Having watched half a gazillion YouTube videos about container turning techniques, I did this one a bit differently than what I saw in any of the videos. Being of Scottish heritage and a bit “thrifty,” I haven’t yet bought one of the 4-jaw chucks we so often see used for this type of work.

Instead, I sandwiched the walnut blank between two pine waste blocks (saves wasting 50 cents worth of walnut) and mounted the sandwich on a simple $10 faceplate. I trued the blank with a live center taking up the tail. After truing the blank into a cylinder, I trued a perpendicular face on the tail end of the blank, i.e on the end of the waste block there. That prepared a surface for mounting yet another simple $10 faceplate for working the lid.

The rest of the turning followed fairly standard procedure.

• Turn a rough profile for the entire container.
• Refine the lid profile to nearly final shape.
• Part off the lid piece.
• Mount a faceplate on the lid piece.
• Remove the body from the lathe and mount the lid piece.
• This leaves the inside of the lid accessible. Hollow the inside to desired depth. Refine, sand and finish the inside.
• Remove the lid from the lathe and mount the body.
• Turn a tenon on the body that accepts the lid as a very snug press fit.
• Remove the lid’s waste block and faceplate. (The waste block was glued in place with a paper separator layer, hence easily cut off.)
• Press the lid onto the body’s tenon.
• Complete the shaping and finishing of the lid. For this particular turning, I left a raised ring of wood on the lid that later becomes the “C-bars” in the carving.
• Refine the outside shape of the body.
• Hollow the body.
• Sand and finish the inside. (Did I say “sand?” Hate sanding anything!)
• Cut the body from the waste block.
• While still mounted, turn the waste block to form a plug / jam chuck for the body.
• Press fit the body onto the plug and turn a very slight concave bottom surface. Sand and finish the body.
• Remove all from the lathe.
• Remount the waste block used for the lid and turn it to form a plug / jam chuck that fits inside the lid. This is not used for any more turning, but as a mount for holding the lid while carving.

All that remains is a simple matter of carving. The design is a single letter monogram set between two classic “C-bars.” The carving is different from most in that it is carved in end grain. While that eliminates the usual grain sensitivity of carving, it presents another difficulty. Carving in end grain is like pressing a knife into the end of a bundle of soda straws. Extra sharp tools are the order of the day, along with a healthy helping of patience. Also helpful are a white wax marker and a fine spoon shaped chisel.

I’m not sure what the recipient will keep in such a container. It has enough room for about 211 calories worth of Gummy Bears, or maybe a few spare gold coins. We’ll see.

The decorations rarely seen on these boxes are carvings. Here and there some might be found, but not many. Which is why … I’m using hand made wooden boxes as a platform for classic woodcarvings. You might have seen this coming in recent months.

Here are two new boxes. Both are made of Cherry. This Cherry is S2S material 15/16″ thick, which I resaw by hand. The sides and end walls are 3/8″ thick, the result of resawing the stock in even halves. The top and bottom material is finished at 1/2″ thick for the top and 1/8″ thick for the bottom, the result of resawing off center. This gives one the opportunity of using “book matched” pieces to display the grain wrapping around the box, and to have a top with a grain pattern that matches the bottom. Note, I said “opportunity”, and that depends on keeping careful track of such things.

First is a small box featuring a classic flower rosette on the lid, the lid shown as work in progress in the previous post. This style of flower is very common in architectural and furniture decoration and dates back many centuries. The box’s construction is a single-tail dovetail at each corner. The bottom is trapped in stopped grooves. The lid is a snap fit, nestled between the long sides, standing proud about 1/8 inch.

click any image to enlarge
   

The second box is another centuries old design, a Tudor rose. This particular variant has 4 petals instead of the usual 5, as a better fit for an oval. As with the first box. the design is incised. The box is larger, having more tails in each join. It too has a trapped bottom piece. This box measures 5 1/2 inches wide by 9 1/4 inches long by 3 3/4 inches high. Interior dimensions are 4 5/8 inches by 8 1/8 inches (long enough for new pencils) by 3 1/4 inches. The lift-of lid covers all 4 walls of the box and overhangs slightly on the ends for easy removal.

Both are currently available in my Etsy store.

It works great. Nothing moves. Nothing slips. All cuts are secure. Yet, sometimes the directions of cutting is awkward. Oh yes, one needs to become ambidextrous in tool handling and that’s not very hard. However, there are times when the angles just don’t work out well for either hand.

So, I tripped across someone using a different method (YouTube, you know). Actually, I’ve seen similar work several times. The work piece is loose, but jammed into a corner or into other stops to absorb the work force. Other than the moments that cuts are being made, the piece can be moved around easily and quickly. Some wood workers plane wood this way. One particular arrangement for “stops” looked interesting, so I fabricated the contraption. As you see, it’s simply a pair of wood strips with notches cut in them. Since, I’m right handed, arranging them as shown is natural. The work piece can now be quickly oriented in almost any direction and always have two points of contact to keep is steady.

This box lid is about 3.5 inches by 6 inches and I’ve used this frame for both hand powered cuts and mallet assisted cuts. It’s worked well for this piece. And… all of the work is done atop my carving bench, or my BoB, bench on bench.

BTW, the work in progress is the lid for a small cherry box you’ll see later.

Oh yeah, none of this works well unless the screw slots are “clocked.”

Shannon Rogers reached the point where he decided to write an article with exactly the same title as this post. Besides being the woodworker and online teacher we know him for, his day job is at a very highly respected hardwood lumber company. So, he knows of what he speaks when he talks about the very obvious sustainability of wood. Wood is one of the most renewable resources in the world. As Shannon says, “It’s already green!” “It grows on trees!”

Markets and international trading systems have matured tremendously from what they were 150 years ago when Honduras ruined it’s precious mahogany resource, or only 70 years ago when the Phillipines did exactly the same, destroying not only a source of income, but their watershed and hydro power generation capability by over harvesting.

Shannon points out that we have more forested land on the planet now than we had 50 years ago and that every species is being renewed, some a little faster than others, and that the more we use it, the more demand, and hence the more it will be renewed.

Shannon is also very generous in suggesting that the people like those I mentioned in the first paragraph are simply misinformed and have been fed “stupid falsehoods.”

Go read it. It’s one of the best things you’ll read today! “Stop Apologizing for Using Wood” by Shannon Rogers.

photo credit: Creative Commons: Christopher Schoenbohm, 2011

PS: For all you out there who regret owning Gibson guitars, with supposedly contraband fret boards, let me know. I’ll buy them at prices that will afford your consciences appropriate penance, especially goldtop and deluxe Les Pauls.

Oh yes, carving still holds my main interest, but carvings need a purpose. Not being one to construct elaborately carved furniture, I find smaller forms more appealing. Hence, the boxes. But… dovetails? Really? (You know, small boats have neither straight lines nor square joins … nor dovetails.) OK. OK.

I’m learning from yet another master. Paul Sellers is in the midst of a boxmaking series at his Woodworking Masterclasses online school. While I find his classes excellent, Paul is one who always produces perfect results. So rare are his mistakes that he seldom advises how to correct them. My learning comes more from (alright, mostly … maybe totally) making mistakes and learning how to fix / avoid them, and I’ve learned over the past weeks that there are elebenty-seven different ways to ruin a dovetail joint. (Nope, no pictures!)

Without further jabbering, here’s the first dovetailed and carved box that’s worth showing:

Body: 4″ by 7 1/2″ by 2 1/4″
Base: 3/8″ larger all around

Body: New Zealand pine
Lid: Wisconsin basswood
Finish: Shellac and paste wax

It is similar to the example Sellers has been teaching, but I’ve made it my own with the carved lid. There are a couple of other variances too.  Sellers cuts the groves for the lid with a tenon saw. That results in a grove that goes all the way through the end of the box and then needs tedious fitting of plugs to close the holes. I made mine a stopped groove, like a stopped dado. This one I cut with only a chisel and knife, an experience I won’t repeat. More learning. A Record 044 just arrived from Patrick Leach in today’s mail.

Sellers also cuts the rebates on the lid (for the slides) with a tenon saw. I cut mine with an ancient Stanley #78 moving fillister plane that I call Mr. Fussy. It does the job, but takes about 4 times longer to set up than just using a saw. Doh! Yet more learning.

One of the last little bits of learning with this project was creating the beading on the top edge. Some time ago, I did beading on the lathe’s timbers with a scratch stock. An even simpler tool, smaller too, produces results faster. Another bit of Seller’s wisdom is a simple screw in a block of wood. The crisp edge of a single slot screw makes a great cutter. Then, hit the outside corner with a light chamfer. Fast. Easy.

The box collector in our household has already claimed this one.

The activity is not frequent enough to warrant buying a fine metal clamp, but does warrant a bit of DIY time and about $6 worth of oak. I found drawings on a blog post by Paul Sellers and got to work. Straightforward … until I noticed the rounded hinge. Hey, a simpler square edge hinge, not housed, would work just as well.  No, that’s the wimpy way out. Carve that hinge, and if it really fails, square off the mess into the simpler version. It worked.

The hinge pin is a piece of brass tubing that I had on hand. That’s a carriage bolt and wing nut that tighten the jaw.

The clamp works beyond expectations, perfectly well for as often as I need it.

I once picked this saw up during my earlier boat building days, and just as quickly set it aside. It didn’t cut well and had a noticeable kink about midway along the tooth line. If memory serves, the most previous abuse was cutting sheetrock or some other kind of rock.

Removing the kink

Read enough around the Internet and you’ll think you need a blacksmith’s anvil and planishing hammers to take the kink out of a saw blade. TRY THIS FIRST: I removed the handle, just to make it easier to mount the handle end of the plate in a vise. Once about an inch of the plate was tightly clamped, I curled the saw first one way, then the other. Don’t be bashful. FIRMLY grab the toe end, pull it around toward the handle end. Once you reach a “U” shape, keep on going, running the curl up and down the length of the plate. Repeat a few times to both sides. Like magic, the kink was relieved and smoothed away.

Sharpening

No magic. The teeth were not really in bad shape, just dull. Sighting along the line, I saw that all were even enough to not even warrant a flattening filing. I simple hit each tooth with a couple of swipes of the file and then tested. Tops: 20 minutes.

The first job for this “new again” saw (OK. it really needs to have the plate cleaned) was resawing a length of 1×4 poplar. I was very pleased to find the saw working straight and true, and running easily.

Richardson, later Richardson Brothers, was a saw manufacturer in Newark New Jersey, about 20 miles down the road from where we live. From what I’ve learned, Richardson made highly respected products. They had one of the early patents for taper grinds on full length saws. Long story short, it seems they were also a very strong competitor to Disston. One contention is that around 1890 Disston manged to “do away” with some of its competitors by buying them and throwing them into a conglomerate known as “National Saw” which died in 1906.

This particular saw has a medallion that carries the 1867 patent indication placing it later than that date, and before the company started marking their products with a “Richardson Brothers” brand in the late 1870s. The stamping on the spine is an arched “Richardson” with “Newark NJ” below the arch, “Cast Steel” to the left, and “Warranted” to the right. The blade measures 14 inches long and has a depth under the back of  3 and 3/8 inches. It is 0.029″ thick.

This saw did not lead as sheltered a life as the Disston #4 I restored a couple of weeks ago. Whoever owned this Richardson used it hard,  probably never sharpened it, and then left it where it gathered a good bit of rust and pitting and lost most of the finish on the handle. The area of the handle where one grips still had a little varnish and several kinds of “donor paint.” The end where it meets the plate was bare, dry, and heavily stained. The upper horn has a bit split off the underside and presents a ragged edge to the web of the hand that holds it. The plate has no dents and is absolutely straight, as is the spine. It was filed 12 TPI, rip, and arrived in my hands with absolutely no set.

I restored this blade the same way I did the Disston, with a (very long) bath in Evapo-Rust and then lots and lots of sanding. There is still a good bit of pitting and maybe a long session with a belt sander could solve that, but my belt sander has yet to be purchased. I sanded off what little finish remained on the handle and sanded some of the stains away. There’s no need to reshape this handle because it was already of the era when they made them nice and comfortable. As for the split out area on the upper horn, I voted against splicing in a repair and simply carved that area to a new smooth profile. I’m unsure, but think the handle material to be apple which was very prevalent at the time. Finish is 3 coats of clear shellac ending with wax rubbed in with steel wool.

My sharpening required reducing the teeth down to about 50% of their original height before I got a nice row of flat spots to work from. Then I sharpened the toe end with relaxed rake for a couple of inches with the rest sharpened at near zero rake, all on the original 12 TPI. I now have two very nice back saws and might opt for a third for smaller dovetail work.

I’m shamelessly stealing the idea from Megan Fitzpatrick who recently wrote about updating her bench. She included pictures of how a ubiquitous magnifying lamp was adapted for use on the workbench. The lamp stands on a column 1/2 inch in diameter. My bench as a whole bunch of 3/4 inch holes for holdfasts. I took a block of scrap 2 by something. drilled a 1/2″ hole all the way through, flipped it over and drilled a 3/4″ hole most of the way through, and glued a 3/4″ piece of dowel in that hole. Now, I can locate that magnifying lamp almost anywhere.

Mass production of western style handsaws started a nose dive in the middle of the last century and have brought us to cheap, colorful, plastic handled blister raisers with brittle teeth that can’t be sharpened. Yes, there are a few premium western saw makers currently making superb saws. If those are your fancy, a good Google search will find many of them for you. For myself, I like refurbishing older tools. So, it was off to eBay to find my first goal, a small back saw suitable for fine joinery.

This Disston Nbr. 4 is has a 10 inch blade, has a plate depth of 2.5 inches under the back, plate thickness of 0.031″, is filed for 12 teeth per inch rip, and has a steel back. The blocky, semi-ugly beech handle dates it to after 1940. There’s no stamping on the back (also after 1940), and the etch on the plate dates it to the post WW II era.  Disston was sold in 1956, placing that as the most recent date possible for this saw. This saw had a very easy life. It was barely used and apparently kept in a comfortable place. The handle seems to have original factory finish, with no chips or other damage, not even significant scratches, but some runs. There’s a little bit of donor paint and other stains. The blade has minor rust, a bit of pitting, and “patina.” The teeth are still relatively sharp. The tooth line has an ever so slight bow. The spine has no visible bowing. Before I did anything with it, I tried a few test cuts and found it maybe 20% slower than the spectacular yellow and black Stanley utility saw.

Since it is neither rare nor collectable, and screams won’t be heard if I don’t leave it “pristine,” I intend to refurbish it in the manner pursued by Andy “Brit.” That means a very shiny plate. After disassembling, the first stop was in an Evapo-Rust bath. This is the very first “eco friendly” clean-up product that actually has the strength to do what it advertises. Mild rust was gone quickly. Then it’s off to the polishing. I used garnet paper starting at about 250 grit, then wet-n-dry to 600, followed by Abralon sanding pads to 4000. The purists will be upset with losing part of the etch, but it’s a “user” not a collector’s item. That slight bow was removed by clamping the saw in my really simple “saw vise” just above the tooth line and then tapping along the spine with moderate hammer blows buffered by an oak block.

The handle is actually beyond semi-ugly. It is downright ugly and uncomfortable too. It wants some serious reshaping. Any self-respecting saw handle would like to look the part, and I wanted to soften some hard lines, and have a finish that did not includes the runs and curtains of the original poor manufacture. Search around and you’ll see that classic handles had a nib on the top, a lamb’s tongue on the bottom, and curves that actually flowed nicely. Out came my marker, turning saw, a few gouges and a couple of rasps. Reshaping it was so much fun that I lost track of time, maybe and hour or two. Finish is three coats of shellac followed by paste wax applied with steel wool. Satin s-m-o-o-o-o-o-o-t-h! The brass finished up relatively quickly with the Abralon pads followed by rottenstone in wax and buffing.

Lastly, comes sharpening. I’m constantly amazed at how many people think saw sharpening some mysterious art. I see it as a fundamental skill for anyone working with hand tools. Why send something out to be sharpened? Why bear the expense and delay. (Some of those premium saw makers offer sharpening services, but have backlogs measured in weeks and months.) Learning to sharpen a saw is something that can be accomplished in only a couple of hours and is a lifetime skill that improves whenever you use it. Once you know how, you can sharpen a saw in less time than it takes to stand in line at the post office. Learn here, or if you’re a member of Paul Seller’s Woodworking Masterclasses online school, learn here. Also, be aware that rip filings do cross cutting surprisingly well, so you can do a lot with the simplest filing technique. I used Seller’s advice and filed the first dozen teeth at the toe of this saw with 10-12 degrees of rake. The next dozen teeth were filed at 5-8 degrees of rake, and all the rest at zero degrees of rake. The idea is to use the toe for easy starting and to have aggressive rake for the remainder of the blade. Time: about 20 minutes. The saw arrived with quite a lot of set. Some disappeared in the filing, but a noticeable amount remained. Test cuts now make this saw about 20% faster than the spectacular yellow and black Stanley utility saw. It cuts rip very smoothly and cross cut slightly less smoothly, but acceptably fast. It’s faster in hardwood than in softwood, indicating I need just a little more set. … tomorrow’s improvement.

All done, I’ve sharpened some skills, saved an old saw from a trip to the land fill, gained what I consider a premium saw, and did it for about 1/10th the cost of a new premium saw.

Just wait til you see the next one…