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:

My workshop shares space with the family car. So it?s important that all of my power tools be portable and take up as little space as possible. So I made the fold-up router table you see here.

I made a simple router table top and attached it to a pair of 2×4?s with screws. Then, after removing the top of an adjustable clamping table, I mounted the router table to the clamping table stand, as shown in the left photo above. The table is firmly supported by the clamping table base.

The nice thing about the table is it can be raised and lowered to match the task at hand. Best of all, I can remove the router and quickly fold the table up to store it against the wall whenever it?s not in use (right photo).

If you?d like to see other router table plans, just go to PlansNOW.

Good Woodworking,

Phil Huber
Online Editor, ShopNotes

Send for a preview issue of ShopNotes magazine

When I build too much stuff with straight lines, it starts to make me a little batty. So after finishing a blanket chest and a gaggle of sawbenches, I retreated into my quick, easy and curvy place.

No, it?s not a gentleman?s club, but it?s almost as stimulating. (Note to self: I must be getting old to write a line like that.) Today I spent a morning building a set of three Shaker oval boxes as a wedding gift. These boxes are an immersion course in curves, angles, steam-bending and nailing.

I first learned to build these boxes during a 2002 photo shoot with the undisputed master of the craft: John Wilson. After watching him make these boxes, I immediately built the bending forms and bought the copper tacks and some bending stock to make some boxes.

I?ve probably made 20 or so sets, and during the last five years or so I?ve altered some of Wilson?s techniques to suit my tools and way of working. And now I have it down to the point where I use hand tools for the entire process, save one little point when I fit the top and bottom slabs to their bent bands.

If you?ve never tried building these boxes, I highly recommend you give it a try. You can order all the materials directly from Wilson at ShakerOvalBox.com or buy a small kit from Lee Valley Tools. It?s so much fun, it might even keep you out of the strip clubs.

Here, in brief, is how I?ve altered Wilson?s tried-and-true procedures in my shop.

1. Feathering: All the oval bands have to be feathered in thickness at one end so the two ends meet in a smooth curve. Wilson uses a belt/disc sander for this operation. He presses about 1-1/4? of the end to the belt sander and tapers the end to almost nothing. I do this with a block plane. I mark a line about 1-1/4? from the end and plane a taper on the end. Takes but a minute.

2. Drilling: Wilson uses an electric drill with a 3/32? bit to make the holes for all the copper tacks and for the toothpicks that secure the top and bottom slabs to the bands. I use an eggbeater drill. I look for any excuse to use my Millers Falls No. 2, and this is a good excuse.

3. Surfacing: Instead of sanding all the parts, I surface them with a handplane or scraper plane. It works great with the straight-cut stuff that Wilson sells.

4. Cutting the tops and bottoms: Wilson uses a band saw. I use a bow saw. My way is much slower, but I like using my bow saw.

So which power tool will I not give up with these boxes? It?s the table saw. Once you cut out the top and bottom slabs, you need to put a little bevel on the edges so they will snuggle into the bands with a cork-like fit.

I have a disc-sander plate I put on my table saw for this operation. I tilt the arbor a couple degrees and sand away. Someday I?ll switch to a spokeshave for this operation I?m sure.

So how fast is this process? The photos here show what happens after an hour of work. I feather the ends of the bands, cut the ?fingers? with a knife and boil the bands for 20 minutes. Then I remove the bands, wrap them around the forms and tack the bands. I put a couple plugs in each band to help them hold their shape and walk away for a day.

Tomorrow I?ll spend an hour fitting and attaching the top and bottom pieces. Then a little touch-up work and I?ll be ready to spray them with a little lacquer.

Because I like my day job, I?ll spray them here at home. Click here for the back-story on that.

? Christopher Schwarz

Welcome from WoodworkersResource.com. In our first audio only episode, we get the chance to interview Christopher Schwarz. Chris is the editor of both Popular Woodworking and Woodworking Magazine. He also maintains two blogs @ www.lostartpress.com and www.woodworking-magazine.com/blog/. Now, you can add to that author. Chris' new book, "Workbenches: From Design & Theory to Construction & Use" is going to be the focus of our interview. But, I couldn't help but ask Chris some other questions as well, like what's it like being an editor of a woodworking magazine? Yeah, you're probably going to be a little jealous when you hear his answer.

If you've ever wanted to build your own workbench, or if you're frustrated with the design of your current workbench, you're going to want to hear what Christopher Schwarz has to say about one of his favorite topics: Workbenches.

Also, don't forget to go to our website and sign up for our newsletter. When you do you'll get a free gift. Go to our website to find out more.

www.WoodworkersResource.com

Here is the best joke I wrote last week. Just wait…it will probably turn up on Comedy Central in a few months in an act that was filmed in 2005. So even though I think this is an original Skiver…odds are someone else wrote this joke first:

Is a deaf mute with Parkinson’s disease considered to be a stutterer?

Well, with that lead in, I want to present a really cool sharpening trick I learned recently from Chris Gochnour. Putting a chisel or plane blade into a honing guide requires one to accurately set the blade at the desired angle, and there are many techniques for this. Some people put the blade in the honing jig while sighting against a protractor in the background. Others make jigs that register a given blade projection for each desired angle they want to use with their honing guide…ya know…extend the blade X.XXX inches for 25 degrees and Y.YYYY inches for 30 degrees, etc. That kind of jig is excellent for getting repeatable angles with a given honing jig. However, it still suffers from the question of how the angles were measured the first time the jig was created and assembled.

Mr. Gochnour put me onto using the Wixey or Beall digital protractors for setting the honing angle. THIS IS BRILLIANT!!!! I don’t know why I only considered using my $40 digital reader for my jointer fence and table saw blade tilt, but Chris’ idea is the most accurate method I have seen to mount a blade in a honing guide at a desired angle.

Chris Gochnour is a very savvy woodworker. He finds (or invents) amazing ways to accurately perform woodworking tasks that are too often looked upon as requiring gifted dexterity. I mean…you can put a four year old on a two wheel bike and let him struggle to learn to ride it, or you can bolt some training wheels onto his bike for a while as he develops a feel for balance. Chris seems to come up with all kinds of helpful ideas (training wheels).

I don’t know if Chris invented this idea of using the digital protractor box for setting a honing guide. Perhaps this has already appeared as a workshop tip in 5 different magazines. I just know that I learned this from Chris, so for now he gets the credit…

Now back to important considerations…like shaky sign language…

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…�

The Wood Whisperer has recently announced the first annual Woodworker's Safety Week: May 5 – May 9. He’d like to think of this week as “a refresher course on safety”.

Many woodworking sites have decided to participate in this event and LumberJocks are joining with another cool challenge prepared in cooperation with Marc. And since Marc is the famous video star, this challenge is about your own videos again. Remember the success of our first LJ/TWW workshop video challenge? The expectations are even higher this time ;)

Your task is to record your own woodworking safety video and post it on your personal LumberJocks Blog. The video may present your personal safety tip(s), review of some safety equipment, top ten donts in the workshop etc. You get the idea.

Prizes

• 3 random winners will get LJ shirt, TWW shirt and TWW Finishing DVD each

How to Enter and Official Rules

1. Just add your entry as the regular blog entry and tag it with challenge05 (of course you may add any additional tags too):
   
   Note that you don’t need to use ‘challenge05’ in your blog entry title (use the meaningful title instead).
2. Enter the video overview plus embed the video into the entry.
3. Valid video must be at least 3 minutes long.
4. The videos must be posted from May 5 to May 9.
5. Winners will be announced online at LumberJocks.com and TheWoodWhisperer.com on May 11.

Marc has prepared easy to follow video tutorial in which you can see how to post your final video to your LumberJocks blog and enter it into challenge. Note that you can use any of the popular video hosting sites like Youtube, Blip etc. to host your video.

Here's the page listing all of the submitted entries.

So get your camcorder ready and have fun!

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:

The router table in my shop gets lots of use. But it?s always difficut to make fine adjustments to the fence. So I built the micro-adjuster you see in the photo above using spare parts I had around the shop.

The adjuster is easy to build. Start by drilling and tapping a strip of ¼? aluminum to accept a piece of threaded rod. And then bend the aluminum strip into an ?L? shape.

Next, drill two holes in a hardwood adjusting block. One horizontal hole for the threaded rod and a vertical one for the hold-down. Then you can cut a dado at the bottom of the fence to hold the piece of L-shaped aluminum in place.

Assembly. Put the pieces together by slipping the threaded rod through the adjusting block and adding washers and locknuts, like you see in the drawing and detail below. This allows the aluminum strip attached to the fence to be moved forward and backward one thread at a time when you make fine fence adjustments.

Fence Adjustment. To use the micro-adjuster, you?ll first need to lock down the opposite end of the fence. Then lock down the micro-adjuster by tightening the knob on top of the adjusting block. Use the turning knob to adjust the fence to the desired position. Once the fence is located where you want it, lock down the other end of the fence. Then all that?s left is to turn on your router and you?re ready to go.

If you?d like even more great ideas for getting more from your router, go to: Router Tables at PlansNow.

Good Woodworking,

Phil Huber
Online Editor, ShopNotes

Send for a preview issue of ShopNotes magazine

Somehow, during the course of about five years, I became a math dolt. When I left high school, my SAT scores for math were near perfect ? far higher than my verbal score.

But after four years of studying intransitive verbs, subjunctive mood and zeugmas, my math skills withered to the point where ? no lie ? I couldn?t figure out the formula for the perimeter of a pentagon during a college class we all called ?Math for Trees.? My wife still mocks me for this.

So I?ve always been at a loss to explain to readers the different curve required on the blade of a bevel-up smoothing plane vs. the curve required for a bevel-down smoothing plane.

The brain-dolt answer was always: The bevel-up planes require more curve to take the same shaving as a bevel-down smoothing plane. But that was about as good as my explanation got.

A couple weekends ago, David Powell explained the math to me during a presentation at the Northeastern Woodworkers Association?s Woodworkers Showcase. I retained the explanation and formula only until the next morning. (Honest: I had only one beer that night. Perhaps is was the lamb korma.)

In any case, I took notes during the presentation that are useful for the shop. If anyone wants the formulas, you can probably ask Powell himself. Powell was the founder of Diamond Machining Technology (DMT) and is now the maker of the Odate Crowning Plates. The plates are diamond stones with a curve built into them so you don?t have to use finger pressure to create the curve on the blade.

Powell?s numbers assume that the iron has a curve created by one of his diamond crowning plates. The plates are dished to mimic a 37-1/2?-radius circle. Powell?s numbers also assume you are using 90 percent of the iron of the tool during the cut.

So here goes: A bevel-down No. 4 handplane with a 2?-wide iron that is bedded at 45° will take a .002?-thick shaving if it has an iron that is sharpened with the Odate crowning plate.

Now let?s take a bevel-up low-angle block plane with its 1-3/8?-wide iron bedded at 12° and the iron sharpened at 25° (the angle of attack is therefore 37°). Powell says this plane will take a .0005?-thick shaving if you use 90 percent of the iron in the cut.

How about the very popular bevel-up jack plane? It has a 2-1/8?-wide iron and also is bedded bevel-up at 12°. If you have a 25° bevel sharpened on the iron, it will take a .0008?-thick cut. If you have a 38° bevel sharpened on the iron, the plane will take a .0006?-thick cut. And if you have a 50° bevel sharpened on the iron, the plane will take a .0004?-thick cut.

While these numbers don?t tell you how much extra pressure to put at the corners of your iron to make that extra curve, there is a good piece of data here. And here it is: Use the same curve for all your smoothing planes.

A plane bedded at 45° is best suited for mild woods. So its .002?-thick shaving is about right.

Planes bedded at higher angles are used for curly, exotic or just grumpy woods. So the best strategy is to take a thinner shaving (thinner shavings help reduce tear-out in my experience). So a shaving thinner than .001? is an excellent choice. And that?s exactly what you?ll get with a high pitch.

So all that math boiled down to this: Don?t bother with the math. Just stick with the same curve for bevel-up or bevel-down and you?ll be OK.

? Christopher Schwarz

Last week I bought a toothing plane from a Midwestern tool collector. I've always wanted one of these tools, and this one is particularly nice.

Toothing planes are lot like scraping planes: The iron is vertical. What's different is that toothing plane has a serrated cutting edge – instead of a smooth edge with a tiny hook, like on a scraper plane.

Toothing planes can be used in a couple different ways. Some people use them to flatten a board's surface. The vertical pitch of the iron prevents tearing in gnarly woods, and the serrated teeth allow you to take a fairly big bite.

Other craftsmen use a toothing plane for traditional veneering jobs with hide glue. The toothing plane would prepare the substrate – flattening it and giving it some "tooth" – before you apply the adhesive and the veneer.

I'll probably use this tool for both of these sorts of jobs – they're handy and simple tools. This one was probably made by the craftsman, and the maker was likely German. The "horn" at the toe is a feature of many European planes.

Oh, there's one other feature of the plane I like:

I wish I had a good story about the origin of this tool, but I don't. The tool collector who bought it acquired it during a tool swap meet. So there's no cool history to share – just the mystery of me wondering what sort of work the other "C SCHWARZ" did.

— Christopher Schwarz

Learning to cut woodworking joints is one thing. Figuring out how to assemble all those joints in a correct and efficient order for a project is another skill entirely.

In the upcoming Fall 2008 issue of Woodworking Magazine, we're delving deep into the topic of cabinet construction. And the method we have developed during the last decade is different than any other you have read, but it will do three things for your woodworking:

1. You'll make fewer mistakes and waste less wood.

2. You'll have an easier time fitting your doors and drawers.

3. Your cabinets will go together faster with tighter joints.

If you'd like to learn about our new method, then I encourage you to subscribe to the magazine by May 30 to guarantee you will receive a copy of the Fall 2008 issue. In addition to our research into cabinet construction, you'll also find:

Fitting Doors & Drawers: We show you how to square up doors with a table saw and fit it precisely with a hand plane. Plus, we explain how to size your drawers so they'll fit properly with only minor adjustments with a plane.

Tool Review – Sliding Bevels: Why do so many of them slip and slide around on you? We investigate the major brands available today and find the best ones.

Coloring Walnut: Walnut with a simple clear finish looks cold and lifeless.
We show you how to warm up this beautiful wood with a variety of approaches, including shellac and stains.

So why should you subscribe to Woodworking Magazine? We think it's different than every other magazine out there. It's written to help all woodworkers fill in the inevitable gaps in our skills that result from teaching ourselves woodworking.

We show you the historical, time-tested and frequently forgotten methods to saw any joint, drawboring, wedged through-tenons and splines. We review tools that other magazines won't touch but are extremely important: like 6" rules, screws, combination squares and moisture meters.

Plus, we offer projects you won't elsewhere. We build only time-tested forms in classic styles, such as Arts & Crafts, Shaker and early American. More importantly, we pick projects that can be built without an enormous outlay of time, wood or tools.

And that's not all that's different. Woodworking Magazine has no advertisements and is printed in glorious sepia-toned black-and-white on its inside pages.

If you're ready to subscribe, we're ready to take your order. Click here and we'll sign you up to receive the next issue.

— Christopher Schwarz