May 23, 2012

Posts Comments

You are here: Home / Archives for Joinery / Drawboring

A little push for Woodworking in America – 17th century carving

September 28, 2010 By

If you are still on the fence about attending Woodworking in America this year, don’t wait any longer. I trust what follows will change your mind.

First, class sessions are sold out – you won’t be able to attend, as you simply cannot register for any courses. Registration closed a while back.

What is still available? The Exhibitor Marketplace, of course!  Click here to read an article by Christopher Schwarz – you will get to meet Tommy MacDonald, Rob Cosman, Reto Odermatt, and Don Webber; in fact, they will be “permanent fixtures” for the duration of the Marketplace!

And if you have not considered attending the conference this year, maybe this article will make you want to attend next year. For example, a 17th century carved box by Peter Follansbee, which he shared with us during his hands-on session at Valley Forge, in the 2009 edition of the conference:

Carved box by Peter Follansbee.

If looking at this box still does not sway you to plan to attend, maybe the following video will help change your mind. I extracted 20 minutes from Peter’s 90-minute hands-on session at Valley Forge. This is the value you get when you attend the conference: you get a unique chance to watch, and to work with, the principal woodworkers invited to lead the hands-on sessions. The close-up exchange of ideas, the question – answer environment, is a terrific way to learn during the conference.

Enjoy this video! And Please let me know if you like what you see – details of carving, Peter’s technique to quickly make a tenon using a large chisel, his drawboring technique, etc.  — Al Navas

I hope to meet many of you in Cincinnati. Have a safe drive!

Filed Under: Blog, Conference, Drawboring, Education, Joinery, Layout, Mortise, Popular Woodworking, Tenon, Tongue & groove, Valley Forge, Video, Woodworking in America, Woodworking Magazine Tagged With: , , , ,

No clamps required for this assembly

March 24, 2010 By

What else can I add? Thank-you Sandy — your help was invaluable!

This was an assembly of a large desk base with four aprons, three stretchers, and four legs; it was assembled with mortise and tenon joinery, prepared as I showed in an earlier blog entry. You can follow the work on the stand-up desk at this link.

After applying glue to the mortises and the tenons, I applied a little glue to the tapered tips of the pegs and drove them home; the liquid hide glue is a wonderful lubricant, too! No clamps were required to assemble the aprons to the legs (and the stretchers to the legs, etc.):

Drawbore pegs after leveling with block plane.

I used liquid hide glue, as it has a long open time; I felt this was the best way to assure myself of a panic-free, clamp-free, and relaxed time during the glue-up of a very large desk base. After the glue dried, I trimmed the pegs with a flush-cutting saw, and leveled all the pegs using a little block plane. Now the drawer fitting begins in earnest, including stops and alignment strips to ensure straight travel during opening and closing. In the meantime I will be touching up the shellac layers, to blend the areas I planed to the surrounding areas. Finally I will apply a durable varnish, Target Coatings’ Emtech 2000wvx.

I had to use a few clamps to hold the dust cover in place, while the glue dried – here is the dust cover in place:

Dust cover in place.

If you want to eliminate much of the anxiety during large glue-ups, I recommend the use of the drawboring technique to pull together all mortise and tenon joints tight. Even the double-tenon/double-mortise joints I used on the stretchers between the legs went together flawlessly; properly tapered, the pegs snaked their way nicely. This was the double mortise and tenon joint at the end of a stretcher, and made with an FMT Pro:

Dual mortise and tenon joint on stretchers.

I admit this was the joint I was most concerned about prior to the glue-up, due to the spacing (“Will the peg find its way through the second tenon…???”). But I am a happy camper now; well, maybe a happier woodworker, as the drawboring technique worked beautifully.

— Al Navas

.

Filed Under: Blog, Drawboring, Joinery, Mortise, Tenon Tagged With: , , , ,

I cheated on my knife

March 5, 2010 By

I cheated today (by the time you read this, it will be tomorrow). I cheated on my knife. And I don’t regret it…Shouldn’t I feel guilty? Or should I feel sad? As a matter of fact, I am happy.

If I have but a few pins to make to pull a joint tight using the drawboring technique, I use a good, sharp knife, or a sharp chisel, to create the tip. It is this tip that allows the pin to snake through the offset holes in the tenons:

I use either chisel or knife to prepare the pins.

Now, the cheating part: Faced with preparing upwards of 20 pins, including a few spares, I scoured the shop until I found an obvious solution – an electric pencil sharpener:

Pencil sharpening technology to the rescue!

I found out that oak is very hard on electric pencil sharpeners. The electric version would not run at all after doing about 12 pins. I scoured the shop again, looking for something that might work. Back to very old technology, the trusty mechanical sharpener – I felt like I was in grade school again:

Older technology proves more reliable...

Using old and modern pencil sharpening technology I was able to finish preparing the pins in a fraction of the time I allotted. The electric model gets a reprieve from the trash can, as it worked fine again after the motor cooled off; who knew these actually have thermal protection?

Is this more than two flinks of pins?

I now have a nice bunch of pins, ready to do their drawboring thing on some mortise & tenon joinery. Whew! Thank-you, pencil sharpeners! Now I have a new question: What is a group of pins called? Is it a gaggle of pins? Or would a group of 12 pins be called a flink?

This is the last time I cheat on the knife – honest! Why am I taking such drastic measures? Because I found a much better way to prepare the pins!

— Al Navas

Filed Under: Blog, Drawboring, Joinery Tagged With: , ,

Page optimized by WP Minify WordPress Plugin