If you can remember the big Tom Hanks’ 1994 hit movie Forrest Gump, no doubt you will recall one of the movie’s most repeated lines:

Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you are gonna get.

If you have ever received a box of chocolate candies as a gift and had to negotiate it without the help of a map on the lid (those are for cheaters!), the first bite into a piece pulled from the box is always a surprise. Will it be one of the tasty caramels, or will it be something you just don’t like?

In many ways, when a sawyer slices into a log of a maple, cherry, walnut, ash, elm or hundreds of other species, it is a very similar experience. More often than not, you get exactly what you were after – beautiful boards of exceptional character.

But, every so often, there’s a big surprise.

A very pleasant one at that.

Sometimes the boards will display a wavy pattern known as figure. This is not the same as the wood’s grain. According to Eric Poirier of Bell Forest Products, an online wood supplier that specializes in figured lumber, this distinction is very important. “Grain and figure are often confused with one another. The easiest way to differentiate between them is to understand that grain occurs in every board because it is how the tree actually grows. Figure occurs independent of the grain and is actually a defect, which happens to be very rare and sought after.”

Of course, there is an exception to every rule. A ray flake appearance in white or red oaks is actually part of the grain, but it is considered figure by the National Hardwood Lumber Association (NHLA). Go figure.

Figure can occur nearly anywhere in a tree. According to Eric, “It varies from tree to tree and is different with the different types of figure. In bird’s eye, the whole log might be full of bird’s eye or just part of one side of the log might have it. Sometimes the bird’s eye can even start and stop at different points in the life of the tree. There may be some sort of defect in the log that also causes the figure to start or stop at a certain point in the log.”

While figured lumber is beautiful, it is considerably more difficult to work with than non-figured lumber. Curly, tiger, fiddle back, pecky, burl or other beautifully figured woods tend to tear out more, and demand exceptionally sharp tools and care in their milling.

The number and variety of species exhibiting figure can be tremendous. Another great way to add these dramatic woods to a project is through veneering. Joe Goreleski, Jr. of VeneerSupplies.com, has seen a tremendous variety of figured veneers move through of his shop. “To the best of my knowledge, most domestic and exotic woods have the ability to display each type of figure. In my stock, I have some truly rare combinations of species and figure that some would think do not exist.” How rare? Think of such odd specimens as bird’s eye walnut and bubinga burl.

While working with figured hardwoods can be a challenge, Joe says going the figured veneer route takes some practice, but is not very different than working with regular unfigured veneers. According to Joe, “some burls may require grain filler, but the basic veneering skills should be able to get you through with no problems.”

Looking at an unfishished figured board or sheet of veneer may not be impressive. However, once a finish goes on the piece, you’ll immediately understand why woodworkers search out figured boards. These imperfections in the log translate into lustrous whorls, stripes and other features that appear nearly three-dimensional under an oil-based finish.

One issue many woodworkers have during finishing is that boards tending to be splotchy are even more difficult to get finished perfectly. A sanding sealer of a one pound cut of dewaxed shellac applied and sanded down with some 320 grit sandpaper helps to control the blotchiness. Again, these rare specimens require care in all stages of woodworking.

While both Eric and Joe get some incredible specimens through their shops, each has his own preference for his favorite.

Eric leans toward curly maples. “I love the way that the figure runs from the flat-sawn to the quarter-sawn grain. I use it whenever I can in different projects around the house. It is my favorite wood to use because I love seeing the ‘tiger’ stripes when the sunlight hits it just right!”

Joe is more of a tamo ash and walnut burl kinda guy. “But, I have not yet found a figured veneer that I didn’t like.”

Momma always said to keep your options open…

When I turned 14, my dad had a surprise for me.

He handed me a new razor, a can of shaving cream and showed me how to shave.  Even though I was using a safety razor, I still managed to cut myself.  Ahh, the joys of inexperience.

Since then, I’ve had a love/hate relationship with the male rite of shaving my face.  Some days, I walk away from the sink in the morning with a perfect shave – feeling fresh and ‘kissably smooth’ according to my wife.  Other days, I swear I took my belt sander to my face – all red, irritated and scraped up.  Since I’m not sure which kind of shave I’ll get, I tend to avoid shaving if at all possible.  Sure, it’s tough to get moving on a Monday morning, but at least my face had a weekend’s rest from the blade.

Later on, when I became a hobby woodworker, I ran into another group of folks who liked to shave – a lot.  And, not just to keep up appearances.

Some of the woodworkers I spoke with had an extreme fascination with sharpening and honing their plane irons and chisels to razor-sharp perfection.  And, with a salesman’s zeal, these folks will call friends and neighbors over to demonstrate how well their blades can clear their arm or leg hairs.  It’s a stunning trick, and I have to hand it to them.  They do have persistence.

But, is sharpening to that keen of an edge really necessary for woodworking?

No one is going to argue with the fact that sharp tools are a pleasure to use.  They are safer, cut more cleanly and make your shop tasks a whole lot more pleasant.  Dull tools will ruin more boards – and hurt more woodworkers – than we can ever fully account for.

But, when should you say ‘when’ during the sharpening process?

Hey, I used to fall into the trap of  meticulously sharpening my chisels and plane irons.  There were times when I used to fuss for half an hour over each edge, honing until the back face of the bevel was reflective enough to signal rescue planes if I was marooned on a desert island.  Then I would flip the blade over and work on the bevel, building a lustrous shine before tipping the edge up enough to create the perfect one degree microbevel.

And, yes, I would then shave arm hairs to prove to myself that the chisels were ready for use.

While sweating over a sharpening job in my shop one hot Florida summer afternoon, the little voice of reason in my head started screaming at me.  “Can we get this over with?  It’s hot, and I want to go inside!  Besides, how much better can that edge really get?”

It was that afternoon when I changed my sharpening procedure and added an important step.  I went to the scrap bin and pulled out a piece of hardwood and  clamped it in my bench vise.  I took the chisel – still far from its mirror-like destiny – and started paring the edge.  The wood yielded.  Easily. In an end grain cut.  With little effort on my part.  Wow.

I was stunned to see how much earlier in the process I could stop with minimal – if any -  effect on the cutting ability.  Not only could I save myself quite a bit of time while sharpening, this result also convinced me that I could sharpen my tools more frequently, without having to take the tool through the onerous process of honing to that fine degree.

My mind then turned to previous episodes of the Woodwright’s Shop, hosted by Roy Underhill.  I have watched Roy for years, working with his planes and chisels in his throwback workshop.  Sure, his tools are plenty sharp, but not so reflective, if you catch my meaning.

While I was reading the Woodwright’s Companion, I noticed that Roy also touched on the fact that woodworkers relied on quarried stones to bring their edges into true.  No, these old masters didn’t get into a heated debate about the micron size of the abrasive they were using – they used the best stones possible to get their blades sharp and then returned to the bench.

And, when they shaved their faces, they didn’t use plane irons – they used straight razors made with much finer and more flexible blades.

When I buy an old plane or chisel, I will regrind the bevel on my Work Sharp 2000, and then either use the Scary Sharp method (sandpaper glued to a piece of float glass) or the DMT Diamond Stone my wife gave me a few birthdays ago.  I’ve gotten so I can regrind and hone an old chisel in about five minutes, and have it cutting easily through wood.  It takes even less time to hone blades that just need some touching up after a project.

I will also use a piece of MDF with some of the Lee Valley green honing compound to put an even finer edge on the edge, but that’s it.

Will woodworkers still hone their irons and chisels to a mirror finish? Of course they will.  There are also people who will shop for stereo systems that faithfully reproduce tones well outside of the normal range of human hearing.  Hey, to each his or her own, and if leaving bare patches of skin on their arms is an outward sign of their sharpening prowess, more power to them.

I already have a mirror in my bathroom so I can see what I’m doing when I pick up my razor to get ready for work in the morning.

It’s any woodworker’s worst nightmare – an injury while working in the shop.  Whether a kickback from a table saw, a slip of a chisel, a router bit gone wild or something much worse, a woodworking injury can make you sit up and take notice.

Since the nature of the injuries can run from the slight nip to the catastrophic, the memory of every injury is branded deep into your memory.

This week, I want to know how bad your worst woodworking injury was.  While you may have had many accidents, please just vote about the worst you have gotten.

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Peter Loh Studio Furniture

In his Bellevue, Washington shop, Peter Loh uses beautiful  boards to create unique works of functional art.

With a style decribed as cutting-edge quality but not to the point of alienating the average client… (Sharon Ricci, Director, Northwest Gallery of Fine Woodworking) Peter blends familliar forms with an unbounded creativity to arrive at some very unique looking pieces.

Through the careful selection of highly-figured boards, Peter’s work becomes more than a funcitonal piece of furniture – it becomes an expression of his woodworking journey and a piece of art to treasure for generations to come.

Peter’s gallery is truly something to behold and is worth a visit.

If I had read James Krenov’s work the Impractical Cabinetmaker when I started woodworking, there’s a very good chance I would be writing about golf right now.

How do I come to this revelation more than a decade into my woodworking hobby?  Easy.  I don’t throw things away when I make mistakes.  In fact, mistakes should be considered opportunities to stretch your skills.

When I first read Krenov’s master work, the one thing that really stuck with me was his passion for perfection.  Krenov lavishes time on the board selections, the stock preparation, the jonery and the finishing, and he encourages other woodworkers to rise to the highest level of craftsmanship.  There’s nothing wrong with that – we should all be working to make our work shine.

Krenov, however, made clear his dislike for mistakes in the workpiece.  He hates them.  He’d rather see you as a woodworker get rid of a piece of wood than continue, trying to repair or undo what you had done.

I disagree, because if I didn’t, my scrap bucket would be overflowing with some pretty nice pieces of wood.  Case in point – this is the box I was building a few weekends ago – the one I put the stopwatch on.  It’s a nice little box, and the couple who will receive it will be pretty darned happy to have it on display in their home.

While I could have just documented the extra 40 minutes of work (or six hours of work plus drying time) to put the final touches and finish on the box, there was a much more valuable lesson to be learned when I built the top.

In order to dress up the edges of the top, I decided to route an ogee profile.  A simple yet elegant way to make the top look nicer.  The only problem is that I was routing it with a hand held router, and when I got to one corner, the router wobbled, leaving a gouge in the profile.  Ouch.

According to Krenov, I was looking at a piece of chiminea chow, suitable for use when keeping warm on a cool night.  And, for a few days, that’s all I thought I had.

That was, until I had an idea.

Since I was only working on a piece of junk, I thought I would take a chance, break out the rasp and try to round the corners over.  Just to make them look a little nicer.

At first, I wasn’t sure what I was doing, but after a while, I fell into a rhythm, slowly grinding away the edge profiles.  Then, I turned to a sanding block with 100 grit, then 150 grit sandpaper.  Before long,  I was left with an interesting looking box top with a pretty cool looking design feature.  The lines of the ogee on the edges die into the curved corners, giving a unique and quite handsome look to the box top.

And, to think, I probably would have just chucked the piece and started over again…

In my opinion, it looks so nice that I may try making that profile a signature feature for some of my other upcoming projects.

Funny – all that from what other learned woodworkers would call trash.

No, this didn’t happen yesterday… but, every Mother’s Day, I’m reminded of a unique project I had to undertake for a neighbor.  It all started with a new kitchen range back in 2004…

My neighbor Chris is a handy guy.  He’s been a sushi chef, has rebuilt carburetors and today cleans rugs for the local school system.  He’s a hustler, never allowing grass to grow under his feet.  So, it came as  no surprise that he was installing a new range in his home for his wife as a Mother’s Day gift.

I just happened to show up at the house as Chris ran into a huge problem.  He had taken out the old range and remembered that he had tiled under it a few years earlier when doing some other kitchen improvements.  Unfortunately, the new range had a higher control panel on the back, and it wouldn’t fit under the cabinet above.  What a bummer…

As he was contemplating major surgery on the range to make it fit, I had already consumed two of the beers he had offered me.  I could sit for hours and watch him work. Seriously.  My wife and Chris’ wife joined us at the dining room table, watching Chris try desparately to fit the too-tall range into the too-short space.  That’s when I opened my big mouth.  “I can build something for there.”

The room went silent.  Chris’ wife turned to me and asked, “Can you?”

“Sure,” I said.  “I’ll just need Chris’ help.”

“Great!” She said.  “We need it done before we all go back to work on Monday, though.  I can’t live without a kitchen…”

Boy, did I ever stick my foot in it.  I had never really built a cabinet before, nor had I selectively removed existing cabinetry to make a new unit.  This was going to be a real test.

And, early on Mother’s Day morning, Chris was knocking on my door asking if we could get ready to build.  We went to the local home improvement center and bought our supplies, then came back home.

At this point, we had already showered the ladies in gifts.  The next one was the offer that we would stay at home to work on the cabinet and the moms would be able to go to the beach together – without the kids.  Besides, Chris’ daugther was just about old enough to watch the three other little ones with some minor help…

The box was easy to build – just 3/4″ birch plywood and some maple edging.  In order to hide the electric hook up and display some of her Swedish glassware, we decided to build a ‘step’ into the piece.  Once it was built, we used a spray can of lacquer to finish the piece – it dried in a flash.

I had failed to realize how precise I needed to be when building the piece.  A horrible thought hit me as we took it over… What if it didn’t fit….

After removing the existing cabinet, we hoisted the new unit into place and it slid in beautifully.  Whew.  Chris drove screws into the studs and neighboring cabinets while I ran home to mill some molding for the sides of the piece.  Total time for the project was about five hours, and the results weren’t all that terrible to look at.

After we finished, I looked outside the window and noticed that the moms were out in Chris’ pool with the kids.  I took off my shoes and put my wallet, keys and cell phone on the cabinet.  I walked outside onto the pool deck shaking my head.  “What’s wrong?” asked Chris’ wife.

“There’s nothing left to do on the project!” I yelled as I cannonballed into the pool, to the surprise of the kids and the moms.  Chris pushed the new range into place, and had already started dinner for both families.

The display case didn’t last too long, though.  Their home was destroyed in a fire seven months later and the display case was broken out and heaved into a dumpster.  I still look back fondly at that project and the manic Mother’s Day we spent with our good friends.

While local hardwoods can be a pleasure to work with and can leave you with a gorgeous project, tropical hardwoods can be eye-poppingly beautiful.  Whether the vividly colored bloodwood or purpleheart from South America, the highly desirable bubinga or wenge from Africa or the hard wearing teak or rosewood from Asia, these boards from the planet’s tropical areas can be a woodworker’s dream, giving your projects a style all their own.

They do come with some drawbacks, however.  First, they have different characteristics than the native wood you work with, leaving a splintery mess where a clean cut should normally be.  They can also be very expensive, since they have to be harvested and shipped great distances to your supplier. And, the harvesting of these trees isn’t always done in a responsible manner, possibly being pulled from forests without consideration of their future health.

This week, let us know how you feel about using these tropical hardwoods.

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