Introduction to Woodworking

WOODWORKING FOR BEGINNERS

So, you want to learn to craft things from wood, do you? Wonderful! Woods are among the most basic and rewarding media with which to work. It is malleable, and many types have a delightful fragrance, and it is available in virtually any size and shape.

Let me begin with an introduction to types of wood. At the most basic level, there are hardwoods and softwoods. Within each grade, there are variations and degrees of hardness and softness as well. For example, oak is considered a hard wood, but there is a wood called ‘blood wood’ that is many times harder. Oak is relatively easy on your equipment, while blood wood will very quickly dull your woodworking tools! Hardwoods in general, though will dull your tools faster than soft woods.

Pine is a soft wood; balsa wood is even softer—yet, surprisingly, balsa is actually classified as one of the hardwood group!

Pine can be dented with a fingernail, while the balsa can almost be carved without tools: you can dent balsa with a knuckle-strike! (Yes, it is still wood, and doing that would probably hurt some, but not as much as smacking a hunk of oak, which would not dent, and probably bloody your knuckle in the bargain!) The classification is determined by the type of tree, botanically speaking. If you care to pursue this puzzlement further, see these articles for more in-depth information on the differences and variations:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardwood   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softwood

Now, on to the actual working with the wood. First and foremost are your tools. Treat them well, and they will serve you well for many, many years. I have some antique planes and chisels that belonged to my grandfather in the late 1800’s: they are still as sharp as ever, and can still be used. Keeping your tools sharp is the most important safety tip I can offer, besides the obvious one of using safety glasses (and hearing protection when using power tools).

A lot of people hear that piece of advice, and say, “Huh?” They think that a sharper tool will be more likely to cut them. Well, used incorrectly, yes, you can cut yourself. Handled carelessly when getting the tool out or putting it away can result in injuries as well. However, the real danger from a dull tool comes from the fact that it will not cut as cleanly through the wood; it is more likely to catch on the grain, bind, and slip…and that "Ooopss--it slipped.." is what sets you up for getting hurt. So, keep your tools sharp, and know how to use them to stay safe.

One of the most obvious safety rules is also one of the most ignored, whether in the work shop or in the kitchen: don’t cut toward yourself!! This may seem like elementary advice, but trust me, it is the single most violated rule, and the one most responsible for injuries outside of just plain stupidity, like the fellow I saw reaching across a running table saw to turn it off!! (Hello, dummy!!  You got a death-wish, there??)

Okay, with the basic types of wood, and the safety lecture out of the way, let’s move on to some of the tools you’ll need for basic woodworking. If you have never worked with wood at all before, go to your local lumber outlet, and ask if they have a scraps/sample bin. You can usually purchase an assortment of small pieces of various types of wood for minimal cost. Have them tell you what each kind is, and write it on the wood with a pen. Just use these as study or reference pieces. Learn what they look like; study the grain; get familiar with their scents.

Your first tool: sandpaper. It comes in umpteen grades and types. For woodworking purposes, the coarsest you would need is usually about an 80 grit. This will remove a lot of material in short order, if it is shaping you are trying to do. It will also leave visible scratches in the wood. As you progress with your item toward a finished product, it must be re-sanded several times with ever-decreasing coarseness of paper. Usually, a 180 grit, and sometimes 200 will be used for the finishing touch. If you have stained a piece, and find that after it dried, there is a slight roughness that was not there before, that means the grain was raised some by the application of the liquid stain. In this case, you will want a light touch with about a 320 grit to just knock down the grain without leaving marks or removing any color. After this, your finish sealer coat can be applied. For the full skinny on sandpaper, (possibly more than you want to know!) ;-) check out: http://www.sizes.com/tools/sandpaper.htm

Your next tools are: saws of a few types; hammer; chisels, a square, glue, clamps, and lots of sharp pencils.

For small work, a basic coping saw is handy, as it will cut through most woods, and will turn tight corners when doing a pattern. It is the hand-tool equivalent of a jigsaw (sometimes called a saber saw), or scroll saw. It is best to learn with hand tools before trying to master power tools. It forces you to go slowly, and learn what the wood is telling you.

A crosscut saw (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crosscut ) is the old fashioned-looking saw many of us think of, with a blade length of up to about 2 feet, and a teeth-to-top height of about 8 inches. These saws are tapered, being ‘shorter’ at the front and ‘taller’ at the rear where the handle attaches. Crosscut saws are for larger work, and come in a variety of tooth styles. The differences are in pitch (angle of the teeth) and in fineness (how many teeth per inch of blade). Each type has its own purpose.  For smaller hand-crafted items, the crosscut saw would be your first-use saw, to simply cut the proper size piece from a larger board.

Hammers come in many types, but the most common is the claw hammer, and is what most folks see in their mind’s eye when the word ‘hammer’ is spoken. This is fine for most woodworking, but for small work you may want a much smaller hammer, such as a tack hammer, for use with very small nails. Especially in soft woods, a big hammer is heavy, and difficult to control, and can leave ugly dents and gouges in your item when (yes, 'when,' not 'if') you miss the nail head (and yes, it even happens to the pros!)

Chisels come in a wide variety of widths and shapes. There are flat blade chisels for making square-edged cuts, and there are gouges, which are u-shaped and v-shaped for making either decorative lines and carvings, or useful channels for sliding parts or hidden seams. Yes, of course, there are power tool equivalents, such as dado head cutters and routers to do these tasks…but again…learn first with hand tools! It will make you a better crafter in the long run.

A square is very important in making sure you have all your corners lined up and your 90-degree surfaces exactly at right angles to one another. Use a good combination square, which incorporates a steel ruler, a sliding component used to line up various dimensions of work, and a small built-in level.

Your choice of glueis very important. Be sure and use glue specifically made for wood. It dries clear, but nonetheless, it is very, very important to clean up any that seeps out of any seam while it is still wet. Once it has dried, it is much harder to remove, and any residue left will make a spot that is sealed, and your stains will not ‘take.’ Hint: apply stain (and let dry) before assembly, just in case you don’t get all the glue wiped back.

Clamps: When gluing, you must square up your work, and clamp it tightly until the glue sets. Nails notwithstanding, they do not ‘suck’ the wood together as tightly as a clamping device, and are really only supplemental ‘clamps.’ It is really the glue that actually holds everything together, so be generous…which is why you will have seepage that needs to be wiped off !

Carpenter’s pencils are typically flat, so they don’t roll off the work surface, and are normally sharpened with a pocketknife or utility knife.

There you go! Your elementary introduction to woodworking! Go exploring, have fun, and take a field trip to the hardware store, and explore the lumberyard, deeply inhaling the marvelous fragrance of fresh-cut wood!

Clocks

Hello, again!

    Today, I'll go into a small discourse on our clock production.  We have a wide variety of styles and sizes, ranging from very modern to classical, and from small desk-top mini clocks and executive pen sets, all the way up to grandmother curio-cabinet clocks.

   We manufacture all of the wood components ourselves, starting with the raw wood, as described in yesterday's post.  The only purchased parts are the clock motors, faces and bezels themselves, glass, mirrors and pen accessories.

  We have (or rather, my husband's family, years back) designed all of the styles ourselves.  Hubby and I do come up with our own new ideas, as well. 

   When available, we like to incorporate as much recycled material as possible.  This is usually with glass or mirror components found on our classical-styled wall clocks and our curio cabinet clocks. 

    Sometimes we are lucky enough to find used wood.  99% of the time, we prefer to use hardwoods, but now and then, an opportunity comes up that is too good to pass up.  This happened recently, when someone was replacing a fence, and we were able to salvage the old redwood fence boards.  Redwood is very soft--you can gouge it with your fingernail, but it does come up a very beautiful color, all on its own with no stain needed.

    All we have to do is go over each board VERY carefully and throughly with both a visual inspection and a magnet, to find and remove any stray nails, screws or staples that could damage the tools (or us!).  Once that is done, we proceed to run it through the planer to smooth out the boards, and restore them to 'like new' appearance....just as if we were starting with raw, new wood, as per yesterday's post.

   In the back of my mind, I am designing some new ideas that will combine our clocks with our ceramics, for a whole new approach and product.  I already have one of these in production;  you may have seen it on my Etsy store site.  (I've provided this link to the listing, because I cannot find the original photo.  I'll have to re-take it.  Curses!)

  More designs are still "cooking."  Keep your eyes peeled!
 


  
  

  

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to one and all.   For those of us who celebrate the Winter Solstice as the turning of the year, it has already been the new year for a week and 4 days.  ;-)  Nonetheless, since I closed out for 2009 in my last post, I'll start this next one on the "traditional" New Year's Day.  It is my wish that everyone is safe and well, and not suffering overly much from too much partying last night! ;-)

And now, on with the blog:


THE WOODWORKING SIDE OF THINGS:

My wonderful and uber-talented husband is a master woodworker, and loves working with wood and making things with his hands.  Together, we make hand-crafted hardwood clocks. I am hubby's apprentice, and I am learning how to make the clocks, but I am so far behind that I don't think I'll ever catch up: he's got too many years head-start because this was a family business of his late step-dad. We bought the business when his health went south, and he could no longer do the work. That is why hubby has so many years up on me...he worked in the family business since he was in his 20's!


My lack of experience notwithstanding, I do enjoy woodworking, and I love the smell of the wood as its being worked; splinters, not so much, but it happens...'occupational hazard.'   [ I remember years back, before I met my current hubby, a friend of the family worked for a cabinet maker.  He got a nasty sliver at work, and was picking it out.  The (mean, nasty) boss came by and said, "Got a sliver?  Put a circle around it, and take it out on your own time!"  How very rude!  I would have said, "Why?  I got it on company time!" ]

We will use oak, maple, walnut or cherry woods, but oak is our favorite. It has a pleasing grain and accepts stains nicely. If you look at a piece of oak furniture, and compare it to the raw wood, you might be very, very surprised to learn that the color you think of as 'oak' is actually an applied stain. The wood itself is very much lighter in color. (See photo, below.)

  Raw (Red) Oak                                   Stained Oak

On the left, above, the actual color of the wood; and on the right, the usual "oak" color most people think of.  This is a stain color called "Golden Oak" in the brand we use.  I have noted the raw wood as 'red,' because oak comes in both red and white varieties.  The white oak is even lighter, almost like maple, but we don't use it much, as it is very difficult to work with, which in turn raises our cost on the finished product.

There are certain woods that, while they are beautiful, we don't use much for any number of reasons.  First, we try very hard, when possible, to use recycled/salvaged wood to save on resources.  We absolutely avoid buying wood from clear-cutting operations, and will use only farmed woods from sustainable operations whenever possible.  This eliminates many of the exotic hardwoods like zebra or koa wood from our available stock.

When the exotic woods can be found as farmed wood, they are usually very, very expensive, so that is another 'stopper.'  Sometimes, we can find small pieces in the 'scrap' bin at our supplier's, and these we craft into either smaller items, or use as accent laminations.

Another of the main reasons for not using much in the way of some exotics such as bloodwood is simply the wear and tear on the tools.  Bloodwood is so hard, it is almost like cutting a rock, when it comes to what it does to the saw blade.  One or two passes through, and you're done:  time to have the blade sharpened!   After that, if you persist, you will be burning your way through from the friction of the blade's rotation, more than cutting.  Not only is this hard on the saw blade and its motor--it is dangerous.  The blade can easily bind and cause the wood to break and/or be thrown, or, worse, catch fire!

We like to buy raw lumber, in inch-thick sections, called '4-quarter stock' in the lumber industry.  (Don't ask me why--I've no idea why they would use the 4-quarters of an inch measure instead of just saying 1 inch!)  There is also 1-1/4 inch thick wood we can sometimes get.. called, you guessed it.... '5-quarter stock'!! (** Check out this post on another blog for that author's take on silly ways to measure things: http://straythoughtsonaleash.blogspot.com/2007/08/silly-counting.html**)  At that, it is 'nominally' those measures--meaning, they got it close, but not exact.  This raw lumber is as it came in from the original mill.  It has been cut into boards,  but is of random lengths and widths, and still rough--not planed or sanded at all. 




We select what projects we want, and from there, cut the wood into the lenghts and widths we need, then run it through our planer to pare it down to the exact thickness desired, and do a preliminary smoothing.  (Actually reverse that--it goes through the planer first--easier and safer to feed large boards than small pieces!)  This is an operation that creates a lot of shavings!  By 'a lot,' I mean that if we are running say, 20 boards through, it takes several passes on each board, as you cannot take too large a 'bite' at one pass.  One person feeds the lumber in, and another 'catches' or pulls it on the outfeed side.  Guess which end I get:  Right!  Guess on which end the shavings end up?  Right, again!  More than once, I"ve found myself nearly knee-deep in wood shavings from this proceedure! 


Tomorrow, I'll go into some of our actual crafting operations, and design inspirations.


Until then, Cheers!