The Day the Music Died....

I'm out of CD's !!

If you've already pre-ordered your copy of Made by Hand: Furniture Projects from the Unplugged Woodshop then with your pre-order you'll be getting a free copy of my last CD, Beyond Before. I recorded the CD the year before my son, Nelson was born. He's five now and having a child quickly changed my 'musical career' and I stopped touring and playing gigs and with that stopped promoting and selling copies of my CD. So as it goes I was left with a couple of boxes sitting in my basement collecting dust. When it was time to start the pre-orders for the book I decided it would be a great way to say thanks to everyone that ordered a copy from me directly and giving them a free copy. Well the response to my book has been quite overwhelming and needless to say I'm all out of CD's. 133 pre-orders! That's much more than I ever anticipated. I'm really thankful to everyone who has already ordered and for anyone still thinking about getting a copy ? I'm going to make a couple of 'custom book boxes' and anyone who pre-orders a book from this point until the release will have a chance to get a nice little wooden box. I'm not sure how much time I'll have to make them so I'm thinking for every 10 pre-orders I'll put those ten names in a hat and draw a winner. I think that would be pretty fair. I'll cover the extra shipping charges for the box so nothing will change as far as expense for the buyer. So again I'll say a big thank you to everyone who's helped me out over the past month, I'm flattered and excited to get your books in the mail...still expecting my shipment in early November.
Happy shavings!

Mixing traditional Skills with Modern Design

A Wall Shelf

I built this wall shelf a couple of years ago using hand cut dovetails and solid Mahogany. The drawer is Flame Birch and made using half blind dovetail joinery incorporating side runners to give the appearance of it 'floating'.It was a fun little project to make and will help you hone your dovetailing skills. If you'd like to learn the details on how I built it as well as a complete cut list and specs, you can pick up the next copy of Canadian Woodworking Magazine (Dec/Jan 2010, issue #63) It's one of the featured articles.

Speaking of woodworking magazines, if you'd like to see a nice little slide show of Made by Hand: Furniture Projects from the Unplugged Woodshop, Popular Woodworking has just uploaded one here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/popularwoodworking/sets/72157622472483565/show/
Enjoy!

Sawing and Shaping White Oak

Door Update

I'm just finishing off the door project and will have the last few coats of finish on by Sunday. I thought I'd show the process from earlier this week when I finally got around to the scroll detail underneath the window.
















To begin, I worked off of the pattern I took from an original door example in the neighbourhood and made a template. I only make a 'half template' so there's no discrepancies between the two sides.















I attached it to the blank, carefully tracing the pattern and then flipped it over to establish the opposite profile.














With the profile nicely traced with some heavy pencil lines I can be begin the sawing. I mentioned I ordered the new bow-saw blades from Tools for Working Wood, so having a nice set of fresh blades made this process pretty straight forward. The coarse blade was used to establish the main shape and then I switched over to my medium blade to get into the tight areas of the scroll.
















From here it was time to fair out the saw cuts and that was done with an array of rasps, riflers and files. What ever works right? This shaping took a few hours and then another couple of hours sanding. Admittedly, wood carving is something I don't do alot of so the tight spots on the inside of the scroll were a real challenge.














The saw cuts were there and made the rasp work fairly easy but to get into this tiny little spaces was a little frustrating to say the least. Tiny little pieces of sandpaper wrapped around little pieces of dowel and sanding fids finally brought the oak where I wanted it. I don't have any really good rasps like the Auriou line or the TFWW saw makers rasps but if I ever do a project like this again then I'll definitely pick some up before attempting this kind of work.

















In this last shot you can see where the scroll lives in relation to the window sill and with a bit more fine sanding and tweaking I'll call this part done. The panels and window details all have three coats of finish at this point and the top rail assembly as well as the mid-locking rails are all glued up. The only thing left is to take the door upstairs to glue the stiles onto the sides and then add these decorative elements.
Cheers!

Made by Hand

My Advance copy has Arrived!

I picked up my advance copy of Made by Hand last night and feel a great weight has been lifted off of my shoulders. This past year of writing and building, editing and writing some more now finally seems complete and I couldn't be happier with the results! Staring at a computer monitor is really like night and day when I compare it to the pages within the book. Crisp and clean everything just looks better- cleaner and larger.
I read through about half of the book last night and will finish going through today, everything looks really, really good. I'm anxious to get the full shipment in November and send them out to you guys who've been so supportive by pre-ordering your copies. I think you'll be pleased with the work.
Been finishing up the door project and will post the final later this week...with that, I'm going to go leaf through the pages some more.
Cheers!

Tools for...

Working Wood

Last Sunday I was all set to cut out the scroll detail on the heritage door project so I went down into my shop, took out my bow saw and because I'm sawing a piece of 3/4" white oak needed to change out the fine tooth blade for my coarse one. The saw, made by Gramercy Tools in New York, came with an assortment of three 12" long blades: 10, 18, and 24tpi. I needed the 10 tpi for this application. So away I go into the 'ol tool cabinet to fetch it. Hmmmm, not in there; maybe the tool chest- nope. My other tool box? Notta. Then it hit me as if recalling a distant dream I suddenly remembered the last time I used my coarse blade, way back before the summer came,(so long ago)I was cutting out a sharp curve in some crazy hard maple and I snapped it! Well it quickly became obvious that I needed to order some new blades and did so on Monday. I figured it really wouldn't matter or set me back any time on the project because I still had lots of fine tuning and sanding to do on the door details. I'd move on to the next step and leave the scroll element for next week when the door is complete.
So that was Monday evening and I ordered the new saw blades, (got the three pack for $11.00...a sweet deal) so here I am going through some of the other door elements when today, Friday the door bell rings and it's a delivery man with the blades!
Man, that was fast. I've gotten so used to waiting weeks or sometimes months for something to arrive when I order it on-line.
Four days, that was all...that's good service. And the best thing? The courier just handed me the package! I also got pretty used to ordering something from the States and when it shows up on my doorstep I need to dish out some more coin for either the delivery, the customs charges, the delivery guys dying mother...what ever...my point to all this: Tools for Working Wood is a fast, reliable mail order company that has never let me down and stands by it's products. Always top notch service which sadly, is seriously lacking in most of my other dealings in this world.
So if you're an on-line shopper like me and would like to get some great service too, then Tools for Working Wood is somewhere you should try.
Cheers!

SKETCH-UP

'gesundheit'

















This past week a fellow East Coaster has been putting together some Sketch-Up models for the book projects. They'll all be available at my new website when the book is launched in November but I thought I'd show you some shots of the first project model here. It's the Cabinetsmakers Toolchest.
These are only 'stills' from the program but when you actually open the files in Sketch-up, you'll be able to zoom into the pieces, rotate them and flip them over, change your perspective on each 'scene' as well as 'orbiting' all around them to get a closer look. A really cool educational tool, they also have all of the dimensions and measurements for you.


















If you don't know Sketch-up it's a free application from Google. Click the link to download! You'll be able to look inside the pieces, see the joinery up close and really get personal with the designs. It should also answer any joinery questions when the time comes for you to build these pieces in your own wood shops.
A great tool, it seems that every time he sends me a new model I can't help to think: "Man, I wish I had this while I was building them!"
I'm really looking forward to November...

Cheers!

(and thanks again Daniel)

Tools of the Trades

Some New-Old Tools

It's Sunday afternoon and I spent the morning out in Pickering, Ontario at the Tools of the Trades Show. It's a really nice gathering of vintage and antique tool dealers peddling their wares to wood geeks like me! I would have posted some info on the event sooner but I only found out about it myself this past week. Oh well, for those that missed it you can catch the Spring session in April.
I went there this morning with nothing in mind really, I don't actually have a short list of tools I currently 'need' or even 'want'(imagine that). Once there though I found many, many tools I would have loved to acquire but my wife would have shot me if I came home with a truck load of new-old tools!
Anyhow, I did make two small purchases- the first is a small little oil can; I wanted one of these for awhile now and this one fit the bill perfectly. I'll use it to keep my Jojoba oil in. Jojoba oil is a natural, non-toxic oil product I use on my tools to keep rust at bay. It's similar to the camellia oil you may find for sale at places like Lie Nielsen Toolworks. The main difference is it's a little heavier but easily found off-the-shelf at health food stores while camellia oil is a little more rare(at least it seems to be in Toronto). The little oil can is copper or brass I believe and will live nicely above my work bench.

The second treasure I stumbled over is a beautiful example of a 1930's Stanley No.22 Transitional Smoother. If you're familiar with transitional planes you may have read reviews about the problems they seem to have with the rear totes moving and becoming loose while in use. One big plus about the No.22 is it doesn't have a rear tote, so......no problem! For anyone that isn't familiar with transitional planes they were wooden bodied planes that had a cast iron frame screwed into the body which was usually made from Beech. This perticular model has a kind of squat, mushroom shaped knob that's a little beafier than the taller, slimmer styles found on Stanley's metal planes. I like this 'robust' little front knob and find it fits my hand quite nicely.
Stanley claimed that "Every Carpenter needs two or more wood planes in his kit, for rough outside work" and the transitional plane was the answer for it. For a wooden bodied smoother, I really like the feel of this model and the fact that it doesn't have the rear tote adds to the comfort while in use. This model was also the first with a lateral adjuster. If you'd like some more information about transitional planes or any other Stanley hand planes for that matter, check out Patrick Leach's web site. It's an incredible resource of information.

This one is in beautiful shape with the original chip breaker and iron, a near-perfect condition lever cap and very-very few marks on the sole. Having the original chip breaker and iron with the added bonus of the Sweetheart logo still clearly visible was a nice touch indeed but that said, I'll rip them out of it as soon as I can and replace them with new ones from Ron Hock! What can I say I'm a worker, not a collector!

So these were my finds, small treasures on a nice Sunday morning surrounded by vintage tools and friendly people. If you were there you know what I'm talking about, if you missed it then maybe you can make the next one in April.
Cheers!