I have long been an admirer of crafted woodworkers, those who can come up with beautiful lines for their objects of art. Like many woodworkers/hobbyist who would read and study various fine woodworking journals, I have always wanted to be able to meet these creators and experience their journey in making something that you can call one-of-a-kind.
I took some time off from work and enrolled in a special woodworking school. I have chosen Inside Passage School of Fine Woodworking located in the beautiful Sunshine Coast of British Columbia, Canada. This school has a great woodworking tradition and provides teachings influenced by the late Mr. James Krenov (JK). I don't know very much of JK's methods but I have been admiring his artwork for many years and I cannot wait to finally experience some of his techniques myself.
As I am writing this, I am not sure if I am going to wait until I finish my whole journey before publishing or treat it as a daily blog...so let see how it goes as I put down my thoughts. So if you're interested in woodworking, welcome to this part of my life journey...
The school
I live on the opposite side of our vast country so taking this course required me do a bit of research. There are other schools closer to home in eastern Canada, my objective is to learn how to use fine hand tools properly but also get a feel of working with professional woodworking machinery. This school's methods appear to practice both and their tooling in the Resource section look impressive enough. I do not have the luxury to dedicate a full 10-weeks to this trade and I want to treat this not only as a learning experience but a personal time off from a busy daily grind. If I can take in a bit of sight seeing, taste some great food, snap some photography etc. that would be an ideal experience. Well, so far I believe I have come to the right place. When I first made contact with the school, Yvonne provided me plenty of travel advice, including a stay at the Up the Creek B&B (a great, relaxing B&B/Hostel).
The Course
I enrolled into the first two segments of a 10-week course called Impractical Cabinetmaker Program: Graphics & Edge and Plane Making. I have to admit that when I first enrolled, I was both a bit intimated and impatient. On one hand I wanted to learn the fundamentals yet on another, I want to jump right into doing advanced woodworking such as making that Vidar's Chair! Why on earth do I have to study something called Graphics and Edge when wood is wood right :). Well, I can tell you that by the end of my first day here, I'm totally blown away with what I have learned and what this school's principles is about. For a while there I was miffed at why the course title is called "Impractical", I thought there must be a typo there. But having listened to Robert (founder and teacher) speak for the first hour or so, I have realized that the word "impractical" can have a great meaning in the things that we do if we want to do it well...
Day 1
Well this is our first day, Yvonne and Robert have asked the students to arrive early for their open-house. This week we have about 5 newcomers, 3 senior returning students and a couple of beautiful dogs to keep us company. I won't bother listing their names here as I am still trying to memorize them. Suffice to say this is a really friendly group who all have a common reason to be here - we all appreciate beautiful wood works and fine woodworking. Most are here for the 10-week program except a couple of us who could not. We got to exchange pleasantries with each other and learned a bit about the history of the school.
I did not bring a full set of tools so I was provided with a student kit - I was pleasantly surprised to see the nice quality of the tools: the kind that you would normally drool looking at the Lee Valley or Lie Nielsen catalogs :).
Then we proceeded to learn about sharpening. This is a dream come true for me because I have tried for many years to self-teach how to sharpen and to only partial success (mostly I fail with frustration, my iron comes out skewed, the micro bevel is not micro etc). After this I need to guess no more (well actually I kinda lied - I still need a lot of practice, my classmates know that as they hear me curse each time I finished grinding my blades). We first learn how to lap the back of the blade to a shine. This is a painful part, a lot of elbow grease need to be put into this. After getting tender on my fingers, I learned a great trick on how to lap small blades by sticking a piece of scrap wood on top of the blade. After half hour of lapping, your fingers really thank you for having something a bit more substantial to grip on.
Thank goodness for each iron, you only have lap once. Well, put it this way, the day has gone by quickly and a few of us ended up staying way past the school hours to get them done.
Outside it's raining and I will be riding in the dark for 10-minutes uphill back to the lodge - better start rolling. Up the Creek's owner Martin graciously lends me a bike so I can roam around a little more freely.
Traditionally making the back rail for this chair, you need stock as thick as 3" by 3" because the rail is not laminated to form a curve. He managed to figure out how to do it with a much smaller dimensions by studying the graphics (yes, that graphics - again). He laminates lower grade lumber in the unneeded area mainly for support. Robert re-enacted how to cut this chair rail live in front of us.
Before going there he shows examples how the grain can run along a piece of wood and depending on how you orientate the cut. (hence rift sawn, quarter sawn, and flat sawn techniques came into play), you can actually make the graphic looks happy or sad by just selecting the right grain direction. Here is an example of how the grain can turn a convex and concave shape into a smiley or sad face. This is important as a wrong design of graphics can certainly ruin a beautiful design.
I did not bring a full set of tools so I was provided with a student kit - I was pleasantly surprised to see the nice quality of the tools: the kind that you would normally drool looking at the Lee Valley or Lie Nielsen catalogs :).
Then we proceeded to learn about sharpening. This is a dream come true for me because I have tried for many years to self-teach how to sharpen and to only partial success (mostly I fail with frustration, my iron comes out skewed, the micro bevel is not micro etc). After this I need to guess no more (well actually I kinda lied - I still need a lot of practice, my classmates know that as they hear me curse each time I finished grinding my blades). We first learn how to lap the back of the blade to a shine. This is a painful part, a lot of elbow grease need to be put into this. After getting tender on my fingers, I learned a great trick on how to lap small blades by sticking a piece of scrap wood on top of the blade. After half hour of lapping, your fingers really thank you for having something a bit more substantial to grip on.
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| These are great looking Hock irons |
Thank goodness for each iron, you only have lap once. Well, put it this way, the day has gone by quickly and a few of us ended up staying way past the school hours to get them done.
Outside it's raining and I will be riding in the dark for 10-minutes uphill back to the lodge - better start rolling. Up the Creek's owner Martin graciously lends me a bike so I can roam around a little more freely.
Day 2 - More Sharpening
Today we get to learn the meaning of "hollow grinding". I have read many times about this technique. If I recall, some woodworkers swear by it, others do not want to touch it ever. And I can understand why. This is one of those things, unless you are actually being taught by someone face to face, it is incredibly difficult to visualize. I have tried in the past reading off a book on how to do this and I would rather face a dull blade than learning it. As a result, most of us tend to buy a bevel jig to use with our blade sharpening.
Robert introduced us to these wonderful hand-crank grinder, because you turn it by hand, it can run at slow speed and you won't overhead the metal (you can still feel the heat on the iron if you're not careful moving the iron enough).
Basically we need to learn how to grind (hollow) out the inside part of our bevel edge. There you go, that is as best as I can explain it. Robert and those seniors are pros and they can grind on the bevel right up to the edge without damaging the sharp edge. For us junior grasshoppers on week 1 we are told to leave a tad but I still mess up (post note: I can tell you that I practice grinding so much that my Lie Nielsen iron has at least shrunk over an inch by the end of two weeks ;))
Basically we need to learn how to grind (hollow) out the inside part of our bevel edge. There you go, that is as best as I can explain it. Robert and those seniors are pros and they can grind on the bevel right up to the edge without damaging the sharp edge. For us junior grasshoppers on week 1 we are told to leave a tad but I still mess up (post note: I can tell you that I practice grinding so much that my Lie Nielsen iron has at least shrunk over an inch by the end of two weeks ;))
After that is done, then you can proceed to honing your blade by doing a motion called "heel to toe".
In the end, I put this tiny iron into use in a Lie Nelsen spoke shaver (part of the student kit) - I started having some success, but I still do not have the confidence that I did the whole thing correctly. Robert also brought out a collection of various types of spoke shavers, he also shows us JK's collection, some of these must be many decades old:
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| JK's collection of spoke shaves |
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| Various types of spoke shaves |
Today we also learn how to make a wooden template for tomorrow's work. Robert makes templates out of poplar. This is our first time getting to use one of his super bandsaws (he has a General and giant Davis & Wells) - both purrs as you run your stock through it with no hesitation at all - this is too good for a tool junkie like me...
The night time has come and I bought a few items at the health food store next door (they have a great selection of frozen wild seafood, game meat and fresh vegetables). Tonight my menu will be a venison burger with mixed greens and snow peas...all good
It's raining heavily still and pitch dark, time to ride back to the lodge, need i remind myself: there is a 10-minute steep uphill battle ahead of me.
Day 3 - Setting up my block plane
For this trip, I brought three pieces of my own tool: one Japanese 3mm chisel, a Lie Nielsen low angle block plane and a spoke shave. My block plane and the chisel are the only quality tools that I possess.
Anyway, today Robert gave us a walk through on how to tune a low angle block plane and the type of steel one can get for the iron. He still prefers the "01 steel", as he calls it.
As we have previously hollow-grounded and honed our iron, today is our first chance to try it out. My plane work well on a piece of poplar. But as soon as I tried it on the ash, clearly my sharpening skill is not good enough, I was getting inconsistent and terrible shavings out of my set up.
Anyway, with the help of Caroline (our resident teaching assistant) and Robert, I started to get the hang of it, but I still can't say that I have have grasped the full workflow on sharpening and making the plane sing yet (as Robert would say).
The next lesson was about making a "Gumby" table leg.
Robert has a model for us to examine, why called "Gumby"? I have no idea except that I guess it kinda looks like Gumby himself ;)
The leg looks innocent enough to make however, once he explains the methods to draw out the "graphics" and let the wood grain follow the curvy shape: I have not the slightest idea that there is so much thought to go into a curved table leg! I get to witness how a winding stick used in furniture making and the true meaning of rift sawn lumber...wow so much to take in!!!
Robert has a model for us to examine, why called "Gumby"? I have no idea except that I guess it kinda looks like Gumby himself ;)
The leg looks innocent enough to make however, once he explains the methods to draw out the "graphics" and let the wood grain follow the curvy shape: I have not the slightest idea that there is so much thought to go into a curved table leg! I get to witness how a winding stick used in furniture making and the true meaning of rift sawn lumber...wow so much to take in!!!
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| Following the grain using a winding stick |
By the way, for lunch today I visited the Gumboot Cafe and they make great sandwiches and soups. Every ingredient is organic and the artwork on display by some resident artist is lovely to look at.
Tonight I decided to stay at the school for a bit longer to review, refresh my practice on hollow-grinding and (you guessed it), more sharpening...I hope I am getting the hang of it soon because back at home, I do not have those grinders available to allow me continue with the hollow grinding. Finally I got my stock fully squared now as per Robert's instruction (the cardinal rule of woodworking, how to make a stock square four sides). Tomorrow, we will start to shape it, should be fun.
Outside it is raining again...Tonight I bought myself a piece of locally caught wild sockeye salmon and some organic veggies, will be making myself a nice meal pairing with a glass of BC wine tonight...
Day 4 - the Gumby Leg
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| Dave shaping his Gumby leg |
Today is the big day, we get to make our own Gumby leg. Before getting to that, Robert told us a great story about the art of making the back rail of a Vidar's chair. The chair has a great tradition at Inside Passage.
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| A Vidar prototype |
Traditionally making the back rail for this chair, you need stock as thick as 3" by 3" because the rail is not laminated to form a curve. He managed to figure out how to do it with a much smaller dimensions by studying the graphics (yes, that graphics - again). He laminates lower grade lumber in the unneeded area mainly for support. Robert re-enacted how to cut this chair rail live in front of us.
Before going there he shows examples how the grain can run along a piece of wood and depending on how you orientate the cut. (hence rift sawn, quarter sawn, and flat sawn techniques came into play), you can actually make the graphic looks happy or sad by just selecting the right grain direction. Here is an example of how the grain can turn a convex and concave shape into a smiley or sad face. This is important as a wrong design of graphics can certainly ruin a beautiful design.
Robert showed how he would cut the back rail on the bandsaw. After a series of cut (almost like magic), the vidar's chair rail unfolded in front of our eyes...speechless.
Naturally we are not at that level to learn more about chair making yet. We turn our attention back to work on our miniature table leg. This not just any table leg, the exercise is to take a rift-sawn 4/4 stock and cut into a curvey leg one side, with square edge on the inside part. We get to practice the usage of our winding stick and locating the, you guess it, graphics.
After using our template to draw the shape (we get to make a template out of poplar too), we cut the leg at the bandsaw then we get to work on the finishing with our spokeshave, i think i am getting the hang of this...
After using our template to draw the shape (we get to make a template out of poplar too), we cut the leg at the bandsaw then we get to work on the finishing with our spokeshave, i think i am getting the hang of this...
Before cutting the curve, Robert wants us to practice making a finishing edge on the square side of the stock by just using our low-angle block plane. Robert demonstrated once more how to hollow grind our plane iron and sharpen it to perfection. Once he took care of my own plane, I became a true believer of how sharp and capable a hand tool can be, all of us are starting to be able to create a ready-to-finish edge by just using a block plane, no sanding required!
Tonight, I went back to the Gumboot restaurant, server Kate greeted me again with a big friendly smile. I ordered a Curry Perogies (recommended by buddy Jake) and it was delicious. Now back into the rain, another 10 minute of uphill bike ride - not so bad as I need to work off some calories. Tomorrow's weather forecast promises to be a sunny day(yes, only after 5 days of non-stop rain - so welcome yours truly to Vancouver)
Day 5 - Finishing the Gumby Leg
Wow, waking this up this morning, there is a actually a peek of sunshine, so i decided to ride down to the school a little bit early to see what the beach front looks like. There is a small sea-side parkette but nonetheless quite beautiful with the overcast sky casting a soft light over the long walkway out to the sea. Hmm, another photo opportunity:
Snapped a few pics and back to the class. Today, Robert has two agendas for us: one is to show us how to finish our gumby leg. He is demonstrating to us how to round over the top and flatten bottom edge of the leg by using just one chisel, a spoke shave and the low-angle block plane. The way he maneuvers the endgrain with his super sharp chisel is a joy to watch. After each cut, you literally can see a lovely shine on the wood, as Robert would put it: "ready for finishing". Next, he would use the block plane to make a light round over the straight edges, and the spokeshave for the curve edges.
When it is our turn to try, I decided to use my cheap $3.00 flea market chisel to see if I can tell the difference between a low end chisel versus a fine japanese chisel. I had previously honed a micro-bevel on this chisel based at home. As I looked at my chisel, I realized that it is not completely square so I decided to practice what Robert has taught us on how to dress up a damaged chisel. I proceeded to the sanding machine first to completely blunt out the chisel and concentrated on squaring my chisel edge. Then I turn to the hollow-grind. As I remember, I need to grind all the way to the edge because I have basically blunted my chisel. Then I honed it at 1000, 8000. When I was done I was eager to test out my edge. Then horror! I found that my chisel was in worse shape than before I started this exercise! I took a deep breath, decided to re-try the grinding, honing, then the result was a bit better, but nowhere near usable on endgrain. Then the master Robert came along and showed me once more how to do it right. My theory by using the sander and grinder was correct, but I just did not have the right skill to finish the job. Robert spent less than a minute on both the sander, grinder, then he proceeded straight to the 8000 stone (skipped the 1000 completely). And after three strokes (no joke, only three), he showed me a tiny hone on the edge and says, that's is good enough, and surely: it was good enough!
After lunch, we got a great treat. All the students head over to Robert and Yvonne's house, he is teaching us green lumber cutting this afternoon. He has a piece of Arbutus that is about 4 feet long and 2 feet round. He demonstrated to us how to rift-saw a 3" thick slab of out of each half of the trunk.
Once this non-descript looking piece of wood got opened up into two halves, there comes a beautiful grain and a vivid purple showing through: what a wonderful lesson and yet another precious gift that nature has given us. Robert says that this wood will require approximately seven years of air-dry before you can use it...I am sure someone lucky who is close to Robert & Yvonne will be able to have a beautiful art work made by Inside Passage in the next decade...Meanwhile Robert and Yvonne's cat came by to say hello to the students:
Once this non-descript looking piece of wood got opened up into two halves, there comes a beautiful grain and a vivid purple showing through: what a wonderful lesson and yet another precious gift that nature has given us. Robert says that this wood will require approximately seven years of air-dry before you can use it...I am sure someone lucky who is close to Robert & Yvonne will be able to have a beautiful art work made by Inside Passage in the next decade...Meanwhile Robert and Yvonne's cat came by to say hello to the students:
This is also the final day of week 1 program (Graphics). As an IP tradition, Robert plays one of the lecture spoken by the very James Krenov himself. It was wonderful to be able to hear his voice, it is almost like as if he is still with usy . Along this lecture, Robert plays a slide shows of many pieces of furniture built by JK, Robert and the IP graduates (you can find these in IP web site). All that I can say is, to be able to see the design pieces coming out of this school is just...breathless. I wish someday I could approach to some level of woodworking...I will be a much happier man.
Then the weekend tradition continues at IP, we get to play darts and team #2 (I'm part of team #2) win: I have no idea how to play this game so just tagged along for fun :)
Tomorrow is Saturday, the school is closed however we are welcome to use the facility. I'm planning some sight-seeing then will return to the school to finish my gumby leg...
Going into Cliff Gilker Park on Saturday, fetched me some of these photos:
If you're interested, you can find my favourite photos of Sunshine Coast here : https://plus.google.com/photos/109439940441001088238/albums/6087166076018088273
Going into Cliff Gilker Park on Saturday, fetched me some of these photos:
If you're interested, you can find my favourite photos of Sunshine Coast here : https://plus.google.com/photos/109439940441001088238/albums/6087166076018088273
Day 6 - Making a jointer plane
Today is the start of the 2nd week. Our objective is to make two hand planes by time we end the week. Robert is teaching us how to make a jointer plane. He started by showing us some of the beautiful hand made wooden planes that he and JK have made in the past. Each has its own character and you can see a lot of love have gone into the making of these tools.
Before starting on the theories of making a plane, Robert teaches us first about how to set up cabinet scrapers. He showed us how to put a hook onto our iron. Again, he prefers the Hock iron over any other ones out there and he told us to stay away from those harder steel like A2, it is much too hard to put a good edge and a burr on it. Also, he recommends that we try to find those old Stanley #80 metal scraper holder or Kunz if can find one. Once the scraper is set up and a hook is put on, wow! it can create a beautiful shiny finish on the hard wood and difficult grain surface way better than any fine sanding machine you can find out there. Robert says that you can apply a finish on the woodwork once a piece has been scraped.
Next is a lesson on the plane geometry. He has prepared us the maple wooden block all cut to size. As Robert does not want us to use any rulers for measurement, he showed us how to make a little jig that contains 60 degrees on once side and 45 degrees on another. This becomes our measurement jig for the inside parts of the plane.
Using the jig, we proceeded to cut the plane parts on the bandsaw. After that, using various tools such as the low angle block plane, the scraper, we proceeded to make every part smooth. I finally have learned how to use the block plane on end grain and it now cuts like butter :)
Robert likes to put his special touches on planes by gouging out tiny specs of wood on the inside part of the plane, he prefers to call these the "canadian" beaver thumb prints :). Now our turn to learn how to make those thumb prints by using a gouge. This is my first time gouging any woodwork and man, I think it is more harder than cutting a straight line.
Speaking of gouging and carving, buddy Spencer is a marvel, he can do all the assignments and make little gadgets like this:
Also check out what Jake can make in his free time!
Speaking of gouging and carving, buddy Spencer is a marvel, he can do all the assignments and make little gadgets like this:
Also check out what Jake can make in his free time!
Well, it was a long and productive day today. Tomorrow, there is lots more to learn...
Riding home on my bicycle this evening. The snow decides to come down. I heard snow is rare in this corner of the world, I guess I brought with me the artic eastern weather to Sunshine Coast, it has been sub-zero temperatures and snow over the whole weekend...time to go home and prepare my organic chicken with roast vegs, I'd say a glass of red is also in order after a long day's work.
Day 7 - Making a jointer plane
Today we continue our journey into making the jointer plane.We had to learn how to temporarily hold the plane together by dowelling into four corners of the plane. These dowel holes are drilled into place using a wonderful boring machine (also made by Davis and Wells). Robert gave us a great tutorials on how to use these machines safely and how to dry fit the plane pieces before making the holes. Although the process is trivial, the steps are difficult to explain so I won't bother here. Next we need to lap and hone our metal chip breaker. The iron and breaker are made by Hock so they are substantial in dimensions. Then comes making the pin that runs across the plane. This part is interesting: it is a tiny pin maybe 1 inch and quarter max in length and we need to use various tools to shape it out of a square stock into a rounded pin that will fit into 1/4 holes.
The entire process took the whole day, all the plane parts are slowly coming into shape. Robert says that we will be making another one by ourselves once this one is completed. I really look forward to that because as much note taking as I can do, there are many steps involved and the only way to remember them is to make a number of these planes.
Tonight the sky is nice and clear so I decided to walk toward the water front to snap some photos, we'll see if they will turn out ok or not. For dinner, I have some halibut cheeks which I bought at Sharky's Fish Store - they sell wonderful fresh fish and chips, fresh and smoked fish. I think I am going to make a creamy spaghetti sauce for my halibut tonight...hmmm, i wonder what goes into a carbonara sauce, time to think about dinner instead of woodworking...some more BC red wine is also ready to be served.
The entire process took the whole day, all the plane parts are slowly coming into shape. Robert says that we will be making another one by ourselves once this one is completed. I really look forward to that because as much note taking as I can do, there are many steps involved and the only way to remember them is to make a number of these planes.
Tonight the sky is nice and clear so I decided to walk toward the water front to snap some photos, we'll see if they will turn out ok or not. For dinner, I have some halibut cheeks which I bought at Sharky's Fish Store - they sell wonderful fresh fish and chips, fresh and smoked fish. I think I am going to make a creamy spaghetti sauce for my halibut tonight...hmmm, i wonder what goes into a carbonara sauce, time to think about dinner instead of woodworking...some more BC red wine is also ready to be served.
Day 8 - Making a 2nd wooden plane
Today we first learn how to glue up our jointer plane. There is more that meets the eyes. Robert explain to us about various types of glue that he and JK would use. White glue is sufficient for the Canadian hard wood such as Maple. Robert is working with an exotic wood that is more oily (Indian Rosewood) so he first wipes everything down with acetone. Robert is very conscious about using non toxic materials in his shop so with this acetone he is not a fan of it but he admits it works well for removing the oil off the wood. For his plane, he uses the Titebond III (waterproof glue). He took an extra precaution and scores the surfaces with a fine tooth saw to ensure a tight glue adhesion.
Next is our turn. We get to work in pairs in case one needs a hand as the glue open time is only about 10 minutes before it hardens. After we are done with our glue-up, we get to move on the next lesson which I found very interesting: metal working. Robert begins to show us how to make our own little hammer using brass stock. We get to see his boring machine in action again and this time, it uses a bit that can work with brass and metal (apparently you can use the same bit for wood too). Watching the precision drilling machine move around is just amazing. I can't wait to get to my turn to play with that machine but we have still a lot of woodworking yet to do.
We turn our attention back to making our own plane, this time we get to mill from rough stock. This allows us to practise what we have learned in the last two days in wood plane making as well as hands-on work on how to mill from rough stock.
After lunch, Robert gave us yet another side treat: he shows us how to take an old metal file and turn it into a plane iron - how cool is that! he says even the pointed part of the file can be salvaged to make a great, short chisel. This part is amazing to me as I never get to see iron works and have never heard of such thing as annealing. This afternoon he uses a hot torch to heat the iron into red hot to make it malleable.
By the time the iron cools, he turns that old file into a flat surface (he ground off the milled edges), put it through the boring machine to make a slot, then he grinds the edge into a plane profile. Apparently this is the very same method done by the Ron Hock for his famous Hock planes. Then comes the hardening process of the steel: Robert reheats that same iron again to almost red hot then dips it into peanut oil! yes peanut oil...
Wow what an eventful day, and we are yet to go back to continue with our block plane.
The evening comes quickly and I don't feel like cooking so I visited the Gumboot restaurant, I heard that there may be a band playing there and sure enough, there is a trio performing. They churned out fantastic electro-jazz. I even managed to get a front row table enjoying my beer and a wonderful meal while these fantastic musicians play on.
After a great meal, I went back to the school and continued working various parts of the plane a bit more, I have to use my Lie Nielsen block plane so much this evening that my thumb is starting to form a blister :(
The clock just hit 09:00pm so it is time to call it a evening. I get the joy of riding up that hill again on Robert's Creek Road before hitting the sack...
Today is the continuation of the making of the 2nd plane. There is much to catch up as I only have two days left and I have not laid out any of the markings yet and already I have forgotten most of the steps. Before we can proceed, Robert is teaching us yet another very interesting topic: how to custom make a chip breaker for the iron. Yesterday he showed up how to anneal the steel from a worn out file. Today, he uses a piece of steel and made a slot for the screw, then he shape the profile by tracing the iron edge to the piece of steel and free hand ground it to shape. Watching him work with both metal and wood is just a joy. Next, we learned how to tap the thread into the breaker by using the tapping drill. Wonderful. He even shows us how to create a bent profile for the chip breaker once the screw hole is completed.
Finally we are back to our own project working on the plane. I am falling a bit behind so I need to hurry up, which is not a good thing in woodworking because there are so many steps to do and one mistake will cause a rework. In fact, as I was near glue-up stage, Robert inspects my side piece for the plane and he notices a defect in the wood so he told me to mill another piece from scratch! As if there is not enough pressure, ah but all is good practice to remember how to dress a piece of wood four-side square again, I get to play with the jointer and thickness planer.
Finally I get go back to working my first plane and I cut it to dimension. Look at this paper thin cut I am able to rip out of the top my first plane using the bandsaw, it is indeed nicely tuned and has a sharp blade.
Now that I have my 2nd piece of stock milled to square and dressed (I use the scraper to clean up the saw marks), I use this time to glue up my block plane so I can do the final assembly tomorrow (it will be my last day here). I also got the opportunity to do some final touches on my jointer plane and for the first time, I get to test drive it: the shavings start to appear from test runs on a piece of poplar...Yes! my first ever hand-built hand plane with Robert's teaching, this plane can "sing" - as Robert would put it...I feel like being serenaded by a piece of 2x4 - a fine piece of 2x4 indeed...
As I look across the room, Jake is baby'ing his dovetails tonight for his Wabi cabinet project and I don't blame him, his attention to details and the workmanship is just out of this world, hats off to you Jake.
It's 9.30pm, the rain has started again. I biked back to the B&B, I had in mind to make a spaghetti sauce with blend of bison meat and black cod - yes it is a bit of a weird combo but I need to finish all my belongings in the fridge, so it will be a pot-pouri of everything - actually it turns out quite delicious...the red wine to pair with definitely does a fine job...
It's hard to believe that two weeks are going by. Today marks my final day at the school. I still have a lot to do, I have to fit up my 2nd plane (I glued it up last night) and still a hammer to make. Robert started the class by showing us a number of new things: first we had a treat on seeing two methods of setting a brass hammer head into a hand made wood handles (he is making two hammers). Both are fit using mortise and tenon joints but each tenons has a distinct shape. Robert makes these curved wooden handles that are really comfortable to hold, does not matter if you hold it with your left or right hand, they just feel great.
He also shows us how to custom fabricate a drilling jig that can mount on top of a table saw to work as a boring machine. I am very excited about this because it will be an eye opener and will be a good addition to my own shop some day. It consists of a few pulleys, a drill chuck and a drive belt, all off-the-shelf parts that we can buy and assemble - sweet.
He goes back to hand planes and talks to us about how to shape a plane that suits our personal needs. He brought out a number of JK's own planes for us to feel the shapes. Apparently JK loves to make planes using Vera wood. It certainly has a nice heft.
Then Robert sets us loose. I proceeded to check out my glued up plane and started tracing the final shape based on one of Robert's favourites; it just feels right in my palm. After following all the steps in the provided notebook, I have myself now a second hand plane that I can call my own :) By this time, I am running short on time so I did not go ahead to smoothen the edges, I'll do that when I return to home.
I then turn my attention to making the hammer. I used the brass stock and cut two pieces for the hammer head. I wanted to make two because I wanted to know if there would be a difference if my handle swoops to the left or right. I figure I can only have time to make one today so I will take the 2nd one home to practice. Robert lets us choose a piece of wood that suits us from his personal pile that is stocked high on the 2nd shelf - he calls it a "stairway to heaven" - I can see why, he definitely has a great selection of exotic stuff that I would have any idea how to tell the species.
In the end, I chose a piece that Robert says it's Afromosia...OK, sounds exotic enough to me. After a few nervous moments, I manage to rough cut two handles from a single piece of stock. I followed the grain direction based on the Graphics lesson that we learned from week 1, making sure that it is rift-sawn of course (from now on, I can no longer look at wood that is plain-sawn, for this I can only blame Inside Passage for turning me into a wood snob).
By now it is already 4pm when the machine room needs to shut down. This marks the end of my journey with Robert's wonderful machine room, but I am allowed to stay late in the class room which I intend to this evening so I can finish my hammer.
It is Friday's evening thus the Inside Passage's tradition ensues: Robert plays the 2nd episode of JK's lesson, this time he gives a lecture on hand planes. While the lesson is played, the slide shows of various objects and cabinets made by JK(?) were just wonderful to watch. At this point, I could not help but think of a photo of JK placed in Robert's tool cabinet:
Also tonight two visitors showed up. Mike (a returning student) and David, an alumnus and an avid turner. David brought over some homemade cold smoked salmon for us to try (very delicious) and also he raffles out a couple of counter sinks with custom-turned handle. My classmate Andy took the prize and for some suspicious reasons, I got the 2nd lucky draw (I never win anything in raffles). Either I am a lucky man today or, I think Yvonne/Robert just do not want me to steal theirs so they'd rather me take a new one :), thank you David for a nice present.
Robert and Yvonne also presented me with a nice student certificate for completing two courses with them. I am super happy about this and again, I wish I could stay for the entire series.
The tradition continues by a game of darts in the machine room and of course, team 1 won this time cause I'm with team 1 ;)
We ended the evening in a very harmonious way, I receive many hugs of goodbyes from all the friends that I have made just two weeks ago. I don't want to sound sentimental but watching how all the students and IP staff act as one warm family, I certainly feel like an IP member. So going back to my own question of choosing IP: I think these guys/gals have answered for me. Robert cited a few stories and he coined this phrase a couple times that also sinks into me: this is also a "life changing" experience for me, really. So to everyone that I have met, I would like to say a goodbye for now but I know that I have gained your friendship and I can't wait to see your beautiful creations in some galleries around the world...
Here is my gallery of a few more pictures from IP:
Yours Truly
HT
Next is our turn. We get to work in pairs in case one needs a hand as the glue open time is only about 10 minutes before it hardens. After we are done with our glue-up, we get to move on the next lesson which I found very interesting: metal working. Robert begins to show us how to make our own little hammer using brass stock. We get to see his boring machine in action again and this time, it uses a bit that can work with brass and metal (apparently you can use the same bit for wood too). Watching the precision drilling machine move around is just amazing. I can't wait to get to my turn to play with that machine but we have still a lot of woodworking yet to do.
We turn our attention back to making our own plane, this time we get to mill from rough stock. This allows us to practise what we have learned in the last two days in wood plane making as well as hands-on work on how to mill from rough stock.
After lunch, Robert gave us yet another side treat: he shows us how to take an old metal file and turn it into a plane iron - how cool is that! he says even the pointed part of the file can be salvaged to make a great, short chisel. This part is amazing to me as I never get to see iron works and have never heard of such thing as annealing. This afternoon he uses a hot torch to heat the iron into red hot to make it malleable.
By the time the iron cools, he turns that old file into a flat surface (he ground off the milled edges), put it through the boring machine to make a slot, then he grinds the edge into a plane profile. Apparently this is the very same method done by the Ron Hock for his famous Hock planes. Then comes the hardening process of the steel: Robert reheats that same iron again to almost red hot then dips it into peanut oil! yes peanut oil...
Wow what an eventful day, and we are yet to go back to continue with our block plane.
The evening comes quickly and I don't feel like cooking so I visited the Gumboot restaurant, I heard that there may be a band playing there and sure enough, there is a trio performing. They churned out fantastic electro-jazz. I even managed to get a front row table enjoying my beer and a wonderful meal while these fantastic musicians play on.
After a great meal, I went back to the school and continued working various parts of the plane a bit more, I have to use my Lie Nielsen block plane so much this evening that my thumb is starting to form a blister :(
The clock just hit 09:00pm so it is time to call it a evening. I get the joy of riding up that hill again on Robert's Creek Road before hitting the sack...
Day 9 - Making a 2nd wooden plane (continued)
Finally we are back to our own project working on the plane. I am falling a bit behind so I need to hurry up, which is not a good thing in woodworking because there are so many steps to do and one mistake will cause a rework. In fact, as I was near glue-up stage, Robert inspects my side piece for the plane and he notices a defect in the wood so he told me to mill another piece from scratch! As if there is not enough pressure, ah but all is good practice to remember how to dress a piece of wood four-side square again, I get to play with the jointer and thickness planer.
Finally I get go back to working my first plane and I cut it to dimension. Look at this paper thin cut I am able to rip out of the top my first plane using the bandsaw, it is indeed nicely tuned and has a sharp blade.
Now that I have my 2nd piece of stock milled to square and dressed (I use the scraper to clean up the saw marks), I use this time to glue up my block plane so I can do the final assembly tomorrow (it will be my last day here). I also got the opportunity to do some final touches on my jointer plane and for the first time, I get to test drive it: the shavings start to appear from test runs on a piece of poplar...Yes! my first ever hand-built hand plane with Robert's teaching, this plane can "sing" - as Robert would put it...I feel like being serenaded by a piece of 2x4 - a fine piece of 2x4 indeed...
As I look across the room, Jake is baby'ing his dovetails tonight for his Wabi cabinet project and I don't blame him, his attention to details and the workmanship is just out of this world, hats off to you Jake.
It's 9.30pm, the rain has started again. I biked back to the B&B, I had in mind to make a spaghetti sauce with blend of bison meat and black cod - yes it is a bit of a weird combo but I need to finish all my belongings in the fridge, so it will be a pot-pouri of everything - actually it turns out quite delicious...the red wine to pair with definitely does a fine job...
Day 10 - Final day at the school
He also shows us how to custom fabricate a drilling jig that can mount on top of a table saw to work as a boring machine. I am very excited about this because it will be an eye opener and will be a good addition to my own shop some day. It consists of a few pulleys, a drill chuck and a drive belt, all off-the-shelf parts that we can buy and assemble - sweet.
He goes back to hand planes and talks to us about how to shape a plane that suits our personal needs. He brought out a number of JK's own planes for us to feel the shapes. Apparently JK loves to make planes using Vera wood. It certainly has a nice heft.
Then Robert sets us loose. I proceeded to check out my glued up plane and started tracing the final shape based on one of Robert's favourites; it just feels right in my palm. After following all the steps in the provided notebook, I have myself now a second hand plane that I can call my own :) By this time, I am running short on time so I did not go ahead to smoothen the edges, I'll do that when I return to home.
 |
| Modelling after Robert's Plane |
 |
| Rough cut mine to shape |
I then turn my attention to making the hammer. I used the brass stock and cut two pieces for the hammer head. I wanted to make two because I wanted to know if there would be a difference if my handle swoops to the left or right. I figure I can only have time to make one today so I will take the 2nd one home to practice. Robert lets us choose a piece of wood that suits us from his personal pile that is stocked high on the 2nd shelf - he calls it a "stairway to heaven" - I can see why, he definitely has a great selection of exotic stuff that I would have any idea how to tell the species.
 |
| Staiway to Heaven |
In the end, I chose a piece that Robert says it's Afromosia...OK, sounds exotic enough to me. After a few nervous moments, I manage to rough cut two handles from a single piece of stock. I followed the grain direction based on the Graphics lesson that we learned from week 1, making sure that it is rift-sawn of course (from now on, I can no longer look at wood that is plain-sawn, for this I can only blame Inside Passage for turning me into a wood snob).
By now it is already 4pm when the machine room needs to shut down. This marks the end of my journey with Robert's wonderful machine room, but I am allowed to stay late in the class room which I intend to this evening so I can finish my hammer.
 |
| My first ever made hammer |
Also tonight two visitors showed up. Mike (a returning student) and David, an alumnus and an avid turner. David brought over some homemade cold smoked salmon for us to try (very delicious) and also he raffles out a couple of counter sinks with custom-turned handle. My classmate Andy took the prize and for some suspicious reasons, I got the 2nd lucky draw (I never win anything in raffles). Either I am a lucky man today or, I think Yvonne/Robert just do not want me to steal theirs so they'd rather me take a new one :), thank you David for a nice present.
 |
| Andy and Dave |
 |
| Hey that's my countersinker! Admired by Dave, Jake and Yvonne |
Robert and Yvonne also presented me with a nice student certificate for completing two courses with them. I am super happy about this and again, I wish I could stay for the entire series.
The tradition continues by a game of darts in the machine room and of course, team 1 won this time cause I'm with team 1 ;)
We ended the evening in a very harmonious way, I receive many hugs of goodbyes from all the friends that I have made just two weeks ago. I don't want to sound sentimental but watching how all the students and IP staff act as one warm family, I certainly feel like an IP member. So going back to my own question of choosing IP: I think these guys/gals have answered for me. Robert cited a few stories and he coined this phrase a couple times that also sinks into me: this is also a "life changing" experience for me, really. So to everyone that I have met, I would like to say a goodbye for now but I know that I have gained your friendship and I can't wait to see your beautiful creations in some galleries around the world...
Here is my gallery of a few more pictures from IP:
Yours Truly
HT
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