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Setting Up Shop #3: A few of my favorite tools...so far.

David A. P. — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 21:05:05 GMT

Being supremely lazy, and having already made some pithy and amusing (at least, amusing to me) comments on a list of my favorite tools—at least, at the point that I wrote it up—I’m going to link to my Amazon Listmania list here. I’ve gotten stuff since then, of course, and I have even more interesting and fun stuff to say…but that will be in the next (-ish) post. Hopefully this is at least somewhat useful!

Keeping track of my wounds: 13 and counting...

David A. P. — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 10:06:23 GMT

I decided at the very start of my woodworking adventures to keep close track of any injuries I managed to incur, in part out of curiosity—knowing that it’s a hobby notorious for its danger, at least in comparison to most other hobbies—and in part because I want to identify where I go wrong, so I can address the problematic action(s).
So far, I’m up to 13 cuts. Of these, the breakdown by source is as follows:

1, flush-cut saw.
1, paint scraper.
1, bow saw.
1, chisel.
9, carving injuries.

You may notice a trend here . I certainly did, and in fact, it was after injury #10 that I decided I’d better buy a carving glove. It’s about the same price as a copay at urgent care, for stitches, and it was obvious that no matter how careful I was, I was going to end up there sooner or later. Injury #11 was another minor cut from the carving knife, in between my resolution to buy a glove and carrying out my intent. After I bought a glove and started using it, my injury rate went way down .
Then, a couple nights ago, I was carving experimentally on a small piece of wood, and I decided I could just be extra careful and do without the glove. You can probably guess the next part: my momentary laxity cost me four stitches in the left index finger. On the bright side, this served as a very graphic safety lesson for my kids (at least two of whom are also carving), and my bloodstained thumb guard is a visible reminder of what happens when I don’t wear my glove.
Injury #13 happened earlier tonight, and was different from the previous 12. All of the others were direct results of applying force to wood via sharp metal, with a hand on the other side of said wood. This one didn’t fit that mold; it resulted from trying to wrestle a log into position while holding a bow saw in one hand. I’ve got a band-aid on my forearm to show why that’s a bad idea .
All in all, not terrible, especially given a marked tendency to be careless due to not paying attention (largely a side effect of the gift of ADHD). I find working with wood to be calming and conducive to focus, and this, along with a healthy dose of caution, has kept me from doing too badly. My tools, alas, do not always fare so well, several having become better acquainted with the shop floor than they probably like. Those that aren’t lost, anyway .

Setting Up Shop #1: Somewhere in the middle: Buck Bros. Block Plane

David A. P. — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 16:11:25 GMT

I have my own blog, and before I discovered the excellence that is Lumberjocks, I started posting my woodworking adventures there. Fortunately, I only got one post up there before I signed up at LJ. However, I’m going to leave that post where it is, so I figured I’d drop a pointer to it here: Jumping Right In. Maybe not the ideal solution, but c’est la vie .

Setting Up Shop #2: Raw materials

David A. P. — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 01:38:41 GMT

I started out with a fairly hefty workbench from the house’s previous owner, but it’s in a place not appropriate for a woodshop, and it’s not easy to move to where I do want my shop (the garage). Given that the space that it’s in is my main art studio, and it’s useful for that, I decided to leave it there and come up with a different bench for my woodwork.
The space I had available…well, let’s call it available in theory, as at the time I decided to set up a woodshop it was more or less floor-to-ceiling boxes of household junk. (To me, anyway, it’s junk…others have a different opinion :).) The first step would obviously be to clear out some space.
I’ve never been one for following formal procedures, though, at least when it comes to recreation, so the first thing I did was acquire massive amounts of wood. In fact, the acquisition of said wood came before—or, more accurately, during—my decision to set up a woodshop, as it was the availability of the wood that was part of my motivation to do so. Our community has a program where, once a year, everyone is allowed to dump pretty much whatever they have, in any quantity, on the curbside, and the city will drive by and pick it up for the dump. I’m not sure how much it was part of the original intent, but the program has become in effect a massive community-wide “freecycling” program, and it makes for a fun scavenger-hunt atmosphere to load up a kid or two and cruise around looking for “good stuff.”
My first vanload of wood was mostly salvage material—finished trim, scraps of plywood, and old furniture that had something worth saving but did not otherwise seem overly functional (unless it seems to be constructed of good, solid wood—something I’d definitely be using for a solid piece of something—I tried not to grab fully-functional furniture unless it was close to being picked up, because I figured I’d have enough to do anyway, and I didn’t want to deprive someone else of functional furniture that they might be able to use as-is). My second vanload was some of that, mixed with more raw material—boards, panels, and chunks of wood. I figured I had enough trim and the like that I wanted to concentrate on things that might make furniture or whatever. After that, though, I hit the jackpot—I found the discard piles of a couple of woodworkers in the neighborhood, filled with a lot of small offcuts, and a few not-so-small boards. After that vanload—which joined the previous loads, piled every which way amongst boxes stored in the garage—I limited myself to any cream-of-the-crop pickups, because if I wasn’t careful I’d end up with a woodshop entirely composed of scrap wood, with no room for luxuries like “people” or “tools.” I still managed to pick up a couple of very nice pieces, including an aged solid-wood headboard—wood type as yet undetermined, in fact, but solid and thick—and a complete dining room table in good condition.
So, at the very beginning of setting up my shop, I had the following:

a two-car garage, full of one car, many boxes of household stuff, and a whole lot of wood in various states of salvage.
a smattering of tools acquired over the years for general household maintenance, including a Skil jigsaw, a Skil circular saw, a Black & Decker detail sander (“the Mouse”), a corded B&D drill, a selection of drill bits I’d just received last Christmas, an anemic cordless “drill”/driver, an old rusty 18” bowsaw, an old rusty hacksaw, a so-called “toolbox saw,” a claw hammer, a rubber mallet, a set of sockets, a couple of badly-worn and chipped chisels, a laser level, a couple of measuring tools (framer’s square, combo square, magnetic level), some sandpaper, and a collection of screwdriver handles, bits, and screwdrivers. I also had, in my art studio, a Dremel with a fair collection of accessories and a couple of good, long rulers.
a fairly random selection of paints and various finishes, some from the previous owner of the house, some from previous household projects, and some from the community hazardous-waste disposal dropoff (which provides an exchange for various usable household chemicals and paints and such).
a whole passel of kids, some of them enthusiastic about doing some woodworking.
a patient, long-suffering wife, used to living through my flights of fancy and mad schemes, short-lived though they often are.

A few pictures of the early days:

A fairly heinous stacking of wood, before I started the recovery process, and before I’d worked out any actual storage. Behind the wood you can see a pile of various items stored in the garage, as well as a tool rack for shovels, rakes, etc. The left, likewise, has more piles of stuff.

A set of not-terribly-sturdy metal shelves, already in place, being used to store a fairly random assortment of things (you can see my Bucket O’ Circular Saw on the third shelf). The wood-looking thing to the right of the shelves is a storage cabinet previously used to hold a nonfunctional stereo; I’d recently moved it out of the rec room while setting up my art studio, earlier in the year. It reappears in the story later on….

These are the shelves I originally used to stack wood. They turned out to be inadequate for the task, though—the metal started bowing.

Next post: the obvious next step. No, not clearing out space…buying tools!