So Many Projects, So Little Time...
I have been planning some major shop renovations for many months now. It actually started way back when I was selling off my power tools en mass. As is typical with shop design plans, it kept getting put off in favor of other things like building furniture, woodcarving, and playing with frame saws. This Sunday [...] Read more »
I am sharpening a bunch of 36″ and 48″ long frame saw blades so it seemed like the perfect excuse to build a specialized saw vise for these big blades. I’m building what is usually called the “Lie Nielsen Saw Vise” since it was shown in a Lie Nielsen You Tube video. This design can [...] Read more »
For Get Woodworking Week 2013 I’m building a dining table that was designed by a beginning woodworker whom I have befriended. This project is all about tackling that first project. This time I talk about the design, the wood needed, and the tools to build it. Your Turn What tips do you have for the [...] Read more »
So begins my final day in Pittsboro at The Woodwright’s School. We still need to bore and ream the arm stump holes in the bow, fit and center the bow, drill all the spindle holes in the bow and the seat, size all the spindle tenons, wedge the through tenons on everything, and peg the [...] Read more »
Things are starting to come together now. With the seat blanks complete we began adding parts. First we needed to bore holes in our legs for the stretchers. Not an easy feet with compound angles intersecting round surfaces that are unique at each corner of the seat. The layout of these mortises takes 5 times [...] Read more »
Today we cleaned up and finished our seats. This involved travisher and scraper work and a lot more drawknife work. This project is such an amazing skill builder and you gain an outstanding knowledge of reading and working with wood grain. The drawknife continues to amaze me by what such a simple tool can do [...] Read more »
Today was boring. Compound boring that it. Sight lines, bevels, and try squares are the watch words for accurate holes for the legs and arm stumps. We then moved on to reaming the holes and tapering the leg and arm post tenons to create very strong locking joints. Time to shape the seat with the [...] Read more »
Today we dealt with some odd jobs like turning our tapered spindles into octagons and moving all the rough shaped green wood into the makeshift kiln. These parts will dry into ovoid shapes at which point we will finish shaping them round. Next was the seat. We got to work with some absolutely beautiful 20″ [...] Read more »
Day two is all about the bow. We started with a White Oak log then split and rived it into rough blanks. From there it was all about the drawknife to create a blank of perfectly straight grain that would bend without running out. A while ago I wrote about repetition building hand skills, this [...] Read more »
I’m taking a class on making a continuous arm Windsor chair this week at The Woodwright’s School in North Carolina. Walking in to the school this morning was a thrill just to see all the tools and familiar projects from The Woodwright Shop TV show. And of course, Roy Underhill in the flesh. Our guest [...] Read more »
