I have been wanting to make a video on plane blade sharpening for some time now. I know the 20 minute video format we chose just doesn’t leave room for the whole story. The last time I taught a workshop on sharpening was a two-week sharpening basics class at Penland School of Craft and …
Before making this latest video on scraper techniques, I looked at quite a few YouTube scraper sharpening videos. I watched so many makers talk about their method for getting a good edge with interest. All of them are going after the same thing but speak about it differently. Those differences are important to hear and watch. Each will …
James Krenov called hand planes “the violins of the woodworker’s orchestra”. I never got what he meant by that exactly other than to express his own reverence for this group of hand tools. I have never played a violin, but I have learned, over four decades of using hand planes, that the nuances of the …
In the larger sense of things, I think of ownership of ideas the same way I think of ownership of land or water. This stuff isn’t ours to own, really. We share it, take care of it, maybe even develop it, and ultimately, we return to it. The concept of owning land is a way …
I began chair making in the early ’80s following the tutelage of Jenny Alexander’s book Make a Chair from a Tree. It took a few years for me to find my own voice in chair design, but by the late ’80’s I began to feel more at ease in my design experiments. By the early …
In our tenth episode, Brian Boggs chats with Jon Binzen, editor of Fine Woodworking Magazine. This 30+ year friendship began in Berea, Kentucky and extends to this day. Enjoy their conversation which ranges from their first meeting in Berea to the craft/studio furniture movement of today to their beliefs about the goals of fine furniture …
In this episode, Brian answers questions on how to consistently saw several pieces of wood to the same length using only hand tools, glue starved joints, scrapers, and shares some nuggets about steam bending vs bent laminations. Subscribe on YouTube – Listen on iTunes TOPICS COVERED IN THIS EPISODE 3:03 – How to consistently saw …
I’ve talked to a lot of people who were having issues with steam bending, and troubleshooting steam bending. At a distance, there is a lot of guesswork, because everything in the process of steam bending, much like we were talking about everything in the process of cutting a piece of wood, creates a new variable. …
Insights regarding steam bending vs bent lamination Read More »
Mark Barabas writes, “I understand that a finished cut, or one that needs no additional work prior to finishing, can come from an edge tool, like a drawknife, plane, or spokeshave. I don’t understand why a scraper doesn’t produce a finished cut, and requires sanding prior to finishing. Can you explain this please?” I would …
Patrick Daugherty writes, “I’ve heard it said that there’s no such thing as a glue-starved joint. I suppose it is to imply that, as long as the glue bonds to the fibers, the film thickness between the wood surfaces is not relevant. Do you agree or not?” Well, it’s difficult to starve a joint. However, …
