat the process. No such luck. Apparently, they did not have Photoshop on any of the computers in their store. I explained the situation - the camera that I was using and that I was looking to replace it. The sales person showed me a few and said the Nikon P100 was the closest evolution to the Coolpix 4300... but it was “much, much better”. So I bought it - all pleased as punch that my camera issue was really a non-issue. Everything about it was pretty familiar - there were a few more bells and whistles - but the interface felt similar. It was the white balance that concerned me the most. I was working on a plane at the time and did what I normally do throughout the day - take photos as I go and send the customer a mid-day report on what I had completed.

I walked into the house at lunch and copied the images onto the desktop and opened them in Photoshop. No problem. Until I saw them. They were dreadful. And I mean really dreadful. Here is an example;

Some of the above image looks ok - the mallet in the background is color accurate... but the Mystery Rosewood handle is horrible. The blacks are not black and everything has an odd haze to it. Here is another photo of the front bun block;

Notice how the color of the wood is kinda wonky while other colors like the Record blue vise are pretty good. For comparison - here is a photo of another plane taken with the old camera. Both photos were taken with planes in the same vises.

The blues are ok, but the clarity and accuracy of the wood is very different. I spent about 20 minutes color correcting the P100 photos and realized there was no way I was going to spend this amount of time monkeying around. So I decided to return the camera.

As I was driving home, it occurred to me that I may be able to find a used 4300 on Ebay. When I got home I checked, and to my delight there were half a dozen to choose from. The new to me camera arrived on December 24th. I was like a kid would be on the next morning - I tore into that package as fast as I could. I ran out into the shop, took a few photos and ran back to the office to see how they looked. Part of me was a little worried that I had totally lucked out on my first 4300 - that it was a photographic anomaly. Thankfully - the photos were just as good. I was elated (and very relieved). I quickly turned right around and bought a second 4300 from Ebay ($60.75 delivered) so now I have a spare. The back-up camera is just as good, so I should be covered for the next 5 years at least. Fingers crossed.

A Mystery solved & the last plane of 2010

2011-01-05T10:53:00.001-05:00

Nothing like waiting until the last minute. I filed the mouth on this 16-1/2" A1 panel plane on December 31st 2010.It is filled with mystery Rosewood. And... I think the mystery of Mystery Rosewood has been solved. I received an email from a very skilled guitar maker in England who was quite certain he knew what the Mystery Rosewood was. Madagascar Rosewood (Dalbergia Baronii). I have seen Dalbergia Baronii many times and it does not look anything like my Mystery Rosewood. He assured me that it was and that I was using what he called “ridiculous premium grade Madagascar Rosewood ”. After a few back and forth emails, some photos and the shipping of a small sample - I am quite certain that the Dalbergia Baronii he is using is the same stuff that I have been calling Mystery Rosewood. It seems strangely fitting that on this second last Mystery Rosewood filled plane - it is finally identified. Thanks Anthony for helping with this.

Here are a few more photos.

This A5 was a surprise Christmas gift. It was all I could do to keep from posting these photos. This plane is infilled with some stunning East Indian Rosewood. It was an a infill set that I had roughed out in 2004. I knew it would make for an incredible plane. Here are a bunch of photos.

The sun was streaming in when I was filing the mouth on the A5. I could not resist taking a quick photo of the grain.

An Amboyna burl test shaving from the above A5.

And now for something completely unrelated.

Jill and I found the perfect piece of artwork for above our fireplace. A dear friend of ours, Noriko Maeda, is a phenomenal Japanese calligrapher. We have always loved her work (take a moment and check it out). Noriko stopped in just before Christmas to show us a few of her pieces. This one stood out right away. It is curious that it is based on the Japanese character for water. A fitting home above the fireplace I think.

The above photo has not been messed with in Photoshop, and I could not help but think that the strange purple glow inside the fire is someone traveling by floo powder. Lucas suggested this may be how Santa travels.

Over the holidays, I was re-introduced to an old friend. This is the very first infill plane I owned - an un-handled Spiers coffin smoother. For all intents and purposes - this is the plane that started it all. It has been living in a small display cabinet in the shop. The iron it came with (which was not the original iron) was just about done - there was only 3/4" in front of the slot. I had lapped the sole 12 years ago (and noticed that I had not done a particularly good job of it) so I decided to do a little work on it. It really needed a new blade. This was a pretty big deal for me. It felt a little weird putting one of my blades in a Spiers plane. The new blade was a little thicker which meant I had to file the mouth open a few thousandths of an inch. Filing the mouth felt strange too - I was a little nervous despite having done this hundreds of times on my own planes.

This is the only plane I have with a 45 degree bed angle and I have to say, it is kinda fun using it again. I have been working with Basswood over the last few weeks (much more on this later:) and have been enjoying the lower bed angle in this easy to plane wood. And as Garrett Hack says - planing Basswood makes anyone feel like a hero!

I am going to stop this post here. I have several more new topics to introduce in the next few weeks. My first experiences with hide glue, my camera nightmares and building a 59LP.

The thing that still keeps me interested in making planes...

2010-12-07T21:44:00.044-05:00

(Honduran Rosewood burl in a SNo.4)

... is the wood.

The wood still captivates me and keeps me coming back for more. And it is a good thing too, because if plane making was all metal, I would have lost interest about 6 years ago. Sure, there are some pretty amazing things you can do with metal. Piening two pieces of steel together and watching the dovetails disappear is still pretty wicked. Polished steel chamfers are stunning, and wrapping a plane in bronze is gorgeous. But truth be told, the metal is just a delivery vehicle for the wood.

On those mornings when I wake up knowing I get to cut into a brand new piece of wood I enter the shop giddy with excitement. And an overwhelming sense of responsibility. Most of this material scares me. Scares me because wasting any of it is borderline criminal. Much of it is irreplaceable. Unique pieces that each have a story - and not just my story - the stories from the people who I acquired them from. Wood is not just a commodity for me. Each piece is unique and if I am careless about how I use it - it’s story can never fully be told. I know this is all starting to sound a bit precious. I know... it is just wood. I get that.

There are pieces of wood that I will not use for planes - for a variety of reasons. The most common reason is size. Cutting up a large piece of timber into small plane parts is irresponsible (on my part). Or if there is an unusually large area of figure - cutting it up into small bits would not be the best use of that material. It would be wasteful to cut up an East Indian Rosewood crotch to use for plane parts. A much more noble use would be to re-saw it into veneer and use it for a Federal style sideboard (purely hypothetically speaking of course:)

Over the past few months, I have been reminded of the beauty of fine timbers over and over again. I have been busy working on a number of planes all of which are special. Here are some photos of the last several planes.

These next 2 shots are of the same Honduran Rosewood burl filled SNo.4 as the first photo.

Two shots of the inside of an A5 Bun. This is some stunning East Indian Rosewood that I roughed out in 2004.

The next 5 shots are of a Rosewood filled SNo.4. Enough said.

This A1 panel is one of a set of 3 planes. This one has a few unique features. Not only are all three planes from the same piece of Rosewood, their bed angles are not typical. This panel is 17-1/2" long and bedded at 50 degrees.

It also has a radius across the toe and heel and a polished chamfer. This is a variation I did several years ago on another panel plane and this customer quite liked it. This radius is repeated in the XSNo.4 and the future A5.

Here is the XSNo.4 with the radius across the front. It is subtle and hard to photograph, but it is a really nice touch. This XSN0.4 is bedded at 55 degrees.

The rear infill of the XSNo.4.

The next 2 photos are of an African Blackwood filled SNo.4ss. When I roughed out this set, I was amazed to see some curl and figure. Normally old African Blackwood is so dark you cannot see anything. This was a real treasure to find. I took these photos on the balcony in some pretty bright light to show off the figure.

The next 2 photos are of a Rosewood filled SNo.4.

And last, but certainly not least, a Desert Ironwood filled XSNo.4

I am working on a furniture commission right now and have been taking photos of it as I go. I will post about it when it is done. This is the first piece I have built on the new Shaker bench. I have to say, I love this bench already. I love the fact that the dog holes are 2" apart and there are multiple dogs to choose from. No more running up and down the bench looking for a dog! Thanks for that tip Jameel. The wagon vise rocks. I love how the work is so well supported all around the dog in the vise traveler. And the massive bench surface is nice too - lots of room for both furniture parts and tools.

Release the hounds!

2010-11-21T13:32:00.021-05:00

All of my previous benches have had 2 (square) bench dogs - one in the tail vice and one in the main part of the bench. During the Shaker bench restoration, I had been in pretty close contact with Jameel and one of the questions he asked was if I was going to put a dog in each hole. I was really surprised by the question, but after talking about it for a while, he convinced me to have at least several dogs in various spots on the bench.

Because I had only ever had 2 dogs per bench, I always made them individually. In this case, I tried something new. Well... I am not sure if it is new - but it was new to me, and I thought it might be worth sharing a simple way to make a lot of dogs in one swoop.

I started with a few offcuts from the bench build and essentially made two, 4" wide dogs and then ripped individual dogs off that glued up uber-dog. Here is a quick series of photos to show how it went.

The 1/4" shoulder at the top of the dog was cut on the table saw using a cross-cut sled. The “spring” was ripped on the bandsaw. Remember to factor in the 1/8" thickness of the spring when calculating the overall width of the dog. You will end up ripping the spring twice in order to end up with an 1/8" thick spring (it is initially 1/4" with the first cut).

I planed off the bandsaw marks and planed both sides of the spring.

This photo shows how I planed the angle at the bottom of the dog. I used a longer plane and registered the sole of the plane on the top of the dog and planed the end until I had about a 1" area for gluing the spring. The arrow shows where the plane is resting.

A few spring clamps to hold it all together.

Once the glue has dried, plane the edges flat and square and proceed to the bandsaw to rip the individual dogs. Rip the dogs slowly - the spring is quite thin, and if you try to rush it, you could get tear-out on the backside of the spring. I cut them slightly wider than I needed so I could sneak up on the fit with a plane.

Here are the 4 dogs from the first batch. (the 1/2 dog in the middle was waste). A few plane passes on each edge and they were fitting perfectly. If the spring is a little too stiff and the dogs are hard to get in and out, use the same process for creating the angled glue area and remove some of the material where the spring starts to bend. A few passes can make a big difference to how easily the dog fits.

shaker bench - the fix

2010-11-13T14:27:00.021-05:00

I did not think I would be repairing the shaker bench so soon! As Dan commented, I have made a pretty major structural error. This is one of those sad instances where, in hindsight, you cannot believe you overlooked it. I oriented the half-blind dovetails on the end cap the wrong way. The force from the wagon vise is not at all supported by the dovetails.

What to do.

I spent a good part of that morning thinking about the options. I could put a few lag bolts through the end cap into the main part of the bench. This would be easy to do and would solve the problem. Trouble is - I really did not want to disturb the clean surface of the end cap. Set this idea aside to see if there was another solution. I then thought of adding a steel plate to the underside of the end cap and connecting it to the front apron. Jameel suggested moving one of the wagon vise rails forward so one of the screws also tied into the end cap. Moving the rail and adding a steel plate seemed like a pretty solid solution - so I went for it (and I could still add the lags if this failed).

Unfortunately - the Metal Supermarket had closed early and I was not able to get a piece of 1/4" steel for the plate. You would think that a guy who makes planes would have lots of scrap material on hand... nothing. Then I remembered the spare base plate for a jack post. It was 5/16" thick and had three pre-drilled holes in it. With some careful arranging - I could get the piece I needed and avoid all the holes but one. I was able to position the hole where I needed to make a cutout for the rail anyway. Unfortunately - this meant a lot of extra cutting. About 5 minutes in, elbows burning, I reminded myself that this was my punishment for making such a stupid mistake. It was about 1/2 an hour of hacksawing but the rough shape was done. Thankfully, I am fairly efficient at using a hacksaw and there was minimal filing and clean up to do on the edges.

Here is the plate in position with the wagon vise rail re-located. It took a few minutes to arrange the positions of the screws. There were quite a few other holes in the end cap already and I did not want to turn it into a piece of Swiss cheese. From left to right; the two left most screws catch the front apron only. The next one in catches a solid part of the end cap. The screw in front of the rail catches the solid part of the end cap and the last screw catches the end cap as well as the tenon of the main part of the bench.

I really debated on trying to locate a screw through the 1/2 blind dovetails, but I was worried it would compromise them structurally so I opted to position 2 screws in the solid section above the front apron.

Now that I had the top off (again) - I had an opportunity to take a few photos of the underside of the wagon vise. I was not sure if my explanation of the traveler covering the hardware and providing a “dead zone” above the base leg made sense. In the above photo, you can see the large nut is just proud of the Honduran Rosewood. This was done so the nut would bottom out against the end cap and not the wood. At least I took clamping force into account this time.

You can also see that the dog hole is positioned as far forward as I could get it with the pre-drilled hole in the hardware.

Another view.

Hopefully this will take care of the it. If there is a problem, I will likely know about it rather quickly - this bench will see a lot of use. And while this whole thing has been quite embarrassing - Dan, thanks for catching this. I would rather deal with it now than after something went “pop”.

Shaker bench restoration - the home stretch

2010-11-10T19:38:00.076-05:00

(this is where it started - Riley dumping out mouse poop from the drawers)

This bench arrived on July 07 2007. Kinda embarrassing that it has taken over 3 years to restore it. I have posted a bunch of photos of the base restoration here, and a very recent post about restoring the Emmert vise. The biggest, and scariest job was restoring the top. In a strange series of domino events, I found myself needing to finish the bench because I needed a bench this size for an upcoming project. It was time to start.

One of the first considerations was re-locating the Emmert to the right hand corner (where a left handed person would want it), and fit the bench with a BenchCrafted wagon vise (more on this vise later).

The original top was made up of fourteen, 1-1/4" wide, 2-3/4"deep strips of hard maple. The back 13" was a single 1-1/8" thick piece of hard maple. The bench was just over 8' long. The front 4 strips were pretty trashed - I pulled out about 34 nails in the first strip alone. It also had a rather large mortise cut into it for the Emmert, so I decided to replace the front 4 strips with new material. This would allow me to make a thicker top to suit the wagon vise specs as well as mount the Emmert from scratch (not to mention eliminating the risk of missing a nail and damaging a machine or hand tool).

To my surprise, the adhesive used to hold the 14 strips was either so old, or of such poor quality, that I was able to pull them apart. I only “lost” one strip in the process. I did a very careful nail and screw check and then re-dressed all 4 sides of each strip. They were in excellent condition and I only lost about 1/8" of height and width. I also flattened and squared the large single board at the back. All I can say is thank goodness for a 16" jointer!

I glued up the front section into 2 pieces (4 and 5 strips respectively). I then put each glue up through the thickness planer before gluing the two pieces together. This made for an extremely accurate middle section.

Above is a photo of the glued up middle section as well as the 13" wide single board at the back.

I used five pieces of 1-1/4" wide by 4" deep hard maple for the very front of the bench. I treated this front section as a separate piece. It was wide enough that it housed both vises. I decided to waste away as much as I could for each vise before I glued up this front section. It worked out really well and saved myself quite a bit of work.

I cut 24 square dog holes into the second strip to keep it aligned with the wagon vise. There was enough space to the right of the Emmert for a single dog hole... just in case I am ever dressing anything over 8'. It is a lonely dog hole... but I am sure it will be much appreciated when the time comes.

In the above photo, you can see the radius cutout to the left of the dog hole strip. This it to accommodate the wagon vise hardware.

One thing I really debated was if I should flush mount the Emmert or not. I was really on the fence with it. My gut told me not to - it would greatly reduce the ease of using the vise. Thankfully Jameel and Raney jumped in and confirmed to go with my gut.

I did decide to bury the vise as far into the bench as I could before it would restrict the range of movement. This meant that the “L” shaped mounting bracket would be attached to the second strip from the front edge. And this meant that the front strip was going to be cut completely. I did not want to cut the front strip and then try to glue it on after the fact so I came up with another solution.

I used an off-cut that was the same dimension as the front strip and marked out what I thought was the best cut out. Before I started cutting, I attached a strip of maple across the top and put two indexing screws in each end. I then cut out the shape until I had something I was happy with. The photo above shows this template over the hub of the Emmert. The strip connecting the two pieces indexed off the top of the mounting bracket - perfectly representing how it would work when the bracket was flush mounted.

This photo shows the template on top and the actual front strip below (held with the red clamps). I pre-drilled the two holes for the radius’s and then cut a shallow v-shaped groove along the layout lines. This line served a few functions. Firstly, it let me know where to glue and where not to glue. The gap also kept any squeeze out from getting into the area that was to be removed. It worked perfectly!

Here is a photo of the rough mortise for the Emmert.

And a photo of the space for the traveler of the wagon vise.

Here is a photo of the entire bench top - including the end caps. The breadboard end caps are held on by way of a 1" long tenon and a few 1/4" square drawbore pegs. They are also attached to the front of the bench with 1/2 blind dovetails. The 13" plank at the back of the bench is supported by a piece of maple glued into the dado - essentially turning it from an “innie” to an “outie”. The board is held in place with two screws from the underside of the outie.

Here is a photo of the holes for mounting the wagon vise.

The wagon vise installed.

The wagon vise traveler is a block of Honduran Rosewood to match the rosewood knob on the wheel.

There were a few issues with how to fit this new top to the existing base. The original benchtop did not have any dog holes, but I was able to adapt this new feature fairly easily. It was just a question of positioning. The traveler is an L-shaped block of wood and is longer at the back (the end that is closest to the wheel). It covers the metal hardware it is mounted to. This provided the perfect amount of “dead space” to position right over top of leg of the base.

(with the traveler moved forward, you can see the end of the white oak leg)

This photo shows the traveler in the position above the leg and the bench dog just clears it. Phew!! I did have to cut two 5/8" deep, by 7/8" wide channels into the top of the base to allow for the undermounted hardware to clear it. A pretty minor alteration in my opinion (see below photo).

Thankfully, the top drawers are set back far enough to clear the bench dogs and will be out of the way enough to allow for any clamping along the front edge.

My first experience with one of Jameel’s BenchCrafted wagon vises was a few years ago in England of all places. I returned home from that trip and decided I really did need one for this bench restoration (whenever it was going to happen). I had contacted Jameel before the Woodworking in America conference and made arrangements for him to bring a left hand oriented vice for me. Sadly, it sat in its box for over a year.

The hardware was very well machined and very well packaged. I know this is going to sound odd, but I always note how things are packaged. If the person took care with their packaging and packing, it usually suggests to me that they take pride in their work and more often than not, my expectations with the contents are exceeded. This hardware was no exception. Everything moved extremely well, smoothly and without slop. The instructions were very clear and I really appreciated the fact that there were many photos and descriptions of the left handed version. Thanks for that Jameel! Now that the vise is installed I am even more impressed. It works like a dream and I cannot wait to try it out. It has a tremendous capacity in that it has a very long travel distance. I also like the fact that the traveler is 1-3/4" wide which means I can clamp any thing up to 1-3/4" thick vertically.

Here is a photo of the finished mortise for the Emmert. I did not complete it until I had the top planed flat and true - I figured the 5/16" deep area for the top of the bracket would change once the top was flat.

Here are a few photos of the Emmert mounted.

As close to flush as I could get before interferring with the range of motion.

The Emmert in the upright position to show the cutout in the bench.

A close up of the cutout (although the camera chose to focus on some Honduran Rosewood logs in the background. Can’t say I blame it though!)

And the finished bench top. I sent this photo to Jameel and he politely asked if I was going to do anything with the last original “General green” drawer. The question made me smile. I am of two minds. Part of me is tempted to leave it - just because it is so ugly and part of the story of the bench. The other part of me knows it is so ugly. I think I will live with it for a while and see how I feel about it later. Part of me worries that I will end up replacing both drawers with ones that are not falling apart. Maybe this restoration is not really over - just mostly done - at least the hard parts are done (famous last words I know).

A wicked wedge

2010-10-10T08:20:00.014-05:00

Sorry about all the boxwood planes recently - I promise the next one will be different (think, Honduran Rosewood burl). That being said - I could not resist posting about this plane. It is a 1/2" wide, 6" long shoulder plane. I have made a few of these over the years, and curiously - they have all been steel sided versions.

It is the wedge for this plane that is so striking. I had a small section of boxwood that clearly had a large branch coming out of it. I took a chance and cut into it to see if there was any typical crotch figure in it. I was not prepared for it to be this spectacular!

Here is a photo of the rough wedge layout beside my own plane to show how perfectly the figure would fit into the wedge shape.

And the finished wedge. It seems almost a shame to hide all the curl in the body of the plane:) I think there is enough left for one, maybe two more wedges.

A post for JW - cleaning up an Emmert Vice

2010-09-23T10:43:00.029-05:00

JW requested that I post a few photos of the Emmert vice restoration. I wrote about this bench a few years ago now - and sadly, I have not finished the restoration. The above photo shows it in its original condition - or at least the condition I found it in. There are quite a few photos of the base restoration here.

(the parts after the first “toothbrushing”)

I would consider myself a minimalist when it comes to restoring things. I clean and fix things that are broken, make sure that parts interact properly, but I am not a re-paint make it look like new guy. I like patina and the evidence that things have been used. I view myself as the current keeper of the vice and will undoubtedly impart my own wear (and tear) on it.

The cleaning process involved taking the whole vice apart and scrubbing it with an old dry toothbrush. It is amazing how much crud a toothbrush can remove! After all the loose dust was off, I soaked it in Varsol for about 15 minutes. I then used the same toothbrush and removed everything else. There were a few stubborn parts that I used a brass bristled brush to remove. For a few really bad spots, I did use steel wool being careful not to brighten the castings too much.

This photo shows the level of clean I was after. The little bits of green paint do not bother me - it is all part of the story of the vice.

There were no missing parts and only a single broken part. I was able to purchase a replacement collar from CS Machinery. It was not a perfect type match - but I was fine with that. For anyone interested in Emmert Vices - this site is an amazing resource - I found it very helpful.

I kept my camera handy and took a few photos as I took the vice apart to avoid forgetting how it went back together.

Here is a photo with the screw removed. I also replaced these two slotted screws - they were stripped.

The Allen screw and collar that hold the screw in place.

Here is the vice back together with leather lining the jaws. I also made a new handle for it (which is a little too long).

And with the jaws wide open.

I have used this vice many times now and I am very impressed with it. I am able to hold anything. The only issue I have to resolve is the cam seems to loosen sometimes which makes clamping a bit awkward. I suspect I just need to tweak the way a few of the parts interact and it will be fine.

Oh, one other thing - I did lap both sides of the cam and the locking nut to ensure flatness. They were a little rough. I also waxed all the surfaces.

JW - I hope this helps.

Another Boxwood plane & a ridiculous first shaving

2010-09-18T13:48:00.004-05:00

I have just completed the largest Boxwood filled plane I have made to date. Working with Boxwood poses one really serious challenge - how to keep the wood clean! It may not seem like a big deal, but Boxwood will pick up even the smallest amounts of dirt, dust or grime. On some days, I must have washed my hands a couple dozen times. When I was shaping the rear infill and the tops of the steel sidewalls, I had to take extra care when draw-filing to keep the hard steel shavings from embedding in the Boxwood. I would draw one stroke, clean the file (aka, wiped it on my shorts), take another stroke and repeat.

It has been a very long time since I have made either a jointer or panel plane without an adjuster, and I have to say - it was really fun. The lack of adjuster allowed me to use a handle treatment which Joe and I used on the very first panel planes we made. You can see it clearly in the first photo. As the top of the handle comes towards the blade, it drops quickly and then forms a gentle ogee curve that leads into the slot for the cap iron. Well... most of the original examples I have seen do not lead into the cap iron slot... but it is much cleaner looking when they do.

The other interesting aspect to this plane was the inclusion that appeared on the front bun. It is fairly common for Boxwood to have inclusions like this as it is a very slow growing scrubby tree that is often quite twisted. I personally love these anomalies - it is what makes Boxwood (and wood in general) so amazing. I have seen one of my planemaking heros, Bill Carter, use these inclusions to great effect. Thankfully, the inclusion was completely solid so there were no structural issues. I was most pleased when the customer contacted me saying he loved it as well.

When I am filing a mouth, I have to start with a fully tuned iron so I can accurately see what is happening. During the fitting process, I inevitably get a ding or two in the iron, which I always re-hone out before taking a few test shavings. I usually take the first test cuts on a fairly tight grained wood like cherry or pear and take both a heavy shaving and then a light cut to make sure the plane is working well in both situations. The mouth on this plane is between 0.004" and 0.005". After the mouth was done, I took a heavy shaving first. It worked perfectly. Then I tried a fine shaving. The above photo is what I got. I was pretty amazed. It is not very often that I get a shaving like this within the first few test cuts.

A cute little plane

2010-09-09T10:55:00.006-05:00

A 1/2" wide, 3-3/4" long, dovetailed rebate plane. The bed is Boxwood and the wedge is birds-eye/figured Boxwood.

I just had to use lamb’s tongues to terminate the chamfers!

A new bench for Woodworking in America

2010-08-30T07:58:00.009-05:00

(Riley chipping out the dog holes)

It seems only fitting that my newest workbench was made, in part, for the upcoming Woodworking in America conference. I cannot think of anyone who has renewed the interest (and importance) of benches more than Chris Schwarz. I was armed with his book as well as Scott Landis’s book. I poured thorough both to see if there were any bits of wisdom that I had previously overlooked. There were a few and will be incorporated into this bench - although maybe not in time for Sept. 30th.

This was bench number 4 for me. My bench use has not changed too much in the last 15 years, so the overall design is quite similar. I like a tail vice, a face vice and square dog holes, 36" off the ground and I do like the option of storing tools below. A few of the new additions will be a planing stop integrated into the end and the use of two holdfasts.

This new bench had only one requirement - it had to fit into our Jetta wagon (with the seats down) and come apart for easy transportation. I have done a bit of site-work over the last 12 months and lugging an 8' bench (when one does not own a truck) really sucks. Between that and the upcoming conference - it was time to build another bench.

Here are the specs; the top is 60" long, 20" deep and made up of a 1-5/8" thick core of hard maple. The skirt is 3-7/8" as are the bread-board ends. The tail vice jaw is Walnut, the base is Red Elm and the end panels are spalted Mulberry.

This bench also features a very new quick release tail vice by Veritas. Riley and I had an opportunity to see a prototype of this vice when we visited Lee Valley head office this past February - so when I was given an opportunity to try one out I jumped at it. For south-paws like myself, this vice is perfect - it is completely reversible and literally took a few minutes to switch the orientation around. It did pose one massive challenge though. The bench top is only 60" and the tail vice needs 17" of mounting space and the face vice on the other end needs 8". If I followed tradition and kept the base between the vices, a chipmunk would be able to topple it.

The only solution I could come up with was to position one of the legs over the tail vice hardware - to use the vice hardware itself as a support surface. There are 4 mounting lag screws that travel through the vice hardware and into the underside of the bench top. I bought two new lag screws that were 1-1/2" longer than the supplied lags and made a bridge between these two locations. The bridge had some cutouts to allow for the moving parts to move freely - but I figured it was worth a shot. As I was pondering what metal to make the bridge out of, I walked past a very large piece of African Blackwood. And then smiled. I have often joked with people that African Blackwood has more in common with mild steel than wood... so why not make the bridge out of Blackwood?

Unfortunately, the above photo is the only one I have of the Blackwood bridge and how it provides support for the leg.

Note how the leg just clears the row of dog holes.

Here is a photo of another minor modification - the bread board end wraps around the hardware.

The quick release vice is remarkably smooth and a real treat to use. Please feel free to stop in an check it out at WWIA.

I also wanted to share an odd-ball technique for dealing with really warped, thin pieces of lumber. Several years ago, I had an opportunity to buy a small pile of really striking spalted Mulberry. They were already surfaced to 1/2" thick, and sadly, were extremely twisted. They sat in my shop for years as I tried to figure out a way to use them. I decided to use two of them for the end panels of the bench. There was no way to re-saw them so I decided to try a backwards veneer approach; glue the substrate on first, then re-saw.

Here is the sandwich. From left to right; a piece of 1/2" thick, Baltic Birch plywood, 1/2" thick piece of spalted Mulberry, 7/8" BB plywood, Mulberry, 1/2"BB plywood. The three piece of Baltic Birch ply. were stiff enough to just about flatten the two pieces of Mulberry.

Here is the first re-sawn slice. The piece on the left has a 1/2" piece of BB and about 3/16" of Mulberry. The Mulberry was strong enough to introduce a bit of twist in this first piece, but with a flat face on the BB side, a few passes through the thickness planer reduced the Mulberry enough that it stayed flat. I also put the right hand side through the thickness planer - all I wanted was a parallel sandwich to re-saw the other side (to get the other 1/2" piece of plywood off). With the two 1/2" pieces of BB plywood removed, the 7/8" piece was now strong enough to keep the Mulberry flat. I counted the plys and re-sawed the 7/8" plywood down the middle. A few passes through the thickness planer, and I had two wonderfully book-matched panels.

Here is the glue-up. I really debated on how to orient the book-matches. In the end, I decided to do them differently to use as a teaching tool to show people how striking this effect can be.

Here are the finished glued up panels.

I should also confess that this is not the first time I have used this technique. One of my other benches has the same Mulberry panels (and Red Elm base). The acidic yellow of the mulberry will fade in time and “works” extremely well with the Red Elm. Which reminds me - I had better get a few coats of finish on the bench - WWIA is only a month away.

Honduran Rosewood - an often overlooked infill material

2010-08-04T19:37:00.004-05:00

I am very fortunate to have a good supply of very old Honduran Rosewood. A few lucky pieces are burls. Honduran Rosewood (Dalbergia Stevensonii) is a fairly common true Rosewood, but can vary greatly in quality. My favourite Honduran Rosewood is dark purple and red, tight grained and has those telltale (old growth) black streaks. I have seen some really poor Honduran Rosewood that has lost most of its color - almost like it has been bleached.

This plane came out of a wonderful chunk of wood that had extensive burl over the entire outside surface.

As you move away from the outside the burl decreased, so I did my best to keep as close to the surface as possible.

As you can see - it is well worth the extra effort. I am always amazed at how rough and cruddy a piece of old wood can look but lurking 1/8" under is some of the most stunning material.

This particular piece of Honduran Rosewood will yield a few more burl sets like this one and a number of sets with great color and tight grain (think A5 and/or A1 panel plane).

In other, completely unrelated news, I would like to thank everyone for your well wishes with regards to my recent finger injury. It has been healing quite well, and this past weekend I experienced the benefits of “fishing therapy”. The plane I was working on when I injured myself is just about completed - I will be filing the mouth later today. It did take some mental preparation to return to work and to return to the plane - but the repair and the rest of the plane came together perfectly.

I also wanted to mention the recent passing of Bob Baker. I had a chance to meet Bob several years ago at an event hosted by Popular Woodworking. It was the first and only time I met him, but he certainly left quite an impression... on all of us. I was looking forward to meeting him and seeing his work in person. His work exceeded all my expectations. He had managed to craft beautiful planes with unparalleled precision, while managing to keep the “human” element that is so often missing in such precise work. He has no equal.

Kari Hultman, Ron Hock and Popular Woodworking all had wonderful tributes to him.

My first real injury

2010-07-20T16:25:00.034-05:00

At 8:15 am on Saturday July the 10th, I sustained my first serious woodworking injury. Actually - my first serious injury of any kind. I have never broken a bone, and other than this injury - had not needed hospital care other than to be born.

I was home by myself for the week - Jill and the boys were at a week long children’s camp and I was using the time to log some serious shop hours. Everything was going great until Saturday morning - the day they were to return home. I was fitting the rear infill of an A5 - something I have done dozens of times when something new happened - total wood failure. I was holding a chisel in my left hand and taking a very small paring cut on the shoulder of the rear infill when the wood blew out. Suddenly there was no wood between the chisel and the tip of my right index finger - so it proceeded to drive in all the way to the first knuckle. It was a rather shocking experience. My first three thoughts were,

“it is still attached, I can still wiggle my finger and how am I going to get to the hospital?”

I ran down the stairs (turned the lights off on my way down) and out into the front yard (drip, drip, drip) to see if any of our neighbours were home. The van was in the drive across the street, so I ran over. Thankfully they were home. I then realized I did not have my health card with me.

Run back home (drip, drip, drip).

And run back again ((drip, drip, drip).

We arrived at the hospital in great time, were checked in very quickly and took a seat to wait. When they unwrapped and washed my had, I felt a bit woozie - so they put me on a gurney just to be safe. This was the point at which everything started to register and the waiting became a serious mental exercise in keeping it all together. I was hopeful that I had not severed any tendons, but I did not really know what my finger looked like or if anything was broken or if the bone had been damaged.

Finally they called my name to see a doctor. They took a look at it and asked what I had cut myself with - “it was an incredibly clean cut”. I told them a very good chisel (I am sure there must have been a bit of a smile on my face at the time). I had cut my finger from the very tip down to the first knuckle - the chisel was wide enough that it had cut through the top and bottom and I was left with a very large “flap”. They decided they should X-ray it just to be safe. I waited a few minutes and then Scott showed up, a young guy with a friendly smile - he immediately put me at ease. On my ride to the x-ray room he asked;

S - “so how did you cut your finger?”

K - “A chisel”

S - “oh, are you a woodworker?”

K - “yes - kinda. I make woodworking hand planes”

S - “cool. I just bought one from Lee Valley. It was really expensive - but works great”

K - “Yeah - they make great stuff. What type of work did you buy the plane for?”

S - “I make guitars and I needed a good tool to smooth and shape the fingerboards”

K - “Oh. Do you have a hard time finding Rosewood for the fingerboards?”

I swear the gurney stopped and his face slowly appeared upside down above my own.

S - “pardon?”

I repeated the question which resulted in a great distracting conversation for the rest of the ride to and from the x-ray room. Scott - feel free to call anytime.

A little while later the nurse practitioner came back to confirm that the tendons were fine and there was no damage to the bone. Needless to say - I was incredibly relived. At this time, I felt I should divulge that this was my first injury (ever) and that I was a bit squeamish. Her bedside manner was incredible and she put me at ease and helped keep my very calm throughout the entire process.

The pair of freezing needles in my finger hurt the most and the actual stitching went very well. She explained everything as she went and did an exceptional job of keeping me engaged in distracting conversation.

I was home by 12 noon.

While I was in the hospital waiting - one of the many fears that creeped in was the condition of the rear infill of the A5 I had been fitting. I honestly had no idea what had happened and if it was totally destroyed or it if would be repairable. The handle had been fully shaped and the adjuster slot had been fit - so it was quite far along. One of the first things I did when I got home was check to see what it looked like;

I found that big chip 5' away from where it happened. Miraculously - the only damage to the handle was a small chip out of the corner and a small scratch on the inside. Both of which are easily repairable... so the handle is still usable. I will need to sand out the blood spatter too.

Here is the chisel and a few drips.

And my bandaging from the hospital. I should also mention that the injury was to my right hand - thankfully I am a lefty.

Here are a few photos of the finger on day 3;

And day 10 right after the stitches were removed.

The doctor who removed the stitches was shocked at how quickly and how well everything had healed up. She told me to keep it covered but I could return to work as long as I keep it clean and used any discomfort and pain as indicators of what I could and could not do.

I have been writing this entry over the last few days - now that I have a bit of perspective on everything, and to be quite frank - now that I feel like I am out of the woods.

Looking back on the last 12 days - there are a few things that stand out and really are the reason for this post.

For all the complaining about our health care system I have to say - I was completely impressed with the care during my emergency experience. I realize that while this was a crisis for me, the ER staff experience stuff like this each and every day. What was so incredible to me was their capacity to treat me like a person, spend a few minutes getting to know me, to put me at ease and care for me as if I were a member of their family. It takes a very special person to have those gifts, and I felt like I was surrounded by them. My deepest thanks and gratitude to Corina, Scott and the rest of the amazing people at Grand River Hospital.

There have been quite a few other people who helped out over the last 12 days. To Rod and Lisa for getting me to and from the hospital, Dr. Dietrich (aka Voodoo) and Joanne for all the care, insight, and laser treatments, to Mrs. Hare - the other witchdoctor in my life for keeping the whole system running smoothly and to Maria for enjoying lacerations even when she is on maternity leave, to my parents and our friends who stepped in to help keep me distracted. And to Jill, Riley and Lucas. Who helped keep me calm, helped wash my back, and knew just when I needed a hug.

Lastly - there is a safety side to all this. I have always had a very healthy fear of power tools, but have always been very comfortable with hand tools. I am always telling Riley and Lucas to be aware of where their hands are when they are working and to anticipate what would happen if something went wrong. I spent the first several days playing this event back in my head, looking for what I did wrong. Part of it really was a bit of a freak accident - but I also need to take responsibility for it and alter the way I work to avoid something like this again. I was also very lucky that my neighbours were home - I do not know what I would have done otherwise. When Joe and I started making planes we would often work into the wee hours of the night - something I do not do very often, but again - if something serious were to happen, no one would find me until it was too late. So please - enjoy your woodworking, have a plan in case something happens and do not work during or after you have enjoyed a pint.

My friend Raney reminded me of a warning posted by Lie Nielsen;

“Warning: Sharp chisels are dangerous and should be handled with care. Dull chisels are even more dangerous and should be sharpened.”

I think that about sums it up.

up & down - bevels that it

2010-07-13T17:44:00.020-05:00

A few weeks ago, I was doing some site work - some inlay in a Mahogany staircase. I had to inlay twelve flame Birch panels into the stair treads. They were left a little over-sized in thickness and then planed flush with the treads once they were installed. For anyone who has ever worked with flame birch - you are likely cringing right now because you know what kind of nightmare flame birch can be to work with. Lots and lots of honing.

There were three planes in my line-up that were suited to this work; the XSNo.4 smoother, the SNo.4 smoother and my LN block plane. They are all narrow and nimble planes and were able to follow and maintain the gentle curvature of the solid treads.

The reason for this post is not to start a war - but to show the different wear on working tools. I used the SNo.4 and the block plane to do the lions share of the work, and then finished up with the XSNo.4 set to take a very fine shaving. The XS is the smallest and most nimble in the bunch. All three planes performed their task wonderfully, but this experience reminded me of why I developed the XSNo.4 in the first place. I wanted a one handed (and very small) smoother that was in a bevel down (BD), high bed angle configuration. I was frustrated with the location of the wear on my bevel up (BU) block plane. Before I get too far into it - here are a few photos of the blade of the SNo.4 smoother (BD) and the block plane (BU).

Oh, - I should also explain a bit of how I sharpen. Both blades are hollow ground to about a 34 degree angle, the backs are flat, and there are no micro bevels or “ruler trick” back bevels.

(click on any of the images for a larger view)

The BD smoother blade on the left and the BU block plane blade on the right. Notice the amount of wear to the back side of the cutting edge on the BU blade.

Here is the bevel side of the BU block plane blade. Notice there is significantly less “wear” to the cutting edge.

The “back” of the iron of the BD blade.

And the bevel side of the BD blade.

So here is my observation based on using these two planes - they both required frequent re- honing, but the blade of the BU block plane required a lot more work to get it to a freshly honed state. I had to re-grind before each honing in order to get rid of the wear to the “back” (the flat side) of the iron which saw more wear than the bevel side. The bevel down blade seemed to have a similar amount of wear to each side and was less effort to re-hone because of it.

If anyone has any insight into what I might be able to do to reduce the amount of wear to the “back” of the BU iron - I would love to hear it. Or if people have had similar experiences with any BU vs BD planes I would love to hear from you as well.

Myth-busting

2010-07-09T20:50:00.014-05:00

A few months ago - while attending a Lie Nielsen sponsored hand-tool show, I think I formally busted a myth. The event was held at Exotic Woods in Burlington and we were surrounded by wood, glorious wood. I was talking with a gentleman who was very interested in infill planes and wanted to review some of their features and to get my opinion on why they work the way they do. He rattled off the usuals; they are heavy - requiring less downward pressure, have a really thick iron which reduced chatter, few moving parts - fewer “tolerances” that can add up to movement (chatter), dense woods that dampens vibration, a closed tote which gives a much more responsive feedback than an open tote. As I was standing there - with a clear view of the instrument parts room over his shoulder, I blurted out;

“well... I am not really convinced that dense woods like rosewood are absorbing vibration. In actual fact, they are the worst choice for reducing vibration... they are tone woods, and highly prized for their ability to vibrate.”

There was a very long, awkward silence, and as I stood there pondering what I might have let out of the bag, I realized I had been thinking about this for some time, but had never articulated it that clearly before. And certainly not in public. The conversation continued for at least another 40 minutes and ended after he had happily tried every plane on the bench. So there it was - out in the open. And lightning did not strike me down and the earths axis appears to be unaltered.

In hindsight - it felt pretty good to toss the monkey wrench... but it did get me thinking more seriously about why infills work the way they do.

Another often quoted advantage of an infill is their weight. I am not entirely sure about this one either. I think there is some confusion between “weight” and how solid the plane feels in use. One of the true advantages of an infill plane is the lack of moving parts as they relate to the blade. The blade is fixed (crushed actually) against a wooden bed that is permanently, mechanically fastened to the frame of the plane - the metal body. The lever cap exerts an incredible amount of pressure against the blade leaving it with only once choice - to cut wood. Contrast this with planes where the blade can be moved by way of a mechanical mechanism to move it up and down, and left and right while the lever cap is deployed. Then factor in the frog being able to move forward and back at the same time. These are all great features - but they do add up to “tolerances or gaps” that reduce how rigidly the blade is held when it is presented with challenging timber. I think people experience how solid an infill feels more than the actual weight. This weight vs solid issue also explains why a Clark & Williams plane feels so great to use. Like an infill - they have no moving parts. The blade is held firmly against the bed and the iron does not have a choice but to take a shaving. The first time I tried a C&W smoother - I nearly tossed it across the room because it was so much lighter... but I very quickly adapted to it, and while it is very different from an infill plane - it does “feel” quite similar - like pushing a rock that spits out shavings.

Those of you that use or have tried both - I would love to hear your thoughts and opinions.

That badger plane

2010-05-27T08:30:00.046-05:00

Several months ago, I alluded to a very challenging plane I was working on. A few people guessed at what it was - Kerry even managed to figure it out (still not sure how that happened). Then - I dropped the subject all together. I did this because it was going to show up here - and here. What a tremendous honour to be placed on the Lee Valley catalogue cover and the opportunity to write for their newsletter. My deepest thanks to Rob Lee and the rest of the fine folks at Lee Valley.

I should also say, it was killing me not to post photos of the plane and some of the hoops I had to pass through to make the plane. This post is in chronological order and is meant to supplement the article in the Lee Valley newsletter.

Here is an early shot of the final shell piened together showing the skew of the blade.

This was an early attempt at the front bun (this is the first block of Elm I had fit to the shell). Neither the client or I were happy with it. The large scoop out of the inside of the bun is typical of many Scottish plane buns, but it created havoc for the radius on the sides and there was not a smooth transition into the lower part of the bun. What we did like was the overall panel plane feel to the top and front portion.

This was the second prototype which we both liked. The bead around the perimeter really picked up on the quarter round radius on the rear infill. You can see one of my notes on the photo to undercut the bead on the inside.

This is the bun we were both quite happy with.

Once the shape of the front bun was resolved, it was time to work on the mouth and blade area. It is hard to see from the below photos -but a fair amount of filing was needed along the mouth side sidewall to allow the blade to exit properly. I made a quick maple mock-up blade for testing purposes.

This is also a very clear shot of how the blade rests against the angled sidewall.

In the above photo you can see the maple blade just about touching the outside corner of the sidewall. The black Sharpie marker on the edge was used to help locate high spots on the metal sidewall. You can also see a faint pencil drawing of the final opening on the side - similar to that of a rebate or shoulder plane.

Here are two photos of the final Rosewood front bun.

The above photo shows the triangular section of the sidewall that still needs to be modified. I knew this area was going to need further refinement, but it made more sense to finish the bun first and know exactly where it was going to terminate. This is a fairly common theme to the way I work - allowing the actual parts to define where lines, angles and edges start and stop. I enjoy the organic flow of things as opposed to a mathematical approach.

Here is the final modified sidewall.

The above photo shows the original reference plane and the front bun and rear infill of the new version. Having the original on hand was extremely important.

Another view of the rear infill showing the cheek of the rear infill. Take note of the fact that the top radius is completed, but the ends are left rather rough. I waited until the infill was installed to fully refine the ends as shown in the next three photos. Also note that the infills were fully french polished before they were installed.

The next 3 photos show the infill cross pinned into the shell as well as the recess for the cap iron screw. Locating this was easier said than done, and I had to make several mock-ups to get the location correct. Note that this recess is parallel to the angled sidewall and not the mouth side sidewall. Yet another wonky detail that could have ended in disaster.

And last, but certainly not least - installing the lever cap. In hindsight, it strikes me that all the crazy angles and careful work were just a lead-up exercise for this... drilling the hole for the cross pin that holds the lever cap.

This was the scariest thing I have ever done with a plane and I even asked Jill to be in the shop with me as I was doing it. I was scared senseless. Below is a photo of the jig system right before the hole was drilled. I made as many indexing fixtures as I could so I would be drilling the hole square to the lever cap (which by the way is in the plane). I also decided that there was no way I could drill the hole in the sidewall separately from the hole in the lever cap. A quarter degree in error would spell disaster. So I opted to drill through the sidewall and lever cap all in one go.

In the end I pretty much eyeballed it, took a deep breath, and went for it.

Thankfully - it all worked out.

The cross pin on one side...

... and then the other.

Even piening this pin was odd - I ended up using the very tip of the anvil and had Jill help me position and hold the plane in the right spot.

After all that, lapping and filing the mouth felt like a walk in the park. This was the first time where lapping a plane was a welcome relief - this plane really tested my limits.

Living room & Dining room final photos

2010-05-08T15:42:00.049-05:00

According to the dates on my photos - we started this project on April 18 2009. We (I) am very happy to say, it was started and finished in less than one year. Compared to the 4-year kitchen... this was a blistering pace. One of the reasons it happened so fast was the very generous help from a lot of people. In no particular order - my Dad for helping with all the framing, moral support and being another set of eyes and ears in the critical early planning stages. To Steve for helping with gutting the room and of course the floor. Andy (aka the human T-square) for helping with the drywalling, Riley and his friend Tyko for helping with mudding the drywall screw holes. To Alex for her infinite wisdom with space, proportions, her design skills and keen eye, and willingness to jump in and save our bacon on more than one occasion. To Walter for catching what could have been a disaster (more on this later) and his exceptional Terrazzo and tiling skills, Pete for his masonry work and to the fine folks at Woodburners for always having a smile on their face regardless of how many times I stopped in to pick their brains about the fireplace. To Tracey for taking such great photos and for allowing me to post them on the blog. Thanks to all our family, friends and neighbours for their help and encouragement during the darker moments. And last, but certainly not least - to my wife Jill and our two boys for allowing me to do this and for putting up with it all. Jill was a serious trooper in the last weeks of the job and I would not have been able to do anything without her. She was always there to hold the other end of a 10' piece of trim, jump up on the scaffolding at the drop of a hat (or the drop of a spaghetti sauce filled spoon).

Here are some of the technical details. The rooms are roughly 12' square each. The ceiling is 9'. All the trim is quarter sawn White Oak as is the floor. The border is made up of black dyed Swiss Pear sandwiching curly hard Maple. The fireplace is a high efficiency wood burning fireplace and the surround is natural New England slate. The hearth is Terrazzo. The doors in the cabinet are spalted curly hard Maple.

Ok - on with the show.

We were thrilled that we were able to keep the original stained glass windows in the room.

Believe it or not, this piano window was drywalled over!

When I split the spalted maple board, this frog showed up. What a find.

The bits of Ebony and maple are Morse code. It says “Konrad Jill Riley Lucas” on the top line, and “Sauer 2009” on the second line. At least... I hope that is what it says. If there is someone out there that can read Morse code and if I have a typo... please don’t tell me.

For some reason - loading the firewood drawer for the first time was a real thrill.

We are now keeping an eye out for a piece of original artwork for the space above the mantel.

This is the only outside corner of the crown molding and is one of my favourite spots in the room.

We are also really pleased with the effect of the bulkhead in the room. It divides it up into two spaces, but still allows flow between the two rooms.

The underside of the builkead

Another favourite view of mine.

As is typical of Tracey - she always manages to take a shot that surprises me. This was it - a view into the room from an original part of the house. There is some pretty amazing woodwork in the house - some of which can be seen in the left of this photo. Hopefully the old and the new will blend together in time.

And for that disaster I mentioned earlier. When we were planning the fireplace, the depth of the hearth was not as defined as it should have been. This was a serious oversight on my part. At one point, we were at Jill’s family cottage, and I happened to measure the hearth depth. It was 12". My head was swimming with so many numbers and details that I must have assumed this would be up to code for our fireplace. Just to be safe - I even increased it to 14" thinking we would be free and clear for sure. The fireplace arrived, we installed it according to the supplied instructions paying close attention to all the offsets, minimum height restrictions etc. Somehow one number was overlooked despite being clearly written on one of the diagrams. Walter delivered the hearth and put it in place while I was in San Francisco. The morning I was to fly home, I checked my email in the hotel to find a very frantic note from Walter asking me to double check the depth of the hearth. He was concerned that it was not deep enough. The blood drained from my face as I sat there downloading the installation manual from the fireplace manufacturers website. Flipped through the pdf to the page I knew had the depth.

18" mimimum.

There were not enough 4 letter words I could string together. I called Jill and asked her to double check the depth - but I knew it was too short. So in the last hour of getting ready to leave for home, I was trying to figure out how to salvage the situation. I sat in the airport with my laptop looking up the code specs for fireplaces. 18" was the magic number. It was a somewhat depressing flight home. Up until this point, we had not compromised on anything and the hearth is a pretty focal point of the room.

When I returned home, we quickly realized we would not be able to modify anything to make this work. So we had to make a new hearth. Gulp. The next issue was how to do it so our error was not obvious. Enter Walter and Alex. Within an hour, we had a new plan. We would extend the framing in front of the fireplace by 3" extend it by 3" on the side as well so that the mitered corners of the floor met the corner of the slate underneath. Walter would make a new hearth with a jog in the left side to extend the hearth 18" in front of the fireplace, but keep it to the original 14" above the firewood drawer so we could still access it easily. We also modified the color and texture of the hearth a bit. Anyway - here is a shot of the first hearth;

And a shot of the final 18" deep hearth.

In the end, we are way happier with this new hearth. The extra depth gives it much more presence in the room. I suspect very few people would realize there was a catastrophic error and this was a compromise. So thanks again to Walter and Alex for their creative contribution to make lemonaid from this major lemon.

The last Mystery Rosewood XSNo.4, the second last A5 & a variation on a shoulder plane

2010-04-30T11:32:00.025-05:00

I am just finishing up 3 planes - two of which are some of the last Mystery rosewood filled planes. This incredible infill material continues to provide stunning color and grain patterning. Here are a few detail shots of both the XSno.4 and the A5. Both these planes have a wonderful light streak in them. Take a look at the top of the front bun on the XSNo.4 and the handle of the A5. You can see it very clearly in the next photo of the infill before it was installed.

The front bun on the A5 is not too bad either.

This next plane is based on my own design - an amalgamation of a number of vintage infill planes. I first used this profile on a pair of 3/8" wide shoulder planes. This variation is 1/2" wide by 6" long. The bed and wedge are African Blackwood.

And just to prove that this plane is not milled from a solid piece of 01 - here are a few construction photos.

Once the plane has been piened together, I use a hacksaw to shape the profile.

At this point, the sides have been lapped but the sole still shows the ends of the dovetails.

The above photo shows the shell lapped, but without the chamfers. I am always amazed at the effect a simple chamfer can have on a plane - it can transform it form bland to stunning in very short order.

The “Sharpie” chamfer layout lines.

Tracey sent me over 600 photos of the living room and dining room. Needless to say - I have quite a bit of sorting to do. Here is one of the images that caught my attention right away.

new blog, new post, new photos

2010-04-21T11:45:00.020-05:00

My apologies for the 3 week lag time between posts. I experienced a bit of a perfect storm in that blogger changed in the middle of the last push to get the living room and dining room completed. In a nutshell - I dropped the ball a bit. But... the good news is the renovation is done! The furniture has been moved in and we even hung a few pictures. There is a large “hole” where the future dining room table, chairs and other assorted pieces will go - but the kids are enjoying driving their Lego cars in the empty space. We are all very pleased with the finished space and I will be posting some photos of it as soon as I get them. I hired my photographer friend Tracey to photograph the room before we cluttered it up with our stuff.

She has also generously permitted me to post these photos of a fairly recent 28-1/2" A2 jointer. I had posted about this plane earlier - but the photos she took were quite stunning so I thought I would share them.

This last photo is perhaps my favourite. I am not entirely sure why, but I suspect my design sensibilities have something to do with it.