Making these things is a process. It takes about 4 weeks to complete one, from rough lumber to the finished product with properly cured finish. I quite enjoy the process. It’s fun to see a pre-industrial navigational instrument come to life beneath my fingers.

I also enjoyed the process of developing the process despite the challenges and frustrations.

One of the larger-picture goals with my business is to establish myself as an instrument maker. Not musical instruments (that would be a luthier), but navigational, mathematical, measuring devices, things like that. The problem with this is there’s no roadmap for how to do it.

Sure, there’s a lot of period treatises out there on these instruments. They lay out the principles of how the instruments work, the mathematics behind them, sometimes you even get a drawing or diagram or something. Every so often you get tantalizing bits from these manuals on what type of wood to use or some specific detail. But nothing on how to actually make them.

There’s a surprising amount of original instruments out in the world. Most are in museum collections though a few are in private hands. The problem is they’re considered rare and monetarily valuable. So chances are slim to nil that you’ll get to touch one yourself unless you’re a wealthy museum donor or the good friend of a collector. Fortunately a lot of places put excellent photos of navigational instruments up online. It’s not the same as getting to actually handle and measure an item but better than nothing at all.

Which leads us to the Sacrifices to the Gods of Joinery and Navigation.

I’ve put a lot of work into figuring out what a backstaff / Davis Quadrant looks like. What they’re made of. What the joinery looks like. Their sizes, how they function, all the details. Which led to materials lists, spreadsheets of measurements (real and extrapolated), lots of time at the drafting table creating drawings and parts diagrams.

Then you get to the business of actually making the thing.

The first patterns I created from the drawings weren’t perfect. That led to improperly sized and shaped parts. Which led to making more patterns and cutting more parts.

There’s a lot of complex joinery in a backstaff. I messed up a lot of joints before I got it right. Then a few more before I got it consistent.

Wood is an unruly material. It’s not human-made so it is not consistent or homogenous. You have to figure out the best way to align parts to take advantage of the wood’s grain and minimize weak points and possible unruliness. Especially with curved parts. Then you have to factor in that wood moves and changes, which affects how you use it to make a precision instrument.

Engraving scales is one of the largest challenges to making a navigational instrument. That has to be right or the instrument doesn’t work. And you only get one shot at it. If you mess it up, the part is ruined. You can’t just erase it and start over. Yes, I messed that up a few times before I figured out a process to do it consistently.

All the parts make a whole object in both a literal and metaphorical sense. That’s the fun and the challenge of all this which keep me up and night as well as create the reward of doing it.

I went into all this knowing I’d have to lay numerous sacrifices on the Altar of Process to appease the Gods of Joinery and Navigation. That’s just how it works. You have to mess up a lot to really understand the pieces and how they make a whole. Nothing I make, from instruments to furniture to pole lathes, goes without some sort of hiccup or hangup.

And that’s not for a lack of knowledge or planning or whatever. It’s the price you pay and the lessons you learn when orchestrating your skills, hands, tools, materials, and plans into the Grand Opera of a finished product.

It’s easy to forget that and be terribly hard on yourself when things don’t go smoothly. At least it is for me. That’s why I leave a few busted parts, off-kilter patterns, and other miscues around my shop. Figuring out how to make things is difficult but not insurmountable, especially if you’re open to learning lessons from the experience.

All the Sacrifices to the Gods of Joinery and Navigation keep me grounded, tell me to give myself grace and understanding, and remind me to trust the lessons of the process.

The backstaff got the most questions. Between it and the Gunner’s Quadrant, it’s more complicated and visually interesting. Everyone wanted to know how it works, what era it’s from, stuff like that.

The questions I heard most often pertained to why I’d make something like a backstaff.

Now that’s a can of worms. One that I’ll open for you a little bit today.

I worked in the museum / public history field in my past life. Some of that time was with historic ships, mainly the Cruiser Olympia. Olympia is the oldest extant American steel hulled warship and the only survivor of the Spanish-American War (1898). Olympia served through the Great War and its immediate aftermath and brought the American Unknown Solder home in 1921.

I did a lot of pubic programming aboard Olympia, mainly about life in the U.S. Navy from 1895-1922. This included topics like eating / cooking; daily routines; celestial navigation; gunnery; and the ship’s machinery. My specific interests were gunnery and navigation.

It is quite difficult to explain such things to visitors in the absence of the right tools and equipment. That meant I had to either find it or make it. This led to a huge research project on the proper equipment and how to use it.

For example, I learned how the U.S. Navy tried solving the problem of hitting what they shoot at while at sea. This includes knowing where your target is: figuring out how far away it is, what direction its going, and how fast. So I found a period rangefinder, repaired it, and learned to use it. I found and made direction finding equipment. I learned how to do a “gunnery plot” in real time, using a slide rule. Then I taught others how to do it so we could demonstrate it to visitors, plotting the courses of ships and boats going by Olympia.

That was a fun and tremendously rewarding experience. And it’s something I want to carry through my current woodworking business.

There’s a lot of people out there who want things like backstaffs in order to talk about celestial navigation. They want to learn it and demonstrate it. But often don’t have the time or means to make something as involved as a backstaff.

That’s where I want to fit into the picture.

I love being a maker of things. I also love the research and discovery that comes along with it, especially in making historic items. I also know what it’s like to talk with the public and explain the material culture of a bygone time. What I want for my Current Life is to use my skills and expertise to help fill in the gaps with things like obscure mathematical and navigational devices.

That, dear readers, is why I make backstaffs (and Gunner’s Quadrants and…).

Spring-Pole Lathe

I want a lathe for my shop and I want to make a spring-pole lathe. So I’m scratching both itches by building one inspired by Roy Underhill’s design which is based on an early-modern German design. I like Roy’s design because it has a small footprint (great for my small shop), you can break it down and stow it (also great for my small shop), it has a double-spring that’s powerful and compact (also also great for my small shop), and it looked like a fun project that’s a good bit larger than some of the stuff I usually make.

I’ve completed the frame, which is quite the sturdy piece of equipment. Next is to do all the moving parts and get to turning some stuff!

This project has been good on a few levels. Not only am I getting a functional lathe, but it’s reminded me that I don’t need to kill myself on certain parts of projects. For example, I hand flattened and squared a few pieces and remembered how time and labor intensive this is. So the rest found its way into my thickness planer and saved me a couple days of work. As fellow woodworker recently reminded me, use your “apprentices” (here machine tools) to save time and labor for the more skilled parts.

Stay tuned as this project proceeds!

Corn-Hole Boards

This was supposed to be a quick project for my wife and me, to amuse ourselves in the back yard as the weather here in Oregon gets nice.

But is wasn’t.

Assembly was a piece of cake, took a couple hours. The painting was the hangup. I wanted to paint them with fresh milk paint, a la ’s wonderful book. My wife and I picked our colors, made up the paint, and we each took a board to slather with color. This ended up a disaster.

NOT because of the paint. Because of me…I own all the mistakes made here…ha! First mistake, I used the jankiest plywood for the tops that Big Box Hardware Store had to offer…because it was cheap and I thought, well, I’m just going to paint it…famous last words. Second mistake, I didn’t seal the wood before painting. I made a wood filler from hide glue and sawdust to fill in some gaps. So that, combined with the less-than-great plywood, meant that when we applied the paint, the grain raised like Venetian blinds. It was UGLY.

There was no way to save it. I used my scrub plane to remove a layer. Then got smart and gave it a healthy coating of shellac. It’s currently waiting for a quick sanding and re-application of paint. Stay tuned for that, too.

And learn from my mistakes. If you use fresh milk paint on bargain plywood, seal it first.

Workshop on Laminated Bent Wood Techniques and Veneer Making

The Mid-Willamette Woodworkers Guild organized a workshop on laminated bent wood techniques and veneer making with local woodworker and all-around nice guy Nick Clark. Nick uses these techniques to make all sorts of amazing stuff. Check out his website to see some of his work!

Nick discussed the process of how to cut bendable strips to suit your project, how to make forms, the qualities of several types of glues you can use, how to think through your design in creating bent laminate pieces, and how to make and apply your own veneers.

I wasn’t sure how or if I could use any of this information but was quite keen on seeing the process. Especially seeing Nick’s work. Now I can think of 100 things I can make with it, starting with repair work. I’ll certainly write more on this as I dive into it.

Mariner’s Backstaff

This is something I’ve been working toward for a while! It follows on the mid-19th century artillery gunner’s quadrants I made last autumn.

A mariner’s backstaff is a device created in the late 16th century that allows you to measure the angle of the sun or other celestial bodies relative to the horizon. You use that information to figure out your latitude. The backstaff is a precursor to the Octant, which is a precursor to the Sextant, which is a precursor to GPS. Here’s more info on what a backstaff is.

I’ve done a lot of research on backstaff sizes, how they’re made, what they’re made from, markings, details, & etc. I’m working on a set of drawings, based on my research, from which I’ll make up a prototype to test my measurements and such. Then on to building a “real” one.

This will be my main focus the next month. In part because I’m entering one in an upcoming show hosted by the Mid-Willamette Woodworkers Guild. And in part because I’ve got some potential customers waiting on me to make a few…

One of the big things of the week is being disappointed and frankly heartbroken over the behavior and actions of some people who I’d celebrated and looked to as role models and heroes. It’s made me think a lot about my own moral compass and doing the right thing in life, even if it’s hard.

This is quite important to me as a woodworker and small business owner. I never want anyone, no matter who they are, to feel uncomfortable around me or in my shop. I want fellow woodworkers to share and collaborate and share in the joy of what we do. And I want to always do right by customers, owning my mistakes and working to make things right when they go wrong.

I’ve spent a lot of time watching Star Trek, all of the series. One of the things I realize as I get older (and hopefully wiser) is how much of my own moral compass comes from the show.

Before someone tries calling me out…I know Gene Roddenberry is a problematic figure, as well as some of the actors / actresses / producers, & etc. That’s a different debate for a different day.

The important thing for me is how Star Trek laid bare life’s difficulties. That we’re faced with sometimes impossible choices and have to live with the consequences. It started with the pilot episode (“The Cage”, 1966), where Capt. Christopher Pike proclaimed “…you either live life—bruises, skinned knees and all—or you turn your back on in and start dying.”

Hearing that was powerful. And seeing how the characters “live life”, experience triumph, tragedy, doom, and glory. They fail and succeed and fail again. These themes carried through “The Original Series” through “The Next Generation”. I soaked it all in, watching “The Original Series” in syndication on grainy UHF channels and “The Next Generation” in it’s first run.

Star Trek covered a lot of ground. It gave a youngster like me a space to think through life and choices and meaning. The show demonstrated you can do the right thing even if it’s the “wrong” thing to do. And that, in the end, you have to live with your own conscience.

I remember seeing the Star Trek exhibition at the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum in the early 1990s. One of the biggest takeaways was the section on what the show meant to viewers. That was the first time I’d encountered an exhibition that dove into the meaning of pop culture. I was a youngster then, didn’t quite grasp a lot of what I saw. But it stuck with me how much people looked to Star Trek as moral compass. It showed people that you can be imperfect in an imperfect world and fail and seek redemption. Or not. The choice is yours.

As I progress in life, I think back to Star Trek often. It guides me more than many of you may realize, more than I probably realize. I hope that in my life, my craft, my business, that I’d be the type of person who’d make Capt. Picard proud.

My parting shot is from Star Trek: Picard, “Two of One” (2022), by Jean-Luc Picard himself:
“I’ve found that even in the darkest circumstances, there is a light. Sometimes only a glimmer. Trust that light. Find a way back. No matter what it takes.”

Bob Ross, unbeknownst to him, encouraged my drawing, painting, and creativity. One of my favorite indulgences was catching “The Joy of Painting” on PBS after school. It wasn’t Bob’s style, content, or process that struck me. It was the facts that 1.) Bob seemed to genuinely enjoy what he did and 2.) mistakes weren’t mistakes so much as opportunities. “We don’t have mistakes, we have happy accidents”, he famously said.

That was liberating to a goofy kid in junior high school. Enjoy what you do and don’t dwell on mistakes. Learn, grow, and move on.

Roy Underhill taught me the same lesson in a different way with “The Woodwright’s Shop.” That show was another PBS after school indulgence that got me thinking about woodworking. I loved watching him create things and mess up along the way. He’d drop tools, muck cuts, have band-aids on his fingers, but always joyfully create something amazing and teach me something in the process. What Roy did became even more meaningful to me later in life when I learned that he did most of his programs in one take, letting things happen organically and sometimes not according to plan.

Bob and Roy are, in my humble estimation, amazing people. Not because they created great things or inspired a generation or two. But because they are real people who managed to do what they did despite their imperfections.

The lessons I learned from them are to do things that bring you joy; to embrace being yourself; to turn limitations and mistakes into opportunities; to be creative despite what someone else thinks.

I also learned to not take myself too seriously. That doesn’t mean belittling myself or not believing in myself. It means I’m one person and there’s only so much I can do, that I’m not perfect, that I can learn and grow and contribute. It especially means that failure and setbacks are not the end.

I mess up a lot in my shop. I make poor design choices, cut things the wrong way, drop tools, and dislocate fingers with a hammer (that really hurts by the way, I don’t recommend it). None of that discourages me or makes me feel like I can’t do woodworking.

It all reminds me to take a deep breath, go have a coffee, embrace the “happy accidents”, don’t be too hard on myself, and get back to working wood.

I’m not the only person who jumped in on fresh milk paint. A lot of folks (including some of you) grabbed this idea and ran hard with it. There’s so many awesome chairs, tool chests, tables, and other nifty things that now have coatings of glorious fresh milk paint.

I present you my first offering to the fresh milk paint gods: a trim board in the stairwell of my house. There’s not much to it. Just a simple pine board that covers fasteners poking through the wall. Painted plain old white. In a rather inconspicuous place. It’s pretty forgettable, you’d likely never notice it or that it’s painted with paint I made unless I told you. Very mundane.

To me, though, it’s magnificent.

I make my own finishes and wanted to make paints (both milk and oil) for a lot of reasons. One is to reduce the amount of toxic stuff my family and I are exposed to on a regular basis. Another is to broaden the spectrum on colors I can use, because I am not thrilled by the various shades of blue and gray that are commercially available in most paints.

I also want choices in finishes, both for my shop and my home. I love color and texture, light and shadow. I want people who buy my work to be excited about seeing and touching it. I want my work and living spaces to be pretty, comfortable, and non-toxic. You don’t get so many options with commercial finishes.

I know, there’s a lot of good stuff out there and we can discuss that from now to eternity. Those products, however good they are, are not what I want. I want to be part of the process, to understand how the finishes work, how to apply them, how to repair them, how to talk about them. Buying stuff off the shelf doesn’t get me there. I need to do it in order to really get it.

Making fresh milk paint and other finishes is empowering. It gets me excited about making things. It even helps me not dread working on my own house…one of the things I hate most about house repairs is painting…and now that I can make paint, I plan on using fresh milk paint and oil paint as much as possible.

I know that making finishes, especially paints, isn’t for everyone. I’d encourage all of you to try it at least once. If you like it, you have something magnificent you can use on all your projects. If not, you’ve learned something and that’s magnificent too.

Here’s the link to Nick’s book, Make Fresh Milk Paint, from Lost Art Press!

My goals were to build a rack with removable frames that can be used to dry herbs, flowers, & etc. from a garden; come up with my own design that is scalable up or down; use minimal metal fasteners in the construction; and use shop made glue and finish.

I started at the drafting table, playing around with shapes and sizes. I’d looked at similar racks for inspiration and considered some of their features. In the end used my own design that can incorporate a lot of surface area with minimal but strong framing. Once I had the drawings I made a cut list and headed to a local lumber yard!

I chose fir for the build. It’s light, strong (enough) for the purpose, had a nice grain pattern, and was inexpensive. I got it to the shop, stacked it with stickers, and let it sit for a while to acclimate.

The first challenge in this project started as soon as I cut into the wood. I did not anticipate how chippy this fir would be. By that I mean it splinters easily when sawn and chiseled and has terrible tear-out when planed. The latter wouldn’t have been such a big deal but this wood had lots of interlocking grain that suddenly shifted directions when you weren’t paying attention. (But at least it is pretty?)

This meant being extra careful to take small cuts, keep all tools super sharp, and make sure to look at grain direction as much as I could figure it out. I still had a lot of blowout and tears despite care and caution. As an added bonus, I ended up with a lovely 1/8” long splinter in a finger that left a scar…nothing like a nice wood tattoo.

Doing the joinery was a lot of fun. The individual frames are four pieces connected with bridle joints that I reinforced with pegs. The case uses dovetails at the top edges and wedged through tenons for the reinforcing struts. Rails for the frames are held in tight fitting dados. There are two stops on the back of the case to keep the frames from sliding through. These are set in rabbets and then pegged in place.

The screens are held to the frames with four battens attached with brass screws. I cut these out with a thin-strip jig on my table saw. I left the bottoms of the battens rough ( I didn’t remove the saw marks and didn’t scrape it smooth ) so as to give them purchase on the screens.

Everything is finished with a coat of pure linseed oil, followed by a coat of shop-made linseed oil wax.

Another challenge of this project is its scale. It’s a big thing, standing 48” tall and with a footprint of 26” x 20”. Plus there’s nine racks. That means a lot of joinery, lots of pilot and clearance holes for the screws. Everything takes longer than you think it will. Especially when you have to cut 36 bridle joints, make 82 pegs, cut 36 dados, drill 162 pilot holes, & etc. This was done almost entirely with hand tools too. Cutting all this out with hand tools isn’t an issue, I can do that sort of work fairly quickly. For me, it’s keeping focus while doing so much repetition. I lost focus a few times and when I did, I had blow outs, wandering saw lines, and other stuff I had to repair.

I give myself some grace on the size issue because this rack, though it will be used, is meant to be a prototype. I want to make these for sale. So working out the process is just as valuable as at the finished project. The ones I’ll sell likely won’t be this big. But if I can make one this big I can certainly make one smaller. My plans are such that I can easily resize and still use some of the templates and jigs I made while building this one.

A challenge beyond my control was sourcing brass screws. I don’t have easy access to some things where I live. And some things I do have access to are so expensive I can’t feasibly use them in things I make for sale. Getting cheap stuff from overseas sellers isn’t the best option given the added costs of imports over the past year. This means a lot of hunting for places vendors who can provide quality products at prices that are cost-effective for a small business. I try to source as much I can locally but this is often impossible.

In the end, I’m happy with how the drying rack turned out. There’s always things I can do better and mistakes I could’ve avoided. Such is life. The valuable parts are that I’ve developed a product I can easily reproduce, I’ve learned more about sourcing and project management, and my household ends up with a rack to dry some of the wonderful things my wife grows in her garden. Everyone wins.

Jeff Lefkowitz Shave Horse

I wanted a shave horse for a while. The problem was picking a design I like that has a small enough footprint for my shop. The Lefkowitz design fit the bill! I love all of the adjustability in the grip and for the seat. Plus it’s small and easily hangs on the shop wall when not in use! It’s a straightforward build with clear directions. I made mine primarily with hand tools. I used a jigsaw and a table saw with crosscut sled for the rough cuts to save some time and did the rest with hand tools. I’m delighted with how it turned out and look forward to putting it to work!

The Drying Rack

This project is almost done! The rack is my design, completed with simple joints, pegs, and glue. The only metal fasteners will be in attaching the screens to the rack’s frames. The idea is to have removable frames for drying herbs and flowers with plenty of space for air flow. My wife spurred this project, she’s the Master Gardener of the household and wanted a drying rack for stuff she grows. I came up with a design to suit her needs and that’s scalable up or down. This one is a prototype and has taken longer to complete than I wanted. But I’ve learned a lot and have a process in hand to make more!

Stanley No. 10 Coach Maker’s Rabbet Plane

I came across this diamond in the rough at a local antique shop. Fortunately all the parts are there, so it won’t take much to get it into good working order. The tote needs repair and refinishing, the blade needs a grind and hone, and the sole a good cleaning and polish. I have work for this plane to do, so it’ll get sorted soon!

Gunner’s Quadrants

These are hot off the bench, just put the last coat of hard wax on them. Artillerists in the 19th used them to measure the angle of a cannon’s tube (barrel). Here’s a writeup I did on Gunner’s Quadrants and how they’re used. Mine are exact copies of the one detailed in Alfred Mordecai’s “Artillery for the United States Land Service” (1849). These will go up for sale once the wax is cured out a bit.

White Rhinoceros

I finished this back in December as a Christmas gift. The recipient asked for a rhino for Christmas and I was happy to oblige! I hadn’t done carving in the round in a while so this gave me a good excuse to sharpen the gouges and jump right in. It’s made from Bigleaf (Oregon) Maple, which has gorgeous figuring and is fun to carve. I finished with a coat of linseed oil wax and two coats of hard wax. I make my own finishes, by the way…mine are made of beeswax sourced from local farms and pure linseed oil from Heritage Natural Finishes, located near me in Philomath, Oregon.

Getting the opportunity to “start over” last year was quite a blessing, and one I do not take for granted. It gave me a renewed purpose, a clear direction that I needed.

But then what?

Time to roll up my sleeves and make it happen.

Starting a wood shop isn’t easy. Neither is turning a wood shop into a business. That’s what I’m resolved to do. To make my way in the world doing something I enjoy with one of the world’s most amazing materials.

I’m determined to do it in my own way. To primarily use hand tools; because I enjoy them, there’s a lot for me to learn from them, there’s a lot I can teach others with them, there’s so much I can create with them. To use power tools when I need them; because they’re handy advantageous for lots of shop operations. To use adhesives and finishes I make myself; because I genuinely feel they’re better options than a lot of plastic-based products out there and are not toxic. To make things that make me happy; because, as I learned in my previous lives, I can’t do things or create things that others will enjoy if I don’t enjoy it. And I mean TRULY enjoy it, not just pretend in order to make a sale.

My shop, methods, and output may seem a bit unorthodox, especially as compared to other wood shops out there. That’s ok. We don’t all have to do things the same way. I’m also not trying to make a political or moral or aesthetic point with it. I just like doing things that way.

Intent plays a big role in all this. Having a vision for something is easy. Making it happen, well, that’s the long game you have to play.

I am resolved to do this, to have a successful wood shop. There’s no reason why I can’t do it.

I have to plan. I have to find the tools and fixtures I need, or make them. I have to drum up business. I have to meet people, become part of a community. The list goes on.

It takes time and determination. And it doesn’t happen fast. I’ve been chipping away at all this for just short of a year and only now feel like I’m ready to take on some larger projects. The larger issue is that I haven’t let starting from nothing stop me from doing something.

I intend on doing this. And I’m going to do it. And I remind myself every day when I go into the shop that this is what I’m doing. I’m truly grateful I have the opportunity to start a shop. I’m also humbled by all that’s made it possible.

My point here is not to give you a Pollyanna pep talk. It’s to say that whatever you do, especially if it means a lot to you, do it with purpose. Be intentional, make a plan, see it through, don’t give up when things get tough. It doesn’t have to be with anything big…small things in life are just as important as large ones.

—Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., “Jailbird”

Today a bit of philosophy from the wood shop.

All of my “formal” training is in history, not woodworking. I have an obscene amount of eduction and practical lived experience in the field of “public history”. This is a branch of the humanities focusing on public facing pursuits like museum work, archives, national register nominations, historic preservation, cultural resources management, stuff like that. It could be fun and interesting. I met a lot of great people. And a lot of jerks.

That’s not what I do anymore. Just over a year ago I walked away from something I did in some form for over 25 years. Why?

I lost my purpose.

I was a person who wrote everything down. That’s part of what you do as an historian. Read a lot, look at primary and secondary sources, take all the notes you can. That way you can share what you find. I got good at it, especially public presentations.

I had the incredible poor luck to be neck deep in graduate education when the American economy wet the bed a number of years ago. Which meant there was just a little bit of money that a lot of people had to fight for. And fight they did, showing me my time there was done.

I had the further poor luck of ending up with an employer that valued who you know and the perception of what you can do more than anything you can do. It didn’t take me long to learn that but I was stuck. I needed the money and felt there were no other options.

I stopped writing things down. I found when I did, it made me vulnerable. It left something that someone could take, either claiming it for their own or using it against me somehow. Writing things down also took away my purpose. When I kept things in my head, I had value because nobody else knew what I knew. Or knew how to say it in the way I did. That made for a good short-term strategy but it wasn’t sustainable.

I somehow managed 18 years with that employer. Dying a little every day because I lost my course. I felt hemmed in and hopeless, adrift in an abyss. I wasn’t sharing with people, connection them with the past. Or with each other.

How does any of this pertain to woodworking?

It gave me purpose, a bearing on the uncharted seas.

I’d been working wood all along. A good many in my family worked wood, so I picked it up from them. It helped me eat during college, doing carpentry, antique restoration, and custom work. I did it as demonstrations at historic sites. I helped make some repairs on historic ships. It was a connection, a lifeline, to humanity for me.

Most importantly, by a trick of fate, I received the opportunity to dig into the ideas behind why and how people make things with my former employer. So I started doing woodworking for real again, that way I could get it back in my head and under my fingers so I could explain it.

Then it hit me. Woodworking is the way out. I’d always loved it. It connected me with people and things and ideas. Why not make it the thing I do?

I created an exit strategy. Then executed. Zero regrets.

The thing that prompted today’s philosophical essay was thinking about a drying rack I’m making. It’s entirely my design, all done with traditional joinery using hand tools. I did a few vague drawings and set myself to work on it. I’ve made a lot of tweaks and adjustments along the way in order to make things work, had a few epiphanies. And I haven’t made a single note. Nothing, no documentation whatsoever besides vague drawings that now don’t even have the right information.

I made this thing that I’m proud of and nobody will know anything about it. That hurt my heart.

Woodworking has been my salvation. I truly love it, despite its difficulties. I’ve created some amazing things, met a lot of wonderful people. I’m excited because I’m only one year in and have the rest of my life to go.

There’s still a lot of learning and un-learning to do, though. I have to remind myself that I can write things down again. And share what I do and how I do it again.

And keep in mind I have a purpose again. One I’ve invented for myself from the pile of wood shavings on my shop floor.

My uncle Dean Clawson (1930-1999) was quite a character. Dean had a quick wit, always ready with a joke, a story, or song (often with bawdy lyrics). Being around him was a lesson in the unexpected, so you learned to be ready for anything.

Dean did a lot of things in life and ended up being quite a good luthier. He made fiddles, banjos, mandolins; repaired guitars and bass fiddles. I loved being in his shop, seeing all the tools and instruments. Plus the smells of wood, machine oil, varnish, and hide glue. Dean told you all sorts of things while he worked, mostly about woodworking and music making. The constant parade of people coming through the shop were fun as well. I got to hear a lot of good music, awful jokes, and unsolicited life advice.

Uncle Dean loved his fiddles. They were copies of the famous Stradivarius violins. He somehow got to examine a real one in Italy, showed me lots of pictures of him with it. Dean gave a fiddle to all his brothers, sisters, and Grandma Clawson. I don’t think he ever thought they’d learn to play them. But he was proud of them and wanted the family to have one.

I got the itch to play the fiddle in the early 1990s. I grabbed the fiddle Dean gave to my dad (which he never touched) and started pecking at it. One of the problems I face is I’m left-handed, so it wasn’t set up for me to easily use. We talked with Dean about it and he agreed to take the fiddle apart and rebuild the guts so I could play it. I got to spent a couple weeks at Dean’s house watching him do it.

I soon got caught up in life and took up the trumpet, which Dean encouraged. (My first trumpet came from Dean.) I didn’t play the fiddle much and eventually not at all. It’s followed me around for a very long time. Along the way the strings broke, the neck popped off. It suffered a lot of neglect.

Now is time to remedy that. I have my own shop. I’m not a luthier but have a lot of the same skills. And I well remember watching Uncle Dean make and repair fiddles. I know what to do and I have the stuff to do it.

This will be a passion project for me. That fiddle has screamed at me from its case long enough. Part of why I do woodworking stems from Uncle Dean and his shop. Repairing that fiddle and playing it again, that gets me back in touch with a big part of who I am.

It will also be a good excuse to show you, dear readers, more of what I do and tell you some of my stories. This will take a while, since it has to fit in around my other work. So come along and see where it takes us.

One of the most daunting tasks in getting a shop started is all the setup you have to do with tools. Practically no tool, new or used, comes to ready to use.

Tools with sharp edges are never honed and ready for work. New tools’ blades are not polished and honed even though they are ground to shape. Some are finished better than others, but there’s always some sort of finishing required. Old tools usually need a lot more work since they’ve been used and often abused. Many blades are a haggled mess that look like they’ve been dragged on rough concrete and then hit along the cutting edge with a rock. But sometimes, SOMETIMES, you get ones that only need a little work.

The process of getting hand tools ready for work can be exhausting. I think that’s why some people don’t get very far with them. It’s not like most power tools, where you put in the blade you want, plug it in, and off you go. (Before someone calls me out, I know there’s more to power tools than that. But not much more…) Folks acquire hand tools with good intentions but often get frustrated once they see it takes more than a few minutes to make it all work.

You also have to resist the urge to get a tool partially set up and then plow into a project. Doing so usually leads to failure because the tool doesn’t perform as you want it to. You can’t go half-way with hand tools. They need to be taken all the way to the finish line in order to function to their capacity.

Another aspect of this is knowing how to set up a tool. This takes time and experience. You can watch all the YouTube videos you want (and you get a lot of fantastic information there) but there’s no substitute for actually doing the work and getting a feel for it. And if you’re like me, you have to sometimes muck things up to learn how to get it right. That’s part of the process.

All this to say that even when you know what you’re doing, getting things set up is a daunting task. I want to cut wood, make things. Not sharpen tools! There’s no way around it, the only way out is through. Many throughs, in fact, when you set up a shop from scratch.

Case in point. I needed a set of carving gouges. I purchased a vintage set through an antique tool dealer that was exactly what I wanted. An English set, made in Sheffield, not abused and ready to set up.

This is a set of 12 gouges with different profiles for doing relief carving. They’ve all been used and the blades needed a little shaping before I could sharpen them.

I started with the hand grinder, squaring the leading edge. Then used the hand grinder to shape the profile and bring the cutting edge close a fine point, like the edge on a knife. I moved on to slip sticks, which are pieces of wood cut to different curve radii so you can profile the inside edge of curved blades. I used abrasive paper on the slip sticks to take out any grinding marks and polish the inside edge. Next I used diamond plates to take the grinding marks off the outside edge and bring the blade to a sharp point. Then I used slip sticks and a leather strop coated in honing compound to give the blade a final polish and a razor edge.

The entire process was almost an entire day’s work. In part because I took my time to get the blades shaped and honed exactly as I want them. But also because I used hand tools to do the job. This would go quicker if I used power grinders and buffing wheels.

The bright side is that once you get your tools set up the way you want them, it’s relatively easy to maintain them. In everyday use I’ll strop the gouges as I use them and when I’m done with the project I’m working on. I won’t have to grind and polish again unless the tool gets damaged.

I’ll allow it’s a time consuming, tedious process. One which I did for every tool I have. One I’ll have to do for every tool I acquire.

I do get frustrated. But gently remind myself it’s all part of the process. I set the tool up the way I want it, the way it fits me. I learn about the tool, its shape, how all its parts and pieces interconnect. I see how it cuts, how I can use it to do the work I need it to do. I gain knowledge, experience, and wisdom.

I benefit from the process. I become a better woodworker. I become a better person.

When I get a set of gouges (or whatever tool) and get discouraged by all the work I know I’m in for, I have to make more coffee, take a deep breath, dig in and get to it.

Most importantly, I remind myself that the way I sharpen all those gouges is to trust the process. One gouge at a time.

I just finished making some 19th century Gunner’s Quadrants. But some people have asked me what the heck they are? Well, let me tell you…

One of the many challenges of using artillery is hitting the target! It’s not as simple as pointing your cannon at something and shooting. You have to take into account a lot of variables, including your equipment; distance to your target; ammunition; and the weather.

Gunner’s Quadrants are instruments that help you deal two of these, your equipment and distance to target.

You use a Gunner’s Quadrant to measure the inclination of an artillery piece. Inclination is the angle of the artillery piece’s bore from level. Think of a cannon’s tube, or barrel, as a large straw. The inside of the straw is the tube’s bore and it’s always cylindrical. Since it is cylindrical, you can use either the top or bottom of the bore to measure its angle from level. “Level” is usually the plane a piece of artillery sits on, be it on open ground or in an emplacement of some sort.

Knowing inclination is important because it helps the Gunner, the person usually in charge of an artillery piece, to “point” (aim) the cannon. If the Gunner wants to shoot at something far away, they “elevate” the tube. Which means they raise the front of the tube to a higher angle. If you want to shoot at something close, you “depress” or lower the tube.

Artillerists and ordnance officers spent centuries figuring out how to make artillery more accurate. Early artillery was pretty crude and primarily used at short ranges. In an effort to shoot at things farther away and consistently hit them, artillerists came to realize they had to standardize equipment and processes. This meant eliminating some of variables mentioned earlier so you can predict what will happen when you shoot projectiles out of your cannon. They did this by imposing standard bore sizes; standard weights for artillery tubes; standard sizes and weights for projectiles; standard ways of making propellants (black powder) and breaking the propellants into small, usable grain sizes. Once you have some standardization, reducing or eliminating some of the variables, you can figure out how to hit targets with your artillery reliably and consistently.

Ordnance experts went on to create “gunnery tables” that detailed exactly how much propellant to use and the specific elevation or depression angles for each type of artillery piece in service to hit targets at predetermined distances. (Then you had to estimate your distance to the target, but that’s the topic of another article…ha!)

Now that you know you need to put a cannon’s tube at a certain angle to hit a target at a specified distance, how do you measure that angle? This is where the Gunner’s Quadrants come into play.

The quadrant is a simple device. It has a face that is 1/4 of a circle (hence quadrant), with reference lines marked along the two straight sides at a right angle and a scale marked to show every degree between 0 and 90. At the intersection of the two reference lines there is either an attached post or a hole drilled, where a plumb bob is affixed. The line for the plumb bob is long enough to allow the weight to fall just beyond the curved edge of the face. A staff is attached to a straight side of the face, the one that’s marked with 90.

The staff is placed inside the artillery piece’s tube at the muzzle, so that the face hangs down just in front of the muzzle. The plumb bob is allowed to hang from the post or the hole. Once settled (no longer moving), you look at where the plumb bob line falls along the scale. The number it lands on is the inclination (degrees of elevation).

For example, if the tube is level, the Quadrant will read “0”; if it points straight up in the air, perpendicular to the ground (level) it will read “90”.

Although the Gunner’s Quadrant is a simple device, using it is not. Consistency is key. You have to place it in the bore in exactly the same place every time. And use it enough to be familiar with it, the plumb bob, and the scale. You also have to make sure the plumb bob settles, ideally stops moving, before taking a reading. You have to do everything the same way every time you use it.

This is easy in theory, incredibly difficult in practice. Especially under combat conditions when you’re in a hurry to make a good shot and someone is shooting back!

Despite the difficulties, Gunner’s Quadrants (along with other pointing devices) made it possible for artillerists to greatly improve accuracy and precision of shooting. They may not hit the target every time but they could hit it more consistently than ever. Gunner’s Quadrants were a standard piece of equipment issued with every American cannon and mortar until replaced by either pendulum type sights or specialized sights with screw mechanisms that incorporated both windage (sided to side movement) and elevation (inclination) into one device. Even then, quadrants and later inclinometers remained on hand as backups to the improved sights.

Rehabbing tools is hard work that, in the end, is quite rewarding. I learn a lot about how tools work and how to use them from taking them apart and putting them together again. Sometimes I have to replace parts, either by hunting for them or manufacturing them myself. Researching the tool to understand its history and how it functions is a lot of fun. It’s also nice to see one go from piece of rusty junk to functional object. And, admittedly, it’s a way to get some nice tools without spending a fortune.

There’s also something existential about it for me. Rehabbing a tool and putting it to use gives these items a new lease on life. These are things that someone used (and often abused). Someone repaired things, made things, learned a trade, earned a living, built a collection, all with these tools. Then they ended up on the auction block, sale table, or junk pile.

That’s how I end up with them. And I take them home and give them some love and put them back into circulation. As I do, I look at the patterns of wear, the names or initials carved into the handles, the distinctive marks, and think about their pasts. It’s fun to think of the full life these things had before landing on my workbench.

But their stories aren’t done. Now it’s my turn.

I get to bring them back to life. Use them to help earn my living. To make things I hope people (maybe you) will treasure and enjoy.

This is part of why I do what I do. It’s a connection with the past, with the people who used these tools for whatever purpose. I continue to give them meaning by talking about that past and then using them to make things that go out into the world.

It’s a cycle, you see, that’s larger than any of us. One that brings me a lot of joy and hopefully you too.

That’s why the tool shelf in my shop looks like the Island of Misfit Toys. Come by sometime and I’ll tell you about them. And show you how they work.

We arrived at the appointed time (my wife went along) and the person was there in a large crew-cab truck. I walked up to the truck and introduced myself. I then gave the person $30 cash and they gave me what looked like a small child’s body wrapped in grey cloth. It looked as shady as it sounds. I’m glad nobody paid attention to us or they’d likely have called the cops. Once we made the handoff, the person abruptly got in their truck and sped away. My wife and I chuckled and as we went for pizza.

The saws I’d just purchased are neither old nor valuable. Four are Disstons, one made in Pennsylvania and the other three in Virginia. The fifth is a Craftsman. All are from the 1970’s or 1980’s. They have chonky handles, thick plates, printed rather than engraved seals on the blades. Not pretty, not graceful, but sturdy and functional. I love them all.

The seller said they’d belonged to their Dad, who used them quite a bit back in the day and never managed to sharpen them once dull. The seller had no use for them, wanted to donate them to a school or something. Nobody wanted them. So this person put them on social media. They sat for a while. Apparently I was the only person who expressed any interest.

Why? They’re not old. Or collectible. Or sexy in any way.

So…why did I want them? Simple: To use.

There’s nothing wrong with these saws. They’re made of good materials. They’re just not what collectors or most tool aficionados want.

They serve a purpose for me. I used them to learn how to sharpen handsaws. They gave me an excuse to make a saw sharpening vise. They gave me a reason to design and build a saw rack. I use them to break down lumber for my shop. They’re part of what I do.

I bought these specifically because they’re not sexy. I needed saws and I don’t have the money to spend a fortune on tooling. Fortunately I know enough about tooling to know they’re good saws despite not being considered overly desirable.

Like I said, they serve their purpose. And I like using them.

Long Live the Chonky Saws.