The Renaissance Woodworker

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Welcome back to the show. I appreciate everyone’s patience while I took a few weeks off. My new job is going great but it has kept me very very busy. Add to that helping my wife at her school and attending all of the fall musicals and recitals that go with being the husband of a music teacher and I have not been in my shop much. What’s more is that I have hours of footage from my shop and from WIA that needs to still be edited into shows. Regardless, I think I have my wits about me again and I wanted to take a little break from the WIA coverage to show you some Roubo footage. I have been hard at work when I can get the time between other projects getting this beast completed. For all intents and purposes the bench is done. I still have to complete the sliding leg vise, but everything else is done. So this week let me show you how I finally completed the top by adding the front laminate and dovetailing it into the end cap.

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Many of my twitter followers will remember my updates of “another power outage” or “I’m in my shop and it’s dark, I’m scared”. It seems that Baltimore Gas & Electric is trying to make me a better woodworker. (yes that is my optimistic view of this). I am essentially a hybrid woodworker with a passion for hand tools. I will try to make everything I can unplugged but I admit there are times when a repetitive task becomes drudgery and I pop over to the the table saw to make some batch cuts, or I hit the router table to cut drawer bottom grooves.

Now if I want to be a really good galoot, what better practice can you get than repeating the same task over and over again right? Well, the lazy American in me often wins. But now with this new energy saving plan my power company keeps pushing on me, I no longer have that excuse.

So thank you BGE for helping me to be a better galoot…could I at least get some power for my space heater though. I’m nostalgic not stupid.

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If you think you have a lot of saws then think again. Ron Herman probably has more saws than anyone alive. What’s amazing is he uses everyone of them and uses them well.

Enjoy this episode full of gratuitous vintage saw footage.

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Another great seminar at WIA this time centered around traditional inlay techniques with Chuck Bender.

Make sure you check out Chuck’s blog for complete instructions on how to make your own set of Bender inlay tools.

Finally, a few points on Sulfur inlay that I forgot to mention in the podcast. When cutting the recess for the Sulfur, you should undercut and create a kind of dovetail effect to lock in the material. Once the Sulfur is cool and scraped clean, it should be painted with Shellac to seal it in and protect the color before applying your finish of choice.

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Made by hand in the Joiner's shop

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One of the products of the Anthony Hay shop

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Adam Cherubini gave an entertaining presentation on the typical joinery planes found the the 18th century Joiners tool chest. Here are a few clips from that presentation and a bonus look at Adam cutting dovetails in the hand tool olympics.

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Here it is for your viewing pleasure, Heather Griffin, Megan Fitzpatrick, and our very own blogging heroine Kari Hultman step up to the plate to bore us all.

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