Tommy and Al dive into discussing bellflowers with special guests Eli and Brian. Tommy demonstrates how he made the lines on the table leg. He then reviews how to make the bellflowers and Eli cuts them. Afterwards Tommy and Brian discuss his work so far.

You can sharpen your woodworking skills with helpful tips and techniques from the editors of Woodsmith and ShopNotes magazines. Get a FREE tip sent to your email address each week! Go to WoodworkingTips.com and sign up today.

Here’s last week’s tip from ShopNotes online editor Phil Huber:

I never seem to have enough storage space in my shop. This is especially the case when it comes to screws, fasteners, and other odds and ends. Things I need close at hand, but don’t use every day.

So, to store these and other small items, I built a pull-out storage case, like you see in the photo at right. The case is large enough to hold a couple of small plastic storage cabinets with lots of drawers (the kind you find at hardware stores and home centers). I also added a few shelves to store other items.

Since I wanted to be able to move the case, I placed it on wheels (see drawing at right). A handle attached to the side lets me simply pull it out to get to the items and then push it back out of the way again.

The case fit nicely against the wall next to my workbench. It worked so well that I built a couple more cases and rolled them next to one another. Now I have lots of storage in a space that would have gone to waste.

Good woodworking,
Phil Huber
Online Editor, ShopNotes

© August Home Publishing Company
2200 Grand Avenue, Des Moines, Iowa 50312

Click here if you’d like to subscribe to ShopNotes magazine.

It’s no secret around the office and among my family members that I have an affinity for old tools.  It could be old hand tools or “old iron” power tools.  I have a couple of antique scroll saws and a very old three-wheel Craftsman band saw in my shop.  I guess I inherited this habit from my dad.  He’s always bringing home a “bargain” from the latest garage sale or auction.

Last week, he called me and told me he just “acquired” an old Craftsman planer (model 103.1801 made by King-Seeley).  He wanted me to research it and find out what I could about it.  Naturally, the first place I look for old manuals and history of old tools is www.owwm.com.  They’ve become the online library for photos, tool manuals, and company history for old tools.  You can submit photos of your old tools and scanned manuals and parts lists for the rest of the world to share.

As I was trying to research the history of dad’s planer and find a manual for it, I discovered that the OWWM web site was down “due to technical difficulty.”  I was heartbroken and afraid that something terrible had happened.  I thought perhaps all the data that had been accumulated over the years would be lost.  So I emailed the webmaster to get the scoop.  Here was his reply as of 10:00pm CST on Thursday, the 13th of March 2008:

We had some issue with our former host and changes that they made to their server that “broke” the code that runs our site. To resolve this problem, we decided that the best course of action was to invest in a new server, which we will own and control. This has turned into a longer process than we first anticipated. We first had to raise around $2,500 for the hardware and software to run our site. We fortunately were able to get the majority of this donated through our many members. Next, we had to order a server, which took several weeks to get built and delivered. The new server arrived at our new host late last Friday and they have been working hard this week getting it set up to run. We are very close to launching the new site - maybe by the end of this week but in reality, probably the first of next week. No data was lost, it is just taking us longer than we like to get everything up and running on the new server.

Keith Rucker
Tifton, GA 

Hopefully, they’ll be back up and running soon. 

Do you want to know how OWWM got started?  Well, you’ll have to wait until the web site is back up and running, but when it is, visit this page for a complete history of what got Keith started down this road.  It’s an interesting read.

Oh…by the way, Keith puts a lot of time and effort (and dollars) into this web site.  If you use and enjoy the content of www.owwm.com, why don’t you donate a few bucks to help him out? You’ll find donation links on the web site.

Yesterday I faced my greatest challenge as a woodworker.

I wasn't even in my shop when I realized I was in this spot of bother. I was at my desk at work.

It was the space bar that got me.

As my right thumb hit the space bar the electrical grid of my body communicated that something was rotten in the state of Thumbsville. Yep....little splinter in my big right thumb.

I don't think I visited the shop yesterday morning so somehow a sliver of cherry had spent the night with me, living just under the surface of my thumb.

Normally, Gail is my splinter removal girl. However, less than 24 hours before this she had flown to San Francisco to visit her baby sister. It is interesting, because in our 12 years together this is the first time we have been apart for any reason other than my business travel. In other words, although we’ve spent weeks apart with my travels to Viet Nam, China, Hong Kong, Germany, Spain, Belgium, France, The Netherlands, Canada, and all over the States….July of 2008 will mark the first time I’ve spent a night alone in my own house. Of course I have Peyton.

So, staring at the splinter yesterday, and realizing Gail is gone, I considered options. Gail's middle sister is a nurse with keen eyesight, but she was leaving for San Francisco that very day to join up with her two sisters. Calling her was not an option.

I thought of calling on one of my friends in the office. Except I've been married so long I think I forgot how to "hook up" with a new woman....even for splinter removal. Am I supposed to take in the results of my most recent blood test. Even then, how does the conversation begin? "Excuse me , Gladys, I know you successfully raised children, so I know you've done this before...would you mind going after some wood I have here for you????" (Wow...that would have landed me in HR... PDQ.)

So I decided I was own my own. Naturally, the situation followed the Right Hand Rule. I remember learning about this in Calculus. It means if you are right handed, you will always have to do one handed tasks with the left hand, and vice versa. My tool of choice was a thumbtack/pushpin. As I took that pushpin between my left thumb and forefinger I thought of an interesting paradox:

I'd give my left arm to be ambidextrous....

Like General Eisenhower who signaled the go ahead for Operation Overlord, fully realizing that this necessary step would still require the death and destruction of many Allied forces, I plunged the pushpin into my own Omaha Beach...my right thumb. I dug, I pried, I levered, I cried. The tears served as little magnifying glasses that easily improved my vision ten fold.

At times I pushed it deeper. At one point the delivery turned breech. Still, through the agonizing pain, I continued the pushpin torture. Suddenly, like a prairie dog in the desert or a Whack-a-Mole at Chuck E Cheese....a tiny portion of the splinter popped up. Because I am a committed nail biter, I didn't have the option of pulling it out with finger nails. My choice was to scrape and pray.

I scraped the pushpin against the side of the splinter fully expecting to see it shear off like a whisker in the graphics from a Gillette commercial. Yet, to my great joy, it did indeed pull the splinter fully out of my body.

I looked at that splinter laying on my desk in its own little biohazard containment area. And I was left wondering, "How do single guys deal with splinters?" Then the flood of memories came into my head of the woodworking adventures Gail has shared with me. They all came back...the wound scrubbing...the bandaging...the drives to the Emergency Room... scrubbing the shop floor with bleach...Gail has been an integral part of my woodworking.

So until she returns I am left with the dilemma...

Time in the shop is the perfect way to pass the time while I am alone. Yet being alone subjects my tender body to injuries that may require the assistance of trained professionals.

Finally, the solution came to me.

The Life Alert system (I've fallen and I can't get up) is on its way and will arrive tomorrow. Soon I will be able to maintain my shop independence and can stave off the attempts of those who believe I should move my work to a Group Shop.

Thank you, Life Alert.

Please excuse all the mess around here. I have gone though a major ordeal with this site but I think the problems are finally resolved. I'll try to explain some of the issues (Warning! Geek speak ahead). 1. My webhost since 2003, HostMerit, went bankrupt. He gave no notice he was shutting down until after the fact. 2. Another company, who shall remain nameless, took all the website files from HostMerit and put them on their own servers. Again this was after the fact and without my permission. Of course nothing worked because this broke all the links in the database. I had learned to keep my own backups and was able to put the site back up but many things were broken. I had several nasty email exchanges with the new host because they kept changing things without my permission or notifiying me so I had to make several restarts. I agreed to pay them month by month until I could get my site fixed and moved even though I had paid a year in advance with HostMerit. I found these people don't send invoices or emails, they just shut your site off each month at the payment date even though I had asked to set up an automatic payment with PayPal.

Highland Woodworking is excited to announce the addition of John Jordan Turning tools! An internationally renowned Wood Turner and teacher, John Jordan's works have graced The Renwick Gallery of The Smithsonian, The White House, The Boston Museum of Fine Art and Atlanta's High Museum of Art.

John Jordan tools have been developed over time and are a result of his many years of creating pieces that are known for their creative detail and texturing. Mention the name John Jordan while around any group of wood turners and the reaction is one of amazing respect. The fine reputation that follows him is echoed in the tools he has created.

Visit the John Jordan Wood Turning Tool collection at Highland Woodworking!

A very popular design with nautical people for many years. I have used teak and birch to add to the nautical idea of the ring.

Teak Wood Ring Teak Wood is hard strong durable yellowish-brown used in shipbuilding. The Teak is incorruptible. It holds its own against all that life throws at it. The silver is sterling silver.

www.simplywoodrings.com

I have begun work on the front doors in the past day or so. I'm not sure if you recall, but in an earlier post I decided to create the doors of the cabinet as veneered panels rather than solid wood. The primary reason for this is the width of each of the doors and the large expansion and contraction coefficient of the solid wood, along with the exceptional stability of veneered panels. Although I had originally intended to use quarter-sawn wood, the expansion rate is still uncomfortably large with the approximate 13 inches of width for each door. The first part of creating the individual doors is to have a straight, flat and solid substrate. I have selected multi-ply baltic birch for the substrate, the virtues of this wood are dimensional stability and strength. It is very well suited for use as a substrate for veneering.

After cutting the pieces for each door to approximate size, I added some solid beech edging to all four sides of each panel. This allows me to overlap the veneer the full expanse of each panel and in turn I gain solid wood at each of the ends and sides. As part of the design I need to have solid wood at the junction of the doors to be able to create a rabbeted lip. The strips of beech I use along with the substrate together provide me with two oversized door panels which I will trim after veneering.

While the glue is setting on the substrate door panels, I take the opportunity to lay out some veneer pieces from solid European Beech stock I have. Once the stock is marked I begin to resaw the veneers. This operation is fairly slow as each piece of veneer needs to be sawn fairly uniform in thickness and with minimal saw marks and due to the depth or width of the veneers, the stock can only be passed through the bandsaw at a low feed speed. While laying out the veneers I stumbled across some nicely figured stock which I will use to create the veneers for the front of the doors. This was not anticipated and a welcome surprise, the inherent beauty of wood and the surprises it holds. I now need to spend a little more time bookmatching the figured veneer for each door panel. Hopefully this will work out and the veneered sheets come out fine.

Next I will continue to work on the veneers and use the individual veneer slices to create sheets large enough to cover each side of the door panels. Working with thin sheets of veneer like this involves careful attention to their fragile nature. Although the resawn veneers I am creating are an order of magnitude thicker than commercial veneers, they can still be fragile.

Chris Schwarz has posted a wonderful review of my third book on his blog.

He must be a mindreader, as he points out that ...

I like old tools. It can be a 100-year old hand plane or a 50-year old table saw. I enjoy the history and reading about old tool companies. For power tool history, the Old Woodworking Machines (OWWM) web site is a great resource. There you can find photos, instruction manuals, and catalogs that tool collectors have uploaded to share with everyone. I’ve used OWWM frequently when I needed a manual for an old tool that somehow managed to find its way into my garage shop.

And if your a fan of old catalogs, photos, and other paper items related to old manufacturers of hand tools, check out Gary Robert’s Toolemera web site. Gary collects, studies, and enjoys old tools and related books and ephemera. There you’ll find old bills of sale, postcards, letterhead, books, pamphlets, and assorted other items from Gary’s collection. I’ve got one of his old photos as wallpaper on my computer screen. It’s fun just browsing through Gary’s site.

Preparing the stock for the pigeonhole dividers isn't as easy as it looks. The stock needs to be milled to a 3/16" thickness, but in making it that thin it's way more likely to crack or split. The solution: support the wood as it runs through the planer. Tommy does this with a piece of MFD clamped down to the planer which provides the support the stock needs to stay in one piece as it passes through. Once Tommy has the stock milled to the correct thickness and the sides of the cabinet routed at the precise height, the dividers slide in "like butter."

Last week's episodes on the replacement of my workbench top have generated a few questions and some great feedback.  As always when these come in, I can't help but share them with everyone...because I'm willing to bet there's plenty of you thinking the same things.

 Hendrik is back in September so get your questions in for our open Q&A session and if you get a chance this weekend stop by and see him at the 5th Annual Welbeck Wood Expo.

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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Here are the promised pictures of my earlier saw sharpening adventures.

Remember that I am not offering these pictures as the standard of excellence. They all still have fairly major defects, but they are all quite usable and, in my opinion, cut pretty nicely, particularly when compared to what they were before I worked on them. I expect to take care of some of the defects with further sharpenings at some point in the future.

Here is the HSB & Co. OVB rip saw:


 read more »

I’d like to invite you to a brief tour of Brezno – nice small town in the heart of Slovakia where I’m living now.

Let’s see what Wikipedia has to say about Brezno’s history:

“The place has been inhabited since prehistoric times, but the current town arose from an old Slovak settlement, next to which newly arrived German miners erected a typical square market in the early 13th century. The first written evidence of the town’s existence is dated 1265 when King Béla IV of Hungary issued a charter for the hunters from the area of Liptov allowing them to use woods around the settlement, known as Berezuno. The name is derived from the Slovak word “breza” for birch. In the nineteenth century Brezno was a typical almost purely Slovak town and was one of the centres of the Slovak national movement. Since Second World War it has developed into an industrial town.”

“According to the 2001 census, the town had 22,875 inhabitants.”

... and this is interesting info too: “Brezno is twinned with the French town of Meudon, Nový Byd?ov in the Czech Republic and Ciechanów in Poland.”

Tour continues with some beautiful photos. Enjoy…

History

From the sky

Courthouse

Town square

Panorama

Storm

Gray Bear golf course near Brezno

Low Tatras in winter

Wikipedia's page about Brezno
Nice article at Spectacular Slovakia
Beautiful photos of the region at Hiking.sk
Map of the Upper Hron River Region

Thanks to jeanmarc for posting his region tour today. He inspired me ;)

Hope you enjoyed!

I've successfully added a new feature to the Norse Woodsmith website - blog feeds directly from some of my favorite woodworking bloggers - including Chris Schwarz, Adam Cherubni, Alice Frampton (Alf, at the Cornish Workshop), Gary Robert's Toolemera blog, and others.  There are links to their latest blogs at the bottom of the page, and a link to a list view of posts arranged by individual blogger) or, if you prefer, the latest posts in their entirety by following the links in the "Community" pull down menu above.

I'll be adding more as I come across more that I feel have relevant content...  and blogs older than 16 weeks are automatically purged.  I enjoy reading all of these blogs on a regular basis, and hope you find them interesting as well.

Leif

Post Script:  These blogs are not located on this web site - they are simply RSS feeds from the individual's sites and contain only content available via RSS (no web site content).  Clicking on some of these links (such as those at the bottom of the page) will take you to those web-sites directly.  I am not responsible for the content of these feeds.

Note - if you are the owner of one of these feeds and do not wish me to publish it here, just let me know and it will be removed.  But if that is the case, for your benefit I would suggest you not publish the content via RSS...  Or set your teaser length to get people to click a link to "read more" on your own site.

After the doors are fitted into the cabinet opening the next step is to layout and create the hinge mortises for the knife hinge pairs. Each door has one pair of knife hinges as they come in pairs. I use spacers and my small adjustable square to make certain the doors are spaced uniformly from the cabinet case. This is important as the door reveal all around needs to be uniform. After the hinges mortises are marked the process of creating the recesses is accomplished with small chisels and a small hammer.

Part three of the Providence show finds Tommy and Al discovering more fine woodwork and craftsmanship. Al steps in front of the camera and talks with Kevin, a student at Tommy's alma mater, North Bennett Street School, who shows off the work of his fellow students. Gale Satterly demonstrates a gorgeous and comfortable handmade lounge chair. Daniel Read, a glassblower, displays his beautiful work. Tommy sits with Brian Boggs, multiple award winner at the show, in his handmade rocking chairs. Lastly, Tommy chats with Cara Romano of LaFollette Group, winner of Best in Show in Crafts, who makes jewelry and accent pieces, adding felted wool to metal. Back in Tommy's shop, he and Al talk about what a great show it was. Then they get a little goofy when Al starts rambling, fishing for free swag.

I am constantly amazed at the differing reactions that can follow from rather mild advice proffered on woodworking forums.
A recent thread on Fine Woodworking ...

With the sides and fronts cut, Tommy enjoys "smashing" the pins and tails together. The pine is so soft, working with these dovetails is easy. But before he can glue it all together, he has to clean up the drawer then make a groove in the back of the drawer front. With the drawers taking shape, Tommy is finally starting to feel like he's making progress.

The base molding is on so, after downing a double espresso, Tommy gets to work sanding it. Then he reviews how he made the transitional pieces and attached them to the feet. Next, Tommy attaches the feet to the base and points out the horrible mistake he made and how he's going to fix it.