January 2011
18 posts
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Anonymous asked: Having read your faqs I know you're a person with answers. I don't expect you to answer all of these questions, any for that matter. At any rate, I am genuinely interested to know the answer to each one.
When did you first realize you love woodworking?
Which of your tools sees the most use? Is it your favorite tool?
What is your favorite...
When did you first realize you love woodworking?
Which of your tools sees the most use? Is it your favorite tool?
What is your favorite...
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Japanese plane tweaks, or On that Japanese...
Based on the various Japanese planes I’ve picked up, mainly from eBay, the vast majority of them are set up so that the bed angle is about 40º. Many people will compare that to a standard Stanley bench plane, which has a bed angle of 45º, or the higher angles found on many infills and coffin smoothers, or the high angle frog options on Lie-Nielsen planes, or Lee Valley’s Veritas...
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Ow, my eyes! →
Japanese chisels in western garb. This just seems so wrong in so many ways.
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Qilan Mountain’s Divine Trees →
Brian Ward encounters a real giant cypress in Taiwan.
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Seedlac postprocessing
After I was convinced the seedlac had finished dissolving in the Everclear, getting it to a useable state for finishing was quite simple. I gave the container a good stir, and strained the seedlac by pouring it through some folded up cheesecloth. This is the residue that the cheesecloth caught, which looks like mutant space alien coffee grounds.
And this is the strained seedlac.
The strained...
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Shellac is for wimps. Seedlac is punk rock.
The seedlac arrived. Unlike shellac flakes, which go through more refining steps to make, seedlac is relatively less processed. Seedlac is made by taking the branches that are covered with the residue left by the lac bug, and crushing and sieving them to remove organic materials. The sieved lac is washed to remove insect parts and other soluble material, leaving the seedlac. “Seed”...
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Road Trip; Tsunesaburo plane makers. →
Stuart Tierney goes to Mecca:
On Wednesday my co-pilot and myself took a road trip into Miki city, Hyogo prefecture to meet (see? I’d already met them myself…) the folks at Tsunesaburo, makers of fine Japanese planes for 3 generations now. I’ll cut to the point here, they are very likely the best known and most prolific plane maker in Japan today, and earned that position quite a while ago by...
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“I just sharpen the way I do because I like it.”
– Stephen Shepherd, on the best reason to choose a particular sharpening method.
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On that Japanese woodworking is done with... →
Curly maple planed with a Japanese plane by Andrew Hunter. Nice writeup on his presentation at the Working Wood in the 18th Century conference at Colonial Willimasburg by Matt Kenney in the Fine Woodworking editor’s blog.
This was a conference that I really wanted to go to, especially given the theme for this year’s conference was “Cabinetmakers Look to the East,” on the...
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Reason #58 why New Jersey is better than New York
Shellac is dissolved in ethanol as a solvent. There are a number of ways you can get ethanol for this purpose. One is to get denatured alcohol from the local home center. The problem with this stuff is that methanol is commonly added as the denaturing agent. Methanol is highly toxic, and can be metabolized to form formaldehyde and then formic acid if ingested. A second is to get anhydrous...
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5 Asian American Inventions You Didn’t Know Were... →
James Wong Howe beats Orson Welles by ten years.
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Dig It
Many woodworkers have commented that one downside of Japanese chisels is that the metal hoop can dig into the palm. This is usually mentioned in the context of using a Japanese chisel for paring. I suspect that this might really be an issue with an improperly set hoop. Even if you are paring by wrapping your palm around the end of the chisel, the wood fibers covering the hoop will act as a...
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WatchIf a picture is worth a thousand words, then at 30 frames per second, 1:26 of video should be close to 2.6 million, or close to three times the entire published output of William Shakespeare. Unfortunately, all I’ll have to offer is what hammering the end of the chisel handle to compress the fibers, setting the hoop, and mushrooming the end of the handle is like in real time, as opposed to...
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Hoop-Dee-Doo: Japanese chisel set up
One of the Christmas gifts I got this year was a 1.5 mm Fujihiro brand chisel from Hida Tool. I’ve been wanting an ultra-skinny chisel for a while, so this was a welcome addition to my chisel rack. Like nearly all Japanese chisels, the hoop needed to be set.
The first step is to remove the hoop from the chisel. Usually, the hoop is pretty tight as the chisel comes from the store....
“To the cowards who post inflammatory comments anonymously here, I’ll be...”
– Christopher Schwarz, in the Woodworking Magazine Blog, showing that Plato might have been right on the money.