Dovetail Class

I'm teaching a dovetail class this Saturday for beginner and intermediate woodworkers.
Here I have all of the stock prepped: 6 total quartersawn mahogany dovetail alignment boards and 4 poplar practice pieces per student.

We'll be using David Barron's dovetail guide for the class. I really think this tool will change the way dovetails are taught in the coming years. I firmly believe the guide allows beginners to build muscle memory as well as their sawing skills while being able to accomplish very nice dovetails. It takes a lot of the stress off a beginner and I'm very excited to start teaching this method!

Image Source: Barron, David. Dovetail Guides. Digital image. http://davidbarronfurniture.co.uk/. David Barron, 2011. Web. 13 Nov. 2014. <http://davidbarronfurniture.co.uk/david_barron_tools.asp?pg=1&id=5>.

Walnut Knockbox

Here's a dovetailed knockbox I've recently completed for a client in Florida. It's made of some nice air dried American Black Walnut, from the Amish in Ohio. Finished with a few coats of Osmo. A little metal housing rests inside of it.

Mahogany Trestle Table

Here is a Mahogany trestle table I finished recently. The table was done entirely by hand except for the cove molding. The base is finished with Osmo oil/wax. The top is finished with candlelight oil stain, sanding sealer, pore filler, three coats of 50/50 polyurethane, three full coats of polyurethane, and finally a French polishing buffing compound.

The joinery consists of drawbored mortise & tenons and through wedged mortise & tenons. All hand cut and chopped. All of the curves and heavy chamfers were made with a spokeshave. A 50° pitch smooth plane left the final surface on all flat areas and the spokeshave for the curved.

1881 J. Kellogg Double Bead

I just received this 3/16 double bead plane from Patrick Leach of The Superior Works. It is boxed with boxwood and made of quartersawn beech. The double bead allows you to plane in both directions so you can always plane with the grain and allows you to put a bead on both sides of a board. The heel (the back of the plane) is stamped “3/16” and “1881”. The toe (the front of the plane) is stamped “J. KELLOGG” and “AMHERST MS.” After a little research here is what I found out about the plane & maker:

DATM Information

James was part of Kellogg, Fox & Washburn until 1839, Kellogg & Fox from 1839-1840 and J. Kellogg & Son from 1865-1867. William Kellogg, his son, continued to use his mark after his retirement in 1867

Identifying Marks

J.KELLOGG/AMHERST.MS

General Information

Kellog’s first company was purchased from Eli Dickinson and became a wildly successful manufacturer of planes. At one point, a portion of Amherst was called “Kelloggville” and was occupied by two of his factories; even producing 150 to 200 planes a day, they were often unable to fill all the orders they received. They are often deemed the highest quality planes ever manufactured on a large scale and collectors abound on the internet praising their worth. In 1886, the dam supplying power for the factories was washed away and production remained idle for several years.

Source: Davistown Museum 

I’m going to clean this up and put it to use very soon. Thank you Patrick.

To Build A Moxing Bird

I do not have a good workbench. That's a hard confession to make. I've been telling myself I'll build my Roubo soon for three years now. Because I don't have a good bench I haven't taken the time or money to install good vises. The Moxon vise solves a lot of my problems. It provides solid workholding for most of my joinery needs and it's portable. That's a big deal for me. Here's how I made mine:

I used Benchcrafted hardware and their plans for the vise as well.

I milled my hard maple stock to Benchcrafted's specifications: 1 3/4" thick, 36" x 5 1/2" for the fixed jaw, 32" x 5 5/8" for the movable jaw, and 22 1/4" x 2" for the stabilizer block. All I had to do was mark out my layout lines, drill a few holes with a 3/4" forstner bit, and chop a couple mortises. Then glue the stabilizer block to the back of the fixed jaw. That's it. You're done. Apply the suede included with your hardware and you can start working.

If you'd like to carve the stopped chamfer and Lamb's Tongues that adorn either side of the vise there are a few more steps. But nothing that will take more than an afternoon to accomplish. The first thing I did was download this template from Chris Schwarz's article on the Lee Valley page and resized it to 1 3/8" wide. I printed it on cardstock so I could trace it easily.

To layout the Lamb's Tongue, mark a point (mine was about 5 inches in, but go with whatever you think looks good) and trace your template. Then flip it over and trace it on the other face of the chop. Then use your marking gauge to scribe a line from the top of one end of the template to the other, then repeat on the opposite face. Keep the same setting so things remain even.

I used my handsaw to cut right down to the corner of the template. This will help out a lot later. Repeat on the opposite end.

Then (still using the handsaw) I made a cut every half inch, making sure not to go past my scribe lines.

After that I used a 3/8" mortise chisel to pop the waste out. Be careful not to go too deep. You don't want to rip out a big chunk. Take it slow and you'll be fine.

After chopping out the waste I used a spokeshave set for a heavy cut to take out the bulk of the material. A drawknife would be ideal here, but I don't have one. As I got close to my scribe lines I set the spokeshave for a light cut and eased up to the lines. Then I used a rabbeting block plane to get into the corners, planing across the grain.

Now it's time to work on the Lamb's Tongue. I used my fret saw to saw out most of the waste. On a smaller Lamb's Tongue you can use a bench chisel for the whole process, but I did not want to remove this much waste in hard maple with a chisel alone. Keep your saw at a consistent angle and change the pitch of the blade to follow the outline. It's ok to stay away from the line. Clean up after this doesn't take too long.

It should look something like this after the fret saw.

I used a 1/2" bench chisel to pare close to the line. I kept the chisel skewed and worked across the grain taking light cuts. It doesn't seem to matter if you go up or downhill here. It was more comfortable for me to go up.

To carve the tip of the Lamb's Tongue I used a #6, 14mm gouge. I think any gouge #3-#6 would do fine here. Use a scooping action to remove the waste.

I used a medium file (use push strokes in a diagonal direction) & followed the curve to refine the shape.

You should have a nice flowing line on both faces. If it's off, lightly use the file to refine the curve. Now you can sand. I used a dowel wrapped in paper, again following the curve, and went through 0000 steel wool.

All that's left to do is apply your suede with contact cement and finish with whatever you'd like. I just went with a few coats of Tung oil. This vise has become a close friend in my shop.