Ken Fitzgerald
04-27-2015, 12:01 AM
of woodworker, I love my power tools. Thus I will never be a Neanderthal but there is something to be said about learning to use hand tools in certain situations.
I choose to use standard plywood or leftovers from previous projects to build new shop tools. Recently purchasing 1/2" plywood for drawers has been a lesson in frustration as I could get any at either of two local suppliers that didn't have certain amount of warp to them. After sorting through their stacks and highgrading the best of the poor quality I still couldn't get flat 1/2' plywood.
So I bought the best available (such as it was) tried working with it. When used for bottoms, the warps really caused havoc as it would distort the shape of the final box. I tried graduated relief cuts on the bottoms of the drawer bottoms. Finally I settled on relief cuts and.......
Taking a sharp block plane, I shaved the edges of the plywood bottom. I was able to reduce the effect of the warping to at least make useable boxes. Again...these drawers are going into a outfeed table I am making for my shop.
A local cabinet shop has offered to sell me 5'x5' 1/2 Baltic birch plywood for my actual projects. I think that's what I will be using in the future.
Though my sharpening system won't hold up to the rigid standards of most Neanders, having a way to efficiently sharpen plane blades and chisels to a reasonable level of sharp, has gotten me to the point where more and more I find a manual solution that makes more sense and is quicker than setting up a power tool to do a similar operation. The block plane proved to solve the issue this time!
I choose to use standard plywood or leftovers from previous projects to build new shop tools. Recently purchasing 1/2" plywood for drawers has been a lesson in frustration as I could get any at either of two local suppliers that didn't have certain amount of warp to them. After sorting through their stacks and highgrading the best of the poor quality I still couldn't get flat 1/2' plywood.
So I bought the best available (such as it was) tried working with it. When used for bottoms, the warps really caused havoc as it would distort the shape of the final box. I tried graduated relief cuts on the bottoms of the drawer bottoms. Finally I settled on relief cuts and.......
Taking a sharp block plane, I shaved the edges of the plywood bottom. I was able to reduce the effect of the warping to at least make useable boxes. Again...these drawers are going into a outfeed table I am making for my shop.
A local cabinet shop has offered to sell me 5'x5' 1/2 Baltic birch plywood for my actual projects. I think that's what I will be using in the future.
Though my sharpening system won't hold up to the rigid standards of most Neanders, having a way to efficiently sharpen plane blades and chisels to a reasonable level of sharp, has gotten me to the point where more and more I find a manual solution that makes more sense and is quicker than setting up a power tool to do a similar operation. The block plane proved to solve the issue this time!