Hi Gary
I had just recently bought my first work bench and within a few weeks the February issue of FWW came in the mail. Your warm up exercise to make the 5 minute dovetail was just the ticket to help me conquer a simple technique. Simple now, but wasn’t before. I am now more confident in using chisels, and cutting to a line with both a small dovetail hand saw and a combination Japanese cross cut and rip saw.
I was wondering if you had any other warm up exercises that would again help to increase my hand tool skills. Most of my wood working skills have been self taught through a lot of readings, and mainly in the use of power tools and machines.
As I work with poplar, oak, and maple hard woods mostly I’m gaining interest in scrapers and scraping instead of doing a lot of sanding. I have scrapers in the drawer but thats as far as they usually go. I use sand paper most of the time.
I have block planes that I maintain in ready to go condition, but my confidence in using them is not there. I spend a lot of time sanding with an orbital sander instead.
I understand the best way to gain confidence with the use of these hand tools, along with the work bench, is to learn to use them and maintain them. Thats why I’m wondering if there are more warm ups that are part of your school’s program that you are willing to share.
Keep a cool Breeze!
Senor Dorado
Replies
Senor,
You know I had a former student come by recently and she hadn't been woodworking for years. Her last class with me was some 15 years ago. When she came to class again she asked me if we were still doing those angled mortise things. And I said, "The Five Minute Dovetail?" She said yes. So it has been a long time for this exercise and I cannot for the life of me remember how I came up with it.
But in class I'll do some other simple things like chopping a mortise by hand. This will tune up your chisel skills and inevitably your sharpening skills as well.
We'll also do some simple hand planing exercises to flatten and edge join pieces together. You can also square up a board completely with a hand plane but get out the pine and save the oak for later.
Drop by the Studio sometime in Portland and we can come up with some others. But as you note, the important thing is practice. Every day and with each day you'll get better if you practice. And then one day you'll look up and notice that what was once a struggle has become second nature. It just takes some time and a commitment to go into the shop to do what some people call work but what we call good fun.
Thanks. Gary
Thanks Gary, especially for the invitation. I'll need to take a good long vacation to come out to Portland since I'm in New Jersey near Long Beach Island. You've probably been asked this a zillion times, but I only have 2 block planes that I use for bench planes. I further understand that hand planes are designed for unique purposes. If I were to buy a good all around hand plane to use as my first bench plane, could you give me some direction in which to head for? You mentioned flattening and edge joining 2 pieces together as an exercise, and I suppose block planes would be OK for the edges, however they don't really fit the task for a surface in my mind. Hence the above question popped into my mind. I also think that once the surface was in need for some fine tuning a scraper would be a finer choice. Again I really appreciate you taking the time in addressing my questions! Senor Dorado
Well Lon Gisland is just a hop and a skip away from Portland. As for planes, I'd have 5 of them for use. A low angle block plane, a #4 smoothing plane for fine work, a #5 jack plane for doing everything else including shooting those long edges, a shoulder plane for joinery work, and finally a spokeshave for curved parts. You can find old Stanleys on line and then buy a good replacement iron like a Hock iron. If you spring for the replacement cap iron/ chipbreaker as well, you can have yourself a really nice hand plane. Learn to sharpen and a whole new world of woodworking opens up for you. Good luck to you. Gary
Thanks Gary, this will definitely get me started. Senor Dorado
This forum post is now archived. Commenting has been disabled