Popular Woodworking 2005-06 № 148, страница 10

Out on a Limb

On the Cutting Edge Of Enlightenment

Awhile back I was cruising an Internet discussion forum and read through a thread that began with this question:

"I've just finished stage one of setting up my shop. I have a bench and some tools, but I don't have the money for a table saw. Can I start making projects without a table saw?"

Other woodworkers chimed in with advice: Get a miter saw for accurate cuts. Use a circular saw and a straightedge. Don't use a circular saw and straightedge. Buy an inexpensive benchtop table saw.

This got me thinking. How do people think furniture, buildings and bridges were built before power tools? It reminded me of something I once read: The typical suburban garage has more tools than were available in 1800 to clear the forests and build the cities between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mississippi River. What if those guys had waited for the table saw? We'd still be sending our taxes to London!

Why do so many woodworkers, the Nor-mites, equate the craft with power tools? And why, for that matter, is there a growing number of hand-tool enthusiasts, the Neanders, who reject any tool with a cord attached?

The point here is not to take sides but to circle back to the original question about having a table saw. More fundamentally, how be st to get started in woodworking and build skills leading to good craftsmanship.

The answer, I've concluded, is you really must learn both hand- and power-tool skills. Knowing both makes you a well-rounded woodworker, a "double threat" who can call on either skill set to deliver the best result.

I was not an early adopter of hand tools and I still have much to learn. For years my experience with planes and chisels resulted in frustrating, unsatisfactory results. The reason

was a basic inability to produce a truly sharp edge. How was I to know what was sharp if I didn't know what sharp really was? Oh, I knew when my carbide saw blades or router bits were dull. And I knew exactly how to fix them - send them out to be sharpened!

I had a moment of enlightenment recently on a visit to Joel Moskowitz's Tools for Working Wood store in New York City. Joel loves hand tools, but he's even more passionate about the earliest woodworking "how-to" books, forerunners of today's woodworking magazines. Joel mentioned in passing the total absence of any early writing about sharpening. Then it hit me. Before the advent of power tools, sharpening skills were as common as driving skills are today. If you wanted to shave, cut down a tree, butcher a hog or even slay an enemy, you had to know how to produce a sharp edge. Your life depended on it, literally! To a woodworker, sharpening was second nature.

As power tools replaced hand tools during the Industrial Revolution, once-commonplace sharpening skills were lost, and much of the hand-tool know-how that built our country then slipped into obscurity.

If I could turn the clock back to the earlie st days of my learning to work with wood, I'd learn to sharpen edge tools just like I learned many other skills. I would have been a better woodworker these past 25 years. And it would have given me something productive to do while saving up for a table saw. PW

Steve Shanesy Editor & Publisher

CONTRIBUTORS

ADAM CHERUBINI

During the day, Adam Cherubini works with cutting-edge technology as an aerospace engineer. But at night, he builds baroque-style furniture with antique hand tools in an 18th century-style woodshop in his 1950s New Jersey home. This dichotomous lifestyle brings balance to his life, he says. Apart from raising three children, Cherubini has devoted much of his life to researching early woodworking techniques. He shares what he has learned with others by volunteering at Pennsbury Manor on Historic Trades Days (pennsburymanor.org) and by writing our new series, "Arts & Mysteries." His latest article, "Advanced Chisel Techniques," begins on page 82.

BOB DUNSTAN

Born in England and trained to make harpsichords, Bob Dunstan moved to Wyoming with his wife when he was 25. Discovering few demands for harpsichords, Dunstan spent the next 10 years

r* building period furniture by commission out of a converted tractor shed on the banks of the Snake River, and raising two children. In 1987, he started Whitecha-pel Ltd., a catalog of fine furniture-grade European hardware. By 1990, Whitechapel kept Dunstan so busy that he had to quit his furniture business. Today, his catalog is managed for him, allowing him to return to furniture making and to create a new form of measurement - the "bob." (See "Farewell Fractions - Hello Bob" on page 96.)

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Popular Woodworking June 2005