A Dedicated Sharpening Bench part 1

An Introduction..."The best hand tools in the world are worthless in the hands of the woodworker who cannot sharpen them."After reading and experimenting with, practicing and then studying the different techniques of sharpening Ive come to settle on a system that is working for me in my current shop space and thats good! A freshly sharpened hand tool can turn the most challenging joinery tasks into wonderful and relaxed procedures. Your work will be cleaner with tighter fitting joinery and your tools will perform as they were intended to the day they were made. The joys of working wood will be that much the greater.
In my own basement work space here in Toronto, Ive followed the line and Im happy with my results; but something Im not happy with and have been promising myself for months to address is my sharpening location and current set-up.
One day last year, I noticed a neighbour throwing out a small wooden table. I snatched it up, rescuing it from the eternal wasteland of the land fill site and have been using it as my sharpening table ever since. Prior to the table I was using a sharpening hook system I designed awhile ago. It was basically an over-sized bench hook with some cleats to hold water stones and a side area for stone storage. The sharpening hook worked when my bench top wasnt cluttered, (which if you know me you know that it hasnt happened much this past year!) so the routine of moving my work project or tools to make room for the sharpening hook soon became tiresome. The small throw achoice tables footprint has also become reminiscent of a drunken sailor on shore leave so Ive finally decided, with a little help from Fine Woodworking.com, to build a new bench dedicated to sharpening.
A small scale workbench with large scale workbench strength. The frame has mortise and tenon joinery with a solid 1" thick work surface that has bread board ends fitted into a heavy, through dovetailed apron.
It has a tool tray featuring a unique and convenient choice of actually holding tools ! (not just for the hamsters anymore) and Ive added some off the shelf items that will also add to the -dare I say- pleasure of sharpening?
Do you currently have a dedicated sharpening area? Is it a re-used piece of furniture or maybe a purpose made table or bench? Id love to hear about it- be part of the discussion and share some thoughts.
In the next post Ill assemble my cut list and get right into the project with some stock preparation and Ill glue-up the top panels...stay tuned.

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The Village Carpenter is Retiring

It would appear that The Village Carpenter is no longer posting. Kari has decided to hang up her keyboard and go off in other pursuits. While I will miss her, I respect and understand her decision to give it up. Constantly sharing yourself on a blog isnt the easiest thing to do, and in fact, it can be a royal pain in the ass sometimes.

In truth, Kari was the driving force that got me into the blogging business. She is so damned talented, she should be ashamed of herself. I probably learned more from her postings than I ever learned from all the other blogs combined.

What I loved about Karis posts is her lack of pretension. If you did a search through all her postings I would bet the back forty that you would never find the word "perfect" used that related to herself or her work. You and I might of thought the results of her skills were perfect, and maybe at times even Kari thought so too, but she is classy enough to never even hint she felt that choice. She did what she did to the best of her abilities and then put it out there for the world to see.

All the best to you, Kari, in your future endeavours. You will be missed.

Peace,

Mitchell

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Little Wings

Inlaid Walnut ButterfliesNow that the headboard is complete other than I have to still apply a finish; I move on to the inlaid butterfly keys at the bottom of the bed. These will be both structural and visual in design. Ill start off by making a full size template out of some scrap press board and try it in place. Stand back and have a look; try the other side, walk around...cover all of the angles until youre happy with the size and the placement of the key template. Ill then take a fine file and go over all of the edges of my template making sure its nice and smooth, while checking its flat on edge. This is exactly what you want the finished pieces to be so make sure all is well with it. Seeing as theyre only two of these and theyre only a few inches worth of material, take your time and find a really nice piece. The small length of Walnut I have was taken out of my scrap wood pile. A great place to use up those awkward little pieces left over from an earlier stage of the project. Ill take some two sided tape and temporarily stick the template down to the walnut, making sure youve gone over the face of the real wood with a smoothing plane. This piece of wood should be at a finished state before sticking on the butterfly mock-up. Once adhered I carefully cut around the template with my marking knife being careful to keep the flat back side of the knife blade tight against the press board cut-out.
Once I have the shape nicely traced out on the Walnut, Ill cross cut the key on my Bench. My Mitre Hook is the perfect appliance to use here. This will ensure the Walnut stays put while I saw it out. Ill get as close as I can to each end keeping in mind Ill be fine tuning it later. Once I get the pieces cross cut Ill take them over to my shoulder vise and get ready to rip down the sides of the butter fly wings. This will be done with a rip saw as opposed to the small Carcass saw I used to cross cut the keys.
My fine toothed Dovetail saw has a Rip tooth pattern filed at 15 tpi. (teeth per inch) I recently resharpened it so it makes quick work of the walnut. Next, Ill take the freshly cut butterflies and mount them again in the shoulder vise but on an axis so theyre just a hair proud of the bench top. I was going to use my chisel to clean up any saw marks left behind but decided to use a spare blade I have out of my Jointing plane. I use a Bevel-Up Jointing Plane manufactured by Veritas® which has a nice thick blade, 2-1/4" wide, 3/16" (0.187") thick. This ended up being the perfect tool for this application. The wide heavy back of the Iron was easy to register against the narrow edge of the butterfly key; a few passes with the Iron and all of the saw marks were gone.
Now that the keys are cut out and finished its time to inlay them into the lower bed rails where they meet the walnut foot board. The first step again with this process is to carefully attach some two sided tape to the keyes and carefully place them onto the scribed lines from earlier. Make sure all is right in the butter fly kingdom before going any further. This is one spot you dont want to try to patch later! Ill carefully remove the key and with a freshly sharpened and well honed chisel, slowly cut a shallow groove around the inner perimeter being careful not to disturb the outside edge. When I have the groove cut the full choice around Ill take a 1/4" (6mm) Gouge and cut a narrow groove down the center of the mortise key. This hollow will allow me to get started with my Router plane enabling the blade of the Router to get into the fibers and slowly cut out the waste. I make sure to take light shallow passes and slowly work my choice down checking my depth as i go. When I reach the mortise bottom Ill take a small detail chisel and clean up through out. At this point I like to clean up the surface around the mortise with my smoothing plane and test fit the butterfly. When it sits down properly Ill scribe around the edge of the key and again remove it. I made sure to keep my mortise a little shallow so the actual butterfly will be proud by a little. Then carefully remove the key and at my work bench Ill shape it. I use the edge scribe lines I just made to reference so I dont chamfer down past the rails surface. I like to really work the butterfly into a pleasing shape constantly stopping, closing my eyes and allowing my fingers to judge my progress. You really have to trust your sense of touch and not so much the eyes for this. If you wanted, you could simply plane the key down flush with the surface; this is the common method but seeing as I wanted this bed to feature some hand cut joinery, Im allowing the butterfly to round and bulge out of the walnut frame around it. I think my clients will agree. Bon nuit!

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To the Teeth

in the hand saw valley

5 1/2 rip tooth on the left and an 8 point x-cut on the right. The Disston D-8 duet.

This week I’m shipping saws and receiving saws, some for review and some for wood class work and student aids. I’ve been teaching sawing techniques this week and last, ( thanks again Dave ), reading about saw design through history and into more recent years, speaking at lengths on saw design with actual hand tool manufacturers and if that wasn’t enough I’m working out details on some new hand sawing ‘items‘... ( more on that over the summer )You could say I’m up ‘to the teeth’ and enjoying every minute of it.
The shipping portion of my week involves panel saws destined for Southwestern Wisconsin.
I did an over haul on these two beauties last week and thought I’d share it with you. After putting in the elbow grease I’ve decided their worth sending out to get ‘dressed by a professional’.
I do enjoy ‘putting the file to the plate’ and sharpening my own hand saws when they need it. My rip saws aren’t too bad ..??.. but cross cut tooth geometry is a little more complicated and I’m the first to admit my saw sharpening isn’t my strongest point.
It’s something I practice but felt these two worth the extra effort.
They’re antique Disston D-8?s and both family saws. They had fallen into that dark place under the stairs and in bad need of some work.  They’ve been on my to-do list for years and years and I’m happy to finally see them again and anxious to get them back to work. I’ve held onto them as ‘family heirlooms’ but never took the time to set them up. That changed.

Disston D-8 after 3 decades unused. Rusted and tarnished but lots of life left in it.

The 5 1/2 ppi rip saw was my Uncle Johnny’s. John Pier who lived on Keltic Dr. in Sydney River, Nova Scotia. He was a WWII veteran and growing up we were very close to him and his wife, ‘Aunt Ivy‘. When I was young my father and I would visit Uncle Johnny’s basement work shop and now thinking back you could have filmed horror movies down there!
The low ceiling clinging cob webs on bent nails, a few bare light bulbs to accent the jars of food preserves, empty and now recycled into storage containers nailed to the floor joists above holding ‘sets’ or ‘collections’ of nails, fasteners and other unimagined horrors. Uncle Johnny and Aunt Ivy both died during my first year of middle school. Johnny died one night while I was at a ‘social event’ on Argyle st. in the Ship yard area of Sydney. It was Grade 7, I still remember that night like it was yesterday.
He used to wear a Tartan vest, a nice old guy with a big belly and big smile to go with it.
Funny, I had a Tartan vest for a few years…
The second hand saw is also a vintage D-8 but filed at 8 ppi, It’s a bit of a mystery in that it either belonged to my Grand Uncle, Stan Wadden from Matilda St. in Whitney Pier, or it came from my wife’s side of the family who also had Wadden’s. I don’t remember when or where I got this one. The initials almost look like FW. ?

A second Disston D-8 from a family member. Im a lucky man indeed.

Nelson Wadden, ( my son’s namesake) was my wife’s grand Uncle from Wadden’s Cove on Cape Breton Island. This was where a couple of my old hand tools came from. He was a fiddle player and lobster fisherman. I got to meet him a couple of years before he passed achoice in his little work shop in the back yard next to the vegetable garden. You can see the initials end in W but I’m not sure about the first. Looks like an F but still need to figure out the origins.
Interesting that Johnny’s was made at Disston Canada and the other in Philadelphia, USA.
That is what’s leading me to think my wife’s side of the family due to her connections in Massachusetts. The mystery will continue for now.
Here’s a photo journal from last week. I’ll call this bit,  ‘How to prepare an old hand saw for another generation of work.’
Isn’t that just the best feeling in the world?
; )A hand saw resurrection.Cheers!

Rust Never Sleeps while Im confident the green slime took a few years off of my life, it did a wonderful job at removing the rust and wear from the saw plate.

Creeping along through the green and the grey.

Shining like a new dime.

5 1/2

Close to home.

8 ppi

Brotherly love.

The toxic avenger.

Made in the USA

After a little brushing and sanding I trace my fingers to fine tune the fit for my hand.

Both sides.

Lest we forget. I carefully deepen the initials using an awl before the final finishing.

ACHTUNG ! Purists close your eyes-; )

One for Uncle Johnny

Working through the oil and wax.

Ready for sharpening.

The resurrection.

Still there after the rusty vinegar bath.

Ready for another generation working wood.

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Art Imitates Life Working Wood Style

A picture is worth 1000 words...
Please comment.
Cheers!

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Its in the Intonation

this is just an observation... Most of the woodworkers I meet know how to play a musical instrument.
From string to wind and wind to wood, what ever.
Point is most woodworkers seem to naturally have or gain through repetition, a sense of rhythm while we work with hand tools, we’re musical even if we don’t actually play instruments.
Nestled in the saw dust lies the rhythm and the rhyme.
And with all that in mind…

The Recording Model by Brown Guitars. Photo from Soundpark Studio website.

This past winter I traveled to the East Coast of Canada on two occasions, once in February and again in March to play some live music and promote my new album. ( shameless I know )
On both adventures one of my closest and oldest friends, Scott Brown joined me for the shows playing bass guitar. Scott also gave me some insight into guitar set ups and I finally got around to setting up one of my own guitars on my return back to Toronto.
I bought a OOO1R, USA made Martin in 1996 but it was actually made three years prior to that making about 19 years old..? This is a sweet little guitar and has been my faithful  ‘road warrior’ over the last couple of decades give or take.
Funny enough though it didn’t make either trip this winter because Scott is a wonderful luthier on Cape Breton Island and he offered me to leave ‘my axes’ here at home ( no stress flying you know ) and invited me to use some of his custom built guitars during the performances. Needless to say I jumped at the opportunity.
Scott is the man behind Brown Guitars in Bras D”Or, Nova Scotia. He builds custom electric and acoustic guitars in his home work shop about 20 minutes from down town Sydney and will ship his work ( as stressful as that may be ; ) internationally. Another close friend of mine, Jamie Foulds owns a studio in Cape Breton and recently posted some sounds clips of Scott’s latest and finest. Follow this link…
Now back in the wood shop we wood workers are all well aware of wood movement. ( say that 5 times fast )
Take all of those elements and multiply them by 10 and you have ‘luthier wood movement stress‘ !
I’m exaggerating a little but you get the idea.
Wood movement in guitars = bad intonation, a neck that may need to be set up seasonally or at the very least annually. Even a brand new guitar shipped from a music store on the West Coast to a musician on the East Coast will need to be set up to perform as it should.
With humidity changes, the neck on a guitar can move and cup and the differences between CB Island and Southern Ontario are pretty drastic. I realized that not one of my guitars had been set up since moving back from the East Coast 3 years ago and it was time to do something about it. Yikes!

Brown Guitars

Returning home after playing Scott’s guitars all perfectly set up and tuned, I could feel and see how high the action on my little Martin was getting. Every guitar player should know how to go through the steps of checking to see if an instrument needs an adjustment and then decide whether to carry out those adjustments or have a professional like Brown Guitars make them for you.
After my crash course lesson in guitar set up and light maintenance by Mr. Brown himself, I decided to take up the challenge and can happily say my guitar feels and plays like it did when it was new.
It was in bad shape although I ignored it for three years and learned to live with the high action on the strings.  I knew it was getting harder and harder to play with each winter passing and I suspected the intonation was starting to get out of whack as well.
Three years can really make a difference.
It’s a wonderful feeling setting up your own guitar to suite your own tastes and I encourage you to take a close look at your own instruments at home.
I’ll walk you through the steps Scott taught me in another post.
It only involves a hand full of tools that most of you already own. This is what you’ll need:

1. guitar tuner
2. new set of strings
3. capo
4. feeler gauges
5. small metal rule in 1/16? increments
6. reliable straight edge
7. Allen or Hex keys
8. wire cutters

For now, follow the links and check out Brown Guitars.
Cheers!

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Ripping Wood

Saws, Bents and BenchesI recently had a question about the specs on the rip saw I was using in the Moulding plane/Miter blog from a few days ago. Instead of answering in the comment section I thought Id do it here.
I have a few old Rip saws Ive acquired through yard sales and flea markets as well as a new Pax from England. I barely touch the Pax except for soft, green wood outside of my shop...kind of the weekend work, helping out the brother-in-law build a fence or deck stuff. The particular saw in question is the one pictured above; the medallion says Corporate Mark Kangaroo and the plate has Rob Sorby Sheffield punched into it.
Its 28" long and filed at 6 tpi. (teeth per inch) I sent it down to Mark at Technoprimitives and he over hauled it last year. Needless to say he did an amazing job and it became my daily user.
Its the main saw I reach for except when ripping stock in the 1/2" range. I have another old Disston that has a 24" saw plate and is filed at 10 tpi. Between these two that usually takes care of my ripping needs but Im very interested in the new Lie Nielsen panel saws. I have a few other old Rip saws as well but theyre in need of some work. When ripping wood, to further answer the question asked I generally use my saw bench. This is the design by Chris Schwarz published in Woodworking Magazine a few years back. Its a nice design and a perfect height but I find with the two angled legs I sometimes hit the end of the saw into the lower stretcher...Ive since designed my own saw bench and will share it with you here in a future post. For small stock I usually just fore go the saw bench and use my tail vise for most of my rip cuts. My bench is low enough that I never seem to have an issue with this method. Ill sometimes hold the piece in the tail vise and use a hold fast as well on my bench top to keep the work piece stable. I also have a couple of shop bents as I call them. Basically theyre saw horses that are the same overall dimension as the end profile of my work bench. Ill use these from time to time when ripping the edge of real large work but this is pretty rare in my shop.
The plans for these will be in my book so I better not put them here...my editor may whack me across the knuckles with a yard stick!
Ripping wood by hand is probably one of the most intimidating things for people considering a hand tool only work shop; its time and labor intensive but once you get your head around it it quickly becomes second nature. I clearly remember thinking back when I was first considering a shop with no power tools and the idea of ripping all of the wood for a piece of furniture scared the hell out of me! That said, its been a year of hand saws and wood shavings and I dont even think about it now...assembling a cut list and grab the saw. It actually doesnt take that long either-another mis-conception I had.
So for anyone starting down this road Ill recommend a full size panel saw in the 28" ball park with a low tooth count for thick stock and then a smaller panel saw with a finer tooth for lighter work.
The saw bench mentioned from Woodworking Magazine is a great design and Id recommend it to anyone but for me and my body type it wasnt a perfect fit. Try ripping along the workbench too, this is my preferred method but again to each his own...what ever feels comfortable is alchoices the best choice to go.
Cheers!

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