A Review of 'By Hand and Eye,' and meditations on the virtues of drafting by hand

For my birthday, (5/21) I was presented with a copy of By Hand and Eye. I'm enjoying the book immensely. But I'm taking my time, and trying to do most of the exercises, as described. I'm currently going through the process of drawing a Doric column.

As a necessary pre-amble, I should mention that drafting is a huge part of the full time program at the North Bennet Street School, so I've done my fair share already. The drafting requirements of the book in question are not such a huge hurdle to get past. For those of us who have gotten used to flipping through woodworking magazines for entertainment, the reality of going through the process in the book, and the mind-shift that it entails, is a minor hurdle on its own. But I think it's one of the hidden gems of the experience.

I've come to believe, over the years, that there are a lot of woodworkers right now who aren't interested in thinking too much. They buy what the magazines tell them to buy. They preach tool philosophies, or bench building philosophies, that are all in line with the latest of what the blogosphere and the message boards are chanting. And some of them, (I can say this, after 3 years of working in woodworking specialty retail) seem to think that owning the tools is enough, that they shouldn't have to think too much, or have to take the time to become too proficient. The tools should pretty much do the work for them. Many of them were seduced by the age-old siren song of woodworking for fun and profit. And they genuinely believe that the reproduction furniture that they see in their mind's eye is as good as theirs, once they own a router table, or dovetail jig, or whatever other pricey gizmocity. I wish that I was engaged in hyperbolic trash talking, but I've sold tools to these people. I've heard this kind of talk.

This book is not aimed at that kind of woodworker.

This is a book about learning to see, and about learning to think. And it's written for people who want to learn to see, and to think for themselves. It's not a spoon-feeding of theory and techniques, it's a guide to finding thought-provoking projects that will lead you to an understanding that you won't get by flipping through (and ignoring) the latest issue of any given woodworking rag. I'm in the second round of drawing the Doric column. And it's already sent me back to my library at the shop to dig out The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director to look up the other columns.

Because I'm used to the magazines, I had half-expected to find a book in Hand and Eye, that would hold me by the hand and walk me through the process of doing some complicated stuff: A book that would thereby assure me that it was all within my grasp, was not something that I had to actually do, and in the end, might actually keep me from learning anything. What I found was a narrative that basically says "The treasure's buried over there. This is how to hold the shovel."

It's good work, pure joy, and child-like exploration.

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While I was at it, I pulled out my father's old drafting tool set. It's a good compass and ruling pen set from Keuffel and Esser, probably circa 1960's, that I'm guessing dates back to Dad's days at MIT. I found it in a pile of stuff he was throwing away, and thought it looked cool enough to keep. But I'd never gotten around to learning to use the ruling pens, or the ruling pen compasses. So I decided that while I was going through the Hand and Eye book, I'd start inking my drawings as I went through the exercises. I wanted to give myself a bit of a challenge, learn something new, and start making good use of some really nice tools. (Like I said, I wasn't sure what to expect from the book.)

Side note: I also have a similar set at the shop that belonged to the late Tom Krueger, an art school grad-woodworker whose shop used to be across the hall. I've been using that now for drafting my project plans there.

What I've learned from the inking process has been huge. Quite simply, it's a pain in the ass, but the final product looks like nothing I've done before. It's a lot more crisp and clean looking. And it highlights every smudge and procedural sloppiness that happens along the way. To get a good final product, I need to keep the oils in my skin off of the vellum or paper, to keep them from smudging everything and making a mess. I need to be precise in my line work. And I need to be aware of the tools at all times, lest I drip excess ink onto the page, or tip over the ink bottle. (Yup, that happened.)

In short, doing the drafting this seriously is an excellent mental exercise. The focus and awareness required to take a finished drawing to the desired level is exactly the kind of care that pays huge dividends in the machine room, or at the bench. As a result, the drawing feels more like the warm-up that I want it to be, and less like a chore that I don't feel like doing. And because it's a physical act, I find it to be more engaging, and more thought-provoking, than using something like sketch-up.

As always, the magic is in the doing, not the reading. So, I have to recommend the book.

Holding pattern

I'm painfully aware that I've been neglecting the blog.

For those who have been following the narrative over time, there are a few things that have been happened since I delivered the bookcases.

-One of my slab tables has sold. They've been sitting in a store for a while, and one of them finally grew legs. This is very exciting to me, and gave me the front money to put down a deposit on...

-New shop space! I'll be starting to move in September. I'll be joining a shared space in a new, undisclosed location, that is shared by a bunch of other full time woodworkers. I'm a little sad about leaving the old shop, for various reasons, but I think this will be a good move. It's also going to give me the opportunity to shake off the dust and complacency, and divest myself of things that I'm not using, or not using enough, so that I can gracefully adapt to the constraints of the new space.

-New project: While I get ready for the move, I'm also going to be building some clock cases to house a really cool new kind of clock movement, to be shown internationally. So there will be some bent lamination, and some production jigs that need to be built. But the first two cases need to be done in September. Yes, the same month I'll be moving into the new shop. No pressure.

-I'm still working at the caning shoppe part time. I'm doing piecework some of the time, it pays better at this point than an hourly rate.

-I've been working my way through By Hand and Eye. I'm making a point to go through and actually do the exercises, even if they look simple on the surface. And, I'm making a point to ink the drafting work when it's done. Just taking the process that extra step has taught me a lot, and I'll be blogging about that sometime soon.

-My son is almost 5 months old, and every day with him is different. It's pretty cool.

I think that's the bulk of the headlines. I'll try to get some more detailed entries up soon, but in the meantime, I'm off to do some caning, and to try to see if I can put together a caning workshop class...

Bookcases: Project in Review

I don't normally write a capstone entry for a project. But I don't normally get a project like this one. There are bookcases, and there are Bookcases. These are the latter. And, it's not every day that I get a project that really allows me to stretch my creative muscles, and do some real problem solving.

I'd used sliding dovetail joints before, on narrow pieces, but never really had the chance to work with the real-deal housed tapered dovetail joint in carcase construction. I'd seen this type of joint cut before, but seeing one done, and doing several in an actual piece is a different story, and there's a lot that I learned about just what factors need to be borne in mind during the process.

Starting with making the tool that allowed me to do the joint, this is a really cool technique that I've been dying to learn for years, and hadn't had the opportunity. I will revisit the dovetail plane, I think I'd prefer it if the blade skewed the other way, but I'm not going to rebuild the existing plane. I'll probably make a new version with another skew rabbet plane that I own.

This is definitely a joint that I'll be using again.

It's been a while since I've gotten to do any serious tool making. The dovetail plane and the flush cutting plane both were a lot of fun to make and use. 

I'd been wanting to carve stopped flutes for some time. I've seen them on a lot of really fine work before, but hadn't had the chance to use them, or figure out how I was going to go about it. I had a few ideas on how I thought I would carve them, and some of those methods will be revisited sometime soon, but not just yet. My final technique surprised me.

I haven't had to install moldings on such wide solid panels before, and never had to take the time to work out the details of the dovetail keys, or the details of the base molding.

Lastly, I hadn't worked with inset tops made of a different material before. It wasn't such a huge technical challenge as the other details, but I will say that they made a huge aesthetic difference, and the mix of materials looks a lot finer in person than something that's entirely made of wood. And I can say that it felt really nice when I delivered the bookcases to see the tops slide neatly, and precisely into place. 

Looking back, there's a lot that went into this project, and it was a real joy to do all of it. And, somewhere in the middle, my son Gabe showed up, and that's put a brand new spin on a lot of things.

Shop Tool: Flush cutting plane

This is a tool I made for the bookcase project. It's not the most inspired tool I've ever made, but it did serve its role admirably.

The germinating thought was that I was tired of the 'worms' left behind by nicks in the planer knives: I've had several instances where this small bit of wood would hit the fence on the jointer when I go to square an edge, and it throws everything out of square. There are a number of ways to deal with that, I know. But this one occurred to me, and it seemed like a good way to move forward.

The basic principle is simple: The edge of the plane gets adjusted to be exactly flush with the sole of the plane. There's a learning curve, as with any new tool or technique. But in practice, this allows the plane to slide across a surface, and remove any discrepancies without affecting the rest of the surface.

It's related, in construction, to a chisel plane. But the extra length of the body allows for a few different grips in practice. And the high pitch on the blade (57 degrees, I think) keeps it from causing too much tearout.

Installing molding on solid wood cases

I don't remember where I found this particular tip... I think it was an old Fine Wood Working magazine.

Because the case is so wide, there's going to be a fairly significant amount of wood movement, so brad nails won't cut it here. The case will likely expand and contract by as much as 3/16" over the course of the passing seasons here in New England, so it needs to be able to do so independently of the molding.

So, to hold the molding to the case, I cut a dovetail groove in the back of the molding, and cut matching splines that were glued and nailed to the case. Once the splines were attached, I slid the molding into place. The front molding I glued on completely. Because it's long-grain to long-grain, it doesn't need the splines, but they certainly help with alignment. The side moldings were glued onto the front-most spline, and the first few inches of the case. The rest is only held on with the splines.

Cutting the splines doesn't have to be a nerve-wracking exercise in precision. If they're a smidge loose when you make them, you can take a shaving or two off of the mating surface, and it will tighten up the final joint. Because they're not going to be regularly visible, it's not a big deal.

In the picture below, there are two gauge lines. Originally, I thought it would be good to use a gauge line for the nails, which were set up in pre-drilled holes in the splines. Bad plan, minor discrepancies made a mess. So, there's the second gauge line, which is simply for placement of the upper edge of the spline, which worked much better. 

Stopped Fluting

The bookcase job called for stopped flutes on the pilasters. It's a carved detail... has to be... but 8 pilasters with multiple stopped flutes is a lot, and I was wracking my brain to come up with a viable technique. This is what I came up with.

The flutes I cut on the router table, using a plunge- and stopped-cut. I stopped them before the top of the flute stops.

The stopped part needed a rounded over appearance. I needed a good way to rough this out, and what I finally came up with was to use an ATB blade on the table saw, barely protruding through the table insert, because of the tooth bevel: It allowed me to get in, and basically rough out each side of the stopped part, one side at a time. 

Some of the cuts were stopped cuts, some were plunge cuts... getting the blade inside the already cut flute, and cutting outwards.

The last part was to terminate the stops with a carving gouge, and to round them off.

More on sliding dovetails

The whole point of making the dovetail plane was to use it on this particular job: 4 large, fixed shelf bookcases. The carcases are single-plank wide cherry, with a finished dimension of around 16".

I used the same technique I'd used on the small footstool to do the joinery here, but with 24 joints to cut in total, (4 cases, with three shelves, 2 joints per shelf) I got a lot more practice, and a little more understanding of the process, to boot.

To make the process faster, I actually ran half of the joint with the same router I used to run the grooves. I did the final fitting of the top side with the plane. I have some funky Festool attachments that allow me to do this, but I'm sure it could easily be set up on a router table, too.

Fitting the joint, first step was to clamp the board down flat, and start working the end of the board. The goal is to have joints that don't have gaps showing at the front. Gaps can always be filled, but I like it better when I don't have to. I started the process with calipers, trying to match up the male end of the joint to the female end.

Eventually I just moved to fitting the ends of the joint to the case. That is, plane the front to fit the front of the case, and plane the back to fit the back, and then work the mid-section until the board slides home. It's important to note that the board has to be flipped for this, because the left side has to be fitted to the left side, and the right side has to be fitted to the right side, before the board is actually able to slide all the way in. The idea is to get that part fitted first, and then leave it alone.

You can see here that the fitted boards are not all the way in. This is done on purpose. Because the joint will wedge itself in place when it's glued up, wedging everything together now isn't really helpful... you'll just have to beat up the work to get that board back out. So, getting the board to slide basically to that last inch or so is pretty typical. 

 On the clamp in the photo, I encountered a couple of times where the boards had started to bow on me. It could be because a few days had gone by since I'd milled them down, cut dovetails, etc, and they'd moved a little bit. It could be because the wood reacted slightly when I ran the dovetail grooves. I'm not entirely sure. I know that some folks insist on doing carcase joinery the same day the wood is milled, because it helps to stabilize everything, and keep it in plane, but with 4 cases to do, with the width of the material, that didn't really seem like an option for me.

That said, there were a couple of the shelves that were slightly cupped. (about 1/16"- 3/32" across 15.5") I figured it would be fine, in the long run, because it would be held flat in the case, and would stabilize over time. But now, I think that doing final milling before fitting this kind of joint makes sense. Clamping a board flat while you plane it, AND fit it, AND try to do assembly is a lot of extra work. Working with flat stock is much easier. And assembling it is easier.

Last word of advice: be SURE to get those boards in to that last inch. I got sloppy on one that was slightly cupped... I figured 2-3" was fine, that the cupping would flatten out, and everything would be fine. This is the part where I confess to the fact that it took 2 I-beam clamps, with pipes slipped over the handles, to crank that shelf into the case all the way. It creaked loudly, like an old door, for about 5 minutes while it slowly shifted into place. I was sweating bullets the entire time, thinking that for sure, the thing was going to explode.  Only push in that last inch.