Popular Woodworking 2005-12 № 152, страница 37

Tools can also be used as gauges. Using that same mortise chisel to lay out the matching tenon is an obvious next step. I use a sharp firming chisel to lay out dovetail spacing. I use a chisel to position mouldings on a case. Your chisels are like a set of machinist's gauge blocks. They are like rulers of fixed and convenient sizes. Every time you pick one up, it is the same width as it was last time, and you always have them handy.

Tool slaving, like gauging, is a way of approaching woodworking that is antithetical to rulers and measurements. Not only are rulers less accurate than either gauging or slaving (since mating parts must be individually measured), they are totally arbitrary as well. Working to a set of drawings is only important when your tenons go into a bin to be later chosen at random and fitted to the mortises made elsewhere down the assembly line. Because we have responsibility for the entire joint, we can simply skip the measurements altogether. There's probably some way you can gauge a tenon from a hollow-chisel mortiser - this is certainly not a hand tool-only concept. You can think of the fence on your table saw like the fence on a marking gauge if you wish. I'm convinced good craftsmen know this and do this. They may not know what it's called, but they do it. I want you to know it's a concept that can be employed in your shop for a whole range of operations on a whole range of tools. And I think you'll be surprised how often it is not only appropriate, but faster for whatever you're doing.

Rumplestiltskin: Single-purpose Optimized Tools

The average late 18th-century cabinetmaker probably had between 30 and 70 wood planes in his tool kit. Like modern professional woodshops, the period woodworker took advantage of optimized, single-purpose tools to improve efficiency.

We've probably all seen Norm Abram's "New Yankee Workshop." Mention the show to any woodworker and you'll invariably hear something like: "That guy's got every tool there is." Most of us probably don't have the shop space - let alone the money - for all the specialty sanders, planers, shapers and saws that Abram has. We make mortises with our drill presses and rip, crosscut and make dados, rabbets and sometimes even mouldings on our

table saws. While cost- and space-efficient, this is not an efficient way to work.

Specialty hand tools offer a low-price, low-space alternative that can actually save you time when you consider the setup time required to get your table saw or router table ready for an operation it wasn't designed for.

Using specialty hand tools doesn't require years of mastery. It's as easy to cut a dado with a dado plane as it is for Abram to cut a slot with

his biscuit joiner or turn a leg with the duplicator on his lathe. The only trick is selecting the right tool for the job. Recognizing that each plane has a single name associated with its one intended purpose helps us select the right tool and reminds us of the efficiency of using optimized, dedicated tools. Yes you can swap irons on your plane to convert it from a high-angle plane to a low-angle one. Yes, you can convert your jack plane into a smooth

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The craftsman who built this fine turn-of-the-18th-century English chest patiently moulded and mitered the many pieces that comprise its decorative front. But clearly his patience ran out when he got to the back. Some scholars suggest such pieces are evidence of the role of apprentices in early workshops. While it may be true that an apprentice executed the back of this piece, the master who so carefully made the front inevitably approved of the workmanship. I believe the difference in quality between the front and back solely represents the values of period craftsmen and their customers, and is not in any way reflective of the difference in skill between masters and apprentices.

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