Woodworking 101--Tools and Tips

[turbowoodworker]

Time to get off ma *** and contribute some more.
For those interested in hand tool techniques and accoutrements, the latest issue, Winter 2017, of Tools and Shop, has some really good articles with pictures. I think those that have questions about bench dog use will find it instructive.

Taunton Press puts out arguably the best woodworking magazine, Fine Woodworking. Some argue it is a little too high flying for most of us (me for sure), but it can be very inspirational, especially if you make furniture. Once a year they put out this special edition. Usually it is full of TS or power tool reviews (hint advertising), but this on has articles on making a woodworking bench, mounting a vise, jigs for hand work and cabinet projects. Someone had asked the question aboutt the best drill bit for woodworking. There is a comprehensive article about that too.

Check it out.

 

[turbowoodworker]

Speaking of woodworking bench vises, I am cleaning up an auction find vise to place at the end of a workbench. It is unmarked, painted blue and says "Made in England" so I'm guessing Record but maybe Paramo?

I will post more pics as I go to mount it. Don't hold your breath. I'm slow.

 

[turbowoodworker]

Planes anyone?

I made a move from a very dry region to NC and had to store my tools in ambient temp environment until I was able to build my present house and shop. In spite of precautions, I am now forced to deal with tremendous rust issues. So I've been rehabbing planes.

First they go into the vinegar for 48 hrs then some wire wheel work, sharpen and tune, and voila, usable planes.

Here are a couple of #5 Baileys, a no name #3, and two #4 1/2, one of which is a Stanley and the other a Miller's Falls.

 

[Boatman53]

Nice work EZ good to see another boatbuilder posting things. I've wanted to do an Airstream for a long time, maybe when I retire. This stuff is too much fun to stop. Jim knows me from another forum so when I get a chance I'll poke my head in here when I can. I take care of a bunch of little boats called Beetle Cats for some really wealthy people as my bread and butter but the last big project I did was this.

No plans exist for the car so everything was done by photographs, plus the chassis was a bit shorter than the original. I designed and built the body and made patterns or molds for the headers, fenders, hood among other things, to ensure they would fit the body or other eliments. Other skilled craftsmen made the those actual pieces and I installed them with help of the owner.
Jim

 

[turbowoodworker]

I picked these older Craftsman planes up somewhere along the way. They are not in bad shape, very heavy. "Crown Top Love"
They won't require as much work to return to service.

 

[turbowoodworker]

Recent addition to the shop. Amazing what 220v and extra horsepower does for a clean cut. That improves safety and confidence. Best addition ever.

 

[turbowoodworker]

Since we're getting fancy (beautiful work Boatman!), I thought I would post a couple of older projects. Not typical woodworking but lots of hand work, relief carving as well as metal work goes into building a flintlock. Hope these are OK for this thread.

 

[ztorres]

Turbo:
Those are some beautiful guns. I love shooting and used to compete high level in trap shooting, and the best gift I ever got was a hand made stock and forearm for my gun that my grandpa made


Zach

 

[CRSINMICH]

Turbo: Here is a comparison of Craftsman Crown Top logo planes. It will help you put a date on your plane if you care about such things. These pictures came from Craftsman tool catalogs. I couldn't find any pictures that clearly showed the much cooler oval logo. I suspect it's older.

 

[Craptain]

Love the pictures of the guns. I play a little with guns but have not yet built one completely. Last one I worked on was a minor repair on a long rifle that was converted to percussion cap by Henry Derringer in 1726 or thereabouts. It was to valuable to mess up. I will look see if I might have a picture but my repair is not visible.
I will have to take a look and see what other antique repairs I might have pictures of. That is what I take most pleasure in doing. Especially when the repair is not visible to the untrained eye.

Sent from my SM-G900T using Tapatalk

 

[ez-duzit]

EZ: ...do have a good system for finding your nuts, bolts, parts and bits?...

Most of the fasteners I use are stainless steel, which I store in heavy duty, compartmented, plastic boxes that are easily portable. Each fastener type/style gets its own box: flat head sheet metal screws, pan head machine screws, washers, etc. Miscellaneous fasteners are generally stored in plastic drawer cabinets. Old, salvaged steel bolts, etc, in coffee cans, which I also use to weight down glue-ups.

Nice work EZ good to see another boatbuilder posting things. I've wanted to do an Airstream for a long time, maybe when I retire... I take care of a bunch of little boats called Beetle Cats for some really wealthy people as my bread and butter but the last big project I did was this.

...

Thanks.
On a trip back east, long ago, I visited the Beetle Cat "factory" where they had a bunch of them stored. Loved them so much I almost bought one.
Fantastic car body! Great work.

Recent addition to the shop. Amazing what 220v and extra horsepower does for a clean cut...

Love the saw.
BTW there is a wonderful book entitled "The Workbench Book."

...thought I would post a couple of older projects. Not typical woodworking but lots of hand work, relief carving as well as metal work goes into building a flintlock...

Nice work.

 

[turbowoodworker]

Love the saw.
BTW there is a wonderful book entitled "The Workbench Book."

EZ
That book by Landis was a wonderful inspiration when I built my bench, as were several other books, like Christopher Schwartz's books.
BTW, Landis does a nice job in "The Workshop Book" as well.

 

[turbowoodworker]

Craptain,

Neat that you were able to repair the long rifle. We would love to see pictures.
FYI though, you said "1726 or thereabouts".

The American flintlock evolved to what we consider the "Kentucky rifle", mostly originating in PA, in the 1770-1790s era. Percussion did not come along until 1810ish. So flintlocks prevailed until the evolution of percussion and the "mountain rifle" or "plains rifle" made famous by gunmakers in St. Louis (Hawken) in the early 1800's. There were also famous gunmakers in Ohio (Leman) using percussion around the same time.
Most of the rifles on the Lewis and Clark expedition were flints.

 

[Shiftless]

Boatman:
Fantastic job on that "woodie".
Seeing it here reminded me of the 1935 Auburn

 

[turbowoodworker]

CRS
Thanks for the info on the crown top. I frankly can't remember where I got those but I must have picked them up at an auction here in NC as they are in too good shape compared to the Baileys that spent four years in a humidity bath.

 

[jimreed2160]

I am loving the boat pictures.

Here is a photo of the Stanley #72 chamfer plane family.

Far left is the body with a bullnose front. Made for getting in tight spaces.

In the middle is the standard #72.

Right is the body with the beading nose attachment. This attachment shared beading cutters with the Stanley #66 bead plane.

Here is a picture of the beader from the front.

Since we are talking about scratch beaders, I have another group to post.

 

[Shiftless]

Speaking of woodworking bench vises, I am cleaning up an auction find vise to place at the end of a workbench. It is unmarked, painted blue and says "Made in England" so I'm guessing Record but maybe Paramo?

I will post more pics as I go to mount it. Don't hold your breath. I'm slow.

Mine looks just like that with the same shade of blue and is marked "Record"
I wonder why there is no maker's name cast into it? Are there "knockoff" English vice manufacturers?

 

[jimreed2160]

Scratch beading is another of those woodworking skills of yore. Modern routers have taken over most decorative trim work and you don't see ww using scratch stock beaders much any more. 'Tis a shame because scratch beads are quick and easy. The resulting decoration almost always has imperfections (at least mine do!) and that is a sure sign of hand craftsmanship.

So here is a class photo of scratch beaders, grouped by manufacturer.

Early ww made their own scratch beaders but the manufacturers got into the game big time in the late 19th century. Here are some offerings from the UK-- specifically Preston.

The top one is the Preston Reeder and the small one is the Preston "pelvis".

These designs were very good. So good, in fact, that Lee Valley Tools has made modern versions.

The small one is almost an exact copy. I think it is cute. The larger one has some enhancements. The single fence is adjustable and the knob is adjustable. They are both excellent tools. I think the large LV is my favorite beader.

Windsor Tools got into the game with a few models.

The top two have cutter profiles on a wheel that is rotated into place. The bottom one has internal cutters.

And of course, Stanley Tools was in the game with a variety of products.

Here are the Stanley beaders. First from left is the #72 chamfer beader. Then there is the #69 hand beader and then there are two #66 beaders. All of them use the same cutters. Lie Nielsen makes an excellent copy of this beader. In fact, the #66 on the top has a LN fence. The #66 beader works well and I have used mine on several projects. I even found some aftermarket cutters.

Here are the Preston Reeder cutters. The one on the right is an original. The two in the middle are modern made blanks. The one on the left is a blank I made and the one at the bottom is a special snipe cutter I designed and made.

Mr Google can show you how to make your own scratch beader or you can purchase one. Either way, get yourself a scratch beader and use it. It might not work for every project, but it will prove itself shop-worthy.

 

[jimreed2160]

I have a very efficient dust collection system in my shop.

 

[drivesitfar]

JIM: i can't tell you how many of those tools and bits i've passed on the past few years cause i didn't have a clue what they were for or how they are used. i might have picked up a few and i'll have to check as soon as i get some of the stuff out of buckets and shopping bags and into all my drawers. thanks for another great tip.

BOATMAN: well that car with the boat back is IMPRESSIVE. if your woodworking tools are half as nice as your vises and other tools you've shared pictures of these guys and i are in for a treat if you have some time to take a few pictures and post them up maybe telling us how to use them too. WELCOME to the 101 thread that is way more than a beginning woodworking one, but it is at the same time too.

Turbo: the only issue with posting a couple pictures of those awesome guns is that you didn't post enough of them. i'm not sure if GJ has rules about pictures of guns and I'll PM a couple Mods to ask and let you know. in the meantime thanks for showing you have some serious good skills and post up a few more pictures of them and your other projects if you have the time.

just an FYI about soaking tools in vinegar you can't soak them too long or leave any on after you take out of the bath because vinegar will EAT CAST IRON and finishes. that is one of the reasons i'm trying to get an old range in the shop so i can rinse and then cook off any vinegar residue cause vinegar does work great to unstick some rusty vises. i hear some of the guys use evaporust with good success and if there is debris in the liquid they filter it out and keep reusing it cause i think it's a bit spendy.

nice saw too

ZT: i just didn't see the screw in any of your pictures and i'm guessing you are calling the 1/8 piece of wood the spring which might make sense. I'm not trying to be difficult i'm just trying to figure out how things work and maybe it might help others that have less woodworking skills than I do. thanks

CRS: i love the catalog pictures and keep them coming.

ALL: i picked up about a 5 foot piece of 10x10 yesterday from a client and was just use it for a boarder to hold up a small slope until i loaded it in my Honda. i deal with heavy stuff a lot mind you, but when i let it down from maybe 5 inches on the end i was pushing in it sounded like i might have done some damage to the back of my bumper. i know it's a bit wet from sitting outside, but i've seen logs come out of the swamp and made into furniture. would there be a good reason for me to maybe dry this out and make some lumber or something out of it? should i cut off the end of it with my little Ryobi 18v chainsaw and see what the wood inside looks like? i'm guessing i'll just need to cut off an inch if i do or should i take off 2 inches? or should i just use it for landscaping timber? i'll get a couple pictures and it's somewhat beat up so guessing pretty old and as i mentioned its maybe 200-300 pounds or in that range.

cheers all and keep those pictures, books, stories and STUFF coming as you have time to post them.

 

[jimreed2160]

Drives--The 10 x 10 timber could be nice inside. Or not. Whittle a large splinter off one corner end and see if you can tell the species.

 

[TerryH]

Afternoon everyone. Most have probably seen my shop but thought I'd post a few pics here just because I'm eat up with it. My shop is 30x40. I'm very blessed to have a good assortment of power and hand tools. I built the dust collection system, all the benches, shelves etc... Over the years I've built most every piece of furniture in our house that is feasible for me to build. I've also built several cabinets, milled every piece of trim and built all the interior door throughout the house.

Shop overview pics...











Home brew cyclone form the Bill Pentz plan. I have all 6" ducts and I made all the blast gates and adapted many 6" hoods to the various machines using HVAC register boots and such.



Some of my work...















I have 1,248,543 more pictures that I'll be glad to share if anyone wants to see anything else.

 

[drivesitfar]

JIM: i'll see if there might be some nice wood under the ugly exterior of my 10x10 and let you know if i find anything worth taking a picture of or mentioning. before this thread and for sure about 10 years ago i might have passed on picking it up or even wondering about re purposing an old timber. as mentioned before my gramps was a logger and old growth tight grain wood was almost more readily available than cheap stuff when i was growing up. if i would have got hooked on woodworking instead of hitting a golf ball 400 yards or holing wedge shots i might have a few projects of my own to show so hoping to have a few in the future.

Terry: thank you very much for stopping in and posting up some of you shop pictures and projects. while i'm sure you'd probably post all 2 million photos if i (we) asked how about posting your favorites. also if you have time to take us through the raw wood to finish product on almost any of your cool projects i bet all of us would be ok with that.

is your shop that clean 24/7 or just for those pictures? To say that i'm jealous of your shop and the machines and skills you have is an understatement.

thanks again for giving me a goal to work towards while i'm ORGANIZING.

 

[jimreed2160]

Terry--Wow! Nice shop. Throw on some tunes and you can rock out all day long. Thanks for sharing.

 

[TerryH]

Terry: thank you very much for stopping in and posting up some of you shop pictures and projects. while i'm sure you'd probably post all 2 million photos if i (we) asked how about posting your favorites. also if you have time to take us through the raw wood to finish product on almost any of your cool projects i bet all of us would be ok with that.

is your shop that clean 24/7 or just for those pictures? To say that i'm jealous of your shop and the machines and skills you have is an understatement.

thanks again for giving me a goal to work towards while i'm ORGANIZING.

I have a couple of projects to make some headway on this winter. I'd be glad to get some pics of the process from raw wood to finished board.

While I like a place for everything and everything in it's place, the shop gets trashed during projects. Over the last bit I've been residing the back of the shop and doing some rot repair on fascia boards and such on the house. At thin moment you can barely see the floor. lol...

Yes this was just as much fun as it looks like it was...

 

[TerryH]

Terry--Wow! Nice shop. Throw on some tunes and you can rock out all day long. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks. When I bought a nice Klipsch system for the house my old surround sound system moved into the shop so I do rock out when I'm in there.

 

[drivesitfar]

Terry: sounds like a plan. if you happened to look back maybe 3 days ago now i just repaired a leaking skylight at my house. not quite as much damage, but got r done and i had a hunch there was a problem. i bet you are happy to have it repaired.

looking forward to all of your tutorials and projects as you have some time.

ALL: as i'm looking forward to all of the posters and members lurking to post up their projects and tools too. almost 9,000 views in a week so guessing maybe we'll have a million or so views by next year this time. WELL DONE all of you and thanks again JIM for starting it.

cheers and i'm off to ORGANIZE and take a peek at the 10x10 insides.

have a great day.

 

[Craptain]

Craptain,

Neat that you were able to repair the long rifle. We would love to see pictures.
FYI though, you said "1726 or thereabouts".

The American flintlock evolved to what we consider the "Kentucky rifle", mostly originating in PA, in the 1770-1790s era. Percussion did not come along until 1810ish. So flintlocks prevailed until the evolution of percussion and the "mountain rifle" or "plains rifle" made famous by gunmakers in St. Louis (Hawken) in the early 1800's. There were also famous gunmakers in Ohio (Leman) using percussion around the same time.
Most of the rifles on the Lewis and Clark expedition were flints.

My bad on the typo. Should have said 1826, and qualified it that I don't have the expertise to date it just repeat the "expert" opinion.

Here are a few pics, but I haven't found any of the "inside" marks (the original gunsmith) though I am sure I took pics for the auctioneer. I recall it was made somewhere near Philadelphia and then converted by Deringer who was also close by.

This is where it sold. https://centurionauctions.hibid.com...fle-percussion-conversion/?sort=2&ref=catalog

 

[ez-duzit]

TH--awesome shop! And love the woodworking bench.

 

[Craptain]

Damn Terry I never realized you were such a woodworker. All I ever read was the dragster.

 

[Rick M]

Shaker inspired sewing table I built some time back. Was supposed to have a little drawer but I never got around to making it. Second picture front, is a horn I built to amplify music and podcasts from an old phone I basically use for that in my shop. The little horn is Dustin Penner's design. I later built a folded version that is much louder.

edit; changed to links ...

http://i.imgur.com/qkxs7Kd.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/OI6R7BG.jpg

 

[Shiftless]

Shaker inspired sewing table I built some time back. Was supposed to have a little drawer but I never got around to making it. Second picture front, is a horn I built to amplify music and podcasts from an old phone I basically use for that in my shop. The little horn is Dustin Penner's design. I later built a folded version that is much louder.

Rick
We can't see your pics. You didn't use imagur did you?

 

[Rick M]

Is imgur not allowed or something? I changed them to links.

 

[drivesitfar]

Rick: i use the paperclip just above where we write our posts to attach pictures instead of links that might work better for you. also for those that have cell phones clicking on links can be a pain to get back to the page sometimes.

welcome to the group and looking forward to seeing the pictures. yes Imgur has an issue with GJ cause GJ has a classified section. i used to use Photobucket cause pictures were bigger and usually better, but they changed their process so instead of trying to re learn it i decided to just attach pictures now and they hopefully will be on GJ in 20 years from now unlike some that disappeared if you stopped using photobucket or other online picture sites.

Craptain: i didn't know you restored old guns either. WELL DONE!! i just thought you sailed huge ships from one vacation spot to the next for those that couldn't or the ones that had plenty of money to pay you and didn't want to. show more of your projects as you get time to and i'm like you and still ORGANIZING.

 

[ztorres]

Drives:
I just realized you can't see the screw.

You're right I was referring to the 1/8" piece as the spring. Essentially as you push the dog into the hole that 1/8" piece pushes out towards the edge and holds the bench dog in place.

A couple pictures of bench dog in use.


Here is a view of the dog that has the "spring" board from underneath

Then a picture of the hand screw end


Zach

 

[Rickss96]

Just ran across this thread, looks good, subscribed. My garage fights between the automobile / mechanical projects and the woodworking projects.

Maybe I can add a few tips to the discussion a day or two ago on clamps, especially the parallel clamps like the Besseys pictured. Some of this comes from my reading on other WW forums, and my goal of stocking up on more clamps.

A review in Fine Woodworking magazine (as stated above FW is a great magazine, especially for guys like me that want to be more than just a rough framer) awhile back rated the best brands as Jet, Jorgensen, Bessey. Unfortunately Jorgensen went out of business earlier this year. I lean to Bessey, good quality and they make a K Body Extender that allows you to attach two clamps together. You can take two 2-foot clamps and make a 4 foot clamp, or attach a 2-foot clamp onto a 4-foot clamp and make a 6-foot clamp. Longer clamps are easy to make when needed. BTW Bessey makes a very similar lighter duty clamp named K Body REVO JR for less money. A lot of people are disappointed in their overall quality and find them hard to adjust. No personal experience.

Jet parallel clamps have a lot of good reviews, especially when they first came out. More recent reviewers think the quality is slipping. Best approach for these is to buy them in a store so you can inspect them first. Make sure the bars aren’t bent or twisted, and check that the clamp faces are parallel to each other.

Black Friday is coming up and stores like Rockler and Woodcraft will probably have sales on clamp sets of all types. Zoro usually has a 30% off sale and that will make the Bessey parallel clamps a good deal.

-Rick

 

[drivesitfar]

ZT: simple and works. sounds like a win win. thanks for the pictures and the added information.

Rick: I know clamps are a big space waster when not in use, but like so many of the guys have shown so far a bunch of good clamps is the RIGHT TOOL for the job in some cases.

ALL: well i decided to use my draw knife on the big timber and it's actually 12 x 12. most likely full of creosote and i thought it might just be wet. still interesting non the less to submit to those who know their wood products better than me before i throw it in the dirt. thoughts anybody on a higher and better use? it's 5.5 feet long.

i need to make a new mailbox stand for myself and 3 of my neighbors on the corner of my property so i might just sink it in 10 bags of cement and have it hold up a platform with 4 mailboxes?? it certainly shouldn't rot cause it looks to be about 50 years old and pretty solid still. or maybe a vise stand for 140 pound vise in the backyard?

 

[bj383ss]

Man this thread moves so fast. Sitting down after work for the day and it is almost impossible to be able to reply or make comments on everything that was posted today.

Terry what a nice shop you have. I dream of having one that big some day maybe...have you been featured in any of the Wood Magazine Shop edition or any other woodworking magazine.

I am afraid to post anymore of my stuff after seeing yours.


I would agree on the comments about Fine woodworking. They focus a lot on hand tools and technique. I will never be at that level but we all need something to strive for. I also enjoyed Shopnotes but sadly they went by the wayside. Partly there fault I think though they kept repeating the same projects over and over maybe with something a little different.

And also if you look hard you can find nearly every woodworking mag and book known to man in pdf format on a certain website.

Couple of screenshots of my Wood folder on my pc.

Wood Folder by bjohnson388, on Flickr



Woodworking books folder. Each subfolder is full.

Woodworking Books Folder by bjohnson388, on Flickr

Bret

 

[McBrownie]

I'm late to the party!!! Thanks Jim for getting this thread going and Drives for bringing it to my attention. So, this summer, I decided to get into woodworking a little more. First thing I did was build a Paul Sellers inspired workbench. Not a bunch of money put into lumber, which was perfect for my skills as a beginner. I also did 95% of it with no power tools. I used a cordless drill to drill some holes. Here it is:

View media item 63047
By the way, a couple of Desmond Stephans branded Columbians for the vises. This is GJ, so vises must be mentioned. I used Watco Natural on the handles to get them back in shape and Valspar Enamel "Moonglow" for the color.

Here is a simple cutting board that I threw together using a Stanley No 5, No 4., and Cherry and Maple scraps that cost less than $7 from a local lumber yard.
View media item 65245
And used Waterlox Original for the finish:
View media item 65246
Now to catch up on this thread.

 

[turbowoodworker]

Craptain,
Thanks for sharing the story of the long rifle. Was it in your family? It truly looks like a conversion as there is some corrosive degrading of the flash hole area only seen with old flintlocks. The shape of the comb suggests a Bedford (PA) County heritage but not common to be half stocked from that area. Half stocks were less expensive and made common first in the Ohio Valley by makers like Leman.
There are lots of books on the topic, and I am no expert.
Thanks again. Rick