Week Four: Wednesday - a New Month.

The case project

As planned, I started reducing that pile of rough lumber to sized pieces today.   I ran five of the boards through the 12-inch jointer to flatten one face.  That required 4 or 5 passes across the jointer for each board, removing about 1/32 inch on each pass. Then they went through the thickness planer to make the opposite face parallel to the jointed face.  This also required multiple passes through the machine for each of the five boards, with the ultimate result of making the faces parallel, and all of them 0.75 inches thick.

The third step in the process is to pass one edge of each board repeatedly through an 8-inch jointer ( I could have returned to the 12-inch jointer for this step, but there are other people flattening their stock.) until the edge was clean and perpendicular to the two planed surfaces.

The final step was to go to the table saw to cut four of the boards to their final width for the outer case top, bottom and two sides, and the fifth board to a narrower width for a divider on the interior of the case.  This last operation is called ripping.

When you go to Lowes or Home Depot to buy your lumber, it has already had all this done to it.  It's already 3/4 inch thick, the faces are planed flat and parallel, and you just have to make a decision about what kind of wood you want and how long you want it to be.  The difference is that you probably can't buy hard maple in either store, and you have to accept the widths they stock.  Also, in the case of hardwoods, they would probably charge you a whole lot more for the wood if it was pre-planed.  I could have chosen to make my thicknesses something else, such as 5/8 inch, but, 3/4 inch gives me some advantages a narrower thickness wouldn't have, and I'm used to working with that thickness.

The next step was to cut the boards to length.  For obvious reasons, this is called cross-cutting.  Because the boards were originally cut casually with a hand circular saw to rough lengths, the first thing to do on each board was to make a cut removing the minimum wood from one end to square up that end.  Then, each board was measured for length.  Actually, the process I used was to use the shortest board and to make successive very fine cuts until I got it to exactly 30 inches.  This is the length of one side.  I then set up a "stop block" on the saw table so that I could just set three other boards to be cut without having to do any measuring.  I assure you that if you were to measure and cut four boards to the same length, they would end up all varying slightly.  Using the method I described, I could stand all four boards on end and their opposite ends would match exactly.

The whole process I described, making the boards flat, faces parallel, edges perpendicular to the faces, and squaring up the ends is known as making the boards "6-square."

Just for curiosity, I checked my Fitbit before and after.  Even though I was only walking a couple of feet with each pass of a board through a machine, I walked well over 2000 steps in the process!  Just thought you'd like to know.

I didn't cut the fifth board to length yet.  I'm not quite ready to use it, but when I am, it's already exactly the same thickness as the other parts..

The four boards I cut to length form the outer case that I'm building.  Tomorrow I'll start to mark out the dovetails to join them, and then begin cutting the pins and tails.

The saw horse project

Today we made the last two pieces, the top cross pieces, and cut the half-lap joints on them and the four uprights.   Now that we had all the pieces, it was time to start fitting them together.

The first thing I had to do was to plane the uprights and the top pieces because the half-lap cuts were slightly undersized.  Remember I said that I sharpened my new chisels and a plane iron on Saturday.  The plane made very short work of fitting the half-lap joints.  It is a real pleasure to work with very sharp tools, even if it is a lot of work to get them that way.  I'm not bragging when I tell you that I measured the thickness of one of the shavings made by the plane to be 0.002 inches ( 2 thousandths or 2/1000 of an inch) thick.  I'm impressed, even if you aren't.

The next thing I had to do was square up mortises in the uprights and the foot pieces.  These had all been drilled out with 1/2" round bits, so they had round corners.  I had to make a decision to either make the tenons round to fit the round slots or square up the mortises.  I chose the latter.  I made a series of photos showing the squaring of the drilled mortise in one of the feet, and fitting of the tenon into the mortise.

The mortise drilled in one of the feet.  It is 1/2"
wide as defined by the drill bit used to make
it.  The length is about 2 inches.

The mortise after squaring the corners with a
chisel

Here's the tenon. The long "cheeks" were cut
on a table saw to match the mortise's 1/2" width.
The short cheeks are marked for cutting
and fitting into the mortise.

The first trial. Almost fits, but still needs
a little bit of trimming

A "whisker" about to be
removed with one of
my very sharp chisels.

And another whisker

This time it fits!

This is what one saw horse will look like when completed.
No glue yet, the feet need some shaping,
and there are through mortises on the legs that
need some touch-up with a plane.

I apologize if the photos are out of order. I'm not always able to get them to go where I want them to in this program. It requires some 'dicking around' with the HTML and that's more work than I want at this time.

The Book Rack project

The book rack got a coat of finish on it first thing this morning, and another one before I left to come home this evening. 

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.