Ok suppose you are starting out and (for some perverse reason) you enjoy the bootstrap process of building a shop. For example, build a bench so that you can build a better bench.
You are a hand tool afficionado. More than that, you want to start your own Colonial Williamsburg cabinetry shop (or, alternatively, imagine you are in a village 200 years ago with no cabinetmaker in the village). Or yet even more alternatively, you arrived at your village way out west, 200 years ago, and all your tools were lost except your chisels, mallets, plane blades and sharpening equipment.
You do not want to go out and buy any of the numerous flat and straight engineering edges all ground to within a zillionth of an inch.
You do not own winding sticks but you need them. You have a set of hand tools (planes, chisels, mallets etc). You do not have a flat bench but you need one. You do not have a jointer plane but you need one.
How did cabinetmakers boostrap themselves into flatness? How did/does one go from a standing start, to a flat bench and a set of straight winding sticks?
How do you get to flat and straight when you don’t start out with flat and straight?
Gregg
Replies
Easy
You use what carpenters have used since probably the time of the Roman Empire - a piece of string. You stretch it taut and work with a chunk of wood and comparing it to the string until you have a straight edge. From there you can make other straight edges and flat surfaces.
Even today, as nice as self-stabilizing, remotely operated laser levels and other items are, carpenters use stringlines all the time.
I think you may be just the person to treasure this book. I do
Seriously good question by the way !
http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Woodworking-Tools-Tradition-Spirit/dp/0941936465/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1320116278&sr=1-1
This book includes the string lines Mr. Harris wrote about.
There are some fascinating explanations of how to make extremely accurate straight edges out of two sticks planed and compared and reversed and compared and planed again. You could do it with a chisel or a plane blade to start then use the sticks to make your first plane.
The "funny, little" Japanese planes have soles far more accurate , FLAT, than many people can imagine. Actually they take the soles beyond just flat and are relieved in none critical areas. For that you got to read the book. Too much to explain here but these methods allowed itinerate woodworkers to carry everything they needed to build most anything, except the wood, on their back in a box and when they got to the job site to quickly create and set up work surfaces on site. They were working very accurately this way over a thousand years ago.
Great great book (s). Mr Odate has a great sense of humor . I have seen him interviewed and video demos.
Good stuff.
PS: his last name is pronounced like this : Oh daw t A
Making straightedges:
http://home.comcast.net/~jaswensen/machines/straight_edge/straight_edge.html
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