I spent Saturday working on a project for my wife that turned out to be a real Neander work out.
The project is a 7’ tall shoe rack for a corner of her closet. It's basically three, 7’ tall x 2” x 3” boards that will form the vertical supports with twelve, 12” x 14” x 5/8” shelves (pictures below).
She wants it painted white to match the rest of her closet so I’m building it out of inexpensive lumber from the local home center: Douglas Fir 2x4”s for the vertical members and pine for the shelves.
All in all a pretty simple project that I will spice up with some shouldered dado and tenon joints to attach the shelves. I thought it would give me a chance to work on my hand tool skills with some nice softwood.
To get the dimensions I wanted I needed to rip the three, 7’, 2” x4”’s - which adds up to 21 feet of rip sawing! So with some deep breaths and a couple bottles of water I broke out the saw bench and a couple of my favorite 28” rip saws: an Atkins 53, 5 PPI and a D-8, 4 PPI and went to town.
The pictures below show the pile of sawdust I accumulated as I'm just about finished with the third board with the two previous offcuts sitting on the bench.
The whole process was surprisingly satisfying and easier than I anticipated. As I found my rhythm, it was fun to watch the blades glide along the layout line. In total it took me about 45”, including rest breaks and cost me less sweat than I expected. I ended up with surprisingly straight, square cuts that cleaned up easily with a couple passes from the joiner plane.
The next job was to surface and dimension the glued up pine shelves. I use my reconditioned Stanley, Bailey pattern #5, #6 and #8 with Hock blades and a Japanese plane I use as a scrub plane. Final surfacing with LN #4 gave me the long, full width shavings and final surface I was looking for. Planing the soft Pine and Fir was a real joy -- except for the knots!
Final dimensioning with backsaws and shooting board at the workbench gave me the square, straight and true pieces ready for cutting a curved front edge and joinery.
The last couple pictures show the dimension stock and a pile of shavings I had to show for my effort - the beer really tasted good that night!
My point in sharing this post is that it was this kind of work - requiring lots of ripping, surfacing and dimensioning by hand is what I was leery of when I got rid of my stationary power tools. I have always enjoyed cutting joinery by hand, but thought this kind of work might cause me to regret going totally unplugged. I found it's been exactly the opposite; I never really enjoyed dimensioning rough stock with a table saw, joiner and thickness planer. Now going the Neander route, I actually look forward to it. For me working primarily with hand tools has really helped me focus on and enjoy the “journey”, as well as the “destination” –and the Neander workout is always a good excuse for a couple extra beers!
Thanks to all you fellow cave dwellers for the motivation, example and teaching that shows how much fun it can be to go unplugged.
Best regards, Mike
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