New Book on Handplanes Released

My new book, Choosing and Using Handplanes, has just been released.  Intended for the beginning and newer handplane user, its 90 pages include nearly 100 color illustrations.  In this book, you will learn:

• The types of handplanes, names and functions
• The first planes you should get
• How to set up and adjust your planes
• How to sharpen your plane blades
• The kinds of sharpening stones
• The different bevels you’ll want on your blades
• How to hold your work for planing
• The body positions that work best
• How to determine the direction to plane boards
• How to plane cupped, bowed, and twisted boards
• How to plane end grain
• How to buy and restore old planes
• How to store and care for your planes
• Sources of new and used handplanes
• How to solve handplane problems

Choosing and Using Handplanes is now available from Amazon and CreateSpace.

If you are hankering to learn how to use handplanes, I think you'll find this a useful guide.

Norm

Choosing and Using Handplanes

For a number of years now I've taught classes on handplanes at two northern Virginia Woodcraft stores.  My classes--Handplane Basics and Restoring Old Handplanes--are both fun to teach and educational, not only for my students but also for me.  I've learned a lot about handplanes since I started.  My beginning was a class at the Marc Adams School with Chris Schwarz and Tom Lie-Nielsen.  Following that, I studied a number of books on handplanes and became a user in my own shop.  But as much as anything, I've learned a lot from the questions posed by my students and my sometimes fumbling attempts to answer those I'd not anticipated.

As a result of this experience I've come to believe I have a good feel for what beginning handplane users want and need to know.  And while there are many good resources available, none of them seem quite right to meet the needs of my students.  So, I've decided to write a book of my own.

For now, the working title is Choosing and Using Handplanes.  The book will explain the types of planes and their uses in the woodshop, techniques for planing, setting and adjusting planes, sharpening and honing blades, buying and restoring old handplanes, and jigs and fixtures to use with handplanes, including holding devices and shooting boards.  It will also have a list of resources.  It  will make extensive use of photos, drawings and explanatory sidebars.

My plan is to publish it as an eBook through Amazon's Kindle.  I'm hoping to have it finished sometime this summer.  Already I have a first draft written, figures drafted and photos planned.  Most of the sidebars are completed.  What remains is to fill in the gaps and edit the text.   I will also need to build the jigs and fixtures I want to illustrate.  There's plenty of work to do yet, but I'm very excited about the project and find myself making progress on it every day.  Look here for information about my progress.

Norm

Adding a Laguna Bandsaw

For a long time now, I've wanted to build boxes.  Beautiful boxes.  Boxes that feature beautiful wood.  And for some time now, I've been building up a stock of highly figured woods that could make boxes that are attractive and, I hope, salable.  I've got several nice, thick pieces of crotch walnut, some with gorgeous feathering, that would look lovely gracing the top of a box.  I've got some figured ash as well.  And small quantities of tiger and birds-eye maple.  Plus a goodly amount of less figured woods that would make attractive box sides to offset the figured tops, woods like quartersawn white oak, maple, cherry, hickory and mesquite, among others.

The thing about boxes is they are generally built from thinner than usual pieces of wood; 3/8" and 1/2" are common thicknesses.  While it's possible to plane wood to these thicknesses, it wastes a lot of valuable and perhaps irreplaceable wood.  So resawing--slicing wood vertically through its width--is the preferred solution.  Resawing is best done on a bandsaw.  Though a tablesaw can be used for narrower boards, for boards over 5-6" in width, a bandsaw is required.  In all cases, a bandsaw is both safer and takes a smaller amount of wood for a kerf.

I have a 14" bandsaw, a Grizzly GO555, and it's perfectly adequate for many operations.  But I've never had good results when resawing with it.  Drift is a big problem, plus I'm limited to 1/2" blades like Highland Woodworking's Woodslicer.  While this is a good blade, I'm looking for something even better.

Enter the Laguna 14" LT14 SUV.  It started with a sale that Woodcraft had on this saw.  So I did some research.  Actually, a lot of research.  This SUV model (SUV stands for "Souped Up Version") has several attractive features, including some that are new to this model.  It is driven by a 3 hp. motor.  It has a large table (slightly larger than 15" X 19") that is easily adjusted and that tilts in both directions.  It has two 4" dust ports.  It has a resaw height of just under 14".  The 125" blade is available in a 1" carbide tipped version called the Resaw King.  Amazingly enough, this 2-3 tpi variable pitch blade has no set, which helps it achieve a smooth cut.  The saw uses ceramic guide blocks that are easily adjusted above and below the table.  The fence has two positions, high and low, and can be quickly adjusted for drift.  Most reviews are high on this saw, which is said to give a superior cut when using the Resaw King blade.

The nearest competitor is the Hammer N4400, a 17" German saw from Felder, which will accommodate a 3/4" blade, quite adequate for resawing.  It has a 3.5 hp. motor.  The nicest thing about this saw is that the tires are flat, rather than crowned, so drift is never a problem.  I'd have easily have gone for this saw--I've seen it in action--but it costs almost $700 more than the Laguna's sale price.   As far as I can determine, each saw delivers excellent results when resawing.  Price being an important consideration, I decided on the Laguna.  It's on order now.

I'll be keeping my Grizzly bandsaw.  I've got plenty of jobs that call for smaller blades.  And, I'll slice logs into lumber on the Grizzly, leaving the Laguna for resawing and protecting the expensive carbide blade for high quality cuts.

Naturally, I'm eager for it to arrive.  Getting it off the truck (the crate weights 420 lbs) will be the first issue.  Then I'll need to go through the whole setup and testing process.  After I've had time to test it for myself, I'll write a review.

Have you used the Laguna bandsaw?  If so, share your thoughts with other readers by leaving a comment.

Norm

A New Name, A New Design

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you'll notice that I've renamed it and applied a new design.  Since I've come to call my basement shop the Cobbler Mountain Woodshop, it seemed right that this blog should bear the same name.  And, in view of the fact that I'm no longer a novice woodworker, a changing subtitle and design were in order as well.

Why Cobbler Mountain Woodshop?  Simply, because my home is situated at the foot of Little Cobbler Mountain in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains, with Big Cobbler Mountain lying just behind it.  It's a lovely location, the mountain visible out the kitchen window on all but the foggiest of days.

The address for this blog is still the same as it was, normssawdustpile.blogspot.com.  Only the title has changed, though a search on Cobbler Mountain Woodshop will find it as well.

The photo beneath the title and the design are new as well.  I chose the photo--of my no. 4 Lie-Nielsen smoothing plane working a natural edge walnut coffee table--to reflect my growing use of hand tools.  It also represents the fact that I've been teaching hand plane use and restoration at northern Virginia Woodcraft stores for the last several years.

As I see it, these changes represent more than a design upgrade.  Instead, they reflect my evolution from a complete novice--which I was when this blog began--to a maturing woodworker with a number of increasingly complex projects under my belt.

I look forward to describing my woodworking adventures here and hope you'll join me for future installments.

Norm

A Home for My Handplanes

Over the years, I've built up a fair-sized collection of handplanes.  I've got a block plane, nos. 3, 4, 4-1/2, 5-1/4, 6, 7-1/2, a chisel plane, a shoulder plane, a bevel-up smoother, a low-angle jack plane, a scrub plane, a router plane, an edge plane, and a skew rabbet plane, not to mention a couple of fix-up candidates.  Of course, since I teach using handplanes at Woodcraft, I can justify having them since I need to demonstrate them and let my students try them out.  And, I really enjoy using them in my various woodworking projects.

My handplane cabinet

But storing them has always been a bit of a problem.  For the last several years, I've kept them in plane socks and stored them in a cardboard box.  But the downsides of this are the inconvenience of pulling them out to use them and the weight of the box when carrying it to class.  Frankly, I began to fear the bottom of the box would tear out, putting my valuable collection at significant risk of damage.

That's when I decided I needed a better home for my planes, one where I could grab them easily when needed in my work.  And, frankly, where I could see and enjoy them.  So I decided to build myself a cabinet to house my collection.

The shelf you see in the photo is the result.  I built it out of poplar that I jointed and planed by machine.  I cut through dovetails for the corner joints and joined the shelves to the sides with sliding dovetail joints.  I added small slips of wood to the shelves to lift the plane blades off the shelves.  I finished the shelf with Watco dark walnut Danish oil and coated that with two coats of shellac.  I rabbeted the back (by hand, of course) to house a 1/4 inch plywood back.  The cabinet is hung with a French cleat screwed into the concrete blocks of my basement woodshop wall.

I'm happy with the result.  And, I'm glad to have the project finished.  It stayed on my workbench for far too long.  Now that my bench is clear, I have room to move on to other projects.  And, I've gotten my planes out of that box and out where I can see and use them.

Norm

My SawStop Returns

After nearly two months of down time, my SawStop contractor's saw is finally back in operation. The tech guys at SawStop were great. They sent me a new control box, which had been upgraded, updated the software in my brake cartridges and sent me a new connection cable. I first installed the new control box, a somewhat tedious but not altogether difficult process. That didn't fix it. Then I tried the updated brakes. That too didn't work.

So I set to work on changing the connection cable. That turned out to be hard work, reaching down through the table top to get at impossible to reach nuts and screws. One I stripped out and had to remove by drilling it out with my Dremel tool. Another the instructions said was a #2 Phillips head screw turned out to be a hex screw. But it faced downward and I couldn't tell that, so I kept on turning and turning to no effect.

I finally hired a man who does repairs for our Woodcraft store to come and fix it for me. In about three hours, he had it together and operating.

It's a wonderful saw. I'm glad to have it back again.

Norm

Starting Out With a Lathe

Late last year, I got turned on to the possibilities of making bowls on a lathe. I did some investigation and decided that the Nova 1624-44 would be the right one for me. It's not a variable speed lathe so it requires moving the belt to change speeds. But that cut about $500 off the cost. It has a reasonably long bed that can be extended another 24 inches with an optional bed extension. The headstock rotates so it is possible to turn bowls as large as 29 inches in diameter, much larger than I'm likely to be turning. Nova is a New Zealand company and is well-respected. All-in-all, then, my new lathe is a multi-purpose machine that should serve me well for many years.

As the above photo shows, there are already a lot of chips on the machine. I started out not with bowls with pens, which is, I think, a good way to begin learning how to use the lathe. I've now turned 30-40 pens of all types, giving them as Christmas presents to many family members and friends this year. The photo below shows the machine set up with wood blocks ready for turning into a Slimline pen.

The process is fairly simple. I select a chisel and with the lathe turning at about 1400 rpm I round off the blank, working in from the ends. Once it's round, I can cut more aggressively to narrow the blocks to closer to their final size. After that, I begin to shape the wood to the configuration I want. In the case of the Slimline pen, I want it to be voluptuously curved in shape, coming to its narrowest points at each end and in the middle, where a ring will be attached during the final assembly. Once fully shaped and sized, I sand in ascending grits from 150 to 600, then polish with EEE cream before applying friction polish for the final coat. It takes only a few minutes to shape a pen and I find it to be good therapy.

Kits for pens and pencils, as well as wood and acrylic blanks, come in a variety of sizes and are available from a number of sources, including Woodcraft. So far I've concentrated on the Slimline and Wall Street II models so there are many more for me to explore.

I'm planning on selling my pens at some point, perhaps on the Web, and at craft shows with a friend. But before I can do that, I'll have to build up a large enough stock to merit the effort. Sounds like I need to spend more time in the woodshop!

Norm

Missing in Action

It has been several months since I've posted anything. There are lots of reasons, many of which I would have written about here had there been time enough. I'll say just a few words now.

First, I attended the second Woodworking in America conference in St. Charles, Illinois, in August. That was a great conference and I learned a lot about furniture design. I had intended to write about individual sessions and speakers, but the time for that has long since passed, so for the most part I will have to be content with saying that it was a great conference and I am glad I attended. I did purchase several tools while there, the most important of which was the Veritas bevel-up smoothing plane. I've had just a little time to use it and it is a fine tool. I was also very impressed with Jeff Headley's Winchester desk, which he brought disassembled and put together during his presentation. I was so impressed, in fact, that I will be taking a class with Jeff next June and July to build one, along with three other friends from the Washington Woodworker's Guild.

Second, I took a part-time job with the Woodcraft store in Springfield, Virginia. I had never before done retail sales until I helped out with a Lie-Nielsen event last June. I discovered that I love working with customers (and tools, of course). I love this new job, despite the fact that it takes me away from woodworking and cuts into my free time for things like blogging. And I also like the employee discounts, which so far have greatly exceeded my meager wages.

Third, I bought a lathe two weeks ago, the Nova 1624-44. It is large enough to do bowls, which I hope to do eventually. But in the short term I will be making pens. I've always had a passion for pens (fountain pens, that is). Now I can combine that passion with my passion for wood and working with it. I'll be writing more about that in future entries.

Finally, I'm very involved with a men's organization called The Mankind Project, also known as New Warriors, which helps men get in touch with authentic masculinity. I'm an officer, trainer and newsletter editor for the Greater Washington group, which takes up a good deal of my time.

So there you have it, some of the reasons I have been absent from this space lately. I hope to be more regular in the future.

Norm