Rough Wood

I am a bit romantic about this hand tool thing, but I am not driven by dogma. That’s a highbrow way of saying that I use a cordless drill. For now.

While I use mostly hand tools, I admit that my current situation is not entirely of my own doing. If I had been a garage owner when my woodworking roots started taking hold, I probably would have jumped into the same pool that the average hobbyist woodworker swims in—using power tools, with hand tools for touch-ups and the occasional organic work. I’m mostly glad things turned out this way. Mostly.

The up side to this is that I have spent my time working on discipline, on getting my hands functioning more precisely on command, and on getting my head around the way wood works. People refer to it as being “Zen” a lot, but for me it’s more like hand/eye yoga for now. I am not a production woodworker, so I have little reason to complete a table over a weekend, other than wanting to just get it done. What would I do then, make more shop furniture? I will probably make 2 tables for myself in my lifetime, so I’m in no hurry to fill up my house with efficiently-created experiments.

This opposition causes a few problems for me. While I have projects that I need to complete, I have a lot to learn and would like to try and enjoy the process. Along comes the tool cabinet…

I’ve begun designing a standing tool cabinet, to replace an old chest that is literally stuffed with woodworking shrapnel—and tools that deserve a much better home. Above you can see the rough current design, which requires 2 drawers and a central shelf on the left, and clear vertical space on the right (with a bottom shelf eventually). In order to be able to build it with hand tools, I’ve worked on a traditional frame and panel design. As it has congealed, it has become clear that there would be 28 mortises cut by hand, just for the legs. If I were more experienced at this, and had any shop space to stretch my legs in, that number wouldn’t sound so weird.

On the flip side, if I were to build the same cabinet using newer materials and techniques (all dados, grooves and rabbets), it would be a bit more like this:

Note that the drawers would likely use drawer hardware, rather than the traditional kicker/runner/glide structure, hence the empty hole in the drawer area.

So you may wonder: why not do it the easy way and go have a beer? I contend that it’s not always the easier way. Referring again to my shoplessness, in my situation I’d have to buy a circular saw—to ensure straight cuts, as cleaning up a 3′ long hand saw cut in plywood would be miserable. I could try the jigsaw with a clamping guide, but there are always tear-out and wandering concerns there. Those cuts would be edged with edge banding, so they’d have to be perfect. Then comes the groove/dado routing. This doesn’t sound like much fun, outside in the yard, annoying the neighbors and suited up for the apocalypse.

Here we cross a familiar threshold—buying tools for specific projects, and considering what your current tools were actually designed to do. Since I am just as new to circular saws and cutting rabbets in plywood, why not take the more deliberate route and do it by hand, without the added expense and inherent danger?

I also have a lot of residual cheaply manufactured plywood-and-MDF furniture in my house, and am trying to slowly replace it with stuff that doesn’t rack, stink, peel or eventually fall apart when the screws strip out…

This project will dominate my woodworking (and probably my blog) for a while. It’s a good testbed for developing my SketchUp skills, my traditional and modern design skills, and my patience. At this stage I’m leaning heavily towards the traditional approach, but with plywood panels throughout. I could hand-cut the panels with a ryoba since the edges don’t need to be made perfect due to their being in a groove. It’s either that, or make 7 or 8 glued-up panels and go to town with the plow plane and router plane.

That’s the best, and worst, of both worlds.

The pressure is artificial; you haven’t gone down this road for anyone but yourself. That still means making things for yourself, your friends and your family—and sometimes doing things just for the hell of it. It still means that you are not a professional woodworker, and should not expect professional results. Strive for it, but don’t beat yourself up when you don’t reach it.

Your past self is certain that this is no longer an option, but wanted to be supportive anyway. Good luck.

I have on occasion thought that on the day that I have the space for a real shop I may actually shed a tear. Today, however, I am thankful for not having a shop.

It’s odd, I know, but it’s true. I have been in the process of making various tools for myself, and had an occasion to shape a handle for a marking knife. On this particular day, I did not want to drag out the various implements of my temporary/breakdown shop, and sat myself on the floor with a length of 3/4″ square cherry and a spokeshave. The freedom of not relying upon a workbench, stops and dogs, and all those fun things in woodworking that we all take for granted, led to a much more organic process. I wondered if we have become a bit institutional with all of the hardware, micro-adjusters, RPMs, jigs and precision.

It was definitely less precise, but for something as delicate and curvaceous as a tool handle, that was a good thing. How would you go about shaping such an irregular thing while it’s clamped or stopped, without a lathe? Maybe you wouldn’t, and maybe when thinking about this you’d flash back to seeing your grandfather sitting on his porch, whittling to pass the time or to enjoy his new (to him) pocket knife.

So there I was, sitting on the floor, whittling with a spokeshave in a one-handed fashion, wishing I had a porch but enjoying myself nonetheless. Maybe it’s not so crazy after all, because I have a cool new marking knife, and all I had to do was vacuum the floor afterwards.

In a way, it was also a bit like playing with my new toys on the floor, except with very shiny and sharp toys. That’s even better.

I’ve been putting finish on my first cutting board. It was made by hand from about 12 strips of scrap cherry that I scavenged from a local fine furniture shop. In keeping with my interest in using natural materials when possible, I originally attempted to finish/season it with a butcher block conditioner. As it was all done by hand, and it was my first attempt, there were some cracks to fill. I filled them with epoxy and sanded for what seemed like hours. 20 gummy sanding discs later, I had a flat board again.

This time I opted to use an oil-based “salad bowl finish” and demoted the board to being an over-engineered food serving board. I don’t want that much epoxy touching my food every day, see. Maybe I’m paranoid, but everyone has a thing. I decided to seal the epoxy off with something more like  a shell, since it won’t be seeing regular chopping action.

Enter oil.

I made my first mallet recently, also using cherry. It was finished with a water-based finish called PolyWhey. It’s nice and durable stuff, but the mineral oil / beeswax conditioner really made the cutting board assert itself. The thinned varnish was even more amazing. The side grain on the edges of the board seemed to dance. I felt like I could see about 1/8″ into the grain. The “cat’s eye” stared at me for the first time, and I was hooked. I could not sleep that night; the grain was so beautiful that it literally haunted me.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia

I’m still trying to find a place in my life for this toxic muck, but I won’t forget that first deep understanding of chatoyancy and the hold that it has over me. Here’s a clip of some curly cherry with the same finish. So yummy.