pulsar17's blog

Tools

I learned a lot of things, to say the least. I am not used to working with my hands, which is ironic because I wrote code for a living. One of the first tools I got introduced to was the plane. I struggled initially with it, a lot. It still remains the tool I find the hardest to use. There are many moving parts in the plane - the blade, the chip breaker, depth adjustment screw, etc. All need to be in the correct position to use the plane properly. Whenever I adjusted one thing, something else would move out of position. This became frustrating at times.

A plane sitting on a shooting board.

I learned how to hold, and of course, use a chisel. I might have skipped on the "how to hold" part because I cut my hand the very next day because I was holding it wrong. I've never seen that much blood in my life, so I got terrified, just a little bit :) After this incident though I started using it correctly, and it became my favorite tool (only when it was a sharp one).

I also learned how to sharpen a blade [and chisels]. This I enjoyed a lot for some reason. Grinding metal on diamond and water stones felt very satisfying, and oddly felt like I was a professional. This might be partly because those sharpening stones are quite expensive and not readily available in India. The ones I was using were from US and Japan. The anticipation of passing the paper cut test [3] was also exciting, maybe even more exciting than the sharpening process, maybe...

I learned how to cut using a saw. The one I ended up using the most is the Japanese Dozuki.

A Japanese Dozuki

Joinery

I learned two joints, mortise and tenon, and dovetails. Of the two of them, I focused more on dovetails. My project was a dovetail organiser box, so it made sense that way too. Dovetails are very technical joints, there is a peculiar process to make them by hand. After the trainer showed me how to make them, I thought I had memorised it. The next day when I tried to replicate them, it seemed I had no idea! It helped that I had made notes and written a step-by-step guide on how to make them immediately after the trainer explained the process.

There are two parts of the joint, tails and pins. The joint is called a dovetail because of the tail part, which looks like a dove's tail. Initially I struggled with both, but after a bit of practice I found it easier to make the tails, and to cut them so that the cut would come out of the saw, as they say. The pins were much harder to make, because they had to be based on the shape of the tails made prior, and I always seemed to have problems fitting the tails and pins.

My first dovetail attempt, unfinished, quite bad to be honest, all kinds of issues...

The whole joint with the pins, looks okay after a bit of work.