Week Two: Dove Tail Joints & confidence

With the first week having already flown by week two kicked off with a test, which I was late for! I quickly jotted down what I thought were the answers and then saw one of my peers work through my paper with a red pen. Being a teacher, its been a while since I was on the receiving end and was not impressed to have scored 50%! A lot of work to be done Rob!

Our group of 18 were walking about the workshop with an air of confidence as our knowledge continued to grow on a daily basis. A constant stream of wood shavings feel to the floor from our planes and bench clamps wound open and shut as we secured our pieces in more convenient angles to work with our chisels. The chisels need to be 'honed' after a certain amount of work to ensure they continue to pare of wafer thin shavings of wood.



A chisel will not be sharp unless its back is completely flat. Once that is achieved then a cutting edge can be added.


For every piece we produce we have to identify the 'Face' and 'Edge' on the piece of wood which we deem to to be the flattest and squarest in relation to each other. If there are any imperfections they are made flat and square with the use of a No 4 smoothing plane, an engineers square and lots of squinting. Once this is done the dove tail joints can be carefully marked out and cut using a Tenon saw before being fine tuned with chisels. When mastered, dove tails can be cut accurately enough with just a saw requiring no work with chisels but it will take a few more attempts to get to that level.

Working with hand tools allows us to get accustomed to how the wood behaves so we can feel what is happening at the end of a chisel or plane. This feeling can be lost if you use tools an electric router to tear through the fibres of a piece of pine regardless of the run of the grain or obstacles in the wood such as knots.








To avoid any silly mistakes and covering my work in blood I keep all digits behind the cutting edge.



















There is something hugely satisfying when the blade you have honed sits is a tool you have learned to set up that then peels off deep yellow shavings that curl around your hands as you push it away from you. I can't wait to learn more of these empowering skills.