The Bespoke Woodworker

While I would like to believe that I could dedicate enough time each day to run to the shop and chop a set of tails, I know that I’m kidding myself.  But I’m determined to give myself the practice necessary to improve my sawing and chiseling skills, in the hopes that I can develop the kind of muscle memory I see in some of the really good woodworkers.

To give you some context, I started this hobby around early 2006.  I am, by no means, an excellent woodworker, but I strive to challenge myself and push my limits, and I’m not afraid of my mistakes.  In that context, I’m going to present to you my first dovetails ever.  I purchased Peter Korn’s book, Woodworking Basics: Mastering the Essentials of Craftsmanship which is an excellent book that introduces woodworking, by utilizing only a small number of tools and emphasizes hand skills.  This is a great way to get started, in my opinion.

Now that my rambling is out of the way, here’s my first set of dovetails, ever!

Pretty, eh?   Lets have a backside shot too, to get the full effect.

Try to contain your jealousy.  You may notice the power sander strokes as I desperately tried, in my foolish woodworking youth, to make it appear better.   Then I tried to fill the gaps with glue.  Oh, those were the days!

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, the next set of tails that I show you will be from this week.  In the interim, I’ve taken a one day woodcraft class (from Michael Wheeler at Woodcraft in Woburn, MA), and practiced several times in the interim.  I’ve probably cut a few dozen sets between then and now, including some previous projects.  But I still make the kind of mistakes that take correction quite often.  I do occasionally get a set that requires no patching, but I’m not there yet.

I have a copy of the Frank Klauz video Dovetail a Drawer, which I often watch fascinated, as he tears through a set of dovetails with almost no prep work and makes almost no mistakes.  Given, he’s been doing this a few decades longer than I have, so I can appreciate how he’s trained his mind and body to do exactly what needs to be done.  Due to this inspiration I’m a pins-first guy, so I’m going to continue cutting them that way.

I won’t repeat this in the future update posts on my progress, but I’ll run through the process that I use, and will be using each time.

I gather my tools:  A Medallion Toolworks Dovetail Saw, my Lie-Nielsen Chisels, a Starret Square, a Shinwa bevel gauge, a Veritas marking gauge, a sharp pencil, and a mallet.

I mark out the base lines on both pieces.

Then mark off the angles of the tails using a bevel gauge.  I don’t go too crazy setting a perfect 1:8.  Whatever looks aesthetically pleasing to me.  One tip I picked up, if you use your square and make sure your stock is perfectly perpendicular to the bench, it makes it easier to cut a straight line.

Cut a nice straight line.  Make sure you stay on the WASTE side, which I mark with an X.

When you examine this photo, you can see that on my far left cut, I let the saw wander.  This will require some serious chisel cleanup.  The other cuts are all fairly straight.  Since I will be marking the tails from the pins, it doesn’t matter if I don’t hit the line exactly, but it definitely matters if my cut is not straight.  This is first of the crucial points that make for a perfect dovetail joint: Straight Cuts.

Now we move on to chiseling.  I keep a few sizes of chisels handy, freshly sharp.  The holdfast you see in he photo can easily be replaced with a simple clamp on your workbench.  For a show piece, I’d put a small sacrificial board in between the holdfast and the workpiece, but since this is practice, I just rap the holdfast in place.

First you put your widest sharp chisel into the cut made by your marking gauge and give it a very light rap with your mallet.  You won’t to go very easily here.  That marking gauge line is going to help give you a perfect joint shoulder.  I didn’t do my best work, but you can see I came pretty close.  This is the second Crucial factor of a perfect dovetail joint: straight shoulder lines.

Then you’ll come back in with your chisel, and lightly pare to the line until the thin sliver pops out.  Now the next time you chisel downward, you’ll have a much stronger surface to register against.  I repeat this again, taking a bigger piece, before I move on to removing waste.  You can see here that I’ve let the chisel slip in my grasp, and done some damage to my joint shoulder.

I’ll show you in the final piece the kind of effect this mistake can have.   Then from the end, I pop out the waste on both sides.

At this point, a solid hit  with the widest chisel you have that fits in the joint will clear out the waste.

Remember my wadering saw cut from before?  You can see the effect now.

You have to be careful when correcting this.  You can easily do what I did first, which is end up paring the wall in the other direction..

You’ll notice the end grain looks like crap.  As long as the 2 shoulders are smooth, you can actually pare down into the end grain and make a small hollow area.  End grain doesn’t provide strength to this joint, long grain glue surfaces do.  At some point, one must commit to being  done cleaning up these pins.  There’s a line you must now cross, and there’s no going back to clean up pins later, because you’ll be marking your tails from your finished pins, so you must make sure that you’ve absolutely satisfied with these pins.  Then you can move on to your tails.

I use a holdfast to keep the tailboard steady, and a scrap board (seen on the right) to make sure the boards are flush.  With a _very_ sharp pencil, I then strike a line onto the tailboard.

Finish marking out the portions to remove, and sawing can commence.

The sawing and chiseling process is the same as the pinboard.

And here’s the first fit.

It was a tight fit, but not that bad.  You’ll see some improvement once they’ve been glued up and levelled, but I can already see where I have gaps, and where I need improvement.  You can see the pin on the right in this photo is the one that required a lot of correction before because of a wandering saw cut.  Obviously, my correction, while fixing the end, was heavy handed and I took too much material from one side.  Lesson learned, keep that cut straight in the first place!

From the other side, you can see where my slipped chisel impacted the shoulder fit.  This is a little more fixable, especially if you’re willing to plane some off the side of the work.  There are some situations, such as a decorative box, where this would be no problem, but there are others, like fitted drawers and inset work, where this could cause an unsightly blemish.  One reason I continue to work slightly oversized and then plane to fit is that I still make these kinds of mistakes.

Post glue-up and clean up, you can see where the gaps are still a problem, and where they’re not.  Planing hides some of your mistakes, but then also highlights others.    This is a pretty extreme closeup, given the board is only 3/4, so you’re looking at almost 2x zoom on a big monitor like mine.  You can see after the glue was applied that right pin was just tight enough at the top to cause a small split.    Or it may just have been my mallet-happy assembly technique requires refinement.   Likely, a combination of both!

On the opposite side, I’ve heading in the direction of a near perfect joint!

The shoulder on the left tailboard was over-pared a tiny bit, and on the right, the down tail cut overshot.   All in all though, seems representative of my current skillset.  I’ll consider, for now, this first week a success!

I’m gradually running out of non-woodworking hobbies.  I used to play a lot of computer games in my spare time, but I find now that I’d rather be down in the shop ‘doing’ rather than passively playing a game.  I still play them a bit, but never the longer marathon sessions that I used to.

But I’ve taken another step recently.  I’m selling my motorcycle.

I’ve just gotten to the point where I don’t utilize it enough, and there are so many woodworking tools I’d use far more than I ever used the bike.  Not to mention all that insurance money can be redirected into the tool fund!

I think I’m headed in this direction with the bike money…

Wish me luck, as my tool addiction becomes more and more powerful…

Not much left to do.  I picked up some proper braided 65lb test fishing line.  Plenty strong enough for our purposes.  As the online documentation mentions, I used 4 loops, and made it snug enough that I could, with effort, still remove the blade when necessary.

Now that it actually was tensioned like a working saw, I had no choice but to give it a try!

You may notice that offcut from my circle cutting inlay tool test.  I decided to follow the circular groove, and even with the low TPI blade, it still followed it just fine.

I decided to turn the handles, as I hadn’t fired up my Rikon in a little while.  I roughed a nice long blank.

Drilled it out.

And then shaped and installed them!

I haven’t glued them on yet, as I’m waiting for a small variety assortment of set screws to arrive.  I’m not sure if I’m going to like the handles I made long term.  The recommendations have them quite thin, and I have meaty hands.  Handle shaping can be  a very personal decision, so I’ll temporarily attach them with set screws, and either replace them, or permanently glue them in, after some test work.

The ever popular Joel over at Tools for Working Wood (also Grammery Tool), whom I also got my excellent Holdfasts from, has produced a nice bowsaw kit.  I’ve been interested in picking up a tool like this for a while, as I’m inherently lazy, and I don’t like to take the resaw blade off my bandsaw for light scroll work, so I’ve been considering a hand tool to save me that time.

The website also makes some excellent measured drawings available in PDF form, even if you don’t buy their kit and blades, although I strongly recommend it!

I had some excellent leftover workbench Ash, and I found a nick thick piece with straight grain in it.  Or at least straight after I do a little riving.   I found good grain lines, then ran a mark off with a ruler.

Then I sliced off the offcut.

Repeat a few more times, and you’ve got some nice straight grain pieces for your stretcher and arms.

I decided to do all my joinery first, while my stock was still square and indexable.  First the tenons.

Then drilling holes for the blade and handle retainers.

I marked mortises from my tenons.

And cut the tenons.   Note that since I have not yet shaped anything, the tenon is extra deep.

I started gently on the shaping.  I know that I can easily take this too far.

I clamped up the stretcher and went to down with a spokeshave, until it felt and looked good.  Very little measurements went into this part, other than locating the ‘middle’ for my eye.

Stretcher completed

Here I kind of just sketched onto the arm from the diagram, then bandsawed and sanded until I liked it.    Then I traced the first arm onto the second, and repeated.

Some more sanding and shaping later, we’re looking good!  I also whipped out a quick toggle pin.

With a blade temporarily tensioned by string, we’re starting to look like a saw!   I need to hit the sporting goods store and pick up some braided fishing line.  The cotton string you see is just for show, and won’t hold up under tension.

I did notice that the saw definitely has taken on a tilt upwards.  I think this is in part to me roughing the parts to size without leaving myself enough room to shape.  Since this is a fairly easy tool build, I may end up replacing the wooden parts later.  I’ll have to make sure I don’t permanently affix the handles so that they can be replaced easily later.  Maybe some set screws.

Enough for today though!

Once again, I went for some more of that curly spalted maple offcut. I spent some time seeing if I could figure out how to make my own tooling from a spare card scraper, my my first attemps to cut down hardened stock were a pretty big failure. I picked up the L-N cutters, since they’re only $15 and appropriately sized already, and went to town.

This is by far the simplest tool in the batch.  Really, its just a block of wood with 2 cuts, 2 rabbets, and 4 screws.

I didn’t think to actually take a live action photo of the uncut wood.  I’m sure you’ve seen curly maple before!  I put the two cuts in that I’ll be pulling the inlay through, and lined up the cutters to verify the size of the rabbet.

Then I lined up the cutters, with extra deep holes.

Recessed the holes, remounted the cutters, and cut a fairly simple and rough mortise, for clamping the block to the benchtop.

That is really all there is to it!

With my straight line cutter complete, I moved on to the slicing gauge. This tool, along with a slicing board (which is really just a board with a lip to hold the inlay material up against) allows you to cut (a ripping action) long thin strips from your inlay sheet stock. This is the first part of making the inlay material itself. Here is my ‘raw materials’ shot. I went with a curly spalted maple body, and a Sipo cutter support bar left over from the previous tool’s offcuts.

Some layout lines, and some cleanly sliced fibers with a Czeck Edge tool, and I’ve begun the hand cut mortise that will hold the crossbar.

I use my widest chisel, registering in the sliced fibers, to lightly relieve the cutlines, which provides a nice solid surface to register the chisel against for mortising actions.

Hogging out the waste is the same process as my previous tool, the Straight Line Cutter. No need to repeat those photos!.

Before I do any further shaping work, this time I think ahead and drill out the hole for the threaded insert and the final hole that the screw of the knurled knob passes through.

With the threaded insert in place, I’m ready to continue.

I drilled out a hole for the 1/4″ brass stock (boy, I’m getting a lot of use out of this 1 foot 1/4″ brass rod, 3 projects so far, $1.72!) and the hole runs true with the crossbar. I also laid out the brass rub strip. I ran out of 3/4″ x 3/32″ brass stock, so this time I’m using 1″ x 3/32″. I also sent off an order for more of that thin stock. Quite useful, and easily workable.

I did the preliminary brass work, rounding off a nub on the end of the brass rod, and cutting it down to size for the guide bar, as well as doing the cutoff on the flat stock for the rub strip.

I created the rabbet for the rub strip, and did some fine tuning, since I ended up a bit shy of the final depth I was looking for.

I started shaping the body with bandsaw and belt/oss sander.

And we’re looking good!

With cutter in position.   I lightly inset the cutter with my little router plane, to help ensure the cutter didn’t move at all.

Fin!

The next tool up is the straight line cutter.  This looked at lot more straightforward than the radius cutter, but it does still require a nice uniform mortise to hold the cutter support beam.  I used Cherry on the first tool, but I decided to go for some scrap Sipo (afraican mahogany) I had left over from another project, since I wanted to make the tool nice and thick.

Like the first tool, all I had was a resized and pixelated image from the L-N website, the cutter, and some thin brass bar stock from Speedy Metals.

I trimmed an 8/4 block to size, and then used the offcut to give myself a nice 4/4 square crossbar.  I also selected the 3/32″ x 3/4″ brass stock.  360 Brass is an extremely workable material, and it doesn’t rust, which makes it an excellent metal for integrating into your woodworking tools.

I laid out the general shape of my final tool, and marked where I’d like the various mortise and rub strip to be located at.

The hardest part would be to keep the mortise walls perpendicular, so that the beam that supports the cutter will remain in line with the work.  You don’t want your inlay skewed into the workpiece sideways, and if the radius cutter’s teeth don’t run in a straight line, the width of your inlay will be the wrong size for the work.    First, I bored out most of the waste.

Then I used my marking knife (made from a kit from Czeck Edge) and a backer block to edge a nice straight line from corner to corner.   I then lightly chiseled and relieved the edge, to give myself a nice reference surface.

Here’s my in-action shot, of truing up the sides of the mortise all around.

The bar drops in, and remains almost dead perpendicular.

Given I did it with hand tools, the mortise is probably as dead true as I’m going to be able to make it.

If you’d like to cheat, then I suggest you hog out the hole with an undersize forstner bit, make a template, and slowly remove the side wall waste with a flush pattern trim bit on your router table, and only do the final corner bits by hand, so you’ll have 4 large surfaces to reference against.

Next I cut the overhang area, where the brass wear strip will be mounted, and that the tool will ride on.

I did this in a 2-cut pass on the tablesaw, with no trapped waste.  It was just just shy of perfect, so that the ATB blade I had loaded would not leave an unsightly groove.  I cleaned out the small nib with a rabbet block plane.

With that cleaned up, I cut the brass stock to size with a hacksaw, and taped it in place so that I could predrill the screw holes into my stock.  You’ll notice that the whole piece is fastened in place pretty well.   I find when working with metal, this is worth the few extra seconds.

I got the holes drilled out, and just barely let the countersink touch them.

This is why I hate multi-flute countersinks.  Inevetible chatter.

I have to pick up a single flute job for this particular brass screw.  On the todo list!   I removed the screws and began to clean up the holes by hand with the multi-flute as best I could.

I mounted the wear strip, and screwed it in.  You’ll notice the screw heads do protrude a tiny bit.  Yes, this is on purpose!  I find if you leave them a bit proud, that after you file them down, you get a much tighter fit than if you set them in all the way, since the screw’s lip is rounded, and the countersink is a straight wall.

Then I filed it flush with the bottom of the body of the tool.

Looking good so far.

I probably should have taken this step earlier, since I’m not balancing the tool on a half-side, hence the elaborate clamping, so lesson learned!  So much easier to make a mistake like this once you’ve got a good aftermarket drill press table!  The hole is for the 1/4-20 threaded insert which will hold the knurled bolt that retains the cutter bar’s distance from the work.

This is my favorite way to install a threaded insert.  The only thing I would also have done is to put a washer in place between the first nut and the threaded insert, but I needed this insert to sit slightly below the level of the wood to hide it.   I never use the flats cut into the threaded insert, as they almost always leave some thin shavings in the well of the threaded insert, which eat up the brass threads.   I probably should have used an actual brass insert, but I didn’t have any, and these were included with a Rockler T-Track make-your-own kit I got, so I used them!

With brass knurled knob installed!

With the retaining knob out of the way, I moved back to the wear strip, and my effort to pretty it up.  I got my very fine bastard file, and went to town.  I followed it up with some 320grit to give it a slightly better polish.  I don’t take it any higher than that on a work surface like this.  It isn’t jewelry, its a tool!

Some quick work at the bandsaw, followed by the belt/OSS sander, and we’ve got a shape pleasing to my fat hands.   Although the tool is a bit oversized, I find I get a good comfortable grip on it.  Perhaps a I’ll eventually “Krenov” it to fit my hand, once I try it out some.

Last up, I’ve got to prep the cutter bar to hold the cutter.  Quick eyeball layout.

Pre-drilled hole looks good.

And we’re good to go!

It cuts beautifully.

Next up, Slicing Gauge!

Cut off and mounted, the brass point actually looks kind of nice.  I’ll just be a little less generous with the epoxy next time, so I don’t end up with that overfill bead.

I mounted the radius cutter, going about 1/16th to 1/8th deeper than the brass pivot point, so that the cutter will remain as perpendicular to the work as possible.  Since the holes in the cutter to attach it to the tool are oval, there is some room for adjustment later on.

It isn’t perfect, but my version bears a faint similarity to the wholeheartedly cloned L-N/Latta version.  (Cheesy pixelated/resized Internet photo in the background there!)  Based on my eyeball sizing, I made this tool oversized, much like the others will undoubtedly be.

I have to admit though, aesthetic concerns aside, the tool cuts a pretty neat curve.  I can tell that this tool is one that will definitely require some practice to master.  While this circle looks good, there are some areas where I could tell that the depth was uneven.  I think I might create a small depth stop gauge to slide onto the cutter, so that I can do a ‘final pass’ against a depth stop and make sure that I have a nice uniform seat for the inlay strips to register against.

Also, I’ve discovered that I should make the head as small as I can, and get the pivot point moved up as far as I can. This tool limits my ability to make small circles somewhat.  I think my minimum is about ~2 inches, which is OK, but I may choose to make a second one in smaller dimensions to insure I can make smaller circles.  The thing to keep in mind, is that the distance between the pivot point and the cutter is the final circle’s radius, not it’s diameter!  We’ll see how it works in practice.

Now, in order to make the inlay, I’ve got to create the other tools so that I can test out my circular cutter!

I was very intruiged by Steve Latta’s DVD for Lie-Nielsen “Fundamentals of Inlay: Stringing, Line & Berry” and the associated line of inlay tools that they offer along with it.  I learned (by way of the Villiage Carpenter) that Steve has been touching  a longer course on inlay for quite some time, and used to advocate the manufacture of your own tools, in the style that Lie-Nielsen is now offering.   When looking at those offerings, I did think that several of them could be made at home quite easily, and the $300 savings applied to something I can’t make as easily, like a high angle 4 1/2.  I did buy the radius cutter and straight line cutter replacement blades from L-N, because I didn’t want to spend time trimming the appropriate sized steel sheet stock, and learning to file saw teeth.

Somehow I managed to lose the first few photos of my progress on the first tools, so I apologize in advance.  I decided to start with what appears to be the most difficult of the 4 tools, the Radius Cutter.  At it’s heart, this consists of 2 parallel guide bars, a cutter, and pinion, and a set screw to keep the bars from sliding.

Since I’ve lost my original photos, I’ll have to improvise and describe my process.   I bought some 1/4″ brass rod stock from my favorite metals supplier, Speedy Metals.  (I’m also a bit of an amateur metalworker, but that is another blog post entirely!)

I also used some scrap cherry, and drilled two long 1/4″ holes through it.  I then cut about an inch off the end for the ‘head’ of the inlay tool, and glued the two rods into the head with Epoxy.  I didn’t properly plan how the epoxy was going to get out of the hole, and while pushing the rods in, perhaps a little too aggressively, I managed to split the head.    However, the 5 minute epoxy leaked through the small split, and dried quickly enough to keep the head a solid.   Sort of a self-fixing mistake.

On the other half of the body, I brought a burr up on the end of some brass rod stock, and used it like a scraper to help widen the holes enough to make the passage of the body over the brass rod nice and smooth, then installed a 1/4-20 threaded insert, and trimmed a brass 1/4-20 knurled knob down to appropriate length to act as the stop mechanism.  Here’s the main body.

The other portion of the tool is the actual pivot point that the radius cutter registers the body on.  I was thinking about doing another inset nut and grind or file a screw head, but I realized this doesn’t really need to be adjustable.   I don’t see myself doing any inlay on a very curved surface.  I decided to just grind a nice point on a piece of brass stock, then trim it off and simply epoxy it in place.   Ive made so many mistakes at this point I’ll probably do a less error-prone version of this tool eventually,  so why not.

That should do it for today!