Review: How To Whittle, By Josh Nava

How To Whittle, The Taunton Press, $19.95, 144pp, March, 2018

Full disclosure: I was given a copy of this book by the publisher for review.

This is a gorgeous book. It features 25 projects that are a mix of functional and decorative items, carrying on a centuries-old tradition.

Josh Nava is a hand carver in Nashville, TN, and is the co-founder of Suburban Pallet, which specializes in hand-crafted goods made from repurposed timber.

Whittling may bring to mind sitting around the campfire or on the porch, carving on some fallen twigs with a pocketknife to pass the time. The end result may be a memento to keep or just go into the fire.

The items in this book are of a more permanent nature. This is what I know as treen or treenware, treen meaning "of the tree". Treen was common when everyday household items were carved from wood.

The book starts with a 20-page chapter on techniques, covering choosing wood, tools, sharpening, safety, knifework, preparing blanks, and finishing.

The projects are covered in 112 pages, 3-5 pages each. It ends with a page on resources, and an index.

One of the points Nava makes is that whittling is a very accessible craft. It requires few tools, and the work is done in green wood, using mostly found material.

The results are beautiful and practical, useful for decades. Whittled items show a distinctive faceting that lends a rustic elegance and reveals their handmade provenance. These are personal. Meanwhile, making them teaches you properties of wood, elements of design, and hand skills.

"Green woodworking" means using freshly cut or fallen wood that hasn't yet been processed or dried. I'm familiar with it from the books of Drew Langsner, as well as demonstrations by his protege, Peter Follansbee, and the work of Robin Wood.

Nava does a wonderful job of distilling this into a concise, easy to follow book. The projects provide enough coverage to give you a wide range of capabilities.

This book will have you scouring the neighborhood and countryside for fallen trees and branches. Wind storms will mean good harvest days. Here in New England, there's ALWAYS someone who has something down.

It's a good way to use urban timber, so you might want to check with tree services and municipal maintenance departments for material.

Tools

The tool list is short:

• Knives: used for medium and fine shaping. These are somewhat specialized, particularly the hook knife. They're not common pocketknives.
• Small hatchets and hand axes: used to prepare blanks (that is, preparing tree trunk sections or branches to the rough blanks that will be shaped into objects) and for rough shaping.
• Folding saw: sufficient for most harvesting.

You can find the knives, hatchets (including some very fine ones) and saws online, with a variety of commercial and custom products available.

Remember that this is for green wood, possibly some fairly large branches, so a longer saw with coarse teeth is best; he recommends 10-14".

Robin Wood covers some information on where to obtain knives and axes. While it is somewhat dated, you have the benefit of experienced opinion.

As with any tools, investing in quality items will avoid heartache later, so beware of buying the cheapest based on price alone.

Techniques

The skill list is similarly short. For knifework, Nava goes through five cuts that he uses throughout the projects. To prepare blanks, he outlines five general steps.

Projects

Nava opens each project with a page showing a photo of the finished item and a list of materials and tools.

This was my favorite item. Look at the gorgeous faceting of that fork.

He covers each project in a series of steps over the next several pages, using clear captioned photos. The writing is very easy to follow. The whole process has a wonderfully relaxed, organic feel to it.


The layout is easy to read and follow.

Whether you use the item yourself, give it as a gift, or sell it, the user will always be reminded of the person who made it. That's the personal connection in such handcrafts.

One thing I like about this is that you can use almost any wood. That means if there's a cherished old tree at a family house that you remember growing up, if some of it comes down, you can turn it into something that the family can continue to use for decades.

It's also a completely portable style of woodworking that offers great satisfaction. A small canvas bag of tools can go with you anywhere, and you can leave behind works of art and function.

If you sell your work, this is something you can do at fairs and craft shows. With your wares displayed for sale in front of you, you can be working on more the whole time. Then it's production and demonstration as well as commerce.

This also offers an opportunity to engage an audience and pass on the craft. You can let people try the tools after a quick lesson on safety and technique if you're comfortable doing that.

This is a wonderful book that will give you hours of enjoyment.

Psst: Don't tell my wife, but I ordered the set of Mora knives, the Marbles camp axe, and the 14" Silky Bigboy 2000 with extra large teeth that I linked above. This looks like fun!

Greenish Luthiery

My first shop-made finger planes, 8mm wide iron, 60 degree body in back, 40 degree body in front with maple shavings.

I have a new obsession. I'm familiar with the feeling of obsession settling around my shoulders. That's how I got started working with hand tools.

Back in August, someone posted a link in the Facebook Unplugged Woodworkers group to this video of Dominique Nicosia making a violin by hand. He's a master instructor at the Ecole Nationale de Lutherie de Mirecourt (National School Of Luthiery of Mirecourt, France). It's a beautiful documentary of a fascinating process. I was absolutely enthralled and inspired.

I watched it a second time, and thinking about the set of videos I had recently put together for my Intro To Hand Tools course, I realized that except for a few specialized tools and procedures, I knew how to do everything he was doing. I could do this!

That was the moment I felt the obsession take hold. Over the past two months, I've watched several dozen other violin-making videos and read 5 books on the subject. The videos range from short summaries to whole multi-part series detailing the process from start to finish. The books range from the late 1800's to the modern day. I've started lurking on several luthiery forums and attended a meeting of the Guild Of New Hampshire Woodworkers' Granite State Luthiers group.

In the shop, I've made several specialty tools, refined my carving gouge sharpening skills, and practiced the procedures for gluing up a bookmatched body plate and bending rib pieces.

Of course, this has all been hobby pace, a few hours at a time, plus reading on the train to and from work. It will supply an abundance of future blog posts. This is just a summary of what I've learned and done so far.

Tools

Luthiery requires several tools that I didn't already have, some general-purpose, some very specialized. Specifically, glue pot for hot hide glue, bending iron, finger planes, purfling tools (purfling is the inlay around the edge of the body plates), carving knives, reamers, and peg shapers. That comes to over $600.

Since we're currently being ground into the dirt by the oppressive boot heels of college costs, I've tried to improvise as much as I could. I've managed to assemble a reasonable set of shop-made tools for under $100.

For the glue pot, I went with the universal cheap solution and got a hot plate and pot. I boil the glue in a glass jar.

For the bending iron, I mounted a piece of 1" aluminum tubing to a 2x4 with a metal gate handle and pipe clamps. I found that  3/4" copper pipe fits in it nicely to add thermal mass. I heat this with a propane torch, or where open flame isn't practical, a 3/4" curling iron stuck inside.


Torch-heated bending iron, with a bent practice rib and the raw billet it was sawn from.

I made a couple of wooden finger planes based on a photo essay by Mario Proulx in the Musical Instrument Makers Forum Library. I made irons for them by cutting up an old, mostly used up bench plane iron with a hacksaw and file.

The purfling gauge is a specialized cutting-style marking gauge. One of the books has an illustration of one I can make. I can make a purfling chisel (for picking out the waste between the cut lines) from an old allen wrench.

For carving knives, I'll use my chip-carving and pocket knives. I may try making a simple violin-making blade from an old plane iron, experimenting with some backyard heat-treating.

The irons I've cut up so far have only been hardened on the cutting end, from the edge up to the chipbreaker slot. The remaining metal is soft, surprisingly easy to hacksaw, about like handsawing 3/4" hardwood. To cut the hardened portion, I score a line with the corner of a file, then grip the piece with vise-grips and work it back and forth gently until it comes off through metal fatigue.


Old plane iron cut up to make 3 finger plane irons in 8, 10, and 12mm widths.

For the reamers, I'm going to try a version of Drew Langsner's chairmaking reamer. I should be able to make up a peg shaper from an old plane iron.

One additional item I've made is a veneering saw for sawing out the 1mm rib stock. This is similar to a kerfing plane, but setup specifically to cut rib stock to its 1.5mm rough thickness. I remove the last half mm with cabinet and card scrapers. Being able to precisely resaw close to final thickness is a significant timesaver.

I may also rig up a toothing gauge for breaking up the surface prior to scraping. This is based on a description of a tool called a filliere, a veneer thicknessing gauge, though I haven't been able to find a picture of one. Lie-Nielsen makes a similar tool for precisely thicknessing narrower pieces, a stringing gauge.

Materials

Initially I was wondering what to do about materials. My first plan was to buy some inexpensive beginner's top and body blanks. These are quartersawn segments of log cuts.

I recalled watching Peter Follansbee plane green oak log splits into boards for his carved wooden boxes. If only I had some logs I could use for my own blanks using the green woodworking techniques I had learned from Peter and his teachers, Drew Langsner and Jenny Alexander.

Then I realized that I did have some. Back in 2006 when I had first started learning green woodworking, the brother of one of my coworkers had a good size walnut tree come down in his yard. I bartered some oak log lengths I had been collecting and riving for a 4' clear section of the trunk, about 20" in diameter.

I had left this log in my yard for several years, not really treating it properly as I tried to decide what to do with it, then finally quartered it with wedge and sledge. The quarters have been sitting in the corner of my workshop now for about 5 years. They're cracked and checked considerably due to poor storage, but there's still plenty of usable wood.

This walnut will make an excellent supply of practice material. And I don't have to discard the practice pieces. I can make decorative boxes using luthiery techniques as I refine my skills. After all, a violin body is simply a box with curved top and bottom; use a flat bottom instead and you have a lovely delicate box. It doesn't have to produce sound. That will come later.

I also have a small supply of yard maples that I've collected from people, quartered, stacked, and stickered. Most of it is in firewood lengths, because that's what people do when they're cleaning up fallen trees, but that's just fine for this work. All of the wood is nice and dry, seasoned in my basement for the past 5 to 7 years.

The traditional woods for a violin body are spruce for the front (the top plate), and maple for the sides and back (ribs and bottom plate), all quartersawn. Walnut is somewhere in between, closer to the spruce in hardness than to the maple. It's a very workable and beautiful wood. The traditional woods for the neck and fittings are maple and ebony.

The Process

The process for making body plates is to join two quartersawn wedges at the bark side (i.e. the thicker outer edge of the wedge) in a bookmatch, after having planed the edge square to one flattened face. So the two wedges are glued back to back.

This forms a plate, flat on one side, with a thick center and thin edges. The plate will be arched, shaped and hollowed to a thin shell curved in length and width. This forms the graceful outer surface and hollow body. The centerline joint is the apex of the arch.

The outside arching process is one of carving to convex curves. The inside arching process is one of excavating to concave curves. The result is a thin shell just a few millimeters thick, carefully contoured and smoothed.

The ribs, just 1mm thick, are shaped on a hot bending iron and glued up to blocks on a body mold. The plates are glued to the ribs, separating them to produce the sound cavity. The carved neck is joined to the body with a glued dovetail joint.

The glue is hot hide glue. This is reversible, so the body can be opened up for repairs. The finish is varnish.

Over the centuries, many old violins have had their necks replaced to adapt them to the new, higher modern concert pitch (modern as of, say, 1800). Beyond that, the design hasn't changed in 500 years.

The bare violin is then fitted up with pegs, fingerboard, bridge, and tailpiece. Only the fingerboard is glued in place. The strings are fitted to the tail, run across the bridge, down the length of the fingerboard on the neck, across the nut, and wound on the pegs.

As they are tautened and tuned to pitch they exert pressure through the bridge onto the top plate. Inside the body, the bass bar reinforces the top plate under the bass foot of the bridge. A loose dowel (the post) is wedged between top and bottom plates under the treble foot.

The science of violin acoustics is amazingly complex. However, the basic mechanics are straightforward. The horsehair in the bow actually has a microscopically toothed surface. Bowing this over the strings makes them vibrate. The bridge transmits these vibrations to the top plate, while the post and ribs transmit the vibrations to the bottom plate. All of this sets the air in the cavity vibrating, moving through the "f" holes.

As with any other woodworking endeavor, there are multiple ways to build a violin. The sources I'm using cover a range of hand and power tool techniques, different order of operations, and different types of inside and outside molds.

This is why I like to learn from multiple teachers. Each one has a different perspective and process, emphasizing different details. By themselves, no single reference quite captures everything, but the aggregate knowledge across all of them covers it well.

Practice Plates

Step one of making a body plate is to cut down a tree, section it into manageable lengths, then quarter it with wedge and sledge and season it for 5-10 years.

However, you can speed up this step by ordering seasoned, quartersawn body stock from a luthiery supplier. They sell it in a range of quality levels from beginner to masterpiece. Start with the cheap stuff.

I call this "greenish" luthiery because I'm using green woodworking techniques, but the wood is seasoned. I used a froe and wooden maul to rive a quarter into eighths, then sixteenths. I used a drawknife and heavily cambered jack plane to remove the sapwood from two splits.


Walnut log wedge riven out with froe and maul.

Planing a rough split requires special workholding, since neither side is flat, and the surface to be planed is at angle. The clamping method I used is something Paul Sellers showed me. It works very well for awkward shapes.


Holding the rough wedge for planing. There's a scrap underneath to support the thin side and bring the top approximately level.

Once I had planed a reference face, I planed the wide edge roughly square to it. The shape was still a little awkward, but it mounted edge-up easily in my face vise. If necessary, a wedge-shaped spacer can be used to help steady it.

For the final precision squaring of the edge, I used my large edge-shooting board. This is the method luthiers use for planing bookmatched guitar bodies. With flat pieces, you can fold them back and plane the matching edge of both pieces together. However, with these wedges you have to do them individually.

A good rub joint requires edges as perfectly planed as you can manage. You should be able to hold the pieces together on their planed edges up to the light and not see any pass through the joint.

Test the joint by rubbing the two pieces together along it and pivoting them back and forth. There should be no high, low, or twisted spots. Anything less compromises the integrity of the joint, and it may come apart during construction or when tightening up the strings.

I mounted one piece edge up in the vise, spread glue along the edge with a brush, and set the other piece on it. I rubbed it back and forth to remove any air bubbles and spread the glue uniformly. It started to set up quickly. This was the first time I had ever used hide glue, so I wasn't entirely sure I had the viscosity or temperature right. Another reason to practice!

I drove small pinch dogs into each end of the joint and set it aside to cure. It's now ready for practice shaping.


The glued up plate (secured with pinch dogs) and practice rib on my large edge-shooting board.

Practice Ribs

I planed an additional walnut 1/8th wedge into a rough billet, then tried several methods for resawing quartersawn rib pieces.

The main challenge is that they are so thin. The finished thickness is 1mm, so I tried to resaw around 2mm to minimize the subsequent planing and scraping required. With such thin material, one errant twist of the saw easily cracks it off. That made a full-size rip saw a littly tricky to handle.

A ryoba, a Japanese pull-saw with thin blade and no set to the teeth, worked well. I tried sawing completely through, and starting fresh from each side. This required close attention to maintain proper thickness. An error of just one thickness of the saw was a good 10% of the final thickness!

Next I tried creating a starter kerf on each side with a 10ppi joinery backsaw for better thickness control. This worked well enough that I tried a deeper kerf, leaving just a little to finish off with the ryoba.

That led to the idea of making a stepped guide fence that I could clamp to the backsaw to precisely space the kerf and maintain it flat to the face. The only problem with that was the backsaw teeth were too fine, taking too long.

The final iteration of all this was to clean up a rusty flea market 7ppi ripsaw, sharpen it, then cut it down to avoid the twist off problem I had with the full length saw, and secure the guide fence to it.


The veneering saw with guide attachment and a couple of bent practice ribs. I'll drill and bolt the guide piece with wing nuts so I can remove it for sharpening. The saw plate cutoff will make some nice scrapers.


The veneering saw in action. In the background you can see my fancy hot glue setup.

The end result was a fast, repeatable method for cutting ribs close to final thickness. I clamped one end of the rib to the benchtop and scraped it down to final thickness with a cabinet scraper and a card scraper.


Scraping a rib to final thickness.


Closeup of the shavings produced by the cabinet scraper and card scraper (thanks to Phil Lowe for the cabinet scraper sharpening technique and GNHW cofounder Terry Moore for the card scraper sharpening technique!).

You can also use a bench plane or block plane, but planing thin stuff like this can be tricky. I found that well-tuned scrapers did an excellent job with lots of control. I could easily scrape down any high spots.

The torch-heated pipe made a good bending iron. I could quickly heat it to the point that water droplets would skitter around on it, then turn the torch to minimum to maintain the temperature. Of course you have to be careful using this setup to avoid burning yourself or starting a fire.

A 3/4" curling iron stuck in the tube didn't get quite as hot, but was still reasonably effective. I may see if I can find a different iron capable of higher temperature. People have also tried soldering irons and various heating elements in pipes, such as water heater elements and electric charcoal starters.

One of the keys to bending without cracking is to back the piece with a metal bending strap. I bought a small roll of aluminum flashing and cut out a strap about 10" long by 2 1/2" wide. The strap applies the bending force across the surface of the wood as you rub the moistened piece back and forth on the iron.

The walnut bent easily and quickly. The hot iron heats the lignin in the wood to a pliable state, which then cools to hold the formed shape. Moistening the surface helps spread the heat; it's not quite steaming the wood.

Using the various rib pieces I had prepared, I bent loose and tight curves. The curved rib sections are called bouts. The center bout is called the C bout, because it's in the shape of a letter C. This has the tightest curves, at the curled ends.

Next Steps

Next I'll shape the top plate I've glued up, and make up some more plates and ribs to refine my process. Then I'll try inlaying some purling. I'll use all these pieces to make up some nice gift boxes.

Peter Follansbee, SAPFM New England Chapter May Meeting

Left to right, Peter Follansbee, Freddy Roman, and Phil Lowe.

Freddy Roman organized another excellent monthly meeting for the New England chapter of the Society of American Period Furniture Makers this past Saturday. Hosted by Phil Lowe at his Furniture Institute of Massachusetts, it featured Peter Follansbee demonstrating 17th century green oak joinery and carving. Videos of the day appear at the end of this post.

Peter has an excellent website and blog packed full of information. A joiner at the Plimoth Plantation living history museum in Plymouth, MA, for nearly 20 years, he's a protege of Jennie (formerly John) Alexander and Drew Langsner, doing green woodworking (woodworking using undried, recently felled wood); he also teaches at Drew's.

He has an article from the Spring 2009 issue of Woodwork Magazine in PDF form here, covering much of what he showed us. He also has a new instructional DVD available from Lie-Nielsen. He's an excellent presenter, so if you ever get a chance to see him in person or buy his DVD, I highly recommend it. He's used to working in front of inquisitive audiences at Plimoth Plantation.

He works almost exclusively in green oak, building carved and joined chests and stools in 17th century New England style. Many of these items came over from England at the time. His primary method (he might say only!) of joinery is drawbored mortise and tenon, often in frame and panel configuration, without glue. The fact that existing pieces have survived four centuries attests to the durability of this method.

One of Peter's reproduction chairs built using these techniques.

Peter's primary stock preparation planes: top, a smoother with iron ground to scrub profile; bottom, a shop-made jointer. I love the jointer, because it's literally made from a piece of firewood. Crude as it is, it still does great work.

His simple travel toolbox, in the style of Toshio Odate's book "Japanese Woodworking Tools". This kind of work requires only a small set of tools. He carries around the wooden plane that's resting on top to show the indentation on the side at the front from the user's thumb. How many years of use did it take to wear that into the dense beech wood?

For the morning, Peter demonstrated stock preparation and joinery. He had several pieces in various stages of readiness, including a turned stool leg ready to receive its rails. He actually works very quickly, but takes lots of time to explain details and answer questions.

Out in the parking lot, Peter shows his hewing hatchet with cranked handle as he prepares to take the twist out of the piece of riven oak in front of him.

Back in the shop, using the scrub plane for fast stock preparation. Where the hatchet was coarse, this is medium.

Fine: final flatness with the jointer.

One of the interesting things he showed us was how joiners didn't bother forming parts into perfectly rectangular cross-sections. They left the inner, hidden face truncated, in what Alexander dubbed a "truncadon" in this article. This allowed them to use narrower stock.

Illustrating the "truncadon" cross-section dressed out of a wedge-shaped billet, leaving one corner off the rectangle.

Chopping a mortise.

Cutting the tenon shoulder on a rail.

Boring a peg hole in a tenon. The hole is slightly offset from the matching hole in the mortise, so the peg draws it up tight when driven in. The resulting drawbored joint requires no glue.

Shaping a drawbore peg. He doesn't use a dowel plate, he just rives off small peg billets, then shaves them down with a large framing chisel.

With the pegs driven in and sawed off flush. That joint is tight and solid.

After lunch, Peter showed us a variety of carving patterns and techniques. The work is nailed to a backing board, which is secured to the bench with clamps or holdfasts. He moves around it to accomodate the grain and the line of the cut, rather than moving the piece. This is used to decorate rails and stiles, as in the photo above, or panels that may be nailed together into small boxes or joined into frames for larger chests.

Peter's modest collection of carving tools.

An example finished panel showing a symmetric S-curve pattern. He said this is about 45 minutes of carving.

One thing Peter emphasized repeatedly was postures for control. The following photos show a variety of grips and postures while making curved cuts, both with and without the mallet.

Left elbow in tight, legs spread fore and aft to lower the body, driving the V-tool with a mallet.

Forearm resting on the work, following the curve in one direction.

Coming at it in the other direction. The workpiece stays in place as he moves around to accomodate grain and carving line.

Pivoting with the feet and torso. Some of this is full-body carving, not just the hands. It's very dynamic.

Rear view of foot placement.

The resulting carving, with another example on the bench.

Once the initial V-tool work has been done, further refinement occurs with bevel up...

...and bevel down. Some of these are sweeping cuts to follow the curves. If a chip is not coming out, wiggle the tool, don't flip it up, because that can cause a bigger chip to tear out.

Nailing down another panel. Many period pieces show the nail holes, they weren't done in the waste.

Closeup of the crisp carving and one of the nails. The dressed panel has seasoned for a week before carving to just dry out the surface.

Layout is done with marking gauge, compass, and square.

Peter disassembles the panel he built for illustrating frame and panel construction when he first started at Plimoth Plantation. This shows the back side, where the panel has been raised with the hatchet and plane to fit in the grooved frame; that also deals with any variations in thickness, presenting a uniform flat face in front.

The front side of the panel is carved. The pegs are omitted from the left-hand mortise and tenon joints for easy disassembly.

Here are a couple of chairs built by our host, Phil Lowe. These are deserving of a SAPFM meeting and blog post all their own, don't you think, Freddy? Hint, hint?

It was quite an inspiring day. I badly wanted to try this, and now I have the opportunity.

In central Massachusetts, there's always an oak down somewhere nearby. One had appeared just down the street from my house a few weeks ago. Since my wife had put her foot down about bringing stray logs home, I had resisted the temptation.

However, after seeing Peter, I just had to get some material to practice with, so I popped on over this evening after work to say hello. Of course, it had all been cut to convenient firewood length by the power company, but I figured there was still enough for some small carved panels and rails and stiles.

I found two marvelously straight-grained sections unsplit. One whack with the sledge on the wedges sent them clear through after they were set in a score line. Even the 1/16th splits came out beautifully. There are just a few minor defects in the wood.

Thanks, Jane, I'll make you a nice little box from some of this!

About 15 minutes of work with the tools shown (though I didn't actually need the froe for these splits; it's one I ordered from Drew Langsner 5 years ago). I didn't quite get the puzzle back together properly when I got it all home, but you get the idea.

Here are two videos of the day. Consider these the motivational programs; get Peter's DVD for the instructional program.

Supporting Coppice Agroforestry

Not as in the practice of, but as in the book project. CNN had a story today about Kickstarter, a website that allows you to help fund creative projects directly. I found this very interesting.

Poking around a bit on their list of current projects, I found this one: Dave and Mark write "Coppice Agroforestry". Dave Jacke and Mark Krawczyk are using Kickstarter to fund a book they'll be writing on the practice of coppicing. This is the management of woodland resources to harvest and regrow wood repeatedly on the same plant, sustainable over periods measured in decades. The wood produced this way is used for a variety of purposes.

Mark has a website dedicated to green woodworking, http://www.rivenwoodcrafts.com/. He has links to Drew Langsner, Don Weber, Jennie Alexander, and Mike Abbott, all people I'm familiar with. This falls right smack in my area of interest.

I don't know anything about these guys other than what I saw on Kickstarter and their websites, but I made a $50 pledge to help fund the project, for which I'll receive a signed copy of the book, for several reasons:

• I would love to see more books on the subject.
• I'd like to help support a fellow green woodworker.
• I like the Kickstarter concept, another way the Internet allows a larger community to support a shared interest. This is an interesting experiment for both the specific project and the general concept.

The way it works is you make a pledge toward the project's fundraising goal, not as an investor, but as a patron of the arts. If the total goal is met or exceeded by a stated deadline, all the people who made pledges are charged for their pledge amounts; if the goal is not met, all pledges are canceled.

Dave and Mark's goal of $5,000 has been exceeded at this point, but they actually expect to need about $18,000 total, which has not yet been met. They have a funding deadline of December 10, so if you'd like to participate as well, time is growing short.

And hopefully sometime next year, we'll all get to read the book. I could probably just wait and get a copy cheaper, but part of the Kickstarter concept is that if it's something that interests you, you get to help make it happen.

That's the thing. Without support up front, these projects might never happen, and something that you might enjoy seeing or reading might never come to be. You never know what these might grow into. This is opportunity creation. You might even want to try a project yourself.

Down The Garden Path

Do others know what led them to work with hand tools? This is what set me off:

Don Weber on the cover of the April, 2004 issue of Popular Woodworking.

It called to me like nothing had before. I'd been watching New Yankee Workshop for 15 years, and occasionally that crazy guy from North Carolina whose workshop was more disorganized than mine. I had lusted after every power tool and shiny jig made, and suddenly here was a bolt from the blue.

The figure on the cover seemed too bucolic to believe. But Don Weber's the real deal. He's a Welsh woodworker and blacksmith in Paint Lick, Kentucky, just outside the arts and crafts enclave of Berea (where my parents met in college, and just a hundred miles west of where I spent my last two years of high school after growing up in southeast Pennsylvania). His article "Entirely By Hand" described the construction of a small side table worked in green wood, riven straight from a log and built with hand tools. I wanted to do that. I really wanted to do that. But I wasn't ready yet.

Over the next 2 years, I started to accumulate new and used hand tools. I bought new Stanley 4, 5, and 6 planes and played with them a bit, but didn't really make any progress. That changed with two critical enabling events.

First, I found Chris Scwharz's article Sharpening Plane Irons and Chisels on the Popular Woodworking website. That finally allowed me to get my planes usable once I invested in a pair of DMT Duo-Sharp stones. It was the first step toward mastery of a gateway skill.

Second, I found Drew Langsner's website and ordered his book Green Woodworking: Handcrafting Wood from Log to Finished Product and a froe. I built the shaving horse from his plan, bought a drawknife, and started practicing on fallen wood I got from my coworkers (in New England, there's always a tree down at somebody's house somewhere).

The shaving horse I built from Drew's book.

So in July, 2006, when I saw the pile of logs at Boy Scout Camp Wanocksett at the base of Mt. Monadnock in Dublin, NH, I was ready. I was there as an Assistant Scoutmaster with my son's troop for a week of summer camp. They had cleared a spot for a new shower house, and felled a big oak that was crowding the Nature Den. The camp ranger was planning on cutting it all up for firewood. I asked him if I could use a couple for a project, then ran home to get my tools and shaving horse.

My timber processing tools. The orange paint keeps things from disappearing in the leaves.

Up to this point the biggest log I had split was 16" diameter 4' long oak. I decided to see if I could split the large oak lying by the Nature Den. They had left two 8' sections of it on the ground, so I didn't have to pull anything from the pile.

It took about 10 minutes to do the first split with wedges and sledge. Then another 10 minutes for each quarter split. I was quite surprised at how easy it was. I cut off some short sections and used the froe to rive off several pieces. I had intended to build Don Weber's table, but I hadn't been able to find my copy of the magazine, and I couldn't remember just what the legs were like. So I decided to model it on the shaving horse, a simple small slab top and tapered shaved legs.

During the day at Scout camp, the boys are all off at program time working on merit badges. The adults are free to use the camp areas: shoot skeet at the shotgun range, take a kayak or small sailboat out on the lake, climb on the climbing tower, go for a swim or a bike ride or a hike. Or just sit around the campsite all day drinking coffee, but where's the fun in that?

Every morning there's a short Scoutmaster meeting just to keep tabs on things. At the next meeting, I announced that I was going to split the other log, then would be up in the parking area making a small side table, and invited them to come see. So after the meeting I had an audience of eight middle-aged dads. The photos below are from the video that follows (courtesy of Doug Becker).

Starting the first wedge. The quartered first log is lying at the far end. That's the Nature Den behind it.

A second wedge to enlarge the crack.

Walking the wedges down the length of the log.

For furniture parts, it would be more practical to buck the log into shorter lengths first, but I wanted to see if I could split something this big, just for fun. Naturally, since there was an audience, this one didn't go as smoothly as the first one had. After 30 minutes, I still hadn't completed the first split.

Here's the problem: the log has a twist to it. That means thick, strong internal fibers holding the two halves together. The near end has two birch gluts inserted to hold it open. I finally got the halves far enough apart to get in with a hatchet and sever the fibers.

The video below is heavily edited for brevity. I've removed the original audio to spare you the gaggle of 12-year-old boys in the background as they worked on their ecology merit badge. Unfortunately, that means you don't get to hear the satisfying thock Thock THOCK! of the wedges seating, and the split popping and groaning under the strain.

The quarters of the first log. The halves of the second log lie at the upper left.

Three other Scoutmaster joined me off and on during merit badge time over the next three days. One was a builder from Cape Cod who had never used hand tools. Like Tom Sawyer, I let them try their hands at the shaving horse. Big grins as they pulled curls off the leg blanks with the drawknife.

The only work surface I had was the shaving horse and a couple of parallel clamps. Great for shaving, the horse makes a lousy planing bench. Plus, this was before I had heard of J. Alexander or Peter Follansbee. Peter's 17th-century hewing methods would have been a big help with the slab top. And since I hadn't yet seen Chris Schwarz's Coarse, Medium and Fine DVD, I didn't realize my jack plane could hog off big thick shavings.

So we spent a lot more effort than necessary. Every once in a while some other dad would wander by, rolling his eyes and saying he was glad he had his table saw.

But picture it. Perfect New Hampshire summer days at the foot of Mt. Monadnock, working in the shade of the maples lining the grassy assembly field. At the far side of the field, past the pines at water's edge, the lake glittering in the sunlight. What more beautiful workshop? Pure woodworking bliss.

The final side table. The splay on the legs is based on the shaving horse. It's too much for a small piece like this, but it'll do for rustic porch furniture. Look at that gorgeous ray flake!

I brought a couple of the oak rivings home. They've spent the last 4 years in my garage, so I don't think they can be considered green any more.

I may try some of Peter Follansbee's 17th-century techniques on these. I've been scouring his website recently.

For the next 2 years, a number of Schwarz's articles in Popular Woodworking and Woodworking Magazine would form the basis for my skills, along with several books by other authors. Adam Cherubini's "Arts & Mysteries" column inspired me to use traditional techniques exclusively. I learned how to sharpen and use handsaws, braces, bits, and chisels. I learned how to make mortises, tenons, and dovetails. I still need lots of practice.

Two more things finally motivated me to real action. First was the the book The Joiner And Cabinet Maker. The original 19th-century text by an anonymous author and the 21st-century annotations and additions by Joel Moskowitz and Chris Schwarz provided valuable information and step-by-step skills.

Second was Tom Fidgen's old blog (converted to a new website). His use of wooden molding planes to reproduce a wooden door fascinated me, and his blog inspired me to start this one as I made the decision to finally build my workbench (and once again it was Chris Schwarz's work over 5 years that I was following).

So these days I'm well down the garden path. My uncle had started me on it when I was 8. For 40 years I followed the typical arc. I loved watching Norm every week. I can never say anything bad about him. But I no longer care about power tools. This is much more fun. And that crazy guy from North Carolina? I hang on his every word.

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