Building Handplanes 01: A Lifetime's Supply

    To me, tool making is at the heart of craft. Craft is communication; communication between yourself and your medium, whether that medium is wood, clay, fiber, computer code, paint, sound, or stone. And the tools you use, how you use them, and your relationship with them will guide you in your communion with the medium.  

    The most basic tools you have, the basic building blocks of craft, are your senses and your hands. With these tools, you are able to craft more tools, more specialized tools, more instruments to play.  In the end you may build yourself an orchestra of tools or maybe you are interested in just having a few fine instruments. Either way, the closer you can get to your instruments, the more intimate and fulfilling your work.

    I have built some planes in the past, and I found it very satisfying. In this series of posts I hope to document and share my building of a new set of handplanes from scratch.

My father cut down a large red oak tree about a year ago.

He left me a few logs from near the base of the tree that I quartered.

Now I am splitting these quarters into blanks for the planes I plan to build.

The tools needed to split wood are basic. Wedge and Hammer.

Splitting wood is faster than cutting with a saw and yields stronger wood

(albiet not as true)

Laying out the plane blanks.  

Simple 3" squares should accommodate the types of planes I plan on building.

Simply start the wedges on the line and work the wedges in tandem. 

 Oak is very easy to split if the wood is clear.

Here are all the blanks I split from the log pictures above. 

It only took an hour or so.

Here is one of the riven blanks in the shop.

   But, I shouldn't get too far ahead of myself. This wood is still too green to work, it will need to sit on the porch for a few months, I'll give it the summer off. Everyone should have a few months off in summer.

Chest of Drawers Part 4: All Finished (except for the finish)

Sorry about the lack of posting for the last.... oh 4 months or so. I had some trim carpentry projects I was working on along with working on my own living space (we now have a bathroom door!) along with raising my son Linden (who just had his first birthday).  I will try and make up for it moving forward. I have a completed a few projects in the meantime that just need to be photographed along with a few projects that are in the process of being built that I will start documenting. Right now I am working on a rather involved piece of marquetry that is coming out nicely.

My brother and I are also working on a line of woodworking items that aren't as intense and are at a price point that is more... let's say e-commerce friendly. More on that later.

But back to the chest of Drawers I left you with.  I have finished the piece and plan on photographing soon, however there are some WIP photos I would like to share:

Decisions concerning knobs should not be decided at the last moment when building furniture and they are an especially important "detail" in a chest of drawers. 

  Composing a piece of furniture without any idea as to where the knobs will go is akin to writing a few paragraphs and then figuring out where to place the periods.  At best you will end up with something awkward.

Here is the back of the piece before we nailed on the pine back.

The Finished Piece

‎"To state it fairly, the old cabinet makers knew every worthwhile trick, and the study of antique furniture the the study of man's mastery over his material. The heavily shaped bombe commode with its flashing richness of intricate veneer-work may look almost impossible, but it was done with primitive planes and scrappers, a pot of homemade glue and a lump of heated iron. No doubt the old craftsmen had more time in which to develop their skills and we are in too much of a hurry, but in the end they achieved more than we can usually show. The moral, therefore, must surely be 'make haste slowly' "

-Ernest Joyce (Encyclopedia of Furniture Making)