Update on My 6 Month Pledge to Not Buy Tools or Wood

 Back in March I had made a pledge to my wife on a PostIt Note that I wouldn't buy wood or tools until November.  She promptly taped it up on the bathroom mirror.  Since now it is now November, thought I'd provide an update on how I did.  

I wasn't perfect but I did really good.  I didn't buy any tools for 6 months.  Even passed up on some really good used tool deals in the local woodworking club I belong to.  As for wood, I broke the pledge once.  For the Shaker chimney cabinet, I had planned to use 3/8" cherry in the front and back frame and panel.  The wood dried and developed a cup in it.  I thought I could flatten it out enough during glue ups to make it fit.  In little test sections, I could but when I tried the dry fit for the whole frame and panel.  I had to make a choice on what to do.  Given the size of the work, my first time working on this scale, I decided to break the pledge on buy some Baltic birch for the back and cherry veneered stuff for the front.  

So yes, I broke the pledge however, that was the only time.  In that regard, I was very happy with how well I did.  

With Christmas coming up, I haven't gone tool crazy.  Also, I have enough wood at home to make some other items before I get to the item I really want to make.  The next piece that I really want to make is a Limbert No 355 bookcase.  I want to make it out of Honduran Mahogany.  It's a wood I haven't worked with and I think it will look nice with this piece.  The wood will be spendy so I need to save up for it.

Shaker Chimney Cupboard - Part 1

 In the Mar/Apr 2013 issue of Fine Woodworking (FWW#232), the cover piece was a Shaker chimney cupboard cabinet built by Mike Pekovich.  Though I hadn't started woodworking at the time, I knew I was close (I had a decade of excuses for not starting - would make for a good blog someday).  I immediately fell in love with this piece.  I must not be alone as there was a video series and DVD that followed.  I really wanted to make it and put this on my mental list as my first dream piece to make.

When I say dream piece, at the time, I didn't have the skills yet to make it.  Some day I would and till then, I could just dream of making it.  In fact, at the time, I couldn't even imagine the order of operations.  In late 2015 (6 years ago), I started woodworking.  Fast forward to 2021 and I now have made this dream piece.  It came out pretty good.  I made it out of cherry.  Since I don't have a bandsaw or planer or jointer, I worked with a local millworks company to provide me with S4S'd "1x12" cherry.  I spent about $1,000 and got twice as much cherry as I needed.  That would allow me to pick the parts for this piece.  Left over wood would get used in another project.  The left over wood will likely become the "15 drawer chest" that Christian Becksvoort has designed (C.H. Becksvoort - Welcome (chbecksvoort.com))  I want to upgrade my shop storage space and Becksvoort piece will be perfect for that.

The wood arrived in Aug 2020.  Though it is kiln dried, I still like it to sit in the shop for a long time before use.  Ideally, 6 months to a year before I need it.  Yes, this is likely overkill.  So be it.  I even get satisfaction of seeing the raw wood just sitting there knowing what it will become.  I started working on it in July 2021 and finished in Sep 2021.  It took 190 hours.

There were many challenges along the way and I learned a lot.  There were a few big boo boos but I managed to fix them.  I am very happy with the way it turned out.  Of course, it could be better.  That comes with time.  I made it as best I can at this point.

For the finish, I kept it simple.  Freshly made garnet shellac on the outside and blond shellac on the inside followed by wax polish.  It is being used in our guest bathroom to hold towels.  In our master bathroom (which gets more humid), we have an inexpensive one that we use to hold towels.  If I even get the bug to make a second one, I will replace the Ikea one.  My wife is happy.  There piece is a transition to larger work I have planned for the home.  All in all life is good.  

The next post will focus on rough cutting stock and dado layouts.

Paul Seller's Clock out of Mesquite

 About 4 or 5 years ago, my brother was living in Austin, TX.  I took my family and we spend a nice Christmas there.  Texas is quite beautiful and we saw many things.  While there, I went to Woodcraft near Austin.  I picked up about some mesquite wood and planned to build a Paul Sellers clock out of it.  I have built about 5 or 6 of these clocks in the past and like them.  They make great gifts.  Plus, since it is my doing the same piece over and over, I get to see how my skill has evolved over time.  The mesquite would add a nice touch and be great way to remember my Christmas holiday trip to my brother.

The clock finally made it to the top of the list.  I was excited as I have never worked with mesquite before.  I mostly work in cherry (I like the way it looks) but I really enjoy trying different woods.  Part of what makes woodworking fun is experiencing the uniqueness of different woods.  

Mesquite did not disappoint.  It is really hard stuff and must dull my irons a factor of 5 or 10 more quickly than cherry.  I just sharpened more frequently.  Despite being so hard, it is also brittle.  Needless to say, I pressed on.  The fragrance of mesquite is amazing.  In fact, I saved all the shavings and gave them to my nephew as he is a huge bbq'er.  I am sure this will be much more fragrant than the mesquite you buy at the store.

I finished it with blond shellac and the wood took on a lovely color.  As best I can tell, the wood will darken over time.  This will be nice, 

The wood was not without it's challenges.  I found working against the grain (as happened for some of the grooves) resulted in some big tear out unlike I've seen with other woods.  Superglue was very helpful.  This won't be my last Paul Seller's clock.  Christmas is coming up and I might make a few more for family.  However, I will make them out of something softer such as walnut.  That's a really nice wood to work with hand tools.  In fact, a few clocks ago, I made some plywood templates for the Paul Seller's clock.  That makes it even more fun when I build it as there is less measuring and more direct marking.  It takes me about 20  hours to make a clock out of cherry.  The mesquite clock took about 23 hours.  Curious to see how long it takes to make one out of relatively soft walnut.

Learning to Use my Plough Plane

I have certainly read what I can on how to use each hand tool.  What I have found is that there is a certain part of the learning that just requires you to spend time using the tool.  No amount of head knowledge will circumvent that, at least not in my case.

I had a love had relationship with my plough plane.  I loved the simplicity and speed of the essential grooves it would make/plough.  I hated that I would sometimes get bad tear out or a canted groove.  Between this and the last project I think I've gotten the hang of using the tool and want to pass along my observations in case it helps someone else.

There are a few things I've learned

One hand holds the fence perpendicular and the other pushes.  Yes, I am being captain obvious on this.  What I've found is that the one that holds the fence perpendicular is also doing a bit more work.  Let me use an analogy of sorts.  When using a Western style hand plane, the hand pressures downwards change.  At the beginning of the board, most of the downward pressure is knob part of the plane.  During the middle of the board, knob and rear have 50 50 pressure.  At the end of the cut all the pressure is on the rear.  This sort of rocking of pressure helps prevent the plane from swooping on the wood.  I've found with the plough plane, I am rocking the pressure fore and aft to keep it perpendicular.  Initially, all the perpendicular pressure is towards the front of the plane, middle of plough pressure is in middle, at the end of the plough the perpendicular pressure is towards the rear.  It's not some drastic hand changing motion but more of a rocking motion.  The slight curvature in the perpendicular handle I think is designed to allow for this.  By using this method, the blade moves true and doesn't go off at some slight angle and bind in the cut.  That is often when I have tear out occur.  In fact, whenever I start to feel some sort of atypical biding, I know that I am mechanically doing something wrong with the tool.  I stop and readjust.  More often than not when I don't I end up with some sort of defect in the crisp edges of the wood.

The other thing that I found helpful was putting a small wooden fence on the tool.  This seemed to really help me apply perpendicular pressure.

I have found that it is the first 10 or so passes the length of the wood that seem to be the most critical.  If I can get those done trouble free, I can usually get a really crisp groove.  Often after the first 10 passes, I will clearly know if I ploughing against the grain.  If that is the case, I will sometimes take my marking knife and deepen the channels in the wood.

Again, this is a lot of words.  Mostly putting it out there to let others know if you just spend time using the tool and paying close attention, you will find little changes that make big impacts.  It just takes a while to teach your hands how.

Still need to focus when using it.  If I get complacent, I end up tilting the handle and chewing up an edge.  I still need to spend time using are the skew rebate plane with knickers as I am still a way away from getting acceptable grooves with it.   I also need to work on hand chopping mortises.  Plenty of skills left to work on.  I enjoy this part of developing my hand skills.  Getting good at being able to do organic synthesis research was the same thing.  By the end of grad school, I came out fully trained and felt confident I could make any molecule that needed to be made.  I probably had about 12,000 hours at the lab bench at that point.  This all ties back to the whole thing that was popular a decade or two ago stating that it seemed to take about 10,000 hours to master a skill. 

How I like to Sharpen a Pencil

 I like writing instruments that provide some tactile feedback.  As such, I really like pencils and fountain pens.  There is a subtle feedback and get from them.  In grad school for chemistry 30ish years ago, I sought out a mechanical pencil with soft leads because I needed to draw many organic structures and it made things pleasurable to do so.  It's not like this is something new.

I use pencils for woodworking and taking notes at work.  To sharpen my pencils I have both manual sharpeners as well as an electric pencil sharpener.  I don't yet have one like I fondly recall using in grammar school but I will someday get one because I loved the feel when sharpening and the scent of cedar.  Still vivid to this day. 

So, this leads to the topic at hand.  How do I like to sharpen my pencils?  As a kid, I had a friend whose home I spent a fair bit of time at.  We used to draw a lot.  My friend was good enough that in adulthood he applied to both Marvel and DC Comics for jobs.  His mom used to sharpen our pencils with a kitchen knife.  I just loved the way the facets felt in my hand and I loved the long taper and slightly longer lead.  To this day, that is my preference for how to sharpen a pencil.  I use my pocket knife instead of a kitchen knife because I have a fondness for a pocket knife.  I've also been carrying a pocket knife since the age of 7 long before they might be considered a weapon of mass destruction.  Amazing how things we do as children still can deeply influence the way we like things now.

Good vs. The Best

 I have been saving for a bandsaw and dust collection.  As a hand tool woodworker (just my personal preference as I really want to work with my hands), it's the one tool that I think will be really helpful.  It is a huge pain to reduce stock thicknesses by hand.  To the point, where I have made things more thick that I would like.

I have find myself falling into a trap I first encountered 15 years ago in another hobby upgrading equipment.  What is the best?  Though a natural question to ask, it is one the leads to much frustration as so I was discovering then and am experiencing now.  I suddenly remembered reading a book called Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz that discusses this in detail.

By searching hard for "the best" we are setting ourselves up for feeling unhappy with whatever we choose.  The better question is "what is a good choice?"  In doing so, we relieve ourselves of the mental burden reading all that has been written and reviewed.  It's relatively easy to find good choices; hard to find the best.

Rediscovering this has helped greatly.  As such, I've been more quickly able to narrow what bandsaw I will likely get as well as which dust collector.  All I need to do is now find a good band saw and good dust collection; not the best of each.  If you haven't read the book, it's well worth getting and can probably be found used.  It will likely save you lots of agony over woodworking equipment as well as other things in life.

Bread Box Part 3 - Front & Back Panels and Finish

 With the carcass now together, it was time to make the front and back panels.  I decided to start with the rear panel so that I could get some practice/warm up before making the more visible front panel.  I had just enough scrap thin cherry to glue up for the rear panel.  

As for the mortises, I had an unfun experience making them for my tool chest.  As such, I opted to use a mortise machine that I had recently purchased.  Part of me feels like a failure and as if I am giving up going this route.  What I simply need to do is practice making some mortises by hand.  If I can dovetail by hand, then I should be able to mortise by hand.  Making tenons by hand I find easy.  What I think will help me is to make and use a simple alignment jig that Paul Sellers discusses when cutting the mortise.  Again, one or two weekends of practice and I am sure I will feel confident.  Till then, I will use the mortiser.

For the back, I decided to try a stop groove that holds the panel by using the mortise machine. It was actually annoying and time consuming to do it this way.  The front will use a through groove and a haunched tenon.  I'm not upset. I just need to try different ways to see what does and doesn't work.  The tenons were cut by hand and refined to fit with a hand router plane.  I learned this from Paul Sellers and it works very well to get the final fit.  Glue up went well.

For the front, basically the same process in that I used the mortiser.  Then, I used the plough plane to run the groove.  It was much faster plus I like to do it this way.  I was very happy with how well the groove came out.  There was a bit of a learning curve to using the plough plane but I think I have it now sorted out.  As for the panel itself, it was thicker than then 1/4 groove it would go into.  The simple option would have been to put a bevel to make it fit.  That would have been fine; however, that's not what I wanted.  I felt that panel would be too thick.  Since how I make something is important to me, I did it the way I wanted to do it.  I used hand planes and took the maple panel down to 1/4" thickness.   Forever more, when I look at the bread box, there will be a little internal smile knowing I made it the way I wanted to make it.  Glue up went very well and the joints were tight on the rails and stiles.  Starting to feel confident on making frame and panels.

Hardware install was straight forward using hand tools.  A recessed magnet holds the door shut.  As for the finish, I went with my favorite go to.  I used shellac.  Garnett shellac for the cherry and blond shellac for the maple.  Parts of the finishing were done before the carcass was assembled and blue tape on the parts that were going to be glued.  Partway through I denibbed.  After letting the shellac "harden" for about 5 days to a week, I then used OOOO steel wool and wax.  The piece came out nice and the wife is happy.  I'm happy because it was my second piece I designed and it looks like the design I made.  It is big but the specs for what it was to hold dictated that.