General Woodworking Skill Improvement

[Bigus]

Hi All

So, I've done bits of DIY over the years, including building an under-stairs cupboard, a shoe cabinet, TV unit, etc. However all of those haven't required that much accuracy on cut or finish and using regular Wickes/B&Q style planed softwood or tongue & groove, stained accordingly.

My current project is making a simple easel following some plans I downloaded off the web. However, what this project has reminded me of is how difficult (for me, at least) it is to be to cut or shape wood accurately, i.e: to give a professional looking finish.

For example, I cut a length of planed timber to size using a mitre box, which gives a reasonably square end but still not perfect. This of course leaves a rough grain finish, so I get my belt sander out to smooth it off but I can't for the life of me get a square end - it's sloped in one direction or another.

Similarly, I wanted to "round off" the edges along the length of the wood.. I tried the belt sander again on one side - trying to keep a consistent speed & pressure while doing so but still the rounding along the length is uneven. I tried another side using a sanding block but the same thing.

How do you guys do it? Is it just "practise makes perfect" or am I using the wrong tools for the job or are there some "tricks" I'm missing? I really want to get my basic woodworking skills up to shape and had a look around at part time woodworking/joinery courses but there aren't any in this area that run in the evening/weekend, which is the only time I could do it.

The other thing is that my next project is an electric guitar! I have plenty of tutorial material on the process and understand the various steps in making one but accuracy of woodworking and finishing are paramount and I don't want to wreck expensive hardwood.

So, any tips would be much appreciated or, for that matter, if you are a joiner in the Oxford area and have a few hours of time to spare in the evenings (pref) or weekend then I could pay for some tutorial.

Thanks

 

[Cheshirechappie]

Hi Bigus, and welcome to the forum!

There are several things you could do. The first is to pop into your local W H Smith's and have a browse at the woodworking magazines, of which there are several. Two reasons - the articles can sometimes be informative, but perhaps more usefully, they carry adverts for people who run woodworking courses. Don't be put off by the apparent high-falutin' nature of some of them; most of the course runners will tailor their tuition to your skill level, and complete beginner is no problem at all to most of them - they'd be delighted to help you.

Another good idea is to find a couple of good 'beginner' books. I'd suggest 'The Essential Woodworker' by Robert Wearing, which can be obtaied from Axminster Power Tool Centre or from Classic Hand Tools. The Collins Woodworker's Manual also gets positive noises from many on this forum, and is more widely available. Many of the 'basic' techniques may not seem directly applicable to guitar making, but building up skills with handplanes, saws and chisels, learning to mark out accurately, and so on, are most definitely going to help you in the long run.

Also, Youtube can be a useful resource. Try inputting 'Planing Endgrain' into the search box on the homepage, and you'll get all sorts of informative clips.

Finally, keep posting questions here! We'll do our best to help, and to get you settled into the wonderful world of getting splinters.

 

[Chrispy]

What part of Oxfordshire are you in, can you get to Wantage for your evening class?

 

[JustBen]

Get on eBay. There are so many woodworking books on there for a couple of quid second hand and normally with free postage.

Some of them may be a little old and out of date when talking about machinery but the basics remain the same.

Browse for recommended books on google then search for the on eBay. You can quickly build a small library of info for not a lot of money.

You can find most of the books that are sold in axminster for half the price new on eBay.

One tip I can offer is to get rid of the 'that will do' attitude if you have it. A lot of people do at some stage and it quickly goes from slight inaccuracies in work to bodge jobs.

I hope that makes sense.

 

[JustBen]

The Collins Woodworker's Manual also gets positive noises from many on this forum, and is more widely available.

I got this on eBay for about £3.50 s/h. It's a fantastic book rammed with info about everything. It doesn't go into individual subject with great detail but enough to give the idea and wet your appetite.

 

[Graham Orm]

All good points above, but no-one mentioned the belt sander. Put it away, it's for removing large amounts usually from flat surfaces. Certainly not for fine finishing of legs. Good luck. If I could give you one tip, it would be to take your time. Don't be in a rush, it won't help anything.

 

[AndyT]

As said, the belt sander is too crude a tool for those jobs.
For the end grain, one way to get a smoother surface would be to use a finer sharper saw. Another way would be to make a simple shooting board and use a hand plane. (There are lots of threads on here on both subjects. )

You won't get far in woodwork without a plane. A common Stanley no 4 will cover almost all of your needs - look at Paul Sellers' blog for reasons why and advice on how to get a good one cheap.

That would also be the simplest way to round over the arisses on long pieces.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

No doubt some will contradict me (and they're welcome to), but I've not yet found a job that a belt sander could do that couldn't be done better with something else.

 

[adzeman]

Hi Biggus welcome to the forum and the (hobby) the craft of woodworking. Its all down to practice, every apprentice goes through it and the jokes they put up with from the other tradesmen. After a while one of them takes him under his wing and gives a few tips and lots of sawing jobs where square is not essential. Use your thumb as a guide. Find which is your strong eye, you may be unfortunate as I am with a strong left eye (I have learnt to saw left handed) Use a pencil mark to square the timber after deciding which are the face sides. Cut from across diaganally from a corner, look down the line and cut bringing the saw down gradually to the horizontal line, keep the arm sraight move from the elbow. keep the fore finger pointing in the direction of the cut, use the full length of the saw but, the best tip for me is look at the reflection of the timber in the blade of the saw and keep it in line. When you master this you will be able to cut mitres freehand! Dont practice on a project, get loads of scrap wood and saw it up for fire wood but do practice. Best of luck.
Just as an aside I bought a japanese saw last year, cuts on the back stroke. I was making cuts like a big girls blouse. Have got better. At present making an arched gate and the angle cuts are not very forgiving but I did one OK this week pretty pleased with myself.

 

[dm65]

No doubt some will contradict me (and they're welcome to), but I've not yet found a job that a belt sander could do that couldn't be done better with something else.

No contradiction here - its the only tool I've bought this year that hasn't been used (and I've bought much more than swmbo is aware of )

 

[Bigus]

Thank you for the welcome and all the useful info.

I realised the belt sander was probably overkill for this purpose but figured if it did work then it would be very quick! I have since learned the term I should have used for rounding off the lengthwise edges of the legs is "chamfer", so I can now sound like I know what I'm talking about when discussing such matters!

Cheshirechappie and Benjimano, thanks for the tips on mags/books - I found a revised 1995 edition of the Collins book on Ebay so have ordered that (Benjimano - you paid a whole £3.50? Kerching £2.99 ;-). "endgrain" is another useful term - it's amazing how much more info you can find out on the net when you know the right terms to search for!

AndyT, I have got a jack plane (in true tradition, inherited from my grandfather!). It's a Record No.3 (45mm blade) and probably needs a good sharpening as I did actually try it on the endgrain but it was catching every millimetre. I bought one of those sharpening kits with an angling device to help get the correct angle on the blade so I'll gvie that a go. Thanks for the "shooting board" idea - I hadn't heard of those but they look very useful. There are a couple of great videos on YouTube on making/using them including a luthier specific video showing an angled top board to spread wear on the plane blade.

Chrispy, I am in Kidlington so Wantage is just about within the radius of travel I was thinking of. I'll send you a private msg (<- edit: actually, I wont as no priveleges to do that. Will email via your website). Charley - thanks for the pm and info.

adzeman, thanks for the description on sawing. I see precision of cut is all about precision of approach. I tend to just pencil mark one edge since I always use a mitre box, however I've never been entirely happy with mitre boxes as I still often get an angled cut, probably since the plastic wears very quickly and I got into the (probable bad habit) of using a big saw instead of the proper mitre-box saws. By the way, interesting what you say about the Japanese saw. I bought a second hand Japanese Kanna plane recently (still waiting for it from Japan!), having watched a video of someone using one. The action of pulling the plane towards yourself, like with your saw, somehow looked more relaxing and in tune with the world in general . Has anyone used those?

 

[G S Haydon]

Hello Bigus,

That #3 Jack is a Smoothing plane . Welcome to the forum and enjoy the woodworking.

 

[custard]

Hello Bigus,

here's the thing, working wood with hand tools is just like learning to drive or learning to play a musical instrument. Yes, read the books to get some basic knowledge, and yes think about the best tool for the job, but at the end of the day you're going to have to practise in order to improve. Unfortunately that tends to get overlooked.

It's difficult to write an entertaining magazine article about cutting twenty bridle joints in succession, and there's no toolmaker's profit in advocating lots and lots of repetitive practise. Plus I recognise that most people don't have that much free time and want to get on and actually make something. But what's get lost in all that is the hard reality that you'll have to cut twenty or thirty mortices by hand before you get one that's half way decent, and to produce a really nice dovetail you need to first cut maybe a hundred or more that aren't quite so pretty!

 

[Chrispy]

PM sent, please look in new messages.