Woodcraft by Hand Tools.

By Alan House

This covers aspects of woodcraft including projects using a pole lathe for spindle and bowl carving, spoon and kuksa carving, making stools, frame saws, greenwood picture and mirror frames and traditional rakes. There are sections on tool making, e.g., a stail or rounding plane, kerfing saws, frame saws, marking gauges, spokeshaves, screw clamps, bar clamp, dual screw vices, rip frame saw and adjustable rounding planes. There is also a short section on traditional cabinet making using dried ash.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Nov 5, 2022
• ISBN: 9781471019517

Book preview

Woodcraft by Hand Tools

First Edition

Copyright 2022 William Alan House

All rights reserved

ISBN: 978-1-4710-1951-7

Acknowlegements. I am grateful to Helen my wife for her understanding of my hours in the workshop and putting up with all the wood shavings and also my daughters, Rebecca and Emily, for their encouragement and helpful criticisms. My 8-year old grandson, Samuel, has also played a part and can now use a spokeshave and rounding plane with ease.

Introduction

This book is perhaps more of a diary of some of my more recent projects and lays-out my experiences tackling different constructions. Sometimes things go wrong and I learn and I can't say the way I've done things is the best way or indeed the only way. It's just what I've done and hopefully this will help and encourage others to have a go. It is a collection of my experiences in woodworking and in particular green woodworking, a more recent interest.  I can't say I’m expert in any of this, indeed my career has been in science research and in particular physical chemistry and in later years, the pollution of our environment. My idea is to set-down some of my experiences in using hand tools on various projects as a record, in the hope it will help to guide others in developing skills and the use of some traditional woodworking tools.

The book covers some aspects of green woodworking including projects using a pole lathe for spindle work and also bowl carving. The lathe I built is sturdy and with a change in the head stocks, is suitable for both spindle work and bowl carving. Other topics include spoon and kuksa carving, making stools both from green wood and dried wood and making frame saws. The book also outlines my experiences making long multi-lampstands from green wood, soap dishes, picture frames from green wood and a rustic mirror frame. I also delve into making tools from kiln dried beech such as try-squares, marking gauges, bar clamp, dual screw wooden vices, Dubuque wooden clamps and other wooden clamps, kerfing planes, spokeshaves and garden rakes. Finally, some projects using traditional methods to make home furniture with ash: a bathroom cabinet and a shoe rack. 

I have used a mixture of imperial and metric units. I prefer metric but because I am using hand tools made before metrification in the UK, they were in imperial sizes, e.g., the augers/drills were made in graduations of 1/16in., it is convenient to use imperial rather than make conversions (25.4 mm = 1in.) in these cases.

 I have been guided in my approach by other authors such as Bob Rozaieski and Paul Sellers and also through short-courses around my home village of Dartington here in Devon, England by Sharif Adams and Felix Kary. I thank them all for sharing their expertise and advise. 

Section 1. Pole Lathe

I’ll put a few thoughts down on my development of bowl carving with a pole lathe. I have been using a pole lathe for a few years now, mainly turning spindles for different projects. I made my own lathe from a design similar to design from the Association of Pole Lathe Turners and this has the usual headstocks with the one on the right having an adjustable pin so that the work is held tight when turning. With spindle turning, this seems to be important as often the spindle works itself loose making progress impossible so you soon get into the habit of checking the tightness when you are turning.

The lathe is easily dismantled as it does not have glued joints or screws and depends on a set of bolts that hold it in position very firmly. I designed my own adjustable tool-rest using pine dovetailed with a strip of oak where the tools actually rest when turning. This has worked very well and I have turned several types of wood including beech (kiln dried and green), oak, alder, birch, rhododendron, ash, box, elder, sycamore and field maple.

More recently, after moving to Devon, I did a course with Sharif Adams in Dartmoor using the pole lathe to make bowls. This was a single day course and covers a lot of information. During the day I made a bowl from beech, a great experience, and I can thoroughly recommend the course. In addition to this, Sharif has made a series of videos going through all the steps of turning and also sharpening the tools.

 I soon realised that my set-up for spindle turning wasn't going to be suitable for bowl turning and I needed heavier headstocks and ironware to hold the bowl. The spindle tool rest was not adjustable enough and so a new tool rest was needed. However, I don't have room for two pole lathes and as the lathe I made was basically quite bulky and sturdy, I decided the iron ware from Sharif for a new headstock would be suitable to make a spindle lathe into a bowl turning lathe. This way I could use the one lathe for both jobs. Sharif also makes the tip-up (TU) and tip-down (TD) chisels and runs courses to make the tools as well but I bought mine from him a few months after the course. With new headstocks, it would be relatively easy to change from bowl turning to spindle turning by changing the headstocks and tool supports. Another difference I noted was that most of the bowl turners take the cord that wraps around the mandrel directly from above so that the cord attaching to the bungee (or pole if you have one) is vertical. The mandrel attaches to the bowl and together with the paracord, drives the bowl so that you get about two and half turns per push down on the treadle.

First of all, I made the headstocks so they fitted the lathe and provided enough mass and bulk to hold the bowl blanks. I used epoxy resin to hold the tips and made sure they were in line with each other.

The next job was making some mandrels to attach to the bowl for turning. I used some ash wood that I turned on the spindle lathe, one larger one, about 2in. diameter and 11in. long and a smaller one for smaller bowls about 1 1/2in. diameter and 8in. long. I made the smaller one so that it attached to the bowl blank by a cylindrical tenon joint about 1in. long and 3/4in. diameter. The corresponding mortice had to be drilled to the right depth in the bowl top. The other mandrel was made to attach by four spikes that were then used to penetrate the blank and hold it in position.  I drilled vertical pre-holes into the flat end of the mandrel, one in the centre and three at 120 degrees. Using large screws (70 x 5 mm) with no threads near the head, I screwed them in place with the centre one protruding more than the others and then sawed the heads off at an angle (to make a chisel end) and all facing in the same direction. The longer central screw (placed in the central hole made when turning the spindle) made it easier to place the mandrel in the centre hole of the blank before hammering the rest of the spikes. I guessed the mandrel would hold better if the spikes were hammered in with the chisel ends across the grain of the wood of the blank. The outside spikes protruded 2.2 cm, useful to know when undercutting the core.

I'm not going to say much about the cutting tools as they are covered in Sharif Adams Blog. The two I bought were the tip-up (TU) tool with the cutting edge on the left with the tip facing up and used for most of the turning, and a tip-down (TD) tool used with the tip facing down and the cutting edge on the other side. I made some ash handles from a quartered log of ash, again setting the irons in place using a tight fit with epoxy resin and treating with linseed oil. These should last a few years if the tips are protected.

First attempt at a small bowl.

I'm just going to go through how I got on with my first solo bowl. This will give you some idea of the problems I faced as a novice and the stages.

I used a log of downy birch I had obtained from Scotland in the summer so it had been sitting around outside for a while and had the start of some spalting where the wood had started to decay but not of course rotten in any way. I chopped a blank and set-in the mandrel with a mortice and tenon joint so it gave a very tight fit.

I used the TU tool to shape the outside but had some difficulty because the bowl wasn't very symmetrical and I seem to get a lot of scraping action rather than fine peeling. From this I decided that the cutting edge wasn't sharp enough as I tried different cutting angles. I also found that I needed to wrap the cord around twice to get a decent grip on the mandrel. I then tried a leather strap around the mandrel (Chlorino Chromnylon belt, LL1, 3000x10 mm from George Lodge and Sons, Hull) and found this gave a more positive drive.

The TU tool wasn't as sharp as the TD so I bought a DMT diamond conical sharpener, extra fine and used this on the inside and a small extra fine flat diamond on the outside keeping the outside surface perfectly flat. I then cut the rim using this tool and at last got some nice fine shavings.

I then made an initial attempt on the bowl using the TD tool to excavate near the mandrel and by twisting the blade so that I was using the edge nearer the tip, and brought towards the outside. I then used the TU chisel to gradually move the hollow to the outside by starting near the lip of the depression and moving to the centre but stopping where the curvature went uphill. To my relief this was easier and I was able to produce some nice fine continuous shavings.

The next step was to excavate again near the mandrel