Spring Cleaning.

Spring cleaning might be my second favorite cleaning activity.  My first favorite cleaning activity is putting off spring cleaning until tomorrow, repeatedly.  I probably could have continued to put off cleaning out my shop if it weren't for the fact that I have to share my space.  I currently share my shop space with items that don't work wood or metal very well, like bicycles and gardening tools.  These items, while enjoyed by my wife and child, often seem to me to be eating up valuable tool storage space (or space I could use for walking).  I have had plans in my mind for a shed for quite some time, and recently got up the nerve to spend some time on one.  The intent is to stop filling my lawnmower air filter with sawdust and to stop falling over bicycles and the string trimmer.   

Fortunately, buried under a bunch of stuff, I have enough tools to build such a shed.  I got the shed mostly dried in and started fitting the doors this weekend.  I kept the doors simple, 2x4 construction sheathed with plywood.  Fortunately, handplanes work for truing up crappy big-box store 2x4s as well as they work on seasoned figured cherry.  

Now that I have a lockable storage space, I have started cleaning out the "non-essentials" from my work space, including some of my unintended lumber collection (leftovers and projects-to-be).  Once I have cleaned and organized the shop a little (more to do over the next few weekends) I intend to start the construction of my long procrastinated awaited Roubo-styled bench.  It is amazing how much junk gets stuffed away during the winter months only to resurface in the spring.  This includes some scraps which will soon become saw totes (posts to come soon!) for a Disston recreation.  

Even the neighborhood cats have started storing stuff in my shop.

It's Better To Burn Out Than To Rust.

Every year in late spring, I start preparing for my underwater workshop.  Humidity in Maryland in the summer is ridiculous, some days it feels like I am swimming in the shop.  Unfortunately, with humid weather comes another summer pest.... rust.  I have found some great techniques and products over the years to help me combat the ravages of rust, I wrote a quick post a while ago about some plane "socks" that have proven to work excellently at preventing rust.  Hopefully, I'll be adding some humidity control into the workshop this year so that should help tremendously.  Keeping rust at bay is one thing, but once it has sunken its hungry teeth into a tool, removing it can be an adventure all its own.

Rusty Antique Vise Grips

A Disordered Body.

O.P.V.

Other People's Videos

A weekend illness, enough cold medicine to kill a horse, and the fact that I turn into a teething two year old when I'm sick is the reason I am leaving you with another O.P.V. post so soon after the last one.  I wrote what I thought was a great post on rust removal this Monday, but when I reread it this morning, I realized that I might have been too high on cold medicine to write anything other than my name (and even that was iffy).  The obligatory spring rust removal entry will be forthcoming, however, in the mean time I will leave you with something that actually makes sense.

Basic Blacksmithing skills are an obvious choice to learn for the woodworker interested in making hand tools.  Throughout this year I'll be experimenting with some very small scale smithing techniques (both my skillset and shop space are very limited), and of course, I'll be posting the lessons learned and the results here.

This short video is a brief interview with Brittain's longest serving blacksmith, Mr. Hardy Fred Harriss, it is both inspirational and moving although it is only 1 minute and 43 seconds long.  Something about these videos featuring people in their golden years still adeptly working with their hands is comforting.  Mr. David Hedges did a wonderful job creating this video.

The second video is a bit longer and is more of an instructional video produced by Artisan Media (an excellent producer of well funded instructional videos).  The "Blacksmith At Work" video gives some interesting insight into a few blacksmith basics and shows how to make a rams head on the end of a tool.  Not extremely useful, but extremely cool.

Enjoy...I'm going back to fighting this fever...

Britain's Longest-serving Blacksmith from David Hedges on Vimeo.

Blacksmith at Work - Ferric Fusion from Artisan Media on Vimeo.

In case you were wondering, the title came from this quote (sometimes I get these questions):

"In a disordered mind, as in a disordered body, soundness of health is impossible"

                                                                                        -Marcus Tillius Cicero

Measure Twice...

The saying "Measure twice, cut once" used to drive me crazy.  I hated when my father would say it, especially when it was because I had made some seemingly inconsequential mistake.  It seemed so unnecessary to measure more than once, especially because I had already bought into the modern teachings of "It's close enough for government work," or, "I can't see it from my house."

I Love This Print From http://jeffpeachey.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/measure-twice-cut-once/

My father's voice, however, kept ringing in my ears the first time I made something for someone else.  It seemed no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get the measurements accurate enough to close up the sloppy joints in a wall cabinet I was making for my mother.  I was mowing lawns and landscaping in the summer to make money while I was in high school, and spending ten or fifteen dollars on replacement lumber was a major dilemma.  As I look back on this little project now I can easily think of ten things I was doing wrong, including sloppy techniques (this was before I had discovered the miracle of sharp tools).  One of the biggest contributors to my inability to fit joints correctly was that I was in fact measuring too much.

Make Your Mark.

Fast is fine, but accuracy is everything.

-Wyatt Earp

Although accuracy is not the same as precision, a good amount of both in woodworking pays dividends in assembly and the appearance of the final product.  Practice in the craft is the first way to get better at both, but decent tools don't hurt!  My first line of defense against a sloppy project is an appropriate marking tool.  I say appropriate  because the marking tool I choose to use depends on several factors.  I have a plethora of mark makers in the shop, some are good for rough scrawls and some leave hairs-width straight lines.  

Traveling Bench

Forgive me Roy, for I have sinned.  I let yet another project sit half finished for way too long.  I posted a short piece on a traveling workbench I am building which will allow me to do some "vacation woodworking."  I let the traveling bench sit for a while because I saw two different designs at the WIA 2012 show that gave me some ideas to steal to consider incorporating.  One was the famous sawyers bench/sitting workbench by Mr. Ron Herman.  

Mr. Herman's small travel bench is great because the basic design can be adapted to your physical proportions, so no two benches are exactly alike.  You should be able to kneel on the bench with one leg while standing on the other, so approximate the height to the bottom of your knee.  The length is up to you (though it provides a nice place to take a post lunch nap if you make it long enough), and it should be about as wide as your money-maker to provide a comfortable sitting surface and will allow you to straddle the bench comfortably.  There, precise measurements, he threatened death if we used a ruler.  This travel bench seems best for most types of sawing and some basic chisel work.  The dog holes in the end work well for holdfasts and clamps to hold work perpendicular to the bench as well.  Oh, and it also holds lunch.  With some minor adaptations I think this bench could be a good one to add to my vacation "to-do" list.  

Mr. Herman's Sawyers Bench/Lunch Table

The second bench is slightly more involved but really got me thinking.  I want to be able to use my handplanes on vacation and at some work-sites so I'll also need a bench that works well while I'm standing up.  The one I am building doesn't  incorporate any built in vises, but it will accommodate ratcheting clamps, pipe clamps and holdfasts.  It will also stand on a pair of sawhorses, and strap to the bottom of my tool chest.  Here is a crappy drawing of my bench currently under construction.

Chicken Scratch Drawing Of Traveling Bench
(The Bench Is Upside Down To Show How It Will Fit With The Tool Chest)

I particularly like the design of the traveling bench I saw at WIA, however, because it can be used right on a kitchen table (with a clamp).  This would even allow me to work in my house when it is either 100 degrees or 10 degrees in my workshop... the tricky part is convincing my wife that this is a good idea...  If you are interested, Mr. Chris Schwarz is building some of these traveling benches for an article in Popular Woodworking soon, his blog entry on them can be found here.

Up Close And Personal With An Original

Ms. Megan Fitzpatrick Demonstrating The Antique Traveling Bench
At WIA 2012

I have made it a goal to finish my traveling bench before I go to the beach again this summer, so hopefully I'll make a good sacrifice to the spare time gods before June.

Profiles.

O.P.V.

Other People's Videos

A movie about woodworking would likely bore the general public to tears.  I, on the other hand, would be thrilled to watch a movie about someone else's creative process.  Hollywood continues to ignore my script submissions for a high budget drama about a woodworker struggling to make ends meet.  So, instead of a feature length film about building furniture, or a blockbuster about timber framing we are stuck with short independent documentaries profiling individual woodworkers.  Fortunately, a lot of these hipster-born brainchildren are actually executed rather well.  These are two that I found which, while very different in style, focus on what makes woodworkers tick.  I appreciate Mr. Rogowski's approach to design in the first video.  His simple straight forward attitude is likely what has made him so successful.  If he looks familiar it's because in addition to being a celebrated furniture maker, he also writes for Fine Woodworking Magazine.

I am enthralled at the ingenuity and determination of Mr. Kapek in the second video (fair warning, it's subtitled).  Contrary to popular belief, power tools have a much welcomed home in my shop.  I am a believer in the right tool for the right job, but if I can do a task by hand I find myself preferring that method more and more.  As I find myself building skill sets (very slowly) I see the value in making my own hand tools.  I can custom tailor them to my needs and learn a lot of important lessons during their construction.  Fortunately, however, haven't yet had to build any of the machines in my shop by hand as Mr. Kapek did.  These videos are worth a watch, as both are rather inspiring, but when I see a 92 year old woodworker still happily toiling away in his shop, I feel there is hope that it is possible to do this for the rest of my life.  So that leaves me several years to actually make something!

Gary Rogowski - Northwest Woodworking from William Schultz on Vimeo.

Stolarz ( Carpenter ) English Subs. from StamtadFilm on Vimeo.