Luke Dupont
07-30-2016, 12:55 AM
I live in an apartment, and I'm quite the night owl, so sometimes one has to be creative :D
I learned something about paring/body mechanics by trying to do the nearly impossible. I'm making an oil-stone box, granted, in some soft wood (Cypress), and wasting out the space for the stone. Normally, I'd want to use a mallet and a chisel for this, but striking a chisel that much is something that I hardly dare to do even in the day time.
So, of course, I do what any sane person would do: try paring all of the waste out by hand! It's Cypress, it should be easy, right?
Turns out it's quite difficult, still. But, aside from a hair-splittingly sharp chisel, I discovered something - namely, how to pare efficiently.
When I first started woodworking, I pared just with my hands. Of course, I still do this if I need more control, and don't have much resistance.
Then I saw woodworkers using their upper bodyweight to bare down on the chisel, and that works a little better, for sure.
However, I'm a really small person, without that much upper body mass to utilize. So, I wondered what would happen if instead of bending over, I instead sink down in my stance, as I do in Martial Arts. I did that, and before I realized it, the chisel that had been meeting quite a lot of resistance with previous cuts just effortlessly zipped through the end-grain before I realized it. Continuing with that technique, I consistently meet with very little resistance, compared to before.
This kind of ties in with what I discovered/was talking about in the planing mechanics discussion. Most people try to get up on top of the tool with their upper body when they meet resistance, which is actually the opposite of what you want to do! Sink! Squat! Think of your waist as the core of your body weight, and manipulate that whilst maintaining a strong connection to that point through your joints. Or, in very specific terms: sink the shoulders, imagine a connection between the elbow and the hips, and don't let anything lag behind when you move your core.
Anyway - back to mortisi- err, paring!
I learned something about paring/body mechanics by trying to do the nearly impossible. I'm making an oil-stone box, granted, in some soft wood (Cypress), and wasting out the space for the stone. Normally, I'd want to use a mallet and a chisel for this, but striking a chisel that much is something that I hardly dare to do even in the day time.
So, of course, I do what any sane person would do: try paring all of the waste out by hand! It's Cypress, it should be easy, right?
Turns out it's quite difficult, still. But, aside from a hair-splittingly sharp chisel, I discovered something - namely, how to pare efficiently.
When I first started woodworking, I pared just with my hands. Of course, I still do this if I need more control, and don't have much resistance.
Then I saw woodworkers using their upper bodyweight to bare down on the chisel, and that works a little better, for sure.
However, I'm a really small person, without that much upper body mass to utilize. So, I wondered what would happen if instead of bending over, I instead sink down in my stance, as I do in Martial Arts. I did that, and before I realized it, the chisel that had been meeting quite a lot of resistance with previous cuts just effortlessly zipped through the end-grain before I realized it. Continuing with that technique, I consistently meet with very little resistance, compared to before.
This kind of ties in with what I discovered/was talking about in the planing mechanics discussion. Most people try to get up on top of the tool with their upper body when they meet resistance, which is actually the opposite of what you want to do! Sink! Squat! Think of your waist as the core of your body weight, and manipulate that whilst maintaining a strong connection to that point through your joints. Or, in very specific terms: sink the shoulders, imagine a connection between the elbow and the hips, and don't let anything lag behind when you move your core.
Anyway - back to mortisi- err, paring!