Posts Tagged With: Tools

Sometimes the threads of my interest and focus are a scary thing.

For example, I recently got Matt Bickford’s book Mouldings in Practice from Lost Art Press.  I’ve read the first 4 or 5 chapters word-for-word, but now I’m itching to get a set of hollows and rounds and experiment with making mouldings.  I’ve been watching for Hollows and Rounds on eBay for months, basically ever since I learned about the upcoming Bickford book.  I was trying to avoid the Schwarz Effect where even a mention of a specific old tool will send the prices through the ceiling.  So far, I haven’t found the right set, and now that the book is out I expect to see prices skyrocket.

Instead I decided to order Larry Williams’ DVD on Making Traditional Side Escapement Planes.  The DVD is also available from Lie-Nielsen, who also sells floats (more later) and tapered moulding iron blanks.

The DVD came in the mail this week and after watching it I highly recommend it.  Larry Williams makes traditional wood planes through his business, Old Street Tool, and in this DVD he shows every step in making a matched set of #10 hollow and round planes.  He talks about stock preparation, layout, making the escapement, chopping the mortise, making and fitting the wedge, shaping and heat treating the iron, and shows every other step along the way to a finished pair of planes.  Even if you don’t want to make your own side escapement planes this is worth buying and watching in my opinion.

Here is a snippet from the video where Larry demonstrates how to sharpen plane floats.

Wait, what’s a plane float?  It’s essentially a coarse file with sharp cutting edges that shear off the wood and leave a flat, crisp surface.  Lie-Nielsen sells them in a variety of styles, prices range from $40 to $60 each.  You can also make your own plane floats as shown here and here.  From watching Larry’s video it appears that you need at least one edge float and one side float.  Larry also recommends a 1/10″ chisel.

I looked on eBay for floats of course, but there were just antique/expensive items there.  I particularly like this one, I like how the shape just flows from end to end.

Antique float from eBay

The teeth on a float are shaped in the same way you would sharpen a rip saw.  The instructions I linked to above show filing the teeth directly into the float blank.  I wonder how long this would take?  The edge float would be fast, it’s basically a tiny rip saw.  The side float perhaps not so fast.  I could also see a blacksmith cutting these teeth with a canted chisel, and if I had to make more than one I’d almost certainly set it up on the mill.

Float Teeth

I also ordered Todd Herrli’s video on Making Hollows and Rounds, it hasn’t arrived yet or I’d be watching that instead of blathering on here.

So to recap, in order to experiment with sticking some mouldings I need to get a few hollow and round planes.  Bickford suggests at least two pair.  I think it would be fun to make my own H&R planes, but first I need a few special tools.  Like floats and a tiny chisel.  I’ll need to get some tapered iron blanks from Lie-Nielsen, and quartersawn Beech or Cherry stock for the plane bodies.

It’s a 3 day weekend.  I need to weld a few oil tanks, program the CNC (unrelated to anything else in this post) and then I think I’ll see what I can do about making a float.

Christopher Schwarz posted a couple of pictures of a rare (as in “the only one known”) Harvey Peace square hole saw in a recent blog.  The saw really caught my attention as I’ve never seen anything like it.  It’s not that I have a tool problem or anything.  Really.  And no, I don’t think the fact that Mark at Bad Axe Tool Works is on my speed dial list means anything.

But check this saw out.  It’s so wrong that it’s right.  Look at the tooth pattern on the front of the saw compared to the sideways portion.

I googled for information about it, and ended up emailing Joshua Clark at Hyperkitten about it as he collects Harvey Peace saws.  Turns out HE owns this saw now.  Small world.  Here is what he said about it:

The square hole saw that Chris featured on his page was made by Harvey Peace though Disston did have a similar design. It must have been an old idea since neither seemed to patent it. The saw was designed to cut square holes in walls, etc without having to drill holes at the corners as you might with a compass saw. Here is a picture of the Peace saw from an old catalog I have:

Yesterday I commented on my dovetail saw that didn’t cut straight, and what I did to correct matters.  It’s still not a great saw.  It’s not as sharp as it should be, the handle is crooked and the ergonomics are all wrong.  But it is good enough for me to make some practice dovetails in some pine offcuts to learn the process.

Another tool that I bought to help with making dovetails is a marking gauge.  You need this to lay out the baseline for the pins and tails.  You want a crisp, sharp line so that you know exactly where to stop sawing.  You should be able to use this line to accurately register the chisel when chopping out the waste.

So I bought a “Shop Fox” marking gauge.  It looks just like other marking gauges.  A thumbscrew to lock the slidey brass thingie in place, and a little disk on the end to score the wood fibers.  I immediately realized the problem with this tool, the marking disk has a rounded edge that was at least .060″ thick at the tip.  The shape of disk is a wedge in cross section, so that the deeper you mark the wider the scribed line.

I worked the back of the disk on a stone until it had a crisp edge, but it still isn’t adequate.  The line is just too coarse.  I scored a line with a knife and straightedge for comparison (going over a scribed line from the marking gauge) and the difference is night and day.

The Glen-Drake Tite-Mark is officially on my Christmas list now.  I’m not sure if Santa thinks I’ve been a good boy (I haven’t), but I can hope.

In the meantime I’m going to mark out my baselines with a knife and rule.

Somewhere I read the phrase “tool shaped objects”, probably in the Anarchist’s Tool Chest although I’m sure I’ve heard it before that.  The premise is that manufacturers make things, tools in this particular case, but over time they have lost their understanding of what makes the tool do it’s job.  It still looks like the same tool, and at a casual glance may even function to some extent.

But where it counts the tool falls flat.  I’d hazard a guess that a large percentage of the tools in any big box store fall into that category.

Case in point number number one: The Dovetail Saw.

I decided I wanted to learn how to made dovetails by hand.  My process:

1. Read everything I can about it

2. Procure the essential tools, if I don’t already have them (and I never seem to…)

3. Try it

4. Look at the results, figure out what could be improved, go to #3 until I’m satisfied.

For step number two, I didn’t have a hand saw to cut with.  So I went to the local woodworker store and picked up a “gent’s saw”.  I didn’t expect it to be a great tool given the price — under $20, compared to $100 plus for what are touted to be good saws.  But I didn’t know what to expect from a good saw versus a bad saw.

So I clamped up a piece of wood and made a few test cuts.  Bleuch.  Seriously?  How can a straight saw cut a curve? (see the “before” cuts in the picture below).  After reading an article by David Charlesworth and seeing a video by Rob Cosman I understood one important point about dovetail saws.  To cut straight they need to have minimal set.  Charlesworth recommends making a few light passes with a stone on each side of the blade to remove some of the set.

You see, the problem is that with an excessive amount of set the resulting kerf is large enough to allow the blade to flop around.  So I made a few strokes on each side of the teeth with a medium stone and tried the cut.  Amazingly, it was better.  I tried another stroke per side, better still.  At 4 or 5 strokes per side I had the saw cutting true with a narrow kerf (see the “after” part of the photo below).

This got the saw to the “good enough” point so that I could start practicing.  That is, of course, another story.