A Hobbiest thinking and working with wood by hand and with machines.
Since well before Christmas, I’ve been working on a background project. Making my work areas more efficient. In the couple of little projects that I’ve done since this Summer, I’ve realized that a few things needed to be moved to a better location. Here is the results:
Main Workbench:
Rather than building a bench from scratch, I [...]
Yesterday, I made a post about getting a new tool (which arrived today). I forgot that I had also ordered a Hand Drill (eggbeater drill) and Hand Brace. As I move to using hand tools, this is a new set of tools that I’m excited to use and experiment with. I have hand drills and [...]
Having your hobby live on a tight budget, you have to save and buy up. This can take month and requires a great deal of patience. Well, my patience is paying off. I had saved up so that I could buy a few tools. One that I’m very excited about is a Lee Valley/Veritas Low [...]
After selling my table saw (see For Sale – which is sold), I needed to have a router table. Yes, I know that I am going to a more hand tool model but I think that routers are too useful for too many tasks to eliminate completely from a shop. For instance, I can’t envision [...]
As I noted in a previous post regarding my Handcut Dovetail Hopechest class, we learned about cutting tails first. I came into the class with no opinion on the old battle about cutting pins vs tails first. Even if I had, I would have probably gone with the direction from the class. What’s the point [...]
As I mentioned in my last post regarding the Lie-Nielsen Tool Event, I was thinking about a dedicated hand plane for the shooting board.
I’m currently using my Lie-Nielsen Jointer Plane which is set up for medium planing work (versus rough/aggressive or smooth/fine work). This works though I’ve found that the plane should be set up [...]
As I mentioned in my last post, I headed up to Port Townsend. It turned out to be a 2 1/2 hour road trip (each way, including the required ferry ride) though I was able to catch up on a lot of podcasts during the ride so it wasn’t totally wasted.
It was a much smaller [...]
I know, I know. Finally he shows his entire shop. Of course when you entire shop is less than 10′ x 16′ there isn’t much to show off.
First, here is my main work bench. Someday, I may build my own from scratch but I wanted to get to work so I bought a bench kit [...]
Tomorrow, I’m attending the Katz Roadshow at the local Dunn Lumber. The 1 day class covers finish carpentry and my main interest in it is that there are supposedly tips and tricks using Festool Tools (probably the circular saw and rail system).
While, as I’ve indicated in previous posts, I’m including more and more hand tool [...]
See my previous posts giving updates from my Handcut Dovetail Hope Chest from last week (I did 5 daily updates). This post is to give you some progress pictures and show you what happened.
Here is Gary, the owner and teacher of our class at Northwest Woodworking Studio:
Here are a series of shots that show [...]
It was a big day.
We prepped our pieces (cleaned up the interior for pre-finishing) and taped off the glue joints so that finish didn’t cancel out the glue.
We adjusted a dado (for the top and bottom) so that the pieces didn’t need a hammer to go in.
We pre- finished our pieces – specifically the interior [...]
Today, I finished all the dovetails. According to Gary (instructor and owner of school) “it looks good, except that it doesn’t.” He’s a funny guy and makes many “smart” remarks throughout any day. From this statement, I read that it’s good that I have the dovetails done but that there is a lot of work [...]
Today, I finished cutting the tail boards and started on the pins. This is easily the most frustrating part. Getting it to fit tight seems impossible to my current skill level. I get it to fit but the examples the instructor, Gary, does are impossibly tight. Also, he and his assistant have good eyes and [...]
I just got back to the hotel. It’s after 5:30p and it’s over 100 degrees outside. The class is in an old, non-AC’d, warehouse. Did I mention it’s over 100 degrees outside?
The class was great. Gary, owner/teacher of the Northwest Woodworking Studio, first started out with the notion that before you [...]
As I mentioned in several earlier post, I needed to build a tool cabinet to hold my hand tools for easy access. Some secondary purposes including making some hand cut dovetails and use up some of the left over plywood that I had (yes, the tool cabinet would be better if it were solid wood [...]
