Innehållsförteckning för September - October 2023 från Quercus

When Handworks was last held, Quercus was yet to be born. By the time you’ll be reading this we’ll have been to Iowa and back, welcomed there, we hope, by the world’s hand-tool royalty, some of the finest toolmakers from around the globe. Clearly we’ll be shaking cover star Will Adams’ hand first, and on p60 there’s our wish list of other stands to visit, and next issue you’ll have a full report. In the meantime it’s back to the workshop, with John Lloyd guiding readers wanting to buy a new block plane or needing to know how to use theirs for paring end-grain. Then there’s Gary Rogowski buying a propane blowtorch to show us all how to produce blades of our own to make a high-angle Krenovian wooden block…

I never set out to be a maker of marking gauges or any other tool for that matter. I guess when the urge to make things grabs hold of you it never leaves. Match that with an interest in the design process and your days and nights (both asleep and awake) are pretty much spoken for. I’ve still got the first completed gauge I made, and it still gets used. I started making these by hand believe it or not, cutting the stocks out on a bandsaw and shaping them on a bobbin sander. Some worked great, some just looked great and a few looked and worked great. I probably gave more away than I sold while I was developing them, although I wasn’t aware at the time I was…

I have a full-time job. I have family commitments. I have a house to maintain. I have a social life. I hope to get a couple of hours a week in the shop. Some weeks I am lucky and it is several times that. Some weeks I am not so lucky and it is zero. All of these combine to make me an amateur woodworker, spending my free time as a hobbyist on my avocation. Therein lies the root of the first dilemma. As Gary Rogowski explained in the January 2023 edition of Quercus, skill improves with practice. But, for those of us with limited shop time, we go into our shops to make as spending time on practice or exercises is just not satisfying. This means that our projects…

Let’s get the bad bit over quickly. I was underwhelmed by Matt Kenney’s book 52 Books in 52 Weeks because despite some distinctive designs, rightly or wrongly I considered the making techniques repetitive, relying on certain kit. When toolmaker Ron Brese sent us a photo of his stubby butt chisels, saying that they were often bought by kumiko makers, I was inspired to order Matt’s The Art of Kumiko: Learn to Make Beautiful Panels by Hand. It is a beautiful book itself, with one of those waxy covers you want to scratch, showing the Lie-Nielsen bevel-edged chisel on which Matt relies, indicating the true heart in which making kumiko lies. Thereby hangs the rub. Ripping the strips accurately and cutting the many notches regular, tidy and square is said to…

At the beginning of my career, design was one of many skills that I needed to nurture and hone. The proficiency required to flatten a board was no less important than the ability to design the things that I was making. But there was something about the design process that set it apart from the other skills I was learning. To be sure, the utility of building was essential. But in my mind, the aesthetics were the goal. This is not to say the construction side of woodworking was not exciting—it was. Learning and figuring out how to make something was often a highly creative venture. During the design process, I first fully experienced how time stands still while the outside world fades into the background and creativity takes over.…

I remember a ratchet screwdriver was one of Dad’s right-hand tools in the 1960s, when timber and a box of screws would feature on the shopping list as often as bread and milk. Surely this screwdriver is one of the most popular DIY tools of the last century, as likely to be found in the kitchen drawer as the tool box. There were other screwdrivers about the home but with their fixed blades they seemed lifeless in comparison. To an inquisitive boy the ratchet screwdriver posed an irresistible puzzle. I just had to keep turning the handle and sliding its shiny button, hypnotised by its clock-like ticking. Decades later a stormy night has left a frail barge board flapping from the shed roof and I am gently refastening it with…

WORKSHOPS • Workbench Design My Dad, bless him, built a mahogany workbench when he left the Army to find new purpose after 22 years as a soldier. Despite eventually setting up a furniture-making business, he was never a dedicated woodworker, just dabbled with the skills he learnt from evening classes at the London College of Furniture as part of his resettlement. Early on he followed convention and attached his small Record vice at the left-hand end of the bench. He welcomed me in his garage workshop, giving me a Junior Hacksaw and Surform Block Plane to get my eye for the ball and learn basic skills. As the worktop still shows, my sawing left kerf marks where I tried cutting boards on the bench side of the vice. Dad was…

Wooden planes are a revelation to use. Simple to make, lightweight, and made to fit your own hands, they are a lovely shop project. But make a high angle wooden block plane with your own hardened and tempered steel blade and the door to a new world of toolmaking will open to you. Follow me inside. When I made and used my first wooden hand plane, you could have knocked me over with a wispy shaving of pine. I was impressed. The smoothing plane that I had made in hard maple was light in my hand. Fitted with an ECE brand 2in-wide iron and cap iron in it, the plane was still quite powerful and a joy to use. Some years later Ken Altman, a classical instrument bow maker, showed…

When I took up woodworking as a career in 1976 there were others in my small town of Eureka Springs, Arkansas attempting to do the same thing. We did not all ‘survive’ as woodworkers, and I have to attribute my own survival to my wife, a professional librarian, whose steady salary helped to offset the fluctuation in my feast or famine business economy. The life of the artisan in America is rarely that easy. Darrell Peart is one of those American artisans whose works I’ve admired for a very long time, and so what he offers in his new book, The Artisan Furniture Maker: A Creative Survival Guide (120pp & published by Linden Publishing) was of immediate interest. Peart’s book may be a bit indirect on the survival guide side,…

SHARPENING • Grinding Scandi Knives In this article I refer to the hollow-grinding of knives used in greenwoodwork, spoon carving and bushcraft; specifically V-grind (Scandi grind) knives. The grind refers to the shape of the bevels, and examples can be seen in Fig.1. I think that the V-grind, also known as a Scandi grind, is the hardest of all grinds to hone, but I hope that this article will bring some useful details to your attention, and guide you through the process for achieving and maintaining the edge. Woodcarving knives are usually made with flat V bevels, and work best with that grind. But my experience of working with, and teaching others who use these tools, is that most V or Scandi ground knives end up with convex bevels, unless…

The Edge I recall once, many years ago, having discussions with two planemakers about block planes. The first involved me being, upon reflection, unnecessarily rude to Rob Lee, the top man from Veritas. The gist of the ‘discussion’ was that his planes worked wonderfully well but were rather ugly. Oddly my comments just elicited a look of excited triumph. He told me that Veritas were working on a new, exciting, sexy-looking block plane, and I thought, well I’ll believe that when I see it. Then there was another ‘chat’ with the boss of Clifton Planes, his demeanour being one of industrial espionage; beckoning me over and with a furtive movement he extracted a package that had been secreted in a briefcase. He carefully folded back the wrappers to reveal what…

With our bags packed for a flight to Chicago and onwards into Iowa, where Handworks 2023 is being held, we’re excited to find our favourite stands and make new friends. So we pored over the layout and contacted all the standholders to ask what wares they’d be selling. Of course, there’ll be more doves than hawks at Handworks, a show dedicated to enthusiasts who prefer working wood by hand, and founded by the Benchrafted people, and noted for being friendly.…

In the Emmenthal, in far-away Switzerland, is a small town, Grosshöchstetten, where can be found my wife’s childhood home. It is a lovely region, with old villages, rolling meadows, orchards, forests and chalets. The cows are wearing cow bells, which can be heard from miles away. On clear days there are distant vistas of the snow-capped high Alps. The traditional architecture shows us huge wooden farmhouses, with great overhanging roofs, and countless window boxes bursting with geranium flowers. It is a good land in which to live. Present day Switzerland has the reputation of being a rich country, but there still is living memory, especially with the older people in rural areas, of real poverty, and of times when people lived simpler, more modest lives. Two ancient and rustic looking…

Something I have struggled with down the years is timber preparation, the business of making faces, edges and ends square to each other, which is of course essential to successful joinery. Living in the Welsh Marches, where the once-green timbers of our abode lost the plot of the perpendicular long ago, I wondered if environmental conditioning might be to blame but I suspect my real problem is impatience, being too eager to get on to the next thing, making do with squarish instead of square. I guess timber preparation with machinery is relatively quick and easy if you can bear the noise and expense. Hand-tools certainly have peace and affordability on their side but they are more prone to human frailties. Some are known and manageable (which reminds me, I…

During Covid many people and businesses were put into an enforced retreat, a spell some (like Quercus) spent their time fertilising. And then there are those, like Will Adams, a Vermont, USA teacher, who were reassured their job would survive, but, in the end, never returned. Following both the pandemic and medical leave for a knee replacement, Will realised he’d had enough and stayed at home, turning to his passion for woodworking, and leading to an unexpected passion for toolmaking. Aiming to prime our meeting at Handworks, a first for both of us, Quercus called Will at Honey Brook (the stream after which his business is named), to prepare with a chat. QM Where do you come from? WA I was born and grew up in Connecticut, then went to…