Woodworking is all about solving problems, and dealing with little inconveniences are a necessary part of creating a hand made item.
The problem with most recommendations for the best first hand plane to buy is that they don’t take into consideration the individual’s staring point.
As of 3:00 PM EST today, my new Hand Plane Foundations course is live. It’s taken than expected, but it’s finally ready for the world.
All the pine for my new hand plane shelf started off life as 4 x 10 roof rafters. Turning them into boards required planing, resawing, and more planing.
A quality combination square usually comes with a steel scriber. However, sometimes the bushing that’s supposed to hold the scriber in the handle, doesn’t.
I just finished up writing a series of posts about milling lumber with hand tools. In the past, I’ve done several videos that cover the process pretty well. They’re older videos, but still valuable for seeing the process. Here’s one of the better ones.
In the late 18th and into the 19th centuries, drawers with extremely thin, delicate sides become fashionable. While these very thin drawer sides look light and dainty, they present challenges for attaching drawer bottoms.
On my old workbench, I had a drawer that I found extremely convenient for keeping things like pencils, a pair of scissors, and other odds and ends. I had always intended to add a drawer to my current bench, but just haven’t gotten around to it until now.
One way to mitigate wood movement that can occur after planing is to not plane the wood to final dimensions right away. This is often referred to as skip planing, and it’s a technique can aid in keeping wood flat whether working by hand or machine.
Sometimes, tuning up a wooden hand plane requires a little more than sharpening the blade and flattening the sole.
Here’s the final video of building the American chestnut coat rack.
Match planing is a method whereby two boards are placed face-to-face and their mating edges are planed simultaneously. If you aren’t familiar with the technique, allow me to present you with a crash course.