Week Four: Tuesday

Wow! I've really been busy.  It's been an entire week since I last reported my "doings" at the school.  I'll try to bring you up to date on the major things.

Last Wednesday and Thursday were pretty much as on previous days.  The book rack was glued up, and when it came out of the clamps, I realized that I hadn't clamped it in one dimension so that the dovetails, which had been cut somewhat loose, didn't close properly.  That required making and gluing up a bunch of tiny wedges to fill in the empty spaces.  Of course, that took a lot of time, and we are at the point now where we are supposed to be working on our new projects.  So, I could only work on the book rack before or after the regular class hours.  The pictures that follow show the book rack on my workbench after sanding.  I haven't put a finish on the outside yet.

Last week we started a class project.  We are collaborating on making two sawhorses for each member of the class.  Each day we have either cut a new piece or performed some operation which teaches us either a new method to perform some operation (such as using a machine to create a mortise) or a new technique for doing something we've already learned to do some other way.  It's an interesting teaching tool in that we all learn a lot of new things, and, in a few days we'll all have a pair of sawhorses.  I'll show you later why that is important.

Here's the pile of parts we've produced so far for two of the sawhorses (mine, in this case):

Doesn't look like much, does it?

In the meantime, we've been hard at work producing drawings for our casework project.

I'm a little behind some of the others who have done their drawings, selected their primary wood, and started milling it.

I've been a little slow for a couple of reasons:  I drew up a plan on paper, didn't like the paper we were provided, and so went downtown Camden to buy drafting vellum, and started over.

Then I got hung up in figuring out some of the joints, understanding how the back would be made and attached, changing my mind several times about sizes.  The cabinet started out to be something like 48 inches wide by 36 inches high.  Then I reduced it to 28 1/2 inches high by 29 inches wide.  Then I decided to make it 30 inches high, and move the bottom up an inch.  Then I made it  29 inches all around.  This morning I changed it to 30 inches high again when I decided that the two drawers had to be 4 inches high.  I always forget that "Perfection is the Enemy of Good Enough."  That's a common malady of engineers.

In the meantime, I taught myself to use the 3-D drawing program called "SketchUp" over the weekend, drew the whole thing on the computer, figured out my cut list, and then redrew it all on the vellum again, since the instructors required a full-size drawing.  Finally, I'd had enough and my drawing was approved this afternoon.

My next step was to go out to the lumber room where I selected three pieces of maple to make the case, panels for the front doors, and some other parts.

The lumber rack

One of three boards I chose.
It's 12 feet long, 11 1/2 inches
wide, and about an inch thick. 

This is what $140.00 worth of rough-cut maple looks like
on the floor next to my workbench.

The 4 Quarter Maple selection

So, you see here the result of my board pulling of about 23 Board Feet (BF) of maple at $6.00 a BF - about $140.  Some of the cost is because I chose three lengths of wood which were all wider than 10 inches.  It would have been cheaper to pick narrower widths, but I need a number of pieces almost 10 inches wide, and even with the wide boards, I'll still have to do some glue-up to get a 14-inch wide panel for one of the doors on the cabinet. Tomorrow I'll start milling to square up the boards, and then start choosing pieces and cutting to approximate size.  Let the Fun begin! 

By the way, I promised earlier to tell you how we'll immediately use the new sawhorses.  Wouldn't it have been nice to have them already made so that I didn't have to pile all that lumber on the floor?

Some other things that happened, especially Friday.  

We all arrived at the school at about 7:45 and carpooled to the small furniture factory of the Thomas Moser Cabinetmakers in Auburn, ME, and took a tour of the factory.  That was really very enlightening.  Although Moser uses a lot of CNC (Computer Numerical Control) machines, a good bit of their work is still done by hand.  We followed the progress of their furniture from the wood coming in the door, through the production of the parts, assembly, finishing, upholstery, and shipping.   The furniture was beautiful, but, since it is all made with solid wood - no veneer - no particle board - it is expensive.

I would show you the many pictures I took at the factory, but they are mostly pictures of techniques and ideas that appealed to me.  To see the kinds of furniture Moser produces, you could just go to their website.  However, there was one thing that I saw that I thought you might like:

Flag made entirely of wood.

After Moser's, we went to lunch and then on to Edgecombe and the workshop of Eben Blaney, an independent cabinetmaker.  Eben's workshop is no bigger than mine, but he turns out some exquisite furniture. You can see some of his work on his website. http://ebenblaney.com

Then we returned to the school.  In the evening the school was opened up for an annual Open House.  I volunteered to assist with directing visitors parking.  I spent an hour or so doing that, and then joined in the fun and food.

So that you know that my weekends are well-spent, in addition to teaching myself how to use the SketchUp program on Sunday, on Saturday I sharpened the 5 new chisels I received Thursday evening, and a plane iron.  That took me about 5 hours, although I admit to being a bit obsessive about getting a mirror finish on the business ends of the chisels.

So that pretty well brings you up to date. 

Week Three: Tuesday

The Book Rack

This morning I unclamped the tiny repair, and sanded it.  It's pretty hard to see, although once sanded, the repair wasn't as invisible as I'd hoped it would be.

The repair after gluing

The repair after sanding

I next masked off the places that I didn't want to be touched by the finish, so as not to ruin gluing surfaces.  Then, at lunchtime, I put the first coat of finish on the inside surfaces of the book rack.  The finish is a clear tung oil product called Waterlox.  In the late afternoon, I scuff sanded the surfaces with 400 grade sandpaper, and applied another coat.  Of course, the finish really brings out the character and color of the wood.

One coat of Waterlox tung oil finish.
Compare the color to the sanded  piece above

Finish on the repaired piece.

The six-week project

The morning was spent in discussions about our 6-week project.  For the first hour or so, we learned about various aspects of building a case piece.  For example, since we will be using solid wood, and not man-made materials such as plywood, we need to be concerned more with wood movement.  The two common construction methods are "slab" sided, which means full width of a board, or even edge glued boards.  The other method is to use so-called "Frame and Panel" construction.  This method does a better job of accommodating wood movement with changes in the atmosphere.  The frame is relatively stable, and the panel floats in the frame.  A solid wood door is always built with frame and panel.  It would not be possible to build a slab door for the entry to your house, for example, because the expansion and contraction of the wood wood could make it impossible to open during part of the year and impossible to latch during another part.

Aaron then showed us an extensive series of slides covering the history of furniture through the ages. This is probably the first time I have sat through such a presentation and stayed interested all the way though.

He then showed some slides about the furniture of James Krenov and the Krenov School - College of the Redwoods.

Aaron finished with pictures of projects by students in previous 12-week classes.  All of this was to give us ideas and inspirations.  In my case, it all caused me to decide to scale my project down.  The more I thought about it, the more I realized that although 6 weeks seems to be a long time, it really isn't.  Given the project requirements, sharing of machines and setups, lecture time, other "time killers," and my own ability, I need to think in terms of something a little less grandiose.  And, I need to be able to get it home in my Tacoma pickup truck!

This afternoon, I decided that instead of a large tool cabinet, I would focus on my collection of wood planes.  My cabinet should display them prominently, give me easy access to them, and also store not only the planes, but also spare blades, any special associated tools, and perhaps spare parts.  My cabinet will still be some 9 inches deep, about 36 inches high, and about 24 inches wide.  This can accommodate all of the planes I now own with enough room for some future acquisitions.  And, it will meet the project requirements by having one door (although it might have two when I finish designing it) and two drawers.

In order to get an idea of how large it would have to be, I gathered together the planes that I have with me, plus several from the school's collection that duplicate planes I left at home, and laid them out on a table so I could find the best arrangement.  Now that I have rough dimensions, I'll figure out how I'll construct the cabinet.

Beginning the Third Week and a New Project

All sorts of changes today.

The first was that Yuri is no longer our assistant instructor.  She was on loan from a fellowship program at the school, and returns to that program full time.  I would say that we'll miss her, but she's just in the next building.

We met our new assistant instructor, Austin, this morning.  He is a very experienced woodworker who is here for the next six weeks.  This is evidently the 12th year he's taught here.

The next six week is also a new phase for us.  Our initial project is supposed to have been completed.  More about that later.  During this new phase, our project is called the Case-Piece Project.  Quoting from the instructions for this project:

This project builds knowledge and skills that provide a strong foundation for fine woodworking.  The assignment is to design and construct a solid-wood case piece (such as a cabinet, box, or chest) that elegantly balances the following requirements:

• At least one hinged door and one drawer
• Solid wood throughout
• Must be made to an exacting level of craftsmanship
• Must be ready to apply finish within the six weeks allotted.
• Must be modest in scale
• Ideally incorporates the following elements:
• at least one frame and panel
• a piston-fit drawer
• at least on web frame
• no more than two mitered corners

There are some other requirements, but that's the gist of the project.

So, I stayed up late last night looking on the Internet to get some ideas.  I had two different projects in mind.  I very much need a place to store my hand tools, ideally a wall cabinet.  So that was one of my possible projects.  The other thing I had in mind would be a sort of end table for in my living room next to the credenza on which I have my TV.  I'd use it for a lamp, and a place to put CD's/DVD's.  But, the tool cabinet was my first choice.

I brought in printouts of a lot of pictures of wall hung tool cabinets this morning.  I showed them to Austin, and described what I had in mind.  He agreed that was a good learning project and had a great deal of potential for me to experiment with different techniques.  So, I guess that's what I'm going to be making over the next month and a half.

In addition to trying to merge a bunch of ideas gleaned from my Internet search, I also examined several examples here on the campus.  In one of the other classrooms there is one cabinet that I particularly admired, although I thought it was a little small for my needs.  I was able to talk to the fellow who built it, and he told me that if he had to do it again, he'd make it bigger!  That was an unsolicited comment.

I measured a lot of tools, including a #7 jointer plane.  I have one of those at home, and it will have a significant effect on the size of the cabinet. At almost 22 inches in length and almost 6 inches from sole to the top of the tote, it is pretty much one of the largest and heaviest hand tools I own.  

The Book Rack project

This morning I used a bandsaw to cut off the waste parts of the two side pieces on the book rack, and the result is what you see in the photo.  I then had to plane the top of the side pieces - if you look closely, you may notice that they are pretty rough.  I planed the top of the back piece so that its top edge angle matches the side pieces, and I cleaned up the rough edges on the bottom edges of both sides. The bottoms of the two feet will have to wait until the rack is glued up before I can trim them, so that the whole thing will sit properly on a table. 

It might not be clear from the photo, but all the angles are based on the 1:7 ratio triangle, and hence the name I've given the rack.  I chose the pieces for the sides so that the grain "cathedrals" on both sides are going in the same direction.

Once I got it all trimmed up , I figured that I'd be gluing up the project before lunch.  

The book rack, fresh from trimming the top and bottom of the sides on the bandsaw.

Two things killed that idea.  

Austin suggested that I put a finish on the inner surfaces before gluing, as that would make final finishing easier.  In order to do that, I had to take the whole thing apart and sand all the inner surfaces in preparation for finishing.  

When I started sanding, I noticed that I had knocked out a small sliver of wood in the vicinity of one of the mortises.  I probably did it when I was knocking the thing apart.  I searched for the missing piece, but couldn't find it.  It wasn't very visible, but it was a defect I didn't want to leave.  Fixing it involved finding a carving gouge, cutting a new sliver of wood from a scrap board, cutting out a similar sized area on the rack, and gluing the piece into the cut out area.  

I cut a new piece which matched the grain of the area it was going to replace pretty well.  I glued the piece in and set the whole thing aside to dry.  I think that once the repair is sanded to match the rest of the piece, it should be pretty difficult to see.  In fact, less than about 3/16 inch of it will show; the rest will be covered by the tenon shoulder.  But, by the time I got to the point of having it glued in, we were into the next phase of the class.

In the morning before class starts I should be able to sand it down, and start the finishing process.  If the weather is good, I might be able to put a second coat of finish on tomorrow evening.

Week Two: Friday & Saturday

In which I answer the question "Will he finish by the deadline?"

Friday

I left off Thursday afternoon with the dovetails cut on the 1:7 book rack, and a severely runny nose.

The runny nose yeilded to a Claritin.

Friday morning I started early to cut four mortises, two on each side of the book rack.  The first pair took me well over two hours, but, once I had the first pair finished, the other pair went fairly quickly.  I had all four mortises finished not long after lunch.

Drilling for mortises

Chopping

Checking alignment

First pair finished

Then I started cutting the matching tenons. This was not a difficut, but somewhat tedious.  Each of the four tenons had to be cut to fit into a matching mortise.  My mortises were fairly uniform, at least by measurement, so it should follow that the tenons would also be fairly uniform.  Cutting them to rough size was the easy part.  Then came the job of carefully trimming off slivers of wood on the order of 1/32 or even 1/64 of an inch. I did the first one totally with chisels.  Then I got smart and got out my shoulder plane.  That simplified the job somewhat because I could set the plane to remove a minute sliver of wood from a tenon cheek, and be fairly well assured that it would be consistant from one end of the tenon to the other.  The method was to trim the long dimension of the tenon cheek so that the ends could be angle fitted into their respective mortises.  Then the short dimension ends of the tenon were cut to fit the whole thing into the mortise.  This process worked pretty well, and I finished about 7 pm.

First tenon shoulders cut

Cutting cheeks of tenon

One tenon cheek cut.  7 to go.

First tenon fits!

Two down, two to go

All four tenons fitted and the whole assembly put together

Then, I put the whole thing together, and had my first look at the 1:7 book rack, without the 1:7 pieces cut away.  It was a pretty tight fit all around, but it did go together without any serious hammer "wacking."

However, the whole assembly "racked" slightly so that it would not sit flat on the table.  One side had its rear end raised about 1/16 inch.

By this time, I was too tired to try to figure out what was causing the problem, so I put everything away and went home, not having achieved glue-up by the end of the class.

Only one student, Pam, actually had her project glued up when the instructors left.  The rest of us will have to wait until Monday morning.

Saturday

This morning I slept in until 8:15.  My landlady had left the house an hour or so earlier.  She and her son are on their way to meet her daughter in Australia.  I have the house to myself for a day or so before her friend arrives to house sit.

Locked out

So, after breakfast, I spent some time tidying up, washing dishes, and collecting accumulated trash.  I bagged up the trash and went downstairs to dump the trash into the recycling bins in the garage.  Then back upstairs to... a locked door.  I had forgotten that the door is self-locking, and I didn't have my keys with me.  I spent several minutes wracking my brains trying to figure out what to do next.  I am extremely fortunate for two reasons.  Firstly, there is a back door onto a porch from the apartment, and, secondly, I hadn't latched the porch door!

Kicking myself for my stupidity, I wrote myself a note to check for keys on the way out and posted it on the inside of the door.

I buy a "Cheap" HP printer

Then I left for errands, including taking my broken camera to the UPS store to send it off to be repaired.  Afterwards, I went to the Staples in the same shopping center.  Going through the printer aisles, I noticed that they had a small HP printer on sale for only $30.  At that price, it would almost be a throw-away.  So I bought it. The checkout person pointed out that it would be a good idea to purchase ink cartridges since the ones that come with the printer don't last very long. Of course, the cartridges were $51.

This was not the first time I've encountered a printer that actually cost less than the ink. I have a color laser printer at home for which replacing the toner cartridges costs twice the original price of the printer. HP is also the culpret on that one.

After I got home from grocery shopping, I ate lunch, and afterwards began setting up the new printer.  Nowhere on the box or in the instructions does it mention that you need an A-B USB cable to connect it to your computer. It's been a while since I bought a printer, so that didn't occur to me until I got the printer home and attempted to hook it up.

So, I drove back to the same shopping center to the Radio Shack (yes they have one of them up here) to buy a cable that I've probably got a dozen of at home. A three-foot cable cost me $7.57. But a longer cable would have cost almost as much as the printer.   I could have ordered a cable from Amazon.com and paid far less, but wanting instant gratification, I bought the short cable.  Bottom line: not including gas and tax, I now have almost $90 invested in this "cheap printer."  And I refuse to look it up on Amazon!  It works, I can use it, and won't take up a lot of room in the truck on the way home.

Back at work

I went from the Radio Shack directly to the school to pick up where I left off last night.  After some messing about with the joints on the book rack, I was able to reduce the amount of racking to an acceptable amount.

Then, I started preparing the whole thing for a potential glue-up Monday morning. It quickly became obvious that manipulating the book rack, glue cauls, and clamps, requires more hands than I have.  I left it as you see.

Bevel gauge set at 1:7 ratio

The assembly tipped at 1:7 

The first book in the rack!

The template that will be used to trim the sides

I also cut a template in preparation for cutting away the angled sections of the sides.  And, I played with the book rack to convince myself that an 8 degree angle ** wouild be sufficient to hold books and/or CDs/DVDs.  It looks pretty good to me.

** A 1:7 ratio works out to approximately 8.1 degrees (arctan(1/7) = approx 8.1 degrees)

Week Two: Thursday

The 1:7 book rack is slowly coming together. The photo below is one of the last pictures I took before the camera jostled off the workbench and on to the floor, knocking out the capability to focus, as I reported in my last posting.  So, this picture was taken on Monday afternoon.  I was planing one of the cherry boards flat on one side to be used in the project.  The rest of the dimensioning will be done by machine, but we were expected to prepare one side by hand for practice.  To plane a board like this, you really have to put your whole body into it.  It's a definite cardio workout.  That's why the bench rocked so much that the camera jumped off.

That's the new plane I've mentioned before.  You can see that there is a section in the center of the board which has not yet been flattened.  I'm using a toothed blade in the plane to remove stock.  The rough board was a little over an inch thick, and when I finish preparing it, it will be about 5/8 inch thick.  At this point, I still had a long way to go.  When I finished, Yuri scribbled on my work with a pencil.  One pass through the jointer machine removed 1/32 inch, and also removed all her scribbles, proving that I had made it pretty flat and smooth by hand.

The remaining photos, taken with my phone, show how far I've progressed.  The two taller side pieces were actually cut from the board I hand-planed,  and I've cut the tails of dovetails into them.  The end piece, which would be the top if I were making a stool is from another piece of cherry, and it contains the pins of the dovetails on both ends.

These two photos are actually oriented with the bottom up.  I was going to explain how part would be cut away leaving only a "foot" which will give the whole thing the necessary 1:7 tilt, but I'll wait until I can actually show it to you.

The last photo shows the the pin ends for a half blind dovetail on the back of the rack, and the board laying on the bench is one of the side pieces showing the matching tails of the dovetails.

It's taken me quite a while to get to this point.  I still have a lot of work to do.  I've laid out the mortises for the two stretchers, and I'll get to work cutting them tomorrow morning.  It might seem that I should be a lot further along by now, but we've had a lot of lectures which take up a significant amount of time.  We spent two hours this morning discussing various types of finishes, (oil, varnishes, lacquers), what each is best suited for, how to apply them.  Then we had another discussion on a woodworking technique.  All this took until noon. And, I'll admit to being pretty slow at cutting dovetails, although I've gotten a lot better over the past couple of days, once I overcame some mental blocks.

Tomorrow we expect to have most of the day available to work on the project.  To be on schedule, we should have it glued up by the end of the day.  I think I should be pretty close to that. 

I've developed a bit of a cold or allergies - runny nose and occasional sneezing bouts - so I decided to go home this afternoon rather than attending the weekly barbecue. I guess it's a good thing, because I was finally able to get through to Nikon about repairing the camera.   I have to take my camera to the UPS Store in Rockland in order to ship it off to be repaired.  So, I either have to get there before 5:30 pm tomorrow, or before noon on Saturday.  Whichever I do, it will cut into the time available for me to work on my project.  I am glad that I ended up choosing a relatively simple project.  Some of my classmates are struggling to get finished.

Finally, I hate to say this, but, unless I'm missing something in the camera adjustment, I do think the colors in the cell phone photos look closer to reality to me than the camera photo.  It looks very yellow to me.  In the last photo, you can see the color of the raw cherry wood.

Progress on the 1:7 Bookrack

Tuesday evening.  It's rainy and about 59 degrees.

I'm well into the first project.  Yesterday I milled the piece of Cherry I'd picked out last Friday afternoon to rough size, including hand planing one side of one of the pieces as flat and as smooth as I could make it by hand.  Unfortunately, while I was hand planing, I rocked the workbench significantly, and my little pocket Nikon flipped off the bench onto the floor.  Now it won't focus.  Something has been knocked out of alignment, and I am waiting for Nikon to reply to my email.  Until it gets repaired, any photos I post will have been taken on my cellphone, (just like everybody else does anymore).

Anyway, I ran the wood through jointer and planer, and almost immediately saw it cup.  There was cupping in the piece I smoothed by hand, and removing the cupping was the majority of my work.  Evidently when I sent the boards through the surface planer, I released some inner stress, and the boards cupped again.  So, I finished up for the evening and let the boards sit overnight to get acclimated (acclimatized?).

Yesterday evening after dinner I returned to the school for the weekly Faculty slide shows.  The first was from another wood turner who has a very unique style.  The second slide show was by Yuri, our current assistant instructor.  She has done some really fantastic work making, as she puts it, "totally impractical stuff."  One sculpture comprises about 4000 mortise and tenon joints!  So, I shouldn't complain about the four such joints that will be incorporated into my project.

This morning I finished up cutting my boards to approximate size, and began laying out the two side pieces.  These are the pieces that incorporate all of the 1:7 cuts which are not part of the dovetails.  I won't actually make those cuts until I have the dovetail tails completed, and perhaps not even then.  We'll see how it progresses.

Because of the cupping, I'm having to take some unusual measures.  I am attempting to cut the tails of the dovetails in both side pieces simultaneously.  This means trying to keep my cuts straight across 1-1/4 inches.  It's pretty frustrating.  Sometime after 5 pm, I was working away, and the school's Director, Peter Korn, came into our workshop.  He stopped at my bench and asked how I was doing, and I told him I was frustrated.  So he spent about 10 minutes or so showing me a technique that I might consider using to fix up the problems I've been having.  After he left, I worked for another 40 minutes or so, getting my work set up for tomorrow.  Then I cleaned off my bench and came home and ate dinner.

I continue to learn new stuff every day.  Some of the things I'm learning are really "ah ha" moments where I discover how to do things I've wondered about, or why we do things a certain way.  Other things are just training new muscles memories or learning new ways of seeing things I have overlooked in the past.  And, one other very useful thing that I am learning, is how to better use my tools, and which tools are more important to me or better suited to what I need to do.  When you work in a shop briefly, every now and again, you don't learn those kinds of things.  After he showed me some of his dovetailing tricks, I told Peter that this is not the first time I have hand cut dovetails, but the previous times have been so separated in time that I've never completely learned the techniques.  Like anything else, it takes regular practice.

Non-woodworkers might want to skip the next two paragraphs.  Maybe not.

I find myself in the middle of a debate (with myself) about which chisels are better  I'm using a set Narex chisels which are made in the Czech Republic.  They are pretty good, and relatively cheaper than some of the others in use by other students.  Their handles are large and they are a bit "klunky", but they get the job done, and hold an edge reasonably well.  I've had them for a few years, and I'd say they are adequate. But, I'd really like to own as set of the Veritas or Lie Nielsen chisels.  One of the fortunate things about the school is that with 12 students, you get an opportunity to see the tools that everybody else has, and also those available at the school.  There's been a lot of sharing going on, and and everyone has their opinions about which is the best.  At least two have the Veritas chisels, and one has the Lie Nielsen, and almost everybody else bought a set of the Two Cherries brand that the school sells.  Christophe brought some Austrian chisels with him from France, and the instructor uses a set of the blue handled Marples (pre-Irwin) chisels. He makes his living woodworking.

Another good thing about the school I think I mentioned before: both Lie Nielsen and Lee Valley offer discounts to us as students of the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship.  So, you might see why learning which chisels I would prefer is of concern to me at this time.

As I was re-reading what I'd written, I also realized that there's one more thing about the school and my fellow students I should mention.  I think they are a great bunch of people.  I am thoroughly enjoying myself.  I guess having a mutual interest brings like-minded people together.

I just looked across the room and realized that this is the first day since arriving that I haven't made my bed.  Shame on me.  Oh well, in a short while I'll be in it.

A relaxing weekend

It's Sunday evening.  Week Two of the school begins tomorrow.  This has been a a fairly quiet weekend, but fun, nonetheless.

I woke up without the alarm Saturday morning, showered and ate breakfast.  Then, I went downstairs and out to the driveway where my landlady was conducting a garage sale.  Wouldn't you know that amongst her stuff was a small camera case, just right for my small camera.  Only a buck.

We did some car shuffling to get me out of the driveway around the shoppers. Because I had some time to kill before going to the school to meet my friends, I drove to Rockport.  In all the times that I've been through this area, I've been to Rockland and Camden, but never took the side trip to see the beautiful little port of Rockport.  So, I drove around it, took a few photos and then off to the school.  I'll go back again when I have more time.

I arrived at the school, and unlocked our building.  I dug out a few tools I thought we might need to check the "goodness" of tools, and then waited for Christophe and Tim to arrive.  They both came in right on time, and we loaded up Christophe's rental car for the trip to Liberty, ME, and the Liberty Tool Company.

The drive to Liberty took about 3/4 hour.  It was a beautiful day, and we had a good time talking on the way.

The Liberty Tool Company is evidently a landmark.  Last summer's visit to Captain Tinkum's Emporium with Steve didn't prepare me for Liberty.  On entry, one can't help but being immediately overwhelmed by the shear volume of stuff.  I took a photo with my phone just before we left, but it doesn't do the place justice.

It's primarily tools, tool-related things, and hardware, but it's also a lot of stuff that I suppose could be called antiques, if being old was the criteria for being an antique.  It's at least three floors.  I only saw the first and second floors, and really spent most of my time on the first floor.

I went hoping to find a Record #43 or #44 Plough Plane, but I never found one.  Yes, I bought some stuff - what I think is a Stanley #4 bench plane in fairly decent shape (my most expensive purchase at $24), a Stanley #95 marking gauge ($5), similar to one I inherited from my Dad, an expansion bit ($2.50), a knife sharpening stone and a hacksaw frame.  I also found three old framed photos, two of pre-WWII Navy ships and one of the keel for a large wooden ship on the ways in a shipyard.  Old pictures like that fascinate me.

If you were looking for an old pickup truck, they had one of them, too.

Tim and Christophe also found some things they were looking for - planes, and other items.

Christophe needed gas, and we got some directions to a BBQ place down the road.  We shared a couple of excellent racks of ribs, corn on the cob, and beer and then just relaxed taking in the view and enjoying the beautiful day.

Then we found a gas station, and Christophe filled up for the trip back to the school.

Ariving at the school, we went in to our building and showed off our purchases to the other students who were working on their projects.  I left soon after and drove to downtown Rockland, and then out Route 1 toward Camden.  I stopped at Maine Sports, and bought a shirt that was on sale.  Then back to my apartment.  I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening reading a doing other stuff.

This morning I went to church, came back to the apartment, and ate lunch,  Then, I went for a walk.  My sister tells me that I should walk to work, since it is less than 2 miles.  To date, I've had stuff to carry to and from the school, so haven't even considered it.  Today was another beautiful day.  The temperature was in the mid-70's and there was a nice breeze blowing.  So, I filled a bottle of with water, set up my GPS to track my progress, and took off.

At home I walk Sammy up and down the hill I live on twice a day.  But over the past year, I've cut back on my walking, primarily because of arthritis and swelling in my feet.  I've had shots in my big toes, and have arch supports in my shoes.  They've helped a lot, but walking remains painful for me.  But, I set out, regardless.

My first challenge was walking up the hill on the road I live on.  I was pretty winded after that, but kept on.  For the most part, the next mile or so was mostly downhill.  I walked as far as Route 90, but didn't continue to the school, which is perhaps half to three-quarters of a mile down 90.   I was a little afraid of the walk back, because of the long uphill stretch, but it turned out to be easier that I thought.  In fact, walking downhill on the last stretch to my apartment seemed harder than walking uphill.  I have a similar problem at home walking Sammy, because he always pulls me downhill on the way home.  Anyway, the round trip was about 2 and a quarter miles, and took about 50 minutes.  I don't think I'm ready to start walking to school every day, but we'll see.  There's probably no reason I shouldn't do it, other than the need to carry stuff.  That was one of the reasons that I went to Maine Sports yesterday - to take a look at backpacks. I didn't get one, but now I may.

Week One: The end of the week.

Through dovetails completed, we started on the first project.  We were introduced to drawing plans.  I'd done "mechanical drawing" as far back as High School, and during my first year at USNA, so this was not new for me. In fact, I remembered a technique the instructor didn't show us, and that saved me a considerable amount of time and effort.

I had spent a lot of time thinking about what to build. In addition to the criteria required, and recognizing that time was a critical aspect (the project has to be completed next Friday), I had to consider a blend of what I wanted to do, what I knew how to do, and what we would be permitted to do.  My first couple of ideas were rejected, either by me or by the instructor, as requiring more work than could reasonable be completed in a week, given not only the degree of difficulty of the project, but also factoring in the scheduled lectures and other work interrupting things (eating, sleeping, etc.) that would cut into the available work time.  Other reasons for rejection included aesthetics - it just didn't look right; didn't show off an intended decorative feature (the dovetails) or was just plain wrong.

I finally settled on a relatively simple book rack.  It could be thought of as the bench I showed in yesterday's posting turned on its side and then tilted it back about 8 degrees.  The actual amount of tilt is derived from the 1:7 ratio (see below for an explanation of sorts) we're using for the angles in our dovetails, so I call it my 1:7 Book rack.

Once I had a design, I commenced drawing.  Again, having prior drawing experience helped a lot.  Because of the screwy angles I've included, it took a lot of head-scratching to figure out how to put the idea on paper.  I did it in about two hours.  Then the instructor checked it; he pointed out some things I hadn't thought of.  The way I had the wood grain going, it was going to be hard to cut out the two side pieces.  Also, he pointed out that I had made the stretcher piece, which was intended for the mortise and tenon piece, so wide that I would have difficulty cutting the mortise by hand, and that it probably wasn't supported well enough. He suggested two smaller stretchers, with a different shoulder arrangement.  The total mortise length would be the same, but taken in two smaller chunks rather than one long one.

As they say, "back to the drawing board."  I tried modifying the drawing I'd already made, but soon discovered that with just a slight change in the concept, almost all of the dimension and the layout had changed.  Rather than erasing a bunch of lines, I decided to abandon the original drawing and start over.

The revision took another hour.  I grabbed Aaron (instructor) just as he was about the leave for the day and asked him to check it again.  Yet again, he laid a whole new idea of how to construct the drawing on me.  Fortunately, I had saved the old drawing, which was done in the manner he was describing, and I convinced him that further drawings would not add any new information.  Finally, he agreed.  He checked my "cut list" which is really the goal of this part of the exercise and pronounced me ready to move on.

Then I went out to the lumber racks and picked out what I think is a very nice piece of cherry.  It doesn't have too much cup or twist or sapwood, and it should be more than wide enough to leave me plenty of wood to build the rack, with a good piece left over for some other project.

Now I'm back at my apartment.  I've met my landlady's parents.  Today is her father's birthday, and they were going out to dinner.  So, I'm here using her washing machine to do a week of accumulated laundry.

Tomorrow I and two of my fellow students are going to Liberty, ME, to the Liberty Tool Company.  Liberty Tool Company sells used tools, and is the parent of the Captain Tinkum's Emporia that Steve and I visited in Searsport, ME last summer.  I'm looking for a Record #43 or #44 plough plane or whatever else strikes me.

---

The 1: 7 ratio refers to the angle produced by one inch horizontal in seven inches vertical or the acute angle produced by right triangle with a 7 inch near side and a one inch side opposite the acute angle.  The beauty of this method is that you don't have to find a protractor or a special dovetail marking gauge to determine the angle.  You can draw the triangle on a handy piece of paper or your workbench, and then set a bevel gauge to the angle. 

Enough?  For more information, see the article at Popular Woodworking Magazine

1:6 and 1:8 ratios.  1:7 is about 8 degrees.

 

Week One, Thursday: In which I do multiple things

This was another really intense day.  I'm not sure I even remember everything we did.

First we had a demonstration of cutting dovetail joints - the tails in one side, the pins in the other.  Then we prepared two pieces of wood (poplar) to use to practice our own dovetails.

Open dovetail joint

A dovetail is a very traditional joint.  In fact, the instructor mentioned that, although techniques have changed, the joints we use today are, for the most part, no different than they were 300 years ago.  We just have better tools and other materials now.

Other than aesthetics, why would we want to use a dovetail joint?  Consider the construction of a drawer.  The basic drawer comprises two sides, a front, a back, and a bottom.  Forget about the bottom, and think about the stresses put on the sides and front of a drawer as it is pulled out of the encompassing framework.  If you built it just of glued up pieces of wood, it probably wouldn't last very long.  No matter how you put it together, the joint between the front and each of the sides is put together with the long grain of the wood in the side pieces being attached to the end grain of the front (or the reverse).  Any gluing to end grain is bound to fail if it relies just on glue, even with modern adhesives.  The joint was created when animal protean glues (such as hide glue) were all that was available.  Because of the way that the dovetail is made, there are built-in long grain to long grain connections which are much stronger than long grain to end grain. In addition, once properly assembled, the pins on the front of the drawer are captured by the tails on the sides, and this provides the additional benefit of mechanical strength.

OK, more than you wanted to know.  But I'm showing off the kind of things I am learning here.  Until this week, I never considered why you would want dovetails.  I just knew that a dovetailed drawer was a sign of better craftsmanship when I went furniture shopping.

We had a demonstration/lecture on planes: types, history, disassembly, sharpening, reassembling, using, where you would use what type of plane.  None of this was new, but it's the first time it's all been put together for me.

I have a brand new plane of a particular type. (For you woodworkers, it's a Lie Nielsen Low Angle Jack Plane.) I am glad to have it, but was almost afraid to use it.  It was still in its shipping box with the paper padding,  The plane blades were still wrapped in protective paper.  It's an expensive device that I purchased just for this class, and I didn't want to do anything to misuse it.  So today was its unwrapping.

In the afternoon we saw a demo of flattening and smoothing one side of a rough-cut board, and were then given our own board to flatten.  I'm happy to tell you that the plane performed wonderfully.  I am very pleased with it.  And, the board I prepared passed all the checks and measurements I could perform, and appeared to me to be flat, twist free, and smooth.

In the meantime, I worked in a practice dovetail joint.  This is not the first time I have done dovetails, but I still need a lot of practice.

We also discussed our first project. Next week will be spent designing and building whatever it is that we decide to make, given the criteria that it must have dovetails and mortise and tenon joints, and at least one of the boards in the project must have been flattened by hand.  The example project is a small bench, but we are not constrained to building that.  The real constraint is time.

The example project - a small bench

We knocked off a little early this afternoon - 6 PM - in order to participate in the weekly pot-luck dinner.  My contribution was a watermelon I bought last night.  It had been in the refrigerator all day and was quite good, although not as popular as the various decadent chocolate concoctions others had contributed.

But the main(e) attraction was Lobster and corn-on-the-cob.

After dinner, the school director organized a game of cutthroat croquet.

The lobster and the croquet are evidently weekly traditions.  One of my classmates, who is camping on the school grounds (he's an ex-Marine, so we'll forgive him) said this was the first real meal he'd had since Sunday.  I didn't admit that I could probably say the same thing except for the sandwiches I've been buying at the local market.

Anyway, it was a good time and a lot of fun, and something to look forward to in coming weeks.

Sawing, sawing, sawing

Aaron, our instructor, demonstrating a quality of wood while the assistant instructor, Yuri, looks on

Yesterday was one of those Intense days as noted in the title of the course (12-week Intensive Furniture).  I discovered (well, I already knew it...) that I really do need to practice my hand sawing technique.  We had plenty of opportunity to do just that: practice sawing.

It might seem boring to saw a 3/4" cut into a piece of wood, over and over and over again, but the result was that I learned a lot about my biases.  When I'm sawing to the left of a line, I tend to lean toward the right.  When I am sawing the the right of the line, my sawing tends to be straighter. Don't read any deep political or other meaning into this.  It's just the way I saw. I suspect that it is because I can see the line more easily when I saw to the right of the line.

Aaron demonstrates cutting a mortise

You might wonder what difference it makes.  If I was just rough cutting a board to length, probably not much.  But we next went on to cut a mortise and tenon joint.  For this joint, one piece of wood has a hole in it (the mortise) and the other has an extension (the tenon) that fits into the hole. I didn't have any trouble with the mortise, but the tenon requires a lot of fairly precise saw work, even though you end up trimming it with a chisel (remember them - we spent the afternoon the first day, and the morning yesterday sharpening them, just for this exercise).  My first tenon fits in the mortise as it should, but, because of imprecise saw work, it is slightly skewed so that the two pieces do not come together to make a smooth joint.  It was off by almost 1/16 inch.  So, today I tried again - three more times. Each time was better, but I still found fault with each rendition.  I suspect that learning to see what is wrong and how to go about correcting it are probably the most valuable lessons I'll learn here.

Periodically, the instructor interrupts us for a demonstration or lecture on some aspect of the work we are doing.  Yesterday we discussed "tune-up" of a mortise gauge.

Typical Mortise gauge with two adjustable
marking points

My mortise gauge, which uses cutting wheels.
See the bottom of this posting for another look at it

My mortise gauge is of a different type than the typical one most of the students had (I have one like that at home but didn't bring it), so I took notes, but didn't have to do that tune-up. However, on examination of mine, we discovered that it had its own potential improvements.  This afternoon, we had a similar lecture on another type of marking gauge, the cutting gauge.   I do have one of these with me, and so spent some time making it work the way it ought to work instead of relying on the manufacturer's erroneous setup.  It comes as a complete surprise to me that these tools are made by people who should know how the tools are supposed to be used, but evidently don't.  Here's an online article on fixing the cutting gauge.

Yuri demonstrates using a Japanese saw to make the same cuts we were doing with western saws

Today before and after lunch we had a demonstration of making a through dovetail joint.  Later we cut and squared up the stock we'll be using tomorrow to make our own practice dovetail joints.

One of the concurrent things that is happening is that we are exhibiting our proficiency in using the various power tools in the machine room.  Each time we do some activity on a tool, an instructor observes us and gives his/her signature on our checklist.  The activities include such thing as running a rough board through a jointer to plane one face flat,  This is followed by correctly running the board through the thickness planer to make the two face surfaces smooth and parallel.  Anyone who does woodworking will recognize these as two steps in making a board "4-square."  The goal is to get initialed off three times on each activity.  Once we've achieved that, we won't need an instructor to observe everything we do.  Even though I've done all these things before, I appreciate the attention and thorough instruction that we are receiving.

For anyone reading this who wonders why I am going into all this detail, please understand that I'm summarizing for my own review as much as to satisfy anybody else's curiosity about what I am doing in Maine for the summer.  I know I have a few lurking followers who are woodworkers and are curious about what the school is all about, so they'll benefit from these descriptions. This is also for my family members who are curious about what their brother/cousin is doing. And for everybody else, I hope you enjoy my writing.

A more detailed view of the marking gauge
typical of the type most students have

Notes on usage of my mortise gauge from the
Lee Valley tool catalog

The School: Day One

The 12 week Intensive Furniture course began this morning.

I got out of bed way before I had to, discovered I didn't know how to use the microwave, left early, got to the school before 8 am.  But, even though the class wasn't scheduled to start until 9, I wasn't the first there.  Christoph, an engineer from France arrived at about the same time I did, and Devon was already there.

Christoph and I chose our workbenches, and I hauled in my over-large collection of tools.  Other students started to arrive, and as each arrived and chose a bench, we exchanged introductions.

Demographics: We have 12 students, a large range of experience, and two of the students are women.  I appear to be the oldest student, and the majority, I would guess are half my age, or less.  Many are hoping for a change of career.  A couple, like me, are hoping to improve their skills and therefore their pleasure in woodworking.

The morning was spent as you would expect in any course - administrivia, followed by safety rules, and other stuff of that sort.

Then we launched in to the course.  First was a discussion of wood - how trees grow, how they are cut up to make boards, the big part moisture plays in movement, warping, cupping, etc.

The big question everyone at home asked me: what are you going to make?  Well, now I know.  In the first two weeks we will be making a small bench of our own design which must incorporate dovetails and mortise/tenon joints.  In the next six weeks we'll be making a casework project, again of our own design, which must incorporate at least one door and at least one drawer. At this point, I plan on making a tool cabinet or something similar.

The final segment we will be making something incorporating bent wood.

A significant part of the afternoon was spent in sharpening 3 chisels.  I'm still not finished.  Then we got partway through a demonstration of making a properly squared up piece of wood from a rough cut board.  More of that and the chisel sharpening tomorrow.

The facilities are excellent.  The photo below is of the bench room.  The next room to the right is the machine tool room.  Large and well equipped, but not the huge industrial sized tools I used at AB Tech.

Through the door you can see in the right of the photo is what I would call the "coffee mess" or kitchen area, and the drafting room.

That's my bench with the yellow topped box next to it.  My "home" for the next 12 weeks.

In the evening I attended the weekly Faculty Slide Show.  First up was the fellow teaching a one week woodturning class.  He's from Seneca, SC, and I'm sure I've seen him at the JC Campbell Folk School.   His presentation was about his beautiful natural edge turned wooden bowls.

He was followed by Peter Korn, the school's Director.  He gave us several intertwined histories - his own, the school's, and the modern furniture making movement.   All very interesting.  Well worth coming back to the school this evening.

And so, good night for the first day of school.

By the way, I said I wan't going to show any more APRS plots, but I have two different routes I can take to get to the school from my apartment.  One takes 4 minutes, and the other about 6.  Here's all the plots for me today.  I think you can understand why this is the last one I'm going to post. The distance from Kathy's Lane, Scott Rd, Chris Rd, West Street Ext, and West St to the school is less than two miles.  The Tolman Pond Market is where I bought a sandwich for lunch.