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