we want to do something that we haven't done before and that is answer a
handful of questions that people have written in about that would be of value
to other people so we're going to give it a stab see how this goes we've got a
question here from Micah who's asking about twin Tenons and he says that I
have alluded to the use of twin Tenons double Tenons on certain pieces of wood
working in the past where we've had two Tenons going side-by-side and he says
he's going to be doing a two-inch rail going into a three and a quarter
inch square leg so we've got two pieces of material here he's talking about this
going in here so he's saying would he use twin tenons or would he use a
single tenon I would say use a single tenon because you can use a fairly
substantial tenon on this going into this size of a leg you could do a
longest tenon you could do up to a two and a half inch tenon in this quite
comfortably one and a half would be long enough and I would go with a 3/4 inch
tenon if this was wider and the rail was bigger and this was going into a
massive door I might do two side-by-side Tenons as twin Tenons but I might also
have a door rail this size where I need a double tenon where one is above the
other or even have four in a single rail those are very rare choices today
because we have aluminium and we have other metals and things that answer that
question but that's my answer for you Micah so yeah a 3/4 inch tenon going
into a 3/4 inch mortise hole is plenty good for what you
want the next question came in from Conor and he's asking can you talk about
the transitional plains well he's got a series of planes that were made in
America he names Miller's Falls Stanley Sargent
Union and Fulton were all transitional plains what a transitional plane is very
different than these planes this is a fairly common we all know about the
Stanley before Stanley could get this to be accepted as a plane people
were using wooden planes wooden soles wooden bodied and and those planes never
you couldn't bend them you couldn't flex them you can flex metal planes if you
want to or need to but in this case he wants to know about the difference
between those different breeds of plane well the answer is that all of them
worked and work well they were basically much of a muchness you
couldn't really differentiate between I've actually used most of those planes
and couldn't find anyone that was better than the other so yes go ahead and buy
them if you get the opportunity his next question was some of them can be hard
for much cheaper ok we'll leave that I've also heard you mentioned that long
me. I have just answered that wooden
planes wouldn't Bend you couldn't bend them because of the nature of the wood I
said that wood skates and glides across the surface of wood this was the big
difference this was why Stanley could not get the status quo woodworkers of
the time to change from wooden planes to metal planes because they were so light
it wasn't the weight of the plane it was the interaction between the wood and the
sole of the plane so if it was a wooden plane it would glide across the surface
like a swan across a lake but when it came to the metal planes they stuck to
the surface and they would pull and drag and so that was the main reason
so for 40 years Stanley made a plane had it was basically this plane on a wooden
sole just like this and the wood against would resolved the issue but eventually
the knowledge of knowing about those planes the wooden planes diminished
because the planes were used a lot less they were expensive to make
gradually he filtered in and to a completely all-metal version the one
we're used to today so we go with the lightweight planes we recommend them
over some of the heavy weights that have crept in on the market because you know
of chatter they say that heavy planes and the thick irons cause chatter
relieved chatter that's not the case usually
to do with the friction of the soul on the surface of the wood that causes the
most scudding and chatter that you get so if you just use an oil in a rag
like this on the underside of your soul and then you can take the shavings you
get no chatter it's perfect all right so I've given that answer as best I know
christophe asks i have recently bought a used stanley number five i need to fix
and resharpen the iron which is heavily out of square I can't justify purchasing
diamond stones which you recommend do you think I could go ahead with just
sandpaper yes you can and actually most of the time much of the time I will go
with like a sixty grit if I've got a plain iron I just bought a plain it's
badly shaped it needs some resurfacing it needs some extra work doing I will
buy a roll of roll sandpaper the type that we use for say sanding the floor
where you wrap it in a spiral and that works perfectly it's got some very
coarse grit to it you set that up on a flat surface
grind the bevel on that use a honing guide if you want to use it freehand and
that will take the iron down and get it square so I think it actually works
quicker than diamonds do so yes go ahead and do that and you can actually
continue if you can't afford the diamond stones just get abrasive paper on a flat
surface if you only doing the bevel is if you've initialized the flat face of
say your chisels you only have to do that once then in that case once you've
initialized them which usually is done on a flats a dead flat
surface like granite or glass you don't have to when you're honing this it
doesn't matter whether this has a hollow in it it's actually even beneficial if
it does so you can actually hone a bevel you can see on here I use a convex on
the bevel I like that it really works well for me and so yeah you can use the
sandpaper and you can go through all the grits to 1200 and you don't actually
need to strop the bevel and polish it out like I do but it's just that extra
measure just takes so little time you may as well do it and of course I do
that on my strop so that's just a question a piece of leather glued to a
piece of plywood pull this across the surface vigorously 30 to 40 times and
that will polish out the bevel so that's how I would do yep
so yes use abrasive paper it's great but you can't if long-term is going to be
more expensive than the diamonds so the second question Christophe has
about hand saws I spent months browsing in the office of local sellers
but either looks like bad plastic handle saws good enough for firewood or
overpriced luxury style tool do you have any tip on existing brand which makes
decent affordable hand saws well I understand what you mean about the
plastic handles the old plastic handles were actually molded and really fit
quite well to your hand they don't quite fit the same as the wooden ones do wood
has never really ever been replaced in my view and so the quality you get from
wood you can't replace it with a plastic handle or even a resin handle there's
all kinds of molded processes that go to give you that you can of course make
your own handle which would probably take you two or three hours at the end
of it you'd have tremendous satisfaction from that from that source so I would
probably recommend Varitas makes good smaller hand saws tenon saws back saws
gent Stiles pistol grips they have very nice very comfortable handles and their
saws are coming at a fairly good price in my book but then again you can
also go to Speer in Jackson they've come out with some saws that I think give
you good steel a good handle and you may need to work on them we've got some
videos out on that to upgrade those so that's that one Robert asks I
acquired a distant type 7 rip saw with a beautiful Applewood handle the problem
is it has a slight bow I watched your video on straightening a back saw do you
have a video on straightening a handsaw it's hard to find a saw doctor nowadays
it's so simple here I've got a saw now this one is straight the blade is
straight so if I look down here it has a slight curve this way what you do is I'm
going to bend this one I'm going to put a bolt in it so there you can see now
I've got a fairly consistent bow along the length out I'm just going to tell
you I have if you can't see all we do is we go exactly the opposite quite
vigorously and we can go the opposite way so what I have now is I have a bow
go in the opposite way that's no good so I just go back this way now I have a
dead straight saw so here is my saw it's dead straight it's just a question of
boldly going where no man goes that will be a foot for it so that's that one very
simple Bjorn asks in one video I see Paul Sellers is using the rolled-up rug in
a small tin can we've seen this so many times and so many times I've had to
answer this and this is a rag rolled-up tightly and then press down into a camp
and I just put light machine oil on this that's the question is which oil do you
use a lot of European countries certainly in America you can get an oil
referred to as light machine oil called three in one oil but wherever you are in
the world whichever oil you would use two oil say a lock or the hinge of a
door the hinge of your car that will work don't use oils that will
spontaneously combust go to Google up spontaneous spontaneously combustible
oils and you'll find lots of good information there that I don't need to
go through again that will answer that question just top this up you just take
your oil put the oil in circle round leave it let it soak in and then go back
three months later you can do it again and you just soak the underside of your
plane like this you can soak the side of your saw I do this all the time it
really reduces the friction tremendously and sometimes if I'm working on a very
fine joint I'll do the flat face of the chisels it really helps
reduce friction and so that's that but what was the other question
boom boom boom ...
he lives in Norway a technical name run oh he wants the name of the oil it
doesn't matter which oil it doesn't matter which name you can use any light
machine oil alright Alex asks I am I am preparing to
make my first workbench and I'm planning on making this I'm left-handed
he's got questions here I'm left-handed how our vise is typically configured for
left-handed people the vise itself this main herb this is the anchor to
everything you do is identical whether you're left-handed or right-handed its
centrally placed the bar in the middle is centrally placed in the vise you can
position this vise anywhere along the bench what you find is it's much better
to maximize the surface area where you grab your tools from so my being
right-handed I like all my tools on the right hand side or in front of me if I
were left-handed I would want the surface area for the tools to be grabbed
to my left so I would move this vise to the opposite end of the bench nine
inches from me unlike a 10,12 inches from the end of the bench works fine you
can put them in the middle I find it better to have it offset all my tools
are very conveniently placed that way so that really answers that one Alex his
next question aside from the face vise that you use is it possible to attach
end vises to the workbench you use he's actually going to make my workbench
type it's not the same as this one my other one has a well in it he's asking
if you can put a face vise or a tail vise on the end and you can just use
this same vise this tail vise this face vise sorry and attach it to the end but
you have to alter the frame that you make for the legs to allow the long
rods to go and the mechanism to go inside
because otherwise the frame or you have it overhanging you can move the leg
further in to accommodate the length of the mechanism for winding so
that's easy enough to do and if you go to the blog that I did on making your
own workbench it's an old blog but it's still current it's still good and it
shows you how to install the vises and it's both tale and end vise or face and
and vise yeah I'm getting everything's confusing okay so that's that on the
wood available to me stood grade stuff at Lowe's for you around the
world don't know what Lowe's is it's just a big box store it's led the
equivalent of B&Q more lending itself to construction type of work and
it's where most of them people would go to buy the lumber to build their home so
he says he knows that I've suggested straight
grained wood where possible least knotted wood and so on is there anything
else he should be aware of yes he should be aware that the shrinkage it's going
to be considerably higher because the wood used for building construction is
usually around eighteen percent by the time it leaves the lumber store and
that's way too high for furniture grade or for making things that will shrink so
if you have a wide bench top it's going to shrink if you have wide aprons
they're going to shrink the best thing to do is get it home put it in the
workshop where the bench will ultimately be used leave it there for a few weeks
if you can probably a month would work great leave it there sticker it stack it
and it will distort more but you can plane that out and make your bench from
that and then it will be fairly stable after a couple of years I've found that
my benches need a little bit of truing up but then after that they very rarely
move after I've got some benches I've been using for 10 15 and 20 years
they're still as flat as they were after I did that second truing up so that one
finally he says are there any detail photographs of how you have the drawers
to the end of your bench I am sorry to say no I haven't had a chance to do this
yet and I have found simply screwing a shelf
on the end of the bench down here is enough to store my sharpening gear I
haven't done the I certainly haven't done the draw and I haven't done these
tills in the ends that's something I need to get on with Bejorn asks has Paul
commented upon the place power tools might have in the world of dedicated
hand tool users yes I've done different things I've written things they're not
ostracized we like power tools we love using them but one thing you've just
heard me say power tools and that is so rare for me to use the term power tools
because I don't believe they are power tools that was something that was
introduced in the 80s by the big big power machine companies they wanted to
get away from calling it a power machine they wanted to get down to power tool it
was like the separation between hand tool old-fashioned fuddy-duddy didn't
work very well to the modern you know cutting-edge
machines they wanted to make that transition so people would think
differently like this belt sander or this router is just a power tool this is the
upper edge of the development this is the evolution process that's improved on
everything that wasn't the case what those cuts always rely on a rotary cut
they don't quite do what your hand will do but what they are good for machines
are very good for dimensioning lumber they're the donkey's they will do donkey
work all day long they will rip plane do all kinds of things and that's where I
draw the line I would never ever ever in my life use a router to cut a dovetail
I've gone for 50 years it's completely unnecessary in most cases if I were a
woodworker relying on selling kitchen units or whatever something that was
more competitive picnic tables I would just use power tools there would be no
point in not doing so but when it comes to fine work when it comes to people
getting satisfaction from the process of working which is most of you you want
that I I love it I love it when I spend a week
making a rocking chair look at this I just spent a week cutting every part of
this from two-inch stug what I loved it I just loved it I'm 67 years old and I
still love it you can do it too enjoy it and that's
all we got time for we're going to do some more of this I hope this works if
I've enjoyed it is it's good way of making contact with you so tell your
friends about it thank you