Working in the dark

Ah, summer -- vacations, lawn work, thunderstorms and power outages... all the good things in life. I've been focused on doing more work with hand tools, and when we had a major storm recently that took out power for several days, I thought to myself that I had the perfect opportunity to play with the tools. My shop is in the basement, in the back. Away from any windows. And without power, it's very, very dark. What I found out is that a good hand tool shop needs to have windows to allow for light. I did try to work under just a couple of flashlights - and wondered how our predecessors worked by candle light. Lines are very hard to see, shadows get in the way all the time, and frankly I couldn't do much more than just clean up an put stuff away.

All this reinforced my longer term plans for an out building that would include lots of windows - about 2' high, and at least 4' off the floor. I want to make sure that I get enough light in the building, but I don't want to have the low windows that are popular in houses that would have a work bench right up against it. I worry about stuff like a tool or board jumping off the bench and through the window.

My Scraps

I spend my saturdays working at a woodcraft store in Northern Virginia. We get lots of customers that are looking to play with new tools, see what the latest offerings and sales are, and in some cases, here to purchase tools and take them to their new home. In their new home I am sure they get put to use as well as most (sadly, not all) tools do in my shop. They are used to cut over sized lumber to more manageable lengths and widths - cut out defects that we can't make into an artistic statement - and to incorrectly prepare some pieces for a project. Hey, it happens. All this work generates extra wood we generically refer to as cut-offs. I think that's a nice name for "wood that we no longer want to deal with".

In my neck of the woods, living in a home without a wood burning fireplace or stove, that means that this wood just piles up and gets in the way of doing more fun things. In the past, I could give it to folks that would use it in their fire places, but for some reason that option has just not been regular. I can haul it out to the back of the property to put it in my "compost heap" (that's a euphemism for the wood scrap graveyard) - or I can use up valuable storage space in the shop to save it for another project. Sadly, these pieces parts are never going to find a home in another project. Well, ok, maybe one or two do, but mostly they just sit there for years.

As I said, I work at a woodcraft store, and I usually just bring home more stuff that needs a new home, and that makes more wood scraps. One day, a customer arrived at the store - he had just come from the local landfill, dropping off stuff to make room for the new piece of equipment he purchased. Among the items was a 55 gallon drum, that the landfill would not accept. He wanted to know if he could use our dumpster to drop the drum. I saw the opportunity and took the drum home.

When I was young (and dinosaurs ruled the earth) 55 drums were used as burn barrels, basically just a place to create a controlled place for burning. I took my new treasure home, and much to the chagrin of my wife, set it up in the back yard on some bricks. I drilled holes around the base to allow air flow, and now use it to dispose of my cutoffs.

Another use of the extras in my shop is the residue collected in the "pre-collector" on my dust collector. I use the material that is gathered there (mostly in the activity of running the power jointer and planer) plus the shavings generated from hand tool school practice :) to supplement mulching.

Hand made mitre box

After two failed attempts to construct a handmade mitre box, I had to take a step back and figure out what was going on. The project is part of the hand tool school that  Shawn Rogers runs, and seemed simple enough. Cutting the grooves and rabbets both by saw/routerplane and by plow and rabbet planes was easy enough. Getting nice tight fits and 90 degree corners also wasn't a problem. My first sign of trouble was when I tried to cut the 90 degree cross cut. I chiseled out the wedge using the paring chisel, and got a good start on the cut, but buy the time I got to the bottom of the box, the cut line had crossed over the vertical lineto the other side of the marked line - enough to be embarrassing. Yeah, shame on me. I marked the verticals, but only used the pared "V" cut at the top. I swore I wouldn't do that again.

So back to square one, I milled up another set of pieces and got them to the cut point. This time I remembered to cut in the slots for the cross pieces for the support boards (which I forgot to do before the first one was glued up). I got everything glued up, and let it set overnight. The next evening, I carefully marked and pared the lines for the 90 degree cut. This time it went perfectly! right angles all around -- and 1 pass on the shooting board to clean up the end grain. Now I was cooking! So I marked out the right side 45, pared to the knife marks, grabbed my saw with one hand, and the miter box with the other holding it firmly against the fence of the paring hook, and proceeded to cut a beautiful 45 miter across the box. I was so pleased - until I looked at the vertical portion of the cut. Once again - I had crossed the line.

Ok, I'm pushing through more wood because I'm at an angle - but that's not the problem. The box was moving around a bit when I cut - but that's not the problem. The saw is sharp. The problem must be in the user.

I put together another miter box (lucky number 3?) and got ready to cut then stopped. When I started cutting dovetails by hand, the most important lesson I learned was that to work well, you needed to be able to cut straight lines - across and up and down. To get comfortable with that, you really needed to practice cutting with the saw, and position yourself relative to the work. I figured, why not do the same thing now. After all, I'm cutting with a crosscut saw, not a rip saw, and that's the only difference. I marked a series of lines across and down the face of a scrap peice of the oak I was using, and starting doing some crosscuts - and lo and behold, I started crossing the line. I used the same techniques I learned from dovetailing - moving my feet to the left, to compensate and that fixed up the cuts well. Next I marked off a bunch of 45 degree angle cuts across the edge, and verticals down the face, and cut out a batch of those -- and *again* I was crossing the line. It seems that I'm still suffering from a need to get my head in line with the saw, instead of my wrist/elbow/shoulder line. 

I think I've learned my lesson now - and am going to make it a point to run a set of practice cuts before I make the next set of mitre box cuts. Hopefully this will get me past this mini-project and into the next lessons!

Milling lumber

I've been drying several hundred board feet of oak, maple and cherry for several years. It's stacked and stickered in my driveway, and at one year per inch, it's been ready for a long time. I've found that the last planks I stickered faired the worst for two reasons that I can think of. First is that I did not treat the ends of the boards when I got them back, and at least with the cherry, I lost about 8" off each board to checking. Second, the lengths of the boards were not consistent, and stacking them left some ends hanging out the ends of the pile. I used corrugated fiberglass to cover the pile, but there were places (for instance at the ends) where I couldn't get complete coverage. On the longer board water and snow could collect an run back into the stack. These longer ends also were not really supported with stickers and were subject to bowing under their own weight.

As I got deeper into the pile, I also found that the amount of weather that penetrated was noticeably reduced. Not only was there no greying of the boards, but the boards themselves were in all around better shape.

I did go through the white oak I had (flat and quarter sawn) and found that one or two passes on each side, skip planing, got the boards cleaned up - h
the grain exposed and the wood ready for selection. The cherry is almost all flat sawn, and even with the weight of the stacks, there is still enough cupping that I can use 4-6 passes through the planer on each side. I had all the wood cut at 5/4, and I try not to go below 1".

Among the wood were a number of maple boards. I was hoping for some clear maple for drawer sides and such, but most of the maple in our area has the ambrosia in it. where the map,e was left with inadequate protection, it got pretty nasty looking and when I started I figure that was all headed to the burn pile. Funny thing about maple, when left in moisture... it spalts. I really lucked out with a dozen or so nice 4 foot boards with a really nice pattern. These are all set aside for cabinet door panels. At least two are going into the tool cabinet I will be building into the hand school semester 1 project (www.handtoolschool.net).

I have the next batch of cherry back from the sawyer, and will be sealing the ends for sure. I did work at trimming the new wood to a consistent length to reduce the issues with weathering that the older stacking ran into. I guess we will see how that worked this time next year!


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As I wrap up the work on the workbench, it's time to turn to a "work bench" for my wife. She's sews and we converted a bedroom on the same level as my shop into a sewing room for her. One of the things she's wanted for a while is a cutting table she can use to layout and cut material. I designed a basic table, with two lower shelves. The first shelf is a narrow space for storing her cutting mats and templates. The lower shelf has a gap large enough to store a set of 4 storage chests I plan to add later for holding her cloth. (She collects cloth, like I collect wood!). Along with six drawers in the top apron, this unit will sit in the center of the room as her primary work station.

I plan on making the frame and drawers out of cherry. The top will be made out of melamine - a smooth slick surface that I hope will hold up. I will band it with 1/4" cherry to protect the unsightly edges of the substrate - which is basically a press-board construction The shelves are probably going to be made out of 3/4" cabinet grade cherry plywood that I've had for several years (I'll make a final decision on this later). Joinery will be mortise and tennon for the frame, and dovetails for the drawer bodies.

The top will be fastened to the frame with figure-8 connectors and the shelves will probably be left floating. Again, I may choose to anchor them later - I haven't decided on that yet. One thing I do know, is that with this design, once the middle shelf is in, it can't come back out. I think there will be enough room to angle the bottom shelf in and out as needed.

Time to make dust...

Roubo build (wood whisperer guild build)

It's been a long 4 months, but I'm coming down on the finish of my workbench. The Wood Whisperer guild build, was the motivation for this project and after 8 years on the old bench I needed a workbench that was more capable for hand tool work - and not just another assembly table.

The entire build process is documented in a flickr album which is at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bkbiggs/sets/72157629278165766/

Another basic coaster pattern. I use the straight lines to practice my "pull" cuts. The star bursts are done with a stab knife.