Popular Woodworking Editors' Blog

I work among a group of tool addicts, and I fit right in because I am one too. My tool dependency manifests itself in a couple of ways; I hoard the wrenches for routers, but the real monkey on my back is layout tools. My grandfather was a tool and die maker and one of my earliest memories of him is being shown how a micrometer worked. When I was six, I really didn't care if one of the hairs on my head was thicker than a piece of paper, but as I grew older I came to appreciate good tools as well as the importance of careful and accurate layout. When it comes to drawing circles, there is no substitute for a good set of trammel points.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009 9:31:19 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [1] 

A large part of the appeal of Arts and Crafts style furniture is the apparent lack of decoration. The project currently on my bench, a reproduction of a Gustav Stickley No. 70 music cabinet and a detail I've borrowed from similar pieces is the reason for using the word "apparent". I've always liked this little cabinet, it's just under four feet high, and only 20 inches wide. The detail I borrowed, mitered mullions on the door, and the idea of plain, unadorned furniture is hard to reconcile. As I worked on the door last week, I came to realize that there isn't any practical reason to put a glass door on a cabinet to store sheet music, and joining the parts of the door this way is just showing off.

I've always liked this detail where the cross pieces that divide the door join the center stile with what appear to be simple miters, and it was an intriguing challenge to figure out how it was done and then to execute the joinery. I found three variations of joints on the other end, and decided to take a middle of the road approach. Some pieces I've seen are straightforward mortise and tenon joints where the mullions butt against the stiles, others have a reflection of the center stile joints, and some are made as shown above with the miter going back to the edge of the rabbet that holds the glass. I didn't like the way a full miter would encroach on the tenon, and I thought the butted shoulders looked too plain.

In an earlier blog post I wrote about making a practice joint, and I used the strategy I came up with; cutting the miter lines with a backsaw, using a router and jig to create a flat area within the cutout, and finally cleaning up the corners with a chisel. There will be an article detailing all of this in an upcoming issue of Popular Woodworking. The center door stile became more and more valuable as I cut and fit each joint, there are a lot of hours in that skinny piece of wood.


This is one of the joints ready to be glued, it looks a lot simpler when it's together, but the lap joints keep the pieces from sliding around and the shoulders behind make it strong structurally, even though it is end grain butting against long grain. There really isn't room in there for anything else. It took a boatload of clamps to hold it all together, but the glue up wasn't that bad and the completed door is pretty strong. As my boss put it "you'd have to shove somebody's head right into it to bust it."

Tuesday, November 10, 2009 8:59:11 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [3] 

The other night, my son sent off his first application for college, and it made me think about who he has turned out to be. When he was small, he enjoyed hanging out in the shop and making things. I enjoyed the time we spent together, and I wanted him to learn about woodworking so I put a coping saw and a spokeshave in his hands and helped him make toy guns and boats. He showed a lot of promise with his Pine Wood Derby cars and a model of a Star Wars land speeder. He became interested in other things, but what he learned stuck with him; he knows how to use tools, he understands the process of making stuff, and now and then he returns to the shop to make something he needs. He may not share my passion for working with wood, but he has picked up some good qualities from being around it. Because he lives with me, he really can’t escape it.

It’s hard to avoid my passion for wood in our house, almost all of the furniture in the place was made by me, and I think that the exposure to an environment of nice, handmade furniture has made a difference in my son’s attitudes and outlook on life. Gustav Stickley wrote about the influence of the home environment on children. His argument was that the things we surround ourselves with have an influence on our character, and on the values of our kids. When I first read that more than 20 years ago, it made sense, but it was all academic. From my current vantage point, I can see proof of it in a kid who has turned out pretty well.

When Hunter was two or three he outgrew his crib and started sleeping on the floor. So I made him the bed that he still sleeps in. He will likely have it until he gets married because it’s too solid to break and too nice to throw away. Earlier this year the desk we bought him when he was nine began to fall apart, and when we talked about the options for replacing it, he decided the best choice was to make his own. Not many kids today think like that. The option of making something yourself so that you can have something nicer than you can buy is an empowering one.  He has attitudes and values that entered his life from the things that were around him as he grew up. This isn't anything that I consciously taught him, it's stuff that rubbed off along the way.

The things we make as woodworkers are much more than objects to fill our homes. The furniture I make is more than wood; it also contains parts of me and the lessons that I learned from my dad and his dad. When I’m gone, my son will be stuck with all these things that I made. In addition to the physical stuff, he’ll also carry other things that aren’t so obvious but are ultimately more important. Hunter sits everyday at the desk he made, and he also built the computer he uses. He spends a lot of time there and I think that will make a difference in his life. That’s not just any desk, or any computer; they are different because they are the product of his efforts. And because of those efforts, he’s not just any kid.

— Robert W. Lang

Tuesday, November 03, 2009 9:58:56 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [4] 

If you’re a regular visitor to this blog, then you know a good thing when you see one. But if this is the only part of Popular Woodworking online that you visit, you’re missing some good things and you should check out what else we have to offer. There are also some ways you may not be aware of to automatically receive our web content. In addition to this blog, there are two more, one for Woodworking Magazine and one powered by a water wheel for Arts & Mysteries columnist Adam Cherubini.

If you prefer, our blog (and a lot of our online content) can come to you. Up and to your left are two ways to subscribe. If you enter your e-mail address, you can subscribe via Feedblitz. When you do, you’ll get an e-mail whenever a new article is posted on the blog. No ads ever. No spam ever. Just content. And, this comes in a format that makes it easy for you to print or file away an article you like.

You can also use RSS feed (click the little orange box) and new content will magically appear in your reader. We all use iGoogle for this and it helps us keep up on new postings in one convenient spot. We also have RSS feed on many other pages of our web site. Subscribe to the feed, and you’ll find out first when we put up a new SketchUp model or a new article or video.

If you want to keep track of all these goings-on yourself, the easy way is to visit our home page. This isn’t a static page that hasn’t been updated since the Clinton administration; it’s a dynamic page that automatically shows the latest additions. It’s an easy way to keep track of all that we’re up to.

What if you’re looking for something from last month, last year or the last decade? That’s easy to find too, and there are hundreds of articles from past issues available on the web site. Like our videos, all of those articles are absolutely free. We have them categorized by topic and you can also search by a keyword or subject.

We also have a comprehensive online article index. You have to scroll down to the bottom of any page on our site to find it, but once you are there you have almost instant access to what we’ve published in the last 10 years. When you find the article you were looking for, look closely at the article description; there you will find links to any extra content that is available online, such as photos, videos, drawings or SketchUp models. Each issue also has its own page, with a link to purchase the back issue.

There are some other noteworthy links down at the bottom of the page. Customer Service will let you check on your subscription and get help if you have a problem. Writer’s Guidelines will help you put together an article query if you’d like to write for us. And the most important link is Contact Us. Hey! There are e-mail addresses and phone numbers for each staff member. Try getting in touch directly with one of the editors from any other woodworking magazine. We answer our own phones and e-mail. If you have a question about something one of us has written, or want to tell the boss what a great job you think I’m doing, it’s only a mouse click away.

We also have a book store; and we match Amazon’s prices and offer free shipping on all orders above $25. Spend more than $100 on books and videos and you earn a 10% reward on your next order.

There is a lot more online from Popular Woodworking than our blog, so I invite you to spend some time exploring and enjoying. If you usually spend a coffee break or lunch with Popular Woodworking online, let me assure you that you can easily spend an entire day or more.

Leave a comment or send an e-mail to let us know what your favorite part of our web site is, or some hidden away place I neglected to mention. And let us know what you don't like, or what you'd like to see us add.

– Robert W. Lang

Tuesday, September 29, 2009 6:08:44 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0] 

My favorite drafting instructor in design school was a histrionic misfit known as Wild Bill. He didn’t pull any punches and tried his best to prepare us for the real world. When we came to descriptive geometry, he let us know that by the end of the quarter at least a third of us would no longer be design majors; we’d have to switch to photography or fine arts if we didn’t get it. His favorite dramatic device when he caught someone making a mistake was to refer to a scene in Repo Man. “Smoking boots!” he would shout, “you’re nothing but a pair of smoking boots!”

It’s a powerful image, and there have been many times in the years since when what seemed like a good plan somehow went horribly wrong. One of the differences between woodworking and science fiction is that there can be a significant time lag between “Give me the keys” and vaporization of everything except your Red Wings. If you read the Woodworking magazine weblog, you’re probably familiar with the saga of the Chinese stool that has been going on since last spring.

The stool looks simple enough, and in many ways it is; three legs connected by three stretchers support a round seat. We have an antique example that we dissected with a dead blow hammer, and the construction isn’t quite as simple as it seems. The center of the stretcher assembly is the center of the triangle between them and that causes the stretchers to twist a few degrees where they meet the legs. It’s a fun project because you can’t rely on any of the usual things you use for reference. Nothing is square, the only things certain are an imaginary plumb line through the center and an imaginary circle about 9 inches off the ground.

You can’t hold one part against another to get a length until all the joints are cut. But you have to know the length to cut the joints. Like the stretcher to leg joint, I’m a little twisted and I think figuring out how to do stuff like this is fun. I came up with a plan and made one stool to be sure I had the procedure down. It was a little sloppier than I wanted it to be, but it went together and it’s a marvelous piece of engineering work. There needs to be some wiggle room for it all to fit together, but there’s a point where all the parts interlock into a strong structure.

I started in on the second stool, shooting photos as I went for the upcoming magazine article. And in the midst of it, I made a fatal error. Instead of transferring a layout mark from the bottom of the assembled stretchers to the top, I flipped the assembly over. Three angled through mortises and three compound angled tenons later I tried to dry fit the stool. Like all great bonehead moves it took a while to figure out what was wrong. The stretchers fit together nicely. The legs fit into the seat, and the ends of the stretchers fit the legs. Six of the seven parts would fit, but there isn’t a hammer big enough in Ohio or China to make the whole thing fit together.

This also happened at the classic time to discover a mistake, Friday afternoon. At two o’clock I was telling myself I’d have the stool together by 3:30 or 4 and I'd get home early. At five o’clock I realized something wasn’t right and at quarter to six I knew what it was and headed for home in disgust. The only solution was to remake all the stretchers. At least I’d only ruined the smallest parts this time, not the seat or the legs.

Remaking the stretchers when I got back to work on Tuesday wasn’t anywhere near as bad as I thought it would be over the weekend. They say that if you learn something by reading it or hearing it you need to have it repeated six or seven times for it to sink in, but the things you learn by making a mistake stick with you right away. In woodworking there is always something new to be learned.

I know that you, the reader never do things like this, but perhaps you have a good goof up story about a friend, neighbor or coworker. You can share it by leaving a comment.

--Bob Lang

Thursday, September 24, 2009 5:07:47 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [10] 

Our November issue is on it's way to subscribers, and will be showing up on newsstands in a couple weeks. If you're a SketchUp user, you can get a peek at the projects at the Popular Woodworking 3D Warehouse collection. These new additions bring the total of free models online to 158, and Google has added some new features to the 3D Warehouse.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009 11:48:00 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0] 

If you look at the video I made about buying lumber, you can see how I approach that task. If the piece were more complicated, I would have had my cut list in hand. The most important part of the video is at the end. I have all the raw materials I need, I’ve checked them against my list to make sure I have enough and then I buy an extra board. That board is still kicking around the shop, but it was money well spent. Driving to the lumberyard in the middle of a project to get one more piece of wood isn’t an experience you want to repeat.

If I’m not picking the lumber piece by piece, I buy way too much, often two or three times as much as I think I need. I have a coffee table in my living room that I made about 25 years ago. I remember picking through 100BF of lumber to make a top that is about 5 square feet. I still enjoy this table because I did a great job matching the three pieces I glued together for the top. If I had put it together from mismatched pieces to save a buck, I wouldn’t feel the same way. As I pick pieces for specific parts, I mark them up with a lumber crayon or chalk to remind me where they go. I look for different grain patterns for tops and panels than I do for frame parts or legs. It would be nutty to think you could plot this out before you see the lumber you have to work with.

I cut things to rough lengths and widths before I head for the jointer and planer. I like to leave a lot of extra length, but I’ll come pretty close in width if I want a specific piece in a specific place. How much extra is entirely subjective and once again, it mostly depends on the character of the wood on hand. I usually mill in two steps, leaving everything too thick and too wide for a few days. When I do the final milling, I’m picky about thicknesses. Thickness has more of an effect on other parts than many people realize. If you buy lumber surfaced by someone else, you need to check the thickness and assess the impact on the size of other parts before you start complaining about an inaccurate cut list.

When I have my parts edged and surfaced, I rip parts to width, but generally leave pieces about 1/4" too wide and several inches too long. I wait as long as I can to cut to a finished width. I like to run one edge over the jointer before ripping. I set the depth of cut on the joiner to remove 1/32", so if I have a part that needs to be 3" wide I run one edge over the joiner, rip at the table saw to 3 1/32", then remove the saw marks with one last pass on the joiner. If I have a large number of parts, I’ll send them as a bunch on edge through the planer. That removes the table saw marks and makes them all exactly the same size. This takes some extra work, but it assures me that I have parts that are really straight and accurately sized.

The extra length also stays as long as possible. I usually make a practice joint or two, and I like to use stock the exact thickness and width of my finished parts. This is where I use the extra length, and often I’ll cut an extra piece or two for testing or emergencies. Most of the time the distance between joints is more important than the overall length of the pieces. I usually make a storyboard and after I’ve rough-cut the stock I refer to that rather than measure, or I mark directly from the work as it progresses.

The cut list is an important tool in the process of making a piece of furniture, but like most tools it should be used at the right time and in the right way. When I made kitchen cabinets, I went ahead and cut all the parts ahead of time. In that situation, that procedure made sense; the bugs were worked out of the process and I was making something over and over again. When I’m building a piece of furniture, I’m essentially making a prototype and I get better results when I leave my options open for as long as possible.

--Robert W. Lang

Monday, September 21, 2009 6:45:28 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0] 

The major effort involved in building a piece of furniture is problem solving and establishing a sequence for the work. After that, it’s almost all cutting to a line and repairing the places where I missed cutting to the line. I like to plan my work because I don’t always make good design or engineering decisions at the workbench, and my skills at adding and subtracting seem to disappear when I step into the shop. My approach is colored by years of trying to make a profit, but I think building efficiently is still a worthy goal even when I’m building something just for fun.

I almost always draw a plan and develop a cut list, but what I draw for my own use is a lot less developed than what I draw and detail for publication. Drawing and planning are problem-solving tools, and when I have the problem solved I can start building. Figuring out what size to make the parts is one of the most important steps to understanding how a piece of furniture goes together, and I don’t think we make the best use of available space in the magazine when we publish a cut list. We’re serving up frozen fish sticks for dinner instead of letting our readers learn how to cook a rainbow trout. Of course if you want the rainbow trout you also need to learn how to catch, gut and clean the thing.

A cut list isn’t the statement of facts it appears to be, it is a series of if/then statements. If the sides of a box are really 3/4" thick, then the length of the pieces in between will be X. If the width of the stiles is what is called for in the plan, then the rails in between will be the distance named in the drawing. If you miss the mark on one of these numbers early on, then you set off a chain reaction, and turn the remaining parts into a row of falling dominoes. It’s easy to think that a bunch of little errors will cancel each other out, but the opposite is true. All those little errors will congregate at the most visible place on the finished piece they can find. Once there, they will hold a party to mock you.

Making a cut list is rather tedious, but it isn’t that difficult, and it’s an opportunity to build a piece mentally before you begin building it for real. I look at the drawing, and start with the largest parts or sub assemblies and work my way down. I compare distances in the drawing with sizes of parts and make sure that these numbers agree. I consider the joints that hold the parts together and how that will affect the overall sizes of the pieces.

One of the advantages of making your own cut list is that you can adapt it to the way you work. When you use a cut list from a book or magazine, parts that fit inside other parts, like doors or drawers, are sized the way the guy who made the list works. There could be gaps you could drive a truck through at the end, or everything might be too big so you can trim it down. These aren’t necessarily errors; they are different ways of approaching a task.

And there is the matter of fractions and human errors. Publishers don’t like to see anything smaller than 1/16" in print; so in many drawings and lists numbers are rounded off. That’s OK if you’re the one doing the rounding and you know what’s going on. It’s frustrating if you’re following another person's plan and you end up long or short. There are also many ways for errors to sneak into a published drawing or list. Cut lists don’t automatically appear, generated by an infallible computer. This is the work of human beings, and the process to get from an accurate CAD drawing to the printed page is more complicated than it appears.

Even if I’m working from a cut list I’ve made, on a project I designed, I compare the completed list to the drawing once or twice before I begin. If the project is complex, I make a story pole, to use a both as a reference while I work and as one more place to double-check the numbers. Lately I’ve been using SketchUp to make combination detail drawings and parts lists like this. It would take far too long to do that in another program, and we don’t have room to do it in print, but it’s a nice way to organize information you will need to build.

The cut list by itself doesn’t have much value. Paired with a drawing it is incredibly valuable. The exercise of making your own, or at least checking a published list against a drawing is that it makes you go through the building process before you get to the shop. You have to examine the parts and consider how they go together, and what you need to do to each part to make it fit in the whole. When you get to the shop and start building for real you can do so confidently. If you depend on someone else to make the list, you're missing an opportunity to learn, understand and develop your skills and confidence.

--Robert W. Lang

Sunday, September 20, 2009 11:10:53 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [6] 

If you ask most woodworkers what a block plane is good for, the usual response is trimming end grain. While this is true, there are many other chores that it performs well. One of my favorites is shaping edges. A block plane can chamfer or round over an edge in less time than it takes to find the wrenches and install a router bit. And no, you don't need an attachment to make a nice chamfer.

I'm currently working on a three-legged stool for the next issue of Woodworking magazine, and the shape of the legs is an example of where a block plane can do something a router can't-round an edge with a varying radius. These legs taper, and at the wider bottom end of the leg, the outside edge has a radius of about half an inch. At the top the radius is about an eighth of an inch.  Here's how I go about making this edge.


This is a two-stage process. There is a lot of material to be removed, and then the edge needs to be refined. The first thing I do is open up the mouth of the plane, and skew the blade as much as I can. On one side I can take a thick shaving, and on the other end I can take a finer one. This lets me work from coarse to medium simply by shifting the position of the plane side-to side relative to the edge I'm working on. This is also a place where the inexpensive high angle block plane with the gaping maw I bought before I knew better works pretty well.


Putting a radius on an edge begins with making a chamfer, then planing off the sharp points.It's easy to do because you're only removing the point, then removing the two points you just created. In short order you have so many facets that the edge is essentially a curve.  If the radius were constant, I would chamfer the entire edge. Because this one will taper, I raise the back of the plane, knock off the corner and chamfer back from the end a few inches.

Then I back up about six inches and continue the chamfer until I have a continuous edge to the end of the leg. I repeat this until the entire edge is chamfered, tapering from very little at one end to relatively wide at the other. All it takes is to balance the sole of the plane on the pointy part of the edge. Don't worry about the exact angle. If you do this a few times you get a sense of where 45 degrees is. If a chamfer is your goal, you can check with a square if you feel the need, but I think a soft chamfer and an inexact angle look better. If you want it to look like you used a router, you should probably put down the block plane and use one.

When the edge is chamfered the entire length of the leg, I begin to remove the corners between the faces of the leg and the chamfer. Again, this is done by balancing the plane on the sharp corner between the two flat surfaces. I can control how much material is removed with each pass of the plane by shifting it slightly sideways with each pass. At the start, I want the maximum depth of cut to flatten out the point. As the chamfer widens, I shift over so that the effort of pushing the plane stays relatively constant and tear out is minimized.

It doesn't take long to go from a corner with two sides to four, eight, sixteen and so on. Each time you knock the corners off it gets closer to being round, and the facets get narrower. When the curve begins to take shape, it's time to retract the blade to take a finer shaving and close down the mouth. The shavings on the left in this picture are the finishing cuts, much thinner and narrower than the initial cuts in the upper right.


This leg is almost done. With the long edges complete, I've started to round over the bottoms. The curve isn't quite finished, but it's pretty close. A few swipes with #150 grit Abranet will remove the tiny remaining high points and my leg will be ready to assemble.

--Robert W. Lang

Friday, September 11, 2009 2:32:01 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [1] 

Few writers or teachers can be given credit for influencing an entire generation. That takes someone special, in the right place at the right time. James Krenov made a generation of woodworkers stop and think about their work, their tools and their material. After Krenov's first book, A Cabinetmaker's Notebook appeared, we all looked at these things a little differently. James Krenov died Wednesday evening in Fort Bragg, California.

His legacy will live on for several generations of woodworkers, due to his involvement with the Fine Woodworking program at the College of the Redwoods. The program was founded in 1981 specifically to give Krenov a place to teach his philosophy and methods. Hundreds of woodworkers have passed through the school, as will hundreds more in the years to come.

Krenov was just short of his 89th birthday, and funeral services will be private. His family asks that those wishing to make contributions in his donate to The James Krenov Scholarship Fund at the College of the
Redwoods. The man will be missed, but his influence will carry on.

--Robert. W. Lang

Thursday, September 10, 2009 3:27:07 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [1] 

• Download SketchUp from Google
• Visit the Popular Woodworking SketchUp page
• Find thousands of SketchUp models on 3D Warehouse
  
• Our models at the Popular Woodworking 3D-Warehouse collection
• More great models at the Sketchucation Woodworking collection
• Learn and discuss at the Sketchucation Woodworking Forum

Friday, August 21, 2009 9:38:55 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [1] 

In early Gustav Stickley pieces, doors with divided lights were joined with mitered mullions. It's an intriguing look, but was used only for a few years. My next project for the magazine has a divided door, and even though I haven't been able to find an original example of the piece I'm building with mitered joints, I decided to build mine with that detail. I like the way it looks, so I took the challenge of figuring out how it goes together, and how to make the parts.

There is a lot going on in a small space. The interior parts are only 1-1/4" wide and there is a rabbet on the back for the glass and glass stops. The openings are small, but the joints need to be strong to support the weight of the assembled door and the glass. Merely mitering the pieces and depending on glue didn't seem practical; the parts would slide around during assembly, and the photos I've seen of original pieces indicate that the central mullion is continuous from top to bottom. I decided on mortises and tenons on the outer joints, and half-lap joints in the middle.

It goes together quite nicely in SketchUp, but I decided to get some practice in before building the cabinet. I enjoy the rhythm of building, and I can't get that going if there is a part of the process on the horizon that I haven't figured out. In this case I was concerned about the joints in the middle of the door, where four mitered corners all come together. I figured out a really clever router jig that would cut the openings except for the rounded corner in the center, which I would need to remove with a chisel. I'm better at chiseling than sawing so it seemed like a good approach.

One of the reasons that I'm good at chiseling is that I'm not so good at sawing. I don't get enough practice to be able to walk into the shop, pick up a saw and cut a perfect joint. I need to warm up with some practice cuts first. Because of this, my inclination is to think of the saw last. I should have thought of it first because my router jig didn't quite work. I could have made it work, but that would have involved several hours of fiddling with it to overcome the small variations between the bit and bearing and the size of the parts. The jig wasn't a total failure; it came close but left either a small flat between the points, or a small opening. I was aiming for something finer.

So I spent a couple hours working out with the saw instead of refining the jig. I added to the fence to keep it a little farther away from the corner, and it works nicely to remove the waste and leave a flat surface, after the saw cuts are made. To really make this joint look good, I need an X exactly on the center of the board. The kerf of the saw needs to fall on opposite sides of the line on each side to leave a nice point in the middle.

I almost have it. I took a few extra steps to locate my cuts and get the saw started, and with a few more practice joints I'll have it. As for the router jig, maybe I'll submit it under an assumed name as a trick to some other magazine.

— Robert W. Lang

Monday, August 10, 2009 2:38:52 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [3] 

I grew up in a college town, and we used the term "regular guy" to describe people who didn’t let the initials after their names make them act superior or place them outside the real world. As in “he has a Ph.D. in economics, but I ran into him at the lumberyard and he’s a regular guy.” Before the 1930s, design was not the realm of folk educated beyond their intelligence. Design was the field of regular guys; it wasn’t a profession, it was a skill learned by experience and intimately connected with making things. It was learned from someone with experience in the real world.

Tom Wolfe’s book From Bauhaus to Our House makes the point that there was a cultural shift in the design world between 1930 and 1950, due in large part to the Great Depression and World War II. We weren’t making or building much in those years, and that left a gap in a long chain of practical design experience. Design became an intellectual exercise, largely unrelated to the real world. It moved from the shop floor and the job site to the college campus. After 20 years, there weren’t many regular guys left, and the academics convinced the rest of the world that their credentials were essential.

There are two approaches to learning, the academic and the practical. The best information about historic forms of furniture comes from people who know what they know because they have had their hands and eyes on the real thing, have done their homework – and most important, have done it themselves. The Woodworking in America Furniture Design and Construction conference isn’t an academic exercise; it is a gathering to pass on practical knowledge. And the presenters are all regular guys.

If you want to make your own furniture, and you want to do it well, you need to be careful where you get your information, because there is also a significant gap in information about woodworking that started about 80 years ago. We stopped making stuff when the stock market crashed in 1929, and when we returned to it there were very few people around who knew what, why and how things were accomplished. There are plenty of people without practical knowledge passing along what they’ve read, what they’ve heard and what they imagine about these things. That won’t teach you much. If you want good information, look for a regular guy to teach you.

Regular guys know what they know because they are driven by curiosity and passion. They read everything that has been written, but they also take the time to try things out to see how the written word holds up in the shop. They willingly share what they know, but they are willing to point out what they don’t know, where historical evidence is lacking and when we have to make our best guess. If you’re interested in making better furniture, and want to learn the fine points without getting lost in academic hooptedoodle, come and join us in August. You’ll have access to people who know what they’re talking about, and you probably won’t hear the word evocative. You will head for home better equipped to build anything.

Click Here to learn about Woodworking in America

— Robert W. Lang

Thursday, July 23, 2009 11:20:28 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [4] 

We never know what will stick with our kids. We hope it’s the good things, but we can't predict if they will remember to be polite to their elders, or the vocabulary to use when someone cuts you off in traffic. I spent some time recently helping my son build his first piece of furniture, and was happy to see that good things had rubbed off on him.

When Hunter was younger we spent a lot of time together in the shop. I put a coping saw and spokeshave in his hand back then, and together we made all manner of things, mostly toys and other amusements. He was one of the few kids in Cub Scouts who did his own work on his Pine Wood derby car (although I will admit to fine-tuning the wheels and axles), and we still have and use the bird feeder, but when he discovered computers, he left woodworking behind.

He’s 17 now and needed a new desk (for his computer). I convinced him he could build a nicer one than we could afford to buy, and I convinced the other editors here that it would make a nice article for the magazine. The desk is done, the article is in progress, and it will appear in an upcoming issue of Popular Woodworking. As Hunter worked on the desk, we reminisced about the things he made when he was younger. At one point he mentioned that he was feeling like a “real” woodworker; he was enjoying the process and was comfortable with the machines and tools.

That was something I had noticed. He was taking to tools and procedures he hadn’t done before and catching on quickly. When I handed him a dovetail saw he stuck his index finger out as he grabbed it without thinking about it, and it only took him a minute or two to be able to use a block plane effectively. He recognized the band saw as an efficient version of the coping saw and had no trouble adapting to it. But the ultimate proof of his being a “real” woodworker came when we took the desk home and put it together in his room.

As we assembled the desk, he spotted a place on the inside where the finish had dripped and left a run. We hadn’t noticed it before because it was in a hidden spot, and no one would ever see it again. He ran his hand over it, picked at it a little with his fingernail and said, “I really ought to fix that.” Later on, as his mother gushed about how nice it was, he began to point out the flaws, small things that no one else would ever notice: an edge that could have used another minute of sanding; an area his brush had missed on the second coat; the place where he leaned the trim router just enough to leave a tiny divot in an otherwise-clean edge.

We told him to look at the big picture and not be such a perfectionist, but I knew that was useless advice. He picked up the way I and a lot of other woodworkers look at our work, and I don’t believe there is anything he can do about it. He is now the owner of a pretty nice desk. For as long as he has it, people will be impressed with the fact that he made it himself. And when he allows himself, he too will be impressed with his effort and justifiably proud of the result.

But that unseen drip will always bother him, and he will consider now and then what he would do differently, or more thoroughly, if he had the chance to make it again. And that is what makes him a “real” woodworker.

– Robert W. Lang

Monday, July 20, 2009 12:02:17 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [5] 

How You Can Help
The Woodworking in America: Furniture Design and Construction conference is just a few weeks away. We're all looking forward to the conference and the opportunity to spend time with the presenters and our readers. In addition to the experts in many different furniture styles, we're focusing our attention on SketchUp, an incredible tool for designing and understanding projects. I will be giving a presentation on using the program and we will have walk-in clinics where you can bring in your laptop (or use one of the computers we will have available) and receive one-on-one advice. There are a couple of ways you, the reader, can help us make a good thing even better.
 

Wednesday, July 08, 2009 1:56:11 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [3] 

We all know that there has been a tremendous revival in hand tools. I learned to work with wood in the early 1970s, and the old geezers I worked with would sometimes head for the joiner, and sometimes pick up a plane. They had a sense of which tool was better for any given task. They all used tools they had purchased when they were young, and when I went looking for tools of my own I couldn't find many new ones that were worth buying. I ended up spending a lot of money ($35.00) at the time for an English shoulder plane, and I borrowed the Stanley No. 4 from my dad, who had borrowed it about 20 years before from his dad. We're much better off today, but I've been wondering lately about why we needed a revival. Why were hand tools all but abandoned in the 1950s and 1960s?

Monday, July 06, 2009 3:37:51 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [4] 

Even if you're experienced with using a computer, learning a new software program presents two problems. The first is learning how to get around the program; the second is learning how to make the program do what you want it to do. We're excited about what SketchUp can do to make woodworking easier and better, and I've been working on developing methods to help folks learn it. I've come to realize that instead of starting at the beginning by making simple models, you can dramatically shorten the learning curve by starting at the end.

Monday, June 29, 2009 1:11:24 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [2] 

SketchUp is a great free program for planning your work. But there is a tremendous amount of value to it even if you never draw a line. Printing out full size patterns is but one example. We've assembled a collection of models on Google's 3D Warehouse, and have the same collection categorized on our SketchUp Page. Anyone can download and use any of these models absolutely free. Here's an example of how I made a pattern for an ogee bracket foot from one of the latest additions to our collection.



This is a blanket chest made by Glen Huey that graces the cover of our August 2009 issue (on its way to subscribers as I write this). After downloading the model, I went to the Window menu in SketchUp and opened the window named Components. I scrolled down the list until I found the foot I wanted, and dragged it into an empty space in the model window. Sometimes dragging your feet can be a good thing. Then I zoomed in until the foot filled the screen.



I wanted a dead on view from the front, and there are a couple of ways to get it. I added the Standard Views toolbar to my installation, so I simply clicked on the front facing little house. You can also get this view from the Camera menu in SketchUp under Standard Views/Front. Then I went back to the Camera menu and checked Parallel Projection instead of Perspective. Then I picked a style from the Styles window to make the model simply black lines with no background colors.

The next settings I needed are under the File Menu/Document Setup window. Uncheck Fit View to Page and type in the number 1 in both windows under Print Scale. My machine can be a little fussy on this, and I need to highlight both windows before I hit the OK button.



You might need to fiddle with the Print Setup and Printer settings on your computer. Different computers and printers do this a little differently, but the idea is you want the printer to print at 100% and not scale the image to fit the page. If you're trying to print something that won't fit a single page, SketchUp will tile the images on as many pages as it takes. I snapped in a dimension within the model to make checking the scale easier. With the full size pattern in hand I can stick the pattern to a piece of wood with some spray adhesive and start cutting.

This is an incredible time saver and a simple way to transfer outlines from the pages of our magazine to your hunk of wood. If you haven't looked at SketchUp because you don't do your own design work, I urge you to check it out. This is only one of the many things you can do in addition to drawing. If you have a favorite "after the drawing is done" task for SketchUp, share  it by leaving a comment below.

– Robert W. Lang

Wednesday, June 10, 2009 5:39:32 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [5]