here we go again this is a new session a new series of questions and the
first one is from Walter he's asking how do you clean a leather strop not
complicated and it's not a dumb question either because what happens when you
apply the wax to the surface of your strop do I have any here when you apply
the wax to here it keeps building up and building up and then it gets
compressed into the leather and it becomes very slick so periodically if I
was going to sharpen this chisel I would have gone here but ba-bump sharpened it
and then I would just go with the side corner of my chisel and I would just
pull it down like this and it scrapes off the surface but it leaves the
leather there leaves the leather in place so that works just fine and it
doesn't deteriorate the leather so that's how I cleared off my leather
straps and I've done it that way for years I don't use the same chisel every
time and it does round the corners here over a long time but it's so many more
like 50 years you might find you've rounded the chisel corner but it's not
an issue no and you could use just about any tool
that has a sharp corner too so that's that one this is a question cutting
dovetails or even Tenon's on the ends of long pieces for example like the ones
you did in the trestle table by standing on a stool of some kind but what if the
pieces are 20 feet long I'm thinking timber framing for example I think this
one is an easy one because just as you're doing timber framing you often
sit and straddle the work and work from above or work from the sides straddling
so in other words you upend one end of the 20 foot length set it on your
trestle the other end is lying on the floor and you do work awkwardly but it
with big bulky Timbers like that it's not usually an issue you can use a saw
you can use chisels you can chop pair all kinds of cuts you can do that way he
has two questions what are you thoughts and feelings about timber framing in
general how would you compare it to furniture making
so the furniture making you do all the tools and workshop requirements
different his timber framing something needs a team of a minimum number of
woodworkers to work out okay this is quite diverse really I've worked in a
timber framing workshop where I was the furniture maker and right next door to
me were ten polish timber framers and they worked right alongside me and we
would often compare what they did with what I did yes
they used chisels some split cuts the same way I would on my furniture so if
they're cutting a tenon they would split cut but everything was massive
everything was much bigger for them I even saw them using steel wedges instead
of chisels to split because that would split much faster so other things like
that they would use a bigger plane to pair across the ends of the Tenons to
make the Tenons fit so it was very different but very much the same and so
it's just a more refined way of working I am surprised with timber framing how
accurately they work even though there's such a massive Timbers that they're
working with they do seem to work quite fine tolerances and it's because the
shoulder lines have to be crisp and clean they're not relying on the peg so
much to hold the joint together as the the compression of the fibers when they
drive the draw-boar to pull the shoulder to the side of the beam or whatever
that's what they rely on and and this business about the team I've worked with
both people I've seen people erect a whole timber frame building 30 feet by
20 feet on their own by just using additional equipment like a forklift or
a backhoe and things like that I've seen people build a whole structure on their
own doing that but then again there's the camaraderie of working together you
know you get five or six people man women they just want to do a timber
frame pole barn or something like that and they just love working together and
I think that's important too so that becomes more interactive with other
people the other one is interactive with just
machines one makes you completely independent the other makes you
completely interdependent I like the interdependency it's very
nice so I hope that answers your question and I
can't say what your name is because it doesn't seem to be a name okay Michael
he says I have need of a good quality set of drill bits countersink bits for
my drill driver so he's talking a little bit differently he's talking about
something like this the ubiquitous drill driver you are powering that bit
into the wood and but that doesn't mean that your work is sloppy and we have
different bits that work differently for instance if you have a bit like this one
this is just a regular twist drill this has a bevel on this side a bevel on this
side a flute down here and a flute down here
so usually they'll have two flutes in there sometimes more depending on the
type you load this in the drill bit and you drill your hole and usually the rim
of the hole isn't quite as pristine as you might get from something like this
where we have completely different dynamic here at the cutting edge these
two outer wings protrude past and they create, they cut the rim of the hole as you
drill and then there's a Brad point bit here and that drills a very different
hole so this one
gives a clean entry very clean and I just hold that for you to see the contrast
between the two now this isn't really the best quality bit and you can get
superb quality ones Veritas makes a set the small set and a large set
they're quite expensive but they are worth having and they are called lip I
think they call lipped bits lips spare bits you see very okay
high speed lipped Brad point bit they term them as so that's the bit you might use
there's also what they call a rim bit or a force and a bit and that cuts a circle
very cleanly and the rim of the bit is what actually keeps control as it goes
into the wood and then of course you have other bits orga bits but he's
asking for bits you can load into this thing here so that's a very different
aspect of drilling so it's very boring this subject you know but anyway then he
asks about what would we use for countersinking and let me see if I have
a I probably don't but I used to have the typical rose pattern countersink bit
but they vibrate when you drill a hole like this they vibrate let me show you
what I mean with these bits here actually designed for engineering these
were I've got different sizes here so you can buy different sizes and usually
buy a set and actually they're very inexpensive they can be hard for
anywhere from five pounds and up for a set of four I use this one this is the
first one I ever had and I've had this for two decades and I'm still using the
same bits never been sharpened and I had to put this extension on here because I
liked it to protrude a little bit more so when you dream the rim
of a hole here with this
it cuts a beautiful hole and what's really happening I want to do a bigger
one here this is a brand new one so I'm going to drop this in here the ugly hole
on the rim there forget that spinning and get the speed up before you press
and you get a very clean hole it's vibration free and you can put this in
Reverse like that and you can polish the rim you can polish the edge of the hole
and consolidate it so that when you set the screw in there it seats on the on
the aspect of the rim there on the countersunk edge so that's what I would
use those are the ones I use I still rely on my organ bits for general boring
because I just feel like I have total control and I really like that so that
those are my choices for bits especially for the countersink bit you do get what
you pay for very often all right this is from Amondeo
Amondeo where did you buy or get your clamps from I live in Portugal and
wonder whether I can buy them in eBay Amazon or any other site you can get
them from eBay and Amazon and certainly if you go to the UK site is probably
where you'll find them they are sold also by a company called screw fix here
in the UK and I don't know if they sell to Portugal or send to Portugal but then
there's a company in Germany called DITA Schmidt fine tools and they will supply
the whole of Europe and they are really very top-notch clamps this is the type
of clump he's talking about here it's an aluminium bar square section or
rectangular section threaded here and this moves along here and these are
excellent clamps they're very nice I like them I use them all the time so
those are the types of clamps he told basically it's a sash clamp it's
what we would have called a sash clamp because it was used to make sashes it
was a lightweight clamp and we use them in furniture making very
nice for furniture-making okay that's that now then okay somebody's clumping
laminating their bench top or laminating us two by fours together we have them
here this type of 2x4 here but we have very square section 2x4 so when I'm
laminating up a 2x4 I don't have the the rounded edges he's referring to them as
chamfered edges but they're not chamfered they're actually a definite
1/8 or 1/4 inch not a quarter-inch 1 eighths radius here so when you put them
together you end up with these grooves in here and that's what he's referring
to and he's asking whether he should plane off those rounded edges first and
then do the lamination for his bench-top and I say no I say go ahead and glue
them up get them as level as you possibly can and then when you got this
big massive wood you can just clamp it to the bench top and the mass itself
gives you something to really work against and you can take out those it's
really only about maybe 1/32 of an inch that you have to take it down and you
have to take that down anyway to get the level you want for your bench top so
that's what I would do all right you say ok glue the surfaces going off okay cam
clumps this is the next one this is these that we made these on via
woodworking master classes and YouTube and these are the ones that are used
quite often in instrument making but these are min box making lightweight
work and stuff like that and what this person is saying is that when he clamps
his up like this so he squeezed here and then he clamps here here's a slipping
minor gripping just fine but his are slipping and what he's asking is what do
you do so the answer is if you got chalk just powder some chalk right
here and make a few passes like this and the chalk will increase the friction
level better than that is if you can get just go along to any violin shop and buy
some rosin it's very cheap and just sprinkle it you can either powder
it up on a grater or you can buy it ready powdered and just drop it straight
into that opening and that will increase that and stop it from slipping so same
stuff for violin making as it is for us making our clamp so that works perfectly
so that's a clamp slippage and here's a big question this is a very difficult
question in some ways but an easy question in others somebody this is
coming from Trufftin and he's asking me big fan of your work and getting people
to pick up the hand tools again I started following you last year or so
and jumped right in I recently moved to California and I'm having trouble
finding an employer willing to give me a chance to train I wanted to see if I if
you had any suggestions on how to find someone that could help or how snag how
to snag an apprenticeship this finds you well and I wish you the best trapped in
all right this is a common question people cannot get apprentices I cannot
get apprenticeships and and there's a complaint sometimes that we can't get
apprentices that's not the common complaint now the common complaint is I
can't find somewhere to train and so here what I've written I'm going to read
it to you first of all and you didn't give any age you didn't give any
experience details no dependents details or formal training are you supported or
supporting parents home partner support these things all make a difference so if
you've got support from somebody else can you work for free can you volunteer
yourself into work for a three-month period so that anybody that could
possibly be a would-be trainer apprentice er would have some feeling
like this guy is really top-notch I would love to have him if I lose him now
my business would go down something like that where yes sometimes have
some idea of who you are who is this man that wants or woman that wants to work
here and I've been writing a blog on this issue for a long time different
issues about apprentice in and you have to look at the definition of
apprenticeship these days because everybody uses the term for general
training for just about every task that anybody has so if you're filling shelves
in a supermarket you will find yourself apprenticeshing as a shelf filler that's
very different than craft training where repetitive over and over tasks are
repeated until you become so expert at it you don't even think about it it's
just like writing your name when you cut a dovetail it's just like signing
something and and that's what it should become that's what craft work becomes of
course it's it's been passed on as well that's another thing that the craft
training as an apprenticeship has been passed on to colleges and universities
now that's not always the best place to gain the kind of work and experience
that you want and often the colleges in university will say ok we're giving you
the basic three hours we're getting you through this but now you need experience
of working with a craftsman or a craftswoman that can give you what you
really need and actually it should possibly be the other way around the
craft experience on the job with people will get you into the craft without
going on to college or university but if you choose to go to college or university
for whatever reason then that's an additional skill set that you would get
they would have something to offer you that would take you beyond what you
might get in the field but definitely training in the field as an apprentice
is the best way many times people say you know that they feel when they go
into their apprenticeship that they're going to somehow be profitable for their
employer or that their employer is making profit on them in most cases
they're not an apprentice actually robs an employer of his time because he then
becomes I know I've worked out that when I have an apprentice working with me he
actually diminishes my capacity by at least 50%
if I have two apprentices working with me my work
ability is almost diminished to zero so then I have to work through those people
if I had 10 apprentices then I could do all of my work through them in times
past when somebody was an apprentice they worked for a man a master and he
might have 6 or 10 other workers and that apprentice would be a distributed
amongst those people and they would be that means that the cost of him being
there the demand of him being there is feathered out amongst other people
not just one person and then the other thing is you have to remember that
people are having a different attitude towards their apprenticeship because
they go in saying I want to train as a furniture maker because I want to be a
furniture designer maker on my own account if you come to me and say well I
want to do that I might say well hang on a minute where are you going to start
your business well I'm going to start my business right next door to you so if I
take on 10 apprentices over 10 years I can end up with 10 competitors right
next door to me so there's a false expectation there that somebody should
be able to demand an apprenticeship that's not the case I think it would
depend you need long-term experience you need to work with somebody but then
there was a sense when I was an apprentice that I just served my
apprenticeship I served the man that I worked for for six years that was very
important in my training it was very important to him because he invested
probably two years when I was really very inefficient and other people were
inefficient so there's a payback that comes from having a longer
apprenticeship and that's why they did have longer apprenticeships was because
that was the payback to the master for the period of time of training so don't
go in with false expectations be realistic about it what will your
employer your train again from you working for him is he just going to
train you and at the end of the year you're thumbing your nose up and you're
off doing your own business I don't think that's a good equation
for the man and I know you have to look at the whole of it not just
you're going through the training and coming out the other side to set up in
competition there I know it's a hard life it's hard to get into but I'm sure
you can make it by doing the volunteer issue and then seeing what transpires from that