This is the last day of the year when the 400th anniversary of the founding of the Jamestown settlement was celebrated in America and some ...

Our great Summer 2008 LumberJocks Woodworking Awards are over so allow me to officially announce the winners. The winning projects were selected from 84 total submissions in an online voting held from Aug 4 to Aug 7. 211 votes by 110 voters were cast during this period.

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BEST OVERALL LUMBERJOCK

1st Place – GaryK (448 points)

2nd Place – Michael Brailsford (142 points)

3rd Place – Karson (133 points)

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ONE MAN’S JUNK

1st Place – Rex Billiard Table by Michael Brailsford (142 points)

2nd Place – My Woodworking Bench from Salvage materials by Karson (133 points)

3rd Place – 'Safety' A Clamp made from a shipping crate by GaryK (97 points)

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SERVE IT UP WITH CLASS

1st Place – A Faberge Inspired Serving Tray by GaryK (351 points)

2nd Place – 'woven' cutting board in wenge, quartersawn white oak and honduran mahogany by DAN (115 points)

3rd Place – Fleur de lis Tray by CharlieM1958 (101 points)

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Click here to see the complete results.

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I’d like to thank our sponsors for their support once again, so here they are:

Jack Rabbit Tool
The Wood Whisperer

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And following are the three lucky winners of our stylish LJ shirt (randomly selected from all the voters):

• kewald
• windofthewoods
• Bigbuck

Congratulations, everyone! I’m going to PM the prize winners shortly.

THANK YOU LUMBERJOCKS! I’m already looking forward to the next Awards edition in the winter…

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!

The Festool Kapex KS 120 Miter Saw has shipped in North America and is now in stock at Highland Woodworking. The culmination of years of testing and engineering, the Kapex KS 120 was developed with one goal in mind: to be the best sliding compound miter saw ever manufactured. The Kapex KS 120 is the first miter saw with variable speed, enabling the user to match the speed of the blade with the requirements of the material for perfect cuts, every time. Finally, a sliding compound miter saw that combines a large cutting capacity with a compact lightweight design. The Kapex delivers 12" miter saw capacity in a revolutionary 10" miter saw design.

Festool, founded in 1925 by Albert Fezer and Gottlieb Stoll in southern Germany, has constantly set new benchmarks for innovative tool design and development, and the Kapex KS 120 Sliding Compound Miter Saw does so again. The innovative twin-column forward rail design gives the Kapex saw greater precision in an extremely small footprint. And Festool's meticulous engineers designed the saw to capture 91% of the saw dust when used with a CT dust extractor when using a 36mm hose.

SPECIFICATIONS

• Power Consumption: 1600 Watts
• Speed: 1,400-3,400 RPM
• Cutting Depth 90°/90°: 12" x 3-1/2"
• Special Cutting Depth: 4-23/32" x 3/4"
• Crown Nested Capacity: 6-5/8"
• Max Bevel: 47°/47°
• Miter Range: 50°/60°
• Dimensions: 28" x 19-3/4" x 18-1/2"
• Weight: 47 Lbs

Highland Woodworking is located in Atlanta, Georgia USA. Call 800-241-6748 for sales or visit www.highlandwoodworking.com for more information.

Kleenex box alert! Even an ace make mistakes, and for Tommy, a slight miscalculation early on means a heavy load of heartache today. The hours spent hand carving the doubler are down the tubes as Tommy takes a router to his mis-sized masterpiece. Could he have fudged it a little and made it fit? Sure, but that's is simply not the way he works. So Tommy sucks it up, rips it out and starts all over again. Didn't a famous home improvement guy once say, measure twice, cut once? He hopes he won't make that mistake again.

Everybody has their little secrets. Mine is moonshine. Moonshine works for me. It allows me to focus, to get the job done, in fact, without moonshine, I'ld have to find...

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

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:

Drilling a centered hole in a dowel can be a challenge. It’s hard to get the drill bit centered and keep the dowel from turning as the hole is drilled. To make it easier, I built the jig shown below.

Build the jig by first drilling a hole the diameter of the dowel in a piece of hardwood. Then just cut a saw kerf through the hole from the end to make a clamp.

Using the jig is simple. Begin by centering the dowel under the bit. To do this, clamp a piece of scrap wood to the table and drill a hole to fit the dowel. Then change out the bit to the size needed.

Next, slip the dowel into the hole in the scrap wood. Then slip the clamping jig over the dowel and squeeze the kerf together with a small clamp. Now you can clamp the jig in place and drill the hole in the center of the dowel.

To learn more essential woodworking tips and techniques, just go to: http://www.plansnow.com/basics.html.

Good Woodworking,

Phil Huber
Online Editor, ShopNotes

Hi! I want to introduce to you a new member in my finger puppets family. She came to bring me a lot of chocolat on this Easter holidays: please say hello to Rosemary, my Easter bunny!

But she is not alone, someone has to look after this cute little bunny. Bob, the elephant is Rosemary´s company.

How to do them?

I used rest of used yarns.

- Crochet a little square (the size will depend on the yarn you use and on the finger size). You can use single crochet or double crochet. In my case I made Rosemary with single crochet and Bob with double crochet (body) and single crochet (head).

- When you think that the body is long enough, you increase a little to make the head´s shape (I increased 3 or 4 stitches along 3 rows, but this depends on the yarn you´re using).

- After that, you decrease, but this time don´t be afraid to over do it: crochet two and skip the next one along 2 rows. The important thing is that you don´t have more than 10 stitches.

- Then, sew the piece, leaving a hole in the down side (that´s way you can put your finger in). Put some cotton to make the head rounder.

- To fiinish your puppet add the details according to the animal you are doing and make the eyes with a contrasting color. This is not a big deal and there isn´t a strict technique: just put the hook in the correct place of the head to make the ears, trunk, mouth…

The finger puppets are a cute and easy gift. You can send me links or pics of your fnished puppets to share with us!

A lovely couple from Wyoming designed these blue spruce and hawaiian koa rings with birch liners. They wrote:

I am looking forward to another USA trip in May 07.

This starts with a weekend class at the Marc Adams School in Indiana. ...

I decided to do something semi-serious on the lathe for once, instead of turning 2x4 pine into a pile of shavings.

I got tired of using a rubber mallet to strike my chisels when I needed to use them. The balance was horrible, and the thing had too much weight and mass to be easily controlled.

What a perfect project then, to make a carver's mallet from the scraps I had around the garage/shop.

First I face jointed a pair of 1x3" (3/4 x 2 1/2") scraps of curly maple. Beautiful figure on this wood! I glued and clamped them into a 2 1/2" x 9" turning blank.

On the lathe I roughed out the shape with my Harbor Freight turning tools. I had a good idea in my head of what shape I wanted, and as I was turning I kept grabbing the handle to fit it to my hand.

Once done, I mounted it into 3 laminated pieces of 1/4" wood: one of padauk and 2 of oak, all with alternating grain directions. I mounted it by cutting a hole in the laminated wood so the handle taper is a press-fit. I cut a kerf in the end of the maple handle so it could be wedged into place. I used a scrap of purpleheart I had for the wedge.

I flush cut the wedge, jointed the face of the laminated wood/handle assembly and moved on to building up the rest of the head.

More next time!

(The Carver's Mallet Part 2)

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’ve been thinking about nomenclature. I’ve been thinking about what I call the area where I do my woodworking thing (or at least where all of the tools and equipment live when I am busy surfing the internet or playing Wii Fit and complaining about having no time to do any woodworking.)

Some people call those tool filled places their “SHOP.� However, that seems a little too generic for me because I have more than one shop in my life. All of the car stuff happens in my garage, but it is more of a combination garage/bicycle shop. I’ve said before that somewhere in between my Park Double Arm repair stand and Park TS-3 Master Truing Stand are enough tools to make 90% of the bicycle shops in North America jealous. Do you need to re-tap a bottom bracket? All decent shops can do either English or Italian Threads. However, for some reason I also have a tap for French Threaded bottom brackets, even though I neither work on bikes professionally nor have any French Bicycles. (I never know why I buy every tool I see, whether I’ll ever need it or not).

The non-bicycle part of the garage is pretty well set up for anything I need to do with cars. In the last ten years I have done engine swaps, clutch replacements, Air Locker installations, countless tune-ups, 30 or so brake jobs, 100 oil changes, water pump and radiator replacements, Axle replacements, ring and pinion set-ups, and on and on and on.

Before my wife and I moved to this house, most of the automotive stuff was done at my father-in-law’s shop. Long before I met him he ran a 2000 sq ft body shop behind his house, but he retired and closed his body shop before I ever came on the scene. So in the early days of my marriage, I would commandeer his shop for various automotive projects.

So now to differentiate between his shop, my bike shop, my garage shop, and the area of my plantation where I do welding and metal work, I always refer to my basement area as my WOOD SHOP. I say to Gail, “I’ll be downstairs in the Wood Shop. If the lazy dog should wake up, feel free to convince him to come keep me company.�

I am very happy with the Wood Shop in my basement. However, I will inevitably have to rename that space. Eventually my work will be good enough for me to call my wood shop a “Studio.� It’s a subtle little thing, but it is the key to being a wood artist. Adirondack Chairs are made in Wood Shops by woodworkers. Commissioned furniture projects are done in studios by two types of guys. To the uninitiated, woodshops and studios look a heck of a lot alike. They have identical equipment and tools. The difference between woodshops and studios is the guy doing the work and the deposit slips for his bank account. Today I came up with the official list of criteria required for a woodshop to be called a studio, and here it is:

1) If the woodworker went to art school then it is acceptable to call it a studio. Art School guys are different. A couple of years ago I was a Mechanical Engineer who worked with a bunch of Industrial Designers designing Office Furniture. It was my job to make sure the roll-formed steel and the drawer slides could support the required loads. It was the responsibility of the Industrial Designers to make sure the theme of the company was represented with a passionate design that made one think, “If I have to spend 10 hours a day in a cubicle, this is the work space I want.� Those left handed, beret-wearing guys were studio types.

2) If you are a woodworker who has ever made $1000 profit on a piece then you can call your woodshop a studio. The keyword here is profit. It’s more than selling cherry cabinets for $2000 when you have more than half of that total tied up in materials, overhead, labor, and burden. Woodshops produce items that either generate no income or can sometimes sell for as much as one half of the price of the lumber they use. However, studios are the setting where profitable wooden art projects are created.

Someday my basement woodshop will become my Studio. I am not able to go to art school, so criterion 1 will not happen. However, I have a plan for creating a 4 digit profit on a piece of furniture or a similar woodworking project. I’ll share that plan with you now.

Someday I am going to resaw a walnut plank and find that the bookmatched inner faces form a distinctive picture of Jesus. Then, I will put the resawn slabs on eBay, and send out a press release. Within 24 hours of FoxNews and Headline News doing bits on Jesus in the Walnut, my auction will have bids over $5000. And when the auction ends and the buyer’s PayPal clears, my basement woodshop with the resawing 18� bandsaw will forever be referred to as “My Studio.�

And I’ll get to show pictures to people and say things like, “here is a picture of my Studio. The Unisaw is in the middle, and on the left is my hand crafted maple workbench. If you look closely in the corner you can see my bandsaw where I created my most famous pieces, Jesus in the Walnut, as I was resawing stock one day…�

Hi! I found this pattern on the web, on sandyfroglegs blog. They are really cute to make as a gift on this holidays. I´ve made only one, but I´ll share it with you now so you can make them for Eastern holiday.

The pattern is really clear: just follow the step by step (or row by row) instructions.

My egg seems Einstein, so I named it Einstegg. I made the eyes and mouth with yarns, but you can try other materials, like beads, for example.

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.

I use dowels to join the panels together, the sides together, the sides to the top and bottom. The main reason for this type of joinery in this particular application is that it allows me to have a slight overhang of the top and bottom panels vis a vis the sides, to accommodate the chamfered edges.. Alternative methods of joinery that allow this are mortise and tenon, sliding dovetails. etc. I use dowels as I feel comfortable with this joinery and it has not let me down so far. A considerable amount of accuracy is necessary in aligning the dowel holes that mate with the top, bottom and side panels. There are also different methods to accomplish this. The simplest method is to use dowel centers, next would be a doweling jig of some sort.

Instead, I make a doweling guide which is simply a block of wood with the exact dimensions , thickness and length of each of the side panels. The concept is to use the guide to create mating dowel holes in the ends of the panels. I use standard size fluted dowels and have pre-measured and carefully oriented each of the side panels to its corresponding top and bottom panel. In the photo, I am aligning the doweling guide on one of the side panels. I since removed and bored two other holes in this particular guide for a total of ten dowel holes. Also in the photo, the face of the side panel is displayed, the back of this panel has a rabbet running lengthwise at the left hand side. The first dowel hole from the left is offset to accommodate this.

As I continue with this boring process ( no pun intended) there are eventually a total of 80 holes bored into the ends of each of the panels. A stop is used to bore to the correct depth to accommodate standard size dowels. Afterwards, each of the bored holes is checked with the depth gauge of a caliper and install the dowels, first on the side panels, then these panels to the top and bottom panels. Some test fitting, and the glue up begins...

When a young Thomas Lie-Nielsen set out to start making premium handplanes in the early 1980s, he launched his business with an adaptation of the Stanley No. 95 edge-trimming plane.

But Lie-Nielsen wasn't the first person to make this tool in bronze. That footnote goes to machinist Ken Wisner, who made the planes in small batches and sold them through the Garrett Wade catalog. When Wisner decided to get out of that business, he turned over his patterns to Lie-Nielsen, who took them to Maine and set up shop in a shack on his farm.

I've always wanted to own one of these Wisner planes – partly out of curiosity and partly out of my desire to own a piece of recent history. But they're hard to come by. And they're expensive when they do come up on eBay.

So this weekend, I got a little schoolgirl thrill when Jeff Skiver pulled a Wisner out of his bags of tools during a class on handplanes at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking. He wasn't looking to sell it, and I won't tell you what he paid for it. Suffice it to say that Skiver practically stole it from a starving widow who had substantial medical bills.

The Wisner is an interesting piece of work. On the one hand, the main casting was nicely polished and the machined areas were crisp and clean. But the thumbscrew on the lever cap was black plastic (the screw itself was metal, however). And the main screw that joined the lever cap, iron and body casting was an off-the-shelf hex-head screw.

Wisner signed his name on the plane with some sort of rotary tool (perhaps a Dremel). And the blade was thinner than the Lie-Nielsen version.

Of course, when you are blazing a trail like Wisner was, you have to overlook details like this and appreciate the sheer fact that this plane exists. Plus, look at what this little plane led to in Warren, Me.

And if anyone has a Wisner plane they'd like to part with (for the sake of history, natch) please drop me a line.

— Christopher Schwarz

Matt Vanderlist has just posted a podcast of a conversation he and I had last week. I hesitate to call it an interview because it sounds a lot like us just goofing around and joking about woodworking.

So I guess, it actually just sounds a lot like a day at the office.

In any case, we discuss handsawing, premium tools and how we generate story ideas here at Woodworking Magazine and Popular Woodworking. Plus Matt and I brainstorm an idea for a shop garment that ensures you never have to take a break while woodworking – and it composts the yard. (If anyone has a good name for this product, post it here.)

It was a fun conversation and if you have some time at your desk and want to look like you're working… I highly recommend it.

— Christopher Schwarz

Designing your rooms around an ethnic theme can be exciting and fun and allows you to bring elements of other cultures and distant lands into your home. You can be more daring in your approach to colour and with such a wide variety of textures and patterns available, this can collectively add a whole new dimension to your interior design project. Unusual artifacts from different cultures can work very well as focal points in a room and as there are no hard and fast rules to stick to and because there are so many variations, you can go beyond the usual or traditional to portray a style that is not only beautiful, it is unique.

So what do we mean by ethnic?

Ethnic basically means native or indigenous people from a particular area so in relation to Interior Design it means to bring the natural elements that are representative of whatever culture, land or peoples you choose to portray into your own home to define your space.

Naturally the world is your oyster as they say so there are countless cultures to choose from, all you have to do is bring a particular ensemble of colours, patterns, materials and artifacts together to create a "look" that is recognisable and distinctive. What about a Mediterranean flavour, Native American Indian symbolism, or perhaps Tibetan Buddhism? Popular themes include African, Mexican, and Asian but you can go with whatever inspires or appeals to you. Here are a few ideas to get you started.

African Theme

Think of Africa and all that it conjures up in your mind, the landscape, the sounds, the smells, the colours, the mood, and then if you try to pick out the key points, what would they be? Colour schemes might include earthy colours like green, beige, browns and tans, set off with orange and splashes of red. Think about floor and wall coverings, natural substances would probably work best. Finishing touches can include wall hangings, African artifacts, drums, rugs, African fabrics and prints, animals made of stone, clay or wood, ceremonial masks hung on the wall, brightly coloured African bowls and pots, and so on.

Mexican Theme

What does Mexico mean to you? Perhaps desert colours with sandy tones, beige and khaki, along with reddish, rustic colours and hues. Blankets and woven fabrics in bright colours, perhaps terra cotta pots and bowls, pine wood is popular for furniture. Artifacts can include symbols of the South West or from the Spanish influence, or from the Aztecs, Mayans and other ancient civilisations, all of which can add an interesting and authentic Mexican look and feel.

Asian Theme

There are many variations within an Asian theme but two quite popular ones are Japanese and Chinese. Japanese themes tend to lean towards a more minimalist look and have a tranquil and peaceful feel. Consider a futon and using screens to get that Japanese ambiance. Colours tend to be natural and objects from nature often feature as focal points, for example, smooth stones and pebbles, water fountains and bonsai trees. Chinese themes on the other hand might involve brighter and bolder colours, lanterns, dragons and other mythological creatures, artwork depicting the traditional people colours and landscapes and Chinese handwriting.

How to get started

Once you have established which particular ethnic culture appeals to you, browse through books and magazines and the Internet to get ideas that will spark off your own imaginative flair. Identify what elements go together to make up that particular look or feel that you want to create.

Consider the walls, ceilings and floors carefully as this will provide a base for you to work from and then you can add in the details to finish it off. For example, is the texture and appearance of the walls and ceilings rough or smooth? What floor covering is appropriate, should it be wood, stone, tiles or carpets? Will rugs and mats make a difference and if so what are they made of? Are the windows better suited to drapes, blinds or shutters? What style of furniture works? What about plants, motifs, pictures and wall hangings?

The theme you adopt and the way that you choose to portray specific elements of that theme is entirely up to you and your imagination, the end result will be your own unique interpretation of a culture or a place and you will have added a touch of the exotic to your home.

David McEvoy is an expert in interior design. If you are looking for a leather sofa to give the finishing touches to a newly decorated room then please come and visit our site http://www.leathersofa.uk.com/

If you are a regular visitor you will notice that my website has a completely new design.

This is very exciting as it coincides ...

A brief recap of the May meeting is on the Bulletin Board. After you log in, Click Bulletin Board on the Members Menu then click on Here's What You Missed (at the last meeting).If you have not Registered, Click Register at the Log In screen and fill out the simple form. That way you can access the Members Only features.

Hi! First of all I want to thank you for the sweet comments and emails. I´m happy to share my work with you and give you some ideas and tutorials, and I´m even happier that my work is useful!!

Today I want to show you a very looooooooong necklace that I made: I used very small beads, so it takes me more than an hour to finish the work.

The good thing is that I can use this necklace as a bracel: just put it around the wrist many times….

You can visit other posts for more ideas:

Strange earrings

More handmaded earrings 

Handmade jewerly

My earrings collection… they´re all handmaded!

Handmade bracel with wire and beads

Step by step: how to make a necklace with beads

A necklace with beads 

Bye bye,

Fran

I finally got a chance to walk part of the AWFS show floor here in Las Vegas and take in some of the new stuff for woodworking.

Makita is coming out with some exciting new “black and white’ cordless tools that will appeal to the home woodworker and do-it-yourselfer. They’re 18v tools with 1.5 amp-hour batteries that will recharge in 15 minutes, according to Wayne Hart, Communications Manager for Makita. To me, these tools look the same as their traditional teal-colored tools. The only difference is the smaller battery size to make them lighter in weight. The larger, higher-capacity 3 amp-hour batteries can also be used on these “black and white” tools. One thing about Makita tools that becomes apparent when you pick them up is their quality. The operation of the cordless drills and impact drivers is smooth. The trigger action is effortless. The combo kit you see pictured here retails for around $329. That’s a bargain, considering the drill alone retails for around $200. This kit includes a flashlight, drill, impact driver, radio, and an “intelligent” battery charger (each battery has a built-in CPU to monitor voltage and prevent over-charging).

Of course, the big buzz on the show floor concerns the “stone-faced” tools from Steel City Tool Works. I spoke at length with Mark Strahler, President of Steel City about his new line of tools with granite tables. The table saw with granite table is based on their hybrid saw. This gets around the problem of mounting the trunnion assembly to the table top as with most contractor saws. The granite tops are really flat…dead flat. So flat in fact, that one of Steel City’s customers requested that Steel City supply them with some granite surfaces to use as reference tables in their machine shop. The other advantage is that they will never rust.

Granite will be available for only a small upgrade charge on their table saws, band saws, and jointers (for the fences). Steel City will guarantee the granite for ten years. It’s an interesting concept that proves that Steel City is thinking “outside the box” when it comes to the design of their tools.

Speaking of thinking outside the box, Mark showed me a pre-production sample of the new Steel City “Dust Collector in a Box.” It is literally small enough to fit inside a small shopping bag. It’s designed for benchtop planers in shops that don’t have a traditional dust collector. It’s a small blower motor and housing that attaches with a flexible rubber connector to your planer. The dust chute exits into a large bag off to the side. The expected retail price will be around $99. Pretty cool.

Perhaps the most interesting thing I’ve seen today is made by Penn United Technologies, manufacturer of Penntek tools. These are the guys that originally produced the Robo-Grip pliers which have been redesigned into the newer MagnumGrip pliers. They also licensed the Versa-Clamp and are producing it. But the most unusual thing they had was a new hammer call the PowerPull. The first thought I had was, “How can you improve on the traditional hammer?” They took a traditional framing hammer and added a pop-up “foot” that provides extra leverage when pulling nails. When retracted, it looks just like a “button” on top of the hammer head. When extended, it gives you several addtional pounds of leverage to pull that stubborn nail. It gets around the problem of having to use a scrap piece of wood for extra leverage. Very unique.

Tonight, I’ve been invited to a “press party” by Porter-Cable. As I said yesterday, they’re going to be announcing some new products. More on that tomorrow.

I finished this pen last night. It's the second one I'm donating to my daughter's school for a fundraiser. I'm pretty happy with how this style came out. I was a little afraid that it might be boring with only two different types of wood (jatoba and maple), but I think it does work.

The cigar style pen seems to work well for the segmentation as well. I'm a little disappointed it's being given away!


This pen has over 200 individual pieces used in the segmenting.