I just fi
nished a hand tool restoration workshop, which I
really enjoyed. We spent most of the morning going over handsaws as this
category of tools causes the greatest problems for new and seasoned
woodworkers. I have to say that I was very surprised that out of eight
attendees, five were women. That’s the highest percentage I’ve ever had in a
full class.
This was actually the first time I’ve ever taught a new
sharpening strategy for saw sharpening and I have set patterns I plan on
adopting as permanent course work for future students. These methods work like
no other I have ever known, so I was pretty excited after teaching my old
methods for years. Now that isn’t to say that the old methods don’t work or
work well. They do, and everyone should learn them, but these new methods
revolutionize saw sharpening for me. As an experienced saw sharpener, I can now
sharpen any handsaw of any size accurately in less than four minutes,
regardless of whether it is a cross- or rip-cut saw. Now just to stop any smart
Alecks—I’m not talking about 32 ppi (points per inch) saws but anything in the
normal and general genre of say 18 ppi or less.
We broke apart a few planes too. I introduced them to the
‘Old woman’s tooth’ plane, the skew-mouthed rebate (rabbet) plane, the
fillister (filletster), jointer
plane, low angle Veritas planes with the bevel up and of course the standard
bench planes like the Bailey-pattern, No 4 and 4 ½, 5, 5 ½ and so on. Ann Corkett
brought in one of the imported planes she’d got on Free cycle, but we pretty
much dismissed that from the start as we couldn’t make any adjustment because
the threads were stripped out or too loose to grab.
Lot’s of great questions throughout the day and lots of good
answers from around the bench too. Always remember the hardest question to
answer is the one that’s never asked. Some are too shy to ask and your question
may be answering theirs.
Thanks for coming everybody. We will do it again with the
tools we couldn’t get too.