A Sharpening Station, At Last!

Many of my tools will benefit from regular sharpening.  This includes handplane blades, bench chisels, carving chisels and woodturning tools, all of which I use often.  It's well known among woodworkers that sharp tools are necessary to achieve the best work, while dull tools are inefficient at best and dangerous at worst.  My problem was that I had no regular place to sharpen my tools.  Instead, every time I wanted to sharpen my plane blades or chisels, I had to get out my stones and set them up on my workbench, then move them out of the way when I was finished with them.  My woodturning tools are sharpened on a heavy slow-speed grinder that was inconvenient to lift from under my workbench every time I wanted to do some turning.  I use a Koch sharpening system and Shapton stones for my carving chisels and, once again, it was stored in an inconvenient location.

The eventual outcome of all this inconvenient, of course, is that the job of honing gets put off until no small amount of resharpening will suffice to restore the tools to peak condition.  And it means that tools get used when they are dull, poor practice indeed, but one I'll admit to practicing.

Gluing up the drawer

The solution is a dedicated sharpening station, something I've yearned for over the years and even planned but never built.  Fortunately, my good friend and business partner Jeff Fleisher came up with some surplus property that provided a solution.  First was a slightly damaged cabinet with a wide drawer opening and double doors leading to a moveable shelf inside.  Then, a local restaurant was renovating and he snagged some thick Formica table tops for each of us.

With these two pieces in hand, my job became simple.  I attached rotating wheels, pin nailed the table top to the case and built a drawer to fit the opening just under the new tabletop.  Then I added drawer pulls and finished it all with a coat of shellac.

My sharpening tools

Even before the drawer was completed, however, I put the station in operation.  The tabletop measures 48 X 30 inches and is large enough for all my sharpening equipment--a Tormek T-7 water-cooled grinder, a Koch sharpening system for my carving chisels, a low-speed grinder and a tray with my Shapton stones at the ready.  My strop is hanging on one side.  Tormek accessories and other small tools are in the large drawer.  Water jugs (I have no water in the shop) and other large items are accessible through the double doors.  Being on wheels, the whole sharpening station can be easily rolled near the workbench when wanted there and then rolled back out of the way when the floor space is needed for assembly and the like.

The finished sharpening station

I feel certain that this improvement to my shop will greatly enhance the speed and quality of my woodworking.  If you don't have a sharpening station, consider building one similar to this.  If you can get hold of a surplus cabinet or tabletop, so much the better!

Norm

Winchester Secretary -- And So It Begins

I reported last year that I would be building a Winchester secretary in the Chippendale style, taking a class with Jeff Headley and Steve Hamilton.  Jeff and Steve are renowned furnituremakers.  They produced the two matching chairs with carved handles that the President and foreign heads of state occupy during one-on-one discussions, as well as reproduction pieces for Colonial Williamsburg and others.  It's a seven-day class in two segments.  In the first segment, which began yesterday, we will be building the outer, dovetailed case.  In July, we'll conclude with two days when we will start work on the interior.  In between times and afterward, we'll work on the desk in our own shops.

In reality, I began working on the secretary late last year.  I first created parts and cut lists using Cut List Plus.  Then I located sources for the cherry and poplar I'm using and began accumulating the lumber.  The hardest part was finding a good supply of curly cherry and getting it in the 5/4 size (1-1/4") needed to assure it would be 7/8" thick after planing.  In the end, I settled for 4/4 (1") stock in many instances and hoped for the best.  Then came weeks of cutting the wood to rough dimensions and gluing up the many panels.  With all that behind me, I am now starting the actual construction of the desk.

The design for the secretary is based on a Winchester area desk that is held in the Williamsburg collection.  It is described and illustrated in an article by Anne S. McPherson, "Adaptation and Reinterpretation: The Transfer of Furniture Styles from Philadelphia to Winchester to Tennessee," pp. 299-334 in Luke Beckerdite, ed., American Furniture 1997 (Hanover and London: Chipstone Foundation, 1997).  The original included a case on top that might have held books or china.  I will be building my desk without that top.

We spent most of the first morning running our panels through a 36" belt sander to get them even and to the correct thickness, then cutting them to size.  The machine work was done by our instructors, who cut all the panels using a crosscut sled and jigs so they would all be equal in size.  This was much faster and saved our time for the real work, cutting the dovetails that will hold the case together.

The afternoon was spent cutting half-blind dovetails in the case bottom and sides.  This was my first time to cut dovetails and my first time for half-blind dovetails, even in practice.  It went well.  Fortunately, the dovetails will all be hidden inside the case so any mistakes will not be visible from the outside.  So it provided me a good opportunity for practice.

Of course, with all my careful preparations to process and load the lumber and tools in my car, I walked off without my chisels and dovetail saw.  I had visited my friend Jeff Fleisher to get some dovetailing advice and took them with me, then left them in my wife Betsy's car. Fortunately, I was able to borrow tools from the instructors and all went well.  Still, I wanted to give my Blue Spruce chisels a good workout and was disappointed not to have them.  They are already loaded in the car so I'll have them today.

When we resume this morning, I'll mark and cut the remaining set of dovetails on the bottom of the case and then we'll turn our attention to the top of the case.  I find I'm enjoying chopping dovetails and, under the watchful eye of the instructors, I'm learning a lot.  It'll be fun seeing how far we get today.

Oh, and I've concluded that my plywood-topped workbench is not going to cut it for dovetailing so a new bench is in order for later this summer.  One thing I know for sure--it'll have a hard maple top.  Other than that, I've ordered Christopher Schwarz's book Workbenches, said to be the best source on designing and building one.  In addition, I've found an on-line source at Fine Woodworking for a good looking bench that uses the same vise I have sitting on my workshop floor.

More later.

Norm

Preparing to Build the Winchester Chippendale Desk

Recently, I've turned my attention to preparing to build the Valley of Virginia Chippendale desk I wrote about previously. I'm taking the class in June and July from Jeff Headley and Steve Hamilton, who teach at the Woodworking Workshops of the Shenandoah Valley, located in Berryville, not far from me.

The first task was to estimate the lumber I will need to build this desk. I'm going to use cherry for the casework and will probably use curly cherry for the drawer fronts and lid. The drawer sides and bottoms and other interior parts will be poplar. I happened upon a program called CutList Plus, where you enter the dimensions and type of wood for each part. The program then calculates layouts on the boards I'll be using and from that I'm able to estimate the amount of lumber I need to buy.

I hauled in a first load of poplar the other day and have it on the lumber rack and stickered. It should be ready to begin processing in a couple of weeks. Tomorrow I'll call some hardwood suppliers in the region to see if they have curly cherry in stock. My plan is to check it out in the next couple of weeks so it too can be acclimating to my workshop humidity level.

Although the course does not start until June, I'm counting on it taking me weeks to joint, plane and cut to size all the pieces for the desk. This all has to be completed before the class begins. I've put together a schedule that will allow me to do all this without rushing and so far I am on or slightly ahead of schedule. But I'll have to be diligent in order to keep it that way.

In addition to preparing the wood, I'll need to learn some new skills. The case is constructed with hand cut dovetails, so I'll need to learn how to cut these before the class starts. I've never yet cut one. And, some of the pieces of the cherry will need to be hand planed because of their size and in order to avoid tearout. I've purchased a good set of Blue Spruce chisels and several Lie-Nielsen and Veritas planes, so I have the tools in hand. Now I need to learn how to use them well.

I'll be updating my progress as I go along on this ambitious project.

Norm

Learning to Sharpen Chisels

Let's face it, I never started out to be a hand tool guy. There is something about power tools that just draws me to them. Among other things, they have (for me, at least) a mystique about being precise in application. Though I'm finding out they are only as precise as their user, still, the whole idea of hand tools leaves me with the impression of their being susceptible to misuse by my unpracticed hands.

Be that as it may, I have already found chisels handy enough (OK, essential) that I broke down and bought a set. I didn't pop for an expensive set but instead caught Woodcraft's Wood River brand when it was on sale. What I didn't count on was the fact that while they are not exactly dull when they arrive, they do need a basic sharpening to make them really useful.

The first thing I did was purchase a basic grinder, which is needed to shape the front of the blade. But after asking my friend Jeff Fleisher how to sharpen them properly, he put me on to an article about David Charlesworth's method. Finally, today I drove out to his shop in New Market, Virginia, and he helped me sharpen the first chisel so I could see and experience the process for myself.

The process is fairly straightforward, if a little tedious when doing it for the first time. Charlesworth's method calls for a series of Japanese waterstones. You first flatten the back (flat) side of the chisel to remove all the tooling marks as it comes from the factory. This involves working the back of the chisel up and down and then back and forth on either a 200 grit stone or wet or dry sandpaper laid wet on a sheet of glass. When the factory marks have been removed, only slight scratches from the stone or sandpaper should remain. You then move to a 1200 grit stone that has been wetted and repeat the procedure, working from there to a 4000 grit stone and finally an 8000 grit stone on which a slurry has been made with a nagura stone. By the time this has been done, few if any scratches should remain and the back of the chisel should be both flat and scratch free.

The next step is to work on the beveled side of the chisel blade. Here you turn to the fine wheel on a slow grinder. You mark the beveled edge with a Sharpie, then grind away the marked metal, holding the chisel at precisely 90 degrees to the wheel. When all the marking has been ground away, you should have a slightly concave surface on the bevel.

The final stage is to put a fine edge on the chisel. This is done on the 8000 grit stone using a device that holds the chisel blade at 30 degrees to the stone. Five or six pulls is all that is needed. Then you increase the angle slightly and repeat the process, again five or six times. All that's left now is to check and see if there's a burr on the flat side of the chisel and, if so, remove it by pulling the blade across the stone a few times.

The finished blade should be able to cut the top of your fingernail when gently pushed against it or should be able to shave a piece of soft wood like pine smoothly and cleanly.

So, I now have one sharp chisel. And a lot of work to do to get the rest of them ready for real use. The good news is, once the backs are flattened (the slow part of the process), I should not need to do more than touch up the bevels for a long time to come!

Norm