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Est. 1998 — 27 years of woodworking knowledge

Discoveries

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Discoveries

#1

Discoveries

Denis Ch�nard, Orl�ans, Ont.

>Been working on and off on a dovetailed "carcasse" this weekend, as family chores allowed. Found out a few things:

- LV Japanese dovetail chisels rock! I've abused these chisels and they come back for more... Chopping between the tails of a 12" board and they still shave the hairs off my arm...

- Chopping between the tails works well with thin stock. With 3/4" thick stock and narrow pins, Cosman's coping saw method works much better and faster.

- I do not like LN's dovetail saw. Nothing personal, I've come to prefer Japanese saws, much easier to control IMHO.

- I can chop dovetails at night! I told my wife that I didn't want to do that at night after the kids were in bed, but she told me she barely heard the chopping in the basement. I chopped for three hours after the kids went to bed, and they didn't wake up, wonderful! This means that I can go work in the shop at night and not wake up the kids...

That's all for now,

DC

Re: Discoveries

#2

Re: Discoveries

Bill Houghton, garage sales in Sebastopol, CA

>"I can go work in the shop at night and not wake up the kids"

Yet another argument for hand tools.

Re: Discoveries

#3

Re: Discoveries

Denis Ch�nard, Orl�ans, Ont.

>No argument here, still sometimes that makes for a slower going... Last night I needed to rout a groove in one of the boards. I could have whipped it up quickly with a tailed router, but that was too noisy. So I took out the router plane and did it by hand.

DC

Re: Discoveries

#4

Re: Discoveries

Hank Knight from SC

>"No argument here, still sometimes that makes for a slower going..."

Don't like to get off the Interstate sometimes and just enjoy the ride? Hand tools are about the ride. Enjoy it.

Hank

Re: Discoveries

#5

Re: Discoveries

thomd

>Also I think it's how one really improves at hand tools. As long as one falls back on machines (and I can fall just about anywhere in the shop and fall back on one), at least for me, there was always a little thing in my head telling me I wasn't confident to do it by hand. And I would be good at one thing but not good at the next skill, a patchwork. Even if the reason one uses a machine for a given task is because it's really and truly more efficient in a given case, it hurts the overall competence. Without the overall competence and confidence, the machines seem even faster.

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