There’s nothing quite as satisfying as watching a perfect curl of wood ejected out of the mouth of a hand plane. Or, the sound of wood fibers yielding under the razor sharp edge of a honed chisel.
It’s a well known fact that sharp tools perform circles around dull ones. It takes less effort to use them, they provide cleaner cuts and they are safer, given that they get a purchase on the wood fibers instead of sliding across a surface.
The real trick is knowing when to sharpen. For some woodworkers who have a good feel for their tools, they can quickly tell when it’s time to break out the honing equipment. For others, sharpening their tools is a chore they want to put off until the last possible moment.
This week, let us know how frequently you sharpen your hand tools. Do you hone every time you use the tool, or does it happen less frequently than that?
Shop time is supposed to be enjoyable. If you are a hobbyist, it’s time at your avocation. If you are a pro, that’s when you are making money.
There are those times, though, when you will spend hours on your feet working to meet a shipping deadline or to hit a promised-by date for a client. Shop time can become an endurance test.
This week, tell us how long the longest shop session lasted that you can remember.
There are lots of terms used to describe those who tend toward power tools and those who rely on hand tools as the primary method of cutting and shaping wood in their shops.
For some, woodworking means the whir of motors on routers, band saws, table saws and many other kinds of tools to quickly and efficiently build projects. For others, woodworking is a nod to the ways of our crafty ancestors through the use of hand saws, planes and other classic hand tools.
This week, how do you classify your shop? Are you exclusively one kind of woodworker, or do you blend the use of your tools to get to your final project?
Unless you have been living under a rock – or avoiding Tom’s Workbench altogether – for the past week or so, you have probably guessed that we were on a family vacation. We visited Boston, Massachusetts and then spent a few leisurely days in Cape May, NJ.
While driving back, I got to thinking… when my wife and I were planning this vacation, I started jotting down a few ideas of what I wanted to do while up there in the northeast. Several of the ideas involved woodworking.
So, this week’s question has to do with your vacation planning. When thinking about your get away, do you make woodworking an essential part of the planning, or do you lean toward avoiding it altogether?
Routers are exceptionally versatile tools. They can hold a number of different sizes and types of bits, tackle a multitude of joinery tasks and can do all of this joinery very quickly and efficiently.
The real fun starts when it comes to how many different configurations the router can be employed. Table mounted. Horizontal table mounted. With any one of several different bases.
This week, let us know if you have a preferred configuration for setting up and using your router.
If it’s from an exotic wood you are allergic to, you could end up with a full blown allergic reaction. Bloody noses and sinus infections. Even worse – operations for nasal polyps or cancer.
This week, let us know what your worst run in with sawdust was and how bad was it…
Hobby woodworking has undergone a tremendous change over the past fifteen years, and much is thanks to the Internet.
Once the only way to learn about woodworking was to take a lesson from a school or a knowledgeable neighbor, relative or friend, read books and magazines or watch the New Yankee Workshop.
Today, woodworkers have access to a vast array of resources right from the comfort of their own living rooms. Websites featuring new techniques, tool reviews and video build alongs have sprung up and can provide immediate access to what woodworkers want to know.
Of course, the Internet could be a huge time waster, taking away valuable time actually doing something in the shop.
This week, how important of a woodworking tool do you believe the Internet is for you?
