A Craftsman's Legacy: The Wood Worker

a craftsman battles for perfection never willing to give in or walk away I'm Eric gorgeous I built custom motorcycles from the ground up using the tools I was born with and skills passed on by countless generations before me I wasn't always a motorcycle builder I worked in nine-to-five chasing money and titles and it nearly broke me so I threw it all away and started over I decided to work with my hands to feed my soul and that never looked back I believe there's a craftsman in all of us join me on a quest to uncover the skills that built our society one craftsman at a time we'll discover what drives the men and women who I call my heroes we'll learn their craft and maybe even find some inspiration along the way there's a part of you and everything you do your legacy a craftsmen's legacy the history of woodworking dates all the way back to the Stone Age our entire civilization was built around it so many of the tools woodworkers used today date back thousands of years designs so perfect they've lasted the test of time and the craft itself is truly a living history with skills being handed down from generation to generation that's how I learned woodworking from my grandfather and father up until recently boys were introduced to woodworking at an early age as part of a standard education while girls were forced into home economics now for the most part those gender walls are gone but sort of the shop classes that taught many of us how to work with our hands I believe it would be hard to find a teenager today who knows the difference between oak and maple or what a coping saw is and that's sad traditional woodworking is being replaced by mass production so its survival has fallen back on the craftsmen who are dedicated to passing on these age-old skills [Music] it's just below zero outside but my coffee's warm and I'm about to meet up with someone I truly admire so life's good John Wilson is a woodworker a writer a teacher and a true craftsman I first sat down with him at a 200 square foot cabin that he built and called both home and workplace for 12 years this is our creative space it was one that a craftsman found congenial and that seemed really strange to Americans because we expand into incredible residential footprints much of the world's population lives and have their crafts going on in space not much different than this it's really quite doable and I in so many ways very freeing how did you find woodworking first with my dad he had a small shop in their basement and so that's where I started did school shop before so many of those were closed down I felt very fortunate to have had that so after that I worked in as a carpenter and house construction to put more through college I was fortunate that back then you didn't have all the subcontractors so you get a chance to do everything when I was a kid woodworking was in my family you know and I grew up around it so it's very it's very emotional for me because it was so special to me when I was a kid you know I just latched on to it immediately even before I started building motorcycles when I had decided in my life that I wanted to start working with my hands for a living but I I really went back and forth over it for a while and I really seriously considered following a path through woodworking I remember a person who took one of my classes observing the fact that when I would take a piece of wood like your tactile you're connecting with it because he found that a machinist doesn't do that you get cut and there's a lot of finesse and technique involved in it but with woodworking it's it's still an organic living material and and we have to deal with that in the trade because in the summer it expands and winter contracts yes whereas in your metal world it'll expand if it gets heated up but you don't want your hand on it and so we have to do things that account for its organic nough stats still there you know before working with John I really didn't know a lot about shaker would work in traditions during the process I was really able to learn a lot about the simplicity the functionality and beauty and the high quality craftsmanship they take pride in having it's useful base and then having it pleasing an appearance combines two really important parts of what we like to have around us they've got it right you know for a number of reasons first of all they weren't concerned with style so if they got something right they could do it over and over and over again without having to come up with another model year and they were in a religion that place an obligation to doing your best they had a definition of perfection as being the best you can do today so the perfection was progressive what you do tomorrow might well need to be a little better one of the things I respect most about John is that he's willing to teach other people it's so important for craftsmen to share their knowledge to bring other people into their world we're sponges and we absorbed and we're unconscious about doing that and when that's happening you're connecting things and that's when it's good to work with your hands John's a woodworker and a teacher and by opening his shop up and teaching his skill to other people that's his legacy tell me more about teaching and how did you get into it did you sort of fall into it or was it something that you were always drawn to I was fortunate to have a good liberal arts education and then two years of graduate work in the University of London and became an anthropologist but there are too many jobs out there for health apologists I mean not like engineers or computer scientists people so they're not too many things you can do but the vast majority of us teach I enjoy having people come and they're expectant and they go away that their expectations were satisfied that's what as a presenter I feel that I've accomplished it I've set the stage so they're independent within that to take the lessons I've just presented in a show-and-tell time and translated them into that object that they have their goals on but they learn the lessons you know the old adages you can't take it with you notice your material things you you're gonna be in a coffin someplace and this is all that yes do you know what you do take with you it's your knowledge if you haven't shared it that's over I wholeheartedly agree with that statement it always bothers me when I meet a craftsman who's unwilling to share his craft and the craft was I don't know what the percentage of the GNP is craft oriented but it's pretty small and to have to think in terms of cornering a market it's just nonsense yeah and if you're not sharing that as a craftsman you're killing that craft just as much as technology or advancements and anything else in society yes I have no no illusion over the originality of what I do any more than I think any craftsman should have so you've written a book on making tools yep 150 years ago this was standard in an apprenticeship it was an expectation that before you became a journeyman you would show you not only could use the tool but you could make that and it became your tool kit do you remember the first tool you ever made yes it was a block plane that I saw taught by Adolf peski in st. Louis and it was really special for me to see him be able to teach that unabashedly give him credit for getting me started on that and then once you've done one you're looking around for others to do you know it's like being on the first rung of a ladder getting there is the jump and after that it's a progress and the book has actually about 12 first tool you make may not turn out as good as you think but I got to tell you I use tools that I made 15 years ago they're not as refined to something I'd make today but they still do the job and when you make a tool yourself it's that much more meaningful in life taking that first step is always the hardest part but if you set your doubt aside you'll be amazed at what you get in return so today we're going to be talking about planes and hopefully building one right yes cool I thought so I did I did you know these have been in my family my my grandfather was a cabinet maker and I thought it'd be cool if I brought a couple of his moulding planes along for you to check what a moulding place yeah he was pretty skilled to have done names himself I respect someone who's done the traditional style I do as you'll see in some of the other ones somewhat simplified wood body and I mean I admire somebody who knew them knew the old ways yeah yeah for sure and they're an heirloom today but they were the you know their everyday useful tools and they're lovely [Music] it's called a shoulder plane because the blade and the sole the plane are inline and so you can cut a joint into a square corner okay traditionally they take a single block of wood and carve the complicated angles that go in here the throat they call it with chisels and very carefully dimensioning that so the angle of the blade which is the blade block and the angle the 4-1 which is where the wedge is going to be exactly match now as you can imagine that's a little harder than it just looks in the finished plane because of that we've simplified it by making the plane into three pieces we got a piece that's in the center and two edges that are trying to take up the science of it okay and this is three different two different kinds of wood three pieces so you can see dramatically what we're looking at the first thing I'm going to do is lay out where the blade wants to come little tick mark there now how do you know what angle you're cutting that tradition yeah the angle of the blade has two things going on one is ease of cut and the other smoothness the steeper the angle is smoother the cut the more difficult to make it go okay the lower the angle the easier it is to go but the more likely you can tear out wood green oh okay okay so there's a trade-off where do we start well I think the first thing I'll do it cleaning off something on this bench so we can do it I think it's a good idea now if you want to go over to the bandsaw and cut out the two to four and a half blocks that's the tool to use you know Eric that's good I see you've left the line that I drew as a reference because what's going on next we're going to sand that surface dead flat on the sander and having that line there will give you a reference point so go ahead and sand both of these both straight and square cross that the glue because it's slippery allows the two to slip past each other right right and it's it's rather frustrating because it's the last little tightening that goes out of line what we do to keep that from sliding as we put a little salt wow that's a great on the line and it acts just like sand does on the county road wow that's a great tip now we've got this one wall in line where we wanted the crucial thing when they come to putting this in is to have the space between the fore and aft blocks the right distance for our blade and the wedge to go in how many of these have you made well I make them every time we do a class and I probably done it about 15 20 times all right it's nice working here with this yeah you know I put the Google in the wrong place how many times have you done this before exact Oh fifteen or twenty thing Oh lots of times John you know how many times I've welded things upside down welded the wrong side of something so many times okay it's always a bummer to at least it's a little easier with the glue you just scrape it off you know [Music] right to the mark and right on that guide I like the smell of the wood-burning stove man creates a nice atmosphere to work in you know now the one what I'm going to be checking this for is so we get a nice little squeeze out of glue and all the places so we know you have a tight fit you're not worried about that glue no as soon as that started to to skin over then we'll take a knife and cut it out okay now we're going to leave that to dry what we're gonna do until that does is we're going to show you how this dimensional tool steel can be hardened and tempered oh cool like you see that yeah okay some flames some oil Hey yeah boys like to play with fire that's always fun so we're gonna oil quench this what's the benefit of using an oil quench steel as opposed you know it's the way in which was formulated as an alloy okay and and what needs to go on is having the crystal structure of the carbon behave in the way that will harden it and then give us the right degree of hardness and toughness in the actual plane when we get done okay look let me a two-stage process but I've started with a blank that I cut out you see it squared up and then this has been ground and did you just grind this down with like a bench grinder or a hand grinder yeah yeah and it actually could be hand filed if you wanted to take a little longer because it's soft enough okay so if somebody wanted to do this at home they didn't have a bench grinder or something they could do it could be fine yeah and then we round the end because that's going to be someplace you want comfortable so you know I've got this now to the to the bevel angle that the plane requires and I'm going to take a torch and have you get some gloves on all right you're gonna be this means business the man of the steel both of them not men of steel with steel yeah that's it and you're gonna hang on to it with that alright and what I'm going to do with a torch I'm going to heat the end of that's going to be glowing red okay and when you get it up to glowing red and I tell you you're gonna take and swirl that in the oil and what kind of oil are we now we're using a vegetable oil this is peanut oil that's what I use well that's what you use well I used it also for a long time and yes I did I'd get a blue haze Oh No well you teach enough people and then the you know the alarms go off so we use peanut oil okay in order to have that not behave so the smell good okay you're ready now you may wonder what we've got here yeah that actually this is a really cool setup well it's nothing more than two tin cans sleeve together with a couple of pop rivets and a piece of is this railroad yeah this is going to get hot so we don't want it anyplace little sure yeah I'm intrigued by the railroad I don't know where'd you find that you don't want to say no I didn't think I my father had it but the reason for this is to shield the blade so that the heat will be concentrated okay if it's not there the heat dissipates out and won't work with a small torch right right yeah the part of all of this is to keep it simple and keep it what the the home craftsman you could have and somewhat safer yeah all right you ready yeah yeah let's rock and roll I like flames all right so now as it gets up the temperature about 1,200 degrees it'll start to get a really dull red glow and then it goes up higher than that toward 1500 Fahrenheit and it'll be a bright red okay and that bright red is our indication that we're at the level that the carbon crystals are willing to take a different form and recently it's going to be cherry red which is what I want him you know you bought ready yeah okay when you take this out you'll see it's red now what i'm the count of three one two three all right and swirl it around so you get equally exposed and the boiling temperature of oil is 375 fahrenheit so we've gone from 1500 fahrenheit down to 375 and just boom and that tends to form a crystal structure that's going to be very hard unfortunately it's also very brittle too brittle to use yep if you were to drop this on the floor it would crack well we don't want that so how are we gonna temper this oh and you used exactly the right word oh good tempering temporary means to take some of the really super hardness out of it and bring it back not as soft as the alloy right it won't be like something that could be drilled and filed but it's going to be halfway back what's happening it's called soaking soaking the steel and it takes that the crystals that are very hard and brittle and makes them ease off a little bit and then when we get done with that we're gonna turn that off because we don't want to quench that you just want to let it come down we want to slowly air dry and then it'll be that final in-between tempered quality Eric quam we've got the blade over in the oven to temper we're going to take and glue the other half on to the plane body all right I'm pretty good at gluing well I'm glad to hear that because you can gonna do it right yeah and we've drawn the lines of the opening so let's take and spread that around [Music] alright I'm gonna put a little bit it's all about technique really when we get done with this we're going to line it up with the top edge about ready just about you're faster yeah we've had a lot more practice well tell me when you're ready to go another reason why I'm not a woodworker I'd have to glue all over well we've got some paper towel here if you need all right so that's the fat end of glue now you know what we're gonna wait remember we told you about this song yeah little salt we're gonna salt that line can you sugar for that too you know sugar crystals aren't sharp I like salt crystals are I mean you don't need much of that it's just just a little bit yep I think that's so cool I've never seen that before do you think a lot about your legacy I think very much that the obligation to share and for me now it is is to have it in writing I'm a firm believer the books are going to be around for a long time and I would feel remiss not to have accomplished a couple of more books that would embody what I've been fortunate both as a craftsman to learn in terms of hand skills and as an entrepreneur running a business and how to supply the objects that craftsmen use that's something I feel that I just pray that I've got the opportunity to to get those things together because because I do regard it as important you know Eric now that we've had the blade come out of the oven and have a tempered it's time to put your name and date in there because you're proud of this absolutely this part of the legacy we've got some leather stamps what do you want to put II will put eg eg and then you're going to put you want to put 2013 2013 because it's may last more than a century it's actually that's a really good as I put my stamp on the blade I realized that just like that John Wilson was able to pass a small part of his legacy on to me and that's what it's all about initials innate congratulations a legacy thank you so much come back this is the shoulder plane I made with John by my side and it brought me back to where my love of craft is born [Music] you [Music] [Music]

Channel: A Craftsmans Legacy

Views: 72,009

Keywords: eric gorges, a craftsmans legacy, eric gorges craftsman legacy, a craftsmans legacy full episodes, a craftsmans legacy season 1, wood working tools, homemade tools, homemade woodworking tools, woodworking tools for beginners, woodworking tools homemade, woodworker, woodworking, handcrafted, craftsmanship, woodcraft, making, handmade, shoulder planes woodworking, shoulder plane build, shoulder plane setup, hand planes for beginners, hand planes woodworking, hand planes 101, Wood Worker

Id: fUlUm9Hvv4E

Length: 24min 6sec (1446 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 04 2020