Traditional Woodworking Workshop – Day 2
On the syllabus for Day 2 was to finish up the workbenches quickly and get started on the initial pair of pratica, namely the winding sticks and the planing stop. But in the lull of battle preceding the gathering of the students I reveled in just walking around, admiring their productivity yesterday.
The benches soon received their finishing touches of holdfast holes and threaded aprons to accept the screws for the vises. I learned after the fact that a good drilling jig would have been very helpful for these holes. A few of them were slightly off kilter, and a good jig would have saved a lot of headache in the end. I’ve already got the design in mind and will fabricate it as soon as I get home.
Soon the holes were drilled and threaded and the screws lubricated and tested in them.
The double-thick jaws were laid out and drilled with a drill press that was brought over from the shop and the vises installed.
After this the Moxon vises were a cakewalk.
The benches were then given their first real workouts with the resawing, ripping, and crosscutting of the pieces for the winding sticks and planing stop. All variety of saws were employed, with my giant c.1800 two-man frame saw the the new Bad Axe version receiving great acclaim.
One of my treats for the day was giving Cam a lesson on saw sharpening. He’d finished up his work in the metal shop for the day and dropped in to see what we were up to. Being a skilled metal worker Cam took to it like a fish to water and the results were gratifying.
This is one of my favorite images for the week, with husband and wife working alongside each other in their own tasks. A profound model for us all.
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