Woodworking Magazine Weblog

Find your credit card. You know the one. It's one your spouse always hides when you get caught reading my blog.

Auriou, the venerable French toolmaker that closed it doors last year after a labor dispute, re-opened for business on Friday. Thanks to new owners and the same plant manager, the new Forge de St Juery is making and selling many of the most popular and useful woodworking rasps on its web site.

The company has more than 400 rasps in stock right now, is currently taking orders and will begin shipping on Nov. 20. The company is much smaller than it was before it shuttered its doors (there is only one stitcher at the present time), so production will be on a small scale until more stitchers can be trained. That is a lengthy process.

The plant is still under the direction of Michel Auriou, a passionate and knowledgeable toolmaker, and so I have every confidence that the new tools will be as good as the old. And what great tools they are. I own four Auriou rasps (two at work; two at home), and I cannot imagine working without them. Actually, I can't remember what it was like to work without them. My old Nicholson rasps seem sorry, coarse and slow.

Of course, the logical question is which rasps you should buy. If you build typical casework and shelves, I think it's ideal to have two rasps:

A cabinet rasp (9", 10" or 12" are all good lengths) with a grain of nine or 10.

A modeller's rasp. I really like the 6" in a 15 grain. It leaves a very nice finish.

I'm also very interested in trying the ALBI rasp listed on the site.

The other good news here is that the prices are fairly in line with what the Auriou rasps sold for when the company closed last year. A 9" cabinet rasp sells for about $107 – that's much less than these suckers were going for on eBay. The shipping is expensive, however. A box containing up to five rasps is going to cost about $30.

However, all this talk about money is immaterial in my book. These are great rasps – the last ones you are ever likely to buy if you are a home woodworker.

— Christopher Schwarz

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My puny 8'-long English workbench is starting to feel like an apartment-sized dinette set. Why? Check out this 12'-long version of that same bench design that boatbuilder Bob Easton constructed using Douglas fir.

Easton's design is interesting because he incorporated a third leg into the middle section of the bench because he was concerned that the whole thing might flex under heavy planing. He built the third leg just a little short to ensure that the whole thing wouldn't become a teeter-totter.

After using the bench, Bob reports that the third leg probably isn't necessary. The bench doesn't seem to flex at all in the middle. However, it looks cool and is good insurance in case Bob ever decided to rebuild a V-8 engine on there.

The other interesting alteration from the original plan published in my "Workbenches" book is that Bob used a traditional face vise in the end vise position. I built a wagon vise there on my version of the bench. I'm Chris Schwarz and I approve of this alteration.

Using a vise like this in the end-vise position saves you lots of construction time. The wagon vise took as long for me to build as the rest of the English workbench (no lie).

Bob has been blogging about his bench and you can follow his progress using this link. Or you can skip to the final and glorious result here.

— Christopher Schwarz


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For the last few weeks I've been joking around that our woodshop has turned into a sweatshop. As of this morning, I don't think that joke is funny any more.

For the last few weeks the staff, lead by Senior Editor Robert W. Lang, has been building all the appliances and jigs that the instructors need for the hands-on clinics at our Woodworking in America conference next week. Oh, and we've also been milling the lumber that the attendees will be sawing, chopping, paring and planing.

There are bench hooks, planing boards, saw-filing vises and myriad other jiggery piled up everywhere in the shop. The jigs were built using poplar we had in the wood rack, ash left over from Lang's "21st Century Workbench" and even some cherry buried in the bottom of the rack that I'd bought to build my wall-hung tool chest.

I'm glad to see that cherry go, actually. As part of the deal I struck with the seller years ago, I bought 90 board feet of low-quality stuff to buy a load of amazingly wide, clear and beautiful black cherry.

We've enlisted everyone, from Publisher Steve Shanesy on down to Drew DePenning, our associate editor for the web, to help screw, nail and glue parts together. Thanks to all the help, I'm sure we're going to make our deadline. That is, as soon as I get my hinder away from the computer and screw together about 38 saw-filing vises.

Or maybe we're not done yet. This morning 250 board feet of poplar arrived at our loading dock. Maybe there are more jigs to build.

— Christopher Schwarz

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I've been doing this job for 12 years now; and that's the longest commitment I've given anything, except for maybe shaving, remaining married and pork barbecue. So clearly I like my job, or I'm un-hirable in any other profession.

Most days are great: I read about woodworking, write about woodworking and do woodworking. But there are a few days that make me grind my teeth in frustration. This is one of those days.

I'm editing a piece by bodger and blacksmith Don Weber for the February 2009 issue of Popular Woodworking. Don has built an interpretation of a Sidney Barnsley hay-rake table and has done a beautiful job. And that's the problem.

I've been dying to build one of these tables since before I came to work here. Barnsley has long been one of my heroes. He was a trained architect who chucked it all to design and build furniture mostly by hand. And to top it all off he had great design sensibilities.

Of course, now that Weber has built this table for the magazine, there's little chance that I'll be able to build one unless I can find a customer. Casa Schwarz doesn't need a massive dining table (already got one). Nor does anyone in my family. I could build one on spec and try to sell it, but I think I'd probably end up with the world's fanciest basement Pla-Doh table.

Maybe I could just build a small model of it…. Aw crud.

— Christopher Schwarz

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This morning I stumbled on a cool movie from 1940 that explains the types of woodworking jobs available at the time and has some really fun shots of veneering, furniture-making and patternmaking. If for some reason your browser won't display the movie, scoot on over to archive.org and you can choose from a wide variety of video formats.

My favorite part of the video is where they show the vocational students attacking some boards with tools. One of the students is planing a big old hollow in an edge. Then it shows him checking the edge to ensure it's square. Though you cannot hear the student, I'm sure he said something like, "Jeepers that edge sucks eggs."

If you have 10 minutes to spare, I think you'll enjoy this little flick.

— Christopher Schwarz

Looking for More Woodworking Information?
• Sign up for our newsletters to get free plans, techniques and reviews HERE.
• Looking for free articles from Woodworking Magazine? Click HERE.
• Like hand tools? Read all our online articles on hand work HERE.
• Want to subscribe to Woodworking Magazine? It's $19.96/year. Click HERE.

Looking for More Woodworking Information?
• Sign up for our newsletters to get free plans, techniques and reviews HERE.
• Looking for free articles from Woodworking Magazine? Click HERE.
• Like hand tools? Read all our online articles on hand work HERE.
• Want to subscribe to Woodworking Magazine? It's $19.96/year. Click HERE.

Handplanes with corrugated soles vex many woodworkers. If you find them on a vintage plane, should you grab it or should you shun it? If you order a bench plane from Lie-Nielsen Toolworks, should you spend the extra $35 to get a corrugated sole or is that money better spent on some Lehman Brothers stock?

Corrugated soles started showing up on planes in the late 19th century. Craftsmen noticed that their newfangled metal planes were harder to push than their old-fashioned wooden-bodied planes, according to period accounts and patent papers.

So manufacturers began to mill corrugations in the soles of their planes. For a peek at their reasoning, check out this 1869 patent by E.G. Storke:

“…(E)xcessive friction was caused by their exact and even faces (of their soles), which were not materially varied by use or atmospheric changes.

“When used on very level surfaces, there were so many points of contact that the friction was troublesome, and the adhesion was further increased by atmospheric pressure, as partial vacuums would thus be formed.”

In other words, the planes were sticking to the work when the boards became really flat. I’ve encountered this when working with closed-grain woods, especially poplar and maple. In fact, if the board isn’t too large, I can occasionally lift the board off the bench because it is stuck to the tool’s sole. It’s a neat trick.

But is the plane harder to push if it doesn’t have corrugations? Many pointy heads I’ve talked to about this are dubious. Friction, they explain, is a function of force – not the surface area of the sole.

I have planes with both smooth soles and corrugated ones, and if there is a difference in effort required to wield them, I cannot discern it.

But there are some practical differences you should be aware of:

1. Corrugated soles on vintage planes are easier to flatten because there is less metal to remove. So if you have an old sole that needs work, corrugations are a plus.

2. The corrugations hold paraffin or wax. This wax wears away completely during use, so I assume it is lubricating the sole.

3. Corrugations on some sizes of vintage tools are rare. So if you are a collector, keep an eye out for them.

So here’s my bottom line: Corrugations don’t change the function of the plane for better or for worse, so it doesn’t really matter either way. I wouldn’t spend extra money to have them added, but I wouldn’t kick them out of bed for eating crackers, either.

— Christopher Schwarz

As a woodworking blogger, I try not to "overshare" when it comes to personal information. I try not to talk about my exotic skin lesions, what I had for breakfast and the wide array of annoying personal habits of my co-workers.

But today is a sad day here in the shop. It's time to let go of the "woobie."

The woobie is actually a rag (there, I said it) that has been soaked with the lubricating juices of many plants, animals and petroleums. For more than a decade, the woobie has wiped down every tool when I put it away. It has wiped every plane sole to make it easier to push. It has cleaned off every edge after sharpening.

But today I think the woobie goes in the garbage.

Here's the problem: I think the woobie has been contaminated by some sort of abrasive grit. Here's the evidence: My handplane edges are deteriorating more rapidly.

One of the indicators that it's time to resharpen a plane iron is when the shaving from the plane's mouth isn't intact across its width. It comes out as several smaller ribbons. What's happened to the iron is it has suffered small nicks or fractures in its edge that prevent it from taking a full-width shaving. Plus, it leaves little plane tracks behind at these fractures.

I've noticed that my smoothing plane iron at work is now deteriorating much more rapidly than my smoothing plane at home (which is where I keep "son of woobie").

More evidence: When I was teaching at Kelly Mehler's School of Woodworking in September I left my woobie at home. And after crouching and whimpering in the corner a bit because of my forgetfulness, I noticed that my edges were lasting a long time again, even though I was loaning my planes to the students.

Hmmm. The woobie sees a lot of abrasive when it wipes off my tools from sharpening. And it sits by the drill press, where there are metal filings and other nastiness. The woobie could be the source of the problem. Embedded grit could be scratching the irons when I wipe them off.

I could launder the woobie, but I want to stay married. So here's what I'm going to do: I'm going to put the woobie at the bottom of my now-empty garbage can, start a new woobie and monitor the longevity of my plane irons. If my edges improve I'll let the woobie go to the dump with the next load of trash.

And judging by how quickly we move here, that should be about Christmas.

— Christopher Schwarz

A lot of people ask to see my tool collection. I tell them I don't have one – I'm a user, not a collector. If I say that again, however, I'll be a liar.

Somehow during the last few months I've started acquiring edge-trimming planes. I've owned a Lie-Nielsen version – a right-handed copy of the Stanley No. 95 – for many years, and that was all this woodworker needed.

But this spring I heard Thomas Lie-Nielsen tell the story of how he got started in the plane-making business in the 1980s to a group of students at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking. I'd heard the story before: Lie-Nielsen began making the edge-trimming plane after picking up the business from machinist Ken Wisner.

This time, the story was different because one of the students at the school (Jeff Skiver) brought one of the Wisner planes to the class to show. (You can read about his plane in a blog entry I wrote in April.) As I held the little sucker, I thought it would be cool to own one of these Wisner planes as a piece of modern planemaking history.

So I started trolling eBay with little luck. Meanwhile, we got the new Veritas versions of the edge-trimming plane in iron, and (mystery of mysteries) those ended up in my tool chest. Then I stumbled upon an AMT version of the tool for sale that I couldn't pass up. The AMT version is, by the way, a complete piece of dung. Its red velvet bag is nice, however.

I knew I had crossed over when I started regretting not buying the stainless steel version of the plane that Veritas offered but is now sold out.

And this week, I finally got my Wisner.

Thanks to some help from Skiver, I found an eBay auction for a Wisner plane and snagged it for a fair price. When it arrived, I was thrilled with it. Not only is it well made, but it is the first used tool I've ever bought that came perfectly sharp and ready to go. That's the good news.

Here's the bad news: My Wisner plane has an iron body with a brass lever cap. So now I'm going to have to look for a Wisner with a bronze body. And the Veritas version in bronze.

And that stainless Veritas plane. Curses.

— Christopher Schwarz

Getting all the bits of hardware to match on a project is a critical detail for me. I go to great lengths to ensure the hinges, pulls and other assorted metal bits look like they came from the same family.

For example, for the blanket chest on the cover of the Summer 2008 issue I wanted to get the brown steel stays to match the black iron chest hinges. I ended up painting the steel stays black, then lacquering them and rubbing them out until they looked like the powdery black iron.

This might seem excessive, but every time anyone (even my kids) opens the chest for the first time, they comment on the cool hardware. It's definitely worth it.

One of the biggest problems with getting your hardware to match is dealing with shiny brass. I really dislike the way it looks for some reason. So I usually end up aging all the brass bits until they look like they have seen about 100 years of use.

Here's how I do it. First I strip any lacquer off the hinges. I'll pour a little bit of lacquer thinner into a Mason jar, drop the hardware in and shake the jar for a few minutes. Usually the thinner gets a little tinge of color (sometimes green).

I discard the thinner, dry off the hinges and clean out the jar. Then I drop the hardware back into the jar and add a tablespoon of liquid gun blue (I use Perma Blue made by Birchwood Casey). I shake it around until the brasses and screws are colored. Then I pour the gun blue back into the bottle and pour cold tap water into the jar.

After rinsing the hardware, I'll dry it off and let it sit out awhile. The instructions say you should allow the stuff to cure overnight. I haven't had any problems installing the hardware almost immediately.

I really like the color that gun blue imparts. It's always consistent, never streaky and doesn't look like a dye job.

There are other ways to go about this process. You could install the hinges and wait 100 years. You could use ammonia, which is the process Senior Editor Robert W. Lang uses. And I'm sure there are even more out there. If you have a favorite one that you think is even easier, post a comment below.

— Christopher Schwarz