Another One Down

Here’s a sneak peak at the latest project from my upcoming book. It’s a small book case with doors featuring through mortise and tenon joinery. I had some beautiful Flame Birch sitting on my shelf for the past few years and decided this was the time to use it. After sitting for more than two years in my wood shop back in Cape Breton air drying, to six more months here in my new shop in Toronto, I figured it would be good and dry. Stable is perhaps a better word to use…man, was I wrong. Sure the moisture content was low but stable it was not. Once I cut into it and planed it the pieces for the doors and the top warped like a banana…Seeing as this was a limited stock I had and I figured I wouldn’t find any other Flame Birch locally I decided to use a few bits of Walnut from my off-cut pile. I’m very happy with the results however if this piece had of been for a client, it would have ended up in the firewood pile. I would have never taken the time to try fixing it. Seeing as it’s for demonstration purposes and was my prototype I took the extra steps and worked through these challenges. It changed the aesthetic of the piece which probably changed some of the design features as well. The sticks captured inside of the door frame as well as the desicion to use hand made paper for the panels…I’m happy I decided to keep going with it and make what I had work. I guess thats the point here, doing the best with what you have. So my Birch bookcase with Walnut top turned out to be a good thing .

Cheers!

Techno Ya-Ya!

You Won't be Disappointed...

What more can be said. I recently shipped off four old 'beaters' to Mark Harrell of TechnoPrimitives.com. There Mark will clean, sharpen and over-haul any old hand saw you may have. The four I sent were your typical garage sale variety, old worn-out, dull and bent.With,in some cases, 50 years of rust and dirt caked on. Mark was very quick and professional to get back to me with a diagnostic of the issues needing to be addressed and a quote to cover the repairs. Another fast turn around and here they are back in my hands. I can't believe they're the same saws I shipped him 'nor can I believe it took me so long to send them in the first place!
A full size rip saw, a smaller scale cross cut and a second 20" Rip. The fourth unit I sent was beyond repair but the three that came back perform better than the new panel saws I've purchased over the last two years...I won't mention any names but did Blog about replacing the handles on them! So with that I strongly recommend that you send that old nest of saws you've been looking at up there on top of the tool cabinet under the fine layer of dust, you won't be disappointed.
And seeing as I never did hear back from the Wenzloff guys after a couple of e-mail inquiries and watching their waiting list run from 16 weeks to 24 to 40 to...
Well you get the picture; fellas you can take me off of your list...my hand saw problems are over!
Cheers.

Progress Report

Things are moving along quickly these past few weeks, projects are coming together, designs are being discovered, adapted and constructed...work is good.
The made by hand inspiration is becoming a reality. The sideboard I designed back in September is finally being delivered this week. My clients will hopefully be as excited and delighted with the finished piece as I am.
'A hand made-modern, mixed medium-urban sideboard'...there Google that! The carcass is Walnut from a local wood mill and supplier, the glass shelves and door panels were cut by a great little glass store just North of the Danforth on Broadview ave. for anyone that knows or is in the area...You can't miss it, they have a beautiful Stained Glass sign over the sidewalk a couple of blocks up. The aluminum started as two solid plates of 1 1/4" thick aluminum plate...140 lbs. I had this pair of monolithes cut and brushed at another company in the greater GTA. www.rciwaterjets.com. Thanks Rob. The interior LED fixtures came from EUROLITE, a local business with an incredible selection of high-end fixtures. www.eurolite.com
The hinges and door pulls are from Lee Valley Tools.
I consider this design to be a continuation from the last 'hand made modern' entertainment cabinet in its evolution and joinery. Both are Walnut but that is purely coincidence. My two clients decided the wood species separately. I thoroughly enjoyed the design challenges this piece offered and while working with the different elements I couldn't be happier with the completed results.
Cheers!

Working wood...lots of it!

Half way there...

Well it's been an incredibly busy few months since the summer came and went. A few custom pieces of furniture designed and commissioned. The bulk of my time though has been spent on my book. Writing, designing, constructing its been an incredible journey thus far. I should apologise to my frequent readers for not keeping things up to date here. I'm usually good for a new blog every few days but lately it seems there aren't enough hours in the day. That said, I'm finally into the 'project' chapters and am very excited with the turn-out thus far. My hands, legs and shoulders are getting quite a work out, dimensioning a few hundred board feet of lumber all by hand! Good for the soul. The first project chapter is a small side table out of Ash which was a real pleasure to work with hand tools; the second is a bookcase with glass doors in Birch-Flame Birch. Now I don't know if anyone out there has ever had the opportunity to work with a highly figured wood like this Birch but what I can say is this: if these trees don't grow out of the Devils garden then I don't know where they come from! Reversing grain every few inches, tear out occurring with my sharpest Smoothing planes....well, isn't that just lovely.? Hey, gotta remember, it's good for the soul;now if Robert Johnston can get things done how should I?
Stay tuned...

A Low-Angle and So Much More...

Accessories?
For Hand planes?
Who would have thought?

What you see here is the Veritas Low-Angle Block plane-yet so much more. To start off I replaced the standard blade with a heavy-duty 1/8" thick, 50 degree iron. To that I added a secondary bevel bringin' this little baby just under 55 degrees! Amazing!
That's somewhere in the 'York Pitch Ballpark" (Galoot, Galoot)

"But wait there's more...much more!"

From there I added these incredible 'after-market' style wooden front knob and rear tote. Incredible! These elements combined with it's adjustable front mouth and we have ourselves a plane to be reckoned with. It kind of morphed into a quazy-miniature smoothing plane somewhere in the #3 range, if we were talking Bench planes...I use this when all my other planes fail, difficult grain and tear out be damned!

"And that's not all!"

Flip this thing back into the low-angle block and you can remove the front shoe and add a chamfer guide.
"Stop it! You're killing me!"
Seriously folks, this is one crazy-little doggy of a hand plane, with so many accessories it's enough to drive you wild...So you say, how does it perform as the low-angle block plane it was designed as?
I can't say really, I haven't put down my low-angle Lie-Nielsen Bronze long enough too find out!
Cheers.

The Taming of the Skew

Lie Nielsen vs. Veritas

A couple of years ago I wanted to order a left handed Skew Block Plane from Lie-Nielsen Toolworks in Warren, Maine so I called their Canadian representative, Rob Cosman. At the time Rob informed me that the left handed version was back-ordered and said he had a right handed model available. He assured me it didn't really matter if I had the left or right model because it would always depend on the grain direction when planing a rabbet if I needed a specific orientation of hand plane. Trusting Rob knew what he was talking about I went ahead and ordered it. He was right, no big deal that it was a right handed version, it exceeded my expectations and has been a pleasure to use these last few years. Late this summer Veritas introduced their Skew Rabbet Plane also available in a left or right handed version; I decided that those times when my right-handed Lie-Nielsen would tear out wood grain when planing against the grain I would order the new Veritas left handed model. It arrived quickly and well packaged as all of my Veritas tools have. Sharp and ready to go I was surprised at the size of the plane.
Now that I have one of each I'll compare what I think are the advantages and dis-advantages of each one of these models. First up,
The Lie-Nielson Skew Block Plane:

When this plane arrived in my mailbox it was ready to work right out of the box. Finely casted bronze with a comfortable front knob in Cherry. The plane set up quite easily and even though it was a right-handed model it felt quite comfortable in use. I decided to add a longer fence to the existing bronze one that came with the plane and the folks at Lie-Nielsen had already tapped out a couple of holes just for this purpose. The plane comes with a nicker that's great for scoring a line just before your cut which seems to help a great deal at eliminating any tear out. I find the size of this plane suits my hand very well but one problem I do encounter while using it is it can sometimes wander away from the inside edge of a rabbet while in use. I'm not sure exactly why this occurs, I try my best at keeping it firmly registered against the side of the work being planed however it still can wander just enough to leave a bit of material on the inside corner. I wonder if the Lie-Nielsen had a second post to support the fence would it correct this problem? This small left-over material is something I'll correct by finishing off the cut with my small shoulder plane. Not a big deal but one negative against. Another item is the Lie-Nielsen model has no depth adjustment or fence. Again, not the end of the world but a depth stop would be handy when you want to cut to a certain depth and no deeper. I would not hesitate to recommend anyone purchasing this hand plane or any other models from Lie-Nielsen.

Veritas Skew Rabbet Plane

I'll start of with saying one of the obvious differences you'll notice right away in these two planes is size. This is not a one handed tool. Perhaps this entire article is a little 'apples to oranges'...I know the Lie-Nilesen is technically a block plane and the Veritas clearly is not. So why bother comparing? Why not.
The Veritas came sharp right out of the box, great except that the front edge of the bottom fence and the front leading edges on the depth stop were also sharp enough to tear out some wood grain while in use. This I quickly fixed by taking a few light passes with a small file and finishing up with some 320 grit wet/dry paper. Problem solved but still my first experience with this kind of thing from Veritas...perhaps this one was made on a Friday? I also find the Veritas a little bulkier which makes set up and blade adjustment a little tricky. I'm one who likes to see down through the throat of my plane while I'm taking a shaving however the Skew Rabbet design makes this almost impossible to do while standing over it working. The design is aesthetically pleasing, it seems to have some extra 'contours' molded into the body just above the mouth and throat area. I'm not sure if these are there to aid in handling however, I found that they created a kind of 'catch all' for shavings and needed to be cleaned out after every other pass. Some advantages I found on the Veritas are these: The double pole for the bottom fence keeps things super straight and performance at cutting down a 1/4" Rabbet in Walnut was effortless. (once I rounded over the sharp edges and finely tuned the set-up) The large front knob is also extremely nice, they also put it on an angle or skew. Having the depth stop is also great for the reasons I mentioned earlier. Another big difference between these two planes is the over-all blade set-up. This is more of a bench plane and features a bevel down blade while the Lie-Nielsen has the blade bevel up. This again is neither here or there except this: The Lie-Nielsen can be used in all sorts of planing scenarios, simply remove the fence and you basically have a nice big block plane. That said the veritas is pretty much dedicated to what it was made for. Hey, we are what we are...So with that can I say I prefer one over the other? No not really, in my perfect plane world my Skew Plane would be about the size of the Lie-Nielsen, have all of the same features it has but borrow the depth stop, the angled, slightly larger front knob and the double pole system for the fence, from the Veritas model and I think it would be 'damn near perfect'. I'll also suggest if you've been thinking about purchasing a Skew plane either one of these fine tools are far more than standard or adequate. They each have a few pluses and minuses but hey, nothing is perfect. In my shop the great thing is this; I needed a left handed model and a right handed model...so do what I did and get one of each.
Cheers!

One Mans Treasure is Another Mans...

Reduce, Reuse and Recycle

A few weeks ago I was walking along our street here in Toronto and noticed this old wooden door on the curb side of a neighbours house. They were throwing it out so I decided to take it home. I'm just finishing off a modern sideboard for a client here in the city and once completed I'll be starting an exterior door for a Heritage property in an old area of town. This will be a great point of reference when building my clients new door; at the very least I'll be able to dissect it and see how things were done in years gone by. Once I have it apart I'll re mill the lumber into some smaller pieces to use in some project down the road. Reduce, reuse and recycle...It just makes sense. (The Beagle in the foreground is Sally, our first born)
Cheers!