A Learning Adventure in the Workshop

Learning the Spokeshave

For some reason, I've been intimidated by the spokeshave in the past, and really haven't used mine much.  I figured that since I'm not a chair maker (yet), I really did not have much use for one.

Over the past few days though, I've needed to true-up and smooth out the gentle curves that make up the bottoms of the drawer faces on my G&G desks.  I had been using sandpaper to do the final fitting of the faces to the drawer openings (after having cut the drawer faces by using pattern-routing on the router table), but sanding is slow going, messy, and not much fun.

I reached for my spokeshave, and took a few easy passes, and whammo!  The  drawer front was finished.  Smooth, gently curved and ready for use.   Spokeshaves are good for cabinetmaking too...if you have curves.

The spokeshave is remarkably easy to learn and use...much easier to learn than traditional planes.   No need to be intimidated like I was!   I see many more uses for this tool now that I have made my breakthrough.

The more woodworking that I do, the more that I appreciate hand tools.  As these desks have progressed (over the past year or more), I find myself reaching for hand tools more and more...and killing fewer electrons...and the work is coming out better!  Some times that old ways are the best (but nobody better touch my Dewalt thickness planer!!!)

Manifest Destiny

I just returned to the shop after a short beach vacation.  The first order of business was to clean-up the shop from the completed grill-cart project and transition back to working on my two Greene & Greene desks.  Its time to build the desk drawers.

For at least the twentieth time, I tripped over one desk and then banged another as I tried to maneuver the two nearly completed desks around the shop...the shop is just too #&*# tight for working on two desks at once.

Then it happened.....I snapped....my wife and kids had taken the dogs on a walk...I was alone in the house...there, hidden under a pile of saw dust and desk parts was a tool of destruction....my reciprocating saw.....

I grabbed the saw and minutes later an old wall that divided the basement roughly in half  was gone....a pile of scrap and debris on the floor.   I had time to clean-up the destruction before  my wife and kids got home. The basement almost looked normal....but the workshop had grown by 25%.