I was in need of a wall cabinet for my hand planes and chisels. Using my former methods of dado and rabbet with the table saw, this cabinet would have taken me about two hours to build. Inspired by all the great hand tool and joinery tips I’ve picked up from this forum I decided to built it out of solid wood using twenty through mortises and wedged tenons and no glue. The cabinet is done, is rock solid and looks great hanging on the wall and took only two eight hour days to complete thus adding 14 hours to it’s completion time. These new techniques have completely solved my problem of what to do with all my spare time.
😉
Thank you, Bret
Ha ha
Replies
Careful, Bret.
There are woodworkers who have beautiful, clean shops because they spend all their time making nice jigs, vacuuming, and tidying up but never build any projects for outside of the shop.
Then there are the woodworkers who spend all their shop time producing and no time cleaning up and organizing and they buy jigs to save time.
Somewhere in between is where I am. How 'bout you?
Chris,
I hope everyone understands that I was poking fun at myself in my previous post. I am a forty year career woodworker, twenty of which I spent operating a production cabinet and millwork shop and also spent several years as a carpenter where I learned joinery in giant scale doing timber framing and also as a general contractor, building houses. But even with all that experience I sheepishly admitted that I was not very skillful at producing half-blind dovetail joints by hand, I've just never done that many of them.
My career has come full circle and I find myself in the shop again and I'm excited about learning to become more skillful with hand tools and I've been practicing. I'm getting better. Don't get me wrong, I'm quite proud of my abilities. I've always been able to take complex projects and break them down into the various production components to produce excellent work in an efficient manner.
Last Spring I built a new shop building behind my house after being without a shop for a few years. Boy do I enjoy having a woodworking shop at my disposal, but the shop is a work-in-progress and will take time to set up the way I want it. The only downside to a one man shop is that there is no one there to clean up after me.
Up until last Summer I had been building custom homes and then the work dried up due to the economy. I've been working as a carpenter lately which has required doing some work in the shop. My goal is to find more work to be done in the shop such as cabinets or hopefully, commissions to build furniture.
So thanks to all for the inspiration to take this new path in my career. I've been pretty fortunate over the years to have found success in what I set out to do. If I'm lucky, I'll find enough work to afford someone to clean up the shop.
Save for the last sentence about using up your spare time, I took your post as being serious. I would fully expect that the cabinet took you 7 times longer.
When I work with power tools, I am more production minded - more focused on the result.
When I work with hand tools, often in the evenings when everyone else has went to bed, I am working for the fun of it - for the journey. I am working for myself and myself alone. Many processes, I do just because I enjoy them, but I know could be done more efficiently (and sometimes better) by machine. But it's fun, and I am practicing and learning along the way so it is absolutely worth it.
This past week, after coming home from the day job, twice I've gone into the shop at around 6 or 7 pm and worked until after 1 am in the shop building jigs. Do I have to be doing this? Absolutely not. Do I need these jigs? No. But their construction is rewarding and they are fun to use. I got to produce two high-quality, practical items in a few hours that provide an incredible amount of joy to use and show off. They are my design and I am proud of that.
The way I look at it, the alternative is to read, surf the internet and forums, or watch TV. Those alternatives are sometimes taken if I am not inspired to work in the shop. Otherwise...
Last summer, after not cleaning my shop for a long time, I opened the doors to the yard and threw everything outside. Then I brought back in and organized what I wanted to keep and the rest I got rid of. Since then, I've been much more diligent about sweeping up the floors and putting tools away when I'm not using them. I'm surprised, actually. Having convenient storage is key, as most tools belong only an arm's length or two away. Before, it meant walking across the shop and moving other things to put something away. Take the time to set it up right. It is worth it. But if you haven't done much work in it yet, you might want to do a few projects so you get a feel of whether or not you like the layout.
One of my greatest luxuries is my own shop. Space... the final frontier.
We have much in common, most notably a love of our craft.
Having a woodworking shop is truly a luxury, we are both very fortunate.
I've been working as a carpenter at jobsites and haven't been able to spend as much time in my shop as I'd like and mostly gifts, freebies or things for myself (as in mortise and tenon wall cabinet)
I try not to operate power equipment late at night or in the wee hours, too drowsy, but I, like you, will spend many hours in the shop simply experimenting or practicing one technique or another.
There are woodworkers who have beautiful, clean shops because they spend all their time making nice jigs, vacuuming, and tidying up but never build any projects for outside of the shop.
I am one of those folks, but my shop, is still full of dust in hiddden places,,
I have been knowen to leave dust around untill the next day,,,
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