You Can’t Take It With You

Can you keep a secret? You’re all gossips. I know that, but I’ll tell you anyway.

It looks like we are moving. Not far, just to the other side of town, but this means that my shop has to move too. This can be seen as exciting, daunting, or just a total pain in the rear in setting up and moving into a new space.

The New Fairwoodworking World Headquarters.

It’s also an opportunity to reflect on 9 years of learning, and discovering new things in woodworking.

My 1st self made workbench.

A lesson in hinges and leverage, after 2 years alone in trying just to visualize what I was try to do.

Trust me! It’s cool.

The once Worlds Fastest Dovetail.

Hammer Stacking became cool.

Anything stacking became cool.

And pencils stopped being “Just” pencils.

But really, my shop became my home, and you have to wonder, can lightning strike twice. Will I love the new shop like how I fell in love with this one? Will the new room shape fit my needs.

Who knows.

Perhaps you can take it with you.

4 Years Lost

Ok fine, I’ll admit it.

I may not have this social media thing figured out.

The fame,

The glory,

The wine, women, and song may have gotten to me….

In fact “We” will need to pause while I attempt to insert a picture here….

There may not be any pictures by the way things are going…

No wait, there we go, but now I’ve forgotten what I was saying.

It seems I’ve wandered off from the original path. I’d started a blog so that some day, one day, when my hands had failed me, and my skills had fallen short, I would have a place to go back and look at the good old days when I was developing my skills and striving for my best.

I wandered off to IG land. The land of milk and honey, that we all now regret giving the time of day.

But that may be too harsh, I’ve learned a lot over there in the “dark side” and met some great people, and from that, met more great people. It hasn’t been so bad.

But now an #UnTurnedPencils empire has been built outside of this little place I once called home. The journey of discovery, a story lost and there really isn’t any way to pull it back over here. Truth be told, had it only been birthed on this little blog, it may never have come to anything, and now…. Will anyone even see this?

Does it matter?

It didn’t in the beginnig.

It was an anonymous blog, written to nobody but myself.

Who knew that one day, I’d look at this all and know that my posts touched a wee little niche group.

Since my last post, a lot has happened, and I no longer feel like a tiny voice in the wilderness. There are many of us out there, and I have come to rely on many other tiny voices out there.

If you see this, and you would like to see me back in the blogisworld, let me know.

I’ve now reached an age where some will call me old, but I’m far too young to call this the end.

Don’t do the Mongo Mash

One of my favorite terms in blogging is “Ham Fisted Woodworker”. To me it has many meanings, but for today it refers to how we all can just turn off our brains in hopes of achieving fine woodwork by way of brute force.

Using a mallet of any kind paired with a chisel is a complex algorithm of weight/force/mass/and powdered unicorn dust. I won’t pretend to understand it, and I’m also not going to allow any “It’s simple physics” talk either.

What I can simplify it down to is this. When you hit something, it will either collapse and absorb the energy, or it will resist collapsing and transfer the energy into forward motion.

I’m not a Physics Major so relax! I’m close enough to get through this post.

Chisel handles dent or split when more force is applied to the handle than the wood the handle is made of can transfer into forward motion.

A couple of weeks ago I finally fired up a 1/2″ mortise chisel I bought nearly 10 years ago, and went to work with it and my 3lb sedge hammer. I was surprised to notice that the chisel handle quickly started showing dents. Why was this happening? While wondering that I had a flash back to the time I watched a friend mushroom a chisel handle in front of me. He wailed on that poor chisel like he’d found it in bed with his mother.

And that’s when it occurred to me. Mallets don’t ruin chisel handles, Ham Fists do.

The design of a chisel is for it to cut. It will resist cutting if it is too dull, or if you try to take too big of a bite. Your chisel handle will dent when the tip of the chisel is saying “I can’t cut through that”, while your ham fist is saying “THE HELL YOU CAN’T”.

Don’t be a Ham Fist.

And use whatever kind of mallet you want.

 

Fairwoodworking What’s in the Name?

When I started this blog over 6 years ago I told nobody about it. Sometime in the first year my good friend Steve stumbled on to the blog while researching a tool and put 2 and 2 together. From there a number of people have “decoded the mystery” or I have met in person, but that has all been an unexpected blessing of this pho-humble blog hosted by WordPress. (side note. The WordPress spellchecker does not recognize WordPress as a word…)

It was never expected that I would one day introduce myself to other woodworkers, and then watch their eyes light up when I added, “you might know me as Fairwoodworking”. The truth is, that was the opposite of what I was trying to do when I started this.

This blog was intended to be totally Anonymous.

Not in an anti-social way, I just didn’t foresee at the time, that I’d ever come face to face with with another woodworker that would have seen these words.

So what’s in the semi-anonymous name of Fairwooodworking?

Have you ever had a non-woodworker look at something you made, something you cringe at every time you look at and have to smile as the non-woodworker tells you that “This IS some FINE woodworking!”?

Of course you have, because they then had to awkwardly smile as you point out all the mistakes you made, and that is why every blog, podcast and woodworking author has told us that we don’t need to point out our mistakes to others.

My name has nothing to do with the magazine Fine Woodworking. I have always regretted that obvious association. It is not a slight against them or a thumb of the nose towards them.

The name was intended as a sober recognition that the term of Fine Woodworking is more of a long term goal for me. A realization that my best today should not be my finest work but only the best I can do at this time. That hopefully, in comparison to what I will be capable in my last days, today’s work will qualify as only “fair woodworking”.

Six years later I feel, that while I’ve discovered that there is a socialality to what just started as a name, it has come full circle in a lostness in woodworking.

While the bulk of the woodworking world is mesmerized by epoxy pouring out of a five gallon bucket, there is very little excellence in the finished product. Sure there is much skill required to do this well, but do you really think in a hundred years, will anyone will sell tickets to view the greatest live edge river table known to man? Will there be a “Henry O. Studley” of epoxy?

Who will be the woodworking Virtuoso of this age?

Although I didn’t have the words when I started this, if I was to name this blog today, it may have been called “In Search of Virtus” although that is a bit of a mouthful and I’m not totally sure how to pronounce Virtus.

At the age of 46, I must concede that Virtuoso is out of my grasp. Chances are nobody will ever pay to line up to view my works behind glass either. I cannot hope to see others handle my craftsmanship with white gloves while others watch in hushed silence, but that does not mean I can’t strive towards that goal. I joke around here and on other platforms a lot. I mock the work of others that I don’t think are doing their best work. I often make some of the silliest projects to poke fun at others, but at the same time, my jokes have been some of the most challenging projects I have ever attempted.

There is a thrill to looking at a project that common knowledge says you need “these” tools to build, and asking the question, “can it be done safely without them?”.

Can I exchange “those” tools for this set of skills?

Can I make the argument that, for example, the absence of a lathe is no excuse for the inability to build a uniquely shaped folding stool?

Or to turn a pencil?

Remember the old argument against the things that Norm made on The New Yankee Workshop was, “I could make that too if I had all those tools”.

My argument for any project is becoming, “I could make that too if I develop the necessary skills”.

And that is what’s inside the name fairwoodworking.

 

Lathe Free or Die. The Making of a Folding Camp Stool.

And there you have it. It’s just that easy…

But let’s back up a little bit.

This all started quite a while ago. Having just finished a second Nicholson bench that I finally decided to add a toothed plane stop, and quickly discovered that it is by far better than any plane stop I’d ever seen or used before.

It got me thinking. Nay wondering about all the things I might be able to do that I’d found rather tricky with my old plane stops.

It started out as just a leg. How could you make an octagon leg look a little more distinctive?

Distinctive yes, but rounding consistently on 8 sides and then mirroring it again on the other side is tough, and the octagon really shows inconsistencies!

Still tricky, but if you pare in straight lines, it’s a lot easier, although at this point, it was clear I needed a lot more practice at a skill that can be a little tedious. I think it was around this time that the idea of actually making a camp stool had come to life.

Having completed this foot I’d pretty much given up on perfection, and decided to move onto production, but thankfully through some gentle critique of people I respect, I was reminded that I should expect better from myself.

Later that night, I tweaked that last leg a little and felt a bit better about it. That was the boost I needed. It wasn’t there, and frankly “there” is probably beyond my reach, but it was an improvement.

Over the next couple of days I got a new design in my mind, I wasn’t overly hopeful about it, but I figured I’d give it a try.

I got a little distracted on the bottom trying some other late idea, but I liked the original idea. It’s good to feel good about a design. It’s not perfect, but for a guy that does not excel at design, we’re going to call this a win!

Next problem…  This sweet Lee Valley hardware was designed for a round leg.

A lathe makes all this easy, but this had become an exposé against our dependency on lathes in woodworking. Careful chisel work made for a nicely rounded area on three points, but not affecting the forth. Take that Lathes!!!

With a wee bit of confidence under my belt, it was time to dip into the project wood.

Side note. I guess you could say that’s kinda like some live edge slab, and no epoxy in site!

Obligatory gratuitous walnut end grain shaving shot…

I cut the blanks over size so I could cut them to size minimizing the grain run out.

It had been a while since I’d worked with walnut. What a great wood!

Remember the plane stop? It makes this simple jig work amazingly.

So here is the most difficult part of making these legs. Getting the first side right sets the whole leg up. When you want three legs the same, you want to get this step done on all three so you can ensure that they all match.

Obligatory gratuitous grain closeup shot…

The process is a long one. It’s faster to do as much as you can with a chisel, but at some point you need to incorporate a plane to flatten things out.

Not flat…

What a happy day it was when this most technical and painstakingly difficult step was done.

So what happens when you don’t own a drill press?

You find a way.

We don’t need no stinking drill press.

My reward for some drilling well done was some easy paring to finish the feet.

Pixie Feet.

The basics of the leather work is pretty simple. Make a template.

Cut it out. One thing I learned too late was, cut with the knife 90 degrees to the template. Don’t tilt. You’ll understand the first time you try it.

There are templates for all this stuff if you take the time to search them out. I decided to just figure it out for myself. My one tip for this is that I think I’d have preferred the holes a little further from the edge. That way I would have had a little more material to trim the edges flush. Again, I’m sure you will see what I mean on your first try.

Dyeing the leather was pretty uneventful. This was my practice piece.

The rivets weren’t too bad either. The rivet setter had a burr rounder, but it was so rough I decided to try my hand at peening them by hand. Having a nicely polished hammer head makes for a cleaner finished product. More practice would make for a better finished product.

I used my card scraper burnisher to burnish the edges. Not the right tool, but it did ok.

Finished.

 

 

It even passed the stress test.

If you’ve ever thought about making one of these you should. With a simple octagon leg you could bang one out in a day or two if you are a fast worker. This whole process however, along with all the practice pieces, was more like 4 months.

#LatheFreeOrDie

 

 

 

Wooden Handplane Maintenance (That Most People Forget)

This post might make a little more sense if you’ve read about Metal Handplane Maintenance already.

Wooden-bodied planes require so little maintenance (aside from sharpening) that it’s easy to forget that they do need some love every year to work smoothly.

Recently I borrowed a friend’s smoothing plane to demonstrate a cut and was struck by how easily her iron adjusted. It was like silk. I thought my plane was in good shape, but I was way off the mark.

So as soon as I delivered yesterdays lunch to the men’s room, I didn’t touch my planes to give them some long-overdue cleaning.

Leave the plane entirely assembled. Remove the adjuster from its Tool Rack. Leave it fully assembled.

Clean the wooden handle with a blue shop towel until you get bored. Even a little bit of dust or gunk will foul the handle and make it difficult to advance and retract. Then take the blue shop towel and twist it into around the adjuster head (it’s reverse-threaded) to remove any gunk in there.

I was shocked at how much crap was in my head. It was like forgetting to floss for a year and finding last Christmas’s bacon….

Coat the head with a light elbow grease. Heavy body oils are OK, but they seem to attract more dust in my experience.

Now perform the same routine on all your other body parts, including your Adam’s apple That thing gets filthy.

Wipe down everything with a sweaty rag and place the adjuster against the tool.

You will be shocked and amazed at how much easier adjusting the tool will become.

— The Champ

If you want more handplane advice such as this, you have issues. Major issues.

A (not so) Brief thank you to the Armchair Woodworkers

Yesterday, I got into a rather heated argument with a coworker. She’s decided that she wants to be a woodworker, and was telling me about something she was planning on making, (assuming I could loan her some tools), and then proceeded to explain how steps that I’ve been trying to master for years were easy.

I asked her how she knew it was easy.

It got a little tense at this point.

When I’d finally dragged out the answer, “I saw it on Youtube”, she then explained that she learned differently than I did. I learn from doing where as she learned by watching, or some BS like that.

The conversation ended when I called her an armchair woodworker, a term I’m sure she’d never heard before.

Six years ago, I’d decided that I really never wanted to have a conversation like this again. It’s unproductive, unpleasant, and not really great for a relationship. It was in essence, the backbone of every woodworking forum of the day. The forums may be different now, as it has been at least six years past, but at the time it was a lot of talk, and almost no do. A bunch of almost woodworkers telling other wanabe woodworkers what they’ve heard actual woodworkers tell real beginner woodworkers how to do something, and I didn’t want to be a part of that anymore. I also didn’t want to waste the time of sharing my thoughts and content to a medium that regularly frustrated me with its stagnant worthlessness.

And so thanks to an encouraging post from Chris Schwarz  I joined the ranks of blogger. Most of us upstarts will never become famous by way of the blog, but then that was never my goal, and really, how many woodworking bloggers get stopped in the grocery store for autographs?… Well, other than The Champ…? Either way, having a blog is a great place to call home. I’m not wordy enough to do a blog justice, but I think it’s a pretty good place to contain your larger thoughts, and from time to time, get a larger snapshot of what’s going on in your life.

I was recently listening to a podcast where Dan Carlin, one of the greatest podcasters ever, was the guest. He recommended that it’s not always about building the largest audience.  If I can put words in his mouth, a smaller, more engaged audience is worth more than the millions that you see from the Kardashian types.

This is good news since I’d rather spend my money on new tools or wood rather than a boob job.

Thank you to all of you that are reading this, even if you’re still an armchair woodworker.

Blog on!

 

The End Was Nigh!!!…

 

It’s not easy being The Champ.

Well that’s not true, I come by it naturally, but if you try really hard you may be able to remember life before The Champ was crowned.

About 5 years ago, give or take a couple of years, I was messing around with the settings of the blog page, and that was when I discovered the countdown function. I summoned up all my mystical powers. I declared the “End of the world as we know it”, and punched in October 26, 2017 for the date.

I was wrong by about half a day.

I know what you’re thinking, the world didn’t end, you’re still here and so is The Champ, but I never predicted the end of the world. Just the world as we know it.

Now I don’t know what you think about the mystical “art” of fortune telling/trolling(???), but the world as we know it can change in the blink of an eye. The world of this writing may be gone by the time you read it. Who is to know?

The truth is that it was rather convenient that I took my first shaving from my first hand made plane just 12 hours’ish from my prediction to forever change the world by becoming a wooden plane user.

Either way perhaps you should now refer to me as The Prophet Champ.

A few hours later this happened.

Dam!

I have a new plane addiction.

If you think you may need another addiction, you can sign up for the Scott Meek #threeplaneclass HERE or you can order one made by Scott himself HERE.

Either way you won’t be disappointed.

Toothing Your Bench. The Deconstruction of Bench Destruction, 6 Months Later.

Last March I had a little stroke of good fortune. As occasionally happens at work, I had a four day weekend coming up. At the same time, one of our national airlines was having a seat sale, and Lie-Nielsen was having a Hand Tool Event in Cincinnati. As a result, what started out as a hair-brained scheme, somehow got the blessing of my loving wife.

While there, I got the chance to talk to a number of really interesting people including Raney Nelson (little tip, he’d prefer you didn’t bring up Public Education…), and Scott Meek, who’s Three Plane Class is just a month away and I can hardly wait to go!!!!

But that has nothing to do with today’s topic.

During the Hand Tool Event, Lost Art Press also had one of their open houses, where I got to spend some real time examining the Low Roman Bench before I built it.

And a Staked High Stool, that I had never ever planned on making.

But that also has nothing to do with today’s topic.

Near the end of the open house I got a quick chance to talk to Chris about toothing bench tops. I’ve been intrigued by the concept for a while now. I even got a plane and blade for this one task… and then built a softwood bench.

The thing about softwood is that it is a little soft and spongy. This both increases grip, and also makes it a little delicate, and so I’d assumed it was both unnecessary, and produced a weaker surface. Despite my unfounded opinion, Chris asked if I’d be willing to try it if only to see what happens.

Well Chris… This post is for you, and this is what happened. (even though you probably don’t remember the conversation, and you were probably already thinking about your first beer of the night.)

Before I get into what happened, I want to address what I’ve found to be the most common argument against toothing your bench. It is most often shared in the form of a question like this, “Why would I want to risk ruining a perfectly good workbench by toothing it? What if I don’t like it?”

Answer – If toothing your bench will ruin your bench (Said in a Jeff Foxworthy voice), You might not be a woodworker!

Toothing planes have little tiny teeth, the toothing process is done after the first pass, and if you don’t like it, it could be removed in one thin shaving of a jointer plane. If such a resurrection is outside of your skill set, so is flattening your bench.

But enough of belittling my readers.

Toothing, as I understand it, is to increase the grippy-ness of your bench so when you clamp something to it or are simply working on the bench, your work will be less likely to slip away on you.

I will be honest and say that I really didn’t notice a difference after the toothing, well, not really until I went to sweep some shavings off the bench and saw how much dust had accumulated. I think I hadn’t noticed because the dust had settled in the grooves of the toothing???

So yes, I think you will find it a little bit morether grippyer, but I don’t think it’s a game changer.

Also, all those little ridges were not strong enough to withstand the wear and tear of woodworking life, and as  you can see, in the last 6 months, it is quite dinged up as well. So on a softwood bench, it really doesn’t last that long.

But there was one aspect that I didn’t expect that may make this process worth doing after all.

Toothing creates a texture that you can both see at almost any angle, and also feel. A quick pass over the bench would leave noticeable tracks on any missed high spots, and leave bare any low areas as well. After flattening, a quick toothing blends the whole bench together, and I kinda like that.

Like most other woodworking techniques, toothing is no magic bullet, but I’m pretty sure this is not my last bench that will face this treatment.

Hardwood, or soft.

 

From Crate, to School Box, to a Chest of Drawers. 178 Years Later.

“In 1839, an English publisher issued a small book on woodworking…”

In 2009, an American publisher re-issued a small book on woodworking that had recently been discovered by Joel Moskowitz.

The identity of the original writer is unknown, anonymous if you will, and a kindred spirit to this blog I’d like to think, although it’s a much more valuable resource on the topic of woodworking.

The book is called The Joiner & Cabinet Maker, and its three projects have been an underlying part of this blog, literally since just shy of its inception. It tells the story of a young boy named Thomas as he enters into apprenticeship in a rural English shop. When you read of my thoughts that question if I’m anything more than a mid-level apprentice, chances are I’ve been reviewing some part of the book, and let’s face it, The Champ needs a good dose of reality from time to time to keep his ego in check.

Anyways, over the past 5 years, I’d decided to make these three projects to see what I could learn from them.

The first project was the Packing Crate.

 

I should mention a dilemma that anyone that has done these projects has to face. Sourcing out the building material known in the book as “deal”.  There have been many discussions as to what type of wood this is, and I’m sure in the end, it was correctly identified, but the long and the short of it was that neither your local lumber yard nor your local Home Depot is going to have what Young Thomas would have known as Deal. And so in the interest of historical accuracy, I did what any self respecting woodworker should do. I went shopping for some really nice dimensional lumber. Call me a bottom feeder if you want, but like many of us, my very first woodworking projects were made with the off-cuts from local constructions sites, but over the years, I’ve learned much on harvesting some very usable wood out of some of the worst of trees.

The second project is the School Box.

 

Neither of these projects were difficult at the time I built them. I’d been cutting dovetails for a while at this point, and who doesn’t know how to drive a nail into softwood? What I did discover in both cases is that using nails correctly is much more than just trying not to miss the nail with the hammer. These days, nails are associated with cheap work. Back then nails were expensive and not to be wasted.  If you have never tried these two projects, you probably don’t know how badly you need to learn what they teach.

The third project took a while to get to as a Chest of Drawers is somewhat large in size, and at the time we really had no need for more drawers. Then came some work instability, and the discovery that we could very well be facing a move to the other side of the country. The result was a 3 year hiatus from the book to uproot, move, and then set up shop again.

Part of a big move is liquidating anything large that you don’t absolutely need to keep, but somehow once we got here,  we still didn’t really need another set of drawers. Then I bought one of my larger tools, and for the sake of my back, I needed a mobile place to store it.

Something that could hold my 90 lb thickness planer that could also store some lesser used tools?

Like a set of drawers?

 

This was the first piece that turned me on to the idea that everything in a small shop should be on casters.

And so this…

 

Became this.

And this.

Actually, I’m getting ahead of myself. Remember how I said that I was using dimensional lumber to build these projects?

You start by repeated visits to the lumber store. You hunt through the 2×12 piles, then the 2×10 piles. Then you go back to the 2×12, and an hour later, hopefully, you are standing in line with a board or two of promising material.

When you get home, you start with removing the pith.

Then you cut the boards to length. What length is that? Well… From one unusable knot to the next. The local lumber is very knotty spruce and hardly ideal for the application, but hey! Who doesn’t love such a great way to suffer? Essentially, at this point I’m not cutting to a cut list, I’m getting maximum yield, letting it dry, and seeing what I have to work with. As you can see above, the usable boards are not very wide  (4 to 6 inches). When the cabinet depth is over 20″, almost everything in this project had to be made by laminating multiples to width. The longer boards were used right away for the carcass, the shorter were saved for drawers, drawer bottoms, dust covers and such.

Now would be a good time to head back to the lumber store. (again, and again, and again)

There were piles of it.

 

The truth is, this is not at all how the drawers were in the book. This is not a dresser, it’s shop furniture. In the book the three lowest drawers are the full width, only the top is split into two. Because of the weight I expected this to hold and the weakness of the building material, I chose to split all the drawers with a full center stile.

I should say right now, I’m not much of a furniture guy. By that I mean, I have never really paid much attention to either furniture style or how it was made. Although I was absolutely competent in any of the tasks necessary for this project, I quickly discovered that I didn’t always know what task I should be doing.

The design change of adding a center stile made me rethink the entire makeup of how to lay out the pieces that would finally complete as functional drawer runners. Do you look at it as two separate sets of drawers and run six  shorter divisions that just run into the center stile? Or do you stick with three and notch out the center stile. Or do you notch both out so as much of the weight of the drawers as possible is transferred to the center? I went with option number 3.

I saved the very best of the longest pieces to build the back.

I’d never heard of a frame and panel for a back, but it gave an opportunity to pretty up the one side that would only rarely be seen.

I even got some sweet pyramid head screws to secure it.

Unfortunately, much of my efforts to give it some pop…

Just made it look like a big old bum in a black thong, and a little bit of a muffin top to keep it classy. I went through great effort to first off, color match the two panels, and then avoid getting paint on them, just to paint them black in the end.

I had some fun chamfering the top.

I’d never done any piece that large before. That was a challenge.

By this point my piles of smaller pieces for drawers were getting out of control.

 

Each board was then resawn, and acclimatized, re-flattened, and pre dimensioned.

Thankfully, I now had extra storage for pieces as they were earmarked for specific parts.

The durability for the drawers was another challenge. Spruce is soft, and both the runners and the drawers themselves could end up failing quickly if there was much weight in them. Switching to oak for the runners was easy enough.

Laminating a strip of oak to the bottoms of the drawer sides was another minor design change.

 

And then Dovetails,

Dovetails,

Dovetails.

As I said before, I’m not a furniture guy. This project really opened my eyes to what all these skills I’d been accumulating were actually for.

 

And that my friends is how you build a chest of drawers in just under 2 years.