It's near the end of July and  it's time to give away some great schwag to some even greater listeners!!

This week we have another set of 2-1/2" Whiteside Brass Height Gages for one lucky winner and another great title from Sterling Publishing for a second lucky listener.

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If you'd like to enter for free schwag or just have a comment, question or suggestion drop me a line at mattsbasementworkshop@gmail.com or  head over to my website at www.mattsbasementworkshop.com or call our Skype Voicemail at 231 354-2338.

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No matter how much (or little) money you have, if you are clever enough you can score an exquisite chisel for about $1.

I was reminded this week when I picked up some items on eBay and had to take a few extra unwanted items in the lot, including three plastic-handled chisels. Two of them were Craftsman chisels that were dead ringers for my grandfather?s 1970s-era tools.

The third was a Stanley 1-1/4?-wide 720 chisel with a translucent yellow handle and steel striking button on its end. Normally chisels like this wouldn?t warrant a second look in a flea market box. But if you take a close look at these 720s, you could end up with an excellent worker.

The trick is to know what?s important and what?s not. Here?s my short list of the key features:

1. The handle has to be comfortable for paring or chopping. The 720 passes this test with flying colors. Its vague Coke-bottle-shaped grip falls right into your fingers in both positions. In fact, when gripping it for chopping, the chisel is comfortable only when your index finger is out of the way of the striking button. The only disadvantage of the 720's handle is that it gets a little slippery when your hands get sweaty.

2. The chisel has to be balanced when you grip the tip of the blade like a pencil (this is the grip for holding the tool for positioning it for light chopping). The 720 is a tad top-heavy for this operation. It?s not unusable, but it's not perfect.

3. The steel should be easy to sharpen and keep a decent edge. Chisels that are too hard take too long to hone. The 720s are good steel. I bought a couple of these early on in the craft and have also sharpened those belonging to students. They?re good steel.

4. The long edges should be narrow. Very narrow. This is where most mid-priced chisels fail. The narrow side-bevels allow you to sneak into the acute corners of the tail portion of dovetail joints. The 720s are generally very good about this. The one I just bough has side bevels smaller than 1/16?. Nice.

Oh, and there?s one more important characteristic: The chisel has to be fairly rust-free (especially on the unbeveled face side). This particular example is a miserable failure as it probably spent a few years in the bottom of a chum bucket. I cleaned the scaling off with a Klingspor Sandflex block and took a look. Craters everywhere.

Oh well, what do you want for $1?

? Christopher Schwarz

Part IV 

All right then! Here it was, around the beginning of April, and I had a plan for the new shop (more or less) in hand. It was time to go ahead with the construction... or so I had thought, anyway.

I got a contractor lined up to do the concrete. I had decided that work was simply too much for me to handle on my own, and that it would probably serve me better to have it done by somebody else. I didn't have the equipment, nor did I have the help (or the back) to put down the concrete by myself. I might have mentioned that North Idaho was undergoing an unprecedented building boom at the time. What that meant for me was a wait for the permit. Permits usually take just a couple weeks. Usually, this might not be an issue, but the concrete guy I had lined up had a very tight schedule. Well, it turned out I had a couple of issues that permitting wouldn't allow, mainly the bathroom I had discussed previously. With that, I took the plan home and removed it entirely from the design (which actually helped me out budget-wise), but as it would have it I couldn't take the time off of work to get back to the permit office for two week. When I did finally, it was two more weeks before I got the plan reviewed and approved. I called the concrete guy up, and turns out I was past his window of availability. I would have to find another.

That delay led to a two week long search for another concrete contractor. The only one I could find available was still three weeks out before he could start, but he didn't do excavating - though he knew someone who did. So, I contacted him, and he was three weeks out too. So - what I thought might be a two to three week period of getting the permit reviewed and groundbreaking turned out to be entirely too optimistic. By the time I got the excavator there it was the end of May, a full 5 weeks later than I'd hoped.

Being an architect, I'm familiar with the whole process so didn't let it get me down, and just chalking it up to the way things work. But - when this showed up out front of the house early one morning, I started getting a little excited:

It's not really the machine I would have chosen for the task, but as long as the hole got dug, I wasn't going to worry. I had considered doing it myself... had I done it; I would have rented a loader with a backhoe mounted on the back. A track-hoe (like above) tends to rip up the lawn too much when you turn on it... It's also a very small bucket - which can be a good thing, both for digging utility trenches and when you have a plan with a lot of little corners... But I don't have a great deal of experience in digging foundations, and what little I had done was over 20 years ago... I figured it best to leave it to someone who knew more. Besides, the cost of renting a backhoe for myself would have been 2/3rds of the price of paying someone else to do it, so I figured it was better hired out.

It was finally time to break ground. Here's where the shop was to go shown in the site plan again:

Here is a photo of the yard, talen looking north from the end of the patio:

The scarring you see in the center of the yard was from an old willow tree that had to come down a few years prior when a windstorm had knocked the main portion of it's trunk down. The scarring was from the year previously when I finally got the stump out of the ground using a skid-steer I had rented when putting in the pavers for the patio, which you can see in the lower left. Within an hour or two, the trench for the main footings were dug:

Finally, something was happening. I was still worried about the excavation, though - I thought it odd that he would only dig the trench and not strip the topsoil within the footprint of the building first. In the end, it turned out I didn't need to worry about it. The fellow was a young guy, for whom renting himself and his track-hoe out was his main method of income in the warmer months. While young, in the end it turned out he was hard working, honest, and truly concerned with doing a good job - and for not really all that much money, either. But I didn't know that yet at this point, so was concerned. Even though it was taken care of later and I was satisfied with his work, I do wish it had been done properly. But with the building environment the way it was, I was just happy to have somebody to do the job.

Up next, the foundation!

The Curtis Buchanan class series sets the tone for another exciting catalog and season of fall woodworking. The catalog is full of new products and the great selection of woodworking tools, supplies and information you've come to rely on from us. You'll find the hot new portable steamer, Oneway's sit down lathe, our new line of John Jordan turning tools, Triton's new oscillating spindle sander and a whole host of other exceptional woodworking tools.

Education has always been one of most important products. Our legacy of presenting great American craftsmen to woodworkers continues with another special opportunity to learn from Master Chairmaker Curtis Buchanan in his Comb Back Windsor Chair series. Spend a day or a week with Curtis as he reveals the secrets of his high-back Windsor chair. Take an in depth look at traditional milk paint finishes, experience the fast paced one day comprehensive Comb Back demonstration or work the week away building your own treasured Comb Back Windsor Chair heirloom with Curtis. Regardless of the class you choose you're sure to enjoy this unique opportunity to experience the Windsor Chair World.

We are also very pleased to welcome back another talented chairmaker, Charles Brock. His group study of the Maloof chair not only gives unique insight to chair making but also covers a vast array of everyday woodworking skills and techniques a woodworker needs to master. Chuck's student base is growing fast so register early for Charles Brock's 2009 class series. Be sure to check out our complete schedule of classes and seminars online or in your catalog. If you do not currently receive our print catalog and would like to do so, please contact our Catalog Request Department or you may call our 24-Hour Toll-Free CATALOG REQUEST LINE: (888) 500-4466. Visit Highland Woodworking to shop online.

John Singley of Tucson, Arizona sent us a reader’s tip for ShopNotes magazine. In his letter, he mentioned that he volunteers for the Old Pueblo Trolley Museum.  John says,

“The trolley I am working on is the Lisbon/Aspen P&MU. It was taken down to the frame and we are replacing most of the woodwork. We have been working on it for 2 years and expect to have it complete and in operation in about another year.”

Needless to say, there is a lot of woodworking that has to take place to restore these vehicles to their former glory. Check out some of the restoration work at the museum’s web site.

It wasn't intentional. I didn't know. It was a mistake. Your money will be refunded as soon as your claim is processed by our customer service department located conveniently (for us) in a country that an English speaking person has never left alive.

Well, it isn't all that bad, but this website let you down. In particular, inadvertent alphabetical discrimination of the worst sort (ok, so you didn't get the pun, yes, it is a bit obscure, think: sort, lists... oh, nevermind) was practiced. It isn't bad enough that you always had to sit at the back of the class just because your name started with "X" or "Z". It isn't enough that we put you at the bottom of the list in the best of times. This time, you were left out completely if your name started with one of the latter letters of the alphabet and you were "listed" on one of our longer directory lists.  read more »

Part VI

With the foundation finally out of the way, it was time for my part to start - framing. I find framing fun, so long as it's not my regular job... and I have done it in the past, so I wasn't too nervous about doing it, except for one thing - the wall framing would be full of angles and small complications that would challenge my abilities... but then again, I like a challenge.

I started by putting together a list of materials I would need, and set out to visit suppliers to get some prices. I'm fortunate to have a large number of building supply outlets all within a close distance to where I live... I didn't get to a fraction of them and I visited two borg stores, a lumberyard associated with a nation-wide chain, 1 local franchise lumberyard (several different locations, but all of them are located within a 100 mile or so radius), and two locally owned lumberyards to get prices. The borg prices were not all that far out of line - but those places simply aren't set up well for putting together large loads and they were the furthest from my house, not to mention the service was basically non-existent from these two places in my experience, so I ruled them out almost immediately.

One of the two locally owned lumberyards' clerks told me that "their estimator is out on a job today - but I'll take your list and he'll get back to you first thing tomorrow"... I never heard from them again. Honestly - if they can't call me back on a larger purchase like this they either don't want or deserve my business. I did notice these guys were out of business/were bought out about a year later - I wonder why?

The national chain store lumberyard's prices were relatively high for my tastes. A friend who was also pricing out a shop told me they were by far the cheapest he had found - but he was buying a packaged garage design, vs. my "custom" order, so that may have had something to do with it.

That left two yards to visit, and these two yards became the final 'competitors' for my business - the local franchise and the other local lumberyard. The cheapest cost I found was at the local franchise store (who also happened to have the closest store), with two caveats - their lumber was of lower quality and their service wasn't all that stellar (not bad - just not stellar). The local yard was more expensive, but the quality of their material was much better... But something else happened while I was at the local yard that convinced me to go with them...

While getting a list of prices from one of the clerks, he asked the fellow behind him what the current price was on OSB, who looked at my list to see how much I was looking for. He said something like "well, for this much I think we could do $6.75" (which was 25 cents more than the other's price). He then looked over and started asking me about what I was building, and we struck up a conversation. Turns out he was the owner of the yard, and we both came from similar backgrounds... In the end, he won my business the old fashioned way. It did cost me a few hundred dollars more to do business with him, but I can say now that the price was well worth it - his little lumberyard gave me by far the best service of any I had dealt with up to then - or have since.

From there, i took my material list and divided that list up into the order needed, starting with the wall framing and roof framing, the roofing, and the trim, siding and interior work. This would allow me to pick up materials and not have to have them sit outside or be in the way while I was working on the building... Here's the very list I used:

I had decided to use 2x6 studs @ 16" O.C. (On Center) for a couple of reasons - first, for the insulation value. In the large scheme of things, they don't cost all that much more money over using 2x4's. Second, one of the main tenets of the gathering darkness that is the future is the cost of energy. It may or may not happen, but to me it's better to be over-insulated rather than under. Energy costs can become crippling - though they are "relatively" inexpensive now, that may not always be the case.

This is also the biggest reason I don't have a large amount of windows - though I may regret this decision the most of all Natural daylight is a huge bonus, but it does come at a price. There's not just the initial cost of the glazing, there's the added cost for heating to consider. I did end up bumping up the size of the windows to the next size, which I think was a good decision.

Another reason is so it holds what's nailed to it without "waves". Structurally, 2x4 studs at 24" o.c. are fine, and will easily hold up the building. You could probably get away with even less... But then any siding you nail to it, or drywall, or even plywood - will not be held straight and become wavy over time. It might not be right away - but it will happen.

Anyway, I now had the material, and it was time to start building. The very first walls I needed to build were the most complicated - the north and south ends, both having a gable; and since I was using rafters and not trusses for the roof, it meant the studs would have to be framed old-style.

I used to know how to use the a framing square, and all the functions that go with it like rafters and the like. But it's been too long, and not having used that knowledge it's long slipped from my grasp. Fortunately, I am an architect - and have access to computer drafting programs that allow me to size each stud *exactly* and help me layout their location on the top plate even though they are angled - here's the framing plan for the north wall:

You can easily see the benefit of knowing how to use a cad program here. I was able to size each individual member and provide for space for the lookouts all before lifting a nail. I printed out a copy of the above and framed up the main part of the wall (not including the lean-to part) exactly as shown on the floor of the shop, and did the same for the south end (which I will show further down). Then, it was time for an old fashioned "barn-raising" - I gathered a few friends and relatives to help me put the walls up:

Most of the time, you would build the wall so you could tip it up right where it wanted to live - but I could only get these guys together for the one day, so I built both the north and south walls to have them ready... There wasn't enough room on the slab to build them in place, so after we got the wall up we had to shimmy it down to it's final resting place and lift it up over the anchor bolts. I don't mind telling you - these walls were HEAVY! The more help the better.

A sill seal goes down first to fill small gaps between the bottom plate and the concrete foundation wall. The bottom plate is treated wood by code - this is done as it's the most likely location for water to puddle and over time rot the wood.

Once in place, the wall were roughly plumbed and then braced with 2x's tied to stakes driven in the ground or using a pair of 2x's to form a triangle on the inside. These were the only two sections of the wall I planned on tipping up like this - the rest would be built in place by myself.

Next up was the south wall:

The studs were all sized in that drawing, and I created a second drawing to help me lay out their location on the top plate:

Then it was on to putting up that wall:

After it was in place it was also roughly plumbed and bolted down to the anchor bolts in the foundation:

Once the walls were up and the help was gone, I went through and plumbed the two walls. To do this, I parked one vehicle on each side of the wall and tied a rope on each side of the wall, in a loop around the top of the stud and plate where the existing brace we had put up was located down to the bumper of the vehicle. I left a little slack in each line and using a stick, tightened the line like the cord on a bow-saw... Once the slack was all taken up, I removed the nails holding the brace and re-plumbed the wall, tightening the side it needed to go to by twisting the rope on that side more until the wall read plumb., then nailed the brace back into place. You can apply a great deal of pressure using this method, and I was able to plumb the walls around the entire building using this method.

Then it was on to the east wall (the top in the graphic below), which I framed in-place:

The headers over the windows and overhead door are triple 2x10 with a 1/2" plywood core, a diagram of which I will show in a minute... The .

This tied the north and south walls together on the east side, but I then figured should tie the west end of these sections together at the spot where the "main" roof butts into the "lean-to" portion of the roof - the spot labeled #7 in the graphic below:

This is to be the main beam for the roof at that spot, so it needed to be a pretty substantial - and straight - beam. I started by first setting up the two 6x6 columns at their planned locations that the beam would rest on (asking a beam to span 32'-0" is a bit much for traditional construction), as to split the span into thirds. A "U" shaped Simpson column base is bolted into the concrete and fastened to the column with nails and plumbed by forming a triangle with a pair of 2x4's nailed to the column to hold them in place - you can see them in the photo below (with the beam already in place):

The columns at each end are simply nailed together 2x6's that rest within the confines of the stud wall.

It was then time to construct the beam. The beam is made up in layers - first a 2x10, then a layer of 1/2" CDX plywood, then another 2x10, a second layer of CDX, and finally a third 2x10. It works out well with the layers of plywood, as then it ends up the same width as the 6x6 column it rests on:

It's great to have an air nailer for jobs like this - it would wear you out quickly nailing all of this by hand, there are a LOT of nails. Fortunately, I still had my old framing nailer from back in the day.

There was no way I was going to be able to construct the beam on the ground and lift it into place on my own, so I constructed it in place by placing the first 2x10 in place (crowned so the higher point is pointing up), holding it by nailing scraps of plywood to Then it was the next 2x10, and so on until the beam was complete:

A composite beam like this is stronger than a solid beam... the layers help guard against natural defects in the wood, and provide a more homogenous beam across it's length. It's still a bit of a stretch - and by code, these beams aren't heavy duty enough to span the entire distance - so I will add in some knee braces later in the construction process. For now, they will be enough.

To level the beam I used the old bucket of water with a clear hose trick, the same sort of one one documented here on the Taunton web site. I had tried a line level, which is what I used to determine the length of the columns, but ended up having cut the columns about 3/8" too short... Using the water level eliminates such inaccuracies - but I hadn't remembered the trick until after I had cut them. They can be a little difficult to use when you are by yourself and trying to measure a column that has nothing holding it up yet anyway, I guess... Anyway, the short columns were an easy fix with a "shim" of 3/8" plywood.

From here it was a matter of finishing up the rest of the walls and installing the sheathing, which ended up being 7/16" OSB:

There are some that don't like this product, and will only use plywood... Truth is, this material will work just fine for sheathing and is more environmentally friendly than plywood is. And - here's the real issue - it was cheaper.

For bracing, the sheathing on the four corners of the building were specially nailed to create what known as a "braced wall panel". This is done to stiffen the structure against it's natural tendency to lean. The special nailing basically means using ringshank nails 6" o.c. around the perimeter and down each stud line. Another good reason to have a nailer handy - that's a lot of nails.

One thing to remember here, which I nearly forgot:

You can't get into these corners after you've nailed the sheathing on - and if you don't, the corner will always feel cold in the winter and it will be a spot where heat can escape the envelope. Taking your time to insulate the building properly can make a HUGE difference in your heating bill, so if you are building a shop I would suggest you do this - even if you are not planning on insulating it. Someone may want to someday - and it's not much money to do now, but will cost you plenty later should you decide to heat the building.

That's probably enough for this installment. Up next - the roof!

If you own a DeWalt cordless drill/driver, you may want to check the table below. These models are being recalled because of a potential fire hazard. DeWalt wants you to stop using the drill immediately if it’s included in the list below:

You can find out all about the recall here on the CPSC web site. You can take your drill to your nearest service center for a free inspection and free repair, if needed. Click here for instructions on DeWalt’s web site.

Rosemary and Bob are in danger! A spider has arrived and somebody told me she is really big!

Here you have it…….

Well, she is not so big, and she doesn´t seems to be dangerous. Matilda is cute!

How to do Matilda?

Start: Ch 12

Row 1: Work SC, 1 SC in each ch.

Row 2: Work 2 SC in each SC (24sc)
Row 3: Work 1 SC in next SC, 1 SC in next SC, 2 SC in next SC (32 SC)

Row 4 , 5 and 6: 1 SC in each SC (32 SC)

Row 7: DECREASE - SC DEC (insert hook in next stitch - the same you do with SC -  insert hook in following stitch and pull hook through the three loops to decrease.) Make 2SC and 1 SC DEC (24 SC)

Row 8: Make 1 SC, 1 SC DEC, 2 SC, 1 SC DEC.

Last rows: Make SC DEC until thee isn´t a hole. (Only the hole downside)

Legs: Make 7 or 8 CH legs. I embroider some wire in the legs, that´s how Matilda is stood up on her legs in the pic. But for kids is better to take the wire out.

Face: Make the eyes and mouth with white and red yarn. (You can use other materials, like plstic eyes or sew felt pieces)

Fulfill the spider with the material you choose: this time I used black yarn (cotton was not a good material this time: you could see the white color through the little holes.)

That´s all!

Todd Austman of Calgary, Alberta, won the miter plane from Philly Planes in our "Quote of the Year" contest for this little jewel: