When you are demonstrating you need to show off your talents so David Barron’s toolbox had to feature through dovetail and mortice & tenon joints Storing and transporting my tools to shows and demonstrations used to be a juggling act involving cardboard boxes and bubble wrap. It was time to make a purpose-built toolbox. I have always fancied constructing one and there are some beautiful examples in The Toolbox Book by Jim Tolpin. The danger with any purpose-made box is that you forget some essential tool or you add a new tool which doesn’t fit. Conversely you can try to anticipate future needs and end up with a box that is too big to move.I laid out all the tools I needed to accommodate, photo 1, and then thought hard about the style of the Bandsaw Upgrade The bandsaw is the latest machinery upgrade in my workshop and I am
Louise Biggs shows us you can have your cake and eat it too. This cake stand is made of quartersawn London plane (Platanus hybrid) also known as ‘lacewood’. My customer had made the cake stand at sixth-form college, with all the parts being produced between his woodwork and metalwork classes. Some decades later the frame sections had warped and twisted. Eager to keep it complete we embarked on a journey to try straightening them. I felt there was little we could do with the twist even if we succeeded in straightening them. Assessment Tool list For the turning Stages of Restoration Attempting to straighten the uprights Further reading
The author shows how to carve this striking member of the thrush family. The fieldfare (Turdis pilaris) is a migratory bird that breeds in Scandinavia, central and northern Europe and as far as parts of China. The fieldfare’s name derives from the Anglo-Saxon word ‘feldeware’, meaning ‘traveller of the fields’. They can be found feeding in hedgerows and fields and they also like woodlands. They are a highly social species with some flocks numbering hundreds of birds. To avoid the harsh winters they migrate and large numbers come to Britain in October/November, but are mostly returned to their breeding grounds by April/May. I chose to use jelutong (Dyera costulata) for this project. It is a timber that is easy to carve and holds detail, including fine pyrography markings. If you do not have jelutong, lime (Tilia vulgaris) would work well too, but you need to be a bit more careful
Mark Ivan Fortune takes you through the steps to carve this beautiful decoration. All things in the natural world, whether animal, plant, crystal or snowflake, have a growth pattern. They grow outward in any and all directions, depending on the inherent nature of the form. Working with this in mind will greatly assist in invoking life and character in your carving. Here I have created a strong enclosed form that, although it may appear quite delicate, is in fact robust and durable and suitable for a wide range of applications. Employing the use of some well-executed undercutting lifts the flower head from its surrounding, which is our main focal point. The subtle but clear distinction between background, middle ground and foreground gives a good sense of depth to the overall piece. Begin by sketching the design to gain an understanding of the form. This will enable you to rough out
We wax lyrical about the sticky subject of keeping your tools shiny and running smoothly. An email from a reader querying my advocacy of WD-40, set me on a train of thought about how we can keep the wheels of woodworking turning, so to speak. Ever since human beings have had a need to get objects to move, or tools to function well, there has been a need to lubricate and protect. As tools and technology get more sophisticated, so newer more specialised lubricants have become available to help do this. I haven’t written an exhaustive list of lubricants and rust protection, but I hope it will be a guide to help ease the way. The first thing is to consider what the general descriptions of different materials means as shown below. These descriptions have been written in a rather academic way, trying to encapsulate all the relevant properties of
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
Although I have called this a book stand, it could be multifunctional. It could be used to hold books, magazines, a tablet, drawings – all the possibilities are there. Even the size isn’t critical. It took me only a few hours to make and the result is pleasing to look at as well as functional. Now read on… Hinges You end up with a nice neat book stand that looks like this… …or folded up, like this. You can carry it with you or pop it on the bookshelf, it’s always ready as a reading aid! Further reading
Paul Purnell makes coasters using pen blanks. Large end-grain projects are reasonably straightforward if you possess a planer/thicknesser and a huge industrial drum sander, but not everyone does (including me). These coasters are an introduction to working with end-grain without access to this equipment. Once you are able to manage these, an end-grain chopping board is feasible. It is crucial that edges are flat and at 90° to each other. Without this, there will inevitably be gaps in the finished piece. This project is a challenge, but a worthwhile one. Anyway, a few gaps will show the coasters were handmade. If you have an accurate bandsaw or tablesaw, you could cut the blanks from your own wood stock. However, this will limit you to the types of wood you have. I experimented by ordering 30 pen blanks via the internet. Their size and 90° accuracy varied, and strangely the more
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.
