Making Kitchen Utensils With Hand Tools
Date & Time: Saturday September 26, 2015, 9:00AM to 4:00PM
This full day hands-on workshop will help you get intimate with your wood. We will make an English Spatula out of cherry and a spoon out of Poplar. You will learn how to read the grain of the wood and use it to your advantage. You’ll learn the proper use of some basic shaping tools and what they can do for you in everyday woodworking. This workshop will provide some great projects for young children or grandchildren and is a great way to introduce them to hand tool woodworking.
Tools needed for this workshop include:
- Small saw: Harbor Freight has one for under $10.
- Spokeshave: Flat bottom (if you have 2 spokeshaves, bring both)
- Rasp or a course half round file.
- 1″ wide flat Chisel
- Mallet
- Coping saw: Lowe’s or Home Depot
- Sand paper: 100, 150, 180, 220
- Gouge; Any gouge you have that is at least ¾” wide is fine. If you need to purchase one, a 7/30 or 8/25 carving gouge is a good choice. Woodcraft should have these items.
- 12″ min. QuickClamp
- Safety Glasses
- Ear Protection
- Pencil and pad
- Scissors to cut out patterns
Optional tools:
- Hand drill with ¾” auger bit. If you have one of these, please bring.
- Curved cabinet scraper.
- Fine tipped felt pen
If you don’t have all of these tools, please don’t let this prevent you from signing up for this workshop. There will be extra tools available for you to borrow. But my “extras” are limited, so if you have extra tools, please bring them with you.
If you know how to sharpen your tools, please do this before the workshop. If you are new to sharpening, we will have a sharpening station set up to help you. The Woodcraft web site has the spokeshave ( Woodcraft Spokeshave) and card scraper set ( Woodcraft Card Scraper set) in stock. If you have trouble sharpening the spokeshave blade, click on the following link for a neat solution: http://paulsellers.com/2012/11/grinding-and-honing-spokeshave-blades/
Power Tools 101
Hand Planes 101: Selection, Identification and Tuning
- AM Session: Saturday November 7, 2015, 9:00AM to 12:00PM
- PM Session: Saturday November 7, 2015, 1:00PM to 4:00PM
- Parts of a plane
- Identifying old Stanley planes
- Bedrock vs. Bailey
- Bevel up vs. bevel down
- Flattening the sole
- Truing other plane parts (frog, cap, mouth, side, adjuster, etc.)
- New planes vs. older planes, when to give up!
- Smoother, Jointer, Jack, Block overview
- Cleaning metal parts, secret formula
- Removing rust from metal parts, secret process
- Cleaning wooden surfaces, secret formula
Introduction to Spindle Turning
Hand Planes 201
- AM Session: Saturday December 12, 2015, 9:00AM to 12:00PM
- PM Session: Saturday December 12, 2015, 1:00PM to 4:00PM
Goal: Understanding iron sharpening and to complete one iron that you can shave with. Reference Leonard Lee “Sharpening”
- Cutting Iron bevels
- Plane bed angles
- Mouth opening and chip formation
- Overview of sharpening materials: ceramic, water stones, diamond plate, oil stones, Tormek
- Detailed process of Veritas MarkII w/ water stones and micro bevels
- Cambered cutting edges and when to apply them
Hand Planes 301
- Scrub plane, or in our case, a power plane
- Jack plane, jointer plane applications and specialty set ups
- Cutting end grain and the shooting board
- Block planes, their traditional applications
- Smoothing plane and how they are set up a great surface
- Scraper plane, scraper blade, when the smoother fails
- Difficult wood management, grain direction, and the dreaded “tear out”
- Relationship between: cutting angle, mouth opening, iron sharpness, cutting iron support, and the material being cut
- Winding sticks
- Flattening/preparing a simulated table top for finish
Turning a Pepper Mill
Make a Cross Cut Sled for Your Table Saw
Hand Planes 401
- AM Session: Saturday, March 12, 2016 , 9:00AM to 12:00PM
- PM Session: Saturday, March 12, 2016, 1:00PM to 4:00PM
- Sharpening card scrapers, making scratch stock, and discussing investments that may improve hand plane work.
- Scraper tune up and sharpen
- When to purchase an aftermarket iron and which type
- Stock scraper for ornamental detail
- Lie Neilson, Veritas, Harbor Freight, Antique Stanley, Millers Falls, Sears, Bedrock?
Introduction to Inlays
Hand Sawing and Joinery
The (wide and confusing) range of saws available
- Western vs. Japanese
- Rip, crosscut and “hybrid” filing
- Saw size
- Tooth size
What saw(s) will you (really) need?
- Which saw size, tooth size, and tooth filing for a given job
- How to examine a saw for purchase
- Which saw for which joint?
- Speed of cut vs. fineness of cut
- Is there one saw that will do it all, and how do you choose it?
Saw sharpening basics
- Tools required
- Sharpen yourself vs. get someone else to sharpen it
- Problems created by poor sharpening and how to solve them
The mechanics of sawing
- What happens microscopically at the tooth level
- How the saw design effects its performance
How to saw efficiently and accurately
- Body position
- Head and eye position
- Work position
- Hands, arms, grip, and how they effect sawing
- Layout tricks and “cheats” to make accurate sawing easier
Correcting problems
- Saw problems
- Work holding problems
- Technique problems
- Secondary “tuning” of the joint with other tools
We will go through the presentation portion as quickly as the group is comfortable with. We will spend as much time as possible actually sawing wood. I will make individual observations and suggestions to make your work more comfortable, and more accurate. Class size will be limited to 8 people in order to make this reasonable. Please bring the following, if you have them:
- Any joinery saws you wish to use
- Layout tools (square, pencils, pens, marking knife)
- A sharp chisel
I’ll have extras, so if you don’t have these, don’t worry.