I spent a large part of the last year in the midst of a divorce. Sometimes life gets in the way of living, and we have to step back and consider where we spend our time and energy, our love and attention, and our money. My enthusiasm for wood and woodworking (and hand tools, let’s be honest) cannot be disparaged. My time and energy, love and attention, and money, apparently, can. I had Big Plans for many projects. I finally had a usable workbench. Full speed ahead. Then, suddenly, it was all so unimportant in the grand scheme.

Upon later reflection, I realized that I had spent an inordinate amount of time making stuff for the ex. Cutting boards, kitchen stuff, planters and trinkets, aids for the aging cats—that sort of thing. The plans for bigger stuff were related to our collective needs. In the face of the split, it was hard to think about spending so much time toiling away on things that would have been for both of us. So I planned some projects for me, like some funky speaker stands that are also floor lamps, which I will post about once I get a little further on them.

Shortly afterwards, I discovered rock climbing, as a way to clear my head and get some exercise, and it became a more effective (and more social) way for me to spend my spare time. Productivity was less important than getting my bearings, so up I went. I’m happy to say that it has become one of my favorite things, and I wish I had started when I was younger.

But I digress, as I often do. So what am I on about here?

It is a rare opportunity—when one finds oneself suddenly standing at the edge of a giant crack in the ground, and can stare into everything that has been known and unknown, all at once. I found that I have a passion for wood—the mechanics of it, the tools used to work it, joinery, discussions about technique, and the occasional near-miss accident. Yes, even tool wars. I also found that, at least at this stage in my life, I don’t run to woodworking as an escape as I once did. It is not an island oasis for me to strand myself upon in times of stress and difficulty; it is a place I go when I need something—when I want to enjoy the process of designing and making that thing myself. It is not a place I will go every night and/or weekend just because it’s there. It is a place I will go to enrich myself, to learn and to grow, whenever it is right.

That sounds like evolution to me. It sounds like a maturation of my concept of woodworking as it relates to my life. Oddly, it coincides with my long aspirations to get back into being an actual artist. As I stare at 50 square feet of veneer on the floor in my office, neatly arranged by shade and texture, wood is now a part of that goal too.

Of course, I’ll post about that some day…

Next up, however, a walnut trestle table and matching benches. Stay tuned, and thanks!

One of those things has been the next version of The Woodshop Widget, and I’m very happy to say that it’s live! What’s new, you ask? I seriously have to go look at my list. It’s massive.

First off, the database has been expanded to 288 species. This now includes “common names,” specific gravity (density), Janka (hardness) and shrinkage information in varying amounts. This information comes from verifiable sources, primarily the USDA Forest Service. So you might find some holes here and there, and that generally means that the information only showed up in one place, and is not verifiable. There’s a lot of misinformation out there folks, be careful!

Comparison
Thanks to the new range of info, there’s a fun new tool for comparing species of wood based on these attributes. You can walk through sets of wood in 2 selectors that live side-by-side, and let the Widget tell you which is “better” based on hardness, shrinkage, etc. It’s fun too! As with everything else in the Widget, in the web version you can copy a URL for specific comparisons, and share that with others.

The image shows the iOS version.

Species
A new tool for walking through all of the species in the database, which also lists the common names and the technical info in plain English.

Updates
- The design of Decimal to Fraction has been reworked to be cleaner and clearer, and it now translates whole numbers in both directions
- “Board Feet” is now “Board Volume” and works in metric!
- Squareness has much greater precision
- Various visual design improvements

iOS
All of this stuff has been added to the iOS version, and some deep design changes in that flavor make it much more efficient for walking through lots of different variations of wood. The new wood selector is much more useful, showing scientific names and common names. The graphics have been updated to work with high-resolution displays, and I am told that it looks “sick!” It still works on older iOS devices as well.

The image show the new Wood Picker in use.

There are more details on the iOS-specific changes in the iTunes store. Due to its hugeness, the iOS version is now $3.99. The iOS update is free to paid users, so have fun!

The Wood Whisperer
After discussion of the past and future of the Widget as it relates to TWW, we have decided to remove this stuff from the Widget. I am still a Guild member, a TWW fan, and an admirer of Marc’s impressive t-shirt collection… and Marc will still be using the Widget. It just made sense for both of us; all is well.

All that said, have fun and let me know if you have any questions or issues. There’s more in the works!

People have told me that I look like him for years, and I had an occasion to change up my costume this year. I bought the robe, a tie and some glasses. I considered buying the wand. After shopping around I saw that most of them are really cheapo plastic things, the others expensive and overkill for something that would only see the light of day once a year.

Now, I’m no Harry Potter geek, but steps had to be taken. I mean really, a woodworker bringing more plastic into the world, plastic that’s molded and shaped to look like wood. That’s just crazy.

So I decided to make one. During a work crunch. With a $15 set of cheap carving tools that I had originally bought to carve pumpkins.

Questionable judgment aside, it turned out reasonably well for my first carving project. I used some thick avocado dowel that I had bought for something else. I sat on the floor in my office and started hacking away during renders. Unfortunately I didn’t get any shots of the process. I only had a little time to stop and tinker, and just dove in. I referenced photos of props to get the size and general shape of the thing. The original design involved 2 different woods, so there was some delineation to imply.

I learned a lot about carving in those hours of chopping at this rod of avocado. Most importantly, that I was afraid of the grain. I have spent so much energy and effort avoiding tear-out in unsupported grain while working on furniture and other construction-type projects that I spent several hours trying to not carve. I nibbled little hints of twists and and tweaks in the supposedly knotty old wood that made up the handle. I was satisfied enough at the time, but looking at it the next day, I realized that I had made a wooden version of the cheapo plastic wands…

So I got cocky the next day, as it seemed at the time, and just started going at it. I dug deeper and deeper into the wood. I felt reckless and irresponsible; I was crossing the streams.

But it looked a lot better.

After a few more hours I had a much better approximation of the 2 woods that were used in the original wand design. As I erased the tiny scribbles that I had sheepishly scratched into the wood before, I began to feel happier with the results. It was not a work of art by any stretch, but at least it was deliberate.

Now, here’s what I got really wrong. This was also my first time using shellac, and as an experiment I counted on the shellac for the coloration. I knew better, but was in a hurry and powered through it. So I had to use a lot of shellac. The result? Two different colors, neither of which is quite right, and a lot of shine. I will knock it down some day, and might even refinish it with some stain. Also, I have to give The Woodshop Widget another shout, because I was able to mix very small amounts of shellac for this small project. Good times.

As for the potential refinish, I feel like I’m a few steps ahead, having gone through the process in the first place, so I’ll see how much energy I have when Halloween rolls around next year and I dust it off.

Today marked my first trip to my hardwood dealer to get stock for small projects that will help to keep me occupied as I gear up to finally tackle my tool cabinet project. The good news is that I will also be networked in my “shop” and will be streaming my progress, if anyone’s interested. I’ll set up a link here in case anyone wants to pop in.

Back to the quickie, an example of determination follows: If you suddenly find yourself without a car, without a real shop, without a pep squad, and with a deep need to make some stuff, what do you do? Do you give up and sit around and watch TV? Do you complain that it’s too much trouble? Do you *assume* that it’s too much trouble? Or do you cowboy up and make it happen? I generally choose to cowboy up.

Here I am getting ready to hop on my bike to go get some walnut, complete with a ryoba sticking out of my bike courier bag. I call this “urban samurai woodworker.”

I managed to get 10′ of rough-cut walnut back home on my bike:

Incidentally, the walnut is for some small speaker stands, which may or may not double as floor lamps. Maybe there’s another post in that, but I’m still tinkering.

The point is: soldier on, friends. Life is unpredictable. Find your center, find your way, and don’t let anyone or anything get in your way.

Side note: I got a chance to use The Woodshop Widget for the first time at the hardwood dealer where I was originally inspired to build it, and it was pretty awesome…

I’ve been working on a widget that’s absolutely crammed with woodworking utilities, with Marc Spagnulo, for about 8 months now. There are two flavors: an iPhone/iPod/iPad app version and a web version.

It has everything from shellac mixing and dilution (in Imperial and Metric) to a wood movement calculator with data for 230+ species of wood. The iPhone flavor even knows what your local number formatting system is, and uses your local currency for calculations, so it will automatically work for anyone who can read English, anywhere!

It’s an ongoing project, with live tips updated by Marc and more functionality already in the works. You can copy links directly in the widget and share your calculations and other information with others by pasting the links elsewhere. Lots of stuff going on here, and it’s finally live! Here are a couple of grabs from the app version. The web version has all of the same functionality, with a different interface.

You’ll be hearing a lot more about this in the next few weeks. You can check out the web version at woodshopwidget.com, and grab the iOS app here. If you have any questions or comments please let us know!

It turned out almost as I had planned, with a few minor modifications along the way. The joinery was a bit more complicated than expected.

At the junctures of all of the rails, there are stopped grooves that open to mortises from 2 directions. Since the legs are relatively thin, the tenons are trimmed at an angle to allow them to mate with the tenons sharing most of the mortise. Lots of geometry in these corners, and in something like chunky and irregular redwood there’s a major risk of blowing structure out. On more than one occasion I found myself right on the edge of peeling entire layers of this wood apart like an onion. I had to glue a chunk of one of my tenons back together when half of it peeled right off. Be careful with this stuff.

There are a few things I would do differently. First off, I’m glad that I went all-in with the hand-cutting of all of that joinery. It was good practice. I was in a weird headspace the whole time though. I chose fencing materials since I could get stock in sizes that were close to what I need. This material is cut to size, but warps and bows quite a bit. So while intending to do this precise joinery, that little voice kept saying: “It’s just fencing, and it’s just a planter, so I won’t bother planing this…” In the end my joinery was a bit less precise than I had wanted, partially because redwood compresses so much that even with a good fit, it won’t be a good fit for long if you’re not very careful.

My angles were slightly off due to slight warping in various pieces, but with slightly rounded edges on the fence stock, I couldn’t plane down much. I used the softness of the wood to my advantage and coaxed things into place when necessary. It all came together though, at about 4mm off square.

One thing that I was particularly cautious about was guarding against water pooling and wicking. For the tongue and groove joints I angled the shoulders of the tongues down slightly to encourage water to run out. I sealed the ends of the tenon shoulders with glue so they wouldn’t absorb so much water. Those shoulders are partially exposed to the elements due to rounding of the stock. I also applied some thinned glue as a sizing to the bottom of the feet, then a coat of full-strength glue over that while it was still wet. The intention here is to get some glue soaked into the fibers where the feet will be in constant contact with the ground.

This project also served as a testbed for some theories about building outdoor furniture. I’ll revisit this in a few years and see what’s still intact. I think having done it all with waterproof glue, mortise and tenons, floating panels, and liberal amounts of sealing should mean that this thing will be around longer than me.

Once the glue dries I’ll put mountains of soil into it and start planting things in my new mini herb farm. It’s Dogfish Head time.

Also, major carnage…

First off, yes, a big machine with whirling knives is more dangerous than a hand plane. Table saws are very hungry for fingers. Kickbacks can send you racing off to SpleenMart. “Router flour” can cake your lungs in seconds flat. In comparison, a discussion of the dangers of hand tool woodworking might seem like comparing freeway driving at high speeds with a romp in a bumper car with flames painted on the side. Bear with me.

Conventional wisdom recommends occasionally walking away from the big metal beasts and picking up a hand saw for a pleasant vacation in HappyLand. This is definitely “safer” in comparison; that doesn’t mean that it’s “safe.” With hand tools our guard is lowered, and we get sloppy.

When I saw and plane in my office/not-shop, I leave some amount of a very fine dust on everything within a 5 foot radius. Early on, I noticed that dust was being sucked into my wind tunnel of a computer, and it was constantly spewing small amounts back into the environment of my office. I had inadvertently created a dust collection and dispersal box. I would also find dust in my nose, which means that it’s getting into my lungs as well. These things showed me how much dust I was generating, just using hand tools.

I consider the risk of dust exposure to be greater than the risk of mangling a digit. Surely, cutting yourself (or losing a finger) is a horrible thing. But those sweet-smelling clouds of wood aid in the formation of various cancers, and other lung issues. It’s not only the volume of dust that’s a concern, it’s the size of the particles and the amount of exposure. Fineness determines how deeply into the lungs the particles go. The finest particles can settle into lower portions of your lungs, and it’s much more difficult for your body to get rid of them. ”Woodworker’s Lung” was around long before we learned to harness electricity. Some species of wood are directly associated with cancer, and you don’t want any amount of that in your body.

In a power tool shop you might switch on the dust collection system and wear a mask, because you expect it. For hand tools, many people skip lung protection entirely. While it is sometimes reasonable, and currently fashionable, to overlook something as simple as a dust mask, you might be surprised at how much dust can be generated using a hand saw and a plane.

Rip sawing turns each cut into a fine powder, which can easily be seen drifting around, waiting to lodge itself in your lungs.

Planing can also generate some nasty dust clouds. It is not usually associated with dust because you’re aiming for shavings, but a very thin shaving is not like a stable sheet of paper, it’s more like a tight web. Some of that is going to generate dust. As well, some species of wood (generally softer woods) generate more dust than others since the fibers tend to crush before being cut.

At times I feel like I’m an overzealous planer, almost like I’m channeling the Tasmanian Devil. The instructional and demo videos of plane usage on the web are usually meant to show form and technique, at a snail’s pace. This is not how it goes in real life. To really get somewhere (especially if you’re thicknessing a bunch of stock at once) you have to generate a rhythm, and since you have a lot of ground to cover by hand, you tend to do it rather quickly.

When the dust clears, it’s either on horizontal surfaces, in your lungs, or stuck to the mask that you should have been wearing when you first noticed it floating around.

Until next time, may the safety unicorn smile upon you.

Behold, the formerly vast expanses of my desk.

It’s pretty cool to sit here, toiling away, and glance over at my planes, thinking of what I’d much rather be doing. It’s a bit torturous at times, but it’s better than carefully stuffing my beautiful toys into a box. I consider it character.

I’ve bought and made a lot of stuff. I am on the verge of having too much stuff, partially because of my space limitations. While I’m not naive enough to think that there won’t be more stuff in the future, I’m not… you know… on the prowl anymore.

Don’t get me wrong, I likes the tools. I want one of each kind of hand plane that I could stand to maintain. I want at least one more size of combo square. I want every chisel that Lie-Nielsen makes. I want a lot more clamps. I want a spill plane in case I’m ever lost in a cave without any batteries for my flashlight—and happen to have one in my backpack, along with some scrap wood.

I’ve spent a lot of time perusing catalogs. I’ve seen lots of funky and interesting one-off tools, and jigs a-plenty. For a while now, it has been a constant barrage of Stuff. So many options, so many colors—I must leave here with something.

But I really don’t need any of it.

Maybe my enthusiasm is on hiatus because I’m so busy. I like to think it’s because my space limitations have helped me to think in terms of compactness and multi-purpose-ness, to plan ahead, and to set my stuff limit much lower than most. As it stands, I have a decent, yet humble, arsenal. Everything else just increases efficiency.

Then again, maybe I just ran out of space and my subconscious is taking the high road.

She had a fun name, which was given to her by a neighbor, before my time. She was from the wrong side of the tracks. When she moved in with me she rose to the occasion. I wouldn’t allow her to demand attention of me, then swat at me when I touched her anywhere below her head—water in a spray bottle works wonders with cats. She became one of the most loving animals I’ve ever known. She was adorable of course, and she tolerated my photographic experiments. She was a good subject.

About 18 months ago, she fell from the internal balcony of our townhouse condo, breaking her pelvis in two locations. She was up and ready to walk in 2 weeks. She later went through a number of intense health issues, only to bounce back into perfect friend mode. She was always around when I was sick, and she loved to sleep in my lap for hours on end, preferably in whatever position was most uncomfortable for me.

As many of those health issues slowly wore her down, in the last few weeks she had been on the decline. On Saturday, we had to let her go. It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last, but that familiar vacuum is very present today. “The Longest Hour” is that last hour that we had with her before our vet appointment. It was absolutely terrible, but I’m happy for every second of it. She fell asleep on my chest for the last time.

You may wonder why I’m posting this here. Beyond sharing our grief in this now-familiar forum, she was one of the original reasons for my finally taking the plunge into woodworking. After her fall she had trouble getting into the bed with us, so I planned to make a bench that she could use to step up. I made a tiny table for food bowls after she suddenly went blind due to hypertension (a condition from which she recovered); I made a little ottoman/step for her favorite chair because she couldn’t handle the jump by herself; I made a ramp for her litter box as she began having trouble getting over the edge.

This is an example of the many things that affect our lives in unexpected ways—of how a pet can become an unforeseen source of inspiration, or necessity. As well, woodworking improved her life just as it has improved mine. I might go so far as to say that my “hobby” helped to keep her with us for just a little while longer.

So thank you, Snausages, for everything. We love you and we miss you terribly. I will think of you fondly when I am building things, and I can’t thank you enough for that.

It’s also time for me to take care of that pile of *stuff* that had to be put on hold while I hibernated. I saw the light last weekend, and started attacking a planter project that has been at the bottom of that pile. It’s a 3′ x 3′ (roughly) planter box with a bottom, in which we will grow a range of herbs in our tiny back yard. This one has to be finished in time for early spring planting, so it’s chop-chop time for me.

After some shopping around, I found that buying chunks of fencing at the widths that I needed would do the trick for less than buying and breaking down lumber from a hardwood source. With my now-indispensible keychain tape measure in hand, I headed off to Home Depot for some fencing. I grabbed 6′ lengths of 5.5″ x 3/4″ FSC-certified redwood (not surfaced) for $1.87 a piece. Yes, please.

I also grabbed some 8′ lengths of semi-decorative strips at 1.5″ x 1.5″, something that would have been less expensive to rip down from a board bought at a hardwood dealer. I don’t have a table saw, and ripping long strips with a hand saw isn’t my idea of a good time these days, so prefab wins this round.

On one particularly nice day, my saw bench, my ryoba and I planted ourselves on the patio and started breaking this stuff down. The interesting bit is that I reworked my original plan for the planter based on the stock that I bought, and accurately built the joinery (mostly grooves) into the SketchUp model. After spending a bit of time confirming the accuracy of the model, I then used it as reference for each initial cut. I did some rework on the sizing of the grooves as I went.

This thing isn’t really complicated, but it was the first time I’ve left the numbers up to SketchUp after building the joinery to specs.

For this project I’m going full-bore. For absolutely no reason other than practice, I’m cutting mortise & tenon joinery for the frame and grooving the panels in. I think practice is a good reason, as the next project is the tool cabinet. At the very least, it will be the most over-engineered  flower pot in the history of civilization.

Rain or shine, if you will.

On a tangent, I cleaned up my cuts and did some surfacing on the components with the new workbench and it went very smoothly. I can’t describe how much less fatiguing it is to do face planing on a bench that you don’t have to simultaneously hold down with a foot…