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Lie-Nielsen event in Kansas City

March 28, 2010 By Al Navas

I had a chance to attend the Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Event, hosted by the Kansas City Woodworkers (KCWW) Guild on March 26 and 27. I arrived early Friday afternoon, shortly after opening time. The parking lot was already quite crowded, and inside was just as crowded. I took this opportunity to shoot a short video, and edited only the parts in which I tilted the camera when I should have turned it off — I left the rest unedited, to give you a good feel for the activities:

The Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Event – Kansas City
Duration: 16:42 minutes

This Event, no matter where it is held, is always a great opportunity to learn about hand tools. I saw several friends, and moved about recording the happenings to give you a flavor of the happenings. Deneb was quite busy, as usual, demonstrating hand planes, and just about any tool that visitors were interested in using or (eventually) purchasing. Larry, a friend of mine and colleague in our St Joseph Woodworkers Guild, tried the inlay tool set and loved it (I hope he bought it, as I would love to see some inlay work in his wonderful boxes!)

Bob Zajicek, Owner of The Czeck Edge, stayed quite busy demonstrating his layout tools, as he usually does at the shows he attends. He had on hand a great selection of his signature marking knives, burnishers, rule stops, awls, and his new line of dovetail chisels.

A wonderful surprise awaited visitors to this event. Harry “Jr.” Strasil, one of the KCWW Guild members, had his 1800s traveling hand tool shop set up and running for the entire afternoon. The video shows Jr. working away in his shop – check out the narrow workbench, with a huge array of workholding capabilities, including a leg vise on one end, dog holes galore, both on the bench top and on the back side.

At 6:50 minutes you will see Bill Johnston, the Guild’s Communications Director, showing a young boy the proper use of a hand plane. Bill runs a program to teach parents how to work with children to teach them the proper use of tools in the shop!

A nice bonus: The Kansas City Woodworkers Guild is housed in a 7,500 square foot facility, with ample room for this type of event and huge crowds. I hope the crowd was even larger on Saturday — but the rain might have been a factor. I am sorry I did not attend on Saturday, as an important commitment to my oldest granddaughter kept me away.

— Al Navas

Filed Under: Blog, Conference, Lie-Nielsen Toolworks, Shows Tagged With: Hand Tool Event, kansas city, Lie-Nielsen Toolworks

Looking back on 2009

December 30, 2009 By Al Navas

With 2009 done, I look back at the most-read and popular articles of the year, and find an interesting mix: Building, machine setup and use, techniques, and how-to articles topped the list. Videos, too, were extremely popular; not quite viral in 2008, the 1-minute video about the Schwarz Dances continued to be extremely popular.

And now, the top articles:

The single most popular article was about Ron Brese, his new hand plane, and his design philosophy. From that article: “As owner of Brese Plane in Thomaston, Georgia, USA, makes wonderful infill hand planes. In recent communication via e-mail I asked Ron about his approach and philosophy to a brand-new hand plane he unveils right now; I also asked him if he would allow me publish the first photos on this blog, and he agreed (photos below). Folks, get ready for a non-infill hand plane from Brese Plane – a stainless steel hand plane, at that!”

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From early in 2008, My setup for resawing on the band saw continues to be a very popular item, and is number two this year. It thrills me when I receive an e-mail message telling me that a woodworker has solved a vexing resawing problem with their machine, and that my article played a role. I continue to rely on the band saw to make drawer bottoms, for example, from thicker stock. Other articles about resawing can be found here.

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The FMT Pro and the Super FMT articles were also extremely popular. I have had the FMT Pro in the shop for several years, and is my go-to machine for all projects requiring mortise and tenon joinery (I love it!). And, although it arrived late in the year, the Super FMT is attracting a lot of attention due to its lower price, while keeping all the features of the Pro version. Leigh Industries sent me the Super FMT to evaluate; I have been using it in the shop, and continue evaluation as time permits. In case you missed it, this article on workholding and consistency with the FMT (Pro) is quickly becoming a favorite with many readers, based on feedback I have received since its publication.

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When Things Go Wrong, my story about tearout like I had never experienced, hit a nerve with my readers. Of course, it helped that Sharpening Guru Ron Hock also published my story on his new blog, The Sharpening Blog. I always recommend setting aside some shop time to do maintenance on the power tools – January is usually the month in which I do this in my shop, as it is a convenient time of the year. Last January, the blades on my DeWalt planer looked fine; but I should have known better, for I have had the machine close to 5 years, and had never rotated the blades to expose the  new edge (my model has dual edges)!

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Although Sandy has not been able to spend much time in the shop much for the last two years, the article about her band saw box continues to be a very popular article. She had never made a box like this; but a local sawyer gave us an oak burl from his scrap pile, and Sandy knew immediately what she would make. Once made, she donated it to a local church, and was sold at a Silent Auction in October 2007. A few weeks later she demonstrated to our Woodworkers Guild how to make these boxes – and that was a very popular session, too!

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My article about the new dovetail chisel from Czeck Edge was extremely popular. In the article I said “I felt lucky to get one of the new Czeck Edge Hand Tool dovetail chisels while I was in Cincinnati last week. The dovetail chisel is “…a design collaboration…” between Bob Zajicek and Jameel Abraham, of Benchcrafted. I promised Bob Zajicek, owner of Czeck Edge, I would use this little jewel as soon as I got back home…” Shown on the photo is the original version of the chisel; but Bob is already producing a second version, with a tapered and beveled rib, to allow getting into tight corners.

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How about some videos? These are extremely popular! The top videos this year were:

  1. Mario Rodriguez, at Woodworking in America (WIA) at Valley Forge, PA: Making and Fitting Drawers
  2. Bob Lang, at Woodworking in America at St Charles, Ill.: Arts & Crafts Style: The Unadorned Truth
  3. Roy Underhill, also from the Valley Forge WIA conference: Dovetails, the details
  4. Bob Lang, in St Charles: What SketchUp can do for you
  5. Christopher Schwarz, at Woodworking in America, Berea, KY: This ain’t no Tango

.I thank you all for reading my blog, and for your support. I wish everyone a wonderful, safe, and Happy New Year!

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—— Al Navas

Filed Under: Blog, Brese Plane, Conference, Czeck Edge, Jigs, Leigh jig, St Charles, Super FMT, Tools, Valley Forge, Woodworking in America Tagged With: 2009, FMT, most popular, review, Super FMT, top reading, year

The Super FMT: Part 2 cont’d – more on the clamp plate

December 15, 2009 By Al Navas

The weather is just about back to normal – we expect 4°F tonight, with (again!) winds around 15 mph. However, today was a good day to be in the shop; the furnace kept the shop at a toasty 65°F. I had a dovetail saw in hand, cutting dovetails for some drawers I must finish. And then it struck me: I had to resolve an issue I ran into with the Super FMT the last time I used it.

I like to check the joinery as I work, because it saves me headaches at dry-fit, and at glue-up time. So, checking each and every single joint is a hard-to-kick habit. After playing around with the Super FMT, moving clamps to and fro as I made mortises and then tenons, I found a misaligned joint:

mis-aligned-joint

See the light under the straight edge of the square? This means the joint is misaligned; there should be NO light under the straight edge. Take a deep breath, and start looking for the cause of the problem. My immediate thought: the table and the clamp plate were not at a perfect 90° angle to each other.

Now I must get ahead of the plan I mentioned near the bottom of an earlier thread. As I mentioned in that earlier post, I planned to cover troubleshooting in Part 5 of this series. But I now chose to ignore that part of my plan, and to give you the benefit of my findings right away. So, let us reason this out together – I will wing it:

  1. I moved the clamp plate several times, to remove and insert clamps as I switched from routing mortises, to routing tenons.
  2. The table moves only on one plane, in the X-axis (left-and-right) and in the Y-axis (front-to-back, and back-to-front). The table is, therefore, a good zero angle reference point.
  3. Both mortise and tenon pieces are machined with the same face facing me (I mark these surfaces with chalk).
  4. If the clamp plate is misaligned, and both tenon and mortise are machined with the work piece clamped flat to the plate, then the error introduced by a misaligned clamp plate (that is, with the clamp plate at an angle other than 90° ) is essentially doubled. This means that a 1° misalignment of the clamp plate relative to the table will result in a 2° misalignment of the joint. And even such a small error will be blatantly obvious.

Question: Why is the error doubled, as I mention in #4?

Answer: It is doubled because the top faces on the work pieces in the photo above are facing me while I machine them – let us assume each piece will have an error of 1°; the joint later goes together with the marks on the work pieces facing me. Thus, a 2° misalignment results; this is visible without the need for any measurement. But it is impressive when back-lit, as I have shown in the photo above — and it is a good way to for me to show you the results. Once again, the eye can tell and it can see the results of a slight joint misalignment; trust your eyes, and check joint alignment, always.

Solution: Align the clamp plate such that is at 90° to the table.

How to do this: My Wixey Digital Angle Gauge to the rescue. Simply set the clamp plate surface 90° to the table surface every time that the clamp plate is moved. First, the table is made the 0° (zero degree) reference surface:

table-zeroed

Then set the clamp plate at a perfect 90° to the table:

clamp-plate-90-deg

After routing the tenon and the mortise, the result is a perfectly-aligned joint when the clamp plate is set to 90° to the table:

well-aligned-joint

I double-checked, and my eyes were correct; I believe you can also tell that this joint is perfectly aligned, by simply looking at the photo above. Trust your eyes, but confirm it with a straight edge — always!

As I kept trying different things, I ran into the following – and when it happened, I felt serious vibration on the router itself, like a strong shudder:

ouch-table-loose

A little more troubleshooting revealed that I forgot to properly tighten the table; I had moved it to align a new work piece.

Edit to add: In addition to remembering to tighten the table, I suggest you also move the table as far left (or as far right) as possible, while still allowing sufficient space to route the mortise. This allows you to move the work piece closer to the clamps; the net result is that the mortise work piece will be better supported by the clamps, and less prone to vibration. And, before I forget, always use two clamps to support the work piece.

After resetting the table, and properly tightening it, I got the following result:

good-mortise

I will continue work on the drawers, aiming to finish them this week. Then on to the rest of that project. And, in between, a little more work with the Super FMT. Hang in there with me!

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—— Al Navas

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Filed Under: Blog, Education, Joinery, Leigh jig, Mortise, Super FMT, Tenon Tagged With: Education, FMT, Leigh jig, Mortise, Super FMT, Tenon, troubleshoot