The basic premise...

So, this is the gizmo I've been working on. It's in a mostly-done state right now, still needing to be burnished and waxed.

What you're looking at is a stoutly made, fully enclosed vise, made with a veneer press screw. The entire top surface is reference-flat, and at 90 degrees to the inside surfaces of the vise. The purpose of this device is to assist in cutting co-planar tenon shoulders, regardless of the angle that's required. The basic theory is this: clamp the part to be cut into the vise, and align the shoulder scribe lines with the top edge of the gauge stick. The saw will then be used to cut the shoulder, sliding back and forth across the top surface of the vise. This will ensure that all shoulder surfaces are 100% in the same plane. In the photo above, the part being cut is at a simple angle. I will also make a pair of pivoting pads, so that parts may be set up for compound angles.

Why did I bother with this?

The tenon shoulder is the most critical, visible part of a mortise and tenon joint. If one of them is poorly cut, there will be a gap, or the specified dimension will be changed. On a table stretcher, for example, the distance between legs is defined by the distance between tenon shoulders. If you're just bracing table legs, maybe this isn't such a big deal. But if you're making another part that will form a drawer enclosure, that dimension is more critical. If you're making a dresser, and you have many such parts, you really want them all to be the same. When you're fitting the joint, mortise walls can be pared back, tenons can be trimmed and shimmed, but cutting the shoulder is a one-shot operation. It has to be done right the first time.

Cutting square tenon shoulders is a snap with a table saw, and it's not much harder with a hand saw. Cutting simple angled tenon shoulders is pretty easy, too, though grain direction on porous wood can throw the saw off track if you're not careful.

Cutting tenon shoulders at a compound angle is possible on a table saw, but it's a hassle, and it took some interesting jiggery to make it work when I was learning to make chippendale style chairs in school. Cutting a compound angle joint with a hand saw is probably easier with a hand saw in that regard, but even still, there's a lot of care required. I suppose in a production environment, and given reference faces, I should just use a Domino machine and have done with it. But in a home shop environment, how do you set up for compound angle joinery and make it easy? Well, the gizmo at the top of this post is the answer.

This isn't my design. This is something that was shown to me when I was in school, that was brought over by a french chair maker. There's a companion jig that provides a way to clamp a piece and plane a reference flat surface, which will then be mortised into.  That'll possibly come next, but for now, this seemed like it would provide more capability.

Quick tip: improvised honing jig, Derek Cohen style.

I needed to adjust the bevel on my Japanese chamfer plane yesterday, and I was in a hurry to get it done so I could catch the train. So, I threw together this simple scrap wood honing jig. The wood wears down on the bearing edge, so the sharpening angle changes a little bit, but it was a quick and dirty way to get the job done, and it worked well. It's also a simple way to sharpen some of these hand-hammered irons that aren't perfectly flat or square, or small irons, because you can make these jigs as big or small as you need.

The source material for the idea is on Derek Cohen's website. He's big on making shop jigs and tools and so forth, and this is just a good idea. It works better for the scary sharp (sandpaper on glass or MDF) folks, because the wood block won't wear down quite so much if it's riding on the glass or MDF, next to the sandpaper. For woodworkers on a budget... this is a fast and easy way to get things done.

Simple Projects: 3-legged stool

So, as the year winds down, I'm in the middle of a few small projects. This stool is one of them, and it's made of a scrap of cherry that I've been sitting on since Fall of 2005. (edit: someone reading this pointed out to me that it was hilarious that I'd make a stool out after I'd already been sitting on it for 6 years.) The cherry was an off-cut from an 18" wide board that was being made into a 6-board blanket chest that I was building in school.

Well, after 6 years, and as I was going through the scrap bin and looking for ideas, I figured it was time to put this particular chunk to work. It's still being tweaked, because getting a carved wooden seat to feel comfortable can be a job in itself. But the job of carving out the seat was a joy. Why? Because the process of hogging it all out was really rough, and pretty ugly for a while. And it was the perfect way to remember that the only cut that really counts is the last one. The rest is only scrap. So, I roughed out the seat with big gouges and a big mallet, and textured the surface with a small gouge once the heavy lifting was done.

Shooting the holes for the stretchers was downright fun. After drilling the board and turning some loose-fitting tenons on the legs, I flipped the thing over and got the legs up in the air. I clamped some scraps across the legs, and drilled the holes through the legs to be parallel to these visual guides, (from each end) which was even easier than it sounds. I marked the scraps to determine the stretcher lengths, and cut the real stretchers accordingly. No precision required, and cutting a little over-length is a good thing, as they will be trimmed after gluing up.

This is my second attempt at a simple stool, and I learned my lessons well from the last one: If you're going to glue the whole thing up at once, and you're planning on wedging the tenons, it's better to make the tenons to fit a little loosely; tight-fitting joints become rub joints very quickly. Last time I did this, (given, it was a more involved stool, with 4 legs, 8 stretchers, and a more involved seat) I got most of the way through the glue up before some of the joints seized, and then it was Game Over. That stool ended up in the dumpster. A 22 oz. framing hammer couldn't drive those joints home, no matter how hard I tried, and eventually things just started to break. That was NOT a good experience. Gluing up 9 joints at once on a simple stool like this is harrowing enough without some of them seizing up on you. Loose tenons are key, as they give you the wiggle room to handle a glue up like this. Wedges make up the difference, and no gaps are left behind.

Having a lathe or some drill-powered tenon cutters are definitely easier than making round tenons by hand. And for under-sized tenons, the adjustability of the Veritas cutters is great.  Other than that, you'll want a spokeshave and/or a good sharp drawknife to make the legs and stretchers, and shape the edges of the seat, and a gouge or two to shape the seat itself.

This project was a lot more fun than I expected it to be... it's pure form, and easy joinery.