Come join us this weekend for the Big Woodworking Show, Friday through Sunday, October 24-26 in Conroe, Texas. Some of you may have noticed that the normal woodworking show that was usually in the spring in Houston got canceled. Well, apparently there was some problem with the venue right at the last minute. But […]
Read all about Frank’s dresser project progress. As I mentioned in my last blog, I had to make myself another dovetail marker because I left mine at the school shop. Making a dovetail marker is not too hard, but I have chosen to make it a little harder by using a tapered sliding dovetail to […]
Read all about Frank’s dresser project progress. It’s time to begin building the dresser drawers. I have spent a fair amount of time choosing the wood for the drawer fronts. In fact I was very pleased with the wood for the lower drawers: the grain runs all the way through and the lower 4 drawer […]
Read all about Frank’s dresser project progress. Now that I have the whole dresser glued up, which by the way was a challenge! I glued up most of it with the help of my 9-year-old and then just in time, Jonathan Schwennesen came by the shop and offered me a hand to put some of […]
The following comes from William Noyes’s 1910 classic, Handwork in Wood. See our previous Handwork in Wood posts here. B. Tools for holding other tools: Wood Braces The brace or bit-stock, Fig. 185, holds all sorts of boring tools as well as screwdrivers, dowel-pointers, etc. The simple brace or bit-stock consists of a chuck, a handle, and a knob, and is sufficient for […]
The following comes from William Noyes’s 1910 classic, Handwork in Wood. See the whole Handwork in Wood series (so far) here. More to come. Pounding Tools The hammer consists of two distinct parts, the head and the handle. The head is made of steel, so hard that it will not be indented by hitting against nails or the butt of nailsets, punches, […]
Some of you may have been worried in the last few dresser building posts that I may have rejected the use of hand tools. Well, this is definitely not so. Hand tools rule in this part of the dresser build. I don’t know how I would do without them. In fact this part would […]
The following comes from William Noyes’s 1910 classic, Handwork in Wood. See the whole Handwork in Wood series (so far) here. More to come. Chopping Tools The primitive “chopping tool”, which was hardly more than a wedge, has been differentiated into three modern hand tools, the chisel…the ax, Fig. 139, and the adze, Fig. 141. The ax has also been differentiated into the hatchet, with a […]
The following comes from William Noyes’s 1910 classic, Handwork in Wood. See the whole Handwork in Wood series here. Some boring tools, like awls, force the material apart, and some, like augers, remove material. The brad-awl, Fig. 125, is wedge-shaped, and hence care needs to be taken in using it to keep the edge across the grain so as to […]
The following comes from William Noyes’s 1910 classic, Handwork in Wood. See the whole Handwork in Wood series here. The block-plane, Fig. 108, gets its name from the fact that it was first made for planing off the ends of clap-boards, a process called “blocking in”. The names of the parts of the Bailey block-plane are: The block-plane was […]