A Necessary Evil

I guess evil is a strong word, but it gets my point across. What I'm referring to is tool sharpening. In reading as much woodworker stuff as I can get my hands on, one central tenet of all the masters is the same: you must work with sharp tools. Basically, if you try to do handwork with dull tools, you're going to get frustrated and tired. Frustrated when the pieces look awful or don't fit and tired by having to wail on a chisel to get it to cut.

I got a reminder of both this weekend when working on J's jewelry box. I'm hand-cutting through dovetails for the box joinery, which requires a fair amount of chisel work to get the pins & tails square and fitting nicely. Let's just say I didn't get off a great start. I stopped after being horrified by the amount of tear-out I was getting from my dull chisels. I must at least give myself a little credit for stopping before I would be forced to use the 4 pieces of mahogany as firewood.

Yesterday's activity was getting the chisels back to form. I've been using the Scary-Sharp method, which uses ordinary sandpaper to hone chisel & plane irons. I buy 400 - 2000 grit automotive paper and work my way up the grits until the metal looks almost like a mirror. The hardest part is flattening the backs of the chisels first so you can actually generate a nice edge. Unfortunately, chisel backs are anything but flat when you first buy them. Here's a nice step-by-step description of the process I generally use (sans waterstones for now). Once the backs are flat, honing the bevel is easy. After about 5 minutes or so, they're sharp enough to shave the hairs off my arm. Not their primary purpose, mind you, but it is a good test of sharpness. :-)

The sad part about yesterday is that I had to quit working in the shop before I had a chance to put them to work. Hopefully, I'll get out there tonight after work since it's a balmy 53 F today. Happy Monday, everyone.

I Finally Got My Shop Back

Hey all. Has it been over 2 months since I last blogged? Of course it has because this is me and I'm quite possibly the worst blogger ever (well, not in content, but definitely in frequency).


I got a bug to write again because I got a nice e-mail from a few windsor chairmakers out in Missouri who found this blog through my instructors' website. Turns out they studied together at the same place and are also professional chairmakers. It was nice to hear from them.


The good news is that the workshop has been busy again lately. I've made it a point to reclaim the shop from the storage area it had become during the bathroom remodel, so over the last 3 weeks I've been doing just that. I basically cleaned it all out (found out that several local mice had been feeding on a bag of birdseed - yuck), moved some stuff around, made a few upgrades, and got it back in working order. The upgrades are a few small cabinets for extra storage that I'v ebeen thinking about forever. They're nothing fancy, but they do manage to keep some tools and supplies from getting dusty, which is key in a shop with little or no winter ventilation. Here's what the weekend oasis looks like now. It looks more crowded than it actually is. There's alot of multi-tasking going on with the benches and equipment.





In fact, I have several projects in progress as we speak. I'm building a jewelry box for a soon to be 13-year old niece (shhh, don't tell her), and have been experimenting more with my lathe. I really want to do more turning, starting with spindles and working my way up to bowls. The first project will be legs and stretchers for a few windsor stools. These have been in the offing ever since I finished my sackback chair over a year ago. I'll let you know how they turn out.


I'm off to Pittsburgh tomorrow for a business trip, so wish me luck that I don't get stuck somewhere due to snow, wind, or both... Have a good week.