Over in the WoodNet Woodworking Forums, member Steven has posted several photos of rocking horses he’s making for his grandchildren. In doing so, he’s carrying on a family tradition begun by his father who made a rocking horse for Steven’s children.

Family built items hold that special appeal. Around 30 years ago my Father built this rocking horse for our first child. She is now married and starting a family of her own and her daughter now has her rocking horse…. Over the years this simple rocking horse will get built many more times as needed as our 6 children start their family’s.

Well, it took me about a month to complete 90% before the boys were born and 8 months to complete the last 10% after they were born.

Well deserved congratulations on both counts and more comments in the Woodworking Forum. BTW: Plans for the crib (originally published by Workbench Magazine) are available in print or as a download at PlansNOW.com.

Over at WoodNet.net, member ephmynus is showing photos of his new gazebo.

For this project, I did actually use a plan I found from PlansNOW. I’ve never built anything other than furniture so I had no idea where to begin without a plan. So, this is the first time I’ve ever used a plan, the first time I ever built anything like this, the first time I’ve ever laid a deck, the first time I’ve ever done any roofing. Lots of firsts so I’m pretty glad how everything turned out.

Sure doesn’t look like a first-time effort! More photos and comments at WoodNet Forums. Plans are available at PlansNOW.com.

And still, I’ve experienced situations that could have resulted in bodily injury.

Once I was knocked on my keester when a workpiece I was ripping pinched the blade and got kicked back into my stomach. (I broke two cardinal woodworking safety rules during that particular procedure.) I don’t remember now what caused the kickback. But I’ll never forget how lucky I was not to have been injured more seriously. (Or the pain to my gut!) But none of us are perfect. Accidents happen and all you can do is hope they don’t happen to you. Right?

That’s why I was surprised while watching a recent segment of TOH, as a trim carpenter made a free-hand cut on the table saw. Frankly, I watched in disbelief as he made the cut and thought to myself, “Man, that just looks dangerous!” Norm Abram was standing there watching and I thought maybe he would say something, but he didn’t. I figured there would be a lot of people commenting about the segment on our woodworking forums. And there is a debate raging over at WoodNet. But, you may be surprised to learn that there are a lot of people defending the practice.

Several people have commented that the practice of pushing a piece freehand past a spinning table saw blade is an acceptable practice by professional trim carpenters. It may be. And the guy managed to make the cut during the show without any problem. But I can tell you one thing….I’m never going to try it.

What’s your response?

Ken posted photos of the process of building this bed. You can read all about it over on WoodNet. It’s an amazing story of how the project was completed and Ken gives all the details of how his wife progressed from start to finish.

Around since 1993, the original WoodNet BBS was a way for Woodsmith magazine to further support their customer base. The BBS evolved into what is now WoodNet.net and it not only includes the forums, but you’ll also find project plans, woodworking tools and kits, tool reviews, and tips and techniques that are sent direct to your email address each week.

But, today, with eight forums in all (five dedicated to woodworking, one to home improvement, one off-topic forum and one for forum help) if you’re looking for answers from people with most of the same interests as you, the WoodNet forums is the place to be. The subject matter during any given day ranges from how to install kitchen cabinets, to the relative merits of a Stanley No. 4 over a No. 4-1/2, to questions about the best miter saw blade available. Proud forum members often post their “gloats” over the acquisition of a new tool or a particularly impressive wood stash.

It’s not all about talking woodworking though. There are guys (and some gals) who belong to the forums, that get together for regular gatherings (see photo). Or, one member may get a load of lumber and then drive all over the country connecting with other WoodNet members, delivering lumber, and getting some more to take home. The forum members also do lots of things to help members who find themselves caught in extreme circumstances (like illness or accidents), plus they assist active servicemen, as well as veterans.

There are over 19,500 registered users of the WoodNet forums, and probably several tens of thousands who visit the forums to “lurk” each day and simply read the forum posts, but never post themselves. In fact, during the month of April 2007, there were on average13,467 distinct visits to the forums each day. According to Google AdSense, the page impressions for all of April at the WoodNet forums totaled over 5.2 million visits.

Moderators of the forums have a “hands off” policy about forum management. So things are pretty relaxed compared to other woodworking forums. But they do have rules, and a dedicated group of member moderators, who keep things on track and without whom there would be no WoodNet Forums.

So if you’re interested, put on your helmet and flak jacket, come on in and pay them a visit.

Don Peschke and Paul Roman.

If those two names aren’t so familiar to you, it’s because they’ve both worked more behind the scenes as the pioneering editors and publishers of Woodsmith and Fine Woodworking magazines, respectively. Each has probably influenced more people to get into the shop and actually build something than just about anyone else on Garrett’s list.

Neither Don nor Paul’s name is as familiar perhaps as Norm Abram, but to me their magazines were groundbreaking. Woodsmith, published by August Home Publishing (they also put out ShopNotes, Workbench, Garden Gate, and Cuisine at home), is unique in that it doesn’t just show you a pretty project, it helps you build the project with detailed step-by-step instructions and clear, concise drawings and photos. I remember the first time I picked up Woodsmith magazine, my very first thought was “I can do that!”

(As you may know, Don owns the company I work for, so this is not a completely unbiased post! But the fact is, I’ve been an editor for Woodsmith for 7 years, but I’ve been reading the magazine for over twenty-five years.)

Paul Roman, and his wife Jan, started Fine Woodworking in 1975 and it eventually expanded into a publishing empire that includes magazines for woodworking, home building, cooking, and gardening. Paul’s goal was to have a woodworking magazine that not only informed, but also inspired its readers. There’s no arguing with that, it’s an awesome magazine.

I suppose we’ll always be more influenced by TV personalities. And this is not a knock on Norm, but I’d rather read about woodworking and then go do it myself, than watch it being done on TV anyday.

If you’d like to subscribe to Woodsmith to find out exactly what I mean, click here.

All it takes is one wrong move, one moment of hesitation, a single lapse in concentration, or a misplaced step. And it doesn’t matter what power tool you’re using. They’re all dangerous…if…you don’t take the time to think about what you’re doing.

Apparently, I’m not alone in feeling that “operator error” leads to most serious injuries in a home shop. That seems to be the consensus of the 100 or so readers who responded to a recent survey at ToolCrib.com that asked the question: “What’s the most dangerous woodworking power tool?” Garrett French, who runs the Tool Crib blog, went to the trouble of compiling all of the responses and then posting about the results. And they were pretty interesting. The table saw got a lot of votes. So did shapers, chainsaws, routers and jointers.

But let’s face it, a blender can cause an injury — in the hands of someone who’s not paying attention. So the bottom line is, use your head. Don’t leave stuff lying around. (Remember Ed from Extreme Makeover?) Turn off the TV and concentrate. (At least when you’re using a power tool). Be confident. (If you have any doubts, don’t do it.) And once you start, don’t stop. (The minute you let up, somethings bound to jump and bite you.)

And if you can’t read the whole post (it’s long out of necessity), take a break from the serious nature of this topic and be sure to read the comments from Bill Wilson. He posted his clever and funny response to Garrett’s question on the WoodNet forum.

Forget the best deals from the past! I want to know what you’ve got for me now?
Got Gloat? Best Power Tool Deals Ever

This looks to be a great deal… Can you say “Snipe?”
400 Bf Spalted Maple Starts @ $0.25 per Board Foot

I do not normally think of most woodworkers as artists. Then I see work like this…
Cocobola HF

Have a good weekend!

First Furniture Project

If I’d known about this rehab process before I bought the rust-encrusted Stanley No. 6 and No. 7 planes that I found at a garage sale for $4, I wouldn’t have resold them for $20!

It’s No RareBear

This is a sweet project that this fella put his heart and soul into. I like it.

There’s a Bird in my Office

-Joel

A Visit to Paul Hamler’s Shop

Looking for a circular saw? Acccording to some WoodNetters, the Makita Hypoid circ saw is hard to beat:

Makita Hypoid Saw

I’m not sure which is funnier – the Craig’s List item for sale – or the forum thread itself:

Craigs List – Chuckle

Even considering repeat posters, over 1000 people took advantage of this “Day After Thanksgiving” Sale:

Official HDT Black Friday List

Did you know a Unisaw is a table saw, but a table saw isn’t necessarily a Uni..? (Submitted mostly for the pictures of Keith’s A100 Unisaw, presumably the very first one produced/sold by Delta.)
What is a Unisaw?

There are some true artists out there, and it seems like the Woodnet forums gets their fare share of them who build beautiful hand planes.
Damascus and Ivory Plane

The last time I had tried to use a hand plane was when I was a young boy. I’d go down to my Dad’s basement shop and spend hours “building” things. But trying to use his hand plane was so frustrating, I gave up. It wouldn’t cut and it kept tearing out the wood.

So I took these two planes he had given me and researched online to figure out how to “fettle,” or “tune” them so that I could use them. I wasn’t interested in them as collectibles — I wanted to use them.

I learned how to disassemble them, clean them, lap the soles flat, and sharpen the irons. And on the 4-1/2 smoother, I had read that replacing the original iron with a thicker one would improve performance. So I ordered a replacement iron from Ron Hock. I Finally got the planes put back together and set them for a fine cut and tried them out on a scrap piece of oak. When I saw that thin, continuous shaving curl up, I was literally awestruck. “So, this is how it’s supposed to work!,” I thought to myself. I was hooked. I spent the next several minutes taking shavings from almost every kind of scrap wood I had lying around.

Over the following years, I started collecting planes to refurbish and use in my shop. I’ve bought planes from online auctions, yard sales, and from tool dealers. I get a great deal of pleasure from “rust hunting” and bringing an old tool back to life to use in my shop. My kids have even participated in restoring old tools.

I spend a lot of time in the Hand Tools forum on Woodnet and in the Usenet newsgroup rec.woodworking. I get a lot of information from the Old Tools mailing list:

“OldTools is a mailing list catering to the interests of hand tool aficionados, both collectors and users, to discuss the history, usage, value, location, availability, collectibility, and restoration of traditional handtools, especially woodworking tools.”

Of course, the online “bible” of Stanley planes is Patrick Leach’s “The Superior Works: Patrick’s Blood and Gore.” I use this site to read and research all the old Stanley and Bailey hand planes.

As for making my own planes, I’ve not made any yet, but I intend to do so soon. I don’t know why. Part of it is economics. Part of it is being able to make them to suit my needs. For example, I’d like to make a set of molding planes to use instead of a noisy router to make decorative edging.
Having said that, I did save up my pennies and purchase a new Veritas Low Angle Smooth Plane and a Veritas Medium Shoulder Plane. “Why?,” as my wife so eloquently asked. I already have a nice collection of vintage planes. Why would I want to spend so much on a new one?

Well, part of it has to do with technology. The Veritas plane has an adjustable mouth to eliminate tearout. It’s a “bevel-up” plane, meaning that the iron is bedded with the bevel up, instead of down as in a traditional hand plane. This means that the cutting edge is better-supported and eliminates the need for a chip breaker. And it’s a lot easier to adjust the bevel angle to deal with difficult woods. I chose the Veritas plane over a Lie-Nielsen because of the cost and because the Veritas planes incorporate a finely-machined lateral and depth adjustment mechanism for the plane iron.

As for the shoulder plane, I didn’t already have one so I opted for a new one instead of one of the “classics.” The Veritas shoulder plane has a lot design features that make it attractive.

I enjoy working with hand tools in my shop. I enjoy the peace and quiet. I’ll use a power tool when I need to, but the whine of a table saw or the screech of a router doesn’t do much for my peace of mind. To me, there’s nothing like the sound of a thin curl of wood rising out of the mouth of a hand plane.

Maybe he should make this dust collection system upgrade:
Better Cyclone Supplemental DC System

Here’s one for Randy Maxey:
Six for One Trade

Very nice bowls:
Coupla Bowl Pics

But I use hand planes for a lot of other things in my shop like smoothing an edge, leveling a joint, or adding chamfers, just to name a few.  I have a nice collection of old Stanley planes, but when I recently built a dining room table, I needed a smoothing plane like a Stanley 4-1/2 that worked better than…well…my Stanley 4-1/2.

So I recently ordered a Veritas Low Angle Smooth Plane from Lee Valley.  I looked at Lie-Nielsen’s Low Angle Smoothing Plane, but decided that I liked the design and price of the Veritas plane better.  I haven’t received my plane yet, so I’ve yet to see how well it performs.  I’ll post an update after I’ve had a chance to use it in my shop.

I’m real interested in hearing your opinions about the use of hand planes (and hand tools in general) in the shop.  Do you use them at all?  For what?  Do you hate them?  Want to learn more about them?  Can’t see the reason to use them?  Let me know your thoughts! 

Home pages:

Wood grain background and more
Fisher Woodcraft

How much wood could a woodnaut naut, if a woodnaut, could naut, naut?
NJ Custom Woodworking

A nice, big home shop
Woodworking with APMonte

An even nicer, bigger home shop
Woodworks by Garry

Galoots:

A great hand plane resource
Woodworking at Rex Mill

Hundreds of links at this link
Index of Fossil-Friendly Woodworking Knowledge

In Business:

Custom designed and built furniture
Chisel and Bits

Uses Sam Maloof-style joinery for his rockers
JSR – School of Fine Woodworking

Blogs:

This guy has some great time-lapse video (if you’re into that sort of thing)
Some Junk We Like

Got a link you like? Send it to me.

WoodNet is the internet side of the three great woodworking magazines published by August Home Publishing. If you haven’t checked it out yet, you should. It has links to PlansNOW, Tips & Techniques, Forums, and Tool Reviews. I also was amazed by the huge amount of interesting links they’ve tracked down on the Links page.

How to Get a Dark Stain on Oak?

Chuck1945 wanted to build a mobile bench and asked for ideas from WoodNet’s resident experts.

Rolling Bench

One of the responses to Chuck1945′s question provided a link to the New Yankee Workshop web site. Whenever I visit this site I like to check out the “New Yankees At Work” gallery. It’s a little difficult to navigate, but you’ll see some fine work by woodworkers from all of the world.

New Yankees At Work Gallery

Finally, I saw this the other day and thought it was kind of inspiring. Check it out.

Woodworker Creates Beautiful Pieces Despite Blindness

I’d like to know your experiences. Have you ever bought lumber online? Was it S4S or rough? Did you have any problems? Were there shipping issues? What was the quality?

I’ve got a poll going on WoodNet.net. Check it out and tell me about your experiences.

Buying Wood Online

Sometimes the posts on the WoodNet forums are shameless attempts by woodworkers to elicit a compliment or two on recently completed projects. This guys waste bin though is a good example of when the compliments are well deserved.

Finally, this is the hottest item on the Tools Swap n’ Sell that I’ve seen in a long time! Get yours now, before they’re all gone.

Paul is also a published woodworking author and is working on a book about hand tools and how to use them. He builds custom furniture for sale and some of his most distinctive pieces, like this Rocking Chair, sell for thousands of dollars.

Paul trained as an apprentice in England as a young man. He gained valuable experience using a combination of hand tools and power machinery, that he feels is sorely lacking today. In fact, Paul feels so strongly about the lack of educational opportunities for young people, especially in the woodworking field, that he thinks it has had an adverse effect on our lives. As he says, “… we’ve reached a crisis point in woodworking for children that sometimes I think it is irreversible.”

I used hand tools exclusively during my class at the John C. Campbell Folk School, and firmly believe that without the week-long hand tool foundational class that I took a few years ago at Homestead Heritage, I would not have gotten nearly as much from the chairmaking class as I did.

Paul and I were trading emails recently and got to talking about how most woodworking schools are all about power tools. I asked him why he felt that laying a foundation for learning to use hand tools was so important? He has strong feelings about hand tools that go beyond his desire to teach their usage, or his ability to attract students to his woodworking school. The following is his thoughtful response to my question:

Joel,

Hand Tools Versus Machines

First, let me say that I was trained in a well-balanced apprenticing workplace for five years using hand tools and power machines. I’d never seen an all-power woodworking facility until I came to the US.

Here I discovered that almost all of the woodworkers I came into contact with worked with machines only, albeit scaled-down versions of industrial models. I was shocked when I saw the mental and physical contortions woodworkers went through to develop and use jigs and guides to perform even the simplest woodworking tasks, like recessing a door hinge or cutting a dovetail, and when I considered the hazardous effects commonly associated with long term exposure to machine use; personal injury, wood-related diseases caused by machine dust and the physical discomfort of wearing protective equipment for ear, eye, nose, throat and lung protection, and also hours of wasted shop time.

I found this type of woodworking to be the norm rather than the exception, yet I’ve met thousands of fellow woodworkers who, had they had the opportunity to apprentice in some way, would have developed more substantive skills of craftsmanship working with hand tools. With no one to teach them the basic fundamentals of using hand tools the only remaining option was to embrace machine woodworking. Most woodworkers that I have met, whether amateur, semi-professional or professional, love working with wood, no matter what skill level they have attained. I then saw that, in the years that changed the face and the dynamic of woodworking, each successive generation knew less about true hand craftsmanship and more about the industrialized methods.

Even in public schools machine-only methods took over, and so the latter then lost all connection with the former. Incremental changes over several successive decades, so-called advances in technology, led to a complete disconnect, severing those unique relationships intrinsic to mentoring craftsmanship. With no context to engender the kind of care it takes to produce accurate and fine handwork, many of the methods craftsmen once relied on to create masterpieces must now be relearned and even rediscovered.

Most of those interested in woodworking today would naturally believe that all of the traditional methods, skills and techniques were improved on by better engineering and therefore that the machine replaced those methods with something better, but that’s not the case. Hand tool methods were never abandoned because they didn’t work; they work extremely well. They were abandoned because they didn’t keep pace with the whole process of mass-market technology industrializing a society. In that process there was no place for developing the creative, intuitive aspects of true and substantive craftsmanship.

Hand tool woodworking demands a relational, experiential approach to gain the essential knowledge a person needs to work with wood successfully. I find that inspiration comes through personal discovery. Yet, in the wake of this industrial “evolution,” such forgotten knowledge now lies buried under successive layers of so-called industrial progress. Yet for the main part, at least ninety-five percent of the over two thousand woodworkers I have personally taught, who I believe represent a good cross-section of the woodworking populous, had never successfully sharpened a chisel or used a hand plane until they learned it here at Homestead Heritage. Once they did, it was like a fresh awakening, and a whole new and expansive world of woodworking possibilities opened up before them.

Children and Machines

An unfortunate byproduct of this whole development, one of the things we fail to balance in the equation, is the reality that woodworking has now become an adult craft. Children must now wait until they are more mature physically and mentally to cope with the industrial substitute and its mass of related equipment. No one can responsibly put a child between the ages of 6 and 16 on most modern-day woodworking machines. No matter how many safety guards you place and procedures you enforce, children do not belong in an industrial shop, even if it’s now disguised in a domestic situation like the garage or home shop.

Leaving children out of the shop until they attain the necessary maturity is to the miss the narrow window of opportunity that for most of them may only come once. The best years to learn any craft are between the ages of 10 and 20 years. That’s when all of the synapses come together. That’s when the senses are the most acutely aware and children are the most receptive. It’s through this type of exposure that vocational calling becomes a reality. Vocation, from the word vocal or voice, originally meant to answer a calling. Few young people today will find such a calling in woodworking, and to me it’s no wonder since most children today will never work with wood in any real way.

Simple skills and hand tools once commonly used in home and school workshops are all but gone. Yet the very methods that I’m talking about, the pre-machine era methods, were ideal for training young people to strengthen their character and work with their hands.

Touching the Senses—Communication

Unlike machine woodworking, hand tool woodworking methods touch all of the five senses. They demand your complete attention but in the most positive sense of the word. By its very nature, woodworking with hand tools by necessity requires that you fully engage in the whole process because you now supply all of the power, give direction to the course of the tool and, by what you see, feel and hear, determine all the necessary micro-adjustments to use the tool to its optimal level according to those senses. That’s what the senses are for. The machine, on the other hand, also needs focused attention, but it’s a different kind of attention in that now your main focus is on personal safety and concern for your material. One slip and a finger or even a whole limb can be lost or at best your board may be kicked across the shop by one of those 3hp motors.

Power equipment relies on two things: speed and force. High revolutions to drive the teeth or cutting edge of the blade and the fact that you are always pushing directly in towards those cutting edges mean that there is the constant risk of injury. Two dangers exist that accompany machine use. One, when you do it long enough, admittedly you gain confidence, but then you also run the risk of becoming complacent. Two, all too often new woodworkers are self-taught when it comes to using woodworking machinery, they have no experience and no relational working knowledge of the inherent dangers associated with machines to relate to. I’ve learned a hundred times more from the minor injuries and near misses I’ve had than I ever did from someone telling me of the possible dangers or simply reading about them.

When a man works with machines, much of his thought time revolves around personal safety on every level. On the other hand, when he works primarily with hand tools, he rarely thinks about it.

As I said earlier, unfortunately it’s the young people of this present-day culture that have lost the valuable links to the past. Dust masks, ear and eye protection, sensors, guards and fences, dust extraction and so the list goes on are now the norm and of course all are necessary by-products of industrialism. They are essential to the personal and public safety of others and the well-being of modern-day woodworkers the world over, regardless of age. For me though, because I’ve mastered certain basic hand skills, wearing such safety equipment is only necessary for a few hours per week. But the machine-dominated woodworker must wear such equipment throughout most of his working day if he wants to minimize potential health risks and hazards that may well be long-term and even irreversible.

In the final analysis, you see it’s not simply a question of efficiency and economy, but more a matter of fulfillment and quality of life. I want to encourage others to preserve the best of the past and combine it with the good things of today, so that they complement one another. I have found that hand-tool skill is so intrinsic to fine woodworking that much of the finest woodworking ever accomplished was done so without the use of any machine. Stradivarius violins and cellos are still considered the finest ever made, and timbered intereriors of massive cathedral roofs with dozens of yards of finely crafted decoration to the most exacting of standards were carved centuries ago.

Another key issue with machine woodworking is the reality that all too often machine woodworkers never fully experience the personal relational knowledge only possible through using hand tool methods. Not only are all species of woods different, but so too the grains within the species vary from one board to the next, and even within each board. By working so closely with the grain and fiber of the wood, a certain understanding of the wood begins to develop that cannot be gained any other way. Working the wood with hand tools gives the most direct contact, and by working the wood this way, feeling the response of the tool to the wood through the tool as an extension of your hand, you gain the knowledge and understanding I am talking about.

As you work the wood fibers with hand tools, you find yourself in a constant state of awareness, yet at the same time unconsciously micro-adjusting the course and direction of the tool’s cutting edge in a minute-by-minute symbiosis only possible by the discipline of using hand tools.

Conclusion

Having said all of this, many might say that I advocate hand tool woodworking only and that machines should be abandoned for the old ways. That’s far from true. In my shop I use power equipment, particularly for dimensioning the wood, ripping, surface-planing and so on. Yet, most of the actual crafting of a piece of furniture is done by hand, and because I can use hand tools, planes, scrapers and so on, I no longer need to sand with coarse-grit papers, which then reduces my sanding by about 80%.

Furthermore, because I hand planed and scraped my surfaces to be free from machine saw and planer marks, I can hand sand without using any mechanical sander. I no longer have to wear a dust mask, ear protection, eye protection and so on. If you never learn to master sharpening and using a handful of tools, you have only one option. I am thankful that I can make the choice most woodworkers don’t have.

Paul

If you’re having problems with blade drift when using your band saw, you’ll get a ton of great insight if you wade through this forum discussion.

This Week’s Best WoodNet Forum Thread