Originally Posted by
Mark Hennebury
Now take your winding sticks….. throw them away…. and get yourself a good straight edge!
This is terrible advice. Why would you advise someone to throw away the traditional, proven tool for dealing with twist?
Originally Posted by
Warren Mickley
There is a reason workers in the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries used winding sticks. They had a lot more experience actually planing wood. Using a straightedge on the diagonals is a very clumsy way to gauge the wind in a board. The winding sticks are often longer than the board is wide, so in addition to gauging wind more directly, they accentuate the error. This is especially true when preparing edges for gluing.
Warren is 100% right here. I can only surmise that people who don't use winding sticks simply never figured out how to use them. Once you get the hang of them, they are faster and easier than the makeshift methods people resort to.
My advice is to learn the traditional methods people have used for hundreds of years; as Warren says, there is a good reason these methods have persisted.
"For me, chairs and chairmaking are a means to an end. My real goal is to spend my days in a quiet, dustless shop doing hand work on an object that is beautiful, useful and fun to make." --Peter Galbert