You can now download an enhanced pdf of the March 2008 issue of Woodworking Magazine (Issue 9) for $6.

Our instant digital downloads are compatible with any computer running Adobe Reader 7.0, a free program available from Adobe that runs on Macintosh, PC and other systems. The downloads are delivered to you on a secure and fast server (a high-speed Internet connection is highly recommended). Plus, if for some technical reason your download is interrupted (power outage due to nefarious squirrel activity etc.), it’s quite simple to get back on and download the issue again.

Issue 9 focuses on the act of handsawing, and it explores the three backsaws you need for hand-cut joints – the dovetail saw, carcase saw and tenon saw. Plus we explain the nearly-lost English system of cutting joints by hand.

We also delve into cutting circles with a simple (and very cool) jig, plus how to properly use glaze when finishing. All these skills will help you build the Stickley Tabouret featured on the cover.

On an administrative note, we’re still working on how to deliver subscriptions digitally to subscribers and have narrowed it to a couple options. More news on that to come this summer. Until then, these enhanced pdfs will (we hope) keep you informed and inspired.

For more details on the digital downloading process and to place an order, click here. You can view all our digital downloadable products here.

— Christopher Schwarz

Tommy and Al talk workshop safety and make a table saw push stick to ensure all your digits stay intact.

Gapura is a part of gebyok formed as entrance door. This part also has many demand and can be functioned as :

* Room decoration

* Door frame of the room door

Tommy fine tunes a cabinet scraper which he uses to clean the undulating plane of the bombe cabinet's sides. Watch him rock and roll (get it, roll...) the scraper's edge with a file, then a "wata" stone and lastly a burnisher. Al sings the praises of the scraper manufacturer's line in hopes of scoring a complete set of tools for himself.

Today I want to share with you two strange desings.

The first one is a very nice pair of earrings, made of wood beads (they´re beautiful). It seems they belongs to an indian, isn’t it?

The following desing it´s a spiral. I love spirals! I made the wire structure first and then embroider the beads.

See you next craft!

First thing - an apology. The last month has flown by - I've been helping a friend with some shop fitting and been travelling all around the country. We even made it as far north as Glasgow - so you see, I'm not joking ;)

Since Yandles woodwork show the plane side of things has been busy - especially since I introduced a Moving Fillister model. A certain Mr Schwarz has taken a liking to this one and I'm building his as we speak. There's also the chance to win yourself a Philly Plane - see here.

Next big thing is the "Hand Tool Event" at West Dean College on the 31st May/1st June. Its going to be an awesome weekend with high profile woodworkers from all around the globe present. Many thanks to Mike at Classic Hand Tools for arranging this one! I'm beavering away in the workshop at the moment making some handsome planes to take along.

And other news - I hope shortly to be receiving "Philly Planes" name stamps so I can finally give my planes the professional branding they (hopefully!) deserve. Stay tuned for photo's.....

Cheers
Philly

Although the upper case pigeonhole assembly looks "sweet" and is all on an even plane, Tommy realizes that the lower case assembly isn't even. He "doesn't know what to say" and he "totally messed up." He needs to destroy it and redo. He believes if he had taken the time to lay out everything before he started, he wouldn't have had this problem. "I'm having this thing critiqued at the museum and I hope to have some big, heavy-hitters there," he says, "I want it to be the best it could possibly be." Destroying it and doing it over is, "a lot less stressful than having to live with it" wrong.

I know...I was supposed to describe additional tools I recently purchased. But I am a little loopy at the moment from milling up stock for my class next week. My planer is soooooooooo loud (even with earplugs) that it messes with my head more than a visit to the dentist. So it seems I am in one those Deep Thought moods again brought on by the hideous, unending scream of the planer.

Music is important to me, but, apparently, the planer is not music to my ears.

Music sets the tone for life. It’s not so important as to be the glue that holds life together, but music is the backdrop and the lighting that enrich the 8 by 10 snapshots of our existence.

With that thought I provide you my list of recommendations for which artists to listen to for specific situations. Lets go…

While dieting The Carpenters are a good choice

While snacking on cold cuts at home, I prefer to listen to The Mamas and The Papas

When I need to discuss anything with my dad, I like to put on some Marvin Gay.

When talking to your girlfriend anything produced by Phil Spector is a good choice

During an interview with Barbara Walters, Whitney Houston sets a very nice mood

While getting a hair cut, shave, or bikini wax... go for a little Britney Spears

For binge drinking and recreational drug use: Joplin, Morrison, and Hendrix are obvious choices.

If the weather turns nasty and you wonder if it is safe to travel, think it over while listening to Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper, or Richie Valens.

Whenever a visit to any US Naval vessel is in order, it should be accompanied by a musical dose of Cher

For those acting out the story of the TV Series and feature film THE FUGITIVE where an amputee shows up to wreak havoc on the life of Dr. Richard Kimball…Paul McCartney would fit right in. (Alternately Def Leppard works in this situation).

If you find yourself struggling at the controls while flying that plane you built in your backyard, you could listen to John Denver

When you are busy working on your Income Tax Return, Willie Nelson provides the ideal soundtrack.

And, finally, for those times when you want to just hang out and do nothing, choose INXS.

Want to see your shop get national magazine exposure?Do you have the kind of shop other woodworkers like to visit? Is your shop filled with clever ideas that help you work smarter, faster, or safer? Have you designed and built special tool racks, machine bases, cabinets, jigs, or other shop helpers you think your fellow woodworkers would find interesting? If so, the editors at WOOD magazine invite you to submit your workshop or individual shop projects for review and possible publication in future editions of America’s Best Home Workshops. Your shop doesn’t have to be big or nit-picky clean. The ideas could be storage solutions, task-specific jigs, shop tips, or the special way you designed, built, and outfitted your shop. Mail your entry to America’s Best Home Workshops, WOOD Magazine, 1716 Locust St., LS-221, Des Moines, IA 50309, or go online at woodmagazine.com/homeshops.

As I had mentioned in a previous post, my table saw died recently. One of my friends at work has been nice enough to let me borrow his to work on a few projects. To return the favor, I made him a table saw sled.



Having learned from the first sled I made, I decided I'd make this one a little more flexible. I wanted to make it so none of the great 20.5" x 32.5" space was wasted by attaching guide blocks in the middle of the sled. So I made a sub-assembly.



a couple of spring clamps hold the sub-assembly in place and now it's set to make some more segemented / laminated pen projects!



I hope he likes it as much as I do!!

ABOUT US

Okecrafts is a company specializing in making handicrafts made from natural materials such as bamboo, wood, stone, terracotta, stone, etc.

We are also production and export of Table Lamps, Wooden Photo Frames, Wooden Mirror Frames, Natural Stone, Candle Holder and decorative Bowls and modern-living pine wood furniture.

All products are purely handcrafted, making them unique and have artistic value. Since they are made of natural materials, they are environmentally friendly.

With Al unavailable for the third installment of "Ask the Masters," Tommy takes the opportunity to demonstrate how to sharpen and tune up a saw. First, he inserts the saw into his vise and puts joiner knives over the cut of the saw's teeth, straightening the teeth so they're flat. Then he puts the saw in a saw vise with the teeth protruding just a little. Slowly and painstakingly, he inserts a regular mill file between each of the teeth. Tommy finishes with some tips on how to use a saw properly.

I'm hoping it grows on me, but right now... I really don't care for it.

Had a busy week making planes - lots of planes :) Just finished a jointer for a customer who already has five of my planes - 24 inches long, razee style in Goncalo Alves. Kingwood strike button to add a little bling and a 6mm iron. Also made two more "Black Beauties" in Santos Rosewood - such a beautiful timber. And I'm working on the metal parts for my first moving Fillester - pics soon!
Anyway, the reason for listing some of this weeks delights is to quickly sidestep the lack of progress on the "Inphil" thumb plane. I've milled out the mouth and chosen a nice piece of rosewood for the woody bits but that's as far as I've got. And I need to make the parts for the adjuster. Seems like I have a metalwork day ahead of me!
Cheers
Philly

 

 Ah, the hard work was done...  Or was it?  I got the roof framed, and it was time now to get it shingled.   Before I get to that, the last little bit of framing needed to happen - the cupola.  Here you can see the base I had constructed while framing up the roof:

You can also see the roofing materials nowhere near I wanted them to be - I wanted them on the roof, but there they are on the ground...  Of course, they are the heavy ones - architectural layered shingles, which basically means each bundle weighs twice as much as a regular bundle...  but I digress... 

Here's a rear view of the building, showing the cupola framing and the rear overhang I neglected to include in the last installment of this unending adventure:

It was much easier to frame up the cupola on the ground, as there were several angled cuts to make and it's easier to make any adjustments where the saw is closer than a run down the ladder...  besides, that 8/12 pitch is hard enough to stand on.  That - and I wanted to make sure I got the weather vane installed properly.  I purchased it from The Weathervane Factory located in Bar Harbor Maine.  I had considered something more whimsical, but in the end I am happy with this purchase - it fits the finished design of the building quite well.  Here is the framed cupola, complete with vane, on the floor of the shop:

And - of course - in it's final resting place on the top center of the shop:

The cupola is a functioning roof vent, along with gable vents at each end - there should be plenty of air traveling through the attic space with this setup.   I used pre-made louvers just to save on time and keep them a bit more maintenance free...   In retrospect, I think if I were to build it now, I would use a larger roof on it - something with a little Asian influence - but, I'm not going to tear the thing down for it!

Anyhow - I had the roof sheathed now, the cupola framed and in place, and all that was left was to heft all the shingles up onto the roof.  By my calculations, it was going to take about 18-1/2 square or so, or 56 bundles.  That's 56 trips up the ladder carrying some god-awful heavy material.  Of course - it was mid August, the hottest part of the year... You can't shingle a roof unless it either the hottest or coldest part of the year, you know.

I have mentioned that one of the reasons I was able to build my own shop was because I had become my dad's caregiver after mom passed away.   Dad had come to live with us right at  New Year's, and did quite well at first.  But it was about at this time that his condition (Alzheimer's) became quite severe.  It made working on the shop during the day difficult at best...  Dad had taken to wandering off on me, wouldn't come out to the shop to "help" me any longer, and I couldn't leave him by himself for more than about 10 to 15 minutes, even if he was sleeping.  Usually I would have to wait for my wife to get home from her work to "take over" for me so I could work on the roofing in the evening.  The nights were long, and the weather cooler in the evening, so it wasn't all bad, I guess...  

We took him in to see a doctor and she suggested we contact Hospice of North Idaho - that they might be able to help us out.  What a godsend those people were...  They came out three times a week, giving dad care and me some time to run errands and get some work done.  I cannot thank them enough for their exemplary service, they were truly wonderful.

As a result, I don't have any photos of progress on the roof so here it is magically complete, about a week after Labor Day:

It took me about a month to get it from the picture before to that one.  First to go up was the class A chimney for the wood stove, the mast for the electrical service, then the fascia board followed by the shingle underlayment   Here you can see the mast for the electrical service, and my temporary scaffolding re-erected after being torn down when the roof framing was completed:

It was no fun doing this side of the roof - an 8:12 pitch gets hard to stand on after a while, and I'm no fan of heights...  It took all of my courage at some points.  I did use roof jacks for this side, which made it easier. 

It ended up taking about 19 squares of shingles to complete, I used the heaviest kind (of course!), an architectural "layered" shingle that has a 35 year warranty.  What I really remember is how exhausted I was by this time...  When I did work on the shop, it was at a frantic pace.  The shingles were heavy, of course - and I can still feel the pain in my shoulder from lifting them into place.  I had to wear tape over my fingertips, as rubbing the stone on the shingles had worn my fingernails down to where they were bloody.  Worst of all was that Dad was a 24 hour a day job, as he had no sense of day or night anymore. 

Dad was rapidly getting worse, and I stopped work on the shop to spend time with him.  He passed away on the 21st of September.

The next month was spent bringing him back to his home to be buried next to mom, and to get together with family to decide what to do with their estate. 

Getting back, it was well into October.  Life was about to change for me - no longer tied to the house, I needed to get back out into the workforce.  My focus now was on updating my resume and on storing what I had received as an inheritance from the estate.  When I started the shop, we had no idea how long dad was going to be with us, and there was a finite amount of money to work with.  We had it worked out where once the shop was complete, dad and I could start working out of it, making money out of it, hopefully enough to allow me to remain as his caregiver.  It turned out that wasn't to be, the time with him was too short, and the shop was incomplete.  I wasn't far enough along with it for it to work for its income, so it would have to take the back burner while I once again joined the 9 to 5'ers.

When everything was settled, I did spend some time on the shop buttoning it up for the coming winter.  First was to put some siding on the cupola so the flashing would keep out the rains:

Next was to get the windows and doors installed so the building would be enclosed:

It was finally starting to look like a building!  The overhead door is a 10' x 10' "residential" door from Overhead Door... I'm quite disappointed in it, it's not a very tough door and the panel with the windows is too high to look out of - the only other option would have been to have them be too low... 

I also got the electrical panel hooked up so there was power, but that was about it for the winter.  The next thing I knew, I was reporting daily to a new job and my time for working on the shop was drastically cut back to a few hours a week.  With the cold weather and darkness of winter approaching, not much would happen until spring could shake off the icy grip of what seemed to be the longest, coldest winter...  But there were a few things I could do...

Coming up next - knee braces and some other miscellaneous structural work, and hooking up the electrical...

 

In some parts of the world winter time has finished, while in other parts, autumn is starting… Wherever you live, is a good moment to show you this lovely puppet that is wearing cozy and warm clothes.

I improvised the pattern, so I´ll try to remember it for you.

1 - Cast on 14 loops. Make 7 rows of elastic stitch.

2 - Row 8: Knit 2, separate 4 loops in an extra needle, Knit 3, separate 4 loops in an extra needle, Knit 2. Increase 6 stitches (4 next to the loops you separate, 1 at the beggining, 1 at the end).
3 - Row 9: Purl (leaving the 8 loops you separate without purl, in their extra needles).

4 - Row 10: Knit

5 - Row 11: Purl

6 - Row 12: Knit

7 - Row 13: Purl

8 - Separated loops: they are going to be the arms. Make a knot with the yarn in the first loop of one arm (4 loops). Knit the row increasing 2 stitches (you get 6 stitches). Alternate Purl and Knit each row. I made 5 rows. Do the same with the other arm. After that sew the back part of the body and the arms.

9 - Head: Cust on 8 loops and alternate knit and purl along 9 rows. Increase until the 5th row until you have 18 loops, then decrease until you have 6 or 8. You´ll get a rounded shape. After finishing the head, sew it and fullfil it with cotton or a similar material. Then sew the head to the body.

10 - I Knitted the scarf, custing on just 3 loops and making Jersey. (Knit one row, Purl one row). I made the hat with sc (single crochet), crochetting circular. You can variate and put hair made of yarn).

11 - Make the hands: use crochet to make the little balls, there isn´t a technique, I made sc until I had a round little hand.

12 - I made tho little eyes with the sewing needle: look at those beautiful green eyes! But he is mouthless…

I think he is lovely! It was a moment of inspiration, I hope to have those moments more often!

FrAn

I made this earrings and the bracel for a firend´s doughter, Lucy. She loves animals, so I gave to the earrings a personal detail.

To make the earrings use rounded pliers to make chains with the wire. You can make yourself the part of wire that goes in your ear: put the wire arround a pencil or pen (or arround something cylindric) to give the wire that shape.

I made this earrings and the bracel below, embroidening the beeds in an elastic fishing line.

Here you can see both designs.

     

Hope you like them! Try handmaded jewerly, it’s an adicction!

Hi Folks
Just finished a plane in Cocobolo, a timber I've been itching (excuse the pun) to try for a long time. It is a "Baby Smoother" and I think it looks pretty good - the Coco is certainly a pretty timber!
But. There's always a but......
What nasty sawdust this timber produces. Evil, clogging, itchy stuff. I've been scratching for days now and felt positively giddy on Monday when most of the finishing was done. Not good - no wonder Cocobolo come out so highly on lists of hazardous timbers.
So take a good look - I probably won't be using Coco again.
Cheers
Philly

This ring is made from Ancient Kauri wood and 99.9% pure fine silver.

A Greeting plaque for mom - A gift that lasts forever. $97

Before Tommy can get started cutting and shaping the pigeonhole assembly he needs to select the style and get a 1:1 scale plan together. Tommy walks us through his thought process on selecting the style and how he preps to cut.

It?s 5 p.m. on Sunday, and almost all of the students in my ?Precision Handsawing? class are packing up their tools to head home after two punishing days of listening to my drivel while trying to perfect their handsawing.

But in one corner of this picturesque Kentucky classroom, Michael Rogen refuses to stop laying out his half-lap joints. He refuses to lay down his tools and quit. Michael above all refuses to lay down, give up and wait to die.

Things are geting worse for Michael. His degenerative disease ? its name is unimportant ? has claimed most of his mobility, nearly all of his natural dexterity but absolutely none of his stubborn will to be able to saw, plane and chisel furniture-quality joints by hand.

These tasks are hard enough for a grown man in good physical condition ? most of my students from this weekend are probably still recovering from sore feet and forearms. But when you add on the fact that Michael can barely stand without two canes and has virtually no grip in one of his hands, it makes you ashamed to be so dammed healthy and lazy in comparison.

I?ve known Michael ? a former actor ? for a few years now. He started asking my advice on buying some tools and bit by bit has worked his way into my life and the lifes of other woodworkers, tool makers and woodworking instructors.

Despite the advice of his doctors, Michael traveled to Indianapolis last year to take my "Introduction to Hand Tools" class at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking. He was in better shape then, but by the end of the week I couldn?t believe that the guy was on his two feet and pounding out mortise after mortise with a mallet and chisel.

As we parted last May, Michael said, ?I think this is it. I think this is my last class.?

Hardly.

Michael went on to take a class in building a blanket chest at Kelly Mehler?s School of Woodworking. Then he took a class in making moulding planes from Larry Williams and Don McConnell followed directly by my class in sawing.

For the class, Michael took the bench next to mine, and while he had to have a little assistance with knifing a couple notches, he stubbornly declined other offers of help. He insisted on cutting his stock to rough length on a sawbench (I don?t know how he kept his balance), and he plowed through the project at a steady and slow pace.

At the end of the first day of this sawing class, I held a contest. I asked each student to make the best tenon he or she could manage with handsaws and a chisel. The tenon had to be consistent in its thickness and have clean shoulders.

Then all the students wrote their birthdate on their tenons and tossed them on my workbench. I left them there overnight so I was certain to forget whose tenon belongs to whom. On Sunday morning before class, I sorted through the joints, marked up their good points and bad and decided on a winner.

To everyone?s surprise (and delight) it was Michael?s tenon. For a piece of hand-cut work, it was solid. The tenon varied in its thickness by only a thousandth of an inch (or maybe two). The shoulders weren?t dead-nuts perfect, but they could be cleaned up with a shoulder plane easily and they outclassed many of the other tenons on my bench.

Michael (who lives in New York) was naturally suspicious that I had rigged the contest.

No so, my friend. You beat us all. Not only on that day, but in many other ways that have nothing to do with cheeks and shoulders, or tools and joinery.

? Christopher Schwarz

Tommy marks up the dove tail on the writing surface and then using a ramp block chisels out the 45 degree and 1:6 dovetail. Just ease into these dovetails and tap, tap, tap it in. Finally scoring the case for the final work to complete the dovetail.

Should you ever happen across me anywhere on the face of the interweb, muttering at length on the evils of poly-uckathane varnish, don't think it's from a position of strength now, will you? No, it's not because my hand is innocent of inflicting such horror; rather that's it's largely based on personal experience. One such varnished chicken came home to roost not long ago. Talk about a blast from the past - an early endeavour that was condemned to be returned to its perpetrator on the demise of the owner. There's an argument against living a long life, if ever I came across one. The idea of further youthful projects returning like so many homing pigeons is enough to make me wake up in the early hours in a cold sweat. But that's by the by.