IMG_0467 – The Neighborhood Joiner

The Neighborhood Joiner

Qui non operarat instrumentum est / Use tools, don't be one

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David Walbert

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I don’t like your style
Building a splay-legged table with hand tools
Small arcs of large circles: A calculator for cheaters and engineers
The hidden cost of convenience
Those old guys really nailed it.

theneighborhoodjoiner

Making small stuff when it’s too hot to make big

Making small stuff when it’s too hot to make big stuff.... and trying to reduce the scrap pile a little. #carving #woodworking #handtoolwoodworking #spokeshave #spoons #woodenspoons

Happy Independence Day! This year I replaced the r

Happy Independence Day! This year I replaced the rather faded Betsy Ross flag hanging over my workshop with a version of the 34-star flag of the United States in effect from 1861 to 1863, hence the first flag carried into battle by an American army fighting to end slavery. Keep working for that more perfect union, friends!

Why O Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide

Why O Lord, do you stand far off?
Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?
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In arrogance the wicked persecute the poor—
let them be caught in the schemes they have devised.
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Their mouths are filled with cursing and deceit and oppression;
under their tongues are mischief and iniquity.
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They lurk in ambush in public squares;
in secret places they murder the innocent.
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Rise up, O Lord; O God, lift up your hand;
do not forget the oppressed.
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Break the arm of the wicked and evildoers;
seek out their wickedness until you find none.
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O Lord, you will hear the desire of the meek;
you will strengthen their heart, you will incline your ear
to give justice to the orphan and the oppressed,
so that mortals may strike terror no more.

Most woodworkers build bookcases for their woodwor

Most woodworkers build bookcases for their woodworking books... I built three for my cookbooks.
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I started out trying to simplify the design of an Arts & Crafts style bookcase I built twenty years ago (the one that does hold my woodworking books), and the simpler I got the nearer I came to the @lostartpress boarded bookcase. Once I decided it was silly not to just nail the shelves in place through sides nobody's ever going to see, that's what it became... except for the details at the top (arched sides, top shelf, narrow backboard with very faint curve) and the fact that they're built from red grandis. That being the case, it seemed right to pose a staked chair in the shot. (Also the green paint and the salmon-brown red grandis go nicely together.) .
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It wasn't what you'd call the most intellectually stimulating project, but man, if you could not flatten and square and join boards with saw and plane when you started all this, you'd be able to do it by the end! (Or die trying.) And since the shelves are nailed into their dadoes and through the backboards, this was also more hammering than I've done in years. My final count was 37 boards joined into 18 panels, flattened and surfaced (thicknesses vary slightly; I'm not a machine); an additional 17 boards for the backs flattened, thicknessed, and lapped; 24 dadoes cut by hand; and something over 250 cut nails. Also the better part of a 20-ounce bottle of liquid hide glue in there. This is for those of you who like numbers. I also had to buy the lumber yard out of red grandis, including a trip back to buy the boards I rejected the first time... but the splotchy grain and gray sapwood are covered by books, so I can live with them. .
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Anyway, it's further proof that simple furniture can look good and often do the job best. It's the books that furnish the room, after all!
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#furniture #bookcases #boardedbookcase #woodworking #handtoolwoodworking #cookbooks

The chairmaker’s barbecue... some of those weird

The chairmaker’s barbecue... some of those weird offcuts of oak and ash will make tasty pork tonight! .
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#barbecue #fire #chairmaking

Time to get to work. #woodworking #handtoolwoodwor

Time to get to work. #woodworking #handtoolwoodworking #handtools #workbench #morning

Don’t worry, I’m not going to start posting ph

Don’t worry, I’m not going to start posting photos of all my meals... but I am also a gardener, and this literal garden salad in one of our new bowls from @keyespottery looked awfully good. #garden #pottery #spring

Making the low-back stick chair requires changing

Making the low-back stick chair requires changing the way you bore holes for the sticks. The short version is that I screw on a temporary doubler to reinforce the armbow while I'm boring the holes, but here is the long explanation:
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Since all the sticks are at different angles in this design (photo 1) you can't bore holes separately in the seat and armbow using a bevel or other measurement. Instead you have to mark out the holes on armbow and seat using dividers, then clamp up the armbow in the desired position, using a jig of some sort (photo 2), sight down to line up the two X marks, and bore, hopefully, from one to the other. For a high-back chair, you could bore right through the doubler, since the center sticks, of course, will pass on through to the crest—and of course that's what most people seem to do. But for the low-back chair, I want the center sticks stopped, because the curve of the doubler would make a mess of laying out the holes and rasping over the wedged stick-ends.
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You could bore the holes before you glue the doubler onto the armbow. But the two halves of my armbow are just glued end to end (photo 3), and while that's plenty strong for the purpose it serves, I don't want to knock that joint around until I get the doubler glued on. Reinforcing the butt joint with dowels, as John Brown did, seems to me like unnecessary work since it isn't going anyplace once the doubler is on, and more likely (for me, anyway) to create alignment problems.
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So I made a temporary doubler out of scrap pine, screwed it on, and bored through that (photo 4). I marked the Xs for the holes in the doubler slightly back of center, so the center sticks would exit the bottom of the armbow in roughly the same position as the others. The screw holes are hidden by the real doubler. .
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Phew. It's really easier done than said, but maybe it will help someone anyway.
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#chairmaking #stickchairs #welshstickchairs #lowbackchair #woodworking #handtoolwoodworking

Well, it looks like this chair has been claimed...

Well, it looks like this chair has been claimed...
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#workshopdog #shopdog #chairmaking #welshstickchairs #havanese

Workholding hack for carving the inside back rest

Workholding hack for carving the inside back rest in the arm bow. Basically 2x4s clamped to the bench, sticking out into space so I can get inside the bow to use the drawknife. I assume there is a better way, but it’s the best I could think of this afternoon (and easier than whatever I did last time!) #chairmaking #woodworking #handtoolwoodworking #workholding

So here is my finished version of John Brown’s l

So here is my finished version of John Brown’s library chair, based on two photographs that I interpreted as appealed to me.... closely but not slavishly, I guess. The paint is General Finishes China Blue, which gives it a quirky sort of elegance to go with its frankly insouciant posture. In any case it is, as the name promised, an excellent chair for sitting at a library table poring over old manuscripts. Or a book on chairmaking. .
I’d meant to post in-progress photos but never got around to it. I’ll post some of the next chair, which my Fair Lady Patron immediately requested. We shall see if it makes an equally good desk chair!
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#chairmaking #woodworking #handtoolwoodworking #stickchair #welshstickchair #welshstickchairs

When I see the magnificent tool chest @mountaintop

When I see the magnificent tool chest @mountaintopjoinersshop built I aspire not so much to make one like it but merely to reach the point where every project does not suggest another dang tool I need to buy (and then find a place for). In this case, a keyhole saw, which I’m certain I had at one time but cannot actually recall laying eyes on since the late 90s. Three more holes with the auger seemed the quickest solution. It’s a jig, not a museum piece. Also, I get to spend more time with my great-grandfather’s auger bits, which are not only tough old buggers but have a feature I haven’t found in any new ones: deeply etched numbers for middle aged eyes.
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#woodworking #handtoolwoodworking #chairmaking #jigs #handtools #antiquetools

Designing a chair from scratch, based on two photo

Designing a chair from scratch, based on two photos of a John Brown lowback “library chair.” The process started by striking poses in chairs I almost liked and measuring where various body parts wanted to be (this could have been embarrassing) and wound its way to trigonometry. Everybody is building the high back “Welsh stick chair,” but I loved this one, and I wanted to try something for which I had no measurements or angles and which left me a couple of construction problems to solve. Going rogue!
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#chairmaking #woodworking #handtoolwoodworking #furnituredesign #stickchair #welshstickchair

Always amazed at how much easier air-dried oak is

Always amazed at how much easier air-dried oak is to work than kiln-dried. The low-angle jack leaves an almost glassy surface on some of the edges (not, if I’m reading it right, the quarter-sawn faces). I wonder sometimes to what degree our industrial context makes hand-tool woodworking more difficult than it was when it was just “woodworking.” #woodworking #handtoolwoodworking #oak #whiteoak #wood #handplanes

Using double-sided tape to check the positioning o

Using double-sided tape to check the positioning of my hardware. What looks perfect sitting vertically on my workbench may look subtly wrong in place... let alone from above with foreshortening. Particularly with drawers of such different heights. #hardware #woodworking #furniture #finefurniture #drawers #doublesidedtape

My daughter asked me why I went to all the trouble

My daughter asked me why I went to all the trouble to tape this off so carefully instead of just, you know, painting the dang chair. “Um,” I said. “Because all the cool kids on Instagram are doing it?” Things you don’t want to have to tell your teenager. I mean I’m sure theres a good reason, I just can’t think of one at the moment. #milkpaint #chairmakjng #woodworking #parenting

Workholding and a basic miter box. This is nothing

Workholding and a basic miter box. This is nothing brilliant, but it works: screw clamps holding the box, holdfasts holding the clamps, the board wedges into the box. Solid as a rock. The difficulty was that the boards to be mitered were wider than my widest backsaw, and while this box gave me a perfect 45 degree angle, I had a terrible time keeping the cut vertical with a regular panel saw. I had hoped the cross pieces would help, but no dice. In the end it would have been easier to mark a line and cut freehand from both ends with a backsaw, meeting in the middle and checking the reverse side frequently. So much for the workmanship of certainty! .
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#woodworking #handtoolwoodworking #jigs #workholding #handsaws #miters

Jeez, all I did was make a miter box. #wherearethe

Jeez, all I did was make a miter box. #wherearethedangelves #workbench #woodworking #handtoolwoodworking

“Bathrooms have evolved to be sanctuaries, where

“Bathrooms have evolved to be sanctuaries, where we can... be authentically ourselves.” —Dr. Toby Israel, environmental psychologist, quoted in the Wall Street Journal, 18 January 2020. (Photo of the Andy Chambers homestead, Teton County, Wyoming, from the Library of Congress.) #design #outhouse #bathroom #authenticself

Glued up the case for my daughter’s nightstand.

Glued up the case for my daughter’s nightstand. All it needs now is dividers, runners, feet, back, top, drawers, and custom molding... so I will stop patting myself on the back and get back to work. #woodworking #handtoolwoodworking #furnituremaker #glueup

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