Using winding sticks - tip for the day (Part 1)

I have an answer

HC Sakman

>If you use an object to do something with it OR use it to assist you that would be a "tool".

That's it.

Chico...

Re: I have a question

Warren in Lancaster, PA

>Adam I don't agree that winding sticks are just any pair of scraps. I have used the same pair of mahogany sticks for almost thirty years. Using the same sticks is important to develop the speed and accuracy necessary for consistant work. When you use winding sticks you want to take a quick look and go back to planing with an image of just how much is needed to correct the wind. You don't want to have to make mental calculations to correct for the fact that these sticks are a different length or different color or whatever from the last set. Repetition and intimacy with our tools are important for a high level of craftmanship. The finest plane or saw or stone is not as valuable as the one we have learned to use well.

Re: I have a question

Bjenk Ellefsen

>Actually, I dont see why making the tool more efficient changes the way it is defined by its usage. It is not independant of its form. We give it form after all. In ancient greece it was said that only the user could dictate the artisan the form and shape of the tool, not the fabricator. The man in charge of making a tool, for example, had to follow the directions of the user of the tool. Thats what made Aristotle say that Artisans were not free men like Citizens were : because they worked for other people (I`m cutting it very short here so bear with me).

The principle stays the same : winding sticks are still sticks defined by the way they are used no matter how thick or long they are. You can make them better at what we use them too, true enough.

Just like a piece of rock that you will break to give it an edge for cutting meat. You can make it better with more refined attention but its still a rock that is defined as a tool for cutting meat by its use to... cut meat. People gave it a name other than "rock" to identify it as a specific tool for that use. There were sharpened rocks to make arrows, some to skin animals, etc. they had different usage and different names. Rocks all the same but more than rocks by what we made them to be.

Winding sticks are just sticks, true. But, according to my eyesight like you say, no they are not just scraps nor without form, they are "winding sticks", sticks used and even shaped exactly to help in the task we put it up to : truing boards. Its that function that will make us try and better those sticks to assist us. That is how it is a tool and we give it form.

I hope it makes sense.

Re: Are you an anthropologist by nature

Bjenk Ellefsen

>By profession and by passion!

That`s why you have to tell me to shut up when I go on like this here. Hey, its Adam`s fault for bringing Zen considerations into the shop!

Re: Are you an anthropologist by nature

Bruce, a MN Galoot

>MA and ABD from U of Minn, cultural/social anthro.

Bruce

Re: atoms

Moses Yoder in White Pigeon, MI

>That is an interesting theory, that an arrowhead is not an arrowhead at all, but just a rock. So if we break everything down to its base, we would refer to everything in the whole world as "atoms". Even atoms are not atoms, but made of different particles, but I suppose the atom being the smallest unit, everything is actually atoms and not really anything else. Thus I guess is why we have different words for different things. If I asked you to hand me those atoms, you would have no idea what I was referring to. So a winding stick is not a winding stick or anything else for that matter, it is atoms, and we simply refer to it as "winding stick" so everyone who understands the english language and woodworking knows what we are referring to.

In order to define the words that we have made up to refer to the different groupings of atoms, we have made dictionarys. A dictionary is a bunch of atoms in paper form with a list of word with their meanings written behind the words. My Funk & Wagnalls standard desk dictionary that I got in like new condition at a garage sale for 50 cents (beep, beep) defines the word we use to refer to certain groups of atoms as tools. Definition 1 is "A simple mechanism or implement". Definition 6 is "Any instrument or means necessary to the efficient prosecution of one's profession or trade". SO I will have to retract my earlier theory that a winding stick is actualy food and can be boughten with money out of the grocery budget, as I think there is strong evidence that it would have to be boughten with money from the tool budget. I'm quite positive my wife would agree with me.

Superb

Greg B

>That was one of the best replies I've read here. Squarely on point, with good humour. Have a great day.

Re: You put your finger on it

James Watriss

>Actually, one of the joys of winding sticks is that you can easily tell if they're still straight. You hold them up against each other, comparing different edges, and look for light. Since each will be bowed a certain amount away from the line dividing the two edges, in holding them up, the gap will actually be twice the amount that each stick is bowed. If they're at all out of straight, planing them back straight again is not really much of a problem for a novice woodworker with a decent hand plane.

A wise furniture builder told me that he made winding sticks pretty frequently out of different woods, from scraps of furniture projects. Since he pretty much used only japanese hand planes, winding sticks came in handy for checking his planes. At the end of the day though, not only did he have plenty of winding sticks, in case he needed them, he also had examples of different species of wood to inspect over the years. Pairs that had been planed down more often were clearly indicative of a variety of wood that wasn't very stable, and he was able to take that into accound in his designs, as time went on. Personally, I think that's more useful, in the long run, than a pair of aluminum sticks from an online vendor.

If stability is such an issue, cut your own from aluminum bar stock from home despot... or angle iron. Save your money for some really nice quilted maple.

Winnie the P'u?

James Watriss

>Ah, yes. Such wonderful conversation... alas, I am a bear of little brain, and not used to such complications.

: P

I'm not sure why a status of "tool" is entirely relevant, but language is a tool for communication, so I suppose there must be a viable use for the word.

On the one hand, I suppose a verifiable "tool," is something worth keeping around, because it remains useful. For those of us with shops filled to the brim with objects tha might someday be conceivably useful, such a distinction is very helpful. Not only because it provides material to talk about online, but because it's a discriminator that's useful. A scrap of pine is just a scrap. Chances are there are lots of those around, so when it comes time to decide which ones will serve better to heat the house, a scrap can go. A carefully maintained set of wooden winding sticks is a tool, it can stay.

Then again, I suppose it's all in how the word is used. Just because it's called a tool, implying usefulness and value, doesn't mean that it's a good thing. I called a guy at school a tool just the other day, and he got quite irritated. Well, actually, I think I called him a "useless tool," which is a contradiction in terms, but whatever.

Re: Superb

Greg Sloop, Portland Oregon

>I must second that!

Thanks Moses!

They're not jigs

Michael Recchione

>Unless a level or a rule is also a jig. They're a measuring tool. I think there's merit to both Adam's and Joel's approaches: Adam's approach is akin to making a story stick when you need one, Joel's is closer to keeping a Starrett rule. I've made many story sticks. For projects I think I'll make again, I save the story stick. For things I'm pretty sure I'll never make again, I put the story stick into the firewood basket. I don't think I've ever re-used one of the story sticks I saved. But it might happen someday. I did drill a hole through the winding sticks I made once, so I could hang them on a nail. I don't own a Starrett rule.

Do winding sticks need to be straight?

Adam Cherubini

>Straight or just the same? I can see whay you might plane two together, but why do they need to be straight?

To some extent, if your winding sticks are bowed, you chose your stock poorly. LIkewise, if the stock you chose for your project is out of wind (twisted), again you've chosen your stock poorly AND you've got a problem that planing probably won't solve. That wind will come back. Lastly, if you project is unforgiving of wound stock, such that you need aerospace grade winding sticks, you may be better off using plywood.

I'm exaggerating of course, but if you buy any of this, where does this leave winding sticks? To a large extent, the die is already cast with the design and material selection of the project. I use scrap for winding sticks, but have saved a walnut stick as a straight edge (my painted rock). I use winding sticks to get an idea of what my stock is doing. Sometimes a use a small torpedo level.

Adam

Use defines the objec

Ron in Kokomo

>It is a tool if used to break open a door. It is a rock if it is left laying on the ground.

Re: Do winding sticks need to be straight?

James Watriss

>You're absolutely right.

The gentleman in question also used his winding sticks as straight edges, particularly for checking his plane soles. For this, he felt wooden straight edges were preferable, as it eliminated the possibility of a metal etraight edge banging up his blade. Having a separate straight edge obviously works, too, but it occurs to me that in this case you can check pretty much everything... wind as well as cupping, at the same time if your winding sticks are straight.

I should throw in here that he also didn't bother with inlay or anything of that sort to help improve visibility. He had dovetailed keys that held the sticks together while they were not in use, or while being re-straightened. I don't think he expected all or even most of them to be life-long tools. They were something he made in between comissions, as somethign to do while he decompressed.

I agree that properly chosen stock shouldn't bow, and that the die is certainly cast once a piece is put together. It doesn't help anyone to know after the fact that the wood in his piece is trying to rack the whole thing out of square. But I've had straight grained quartersawn wood do weird things on me before, and even if those winding sticks are useless for the piece in question, for purposes of comparative analysis between species, I can imagine that it might be useful in the future to know which sort of wood are prone to do weird things on you.

At the end of the day, though, I'm not trying to disagree with you. The purpose of my original response to Denis was more a defense of wooden winding sticks v buying fancy extruded aluminum versions. Wooden winding sticks are subject to seasonal weather patterns, just as much as wooden planes are, and that doesn't impugn their reputation of their trustability in my mind. I was mainly disagreeing with Denis' point that becuase wood isn't quite as stable as metal, that doesn't imply that it's not a trustworthy tool. They're not hard to check, they're not hard to correct, if you choose to keep them straight, either.

Off topic, and by the way... many thanks for your articles in PWW.

Re: Do winding sticks need to be straight?

paul womack

>why do they need to be straight?

Assuming your stock has been planed flat, and you're now checking for twist (i.e. mis-orientation of 2 straight lines), only a straight winding stick can correctly and reliably register with the workpiece. You could hypothesize about a 2 point contact, but since workpieces vary in width, you don't know where to have the 2 points :-)

Further the winding stick must be parallel in order for the non contacting edge to be a proxy for the workpiece.

All this within "reaonable" tolerance, of course.

BugBear (with wooden winding sticks, planed straight, and gauged parallel)

Re: I have a question

George Makowski

>Warren, You have hit on something that bothers me about Adam's responses in this thread. Just because a complex of tools seems simple to us and perhaps remote in function and time, like XVIII c. woodworking tools, does not mean that any one of those tools was simply random in its conception or use.

Take the objects of our discussion here, winding sticks. You want a point of connection for arts and mystery, here it is, as it also is in levels, dividers, and squares and bevels, fixed or adjustable.

As Paul pointed out above, not any two sticks of wood are fine, they must be straight and the edges parallel to allow consistent work. They provide an analog reading of a surface exaggerating differences by projecting them in length. This also underlies some of the most advanced physics testing done today to ascertain the nature of light. As you pointed out Warren, when you get your sticks right, they are right and can be used for years. Some workers in the past might have considered such accuracy disposable. There is clear proof that many did not. They prepared their winding sticks with care and inlayed them with contrasting materials. They checked them regularly. They kept them for a long time.

Wooden winding sticks are clearly measuring tools used for high order testing of surfaces within the tolerances accepted at the time of their extensive use. If we choose to work to other tolerances: either lower, where we wouldn't really need winding sticks, or higher where we believe we cannot tolerate wooden sticks that is our choice. At the core of the discussion is not only our attempt to understand workmanship in the past, but our understanding of wood.

How accurate does wood working need to be given it is working with wood? It depends on our own goals and ideals. Will it be the axe today or the jack plane? The fore plane or the smoother? A quick glance for wind or winding sticks?

This is a good discussion, but I believe that we need to remember the wide variety of production tolerances accepted in different types of woodworking over time and choose our level of accuracy when discussing and of the tools we use or want.

Re: I have a question

joel -( tools for working wood)

>Because winding sticks can be trivially checked and correctly - the ida that standards of accuracy have changed is incorrect. THe human eye can see (against a dark background) a light leak between 2 edges of about 1 millionth of an inch. - being a little sloppier it is extremely easy to plane a pair of winding sticks to a thou or less accurate over a 24" length. The tradeoff is that it may not (won't) stay that way. THe second indication of accuracy is length. the longer the winding stick the more accurate a reading you can detect. With my 24" pair I can easily plane something say 4' long 8" wide that is flat to within a 32nd or less without thinking much about it. If I wanted to go more accurate I would just get longer winding sticks.

The major change in the centuries is the modern supposition that factory made tools are more accurate/better than shop made tools which isn't always true.

Another major change in the centuries - which may be more important is that idea that accuracy is given by the tool. In earlier times it was understood that accuracy and repeatability was a skill to be developed like anything else.

Birds & Beasts

Derek

>I have seen, a number of times, references to animals which use "tools". These would turn out to be a stone or a stick which the animal used to get food. A short piece of stick that a monkey or bird used to pry a grub from a hole in wood, for example, would be called a "tool".

I think that any device we use to aid us in our work would be called a tool. In this case, winding sticks are definitely tools.

Can a tool be "disposable" - certainly. Single use tools exist. In fact, even "multiple use" tools do wear out.

Work rhythm

Wiley Horne--Glendora, CA

>Warren opined,

"Repetition and intimacy with our tools are important for a high level of craftmanship. The finest plane or saw or stone is not as valuable as the one we have learned to use well."

________

This rings true, unquestionably. In any kind of work I have ever done, whether mental or physical, there is a rhythm. People say they get into a "zone". When things are really going well, you're not rationalizing each step and micro-step ('gotta find a straight stick')--instead, you're reaching for familiar tools and it's just happening in a flow.

When Mark Grable was apprenticing with the sawmaker Miyano in Japan, he reported that when he would finish scraping and hammer-tensioning a saw, he would take it to the boss for inspection--and it would not get even a look unless there was the right rhythm in the sounds, the hammerstrikes and so on, that went into the making.

I think Warren is right.

Wiley

Re: I have a question

George Makowski

>Joel, I am not arguing that achievable accuracy with hand tools was less in the past. Your points about the ergonomics of measurement and observation are right on. We can, and have been able to, measure as well as we can see.

What I am saying in part of my post is that woodworking in the past encompassed the production of a vast number of different objects produced to vastly different tolerances. Different techniques were used to judge what was "tolerable" depending on the task. Shaping a dough trough with an adze has wide tolerances. So does turning a bowl or carving a spoon. Framing a house has allowances different than framing a cabinet door.

To pick up on one of Adam's themes in a previous thread, when you have a premium on completeting a job, productivity, you set tolerances that suit the job to speed production. I am suggesting that we bear this in mind when we discuss tools and techniques.

Thanks for your response,

George in AL

Re: Do winding sticks need to be straight?

ThomD

>I think it was in a picture of John Bart's workshop that I saw his many sets of Japanese style WSs that are made of two wooden pieces joined with a pair of dovetail keys. One of them was shaped like those curvy boomerangs. Far from straight. It gives one possible use (not sure what he had it for) of winding sticks. Imagine in simplest form a coopered door front in which planing the curves into the pieces might result in twist. Imagine the curve is higher in the middle and therefore difficult to sight. The outside curve of the winding stick followed the inside curve, and the inside curve could operate as a pattern also. Anyway, whatever they were for he had them.

Hear Hear

Paul Kierstead

>Something else that is overlooked sometimes is the reason why extreme accuracy is highly desirable: Things made in factories are made independently and must fit without adjustment. This is especially true since most are made of materials which cannot stand 'adjustment', even with cost of time ignored.

With hand made (with the assistance of machines possibly) items, this accuracy is overrated. Sure it is nice if your cabinet door is perfectly square to 1/64" and fits into the perfectly square opening, but realistically a very slightly oversized door tweaked to fit will be easier, faster and actually still fit better, because it is pretty easy to tweak the door so that the gap around it is more accurate then 1/64" in consistency, and it can all be done by eye possibly with a piece of paper or two.

You make a MAJOR and important point

Dave Anderson Chester, NH

>You're right on Paul. Mass production and interchangeable parts changes the whole complexion of things. Most of us, being hobbiests, are in the bespoke furniture business not a manufacturing industry. Hand fitting or adjusting is part and parcel old fashioned woodworking.

Re: Do winding sticks need to be straight?

Dean J in MN

> Adam: Straight or just the same? I can see whay you might plane two together, but why do they need to be straight?

BugBear: only a straight winding stick can correctly and reliably register with the workpiece. You could hypothesize about a 2 point contact, but since workpieces vary in width, you don't know where to have the 2 points :-)

I think we are talking about straight in different planes here.

Adam seems to be saying why care if they have some bow in winding stick,

or even some taper. He goes on to say he sees why you may plane two

together, which makes the two mirror images. In my reading, he isn't saying the edge shouldn't be straight.

As I see it there is no real reason to have the top edge and the bottom edge parallel to each other. So long as they both sloped the same and you always face the sticks such they are sloped the same you are fine.

A quick mark on the side which should face you is all you should need

to keep things straight. (Oh no, not that word again)

So, grab two scraps from the pile. Stick them together, and plane

them as if you where match planeing a edge joint, do the top and the

bottom edge, and you have two mirrored shapes. Viola, winding sticks.

If you really like 'em -- paint that stone and keep it.

-Dean (with wooden winding sticks, matche planed, without top and bottom edges parallel as far as he knows)