Popular Woodworking 2004-10 № 143, страница 106

to an end: You could be a well-rounded woodworker as a result of the donuts, but not the tools.

This realization happened while I was working on the Pilgrim - a trawler yacht I had the pleasure and honor of helping build at Penob scot Boat Works in Rockport, Maine. As I busied myself laying out a curved transom window with my German-made trammel points set to a center point I had painstakingly established with my Starrett try square and marked with my Swedish-made layout knife, I looked up to see Tom Brown - an elderly, down east boatbuilder who had been working on boats since probably the end of the 19th century

- begin to cut the yacht's rub rail to length.

To get the new section of rub rail to mate with the section already attached to the hull, Tom had to cut a long scarf at a precise compound angle because the rub rail was curved two ways: to the sheer line and to the outside sweep of the hull.

As I watched, Tom simply squinted at the new rub rail and began hand-cutting the scarf with his trusty old panel saw (a shorter version of a carpenter's standard hand crosscut saw). There were no layout lines on the rub rail. Instead, Tom was holding the length of wood in front of the scarf already cut in the rail that

was attached to the hull. I was stunned! He was simply cutting that complex joint by eye!

On the first try, he got it "spitting close." He then pushed the loose rail hard against the one on the hull and ran the saw through the juncture of the two pieces to make a perfect match. In less

than two minutes, Tom had made a j oint that I would have used up to six tools to make in an hour.

Tom had made use of a woodworker's three most essential - and impossible to purchase - tools: his eyes, his hands and his own experience. PW

This article is adapted from Lesson Five in "Jim Tolpin's Woodworking Wit & Wisdom: Thirty Years of Lessons from the Trade" (Popular Woodworking Books). To obtain your copy, visit your local bookseller, call 800-448-0915 or visit the Bookstore at popwood.com.