Quotulatiousness

June 25, 2017

Sometimes, the workman is right to blame his tools

Filed under: Germany, Technology, Tools, Woodworking — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Paul Sellers recently bought and tested a new Two Cherries brand “Gent’s saw” and was very unhappy with the tool:

This week I picked up a brand new gent’s saw straight from the pack made by the famous German tool makers Two Cherries. I noticed the unusual tooth shape, which strangely resembled the edge of a tin can when we used to open it with a multipurpose survival knife. I wondered how it would work and whether it was just a miscut. I examined several others and realised it was actually intentional as they were indeed manufactured that way. I offered the saw to the wood and the very middle cut with the dovetailed angle and the broken off section was the results of ten strokes.

“The long saw cut on the left is how the saw cuts by a man who has used such saws every day, six days a week for 53 years. The two to the right are how it cuts after sharpening and redefining the teeth.”

Could this truly be the end product of the once highly acclaimed Two Cherries of German tool manufacturing? I looked at the packet and, well, there it was; Made in Germany. So here is my perspective on the saw. Nice beechwood handle–nicely shaped (but it is unfinished), nice brass back, good quality steel plate, not too soft, not too hard. Two Cherries, the materials leave you no excuse for making such a poor grade product. YOU should be very ASHAMED of your product and yourselves. It is the very worst saw of any and all saws ever, ever, ever manufactured. I have never seen anything worse.

[…]

If you bought this saw and you thought the outcome was a result of your inexperience. It’s not. Blame the tool maker. It’s his pure arrogance to think he can pass something off to you like this and call it a dovetail saw. Shame on you Two Cherries, shame on you!

June 12, 2017

How to Make a Dovetail Template | Paul Sellers

Filed under: Technology, Tools, Woodworking — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Published on 2 Jun 2017

Paul introduces the dovetail template that he has been making and using for over 50 years. It helps you to efficiently mark out the dovetail angle. Making it requires a high degree of accuracy and attention to detail, in order for it to be used as a reference.

May 28, 2017

How to make a Half-lap Dovetail | Paul Sellers

Filed under: Technology, Tools, Woodworking — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Published on 18 May 2017

The half-lap dovetail is possibly the most common of all the dovetails used today. It is used for the front corners of drawers, and anywhere where you want to use a dovetail which is not visible from a certain viewpoint. Paul has developed a method which includes a small rebate, that helps in aligning the components to achieve the crisp definition of quality half lapped dovetails.

For more information on these topics, see https://paulsellers.com or https://woodworkingmasterclasses.com

May 3, 2017

Understanding and Choosing Antique Router Planes

Filed under: Technology, Tools, Woodworking — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Published on 10 Mar 2017

Bill Anderson teaches all about antique router planes and how to choose the best planes. See best brands on my blog post: http://woodandshop.com/understanding-choosing-antique-router-planes

March 15, 2017

Making a Poor Man’s Mitre Box with Paul Sellers

Filed under: Technology, Tools, Woodworking — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Published on 11 Mar 2016

The best way to get hold of a mitre box that suits your needs is to make your own. In this video, Paul shows how he makes one in a matter of minutes that guarantees accuracy, especially when used in combination with a shooting board (link to shooting board video). They can be used for many things such as trim for tool chests, boxes and drawers as well as picture frames and the like.

March 13, 2017

French cleat storage system for hand tools

Filed under: Technology, Tools, Woodworking — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Published on 1 Mar 2013

A new method for storing my hand tools and allow me to get rid of my pegboard. I decided on using french cleats to hang screwdrivers, pliers and other items. It’s a really flexible system that lets you get creative customizing it.

March 3, 2017

Sharpening a Chisel with Paul Sellers

Filed under: Technology, Tools, Woodworking — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Published on 27 Feb 2017

Chisels come from the manufacturer needing preparing or initialising as well sharpening. How do you check they are flat and get them sharp? Paul shows you the process he follows. This gets them to the level we need for crisp and accurate work.

For more information on these topics, see https://paulsellers.com or https://woodworkingmasterclasses.com

July 27, 2015

Sharpening and Setting the Bench Plane with Paul Sellers

Filed under: Technology, Tools, Woodworking — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Published on 23 Jul 2015

Paul Sellers shows how he sharpens and sets a bench plane in his every day of work. A quick and easy guide to get your plane working.

April 1, 2015

The Building of a Custom Bench Plane Revealed

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Humour, Tools, Woodworking — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:07

Published on 1 Apr 2015

Watch this behind-the-scenes video on the making of our Custom Bench Planes.

February 21, 2015

How to make the Three Joints – Dovetail – with Paul Sellers

Filed under: Technology, Tools, Woodworking — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Published on 17 Feb 2015

It takes a master woodworker to teach the basics. Watch Paul’s every move in this video. He shows every single detail of cutting this essential woodworking joint. This is one of the three joints that Paul talks about in his woodworking curriculum. The dovetail is the essential box joint. It is the strongest way to join two pieces of wood at the corner. Although there are many variations on a theme with this joint mastering the most simple form is the most difficult and important step.

October 25, 2014

Sharpening woodworking tools

Filed under: Technology, Tools, Woodworking — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:39

Paul Sellers talks about the practical limits to sharpening woodworking tools like planes and chisels:

As I have said, we have become something of an obsessive bunch when it comes to the different elements of working wood; sharpness has become more and more obsessive. Now we are not talking about the violin maker seeking sharp levels for clear tone from the wood and who uses wood so soft, unsharp gouges and planes would bruise rather than cut the fine surfaces he strives to achieve. His standards parallel the levels needed for severing tissue by the surgeon’s hand, not the bench joiner chopping mortises and cutting a few dovetails.

Chisel edge degradation by Paul Sellers

It’s unfortunate that since the demise of ordinary craftsmanship we now turn to guru wood writers and not wood-wrights. Woodwrights are no longer there to give us our information of course. It’s true too that the sources of information become more and more questionable. Three recent sources of information teaching on sharpening techniques I tracked back to tool catalog and online sales people selling products for sharpening. Most of the information they have is not new but regurgitated. Each phase of sharpening change marks another saleable product and so we see Japanese water stones added to carborundum stones, Arkansas stones and Washita stones and then came diamonds and abrasive films, diamond paste and flattening stones. The list goes on.

We have survived the different gospels of scary sharp and micro-bevel methodology and are emerging to this very simple reality. As long as you start the cutting edge somewhere around 30-degrees and polish it out it will cut well. If you you sharpen to around 1200-grit it will cut most anything you need in woodworking. If you sharpen to a polished edge of around 15,000-grit you can slice the most delicate of materials effortlessly, but 98% of the time that’s far from necessary. What am I saying? I’m saying that we generally sharpen to task but often sharpen to a higher level because it’s not much extra effort. We all know after a few efforts at sharpening that the greatest effort comes at the start of the process when we have to regain ground to get through a fractured and dulled edge and back to a productive cutting edge. That said, it’s not a big deal, just a few extra strokes on the coarse diamonds gets you there. So, if that is the case, why do we sharpen to higher levels than are usually needed. Well, it is a fact that the more polished the two plains forming the arête for a cutting edge are, the sharper the edge is but the stronger the edge is too. As I said, the extra effort is worth the work because it’s so quick and effective. It’s not so much what we do to the edge to establish it but what we do to the edge after we have prepared it for work. Taking the chisel to the surface of the wood to work the wood begins an immediate process of edge reduction we now know is edge fracture but was once called wear. No matter the steel, edge fracture occurs at some level but some steels fracture more readily than others. What we often do not realise is that it is impossible to find a steel that both takes and retains an edge and at the same time has a level of durability we can rely on forever. All edges wear away by fracture and constantly need restoring.

September 2, 2014

Sharpening woodworking tools

Filed under: Technology, Tools, Woodworking — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 16:23

I’m an occasional woodworker, but I’m always aware I don’t sharpen my tools as often as I should. One of the reasons I don’t is that it’s such a hassle to sharpen them properly: it’s not as simple as sharpening a kitchen knife, and you need to spend time to work through from a coarse grit (250 or so), through medium grit (1000) and into fine (4000) or even superfine (15000 and higher). This video by Paul Sellers has persuaded me that it doesn’t have to be that way for most of the woodworking hand tools I’m likely to use:

Published on 8 Nov 2013

In this video Paul Sellers shows that you don’t need to sharpen to 15,000+ grit on you planes, chisels and other woodworking tools. 250-grit works just fine for most of our woodwork. Paul addresses the myths and misinformation put forward, and challenges what we think about sharpening.

To find out more about Paul Sellers and the work he is involved with visit http://paulsellers.com

August 26, 2013

A small note from the hand tool trade

Filed under: Business, Tools, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:02

In a discussion of the plight of Sears in the major appliance market, Coyote Blog mentions an earlier Sears mis-step in a different market:

Oddly, I witnessed a similar Sears private label fracas when I worked for Emerson Electric over a decade ago. For years and years, Emerson (not the folks who make the cheap radios and TVs) manufactured many of the Sears Craftsman hand tools and power tools. Sears got tough one year, and negotiated a better deal of some sort with someone else, and an entire division of Emerson saw its sales basically going to zero. So Emerson bought a bunch of orange paint and plastic, went to Home Depot, and cut a deal for a private label tool line at Home Depot (Emerson separately owns the Rigid tool company, so a lot of the items were branded Rigid). Emerson ended up in potentially better shape (I did not stay long enough to see how it turned out), partnered with a growing rather than a declining franchise.

October 20, 2010

Some combination tools work well … and then there’s this one

Filed under: Humour, Randomness, Tools, Woodworking — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 13:05

Christopher Schwarz gives in to the urge to try out a new tool that combines the rasp and the chisel in one not-so-easy-to-handle package:

Now usually when I see a tool like this I just ignore it. Boneheaded ideas like this usually end up in a mass grave with the bones of dodo birds, passenger pigeons and AMC Pacer automobiles. But a couple weeks ago I stumbled on a set of these tools for sale — new — on Amazon.

These tools must be stopped. So I bought a set of three to take a look. They are as bad as I feared.

The tools are incredibly heavy. The rasp teeth are coarse and not very aggressive. They manage to make more of a farting sound than any scratches in the wood. Of course, it doesn’t help things that you have to use the rasp one-handed — grabbing the chisel tip is ill-advised.

Or is it? The chisel edge is as sharp as Lennie from “Of Mice and Men.” And when you do pound the chisel into a piece of wood (thank you Mongo the Mallet) the tool stops dead after 1″ because the rasp teeth dig into your work.

And the worst thing of all? They are branded as Nicholson — the once-great rasp maker.

But if this tool can succeed in the marketplace for 10 years, what other opportunities are toolmakers missing out on?

September 10, 2010

More on that list of tools you don’t need

Filed under: Randomness, Tools — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:27

Jon, my former virtual landlord, wanted to respond to this post:

Your post — here — is amusing. I am guessing, though, that you and Sippican Cottage just don’t do certain things around the house. Taking SC’s easy ones . . .

Sledgehammer — I use mine to set stakes around trees and shrubs.

Center Punch — You don’t need the one shown in the Pop Crap article (which has a shank similar to that of a cold chisel, which makes me think the one they show there is for masonry work), but a centre punch is helpful for drilling. I punch the centres of all my drilled holes, even those that I’m doing on the drill press. I also use a centre punch when mounting hardware, such as hinges, to wood.

Combination wrench — I guess you guys don’t do any plumbing, or anything with bolts that go completely through an object. You can’t reach everything with a socket — a socket will not undo the nut on a toilet’s feed pipe (unless, of couse, you break away the toilet’s tank so that you can get to the nut from the top). And you sometimes need to hold the bolt head in place while you crank on the nut with a socket. I have a good set of combination wrenches and use them a lot on our bikes and playground equipment. I also have a cheap set that came with my socket set that’s convenient to have with the sockets, but I don’t think they will stand up to prolonged use. The socket set itself is an interesting item that would make Sippican Cottage laugh out loud: it’s a 300-some-odd-piece set with 1/4″, 3/8″, and 1/2″ drives and sockets. I see the need for 1/4″ and 3/8″ and use both frequently. If I ever need to install industrial-grade light standards or build a highway overpass, I guess the 1/2″ set will come in handy.

But hey — it was on sale!

Jigsaw — Depends on what you are doing. I use mine to rough out stuff that I am going to finish with a template on the router table. If I had a bandsaw, I’d use that instead. I did not have $700 to drop on a bandsaw, so I bought this $50 item instead.

Tin Snips — you need these if you do home repairs involving metal. I’ve used mine to repair or replace exhaust vents, install anti-bird mesh in said vents, replace the clothes dryer exhaust tubing, and to do repairs to aluminum downspouts. I’ve also used them to open those freakin’ polycarbonate clamshell packages that all electronics and toys seem to come in. They are the only way I can get into those things without slicing up my hands on the packaging.

Machinist Vise — this is the only vise I have at the moment. A real woodworker may not need one of these, but I have found mine to be handy.

I wonder how many bench planes Sippican Cottage has . . .

Humph.

As Gerard Vanderleun points out in the comments to the original Sippican Cottage post, “I love this fisking more than I love the dream of an Obama recall. It gets worse since Yahoo evidently chopped this down from the original 50 by Logan. That’s a schmo at the beginning and a know-nothing Yahoo intern chopping at the end. De-licious.

« Newer Posts — Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress