Dream Saws...Seriously

Careful what you wish for ?

In my wood shop using only hand tools to build furniture, back saws are without a doubt one of the most important and most frequently used tool than any other outside of perhaps hand planes. Today we have the luxury of purchasing pre-dimensioned, quality lumber for our projects making my full size panel saws second in most cases. I still have to spend the time to cross-cut and rip stock, but the backsaws are where the real joinery happens.
I use my Lie Nielsen saws for most of my work but also have a couple of nice reconditioned antiques. One of these vintage gems is an old 'R.H. Davis Co. and was given 'the works' by Mark at Technoprimitives, it's a great saw and a real pleasure to use.
Over this past year I've designed and manufactured thirteen pieces of furniture in my small workspace and through this hectic schedule realised some limitations in my current hand saw arsenal. For example, when cutting dovetails in carcass work I like to use the method of clamping two surface pieces of the stock together and cut the tails simultaneously. When dealing with stock 3/4" or better in thickness, I've often found myself wishing my Lie Nielsen dovetail saw had a longer plate. I absolutely love this saw for general dovetail work like drawers and single board thickness sawing-but dealing with 1 1/2" to 1 3/4" material shows limitations. For this reason I've been speaking to a couple of hand saw manufacturers and would like to develop a dovetail saw that has a longer saw plate.
I think most people associate a longer saw plate with less TPI (teeth per inch) but on the contrary, the design I think would suite my work best would actually be a finer tooth pattern. The Lie Nielsen comes standard with a 15 tpi or for easier kerf starting they now offer a Progressive Pitch Dovetail Saw which runs from 16 tpi at the tip down to 9 tpi at the handle position. I haven't yet tried this model but have heard great things about it.
The dovetail saw I'm thinking about would have at least a 10" saw plate with a slightly finer tooth count, say 16 tpi over the length. The progressive pitch would be fine if I can convince anyone to build one for me! With this size plate I began to worry that the extra length would mean of course extra steel or brass back in turn making the saw heavier. Not a plus when cutting dovetails in my eyes...or hands. I'm not sure how this will play out but I have a couple of ideas in mind; one being a kind of hybrid mix of dovetail saw with No. 9 half back saw plate. This would essentially make the plate the desired length without the extra weight of the full length back.
I'm still in the developing stages of this and need to work more on it...any comments or suggestions are always welcome!
So that's my 'dream' dovetail saw but unfortunately I'd also like a larger scale back saw for cross cutting long miters. I've seen pictures of the really large plated back saws used in miter boxes...Roy Underhill is famous for that one, but would like something in the 16" range. Anyhow, the same thing would apply, a longer saw plate with a finer tooth pattern. For this one I wouldn't mind the extra heft so I think the back would run full length.

Now here's the cool/freaky/strange and then cool again-part in all of this:
Last weekend I stumbled over an add in the local buy and sell...it simply read 2 Antique back saws for sale- $15.00 and $20.00.
At that price is was worth the gasoline to drive across town to see them. A friendly gentleman greeted me with the two saws saying they had been sitting in his cottage for years.
Well when I first saw him hold up these two saws I was a little bit like...
"O.k. where's the hidden camera.?"
I took them home and simply gave them a light cleaning with metal polish and fine steel wool to remove a bit of the surface dirt and small amounts of rust that had collected on them; not more than 10 minutes on each and they were shining like new dimes. The handles needed only a fresh wipe of oil and I'll re-sharpen them as soon as I can...
So now, here's the hook, one saw is a closed handle, 10" back saw with a 1 1/2" depth of cut made by Disston & Sons the better part of 100 years ago. It does have a small crack in the handle but doesn't seem to interfere with holding it...nothing a bit of glue won't fix.
The other has a 16" plate with 3 1/2" depth filed cross cut at 14 tpi. It's by Shurley & Dietrich, a fine Canadian saw manufacturer from years ago. Oh yeah, the little carcass saw, which The Disstonian Institute mentions: "While not marketed as such, the 8 and 10 inch saws make respectable dovetail saws when filed with 14-point rip teeth." is indeed filed at 14 tpi-Rip tooth.
While not 'exactly' the saws I'd been dreaming about these past few months, (cutting a couple thousand dovetails will do that to you) they are an incredible find. A couple of pieces of history to inspire me, assist me while I'm working wood and educate me in designing a couple of new backsaws someday...Careful what you wish for? I'll never get them designed now!

Cheers!

PHILLY STYLE

Fine Wooden Planes made in England

I'm getting geared up to start production of an Exterior Wooden Door for a client here in Toronto. The house is located in the historic neighbourhood of Cabbagetown and is declared a Heritage Property.
The existing door was put on about 25 years ago, so I'm building a replica of the original. It will be made of 8/4 Quarter-Sawn White Oak and to keep it true to the local history when it was originally made a century ago, I'm building it using only hand tools.
The carcass is a straight forward frame and panel design with some interesting moulding details. In order to reproduce these mouldings I've ordered four pairs of hollows and rounds from Phil Edwards in Broadstone, Dorset.
Phil is craftsman, musician and clearly a hand tool enthusiast; during his process of manufacturing my planes he's sent me a photo of the progress. I'm looking forward to getting my hands on them and taking some fine shavings...
Stay tuned.

Spending the day with David Charlesworth...( well sort of )

Making the Best a Little Bit Better...

In my shop I have a wide selection of hand planes, from vintage Stanley's to the modern designed, and Canadian made Veritas. I'm the proud owner of a James Krenov smoothing plane and also have an assortment of vintage wooden bodied bench planes and special purpose tools. I've acquired all of these tools slowly over the years but have to say that the planes I reach for the most while working wood and find to be much higher quality than all of the others mentioned are my Lie Nielsen hand planes. A league all their own comes to mind...
Right out of the package these tools perform exceptionally well but I'm going to demonstrate a few simple procedures that will make these 'near perfect' tools even better. The tips and techniques I'm going to describe are all methods used by English cabinetmaker and wood working teacher David Charlesworth; his hand plane tuning and technique videos are worth every cent. It's funny to think that people go out and spend thousands of dollars on education but for the price of a handful of DVD's, three books and some time spent in the shop you can get a kind of private lesson from this woodworking master. I had David's books for the past while and finally got around to picking up his videos...better late than never, you're never to old to learn a few new skills. Although I've been working with hand tools for awhile now there are some great tips and techniques in these books and videos that every wood worker should see. I set up a small monitor at the end of my workbench and make my way through the videos...pausing and playing, stopping and re-watching. This is a great way to learn at your own pace and I honestly can't say enough about his videos....extremely informative!
Lie Nielsen bench planes come with a blade ground at a 25° bevel; this is where I'll start to make my adjustments. Following the advice of Charlesworth, I'll regrind the bevel closer to 23°. I use a JET slow speed wet sharpener for all of my grinding applications; it's a good tool that is reasonably priced, easy to set up and dependable. It came with a wide assortment of jigs for different sharpening applications but I tend to only use the one to hold my irons and chisels exclusively. The rest of them I don't bother much with.
After a few minutes on the grinder establishing the new bevel, it's back to my work bench to get set up to flatten the sole of the plane. 'Flatten the sole?' you may be asking yourself...Why should you bother if the tool was manufactured to such high standards?
Even with an exceptionally well made tool like the Lie Nielsen line, there is always a chance that when in use and the plane body is under tension with the cutting iron, chip breaker and lever cap installed in working position, the bottom of the plane could be slightly out of true. This simple process will insure accuracy and enable me to take the finest wood shavings. Starting with a dead flat surface, in my case a piece of safety glass I'll lay a piece of 220 grit sandpaper on it. From here I'll take a felt tip marker and draw out some grid lines over the bottom of the plane. A few passes and you'll quickly be able to see just how flat the plane really is...keep taking passes until the bottom is completely clean. I'll usually do a second round of lines just to make sure things are as flat as they should be. I follow this same procedure for all of my Lie Nielsen hand planes, fine tuning them all at once is a nice way to spend the day and will really pay off when I'm back in the shop next.
In the next shot you can clearly see what the sole of my 140, skew angle block plane while under tension of the iron and lever cap, looks like after a few passes on the 220 grit sandpaper...a bit more work and I'm there.Notice the area around and just behind the mouth in the first shot...these are the areas you want to make sure are dead flat. A fine shaving is impossible to achieve if these areas are not touching your surface to be planed.
Again I'll repeat these steps for my shoulder planes, side rabbet planes, block plane and bench planes.
When flattening the sole of my shoulder planes it's a good idea to use a small square to make sure you're keeping things square; the nature of the shoulder plane in use would not be good if you unintentionally sanded it out of square...something you could easily do with this technique...be careful!
Once I've flattened the soles on the 220 grit sandpaper I'll take some super fine steel wool and a bit of metal polish and give the soles a good going over. This will make all of the tiny scratches left behind by the sandpaper very minute and give the planes a slick sole that makes it a breeze to move across the surface being planed. Seeing as I'm doing this hand plane 'Spring Cleaning Session' I'll go over the sides and lever caps as well, making them shine like a new dime. Any small surface rust, tarnish and grim will be history. From here I'll focus again on the irons. With the newly ground bevels completed, I'll hone a second bevel on my water stones to approximately 33°. Then a third tiny bevel to finish at 35°. This again is a Charlesworth technique that will give you a razor sharp iron capable of taking the finest shavings. Before using the stones though, it's a good idea to use the safety glass and sandpaper method to flatten them as well. You'd be surprised at how easy it is to hollow them while honing.
Once the cutting bevel is prepared it's time to flatten the back of the iron...these planes have been with me for a few years now so they don't require much honing. I made sure when I first purchased them that I spent enough time on each iron insuring a flat back. The one thing I will do is perform "the ruler trick". Again a Charlesworth technique to create a tiny back-bevel on the irons flat side. This may sound strange at first but I promise you the edge created will scare you.
Again, here in this article I'm not getting into all of the details of the process but am trying to say that a few hours spent with some sandpaper on glass, a Charlesworth DVD or two and a few of the finest planes on the market today will indeed take your wood working to the next level...guaranteed!
Cheers.