Woodworker's Journal April 2014

What’s Your Wood Choice? SO, WHAT DID YOU MAKE IT OUT OF? It’s the first question that we woodworkers will ask after you tell us: “Hey, I just completed an end table!” (Or chair, or coffee table, or kitchen cabinets.) We want to know what species you used and we want to know why you chose that type of wood. There are lots of reasons for the question: it will help us visualize the piece, it will give us an idea of how hard you had to work to get it done, and it will help us ask you a few more questions. (What finish did you use? Mortise and tenons? Did you stain it?) And we also want to know because it is one of the first questions we…

Add-ons and Workarounds Nail Returns Clamp to Service The sliding jaw on one of my small bar clamps lost the ability to engage the bar and became unusable. To salvage the clamp, I drilled a hole all the way through the jaw and several evenly spaced holes along the bar. The clamp can now be used through its full range by inserting a nail through the sliding jaw and into any of the holes in the bar that offers the capacity I need. Jim Moorehead Barrigada, Guam Doweling Jig Doubles as a Drill Press Whenever I need to drill a hole into the end of a long workpiece that won’t fit on my drill press, I use my doweling jig instead. I clamp the jig to the workpiece and drill…

Does a Plane’s Sole Need to Be Flat? THIS ISSUE’S EXPERTS Ian Kirby is the creator of the DVD Using a Hand Plane, available at www.rockler.com. Rob Johnstone is the publisher of Woodworker’s Journal. Chris Marshall is senior editor of Woodworker’s Journal. Contact us by writing to “Q&A,” Woodworker’s Journal, 4365 Willow Drive, Medina, MN 55340, by faxing us at (763) 478-8396 or by emailing us at: QandA@woodworkersjournal.com Please include your home address, phone number and email address (if you have one) with your question. Q When we joint a piece of wood, the infeed table is always lower than the outfeed table. Then why do they stress the importance of flattening the bottom of a hand plane? It seems there should also be an offset in the bottom of…

A Mica Mystery? What’s This? This tool belongs to Ray Elish of Brecksville, Ohio. Ray acquired it from the estate of his late father-inlaw, who became a hardware store owner in the 1880s. Do you know what it is? Send your answer to stumpers@woodworkersjournal.com or write to “Stumpers,” Woodworker’s Journal, 4365 Willow Drive, Medina, MN 55340 for a chance to win a prize! When Gary Saunders of Economy, Indiana, responded to the December 2013 mystery tool, he commented that, “This tool was old when I started to work for the International Harvester dealership in 1963.” Gary wasn’t the only one who knew that the tool belonging to Jeffrey Saylor of Mifflintown, Pennsylvania, is a mica undercutter. “It is used to relieve the copper chips from the mica insulators on commutators/armatures…

Remote Retreat Turns Trees to Guitars When a logging project at Holden Village, a Lutheran Christian retreat in the mountains of Washington, included trees along the edge of Railroad Creek, a frequent guest recognized some as Engelmann spruce. David Olson, a former spruce forest ecologist and a guitarist and luthier, knew that Engelmann (Picea engelmanni, aka "white" spruce) is prized by luthiers for its rich, mature sound and clean, white complexion. David also knew Steve McMinn, founder and owner of Pacific Rim Tonewoods (PRT). PRT supplies nearly all of Taylor Guitars’ spruce as well as serving companies like Gibson and Fender. Steve is "fussy" about the logs he buys, traveling the entire West coast from Alaska down to harvest only about 550 logs a year. Since Engelmann logs tend to…

MORE ON THE WEB For a video of the author demonstrating his technique for grinding a secondary bevel on a bowl gouge, please visit woodworkersjournal.com and click on the “More on the Web” tab shown above. Curiously, how a bowl gouge’s cutting edge is ground can affect how well it performs as a turner attempts to make deep, closed forms. To improve the cut, I grind my gouges in a specific way that includes a second bevel. To fully understand the benefit of secondary bevels, we need to first look at how a bowl gouge works and how its grind has changed over time. At the top of the opposite page, we see a traditional bowl gouge of about 1970 vintage. The flute is U-shaped, the edge is square to…