Your Turn

Tool boxes take many shapes and forms. What cool designs have you come up with and how do you deal with working outside of your workshop? Please share your thoughts and experience in the comments below.

May 16, 2013 | Magic moment when finish hits raw wood and inlay. by RenaissanceWW on Keek.com

Still, I have to wait 8-12 hours between coats and sometimes even longer to really make sure the oil is dry. When you factor in a day job and normal life obligations, I’m usually applying a coat at 10 or 11 at night meaning most of the following day will be off limits to dust producing work. So I tried something that now seems perfectly obvious and it has really sped up the drying time. So much so that I can’t help but wonder if there is a catch I’m overlooking.

I have a small electric space heater that I use in the Winter to keep the shop above freezing. When I turn it on full blast, I can keep my small shop at about 60 degrees when the outside temperatures drop into the 20s. Even though it doesn’t have any exposed heating elements I have always set it up on the opposite side of the shop from the bench to keep it away from any stray shavings or dust and it works great.

So 2 days ago as storms rolled into the area and the humidity skyrocketed and stayed there, I grew concerned about problems with my curing finish. I don’t have a dehumidifier but I probably should get one. It’s just such an unsexy thing to buy and often gets forgotten. So I set up my little heater and cranked it up. Heated air is very dry air right? I came into the shop about 4 hours after my last coat of oil and besides the shop being prepared for a hot yoga class, my finish was dry to the touch. No sticky or clammy feel and completely ready to move on to the next coat. I haven’t tested the limits of this solution to see if I could cut down the drying time even more and frankly after all the work I have put into these projects, I’m not inclined to push my luck. I do think that this heater solution would allow me to safely move my project pieces within a few hours to another location so I could keep working in the shop. I plan to test that theory this weekend as I still have at least 2-3 more coats I want to apply to get the finish just right.

Going with my old schedule of things that means I get no woodworking done at all this weekend and my production schedule just won’t tolerate that kind of down time. So sure I could subvert all this by just using Shellac or Lacquer or a water based product, but you can’t argue with a finish that produces beautiful results. It also helps that I already had a can of the stuff in my finish cabinet seeing as good quality finish isn’t cheap.

What’s the catch here?

Most of my readers are pretty dang smart people so I’m leaning on you guys to poke some holes in this. I really don’t think I am creating a fire hazard here since the heater is on the other side of the shop and I have my air cleaner running to circulate the air and 2 windows open to ventilate. What I’m concerned about is if I am compromising the quality and integrity of my finish by accelerating the curing process. I imagine this is the same thing guys in the hot desert experience when they finish so it can’t be bad right? What am I missing? Please leave a comment below and let me know if you have experience doing this or if you foresee any problems.

Your Turn

What do you do in between coats of finish? What solutions have you come up with to keep on working with the finish is drying? Please share your thoughts and experience in the comments below.

The table I’m building in this video is a project in Hand Tool School Semester 4.

But sometimes wood knowledge can be pulled into service while at the bench. Understanding why a certain wood works the way it does can be really helpful when you comes across an unknown or new species. By examining the physical properties and divining the origin you can compare it with other similar species with which you have a working knowledge. Is the species ring or diffuse porous? What is the hardness or specific gravity? Knowing some of these values requires that you know what you are working with so you can look it up (unless you have the testing facility to run Janka tests or displacement). If the species is unknown then physical observation can go a long way to determining how this wood will work. How heavy is it? Is is open grained or closed (ring or diffuse porous)? Does the grain sparkles in the light (high mineral content)? How tightly packed, or not, are the growth rings? What figure is present and how visible are the medullary rays? There is more but I think you get the idea.

This weekend I had 8 or 10 highly figured pieces of wood laid out on a table top trying to figure out which would be best to inlay as butterfly splines. Each looked good so just going with my aesthetic sense was only going to get me so far. Each species was heavily figured so I knew no matter what that hand planing it would be difficult. The one that kept catching my eye was a turning square of an unknown species. It was something I had bought more than 5 years ago on eBay to use for small turning projects but had since forgotten what it was. The color looks similar to White Oak but the closed pore structure said otherwise. A quick check of the end grain told me it is a diffuse porous wood (White Oak is ring porous) and the even distribution of growth rings and lack of early/late wood differentiation told me it is a tropical species. The weight of the blank was similar to some of the Hard Maple turning squares in my shop so I made a guess that the density and specific gravity would be similar. I could just make out the medullary rays and they were quite small, similar to Maple. I knew therefore that while hard the grain would work uniformly, but under sunlight small reflective bits of silica could be seen so I knew that I would probably need to resharpen during and after working it. I’m guessing I have a block of fiddleback Anigre as many of the characteristics match, but I’m ultimately not sure. The point is that is doesn’t really matter, and simple observation has helped me to glean how this unknown will work and I am prepared when I make that first saw cut and start to pare it.

The worst thing is when you buy a bunch of wood because it looks cool and realize how difficult it is to work or that your body is reacting violently to the dust a quarter of the way into the project. Let’s be honest, with today’s tooling most any wood can be “tamed”, but the knowledge you gain from understanding why it works the way it does will serve you each time you enter the woodshop. Plus if you are selling your work, understanding where the species came from will add distinction and a back story to your piece. It also helps when the inevitable sustainability question arises from your potential customer.

We can talk about techniques all days long, but the reality is that many woodworkers would benefit greatly just by spending time learning about the medium we work and observing why it works well or doesn’t work well. In the tough situations, this understanding will help you formulate a way to smooth it, pare it, or finish it. Wood is good, why not learn all you can about it?

Blatant Self Promotion Alert

By the way I did a wood species world tour lesson in Hand Tool School Semester 4 that goes into much greater detail on the 3 or 4 key properties to help you determine the workability of a wood species. I’m told by members that the lesson was “worth the price of the whole semester”. Ok end blatant self promotion.

I have focused my pursuits a bit over the last decade or so but I do take a detour every now and then just to keep things exciting. Over the past few months it has been along the green woodworking path using my spring pole lathe. I was delighted to find an entirely new community thriving under the “Bodger” moniker and centered firmly in the UK. I’m interested to research this further as to why this woodland craft subculture has thrived so much in the UK and not so much elsewhere. I’m sure the zealous consumerist nature of US culture hasn’t helped much on this side of the Atlantic, but with the Renaissance of hand tools over here perhaps the Bodger has a chance to gain a foot hold after all. For me it was a discovery that came just at the right moment. I had just built a pole lathe and was exploring the differences of turning that way as compared to the flywheel turning I have done while working at the Steppingstone Museum. My first epiphany was that this spring pole thing is immensely fun and much more powerful that one would think. There is a lot of sentiment in the circles I frequent that the flywheel lathe is the natural evolution of the muscle powered lathe and therefore a pole lathe is reserved only for nut jobs who dress in tights, feast upon Turkey legs, and shout “Huzzah” a lot. Boy was I wrong. I’m not ashamed to admit that I was completely blown away by how cool turning on a pole lathe can be and how different it is from continuous motion lathes. But this isn’t a post about the pole lathe. There will be more on that subject soon enough; ahem, have you seen Semester 5?

This is all a verbose preamble to a book that has become a bit of a Green Woodworking Bible for me. “Green Woodwork” by Mike Abbott is a comprehensive tome of woodland craft knowledge and a great way to quickly understand the principles in play. Mike’s book is a treasure that waxes philosophical on why to work with green wood, but then backs it up with an evident knowledge of species and wood lot management. The book then spends a lot of time on the tools and how to maintain them. There is an entire chapter dedicated to making a pole lathe and several introductory projects to do with your lathe. This isn’t a book on pole turning however and Mike quickly moves on to shaving horses then other projects like spoons and different types of chairs. For those of you familiar with Roy Underhill’s books, you will feel like coming home when you read “Green Woodwork”. There is a literary quality to the writing and I sat down and read it cover to cover in just a few sittings. The overwhelming theme is working “with the wood and not against it” and Mike gives you the information you need to embrace this style of working. Mike Abbott is a respected instructor in the UK and he runs a school, Living Wood, where he continues to spread the word and introduce people to a very self sustaining and fulfilling craft.

This style of woodworking is liberating as there is no drying of the wood and heading to the lumber yard to figure out the board footage needed. Perhaps is it because I have such easy access to world class kiln dried lumber every day at work that I am drawn to the simplicity of working from a log. I tasted it when I built my first Windsor 5 years ago and then again at the Woodwright’s School last year. If working with hand tools brings you closer to the wood, then working with green wood takes that next step to understanding our favorite building material as a living entity. So while I’m still a furniture making “mainstream” woodworker, I’m now moonlighting as a woodland bodger and happily getting lost in an entirely different subset of woodworking. With axe, hook knife, and froe in hand I venture into the woods to see what I can make. Huzzah!…aww man!

Sorry There’s a Catch

Here is where I frustrate you all interested in this book. It is no longer in print and while not hard to find, the price tag is hovering in the $60-70 range. I think it worth even that price, but if a cheaper option is your speed, check out the Association of Polelathe Turners & Green Woodworkers web site. They have some great information there and a very active forum full of helpful folks to aid you in your studies. My apologies in advance for the afternoon you just lost there.

More Woodworking Safety Goodness

Check out all of my previous Woodworking Safety posts and videos on my Woodworking Safety page. Also make sure to check out this official Woodworking Safety Day page at The Wood Whisperer for a complete list of all the safety topics going on this year.

Be safe and have fun; preferably both at the same time.

How About You?

What nagging injuries have kept you down? What could be done to prevent them? What creature comforts does your shop have to decrease the repetitive stress injuries? Please share your experience and comments below.