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.

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Cooperage – Making of a Wine Barrel

It’s a skill that was critical wherever people lived. Coopering, the craft of building barrels, was in demand for a wide variety of daily functions.  Carrying dry goods, liquids, construction materials … whatever needed to be contained.

Today, plastics and metals tend to fill the need that barrels once filled.  Now, the greatest demand for barrels is with distillers, brewers and vintners. This site, run by Maryland woodworker Tom Crowl, shows the step-by-step process of how to make a wooden barrel, helps define the specialized parts of the barrel and offers numerous links to additional barrel-making websites.

If you ever wondered how these beautifully-crafted workhorses were made, this is a good place to start your exploration.

If you ever grew up with siblings, mischievous friends or spent the night at a sleepover camp, you probably know what a wedgie is.

Yeah, it’s a prank that grade school kids often pull on each other which leads to humiliation or even – if done with enough force – discomfort or pain. I’ve had it done to me – a danger of wearing loose-waisted jeans without a belt in grade school.  I’ve also given my fair share of ‘em – mostly in retaliation.  Ya know…

Thankfully, I have grown beyond that phase in my life now.  Although the urge to give a wedgie to the guy who cut me off in traffic does pass my mind… but I don’t act on the impulse…

Instead, I am here today to propose that a wedgie is a good thing,  Something that woodworkers should come to embrace to make your work more efficient.  Something that can save you money while solving a number of problems.

Oh, I mean a wedge!  Yes, that simple triangular mechanical device that has been in use for the past 9,000 years or so. By tapping a wedge into place, you can solve a number of difficult woodworking conundrums for a small investment.

One of the best uses I have recently put wedges to are as a clamping tool. As you can see, it’s a simple arrangement.  Any bar type clamp can be clamped in place on the cabinet body, and a wedge – this case, a commercially available shim – is driven in under the bar to put pressure on the piece until the glue dries.

On the  cabinet project that Paul and I are building, we wanted our face frame to be unified… you know – one solid top and bottom rail with individual stiles covering where the cabinet boxes meet.  I  think that arrangement looks better.  We were able to join the pieces with pocket screws, and we were able to use pocket screws to attach the top and bottom rails to the cases.  But, those stiles needed to be snugged down until the glue locked everything into place.  Most importantly, Paul and his wife didn’t want to have to see filled brad holes when they looked at the piece.  We employed this strategy… and it came out pretty darned nice.

This is a great little trick, but it’s not all that the wonderful wedge can do. Many woodworkers fail to realize one of the best uses for a wedge at the workbench.

While working on a workbench, the most critical thing to remember is that the work needs to be secured for you to do what you need to on it. A vise becomes an important piece of equipment, but, with the economy the way it is and the price of premium bench vises, not everyone can afford to put one in their shop. Other issues, such as the set height of a vise’s jaws can also make planing a tough task. You don’t want to whack your plane iron against a metal stop, unless, of course, you would rather sharpen than woodwork.

But, with a bench dog or two and a wedge, you can easily secure a piece of wood at your bench.  Just set up the dogs and use a larger wedge – cut from a piece of your scrap pile – to lock the board in place. A tap or two on the wedge secures the piece, another tap can loosen the board so you can move it.  You can also make the wedge any thickness you want. So, if you need to hand plane a 3/8″ thick board, you can easily cut a wedge out of 1/4″ thick  material.  Should your plane’s iron hit the wedge, it’s no big deal. Remember it is made out of wood.

It’s surprising how often we overlook the basics.  However, if you want to give your woodworking headaches a wedgie, going with wedges isn’t a bad idea.

Did you ever hear the expression never buy a pig in a poke?

That  was a very strange one for me – a kid growing up in New Jersey where a poke is what the Three Stooges did to each others’ eyes.  I had heard people use the expression, but, in an age before Google, I never understood what the heck it meant.

It turns out that the expression was first used in the middle ages by less-than-reputable merchants. Basically, the scam artist would be holding a poke – a colloquial term for a sack – and tell his potential victim that it contained a suckling pig that would make a very tasty dinner. If the customer was an idiot, he would say ‘sure’, fork over his hard-earned money and get the sack with the ‘wriggling piggy’ inside.

After the merchant beat a hasty retreat, the dupe would open the sack and, to his surprise, see that it contained a cat. Not exactly the best eating. This also led to the creation of two other well known idioms, to let the cat out of the bag (something the scam artist never wanted to happen) and to be left holding the bag (to get nothing for your hard work).

Now that I have impressed the heck out of you with my Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature and Language, what does this have to do with woodworking?

Glad you asked. Woodworkers are very sensory-driven people. We need to see the wood we are going to use in our projects in order to match the grain and colors. We need to feel the wood to see if it is soaking wet or ready to work. We need to smell the boards because hey, that’s what we do.

And, I’d be willing to bet that’s what’s holding some folks back from buying their wood online.

“It’s something we do see in woodworkers,” said Eric Poirier of Bell Forest Products. “For first time buyers, we notice a lot of anxiety when they believe they aren’t going to have control over the board selection process.”

To help put wood shoppers at ease, reputable online wood dealers take great care when selecting boards they sell to customers. “No, we’re not going to select the worst of the lot and ship them off to our customers. That would be about the worst business practice ever. We have built our reputation on providing quality wood for woodworkers to build their treasures, and any shenanigans would ruin us.”

For those who may want additional control over the process or who may want to find a board with particular characteristics for a project, Bell Forest Products also offers a program where customers can hand pick their boards. “OK, I’ll admit that customers will handle their mouse to select their board, but what a selection they will have to pick from.”

Yes, customers can actually look board by board from some choice pieces for their projects. “We feature burls, boards with unique figure and boards with live-edges. Exotics and domestics. If you are looking for something special to feature in a project, it’s not a bad place to start.” Selecting the hand-picked board link provides photos and descriptions of nearly 500 different spectacular boards to choose from.

And, if you can’t find something that tickles your fancy? “Just give us an idea of what you are looking for. We’ll keep an eye out for you. Who knows? That dream piece of wood may be coming out of the kiln right now.”

Luddite.  Normite.  Knuckle-dragger. Power hog.

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?

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Woody Bicycles

It’s not often that a blog post just reaches up and slaps me in the face, but that’s exactly what happened on the seawall in Cape May last week. On my way back from the candy store to lay in a supply of famous saltwater taffy, I saw this chained to a fence:

Yes, it’s exactly what you think it is… it’s a bicycle with a wooden frame. Local carpenter Max Samuelson, owner of Woody Bicycles, had a vision of a bike made out of wood.  Between jobs in his shop one day, he took some choice wood scraps and put together his first prototype bike frame.

Customers can choose from oak, mahogany, ash, birch, walnut, bubinga, purple heart and others upon request, and each frame is built to order.

It’s a very unique design and an interesting story. Definitely worth a look.

He’s short. He’s furry.  And, he’s a fairly decent writer.