questions and answers episode 9 this is
amazing we keep bobbing along and answering all these questions and I love
doing it and I hope we can continue doing it this question comes from Ed
he says I've been thinking about the use of card scrapers smoothing planes or
hand tools other than sand paper in order to achieve an ex tremely smooth
surface can you help explain sand paper versus scrapers planes and card scrapers
well first of all there is nothing wrong with using sandpaper for some aspects of
our work and what I don't like is the use of some sanding abrasives
to do a mass reduction on say on a more professional level where if you're
working in a commercial sharp everything gets passed through a big wide belt
sander and things like that using that kind of target in the home workshop you
know using that level of industrialism in the home workshop can be prohibitive
especially if you know how to use your hand planes and your scrapers because
there is no doubt about it a hand plane that's well sharpened on the right wood
going in the right direction nothing feels smoother than it not even glass
and so we tend to rely a lot on hand tools as woodworkers especially in our
home shops and I just wanted to show you something that we pulled out here I
think in this piece of pine here this was the nearest thing we had to get in
the undulations left by the machine and what we want is a super smooth surface
without necessarily using abrasive now if you use abrasive there's nothing
wrong with using abrasives we often use it to give tooth to the woods so that when
we apply the finish the finish has something to grab because when you apply
a finish it shrinks away in the surface and stretches over the surface so what
we've got here in this is we've got these bars going across these
undulations going across when we use a plane I'll give you a quick example if I took a plane to this surface now
and Eddie's asking for the difference if I can just show the reasons give the
contrast here so a couple of shavings like this across the surface
now I'm taking off a couple of them at the most there if I offer this back
to you now you'll still see some marks but not the same marks that you saw you
don't have the undulations in there it feels like glass across here and we are
ready to go so we would then apply the finish but we would usually sand the
surface rough what happens if we do sand that when we come on can you see
this is crisp and sharp but if I come in with sandpaper like this yes it feels
smooth but it also looks muddy we really muddied the surface it's not a slick or
as shiny as it was and that's the difference or one of the differences a
couple of differences that so thanks for that Ed that was great and I did have a little note to myself
at the bottom here there is no doubt in industry sanding is the fastest method
and of course it's practical because pushing boards and components through
machines requires very minimal skill it's unskilled work and this is
preferred by industry and it does make sense here's a question from SELCO he
said he's considering building a Newport tea table and will need to route
out and excavate the top this is where you have a figured pie-shaped
whatever shaped table probably in a dark wood like walnut was very popular
and the perimeter is higher than the mid center section often this was
done solidly in the wood and so they reduced the mid section so on a small
scale you have it could be oval it could be round it could be octagonal
and this perimeter here is maybe quarter of an inch 3/8 of an inch higher
in this midsection and what he's saying he's going to drill holes this is what
we did in violin making or something you have your registration table where you
pull your drill down your yeah you drill press down and if you set the distance
of the bit then you can drill into the surface all the way across here and you
have these registration marks in the surface then you can route down to that
level what I'm going to suggest is this take a line across here chisel down just
a pop pop pop all the way across just to leave this Ridge in the middle then get
a board that's the width of the table like this and put your router plane
slap-bang in the middle and you can move this across from the full half size here
to here and you can take this surface down in increments of 1/32 to 1/16 of an
inch go across here do the same on this side
this plank that you've got your router on it's a longer version of this you
have a much longer version and a little bit thicker to make sure it's not
bending and you go in between this surface and this surface all the way
across up to a knife wall that you've created in here you keep deepening the
knife wall take off another 32nd deepen it again take another thirty second
before you know it you're down to depth work both sides and that works very well
for creating the kind of table that he's talking about this is from Joris can you
demonstrate when a chisel is sharp enough to make a good joint
furniture-making at that level sharpness seems to be the
key element to all your work and I tried sharpening on diamond plate strop but
not sure if I'm sharp enough it is sometimes you pick up a chisel like this
one and you can feel the edge with your finger this one doesn't feel brilliantly
sharp this one feels nice and sharp so how do we test this oftentimes people
will say use the back of your thumbnail like this and if the chisel grabs this
one is grabbing it's not sliding off then the chisel is sharp I think that's
probably close to true it's been done for too long not to be but I often use
say a piece of paper and it is a good guide let me see yeah take your chisel
in from the edge like this see this is gliding off the edge it's not really
grabbing so it's not as sharp as I want it to be let's do a quick sharpen up and
show you what the contrast is on a super sharp chisel so here we go so I've got
my bur on the back not yet not yet now I've got my burr I felt it and you'll
see the difference flip over one quick pull onto your strop so this should be
at its ultimate level by the time we've got to this stage was that thirty I know
some of you are watching for that you're counting on my behalf
there's my burr off so let's see what the difference is now this is a chisel I've
been using for a couple of day so it wasn't very sharp you go here still not
sharp it's still not sharp so maybe I didn't get the whole burr off and that's
it so now we know it's sharp this will do anything actually you can use a
chisel at a lot less of a degree of sharpness and it will be perfect for
your joinery so yep so that's that sharpening so back of your thumb I'm not
sure if I like that too much especially with my chisel it may I don't know if it
would work I wouldn't do that in a school either this question this is
Robert is asking about the rule of sizing for mortise and tenon joints and
there are different rules white 1/3 the thickness here one-third mortise
one-third either side of the mortise and then the same on the tenon or something
like that there are all kinds of theories behind it but generally you're
asking whether if you have a mass of a leg that you could put any size in what
would be your answer for that generally we don't
use Tenon's that are bigger or thicker than 3/4 of an inch so if the tenon can be to
a certain size like needs to be to a certain size sometimes it's governed by
the groove sometimes it's governed by the rebates things like that if it's a
table leg and then you have a rail going into it I would probably say a half-inch
tenon is plenty big enough for just about everything that you might make
same on a door if you have a 2-inch wide door a half inch to 3/4 inch tenon would
be a good Maxim to shoot for.
I think sometimes too we don't realize that
Tenon's go on the corner here and then I think another part of the question is
how do you determine the width of your tenon well if a tenon goes in here you
have to leave enough meat on the end of here to enclose the tenon so let's say
here here here and here that would take this rail and we want
enough meat on the top here to make sure the tenon is enclosed so that would be
the width of my 10 and I'd leave about 3/4 of an inch to 1 inch on the outside
edge and that keeps the integrity of the joint it also means that you have
integrity at the top of your tenon as well with chess bulks that are wedged
are they better tapered or not this is where we have a spindle going into the
back of a chair or something like that this is very different than the legs
going into the chair very often we would use tapered legs going into a tapered
hole into the chair so that the chair is always under compression when the angled
it's not really truly a tenon but we'll call it that goes into the hole it's
tapered and it's always tightening itself it's a self tightening tenon and
when you have a spindle in the back of a chair it's going into say a hoop back or
a top rail or something like that he's asking whether we taper the spindle
going into the hole or not the truth is you can do it either way
because that rail isn't really relying on the kind of compression the legs are
the tension that the leg is under so I would say for me I would always want to
taper the spindle going into the back of the chair taper it until it starts to
bind in the hole and you know you've got the right depth then you can wedge it
and the wedging if it's tapered when you drive your wedge it will fill in the
gaps on either side this is from Joseph would you please demonstrate planning
into a mitered molding on your shooting board for both sides of a miter one side
seems to work fine but the mating piece either isn't supported by the fence and
it is hard to hold or I have to plane such that the molding profile is
unsupported and the chips and chips out well let's give it a whirl see if we are
answering this question here I'm not sure what the issue is Joseph I cut
a couple of miters this one could just as easily be at the other end of this so
we could treat it the same or I could cut the miter in both pieces and I do
that and then we you are saying yours has a miter this way so we've got our rough cut mater and so
this goes on here of course this is supported I've got it against the stop
and I slide my plane but this way so I've got a perfect miter there you're
think I think you're saying if you put it on this way it doesn't work too well and I can understand that but we usually don't do it that way we take the
stuff out then flip it and put it into this side here and then we've got the
other one this is when I just planed this is the one here flip the plane over
slide it up to the sole of the plane and start
feeding that into the cutting iron until you have a smooth cut so I'm not sure if
this is answering your question but that's how we do it ok this is a great
question how can I make a dowel for a project I'm working on it depends on how
long you want the dowel sometimes you can buy what they call a dowel maker from
Veritas, Veritas sells one and it will really basically take a square section
of start you feed it into the dowel maker and the dowel maker has a cutter and you
can size this to cut any just about any dowel size you want depending on the
size of the actual dowel cutter you buy on the other hand you may mean a
short section of dowel that you're going to use for making a project where you
joining two boards or two pieces together with a dowel and I have this
other method to offer you which I think you will like a bit of sticker wood
here and I have already drilled a hole in a piece of steel and
you might find a hole and I did actually find a hole in a piece of steel but I'm
going to show you the whole process here what we do basically is we take off a
little feeder edge take the corners off here like this a little bit off the flat
bit off here bit off the flat so we're giving it a leading edge to go into a
hole that we've drilled in the steel now we can take more off along the whole
length just to relieve some of the pressure on this down as it goes through
the hole like this flip around come in from this end like this
take off that excess of the corner a little bit just to reduce the size and
I've got a piece of steel like I drilled a quarter-inch hole into this piece of
steel here so this hangs over the vise here and then I'm going to use a steel
hammer but you can use just about any I wouldn't use a mallet this goes in the
hole see that and then we just drive this into the hole so it's taking the
corners off and leaving us with a round dowel so let's go all the way through
here now with the Wrightwood and the longer piece of wood you could do quite
a long dowel with this there is my dowel now if I want to refine that if I'm
really clever I can size another hole that's slightly
undersized or to the size I want and I can drive this one through this is
actually a blade cutting on drive this through here and it'll surface trim the
fiber cleaning up come out there we go and
then I've got a quarter inch dowel ready for working with so it could be three
eighths I found these work up to three quarters of an inch if you can drill a
large enough hole and you have a big enough bit half an inch is great but
that's how we do that this is the poor man's dowel maker which I've used all the
way through my working life I just take a hinge drill a hole of whatever size I
want and I'm ready to go okay that's all we have time for this session we've
got many other Q&A that we've answered in the past no two are the same so go
through them and start watching those subscribe to my youtube channel that
will help you stay on track with the up-to-date Q&S that we're doing and also
go back through the archives I think you'll enjoy that thank you for your
time