Woodworking Magazine Weblog

The last time I completely lost my composure, a piece of office equipment almost died.

This was in 1995, when I was running a start-up newspaper in Frankfort, Ky., and was sleeping under my desk some nights. Our company was broke, I had just spent an hour cleaning the bathrooms and our automatic paper-folding machine decided to clog because the humidity was a couple points too high.

After the machine ruined hundreds of valuable pieces of mail, I freaked. I grabbed a broken table leg (why we had a broken table leg in the newsroom is a mystery to me) and beat the machine senseless in front of the entire staff. Then I took a walk.

Last night, I was looking around my workshop for another spare table leg.

Let me back up for a moment. I'm building a fairly large shelving unit for a local couple and am now sanding all the components before finishing and final assembly (the photos here are of the finishing sample boards I'm preparing).

Against my better judgment, I bought some Far East red oak plywood from the home center for the shelves. It looked OK in the store, but it has been a nightmare. The surface veneer is woefully thin. Typically, I can dress plywood with a handplane and make four or five passes before I'm in danger of cutting through the veneer. But not this stuff. The veneer seems as thin as notebook paper. And so I decided to sand it to be safe.

I started sanding with #150-grit – typically a good place to start with quality plywood. But not this stuff. The machining marks on the surface veneers are so pronounced that I had to start with #120-grit. That's a mite aggressive for thin veneer, so I hunched over the work while sanding so I could keep a sharp eye on the veneer in case I started to cut through it.

That's when I noticed the veneer lifting in a few places, like a blister about to pop. Either this is a new development, or I didn't notice it (I'm guessing the former). So I couldn't power sand these blisters.

So after four hours of power sanding and hand-sanding, I'm now about halfway done with the project. But I am completely done with cheap plywood.

Believe me, I don't blame Far East manufacturing for this (so please don't bash an entire nation or culture if you leave a comment). Someone in our country ordered the plywood be made like this. Someone at the home center agreed to stock it. And I was stupid enough to buy it. I blame myself and no one else.

But it's just a good thing that all my table legs are still attached to tables, or I'd be sanding out quite a few big dents in these shelves.

— Christopher Schwarz

Probably the silliest thing about woodworking journalism is the "in a weekend" project that we promise readers on the cover of the magazine: "Build a John Goddard Highboy With Four Sticks and Pocket Knife – In a Weekend!"

(And trust me, it's the exclamation point at the end of that sentence that makes you buy the magazine and puts food on my table.)

Anyway, loyal reader and blogger Eric Seidlitz sent me the above photo of his Roubo-style workbench that he built over a holiday weekend. Eric, who works in Malaysia, said he's been frustrated with his bench-building efforts lately and has been having trouble finding good material and getting his tools to work. So he absconded with his children's Christmas present and built the above bench.

I think it's lacking in the mass department, but otherwise he did a fine job.

What would really improve this photo would be the addition of some Lego Frenchmen with frilly cuffs and collars at work at the bench. I checked the Lego web site, and though you can get Lego dudes dressed up like knights, astronauts and Indiana Jones, Lego doesn't appear to have any 18th-century French Joiners in its product line.

I think the Lego Pirates would be a good substitute. However, their eye patches aren't going to help with their sawing.

— Christopher Schwarz

On Friday, Jan. 11, we will make an important announcement in our newsletter about our future  plans for subscriptions to Woodworking Magazine. And shortly after that, I'll also post the news here on the blog.

The reason I'm writing to you today is two-fold. First, I'd like to encourage you to sign up for our newsletter so you will be the first to get the news. And second, I'm writing to ask for your assistance. If you know any other woodworkers who would be interested in the kind of woodworking journalism we practice here, I'd appreciate it if you could send them a short note and encourage them to sign up for this free newsletter.

We've made this easy to do. You can send a message to up to three people through our Tell a Friend page. Or you can simply direct them to our home page to sign up for this newsletter (the sign-up box is in the top right of the page). They also can download an entire sample issue of the magazine from the home page, which will give them a good taste of what we're about.

Anything you could do in this regard would be greatly appreciated.

Sorry I can't say more about the announcement right now. We're still working out some important details to make sure next week goes smoothly. Thanks to all of you for your letters of support since we started this magazine in 2004. You can rest assured that you have been heard and that your voice has made a difference.

Until next week,

— Christopher Schwarz
editor, Woodworking Magazine

P.S. You can now download Issue #2 free from our home page (look on the right side of our home page where it says "Download a free issue"). Issue No. 2 has one of my favorite projects on the cover: A cherry Shaker side table with delicate proportions.

I've probably built four or five of these tables and have sold them all except the one shown on the cover. That table sits beside my bed and holds the books that I pore over at night to help me chart the future issues of this magazine. The table is a fantastic project that I never get tired of building because the joinery is so simple and you don't need a lot of material.

That issue also has some other fine articles that we're proud of, including an interesting method of making the joinery for drawers that requires only one table saw set-up. Plus, an article on how to set up and sharpen chisels and how to use brushing lacquer. If you don't own that issue check it out on our home page.

Thanks to the maturing of my two daughters (and the waning of the “Days of Dark Diapers”), I’ve decided to teach two more rounds of handsawing classes in 2008 – two one-day classes in Sterling Heights, Mich.; and a one-week intensive class at the Northwest Woodworking Studio in Portland, Ore.

As of now, there are spaces available in all of these three classes. Here are the details and link to the schools where you can register:

Hand-cut Dovetails
Saturday, March 15
Woodcraft, Sterling Heights, Mich.
To register, send an email to: sterlingheights-retail@woodcraft.com or call 586-268-1919.

Learn to saw dovetails by hand while building a cherry Shaker silverware tray with through-dovetails. You'll learn to lay out your dovetails so they look nice, saw them accurately, chisel out the waste quickly, and fit them right the first time (plus, how to hide any mistakes). This is a great class for first-time dovetailers or anyone who has struggled to learn this classic hand-cut joint.

The Forgotten Art of Handsawing
Sunday, March 16
Woodcraft, Sterling Heights, Mich.
To register, send an email to: sterlingheights-retail@woodcraft.com or call 586-268-1919.

In this class, you'll learn to use handsaws and backsaws to track a line like a bloodhound. With a series of special exercises, you will learn to make the three different classes of sawcuts: rough cutting for dimensioning stock, standard cutting for final sizing of casework pieces and fine cutting for precision joinery. You'll learn the proper stance, grip and body motion for accurate sawcuts and receive the instant feedback and corrections from an instructor that will make you develop your skills quickly. You will also build a basic sawbench - the most important workshop appliance for handsaws.

Handsawing, Handsaws and Sawbenches
July 14-18
Northwest Woodworking Studio, Portland, Ore.

In a traditional shop, sawing was reserved for the most skilled cabinetmakers on the floor. Most anyone could use a plane or chisel, but it was the sawyers who transformed the timber into furniture with rips, crosscuts and joinery.

And though we now have accurate power equipment in our workshops, sawing by hand is still a tremendous skill that – when done properly -- can save time and effort. That’s because handsawing can be done without jigs or guides and without regard to the angle of the cut or its bevel. In short, if you can see the line, you can cut the line with a handsaw.

Honing this simple skill allows you to easily cut compound angles, angled joinery and cuts that might take hours of jig-building and test-cutting on a table saw. And, as a bonus, learning basic sawing trains your hand, eye and mind to cut any sort of dovetail joint you can imagine.

In this class, you’ll learn to use handsaws and backsaws to cut joints as precisely as any power tool. With a series of special exercises, you will learn to make the three different classes of sawcuts: rough cutting for dimensioning stock, standard cutting for final sizing of casework pieces and fine cutting for precision joinery.

You’ll learn the proper stance, grip and body motions for accurate sawcuts and receive the instant feedback and corrections that will make you develop your skills quickly. During the first part of the class you will build a basic sawbench – the most important workshop appliance for handsaws – and a bench hook – the most important appliance for wielding a backsaw.

With your appliances built and your handsaw skills in place, we’ll dive into dovetails during the second half of the week. We’ll explore both English and Continental styles of making this joint (both are valid) so you can find the approach that is right for your work. And at the end of the week we’ll build a simple dovetailed Shaker silverware tray.

— Christopher Schwarz

Mark L. Wells writes: I've read your book and the extra chapterr.  Both are great. You provide so much more detail than anything else I've read, and I almost feel guilty for not having to work it out myself. 

Anyway, I am going to rebuild my bench soon and I plan to put a leg vise on the front.   When attaching the top, I assumed I would have to use mortise-and-tenon joints because of the tremendous shearing force generated by the leg vise.  I'm concerned that the vise would just push the workbench top right off the legs.  However, when I saw the simple L-brackets in this chapter, I started wondering if those would  be sturdy enough to resist the force of the vise.  The L-brackets would certainly be a lot less work! 

Have you tried attaching the workbench top using L brackets when the bench has a leg vise? 

Answer: Good question. My gut says that two L-brackets on the leg with the leg vise would probably do the trick. However, just be safe, I would probably put one stout 1"- or 1-1/4"-diameter dowel in the top of that leg. That should provide all the protection against shear forces that you need.

Hope this helps, and good luck with your bench design.

— Christopher Schwarz

When I travel with some of my old-school workbenches, it looks a bit like a 19th-century British caravan to India. Since 2005, I’ve strapped my French Workbench into the bed of a tiny Toyota Tacoma pickup truck. I’ve driven it across town with its hinder hanging out the back of a Honda. And I’ve crammed the English Workbench into two too many mini-vans.

These workbenches don’t knock down flat for shipping and weren’t designed to. Society was a lot less mobile when these benches were in favor. And while I prefer these workbenches the way they are – built as one monolithic structure – sometimes you need to build your workbench so it knocks flat.

Though I discuss some bench-bolt schemes in “Workbenches: From Design & Theory to Construction & Use,” I didn’t cover the tricks to installing the hardware. I’ve installed quite a few of these systems in workbenches and beds.

So I’ve written an additional 10-page chapter that covers bench bolts and other systems of making your benches knock down flat into five pieces. Anyone can download this chapter here, for free, whether you’ve purchased the book or not. (The chapter is about 3.5 mb, so you will have an easier time if you do this on a computer with a broadband connection.)

The chapter discusses the pros and cons of the various ways to make your workbench’s base knock-down, including:

1. Solid-wood tusks driven into through-tenons that pass through mortises in the legs.
2. Drawbore pins
3. Lap joints secured with screws or lag bolts
4. Hex-head bolts, bench bolts or threaded rod.

Then I detail how to install the two tricky bits of hardware: hex-head bolts and the Veritas Special Bench Bolts, which I quite like. In addition to discussing knockdown workbench bases, I also discuss some of the different strategies for attaching the top to the base so you can easily remove it.

There might be a little surprise in here for you if you’ve read my book. All of benches feature very stout joinery, yet, I think it’s quite possible to really overdue it when it comes to attaching the top to the base. Most people focus on controlling racking forces when they attach the top. In a well-designed bench, you really should be more concerned about shear forces instead – and those are much easier to manage.

Dec. 20 update: Three typos fixed in file below. Thanks for the copy editing!

WB-Chapter9-appendixR2.pdf (3.49 MB)

— Christopher Schwarz

Reader Greg Peel writes: I'm glad to see that the latest issue of Woodworking Magazine is a great one like the others. I was wondering if there is color picture of the pumpkin pine samples that you did for the issue? It looks very intriguing to me. I've always used some version of golden oak for my pine pieces and I like their color very much, but I'm always interested to working with antique wood and achieving an aged finish on new wood.

By the way, I miss the sepia toned look of the previous issues that was so rich and beautiful.

Greg: Below is a link so you can download a color-correct image of the bucket – the image above has more brown in it than the real finish. Of course, if your monitor stinks, then it probably has too much baby-poo green in it, as well.

On your comment about the sepia color in the current issues: For the next issue we'll be back on the same paper, our old printing press and the same color set-up. So... wish granted.

PumpkinPineBucket.jpg (87.5 KB)

— Christopher Schwarz

A couple readers have pointed out a problem with page 81 of "Workbenches: From Design & Theory to Construction & Use" (Popular Woodworking Books).

The two columns of text on that page were transposed during the layout process, and I didn't catch the mistake before we went to the printer. All the text is there, and the story will make sense if you read the right column of text first and then the left.

Of course, that's not a good solution in my book (pun intended).

So I've prepared a corrected page that you can download, print out and stick in the book if you like. The page is in pdf format. If anyone else has any errors they have spotted, please e-mail them to me and I'll see that they are corrected in future editions (assuming that there are future editions).

NewPage81rev2.pdf (906.22 KB)

Sorry for the mistake.

— Christopher Schwarz

In the world of handsaws, certain topics are taboo (or should be).

We dare not talk about the origin of "the nib," lest the conversation turn to the ridiculous.

When discussing backsaws, it's best not to say if you think the back should be folded over the blade (you old-school traditionalist, how do you post on the Internet with that goose quill?) or if it should be a solid billet of brass that has been slotted (I bet you'd use a saw with a plastic handle).

And wading into the debate on Japanese saws vs. Western saws is, in the words of Vizzini, a blunder equal to a land war in Asia.

But today I'd like to talk a little bit about one verboten topic: blade tapering. Now, a saw blade can be tapered in a couple of its dimensions. With a handsaw – a 26"-long saw with no back – it was typical for the sawplate to be tapered in its thickness. The sawplate would be thickest at its toothline then get thinner up near the top of the blade. My beloved Disston D8, for example, is .039" thick at the toothline and .029" up at the top of the blade.

This kind of taper is quite useful. It means the saw is less likely to jam in a deep kerf. And I don't have to add as much set to the saw's teeth, so it's easier for the saw to follow a line (more set creates a bigger kerf that the saw is likely to wobble in).

But that kind of tapering isn't controversial. Though early handsaws weren't taper-ground, most people agree that it was a useful invention and embrace it.

The other kind of tapering – the kind that makes tool collectors blue in the face – is in the width of a backsaw's blade. With this kind of tapering, the sawplate is narrow up at the toe and wider back at the heel.

I've seen a lot of vintage saws, and I'm always surprised at how many are tapered this way. One school of thought is that this taper is a defect. Either the sawplate has come loose from its back and slipped down at the heel, or the saw was sharpened over the years to this shape unintentionally. So some tool collectors disassemble the saws, and pound the sawplate back into the back at the heel to remove this taper.

Unless the sawplate is flopping around, I think this is usually a mistake. After years of using a wide variety of Western backsaws, I've concluded that the taper is brilliant. Here's why: It keeps me from sawing too far and crossing my baseline by accident.

Think about it. Let's say you are cutting dovetails at your bench. The work is secured in your face vise and you are sawing a tail or a pin down to your baseline. Now, unless you are some sort of magic flounder, it's impossible for you to look at the front and rear of your joint at the same time. And so when you get close to sawing to your baseline, you'll peer over the board to see if you've hit the baseline on the exit side.

A tapered blade makes this process easier. When I saw dovetails, I simply saw until my teeth touch my baseline on the front face of the board. If the blade is tapered and I haven't tipped my saw in a radical manner, then I haven't crossed the baseline on the back of the board. Usually all I have to do is peer over the board, tip the tote of the saw up a degree or so and make one more stroke to hit my baseline on the back.

Here's the backside of my dovetailed board – after I've touched the baseline on the front side.

The taper works like this for all your joinery – tenons, half-laps, you name it.

Now the naysayers claim that the taper might be useful, but it isn't correct for a pristine, true vintage saw. It's a user-modification, like the dual Weber carbs I'm contemplating for my Volkswagen. To that I say: Read Joseph Smith's "Explanation or Key to the Various Manufactories of Sheffield" (1816).

The four backsaws shown in "Smith's Key." Note the tapered blades.

In case your copy of "Smith's Key" ain't handy, here's the deal. This book was kind of like a clip art file for early Sheffield toolmakers. Engraving was expensive, so a toolmaker needed an image of a bevel-edge chisel for a catalog, they could get one from "Smith's Key."

"Smith's Key" has one page devoted to handsaws and backsaws. And on that page, all four backsaws are shown with a prominent taper. If a tapered blade was a defect, why would you show that characteristic on a new saw in a catalog that might be used by as many as 150 tool makers?

By the way, I own two dovetail saws by modern makers that are tapered in width. My Gramercy Tools saw is 1-1/4" wide at the toe and 1-3/8" at the heel. My Wenzloff & Sons Kenyon-style dovetail saw is 1-5/8" at the toe and 1-3/4" at the heel.

— Christopher Schwarz

We're in the midst of working on the March 2008 issue of Woodworking Magazine. The projects are built and the editing has begun, but we still have some screws left to test. This issue will be printed on the glossy stock we used on the first seven issues (that will make Issue 8 a collectors' item – ha!). And we are going to put this issue back into the wholesale newsstand market. So you should be able to find it at more bookstores and newsagents than you did with Issue 8.

As always, Issue 9 will be available directly from us, either in printed form or in an instant digital download. While we don't have a definite release date for Issue 9 yet, here's my best guess: The digital download version will be available Feb. 1. The printed version will start going out by mid-March. Below is the line-up for Issue 9. (And by the way, work has already begun on Issue 10, which is where we're going to make sense of finger joints).

Cover Project: Two Stickley Tabourets
By Christopher Schwarz
We build the same Gustav Stickley No. 603 tabouret two different ways: one with mostly hand tools and the other with mostly power tools. Plus we explain how each perspective requires a different approach for layout and assembly.

Technique: Learn to Saw
By Christopher Schwarz
Details: Sawing by hand is one of the most fundamental hand skills you should develop. But it's not all practice, practice. Chris takes a look back at the historical techniques (now forgotten) that woodworkers used to get accurate sawcuts. Plus, we list the 10 most important rules for sawing.

Tools: Understand Western Backsaws
By Christopher Schwarz
Why would anyone (with the exception of a historical re-enactor or purist) buy an expensive Western saw? We investigate the Western backsaw and explain why it might be a good idea for your shop. Plus, we explain what three saws you need to do to perform all the common cabinetry joints and why.

Technique: Cutting Circles
By Robert W. Lang
We explore the best way to cut circular work, including router trammels and circle-cutting jigs for band saws and spindle sanders (and dismiss the table saw). Once we settle on a technique, we explore the best way to proceed with a minimum amount of clean-up afterward. It uses a router. But which bit is best (Straight? Spiral up-cut? Down-cut? Something else?). How close to the line should you rough-cut? Should you climb-cut? And if so, at what point on the circle – give some guidelines and rules. Plus: Build your own router trammel.
   
Tool Review: Premium Screws
By Glen D. Huey
Some woodworkers buy the cheapest drywall screws they can find. Others spend a pretty penny on stainless-steel beauties from Spax or McFeely's. What is the difference between these (beside the price)? Are they different steel? Different hardness? Why do some screws cam out and some hold tough. We pit the premium brands against some home center specials to find out if the extra money is justified.

Project: Circular Cutting Board
By Robert W. Lang
We build a simple round cutting board using the jigs and techniques featured in this issue.

Finishing: Glazing for the Ages
By Glen D. Huey
Glaze isn't a product as much as it a process. We explain how to apply color between layers of finish to subtly age a piece. We explore different products, including shoe polish, gel stain and traditional glaze. What are the differences, advantages and pitfalls of each.

As always, there will be Letters, Shortcuts, a Glossary and a back-of-the-book essay by Glen Huey on the tools he wished he'd never bought. And the back-page poster will cover butt hinges.

— Christopher Schwarz