Sign Carving

I was originally planning to show my working on this one but as the project developed and I found myself changing my methods, making mistakes and generally not knowing what I was doing, I figured it would be a case of the blind leading the blind.

Instead I will just post the finished results.

 It's a house sign for a relative. It's also the first piece of woodworking that I have been paid for, as this was in essence a commission piece. It's carved in European White Oak and has been given a coat of Raw Linseed Oil, followed by one of Boiled Linseed Oil, which I am led to believe, with regular re-coatings of the Boiled Linseed Oil, will make it reasonably weather resistant.

From sketching out the letters, to applying the final coat of oil the project took me roughly 10-11 hours. Though I'm sure a professional sign maker would hammer something like this out in much shorter time. It's my second attempt at letter cutting, something I was put onto by my Grandpa, who used to do some letter cutting pieces now and then for a little extra cash when he was younger (there may still be a few plaques in churches etc. made by his hand), and who has given me some verbal instruction (and hopefully a practical lesson soon, as there are a few points I struggle with). My first letter cutting job consisted of carving my initials on the top of a box I made - my first 'proper' wood work project (I may post that at some point too).

There are a few mistakes (I won't highlight them) but viewed from the sort of distance you tend to view a house sign at I'm pretty happy with the results, and more importantly the customer is too.

And finally, just because I had it ready for a how-to post, this is what I use when marking out the letters to make sure their proportions etc. are all correct.

An Interesting Table

Do all woodworkers find themselves pouring over interesting bits of furniture, investigating the various joints used whilst admiring good craftsmanship? It’s something I find myself doing more and more at antiques sales or in various houses (preferably while the owners aren’t looking).

A little while ago the family was on holiday, staying in a rented cottage which was home to a table which I thought rather interesting.

I took a few photos (unfortunately I had forgotten to pack my camera and had to rely on my phone) and a few quick measurements. This is a huge table, the top is some 108 in. by 41 in. made from 5 2 in. thick oak (I think) boards. The story from some locals is that it will be sold with the house as there’s no way to get it out, which might suggest that it was moved into the room in ‘flat-pack’ form and put together on site.  

What interested me most, however, was the way the top boards were joined together, at five points along each join in the table top there was a group of 4 visible wooden pegs. My guess is that the boards are joined using using a pegged or draw-bored ‘floating’ tenon or biscuit (I am guessing at terms here – if there is a proper technical term for this joint I’d like to hear it). I’ve seen draw-boring used for mortise and tenon joints but this is a new one for me. The pegs are also clearly square pegs driven into round holes. Overall, I expect this will give a very tight joint without any need for cramps.

The pegs from above

The pegs from below

I did draw a technical drawing of the table, I’ll apologise if the method of drawing isn’t exactly standard – I was never taught technical drawing and have come across my method mostly through intuition (and I can’t do any isometric views etc.). There were also a few measurements I forgot to take, mostly the overhang of the table, so I guessed here.  

When scanning the scale seems to have gone slightly awry but the included dimensions should suffice, and only having an A4 scanner I had to scan this in two parts which put things slightly out of line (and put a big line down the centre of the drawing). 

The Shooting Board Part 2

Having spent some time on some basic skills making the base for the shooing board, this post will tackle the remaining bits of wood. To avoid repetition, and to save the shooting board project from running on to chapters I’ll be skimming through the rest of the build picking out some key aspects, and things I learnt from, which hopefully others can too. 

I’m still struggling out the best balance for these blog entries regarding length.  I don’t want them to run on too long, nor do I want them to be so short that very little actually gets done.  I’m not sure if I’ve (m)any followers yet (I’m expecting most blogs are slow starters and this one will be no exception), but I’d welcome any opinions on the ideal blog length, what do people prefer?

But back to the matter at hand. First up was the upper level of the shooting board. This was first sawn and planed to a size of 24in. long by 4in.. It was taken from the same board as the base piece which was about 1 1/8 in. thick which had to be reduced to 3/4in. thickness. I figured this was too much to plane down, so it would need to be ‘re-sawn’. I did a bit of reading about this, which all made it sound rather challenging and suggested that my rip saw of 6 points-per-inch might be a little fine for such a job but without any obvious alternative I thought I may as well give it a shot.  

To start with I marked out the desired thickness of ¾in. on all four sides of the board using a marking gauge. I then ran a pencil along the marked lines to highlight them

Thickness marked out

I then clamped the board in the vice at an angle so that I could see and follow the line on two sides at once whilst sawing the board.

 I then started the saw cut until it touched the far corner, having sawn out a triangle shaped kerf. I then turned the board around so I could saw from the other side, guided by the previous kerf, nibbling out another triangle. From there it was just a case of turning the board back and forth taking out triangle after triangle.

Nibbling out triangles

When I was roughly half way through I turned the board round so that I could start at the other end and work towards the middle. By trying to follow the line closely I was able to get the cuts to meet up pretty cleanly at the centre.  The job wasn't nearly as hard as I was expecting. It can't have taken me more than 20 minutes and the saw seemed to cut pretty rapidly, especially when I used a two-handed grip. From there it was a simple job to clean up the surface with a plane.

Freshly re-sawn board

Next job was to sort out the stop. This was just a block of wood 5 in. long, 4 in. wide and 1 ¼ in. thick. This was then tapered down to 2 ½ in. at the front. I didn’t record this stage at all, it was a simple job of just marking a point 2 ½ in. from one edge at the front of the block and joining the dots to the back corner.

To hold the block a trench was cut in the upper board of the shooting board. One edge of the trench was marked out from the square and the angle other edge was copied from the stop using a sliding bevel. Having marked these out I cut down ¼ in. deep along these marks using a tenon saw, and a couple extra cuts in the waste were made to make it easier to chisel out later.  

I wasn’t sure how best to chisel out the waste so I sort of guessed here. I first set in a few blows from the chisel from above so, hopefully, the waste could be popped off in nice clean blocks. 

Waste sawn and scored with chisel blows

I then chiseled in from the side, staying above the marked line to take out the bulk of the waste, then carefully paring down to the line with a chisel (I found the depth of the saw cuts also helped as a guide here in trying to get a consistent depth). This was done from each side working towards the centre to avoid blow-out on the sides. This trench could have been finished off with a router plane to level out the bottom of the trench but I didn't feel it was necessary for this sort of work. 

Hogging out the waste

Paring to the line (note the saw cut that went too deep)

At the first dry-fit the trench was a tad narrow and the tapered block couldn't fit all the way to the narrow end.

A tight fit

To fix this I borrowed a side-rebate plane from my Grandpas tool-chest  to widen the trench. I actually found getting this tool to cut across the grain somewhat troublesome but got there in the end.

A Stanley No. 79 side rebate (or rabbet) plane

A Better Fit

From there I planed a slight chamfer on the upper board to allow a cavity for sawdust so that it's not affecting the run of the plane. I puzzled over this for a while as that lower corner of the board is also what stops the plane from taking shavings off the shooting board itself (as described here), in the end I made the chamfer small enough that it will still leave enough wood to act as a lip against the edge of the plane's sole. Most of my planes have about 1/4 in. between the edge of the blade and the side of the plane, so I made the chamfer just under 1/8 in. so there would still be 1/8 in. rubbing against the small bit of sole between the edge of the plane and the iron to stop the plane eating the shooting board.

The chamfer was marked out in pencil using a handy little chamfer template which holds the pencil in place to mark a consistent width which can then be planed to.

Chamfer template

Planing to the lines

From here the stop was glued and screwed in place and the protruding waste was sawn off then planed flush. It was then the work on an instant to screw the upper board to the lower, and, at last, job done.

The finished shooting board

I’ve given it a test run and the results seem pretty good. There may be room for fine tuning as the results were slightly out of square in one direction but this may be down to my technique, I'm possibly tipping the plane slightly, or even to the set of the plane itself. 

Baby Steps

For a first project I thought I’d start with the essentials: a shooting board, a useful appliance for planing the edges of lengths of wood square. I’m hoping this will also prove a good way of practicing some basic woodworking skills making accurate and true pieces of wood. I'd be working from plans taken from Carpentry for Beginners by Charles H. Hayward.

To start of with, and apologies if these seems dull, I'll be making one bit of wood, the base piece of the shooting board, and doing my best to make sure it was accurate on all sides. 

After a bit of a root around last time I was at the timber yard I managed to pick up some quarter-sawn Chestnut roughly 5’ long, 7” wide and 1 ¼” thick. The quarter-sawn grain should prevent any cupping off the wood throwing the shooting-board out of square (I’ll admit this will be my second shooting board – the previous one was made out of some scraps of Oak and Pine with little understanding of wood movement and following no tried and tested plans, it was near useless after a while).

The Raw Material

A poor picture in which you can just make out the quarter-sawn grain

To start off I cut the board into two pieces just to make it more manageable. You can see that the surface of the wood is fairly rough, so my first challenge was to clean up and true one side which would become the face side.

To do this I started traversing the wood at an angle (planing against a small batten nailed to my workbench top) until I was getting consistent shaving across the wood, which should be a sign that any belly or cupping was removed. I decided to use my fore plane for this as the sole is nice and flat for accurate work while the iron has a bit of a camber for hogging of material. I probably could have got away with using my wooden jack plane, or my jack and trying plane but using the fore plane saved me switching tools continuously (and I think the sole of my wooden trying plane has a slight belly which I've not had the confidence to tackle yet!)

Traversing at and angle

Having trued the board up across the grain I then changed and planed along the grain to ensure the board had no bow lengthwise.

Planing along the grain

Having planed the surface down I checked for any twist in the board using pair of winding strips, then having confirmed it was true I planed down one edge of the board to make sure it was square to the face – giving me a trued face and edge to make all my later marking from.  These were marked with the traditional ‘face mark’ of a loop connected to the ‘face edge mark’ of a V, pointing towards the trued face.

With a true face I then marked round the 4 edges with a marking gauge to mark the desired thickness and then, in a similar process to before, planed the other side down to these marks so the board was of a constant thickness.

Trued up

Having trued both faces I just had the 2 end edges and one side that still required attention. The sides were already parallel. The face edge was already squared up, so it was the work of an instant to square up the other side and one end (which I had taken pains to cross cut square when dividing the starting board) – testing repeatedly with a try square. During this however I noticed some cracks in the wood, what I believe is called 'heart shake', I'm not sure if it's best to try and plane these cracks off (leaving me with a narrower shooting board), or if I can just fill them with epoxy or similar. 

Heart shake?

The other end however had a knot in it and was far from being square. I'd left a bit of surplus length to allow this to be re-sawn. Because I was making a shooting board I couldn’t rely on being able to plane the end square if my sawing was off so I had to get this as close as possible straight from the saw.

To do this I cut a channel square across all four sides of the board for my saw to track in. This was done with a square and a marking knife. First I squared across the board as usual, and went back across the markings to deepen them with my knife, I then came back along the lines with my marking knife at an angle to dig out a V shaped trench. The V should lean into the waste side of the cut with its back, so that you don’t leave a beveled edge on the keeper.

This is a trick I’ve  seen Roy Underhill use on The Woodwright’s Shop and I was amazed at the results. I know my sawing needs more work as I often drift off the line, but following this groove the results were pretty good – a quick clean up with a block plane and I was happy.

All in all, after a couple of hours work I had turned a bit of wood into a square and true bit of wood. It doesn’t look like much but I feel taking the time to do this properly will teach me valuable lessons in accuracy. The shooting board needs two more bits which will hopefully come from the other half of this board of Chestnut. With varying thicknesses I'll be needing to try my hand at re-sawing a thick board down to two thinner ones next - another opportunity to learn something I think!

The Tool Kit

Having opened this blog with an introduction to the tool kit, I thought it would make sense to follow up with a list of its contents. The kit was chosen mostly under the guidance of various Charles H. Hayward books, who edited The Woodworker magazine from 1935-68 and wrote a number of useful books on furniture and woodworking. The two I’ve relied on most are Tools for Woodwork and Cabinet Making for Beginners. The Joiner and Cabinet Maker (of which a tool list is available here) and Chris Schwarz’s The Anarchists Tool Chest also deserve a mention when on the topic of choosing tools.

Most of the tools were given to me by relatives or picked up on Ebay or various antiques markets, though a couple were bought new. There are a few oddities that were picked up cheaply more for nostalgic reasons that for regular use – though I did find a use for the badger plane making the wide tenons for the clamped ends on the tool chest’s lid. I’ve a soft spot for old wooden tools, especially if they are interesting or unusual for any reason (such as the badger plane, which I expect was made by a carpenter for personal use as it’s made out of mahogany, when as far as I’ve seen all tool makers were using beech except for infill planes).

I also went a bit overboard with the brace bits. I’ve a table in one of my books that lists the various sizes of clearance holes and pilot holes for hardwood or softwood for all screw sizes from No.2 – 14. So I’ve more than the average number of shell and half-twist bits in my bit role to try and cover all those ‘required’ sizes. And, once I’d finished the bit roll, I saw the wooden tube of drill bits and in a moment of weakness bought that too (because I didn’t have that 1/16 in. bit I needed!). We will see, but I rather think I will only need a few of those bits for the more common screw sizes.

I’d also note that I am already overflowing the tool chest (I was before it was finished in truth), so there are a couple of tools kept separately which are marked with an asterisk (*). This was partly planned, I never expected to fit the larger hand saws in the chest, and partly due to a mild tool addiction. Ideally I’d like to have a truly traditional tool kit (circa 1850) with all the old style wooden tools but in some cases the modern metal tools are nice to have to hand when required. I find they do make some jobs easier, especially whilst I’m still developing my skills. The wooden router plane in particular always causes me distress, and I struggle to get the fine shaving I can get with a metal smoothing plane from a wooden one.

Saws

• *Rip Saw
• *Cross-cut saw
• Panel saw
• Tenon saw
• Dovetail saw
• Keyhole saw
• *Bow saw

 

Planes

• Jack plane
• Smoothing plane, wood
• Record No. 04, metal smoothing plane
• Trying plane
• *Record No. 06, metal fore plane
• Record No. 09 ½ block plane
• Skewed rebate plane
• Fillister plane
• Plough plane
• *Stanley No. 50 combination plane
• *Moudling Planes, ¼ in. beading plane, 1 ogee, 2 rounds.
• *Badger plane
• Router plane, wood,
• *Stanley No. 71 router plane

Chisels

• Firmer chisels, 1/16 in., 1/8 in. – 1 in. in 1/8 in. intervals, 1 ¼ in.
• Bevelled-edge chisel, 1 in.
• Mortise chisels, ¼ in., 3/8 in.

Marking out and Testing

• Try Squares, 12 in., 6 in. and 3 in.
• Mitre square
• Sliding bevel
• *12 in. Combination square set with protractor and centre square.
• Marking knife, striking knife, pencils etc.
• Marking gauge.
• Cutting gauge.
• Mortise gauge.
• Panel gauge.
• Dovetail template
• Dividers
• *Wooden straight edge
• 2 ft. three fold rule.
• 2 ft. folding slide rule.
• 1 ft. steel rule.

Boring Tools

• Ratchet brace, 10 in. sweep.
• Brace, 5 in sweep.
• Assorted brace bits
• Brad and Birdcage awls
• *Hand drill

Other Tools

• Wood spokeshave
• Half-round file
• Rat tail file
• Cabinet-makers rasp
• Scraper
• Pincers
• Pliers
• Punches
• Oilstone
• Slip stones
• Oil can and rag
• Leather strop
• *Framing square (which should have been in the marking and measuring photo)
• Hammers
• Assorted cabinet makers screwdrivers
• *4 ‘Perfect handle’ screwdrivers, parallel tips sized for No. 4, 6, 8 and 10 screws
• Burnisher
• File card
• *Various files, handles and saw-sets for saw sharpening.
• Cork rubber
• Needle files
• *Hatchet
• *Metal plate
• Inches/Millimetres equivalent chart.
• Old candle for greasing plane soles, screws etc. and general lubrication. 
• Mallet

 

So there's the kit, which is rather more extensive than I realised. Next up I really ought to start building things...

The Tool Chest

The Tool Chest

The New Tool Chest

Freshly armed with a hand-made chest of hand-tools, the idea struck me that it would be interesting (for me at least) to chart the progress of the various items which I build from said tool chest. Keeping a record of what I made, how I made it and the various troubles and triumphs of learning how to work wood.

The chest building began several months ago when, with a lot of inherited tools and very little knowledge, I decided to build them a home.

My preferred choice would have been a traditional English chest, such as the tool chest of Benjamin Seaton. However, I lacked both time and the skill to do such a chest justice. I still hope one day to build and English style chest, but I need to get some practice on veneering, inlay etc. before I take on the challenge.

Instead I opted for a Dutch style tool chest, popularised by Chris Scwarz and featured in the October 2013 issue of Popular Woodworking magazine. (Schwarz also builds a version with Woodwright Roy Underhill here).

I’ve also come across a couple more examples at the Frisian Maritime Museum in the Netherlands. This one, dated 1850, is the most similar to the Schwarz (et al) style, but the museum collection also features two other chests with sloping tops, here, dated 1696 and here, dated 1850 (but I expect probably older).

This type of tool chest is much quicker to build compared to the English style, or at least it’s supposed to be. I’ve managed to draw my build out much longer that the two days Chris Schwarz says he can knock them out in. The bottom corners are dovetailed, the shelf is held by a dado and the ends of the lid feature clamped ends using several mortise and tenon joints but the rest is simply glued and/or screwed together. I also had to tongue and groove most of the boards to get the width – the largest boards of pine I can pick up locally are about 5 ¼”.

As far as the history of these chests is concerned they are, as the name implies, mostly of Dutch origin. One features in Jim Tolpin’s, TheToolbox Book (‘look inside’ on Amazon and you can see it on p.8) which was ‘brought to America in the late 1800’s but thought to have been built several generations earlier.’ Chris Schwarz has also blogged about another old example here (also featuring one pictured in Grandpa’s Workshop) and has shown another in a blog post here.

With chest and tool kit complete (ok, the tool kit probably isn’t, there are already one or two thing’s I’d like to add, not to mention several things that don’t fit in it – a full inventory may be another blog entry) I thought I’d take the opportunity to record all the projects which emerge from the tool chest. My woodworking experience is limited – I’ve only really made a tray and a box before this chest – and this is my first attempt at blogging so the journey will be very much an adventure in amateurism but I hope the information may interest or entertain.