New DVD from Jay van Arsdale: "Japanese Hand Tools & Joinery"
Available for pre-order. I pre-ordered my copy.
No affiliation, etc.
I would like to publicly profess my love of Japanese chisels.
Oh. My. God. Kari Hultman, via Facebook. Be still my heart.
She goes on to say:
All the rest of you chisels can just go home now.I have used the same chisel for chopping and paring maple for days and days and have yet to resharpen it.
Obviously, Kari doesn’t know that you can’t use Japanese tools on hardwoods.
Flat Back? Good Idea? How Flat is Flat?
This just in: crazy esoteric Japanese toolmakers not the only ones to put hollows on the back of chisels and plane blades.
Joel Moskowitz:
In traditional western tool manufacture (which isn’t practiced much these days) grinding the cutting bevel and any side bevels is done after hardening the iron. What the tool maker does is harden the iron, and then check which side has warped a little concave, and then put the bevel on the other side. This gives a subtle concavity that achieves the same goals, abet less noticeably than a purposely hollowed Japanese tool.
Unfortunately most modern western tool makers grind and harden in giant batches and have lost the craft that practices the above procedure. The result with a lot of western tools are backs that are bellied which makes for very hard conditioning.
Ray Iles, who explained all of this to me, still practices the traditional procedure on his plane irons. Ashley Iles (run today by Ray’s brothers Barry and Tony) don’t do this on the chisels they make but they intentionally grind their MK2 beveled edge chisels and their American Pattern Chisels very slightly hollow for the same reason.
Woodworking Media – How Do You Learn Best?
Great observation from Bob Rozaieski on his experience learning how to do some sleight-of-hand tricks:
The simplest of tricks seem to be really complicated when they are written out in a book. However, actually seeing the sleight explained by someone who is practiced in the effect all of a sudden makes it much clearer to me. It makes my practice time that much more focussed and productive instead of clumsy and confused.
This got me wondering, is it me, or is it just that this particular skill is not easily taught in print? I then began to wonder the same thing about woodworking.
Woodworking is full of tacit knowledge — knowledge that is hard to pass on via writing or talking, but instead is learned by doing. There are some aspects of woodworking that can certainly be written about. But there are other things, such as what a truly sharp chisel is capable of, what cutting with a really good saw is like, or what a well set up plane can do, which are quite hard to describe just in words or pictures. One of the seminal events of when I started woodworking was when my back door neighbor, who is a tremendous woodworker, showed me what a Stanley #4 plane can do. In an instant, I knew and understood. I would have never been able to understand this just by reading.
Which is why my usual advice to people looking for a start on hand tools, Japanese or otherwise, is to go find their local woodworking club, find the hand tool nut (believe it or not, in my club, it’s not me), and hit them up to show them what hand tools can do. There’s a lot of great information on the internet, but some things need to be experienced in person.
Q:Mushrooming chisels: I have a few that were delivered with hooped ebony handles. Any recommendations on mushrooming that?
Anonymous
I haven’t tried setting up Japanese chisels with ebony handles, so this is just a guess based on my experience with using ebony so far. Since ebony is harder and more brittle than the oak used in my chisel handles, I’d go through the usual set up process, but I wouldn’t be too aggressive in doing a lot of mushrooming. I’d make sure the end is soaked really well, and try to mushroom the end just enough to cover the hoop.
But go ahead and give it a try. The worst case scenario is that it doesn’t go well, in which case you can just pare off the mushroomed end and start over.
Nice film. Not a safety device to be seen, though.
Twitter discussion on this week's Tom's Workbench poll
- Tom Iovino: So, how do you cut your mortises?
- Wilbur: Real men use mortise chisels.
- Tom Iovino: Even when you have LOTS of them to cut?
- Wilbur: Real men don't worry about the number of mortises to be chopped.
Japanese joinery inspired cell phone stand, by Slim Milo.
(Thanks to Chris Weiland for the link.)
Source: slimmilo.com
