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Twelve years have passed since Willard Anderson wrote about the Howarth bow saw in Popular Woodworking, inspiring countless hand-tool lovers to take a stab at making such a beautiful tool.

I was...

Wayne - I had hoped to achieve a natural finish; my client had a houseful of dark antique furniture and wanted something light.

My first go-round didn't come close -- grain filler followed by...

I posted a query some time back asking for input on finishing European beech -- and I return to this forum with a tale of woe, caused in large part by my own faulty memory.

Back then, having...

Derek - I second James' comment about your write-up. Clarity is the key to good writing - a one-to-one correspondence between thought and utterance. The goal is the same for the woodworker, with one...

Next to snakewood, black locust is the toughest wood I have worked. Thanks for the kind words.

Deneb Puchalski sent me an invitation some months back to attend the Lee-Nielsen open house up in Maine next month as a guest demonstrator, and I decided to take the invite as an opportunity to make...

Rob - If your granite tile is like the tile sold at Home Depot and elsewhere, it's quite capable of flexing if you've got it on an uneven surface, making it pretty much impossible to flatten the base...

Eric - I'm still around and kicking, somewhat against the odds.

The black locust out of which I made the workbench you mention was green at the time and hence easily worked. I worried when...

Brian - I like your ideas. Tell me more about the handle and how to integrate it with the forces generated while turning.

Also, I do plan to use it pipe-cutter fashion and to turn the spindle...

Marion - I'm making this knurler in hopes that it will produce better knurls than I've been getting with scissors- and bump-type knurlers for the lever cap screws of my infill hand planes - "better...

Hey, folks:

I'm making myself a three-knurl hand knurler as follows:

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I plan to machine the middle and lower steel cross pieces to accept the knurl wheels and pass pins through both...

Lowell - Shavings coming up as soon as I finish tuning the planes.

Matt and Ron - Many thanks for the input. The client who commissioned the No. 4.5 wanted the up-swept crown or horn. It's not meant to resemble a bird's wingspan, incidentally, but rather a bird's...

I'm in the end game with these two ebony infills, one of which seeks to address - the No. 4.5 in the foreground - the risk that the thin neck on my planes might break.


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Derek and Pat - You are right to express concern about the thin dimension and grain direction of - what shall we call it, the neck? - as I share the worry. I have broken one or two myself while...

Pat - I make my own irons at the moment, in large part because I am still experimenting with widths and lengths. But I pretend to no expertise in such matters and intend to ask Ron Hock, from whom I...

A client gave me a rather large cant of African blackwood some weeks back with instructions to use it in a No. 4.5 infill - and out of a caution spawned by the trouble I recently had making an infill...

Patrick - Thanks for the cautionary note. I believe my client understands the risks, as do I. I've been pushing the design envelope since I made my first plane four years ago next month. I may well...

Patrick - I know some good jokes about parrots but had never heard of parrot day - and I'm gonna check it out!

Leigh - Many thanks. Not sure about adjusters, though.

Frank - The reference is to the poem "To a Mouse' by the 19th century Scottish poet Robert Burns, which reads in part:



The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men




Gang aft agley,

Patrick - I use precision ground 0-1 tool steel unannealed and to be sure unhardened on grounds that it is slightly harder than 1018 mild steel and thus more suitable for the base of a plane. This...

Good morning, folks - and Merry Christmas to you and yours.

It was all blood, sweat and tears making the bun and tote for this plane out of a cant of snakewood, not to mention the stress that came...

Curt - Many thanks to you as well. Introduce yourself next time LN holds a hand tool event at Palomar.

Dave - You're right about snakewood: It's tough stuff. I need to tease a tote for a No. 4 out of a half log (sometimes call a "cant," I believe?) 10 inches long, 10 across, and about 5 high, and this...