How to make Winding Sticks (part 1) | Paul Sellers

we're going to make a pair of winding sticks and them I've used winding sticks all through my life we use them to test pieces of wood sections of a piece of wood a beam or whatever to make sure they're not twisted and we use that to test the first face when we plane for square we place one stick here and another stick here and then we sight in to see if the if the face is twisted or not and that's why they're called winding sticks this is a pair given to be me by a friend Steve Weisman who's an architect in Canada and I use these a lot you can see these are rectangular in section and I like these but let me just show you what I prefer and I would encourage you to have is a triangular winding stick because you have more bottom weight than the top and they stand better when you place and whereas these are equal top and bottom they still work I just have to be a little bit more careful so we're going to make this pair of winding sticks with some light colored wood inlay on some mahogany and then then here some evany on the back and now you could use walnut if you've got walnut and you can color your wood if you want to with a sharpie or something like that but I think I have some pieces of ebony that I'm going to make or use and I have some old piano keys and things like that that I often use for small projects like this so let's get started and take a look at how we make winding sticks I've got a piece of mahogany here this is 16 inches long it's one and a quarter tall and it's one inch wide here at thick should I say so let me show you where we're going with this did a quick sketch just to get you in the ballpark so this is the ebony piece with the long inlay in it this one here and then this one has the the white inlay tabs in there and then and so it's very simple this is a nice project it's great to make make you're only actually making a pair of lifetime tools that you can use for the rest of your life so it's really great to make it so a couple of sticks of wood and we're on our way first of all what we're going to do is ignore these have changed the size on these these are a little bit lightweight here is the actual size of the ones we're going to make so you can see I took this from here which is similar to this by the time you've taken the saw kerf out and everything that will be the same size so these are the ones we're going to make my first task is to set this gage to would you believe eleven sixteenths I think it is so that's eleven sixteenths which is seventeen millimeters it doesn't matter which head you run your gage from at this stage we're going to go this is the narrow face this is the one-inch face so we're running the gage along here like this I'm going to start here and then just run it and you can go quite hard on this because you want a a definitive line normally I might not say that there is one now watch the way I flip this now oops my gauge slipped because and upped it set it tight which way I flip this so I've run my gauge line on this side now I flip this this way so I'm on the opposite face and I run my gauge line again like this I'll make it quite positive so you can see it mostly there's my boobs line there's my gays I know I'm going to put the line across here so here is my line here and the line is here so it technically I can't really go from the lot from the mark to the mark with a gate with a pencil line like this I put the line on purely as a visual but what I'm actually going to do is I'm actually going to place my saw on this side of the line here and then I'm going to go to this side here and put it on this side of the line so it's actually going to be taking something off the face of this one on the face of this one very important if you want these to be the same size that's going to be important so I'm going to start mine with a tenon saw now I'm going to switch to a handsaw so here we go this is where I go on one side of the line and then to this side of I now that means can you see I've got can you see right in here I'm on that side if I flip it to this side I'm on this side of the line so that's going to mean the two pieces should come out very similar in size which I want in the overall scheme of this so I'm using a small hand so now I'm going to drop into that curve why did I use the tenon saw I just found it more rigid and easy to get that first cut now I'm going in with this saw once I've gone in and I'm confident that I'm in deep enough I can start dropping my hand on this side leather deeper I've gone down about three inches on this side and only an inch on this side now I'm going to go on this side and I'm going to drop my hand on this side I'll lift it up a little bit high and change direction here now see if I can do this a little bit more where you can see it so now I'm dropping my hand along the gaze line and I don't want to go too far because I want to guarantee as near as possible that I'm staying on the gaze line on both sides I had to add a little bit of correction there and it's important that these are accurate - anything to do with the layout it's always important that accuracy always prevails a little bit more nearly that four inches nearly there not much to grip to now little tiny bit that's that so I'm going to plane it through up these surfaces now I could do that on the bandsaw the table saw too but just think of the exercise you're missing skills and everything else now because we just cut this we could have been relieving stresses in the wood this is looking pretty good it looks parallel pretty parallel down there I'm going to just take it there's not much to hold on to is there is enough that's looking good I already planed up these outside edges so they were already Trude then I I ball the top and this one has strain stayed pretty straight so that's that one and if you get stuck you can put the clump in the vise to do this as well it will work fun looking good size-wise it's dead-on so we're accurate all the way along here excuse me so one quick swipe three swipes here on these bottom corners just to stop them from breaking and that's basically now you could if you were like in a hurry you could just take a magic marker a felt tip like this say you were in a hurry and just run a black line along there just like that and that that would be ready to go you would be ready to use that as as you're winding stick so those are ready to go if you wanted to stop at that so that would work but we're not going to stop at that we go straight that line is down there a notice that these have changes these these are gun a little bit hollow different places but can you see that down the center there these are my new ones I don't know how these are but you want them fairly straight these have stayed pretty straight so pili is very stable for things like that so we're good okay now we're going to put an inlay in here there's a couple of things we want to do one is we've got to put a couple of dots in here if you remember usually they'll have some dart in here and in here and the reason we do that is because when you place it on a narrow piece of wood let's say you wanted to place these on a narrow piece of wood let me do it as though you were seeing this from your side you would place the dot in the middle like this to equal up the weight so that would go there but watch what happens if I move this one over here and this one over here then I put more weight on one side and that can exaggerate a problem it can create a problem that's not actually there but if I put this centered if I bring this book so if I move it slightly off you can see how this starts to tilt it's a little bit out of balance but if I put it in the middle it will equal the pressure my close to middle there it will equal out the pressure on the narrow boards and that's why we do that so we have the dark there just to guide us let me see if I can turn this to the camera there so it does affect it so you want that dot in the middle it could just be a pencil line as well but we're going to put the dot in and we're going to use evany so these are 16 inches long so right on the 8 inch mark make your line yes the same right on here try and get it as accurately as you can and we're going to come up 3/8 of an inch to the center here it could be half an inch it would be fine I think I may have even marked it off an inch on my drawing nope I didn't say just quarter of an inch diameter I'm going to use what we call a brad point bit this has a very it has a center point and then it has to spur cutters right on the very outside and what those cutters do is they will cut the outside rim very cleanly so we drill a hole right in the middle and obviously because it's a spur bet you can't really drill all the way through without the risk of bursting out the other side I'm going to clamp this on here safety really as much as anything and I'm going to drill into that piece of wood right on your line find in a different location so I don't go in the same hole so I got clean exit hole both sides now I need the a dowel I've already cut a couple of dolls and I want to show you how I get these these are some old piano keys that I collect whenever I can what we do is got the square peg we want to put that into this hole here what we do is we take the corners off first here so just find a scrap of wood like this put the wood on here take the corners off so this piece of wood is actually just barely over a quarter of an inch square so I ripped it down just over a quarter of an inch like this and that just gives me a start to go in the hole now I drilled a hole through hacking knife here so this will take the start of the hole here and I'm just going to close up my vise like this and take that they'll write on here watch what happens now I'm going to have to hold this so you can't see it too clearly but you tighten this up just a little bit you can go wherever it's comfortable I can go right here see what's happening on this side I've got this beautiful dowel have any dowel here now that I'm feeling some resistance on this side for some reason I'm not really sure I might go back here and take a look I can see why there's a chunk there but I have enough there to do this one so I'm going to go from the other end now but you could you should be able to go all the way through if you have a clear passage so I have to just start this one off again do on the bench if you don't feel comfortable with the pencil sharpening technique and the same again from this side now I'm through this Maddow that will work perfectly I'm going to use usually I'll use superglue you could use white glue or aliphatic resin anything really and these go in here now what I do I'll just use them a super glue will work just fine because the super glue will go black when I set this out so I'm putting the glue on there it'll just wick into the whole slide this up till it's tight and then you could use an accelerator as long as you don't spray too much on it I think I'm just going to leave mine to set up I don't really need the accelerator I'm not in that much of a hurry same with this one just twist it in and then the superglue and that just needs leaving for five minutes just to set up and then we'll cut those off and plane them down and you'll be able to see them when they're done the glues gone off I can cut these off I think so I'm just using a fine saw leaving it a little bit proud of the surface and those are why dots done centered perfectly so the next bit is going to be the inlaid corner I think the long black ebony corner so I'll use this one now this is a piece of Ebony that I took from a thicker piece here so I've just ripped down a section and then I cut down the length and the way you do that this is the piece this is about 1/8 by 1/8 it's actually three millimeters by three millimeters which is plenty big enough so this will go on this corner here what we're going to do I'm going to show you two or three different options for you because you may not have I like this very test gouge for this it's very good we're going to put this on the beveled face on the front face here so what you do is you set the gauge to just under the size it's going to be hard to see on the on the ebony I think so I'm just the gauge is about half a millimeter under size and it's important is it's important really to get it just on the size so that you your evany is just protruding slightly past the surface so I'm going to run this gays eye on here so this is one option I like this gauge for this because it's such a fine cutter but I've got some alternatives for you too now normally this would be used as a marking gauge not as a slitting gauge or a cutting gauge and then I'm going to show you another alternative now so I use this to give me a cut line and I can follow this with a knife but I'm going over and over this to get as deep as I can which isn't very deep you could use a traditional gaze this would be more typical this is also this is called a cutting gauge you can see it doesn't have a point on it in the normal manner of a marking gauge it's got a natural cutting iron in there very small very fine and it cuts in both directions so you can push it or pull it it goes to a V point a diamond point or a spear point and you set this just the same way you did the other one so I'm going to use this one for a corresponding let me just check this in here that one works on there now this is where it gets a little difficult because I can't put this gauge easily against this front edge and keep it perpendicular so the stock has to follow the face like this which means my curse is not perpendicular but slightly angled but it won't matter because we're going to go in and refine this shortly with a bull nose play when we've got this cut so I'm marking this this is another cut line all the way down and off the other end like this I'm going in the vise now what I'm going to do is take the knife go along that cut line like this very carefully make sure you following the cut line from the gauge not the grain because the grain can take you off at another tangent if you're not careful now I feel more confident because this is going quite deep it's probably actually gone to the full depth of where I want to go this side here the same gently and carefully make sure you're in control and you know if you find yourself going against the grain you may have to turn around and come from the opposite end look there the grain just took me off at a tangent the right direction but it could have just as easily been the other way so I've corrected the grain two hands on here for control and for pressure this is where the two cuts kind of start to meet in the inside corner now pretty close I'm sure I can see some movement go back on the top again pretty close carefully carefully carefully that's that so we've got the recess but what we have got to do is we've got to refine it just a little bit now we've got this this plan here you could have done the whole thing with this and I'm going to show you a couple of things with this in a minute but I might generally I would reach for a ball nose plane like this one but you could use just a chisel almost as easily so I'm using this to get a crisp shaving but I don't want to go too much deeper so let the sole register against against the edge I think I'm down looks good and then onto this face on this edge here so I'm using the plain sole to straighten up that's my registration so it's straightening on they didn't hit there so I'm going to come way back here take one more shaving that feels pretty good and see how this looks and that is about as good as it gets for for what I'm doing I've got a little bit of an internal corner there where it's a little bit of a discrepancy so I'm just going to go with my chisel right in there just to make sure the corner is crisp just like that that's it really so what we're going to do is glue that in now maybe we have to take off a shaving because I can scan you see how this rocks here is it just rocking a little bit something's not quite square so I could either plane this piece of wood the inlay piece and how I would do that I want to plan it slightly out of square to correspond to whatever discrepancy there is here so I would just leave my plane on the bench like this take a shaving so it's actually planing out of square but it's very controlled then I do the same from here like this and then I flip it and firend and now I've got the other corner so I've got the other inked eternal corner and what this will do is give me a slight chamfer loops to the inside edge that's got it that's nice and tight looking good don't worry if you slight like I'm slightly under here don't worry most of this is about as good as it gets so what I will do is take this on glue it tape it and then I'll plane the face of this and it'll be exactly where I want it to be I just use some masking tape and I'm going to go with the white glue here make sure I've got the right edge on here and just run a bead of glue right down the internal corner just make sure you have glue coming out on both edges so you can manipulate this to get the glue onto both faces see how it's coming out here and here it's coming out all along leave it past a little bit on either end and then I should have got these ready but this will be fine put this right on that face here and then pull it press it and pull it all the way around to this other face now you've got plenty of time for this there's no urgency just you can put as many of these on as you like really Paul so you're stretching it so it's pulling it right into the corner and then we leave that alone for half an hour or so usually and we can go in so here I put a press it firmly onto this face press this down and then stretch that tape as much as I can and pull it round to that face don't worry about the glue on the surface we can cut that plane it scrape it whatever we want to afterwards right in the corner here make sure it's good and down it's a good expression good and down probably okay so I'll see you in a minute when we have this dried meanwhile we can work on the inlay with the white inlay into the other piece of the the other section of the metal of this winding sticks I just want to give you a couple of alternatives for doing the inlaid corner just to show you what you can do this is a screw in a block of wood that I can use what I did because the edges of the screws usually have some kind of a small jumper right on the edge I sank the screw into the surface of the block of wood and then I just took a regular flat file and filed it so it had crisp sharp edges and I can use this now see if I can make this so you can see it so I can use that as a cutting edge along this surface here just the same way I did the various gouge put down here and then cut down this face too so I'm getting the same gauge lines that I got with the very disc aids then I can go with there's a couple of options I could just go with a knife where did my knife go I can just go with my knife which would be fairly conventional for me as my probably my preferred method I go down here with two or three strokes just to get the depth and also into this face like this so this is pine and it's going to take you in a different more awkward direction probably then that say I mahogany or something like that so that got me a rebate at least so I can do that then you would go with say I'm just using the poor man's rebate plane here just to clean up and we've got a video on that so you could follow that video you see can I do this so you can see think again so I cleaned up one face and now I can clean up the other face but not easily this will work so that's another way so then I've got my inlay piece can go right on the inside corner like that that would work or I could just literally just use this rebate plane or any rebate plane that has fences so that one will work too so there you've got a rebate for your inlay that way that's another way you could actually just use a ball nose plane if you've got one and you can set it with just your fingers like on either side and you can start at one end like this work back and just use your fingers as the fence like this until you've gone in a little bit then you can move your fingers so that's another way then the other way is going to be to just run a gauge line whatever depth you feel like it needs to be run a gas line like this like this and then take a saw tenon saw like this and just run that right along that corner like that so you're actually in the gauge line now these are just alternate methods easier methods that you use instead of giving up when you don't have the exact tools there is my inlaid corner done and again if you clean up with just a ball nose plane just to take the saw kerf out couple of strokes that way and this way here and there's your recess for your inlay those are all challenges

Channel: Paul Sellers

Views: 286,478

Rating: 4.9282341 out of 5

Keywords: Woodworking, Hand Tools, Winding Sticks, Paul Sellers, How To

Id: EToMNxJ4-vw

Length: 41min 21sec (2481 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 25 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/ejokelson]

Whoops! I called him Peter Sellers! This ain't the Pink Panther.