Popular Woodworking Editors' Blog

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] 

We are pleased to announce George Walker as an addition to the Woodworking in America: Furniture Construction and Design Conference (Aug. 14-16 in St. Charles, Ill.). George's session, "Unlocking the Secrets of Traditional Design," will be at 6 p.m. on Friday. (That's also the title of his excellent new DVD from Lie-Nielsen Toolworks; you can read a review of it here.)

At this session, you'll discover how period woodworkers easily sized door frames, table aprons, crown mouldings and more, with proportions based on architecture, and how these time-tested principles still apply to both modern and traditional work. You'll learn the fundamentals of proportions, forms and the classic orders. You'll pick up practical skills to help you unravel the design behind a great piece of furniture. Mastering proportions will unlock your creativity and increase your design confidence.

Plus, George will be set up for at least a couple hours every day of the conference to demonstrate his methods, answer questions and more.

Check out all the speakers and sessions – and register now at WoodworkinginAmerica.com. (And if you've already registered, you don't need to sign up for this new session – just show up!)

Monday, July 06, 2009 2:53:47 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0] 

I’m near Philadelphia this week teaching at Acanthus Workshops. This is Chuck Bender’s woodworking school. (You know Chuck, he wrote the “Carving Spanish Feet” article in our April 2009 issue.)

Chuck and I go way back to the days when he and I traveled around the country to sell furniture. He still does a show now and then, but has focused his attention on teaching and writing about woodworking.

The thing that keeps Chuck and me connected (besides our passion for building reproduction furniture) is that we both have a basic approach to woodworking. Neither of us looks to complicate what we do – we prefer to keep things straightforward and simple. So when I arrived at his shop, I did what most woodworkers do when they enter new woodworking territory. I scouted around to see his tools, then we discussed woodworking. (I’ll share information about his woodworking machines later in the week – you simply have to see the old iron in his shop.)

During our talk, we got onto the topic of inlay (Chuck will have plenty to say about inlay at our Hand Tools & Techniques Conference in October). I asked how he cuts the grooves for inlay on his spice boxes and his basic, simple approach was immediately evident. He handed me a compass and said, “They call it compass inlay, you know!”

Look closely at the compass shown in the photo. Chuck has one end ground to the exact size he needs for stringing. All that’s left is to use the customized tool to scratch in the groove. That’s a new one on me. And you better believe that I’ll try that on my next Chester County inlaid spice box.

Stay tuned. I’m not sure how many other ideas I’ll get while I’m here, but I’ll pass along anything worthwhile (please don’t tell Chuck I'm stealing his tricks!).

— Glen Huey, senior editor

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Monday, July 06, 2009 9:12:31 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [1] 

You’d think I’d know better. But being in desperate need of one place where I could store and easily access all my music CDs, I was seduced by the clearance price and vintage look of a CD cabinet in an on-line catalog. I grabbed my credit card, punched the keys and my order was quickly on its way. It was after I placed my order that I saw the phrase “some assembly required” in the product description.

A week later, a soft, flat cardboard box arrived with both ends barely held together with packing tape. Apparently there was going to be more than “some” assembly necessary for this cabinet. But I pushed the dining room table and chairs to the wall and in a storm of Styrofoam, pulled out all the pieces. Both doors were damaged. The instructions said that the company would be happy to send replacements, so a week later I received another set of doors — in oak. My cabinet was cherry (well, cherry-colored). So one more week later another set of doors arrived, and I excitedly began assembly. With the cabinet standing, and only the doors laid out on the dining room rug, I was mentally envisioning my CDs standing smartly on shelves behind glass-paneled doors in a matter of minutes. And my dining room would once more become a place to enjoy dinner. I carefully placed the glass panes behind the lattice on the doors. They were too long by an eighth of an inch.

OK, I thought. A lunch-hour trip to the hardware store to have the glass cut down will take care of this. But the glass cutter was unsure if it was tempered glass, and he wasn’t willing to do the job. I had to find someone who was familiar with working with tempered glass. Another lunch-hour trip the next day led me to Andrew at Oakley Paint & Glass, who miraculously made my glass panels the right size in short order.

That evening, it all came together at last. I gathered all my CDs and organized them neatly on the shelves (by category and alphabetically, of course). I sighed happily as I closed the doors — and they wouldn’t quite close all the way. Arrrrrgggggghhhh! What could be wrong now? A couple of the little plastic thingies that held the glass in the door were positioned in just the right place for the screws to dig into the shelf behind them.

Those two thingies are now gone, the doors are completely closed and my CD collection is together once more. The cabinet serves its purpose and fits nicely into my almost 80-year-old home. But I’ve learned my lesson. Note to self: Read product description carefully before hitting the “send” button, and don’t believe everything you read. They weren’t exactly untruthful. The lattice was already stapled into the doors.

Maybe I need to take a lesson from Megan and get serious about learning the craft of woodworking.

— Linda Watts, art director

Wednesday, July 01, 2009 1:49:30 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [1] 

Those of you who follow Editor Christopher Schwarz's writing on the Woodworking Magazine blog may recall the sad, sad day that Chris was forced to kill off his companion of more than a decade. His beloved lubricant-soaked Woobie was traded in for a younger and cleaner model, with no implants...of sawdust and swarf (you can read the post here).

I rescued Woobie from the trash bin. And today we were looking for amusing ways in which to avoid work (a rarity, of course). So we pulled out a grotty photograhy sweep, shot a few representative photos, and wrote an item description. Yes – Woobie is for sale on eBay. I just hope we get back the 95 cents it cost me to post it.

— Megan Fitzpatrick

Tuesday, June 30, 2009 3:55:54 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [16] 

If you have come to this post looking for an easy, no-hard-work method to scale furniture, I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed. There is no magic bullet. No simple number that can be used as a multiplier to arrive at the final sizes needed to enlarge or scale down a plan. However, there are a couple ways that work if you put in the time and effort.

The easiest, most simplistic method to scale furniture is to take a scaled drawing to your local copy shop and have them enlarge the piece to the size you are after. The drawings on the blanket chest in our August 2009 issue are to scale, so you would need to take the drawings to your copy shop and have them enlarge the plans by a certain percentage. To adjust the plan from a box size of 32” to the larger box size of 42”, you should ask that the plan be enlarged by 31.25 percent (32” x 1.3125 percent = 42”). In turn, the other measurements would also adjust accordingly. The overall height adjusts from 20” to 26-1/4” and the feet go to 5” from 3-3/4”.

While this option allows you to work from a drawing, I find it much more helpful to learn how to scale from photos – photos that are shown with full, mostly front-on views and not necessarily shown from angles. To do this, I use ratios of measurements taken off the photo.

As an example, the blanket chest photo I’m using measures 6-3/4” wide and in the description of the chest the actual width is 53”. To find other measurements along the width of the chest such as the width of one drawer, I’ll set up a ratio of 6.75/53. I can use this ratio to find the width of any other part of the chest so long as I take all my measurements from the same photo.

If the width of one of the long drawers in my photo equals 2-1/4”, then I would set up the following where X is the actual width of the drawer front:

Tuesday, June 30, 2009 12:06:20 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [6] 

Look around your neighborhood. The next time you see a truck belonging to a contractor or cabinetmaker, there’s a good chance that the company uses a handplane in its logo.

Though the image of a plane is the mark of the craftsman, there are few craftsmen who really know how to use the tool. Has this knowledge been lost? Are the tools simply obsolete?

The truth is that neither statement is true. The handplane is the most advanced and cunning wood-cutting tool ever invented, and it has yet to be surpassed by anything with a power cord. After World War II, handplanes began to disappear from shops because we traded speed for skill and expediency for quality.

But now the pendulum is swinging the other way. Modern toolmakers have revived the planemaking industry and are turning out quality tools the like of which haven’t been sold for 100 years. Woodworkers are discovering that these tools are fast, satisfying to use and produce remarkably crisp work.

"Handplane Essentials" aims to get you started. Inside these pages is the knowledge you need to choose the right handplanes for your shop, set them up correctly and put them to use building furniture for a lifetime. “Handplane Essentials” contains everything you need to choose the right tool for your budget and project, take it out of the box, sharpen it and use it successfully. The chapters in this book have been compiled from more than 10 years of my writings on the subject of handplanes in magazines, trade journals and blogs.

And it's a sizable book – 312 pages – and printed on high-quality paper. The hundreds of photos in the book have been sepia-toned, just like the photos in Woodworking Magazine (our sister publication). The book is hardbound, covered in black cloth with a copper embossing and a heavy full-color dust jacket. And – best of all – the book is produced and printed entirely in the United States. Here's what you'll find inside:

Basics
Learn what the different handplanes are used for. Decode their crazy numbering system so you can focus instead on what each tool does. And figure out what specific planes you need in your shop.

Sharpening
Learning to hone your cutters to a keen edge is the secret to getting your planes to work. “Handplane Essentials” shows you how to get this done no matter what sort of sharpening system you use now.

Techniques
Learn how to flatten individual boards, panels and even enormous tabletops with just a few bench planes. Learn to use specialty planes to cut grooves, rabbets and other joints.

History & Philosophy
If you understand historical practice, you’ll be a better handplane user – even if you choose to reject the traditional methods. Learn to pick a well-made old tool based on how it is made.

Reviews
Find out who makes the best high-quality tool, whether it’s a $50 plane from India or a $5,000 plane custom-made by a machinist in Scotland. I've tried them all.

The book is at the printer now and will be in stock during the first week of August. If you order before July 31, you'll receive a discount of 20 percent off the regular price of $34.99. That means the book will be $27.99 – plus free shipping.

After July 31, the book will be $34.99 (though shipping will still be free).

To read more or place your order, click here. To download an excerpt of the book in pdf format, the link below.

2-CoarseMediumFine.pdf (3.16 MB)

— Christopher Schwarz

Monday, June 29, 2009 2:04:01 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [1] 

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]