Take a look at two lists: the Speakers and the Toolmakers who will be at WIA.

Every woodworker can learn plenty from that bunch. In fact, we can probably learn just by breathing the air at WIA. I’m only half kidding: seeing Mary May in person carving oak leaves, and hearing Silas Kopf discuss where design ideas come from, to cite just a couple of examples among the classes, are sure to elevate my skills and confidence.

Browsing the toolmakers’ booths is going to be fun – handling and trying out fantastic tools cannot be done online. Yes, this is dangerous territory, especially if your credit card is handy, but as a woodworker, isn’t that just the kind of living on the edge that you crave?

Exchanging ideas about tool design with these outstanding makers will be just as enjoyable. My first mission will be a reconnaissance op to the Bad Axe Tool Works bunker and Col. (Ret.) Mark Harrell.

Heartwood readers, I cannot think of any better or more enjoyable way to improve your woodworking skills, knowledge, and perspective than to visit WIA and hang out with lots of people who share our passion for the craft. I hope to see you there!

There are places available in the class I will be presenting tomorrow, Sunday, September 22, 2013, at the Woodcraft in Walpole, MA, 10:00 AM – 3:00 PM on “Fundamentals of Hand Plane Selection, Setup, and Use.” The location is about 15 miles southeast of Boston, two miles north on Route 1 from Gillette Stadium.

The presentation will be in a clear, logical, at-the-workbench manner, much as topics are presented here on Heartwood. It will include plenty of guided hands-on, as well as demonstration and discussion. Beginners as well as experienced woodworkers will benefit from the class, which will include bevel-down and bevel-up options and tuning. Bring a plane or two. DVR the 1:00 PM Pats game and beat the Route 1 traffic going in and going home.

Please see the Woodcraft website for directions and details.

Other upcoming classes I will be teaching:

• How To Make and Use Mortise and Tenon Joinery on Saturday, November 2, 2013, 10:00 AM – 3:00 PM.
• Choosing and Using Hand Saws – Western and Japanese on Thursday, November 14, 2013, 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM.
• Fundamentals of Hand Plane Selection, Setup, and Use on Sunday, December 15, 10:00 AM – 3:00 PM.

If you are in the area, and especially if you like reading the Heartwood blog, come on over – we’ll have a blast.

The previous post discussed the creative destruction that I optimistically think contributed to my development as a woodworker. Thus, probably slower and with more angst than necessary, I think I’ve learned a few things worth sharing. Surely, readers, you have many points to add, but here are some key factors that come to mind that I believe contribute to a successful woodworking project, which, for me, is one that brings the “quiet joy” of which Krenov spoke.

• Plot a smart order of construction steps. Don’t back yourself into corners that make succeeding steps more difficult than they need be. Think and think ahead.
• Recognize appropriate tolerances in stock preparation, joinery, tool tuning, and so forth. Know where you must be very close and where you have some room. We all recognize the damage caused by sloppiness, but compulsive attempts at unnecessary perfection waste energy when building.
• Know where the critical junctures are in the process. Some steps are make-or-break, so bear down on these.
• Likewise, be cognizant of the major pitfalls. Usually, they are apparent only if you stop and think.
• When possible, work in a self-correcting manner. For example, it is often a waste of time trying to get two surfaces to meet right off, and easier to plane small excesses flush as a final step.
• There are many small touches that cannot be shown in the shop drawing, such as how ends and edges are softened. These decisions properly come along as the work progresses, but they must be consistent with your style and the design concept, and so you must maintain aesthetic awareness as you build.
• Choose finishes as part of the design, not as an afterthought when the piece is assembled. Experiment on scrap to find a finish that supports the design concept.
• It is nice to challenge yourself, but not to the point where you cannot maintain reasonable composure as you build. That’s no fun, and the piece will probably show it!

In marked contrast to the disappointment that can sometimes come from trying to make fine things, it can be exhilarating to work in control, in the flow, and in the moment, making something that you dearly want to be.

Here are best wishes as you pursue your path to the joy of woodworking.

Two projects, a small table and a wall cabinet, now distant memories from 25-30 years ago, occupied a considerable amount of my attention as I endeavored to advance my woodworking skills. They were moderately complex pieces. The table involved blind and through mortise and tenons, and curved legs. The cabinet involved multiple frame-and-panels, doors, drawers, partitions, and lots of dovetails.

The designs were pretty good, the wood selection was very good, and there was a decent amount of good workmanship including lots of clean joinery. Unfortunately, I eventually got stuck with some poor choices in several areas: coordinating the alignment of certain components, assembling parts with work left to be done that was then impossible to do well, delayed decisions on some joinery strategies, and poor selections for pre-finishing the panels in the cabinet.

I could not bring myself to finish these projects. Both lingered, partly assembled, in the shop for a long time because I also could not bring myself to destroy them. Yet, eventually, I did destroy both of them.

Why? It was not a matter of imperfections; all projects have those. It was because I knew these pieces would never have that fundamental rightness that produces joy. Further effort would be drudgery. My consolations were that I learned, and time would better be spent on work with real promise.

This sort of failure can come from a faulty or misunderstood concept, though not in these cases. Rather, in each, I did not understand a path to successfully putting all the aspects together to complete the piece, even though I successfully executed many individual tasks such as joinery. My craftsmanship, while pretty good in many respects, was naive. I could not put it all together, figuratively and literally.

This is the hardest aspect of a woodworking project – all the elements of design and execution must come together. One must map a clear, controlled path to achieve this. This path is ultimately based on a clear vision of a good design concept, and the insightful craftsmanship to carry out that vision.

I guess it is true of any endeavor, work or play – such as jobs, sports, and arts. It’s one thing to learn the components but quite another to put them together and make it flow. With woodworking, however, you see it all before you. There is no hiding, and you know it.

Next: So, what did I learn?

This is the best screwdriver I have ever used. Made by Spec Tools, the Overdriver Pro has been in service in my shop for 23 years.

Similar to many drivers, the magnetic shaft accepts 1/4″ hex bits, which makes it a versatile space and money saver, and it has a ratchet mechanism to reduce hand fatigue and speed the work, though this one is exceptionally smooth and quiet. There is room to store several bits inside the handle.

What makes this tool unique and great is its patented 4:1 on-demand gear ratio. When you want low speed with high torque, use it like a regular driver with a 1:1 gear. When you want high speed with low torque, use your second hand to grip the large collar at the top of the shaft to actuate the 4:1 mechanism, making it easy to exceed 400 RPM. The smaller collar at the base of the handle reverses the ratchet direction.

None of this would matter if it was flimsily built, but this tool is very well made and tough. It has seen plenty of use in all sorts of DIY work in addition to the woodshop. The handle is hard plastic that gives a surprisingly good grip and is very durable, but can be a little rough in sweaty hands. There is no lock setting on the ratchet mechanism, which I would sometimes find convenient when making a final torque adjustment on a screw and want to back off a little.

The model pictured above has been replaced by the OD-2001 – same tool, different color. It and the RGO-5412, which has a friendlier looking handle containing some firm rubber, are the company’s pro model straight drivers. They cost more but are worth it.

This screwdriver does not seem to be sold by many stores so I thought readers would like to know about it. Spec Tools is located in eastern Massachusetts, and you can order from their site.

This review is unsolicited and uncompensated.

Addendum: I would like readers to know that after I posted this review, the nice people at Spec Tools sent me a package of a few tools, which they insisted I keep with no expectations on their part. I did not solicit, hope for, or at all anticipate this, nor did I subsequently change the content of the post. It is not why I wrote the review. Therefore, I have kept the tools.

Woodworkers estimate a 90° angle all the time in their work.

For example, as you follow the line when rip sawing by hand, you estimate by eye and feel the position of the saw square to the surface of the board.  Similarly, the initial placement of the tenon saw in the vertical plane, as the cut begins, is done by estimation. When chopping the baseline of dovetails, you estimate a 90° angle for the chisel, even if you then choose to slightly deviate from it to undercut.

I wondered, how accurate can we be with this kind of estimation? After doing some simple trials with a magnetic angle gauge, my conclusion is: amazingly accurate.

I placed the gauge in a position out of my view on the sawplate of my Bad Axe hybrid dovetail/small tenon saw, an exquisitely balanced, multi-purpose backsaw. I placed the saw, as if to start a cut, on a board’s straight edge, which was exactly parallel to the workbench surface. When I sensed the saw was vertically square to the wood, I asked an assistant to read the gauge.

Initially, the weight of the gauge on the right side of the saw tended to confuse me (a woodworking Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle?) but I was able to recalibrate my senses after several trials. As long as I paid attention to my senses of sight and feel, not allowing unnecessary thought to interfere, I was usually within 0.5° of 90°, despite the hindrance of the heavy gauge. I feel sure I could be even more consistent without the annoyance of the test gauge.

A 0.5° error would cause a deviation of only 0.009″ over the length of a 1 inch cut. A 0.25° angular error corresponds to a 0.004″ deviation – the thickness of a sheet of copy paper.

Of course, the initial estimation is validated or corrected as you saw, following the layout line on the face of the work piece. However, well begun is half done, and even as the sawing proceeds, I believe that a lot of ease in accuracy can come from retaining the sense of the saw’s initial placement.

The ability to estimate square is enhanced by awareness of peripheral vision references, close and far, such as the edges of the work piece, the horizontal top of the workbench, the vertical wall behind the bench, and even the front and back edges of the bench being parallel to the wall behind it. It is equally important to feel the balance of the saw in your hand.

Intuitively estimating square is one way of speeding up woodworking and getting into a working rhythm. I have not found it helpful to employ tricks such as observing the reflection of the work piece edges in the sawplate to determine perpendicularity. In addition to being unnecessary, it requires too much distracting shifting of the eyes and head.

Other experiments can be tried, such as crosscutting a board square by eye, or drilling a hole. The accuracy of the results may surprise you.

This is not a case against proper layout lines, and certainly it is not for setting up a jointer fence. The point is that in the course of our woodworking, we are routinely estimating square, and we can be pretty darn good at it.

Developing trust in your senses is one of the joys of craftsmanship!

It pays to have a wide repertoire of options to hold wood in place while working on it. Here is a very simple, albeit unoriginal, device that can be used in conjunction with many of the other methods discussed elsewhere on this blog.

The idea for these planing stops came to me from a version made by Veritas. The adjustable feature of the Veritas is nifty, but I have an inhibition about forcefully pushing my planes toward large pieces of metal, even aluminum. The shop-made version is super-simple, super-cheap, and wooden.

These are made from 15″ x 1 3/4″ x 7/32″ poplar with 1 /1/2″-long pieces of 3/4″ dowel attached with brass screws, deeply countersunk. I spaced the dowels to accommodate the holes in my workbench. If I had great forethought several years ago when boring those holes, each pair in both directions would be separated by a constant distance. As it is, I had to make three planing stops, each with a different dowel spacing, to make full use of the hole patterns. This is not a problem because I want to have a few stops in any case.

The low profile of these stops allows their use with thin workpieces but is still sufficient to secure thicker boards.

For planing along the length of a board, two dogs usually suffice to secure the wood. However, vigorous planing with the scrub or jack, working diagonally or directly across the board, tends to dislodge it. A third stop is very helpful in these cases. Similar situations often arise in random orbit sanding, routing, and carving. Workpieces that have curved edges, live-edge boards, finished drawers, and wide panels also can thwart the simple two-dog work holding system.

The photos above are at the right side of the bench with the tail vise and wooden bench dogs. (The blue Record holdfast hole is not involved in this system.)

Below is the hole pattern on the left side of the bench. Following are some of many possible configurations of planing stops, Veritas Bench Pups, and bench end stops.

Here the planing stop is set up as a simple end stop, assisted by a single Pup:

Here, Pups in the front vise and the two stops at the end of the bench work with the planing stop:

Yet another variation, to put work further outward:

With all of this gear, something can probably be worked out to manage just about any work piece on the bench top:

Addendum:

Before settling on this version, I experimented building an adjustable version using different types of screws with the heads projecting from the tops of the dowels. The heads would then run in a T-slot in the stop piece. This would make the dowel positions adjustable like the Veritas version.

It became too finicky for my taste, especially since I wanted to keep the stops less than 1/4″ thick so they could be used for panels and other thin work pieces. The adjustable design can be done using a thicker stop piece. Readers may want to give it a try, but I like the thin and simple version.

Heartwood blog readers, I will be teaching classes starting this September at the new Woodcraft in Walpole, MA. The location is about 15 miles southeast of Boston, two miles north on Route 1 from Gillette Stadium, home of the New England Patriots and Revolution.

The first two classes I have scheduled are Fundamentals of Handplane Selection, Setup, and Use on Sunday, September 22, and How To Make and Use Mortise and Tenon Joinery on Saturday, November 2. Each starts at 10 AM and is five hours long.

I will present the topics in a clear, logical, at-the-workbench manner, much as topics are presented here on Heartwood. The classes will include demonstration, talking, and, of course, plenty of hands-on. If you have any questions regarding the class content, please email me or comment here on the blog.

Signup can be done by phone, email, or at the store. Please visit the site for details.

There are many classes available at this Woodcraft, which houses an exceptionally spacious, well-equipped teaching room. Topics include turning, finishing, sharpening, carving, veneering, power tools, guitar making, and classes for beginners.

If you are anywhere near the area, the store is a very worthwhile visit. It is gorgeous – huge and nicely laid out. Manager Jerry Klevas has thoughtfully assembled the inventory, and thus on a recent visit I was delighted to see tools and supplies that had been difficult to find elsewhere. The store also has a nice lumber selection including specialty woods.

For effective instruction, class sizes are small, so if you are interested, I suggest signing up very soon.