What is a travisher? In this article, I’m going to show you how to make my favourite tool for shaping Windsor chair seats. A travisher is a type of spoke shave, designed for working out a concave in a piece of wood – the type of profile often seen of the base of a chair, for example. With a travisher, you can rough out a seat blank very quickly, taking large shavings, or take the finest of shavings for a finishing cut. It’s the tool that students like to use on my courses. It’s perfect if you want some texture to any sawn surface that doesn’t need to be planed flat. A medium or heavily-curved travisher will produce a textured surface to a rustic shelf, or the finest of chair seats. You can source old travishers online, but they usually need a lot of remedial work to get them functioning
Vic Tesolin takes you through the building of a tool box design that is millennia old. I’m a believer in the axiom, ‘A place for everything and everything in its place’. This couldn’t be truer when it comes to my woodworking tools. Not only does this keep your space organised but it keeps your precious tools safe too. You also spend less time searching for tools when you are in the throes of a build. The Japanese certainly understood this and their tool boxes are a testament to that. With their simple designs and easy building techniques, these boxes make great storage solutions. You can make them big or small, fancy or spare. Either way, you will have a classy home for your tools. The one in this article is on the large size designed with Western tools in mind. The traditional material for this tool box is softwood –
Could your workshop use a bit of a tidy up? Well, the Editor talks us through small, but effective changes to maximise efficiency and safety. No doubt this is a wonderfully productive workshop, but if your workshop and workshop practices resemble this, then maybe a bit of a rethink is necessary. Workshops are personal to us all. They are our space that reflects our needs, likes and what we want to do in them. It is, however, a truism that no matter how big the workshop we have, we will always find things to fill it, and thereby need an even bigger workshop. We can dream of bigger workshops, but the reality is, we must all look at utilising space well. But it isn’t just space in a workshop that affects how we work – there are other things we need to consider that directly affect how well we can
The author takes you from sharpening your knives to making your first triangular chip cut. I would like to take you through the process of sharpening, choosing your wood, carving positions, drawing a grid, and on to your first cuts. I have taught a lot of people the art of chip carving and the greatest difficulty they seem to have is getting to grips with sharpening. I hope to break this down into a series of logical steps and try to remove the feeling that it is a ‘black art’. What we are trying to achieve is a blade that tapers from the back edge to the cutting edge as a smooth taper, culminating in a fine micro-bevel. The sides of the blade and the bevel should be finished to a high polish such that, when drawn across the end grain of a piece of wood it cuts very easily
Such is the temptation of repeating tasks in woodworking, that I was encouraged by my editor to undertake something new – something more challenging. For one reason or another, I landed on turning a square bowl. The combination of creating a square object with a lathe seemed appropriately at odds. With everything have gone well so far, in this article I’m continuing to the later stages of construction, including thinning out the inside, sanding off, and finishing for that desirable glean. This is still very much an experiment, so please do bare with my thoughts about how to overcome challenges – I do, of course, hope that such illuminations will be of use to you. So far, with a cautious approach, the process has been enlightening, and I have managed to overcome every obstacle with some form of inventiveness. Will it continue? We’ll see! Finishing cuts With the curve looking
Cedar is a catch-all name for many different species of often unrelated tree – we show you a few of them In this series we have looked at a very few species of tree in each article. There cannot be a single, named tree in the world that isn’t related to others or, in some cases such as cedar, frequently ‘unrelated’. It does get very complicated – so much so that we thought it might be better to take several different ‘cedars’ as examples because they have such diverse properties that are useful to the woodworker. Pinaceae family (Cedrus or Cedar) Cedar of Lebanon There are five species in this group, but Cedar of Lebanon (Cedrus libani) is well known and liked as workable timber. Location Over the centuries, extensive deforestation has occurred, with only small remnants of the original forests surviving. Deforestation has been particularly severe in Lebanon and
Theo Cook shares one of the Robinson House Studio’s student projects. (First published in 2017) A project Robinson House Studio likes to do with every student is a serving tray, because of the techniques it covers and the variety of skills you can learn from it. In this single project students can cover routing, veneering, laminating, using a spokeshave and sanding. In fact it covers more things than any other project you can do in a week. It’s such a great teaching platform that we’ve devised a short version and a long version. The 12-week and one-year students make their trays over a two-week period, going into more detail and also learning to use all the machines required to make it themselves. The one-week students have some of the preparatory work done for them by tutor Theo, such as the initial machining of the timber. The shorter course students also use
Geoffrey Laycock visits renowned gunmakers Holland & Holland of London, and discovers a world not so far removed from that of the cabinetmaker. So what does gunmaking have to do with furniture making you might ask? Well, for a start it requires the utmost attention to detail and the excrutiatingly accurate mating of components made from different materials. If this sounds in any way familiar then what follows needs little explanation. If on the other hand, you’re not convinced then just enjoy the nature of bespoke work and fine craftsmanship and be inspired. Although some shotguns and rifles now use alternative materials for stock and forearm, the vast majority still use wood, giving the best appearance and tactile qualities we all know and love. For mass-produced guns these days, almost every part is formed by an inanimate machine capable of supreme repetitive accuracy making them super reliable and very reasonably
Bridle joints are common in frame construction because of their strength. The wide mortise and tenon provide plenty of glue surface for a rock-solid joint. Randy Maxey shows how you can make a bridle joint with a band saw and table saw.
To buy Randy’s book: “Wood Joints by Machine & by Hand”
Randy Maxey shares a project design he used to teach woodworking to local residents in El Salvador through the non-profit organization “Tools for Opportunity” @toolsforopportunity7242 The simple design allowed the woodworkers to become familiar with power tools and woodworking design principles. It is a popular design that will not only look good in your home, but it serves an important function in keeping your outdoor gear handy and organised.
Every once in a while, someone comes up with a radical new method or tool that knocks tradition for a loop. Tooley Park scribes are a new take on a centuries-old method of scribing a workpiece. For example, fitting a cabinet filler strip against a wall that’s less than plumb and even. Or scribing an inset door to fit the cabinet opening precisely. Or scribing the bottom of a chair leg for cutting it to eliminate wobble. Many craftsmen and carpenters would use a compass or a crude shop-made tool to do the job. Tooley Park offers another option for scribing that is worth a look.
Stanley Bedrock planes were first introduced in the late 1800s. Their design is a little different, some say better, than conventional bench planes of the era. Randy Maxey disassembles the Bedrock plane to clean all the components before reassembly.
Learn more about Stanley Bedrock Hand Planes:
http://www.supertool.com/StanleyBG/stan15.htm
https://toolsforworkingwood.com/store/blog/1314
Stanley Bedrock hand planes were designed and manufactured to be different than conventional Bailey-style hand planes. But were Bedrock planes better than the common bench plane? Randy Maxey compares the two styles of hand planes and points out the differences between them.
These planes were first introduced in the late 1800s. Their design is a little different, some say better, than conventional bench planes of the era. Randy Maxey was fortunate enough to get his hands on a couple of Bedrock 605 bench planes when a technical school decided to get rid of them. After a few years in storage, he pulls one off the shelf to learn more about Bedrock planes and bring this old hand plane back to life in the workshop.
