LIVE Q&A - Wood Preparation | Paul Sellers

hi everybody I'm running a minute and a half late because I had a technical issue which is not unusual me so we're ready to take a look at some questions these questions we kind of combined a few and we've come up with a few questions these are the ones that people sent in beforehand just to break the ice so that I have some kind of clue as to where I'm going with this so this one the first question so welcome first of all thanks for coming and thanks for joining me this is from Greg Washburn from New Jersey in the USA can one join any two different species of wood question has to do with wood fibers and can the glue hold together hold them together any two species that will not create a strong bond would expansion contraction at different rates which these are all great suggestions as to what can go wrong and generally my belief is that you wouldn't usually join a hardwood to a softwood you wouldn't take thyme spruce larch and things like that you would try to join species for species but I remember one time where I joined some so one particular kind of time to some sapele and all the guys said it will never hold together it will ultimately come apart and I gave the the coffee table to my parents and they used it for 30 years and he never came apart eventually they just ditched it but I thought that was fine so you do have to look for oily woods you do have to look for really dense woods like rosewood or evany and things like that they may not be compatible with other woods that expand you might not know this but maple hard maple expands at an exponential rate it will expend on a six-inch wide board re saturate it after it's been kiln dried and it will expand 3 3/8 of an inch to half an inch much much more than a lot of other wood so it's not the ideal wood for a lot of the things that it is used for but it's just a very easily available would and you can use it and once it's acclimated to wherever it's going it's fine so you do have to make some major considerations there Gregg this is D Paul in Tennessee says do you preps s4s all pieces or just prep to reference phases well this can depend because sometimes you want the inside and outside face and the two edges need to be parallel because of something you're working on or the end result like the like a frame for a door for instance if you're making a cabinet door you'd want all four sides to be straight parallel out of twist and all of that and you may as well go ahead and do it at that time but if it was a frame it was going say against a wall the back of the cabinet may be a mirror or something like that the back face is less important so you do have to pick your battles and decide on which one you want generally I would say most of my time I usually plain everything parallel s4s that means square for edges so or square for sides I hope that answers it I might dip in and out of each yeah I think there's just variations different strokes for different folks really because you just have to pick your battles as I say I've been struggling with dimensioning rough lumber to exact thickness any tips yeah this is a good question because it comes up all the time and the most important thing is don't have an over expectation of your own abilities especially if you're new to woodworking a lot of times I see people who take a plane and they set themselves absolutely rigidly and they lure it onto the wood and they push it across as though they're a road grader grading the surface of a road and that is not in like a big bulldozer boom you hammer this thing you've got this body rock-solid when in most of the cases Mike laning I find I've got to have some flex in there so a little bit of flex and and by doing that I find I become more sensitive as soon I learned this a long time ago when I was in the police as soon as somebody makes a fist they're losing control and and that's what I learned with if I make a fist this thing about bulldozing bulldogging this plane to tusk it's a no-no really you want flexibility you want gentleness that means you can pick up sensitivity you're getting a message back from the soul of the plane from the blade everything else and you're pulling this into yourself and that sensitizing of your body is something that has to happen because you may have been plugging away at a computer for years or or not having ever worked with your hands and your body is has a receptor you're you've got your five senses but then you've got your core belly senses that inside of you another twenty sensors that want to transmit information to your brain so you can adjust yourself to the task so that's a great question and I hope that helps Kieran Robertson from Durban in South Africa how do you ensure them maintain an even thickness when planning a tabletop or a cabinet or cabinet sides after it's being glued up but not yet joined I often end up planing in a twist or a corner much too thin mmm I get this I do get this because what happens where again often when we start the plane we're on the beginning of a piece of wood we land this plane down here we're quite confident and it hits the wood and the blade is pulling itself down into the surface of the wood and as we move across the pressure of the whole plane on the surface you're actually elevating the peat they plane off the wood and as it moves further forward it's elevating it even more then you get to the other hand and you're wrong you're on that thrash Coe stroke and you're pushing it all the way through and then you come back to the beginning that's what happens so it often the best place to start planning isn't it at the beginning at the start or the end of the wood it's often better to find out what's happening in the middle just let that plane glide across the surface see this is telling me here this pain is higher than here so I start working down on the high spots because that's what it's all about it's about taking the highs down to the lowest point and that's what we do you just have to resent it or become sensitized if you're not sensitive if you and we all think we're sensitive don't we but I think I'm still learning that I'm less sensitive than sensitive so I try to work on that so that I'm feeling for what's going on in the plane paddy Johannesburg what are some things to do differently if you do and prepare yourself with versus hardwoods other specific considerations well they we keep coming back to this sensitivity because hardwoods probably what we have to do in both cases hardwoods and softwoods we have to recognize that the tool the plane has to be sharp you've got to have the sharp plane if we're coming down to that level where we've already saw on it we've got most of the twister and now we're doing those final strokes we want this sensitivity we start cultivating this sensitivity we start listening feeling we start to work with the wood listen to what the plane is doing and things like that so it's more a sensitivity of placing the plane on the wood if you're planing a piece of rosewood it's very dense cocobolo very dense any of those exotic hardwoods there really are very dense and you just have to take very light classes with the plane when you're working on soft woods you may even have to have more sensitivity because as soon as you put the plane on the wood the fibers are being compressed into themselves and then they spring back up you don't get that memory you don't get that coming back into the plane with the hardwoods so you use different techniques again it always comes down to cultivating sensitivity sensitivity think of it this way sensitivity and accuracy and care are all one on the same you can use those words interchangeably when you're working because how accurately you present the plane how much depths have cut you set the plane to things like that they're all accuracy and they all revolve around your sensitivity and your sensitivity is paramount to getting the best results the optimum results thanks Patti that was a great question okay from the Netherlands Mick from Hill hilversum Paul is there a technique to clean the sides of a board as as straight as possible eg in preparing for laminating a few boards for a tabletop often the beginning or end of the board trail down well I think we just answered that in the last question I plane them the slight hump in the middle yes and this is important because let's say you've got a whole bunch of boards like this and you've got to glue these together into a laminated top like this well the important thing is if you've created a slight bolt shape on each side of those pieces by the time you've got these laminations going together yes you can clamp it out the problem is when you do clamp it out those ends are under very tremendous pressure probably more than the glue can hold and even if the glue holds the wood will give it's going to split on the ends and that's what we face a lot of times so we've got to be more sensitive we've got to get that mid we have to start in the middle like I said before so if if this was cambered this way just start in the middle keep going down keep going down so it won't take a cut then elongating the stroke and elongating the stroke and keep you long gating then you sight along it to see how you're going yes I've got this is going down nicely I keep going until I take those final stroke then my continuous stroke if I want to continue stroke goes all the way through and I've got those straight edges so it's very important to realise what's happening sensitivity again Andrew Scott from Sydney Australia hello Andrew when preparing dress timber for rough sawn from rough sawn I often end up with the board's cupped bold twisted or all three what is the best way to remedy this cut oversize and then plane the cut board flat okay this is a good question - they're all good questions every one of them that came in I've got a huge board here this way it's not that big it's 8 foot long or something like that and in the middle of this board I've got a I have sixteenth Hollow I already measured it it's got a cup in there five sixteenths if I play in this side down on this side down to get that 5/16 flat all the way across then I have to do the same on the other side I've lost five eighths of an inch of wood whereas if I were to rip this down the middle here and I put my straightedge on here I only have one sixteenth of wood out of the cup and on this side it actually is rounded so if I claim them after I've ripped it and then edge joint the edges and glue it back together I end up with a straight board and I end up with a board that instead of going from one and 1/8 to five to half an inch I've got a one inch board so that's why we do that and those are very serious considerations when we're doing this kind of work so yes that's a great question Chuck from Tucson Arizona I have trouble I have trouble planning my wood to get it square okay this is a biggie everybody has this problem I have this problem not really um because over the years I have worked on my planing technique and it's less of a problem for me now than it was but this is where you're planing down you've got your sides flat or whatever and now you want to plane this edge and you're planing here now there's a lots of reasons this can be out to square one of the main ones is that you didn't set your plane I'm perfectly parallel to the sole of the plane or somebody told you if you're taking more on this side can't your plane iron over that's not what this leave is for that's this lever is solely to get the plane iron parallel to the surface of the soul we never count that over to compensate for something that's not what we do so you keep it powernow if you're if you have a high side let's say you have a high side on this side there's a tendency to want to count the plane over like this to compensate for it but instead of doing that move the plane over to this side and take your shaving just off the side and keep taking it down and that shading is getting wider and wider and wider until you take the full width shaving and you'll find that you're very near to being square sensitivity cultivate sensitivity it's the same thing so there we go that will help you instead of counting the plane over just move the plane over to the opposite side and stand then move back into the center of the board okay Chuck hmm Gary Mercer is there a trick to identifying grain direction in glued up boards well when you've got glued up boards and you're you've already glued up the boards you've got your laminations like this you've made a tabletop brama ultra-wide there's not much you can do because often we reverse these we make one this way we make one this way and that one goes that way and then this goes over this way and that we do this often to keep to increase the stability of a tabletop but what happens is the grain is going one way and then it's going the other and then it's going the other there's not what you can do if you have decided to laminate except what you can do is really set the plane superfine and you can work it in both directions but I've often found when you do have terrible grain I've got some really scraggly grain here there are things that I learned as a boy when I was a kid George said to me I was straining to get this board without the torn grainy and he said take the shavings and stuff them in the throat like this and then Ram your fingers in and then take your shaving and guess what it worked it did work and that was on pine it worked perfectly on all the woods so do that and see how you feel it's a bit unnerving at first because you think some crocodile or alligator is going to come out of the throat and nip the ends of your fingers but it does work so pick your battles again pick your wood make sure you select it that's the only real good answer I think I really like the techniques from Buhl dial Bui le I really like the technique where you take two boards together and plane them together so they are lined perfectly up there line up perfectly on gluing up however if the boards are thick so what he's asking me here is if you've got the edge of two boards that's to this miniature version here if you've got the edge of two boards and they come to a wider width than your plane then it won't you can't plane up those two surfaces but actually you can and what you do is you plane down the middle you get that level if you got them fairly straight you get them straight pretty much beforehand you can move either side of that centerline and you keep half the plane registered on the side that's being planed and then you move to the other side and eventually you'll get a very nice surface so I think I could probably surface playing something up to two and a half inches wide just using the narrow plane of a number five number five Jack plane and so but again that's something where sometimes you really have to plane the two boards separately and plane them straight using a straight edge to get one edge straight just a nice plain piece of pine like this and then and then use the square to square the edge and that's just as good as anything so you don't have to have the two boards together when you've got wide boards when correcting twists this is John from Florida when correcting twists is it necessary to check all four phases this is a good question again because we think if this side is twisted I do have a piece of twisted material somewhere here if you've got one side that's twisted then obviously the opposite side is twisted there's a twisted board I hope you can see it it's very twisted this is Beach which is well known for twisting and then and what you do is you plane one surface and then you think you have to plane the other surface which of course you do but what happens once you've Trude this surface up you've got your winding sticks on there you've you've checked it for twists you've eyeballed it you've got everything all twist in that surface you've planed it you've I balled it along its length and it's straight no twists no cut no bow then what you do is you set your mark you your square on the face on that register this now becomes your registration phase this is the face we put the face mark on us a meaning face and then we put the square on here and we slide it down here and we'll find this edge is twisted too but now we first of all straighten the edge as best we can then we offer the square to it and we find out this corner is high and this corner is high what we simply take the twist out get the twist out use the winding stick if you really want to but you don't need to because just by using the square here here here and here you'll start to see how that twist that was developed during the drying process is now getting reduced and then once you get that out and you've got it straight then you flip to the other edge usually what you'll do from these two faces now is you'll take a marking gauge run the gauge along here to the lowest point flip over run the gauge on this then you'll playing it down to that surface and then you'll work on your parallel or you can do it either way you can do either face you can do the big face or the small face and and that will bring you parallel to the surface so you don't need to check it with winding sticks or anything else you don't have to take it out that way what is the best wood preparation for wood burning this is to make a good result and quicker drying process you know the best and easiest wood to dry it to burned is going to be green wood so if it's green or semi green it bends a whole lot easier than it does dry wood you can bend some dry woods they work just fine but the best one of course what you have to do in preparing if you are going to bend it while it's green you have to bend it and leave enough meat on the wood to go in and further finesse it after the bend is complete you've left it in the former or you've left it tied or whatever then you have to leave enough material on to going with a spoke show or a draw and I for tools you're using and then you have to finish it after you've got the moisture down and you can get the moisture down further just by taking it into a dry environment or using heated sand or whatever to heat the wood I'll east Heartland Connecticut hi Paul when purchasing rough sawn lumber how long do you let it acclimate to your shot before working it do you use a moisture meter I do use a moisture meter and on some projects I wouldn't go without a moisture meter unless I'd had the wood like I have I've had this plank of oak in for about well mmm it is something like that and I have several planks like that and I like to keep my wood as long as possible and it's surprising when you buy wood for a project and you've got a good deal then it's a good idea to keep it and keep it in the workshop where you're going to be working I keep my workshop fairly close I keep the humidity down in my garage and I use a dehumidifier and I leave it on permanently winter summer and spring any time of year I just like to keep the moisture as low as possible because it keeps my tools dry and it also keeps my wood relatively low but what I would also do if you have the opportunity if this is furniture for you your family or something like that slip it under the bed and leave it there for six months if you can afford the time to do that sticker it if you need to I think that's a good idea lift it off the carpet lift it off the tiles so that air is circulating and and that's what I do so I think you do have to keep wood in for a while if I'm just making stuff ordinary everyday stuff home kind is noted for the amount extinct or expands I've put clamps on boards have been two feet wide and come in the following morning and the clamps have dropped off they weren't even on the piece because they shrank so much so you do want to get that moisture down Paul from Toronto what are some tips and tricks for planning the face of planing the face of board that has not seen consistent grain so as to avoid as much turnoff as possible I already gave you the trick with the fingers down in the throat with the shavings in there to stop the shavings going into your but just sharpened tools it's just sharp tools and interplaying I think depends inter playing between a number 80 cabinet scraper and your smoothing plane taking the highs down one of the other things I do I keep two planes side-by-side so that I have one excuse me one that might be of course not quite so finely sharpened excuse me one that's not quite so finely shot and I use that for roughing off and then I go with a finer plane and that means I can interplay those two planes and then a scraper to where the nuts are very hard on your plane very often so I'll use the plane still but mostly I'll work those with a with a scraper and I work that surface that way what tips do you have for preparing exceedingly hardwoods pecan mesquite and beech all different woods mesquite beech and pecan are very very different woods pecan is hard and mesquite is hard but pecan is particularly hard it's not like any other wood it has a tenacity all of its own I've used it often enough and mmm I don't know I really can't give you an answer on that it's just sharp tools and tenacity in your own body you've got to fight it they're going to fight you all of those woods beaches fine Beach isn't such a big deal Alex garner from Leicestershire what's the best method for planing thin stalks a four to six millimeters thick which can easily be held which can't easily be held in a vise I usually take a strip of wood if I have one let's pretend let's pretend this is super thin but it's going to use six feet long take this clamp it to the bank the vise like to the bench like this and then take your plane and once it's solid just take your planes and pull it don't push into a clamp pull it from the clamp and you'll be surprised you should be able to get down to I've been down as as as thin as one and a half mil or one to do that on some pieces so that worked really well that's what I would do so if you you might want to use a bench holdfast or something like that where you drive the the holdfast in the hole in the bench down here and then you can pull up playing against the wood and it will work fine you won't have any problem ok we're doing great well it's the best way to read wood grain great great question this is one of those that comes up all the time here's a piece I picked this out because there's a piece of pine the fine just shows the grain much more readily when you're looking at the grain on the wood I've got this tear out here this is really what happened when it was passed through the machine this is just a 2x4 or 4 by 2 depending on which continent you're all so I've got a knot here the grain tears here it's nice and smooth here I come the other way the smooth this will be torn on this side and the grain will be smooth on this side this is over the top of this is over the top of this I don't know if you can see that but you have these little telltale signs here again this is on top of this is on top of this you look on the end grain not sure the layers of growth so you look for that so these are what many woodworkers would call look at the cathedrals because they do the the arching of a cathedral the roof of a cathedral you can see it going away from you and coming towards you and you soon get used to look for that I just got a splinter now it's out and but then also look for where the wood comes to the corner like this so if if the wood is coming to a corner and it's coming to a corner on this face then this is going to be against the grain this way and with the grain this way little telltale signs like that it's real full when you're looking at the grain and different woods have different apparent surfaces I've got some in here it's not very clear because of the darkness of the wood but I'm looking I'm looking all the time for those little telltale signs plus just tracing your fingers across the surface here if I was in the lumber store and I would just pull my fingers like and I already know which way the direction of this grain is going I can tell by calling it here it's grabbing on my fingertips this way it's going over it smoothly there are little telltale signs like that that we use all the time even on the surface of a rough sawn board like this this has been ripped on a bandsaw but I can tell which way the grain direction is going by pulling my fingers because the grain stands up in a different direction as it dries all these great questions okay hello Bob from Minnesota oh that was from Tom a in the USA hello Paul my question is about the smoothing of a board when I'm planing I can't take full-length shavings of the board I get marks from where the plane blade first makes contact and then it leaves the surface I know exactly what you mean when you're planing the surface there's a tendency to put the plane on the wood and start planing from that point well what you have is you've got the sole of the plane and the blade is protruding by whatever it is fraction of a millimeter fraction of an inch so it's already protruding as soon as you start to apply pressure the blade dips into the wood at that point you push it along and then you got a little step down and then you get to the other end here and you just lift it off like this and you've got this grain tearing what we do in reality is we start the plane here we rest it on the surface and then we lift the heel slightly and we move it in and we lower it into the surface and when we get to this end we lift the heel off so by doing that what we're doing is we're feathering it in to the surface and we're feathering it out and that's the best way to eliminate that kind and if you go across the whole board we're talking thousands of an inch here in the different level of the surface unfortunately your fingertips can tell the difference between two thousandths of an inch in different heights when you run it across the surface of anything amazing things fingertips so but what you're talking about is much D than that set you playing much more shallower maybe think about let that less brutal approach and just go more sensitively make sure you play nice set okay when done from Chicago when dimensioning rough stock by hand how exact distinctness flatness cannon yeah because he wants to do joinery says how much is acceptable my personal feeling is you go as tight as you can to every one of those you want it straight you want it square and you keep working at it and working at it and by that I mean that once you've got what feels like flat you back the plain iron off take a little bit more of a pass back to plain iron off again until it's taking the onion skins off and when you get to that level that will give you the kind of surface treatment you want for your wood you do want it straight because anything that's out of straight anything that's twisted is going to Telegraph into the wood a slight twist that may be so minimal you can barely see it can translate into a rail going into a mortise hole and that will be exaggerated if the style is three inches wide and it has a 1/16 twist in it which is not a small amount I'm not saying it is but that then is magnified the width of that piece all the way across so if it's two feet wide it'll be magnified eight times or whatever six times in that and that's where you end up with twisted doors if it's slightly cooked along the length then your mortise hole won't be square there's all kinds of things everything has a knock-on effect and those are the things we keep trying to minimize so great question thank you yeah I think I've got all the ones I'm going to do there and I see what we've got coming in and let's see good evening Paul from Malaysia so I've got a lot of people coming in he's so sharp at answering these questions thank you very much mister from Shelton Washington I call why does some Stanley mMmmm disappear too I really bought a new pax dovetail saw and have troubles starting the cook would you have a better one to buy 4 crosscut instead a brick cook no I did with mine is I think these smaller saws like these I'm thinking you may be talking about something like this and what I do with my saws I just take a file to the very beginning four or five teeth and I take a pass just like that it seems brutal but then when I start that sob boy it just goes for it it doesn't have any hesitation so if I took this and took a saw stroke here now it just went straight into the cut see they're just those two stroke it just goes and that's going to give you a wonderful sort experience so I do that on my talents oars as well so you don't have to do all your sauce just do one of them or two of them or whatever you want question from 30 a carpenter joiner apprentice so these are what do I do to stop this how much do you leave on the wood when bandsaw in to size to allow for planing I find that I really finesse my put my bandsaw I get every defences the table dead square a new blade is often I don't let I don't stretch the sharpness of the blade until it goes door I do not do that I take it out and I put a new on it they cost about 13 pounds I think a blade usually lasts me a couple of months actually so it's not that expensive over that expanse of time and that way I can get my wood I would say I get to within say under a millimeter so that's pretty fine so once I planed at one face planed the edge rip down on the bandsaw parallel cut on the bandsaw that kind of thing I don't have very much just a few swipes with the plane and I'm good to go it's difficult to play an end grain to keep the end flat and not break out the edges do you have any tips to address this I think sometimes you can take a shaving being a shorter one in here you can take a shaving off the corner if you can afford to do this and if it's not compromised I usually take a shaving off the corner like this one here one here it doesn't need very and that means I can now come in this way and I can even plane all the way out and it won't cause that spelling we call it where the out cut is breaking off so that works well for me and the other way is to which I do a lot I do a circular motion like this and then I come in from the other side and plane into it and then that last little circular motion this is already planed by the way I really did just do that and it's silky smooth now so that's the technique you so little circular motions work really well okay hello Paul what kind of sharpening method do you use well as with these lots of information out there I use three stones Diamond place and then I use a strop so go and have a look at how we sharpen these are coming in sick and first I don't know what you do to stop it or what I call how do you avoid contaminating light wood we dark wood when final sanding yeah good question that great question it depends on what kind of finish you're going to put on but you can go on either the light wood you can go on the light wood with a very thin coat of shellac and go along that line and then when you sound it should give you some protection it's not altogether foolproof but it's definitely better than just going for the sanding so you can do that and then when you're going with your final color that can go under any finish that's the main advantage of it so use that thin coat you know a thin cut to coat on that surface will prevent that oh can you scroll up slightly and the feed will remain stationary oh I see thanks Adam hey Adam you can come and work from okay when working with pine should the bevel of the plane iron be 25 degrees or thirty it doesn't matter you know the bevel of the plane if you're using a bench plane like this doesn't matter what the under bevel is doing at all that doesn't really affect anything because this is fixed at 44 degrees or 45 degrees depending on the plane maker so it's fixed at that angle it's not a bevel up plane now on a bevel lot playing I can see that that does make a difference if you go too shallow 25 degrees or less 20 degrees then you end up with a weak cutting edge so on the bevel down planes like that it makes very difference it doesn't make it I sharpen all my planes at 30 degrees and taper off to around 20 because I do a camber not micro bevel I find micro bevels don't last for me okay now somebody said okay hey Paul I really reconditioned an old mmm sorry no misspellings and I can't understand what he said when joining mitered end grain if you put glue on both ends and let them dry then the glue them together does it make us stronger joint no not really because what you've got is glue on glue depends on the kind of glue and so no it doesn't because the glue itself if using a PVA relies on some absorption into that surface it relies on the surface once you put PVA and the all you're doing is coating the surface of the end grain with plastic because PVA is plastic it's polyvinyl acetate so you glue it and then you put blue on blue and it doesn't glue so no it's not it's of no benefit some people playing the whole face of a board at once and some hmm you can tell I don't know what I'm doing here Paul tell me how best to dry wood logs or boards good health okay wood logs on board you don't really dry logs logs don't dry well while they're in the round because all the time they have this massive water inside them and that water combined with a dryer with a warm atmosphere is creating fungus inside and that ends up spalting the wood and even rotting the wood so the only real way is not to dry a log love will take I mean if a log is 14 inches in diameter it's going to take 20 years to drive it just does but if you slab it into boards they say an inch per inch of thickness a year per inch of thickness that's a pretty good Maxim it's not exact but it does help and so what we do is really slice through and through and then we just drive those or we caught a song or we riff saw or whatever different method we use and once they go into that thickness then you stick of them with an inch in between each piece leave them there for a year and you wood will be ready to bring in doors to acclimate to this to these surroundings it's going to live in hey david Rogowski how are you I thought there were some longer term tests to see how they held up in use I know they did the job mm-hmm not sure what that's referring to okay all he doesn't sell their chisels in the US do you have any recommendations for a decent sets of chisel well you know all the chisels were made by a German company and they're still being manufactured they're just not as cheap as the old e-version but they're still being made and I think we do have a link somewhere so I might just yeah well I'll see what if I can dig it out maybe get back to you but I'm still using my old days and I love them to pieces there are the best chisels I'll tell you what we should all do would listen to me and just get them in again thanks Sean it's okay Paul do you suggest acclimating dried wood to your environment for a period of time before working yes I already answered that one I think and I do I do I definitely do I'll buy 2x4 studs in and keep them in for six months I usually have about 50 in stock somewhere and I just leave them in the east somewhere and let them dry okay yeah just I I actually just got a suggestion here from the team just to say check out our buying guide that will give you the exact ounce of the buying guides so go for that you are my hero Paul thank you Sam I love you leave a cap however you spell it Oh now okay I'm trying to stop this from scrolling before I get to the question I bought some redwood for a ruble build bench build being milled hmm I need your help jealousy if I don't know how to stop it somebody said scroll all the way up which I did I some common woodworking the buying guide for the chisels just go to common woodworking that's where we teach all our basics for everybody who wants to learn woodworking and it's free remember it's a freely free free resource I call I recondition an all plain using your video and sharpen the blade using your technique last night I was able to plane I was just able to plane join black walnut got a lot of practice but what joy okay thanks for that Steve great hmm do you own any Lee Nelson planes I do I do own them I don't use them because they're I find them too heavy because I'm an old man you know and I'm fine oh oh that was Gary thanks Gary that David I mean favorite Texas woods favorite Texas was this is somebody in Texas she wants me to give a plug for Mesquite it is definitely my favorite Texas wood mesquite scroll up once slightly and it will pour some shot thanks I keep doing that but it's still running away from me just scroll up slightly in the feed will stop okay did do this time okay Marcus how are the disadvantages to planes with ribbed bottoms you don't want to buy them don't get lost corrugated Souls they were the worst invention in the world the shavings wedging the corrugation you move across the surface of the very fine surface you already achieved and all of a sudden it's scored with these shavings that were wedged in the plane don't get one they're just nice to have maybe hi master Paul can you give some advantage advantages on adjust the plane throb okay there is almost no advantage to route to adjusting the plane frog I did a survey once I called about eight woodworkers in Britain when I was living in America and asked them how many of you I mean I asked them do you ever adjust a frog on your plane and wrong one of them said I did it once all the rest said they never did and I rarely I would probably never adjust the frog on my plane it's almost a useless of addition but I suppose at the time they felt like it was necessary but I don't think attack throat makes much difference at all personally that's just Paul Paul is your chat show too slow is it sure I don't know should I use lacquer for a dining table I think you could use like it depends what kind of like are we're talking about shellac lacquer or are we talking about a polymerized lacquer which are very very durable the problem with lacquers is they do dissolve with the acids of your skin so if you make a dining table and you use lacquer generally that will dissolve one thing that I have found even though I'm not particularly enamored completely with it is the water-based floor polishes polish up very nicely and you can build up the coats and they do they do hold up with heat and water amazingly what we don't really know is the long-term value because they're really not that old so you might think about that could you please let me know the advantages or disadvantages of skewed plate blades on planes rather than straight the reason we have skewed ions mostly was on rebate planes so that when it was being pushed into the rabbet the rebate it would pull itself into the corner instead of gliding in and out because it didn't have any side to it so that's the reason we had skewed blades skewed blades in molding planes were wonderful because they pull themselves to task you're pushing this along a surface it's pulling itself into the corner as far as a skewed blade on a plane iron I don't really give you an answer because I don't really know I've never had a problem with a square iron going across I think I might have a problem adjusting a skewed iron to get the skew exactly to match the plane is it true that you can get a plain surface so smooth that you need to real it up a bit is that mean like Duff is up and bTW yes yeah you can get surfaces to to smooth for the surface adhesion because there may not be any fiber in that particular type of wood where you can actually feel a surface so if you get super dense hard grained woods and often veneers were like that they go over it with what we call a two thing plane and roughen the surfaces and then we glue it and put it into place and however we secure it whether with clamps or with a hammer what we call a hammer for putting the veneer down so you do have to roughen it with this with a 2d plane okay Paul I was wondering what ah angles should have my chisels and plane blades at all so what type of timber is best movies going to third which is the hundredth well I've got these that I got from Aldi and these are super super hard and hemlock there's lots of different woods that you can use for cheese or handles I've seen a swans hold up boxwood people use all kinds of wood fight but it's hard to give you a real recommendation because of the availability I don't know what country you're in or where you are but I think any hardwood dense grained hardwood will work really well even maple will work people I'm about to start building a timber frame shed workshop 8 by 8 Douglas any advice this for teaching for a couple years but a timber frame is something else again well it's not my field of expertise I'm not I know I could do it it's not like complicated it's just having the right tools so it's not not really my area I'm a furniture maker do you always use calipers to check for even thickness I do i use a vernier I love it because it really does give me get me within that really super fine tolerance unless I set up a jig and sometimes I'll set up a board where I want plain thin stock or lots of pieces and I'll make a jig where I can just drop the board in piece of wood in and take a shaving and it guarantees take this I do rely on them though I have an episode a threeway you make tools boxes like the joiners box for the car okay yes a good idea hi mr. Paul PVA versus yellow wood PBA this is yellow wood PVA and yellow wood I think you're saying yellow wood glue yellow wood glue s PVA usually if it's not it it's going to be a plastic of some kind they're all pretty much of a plastic nice these days hi Paul just made a frame saw tried to resource and kiln dried out but now they are all bent hmm can I fix this what he's saying is the kiln-dried oak bent or is the sorbent sorry I can't really help you please have an episode three where you can make the toolboxes they make in the old days we've done that we have a toolbox money if we did one we made one a few years ago on woodworking master classes so you might go there when cutting tenon cheeks I found that the saw kerf will damage the final the fine knife wall should I lean the saw slightly to avoid this well the tenon cheeks I always true the tenant tenant except I don't usually get it straight off the saw I like that finessing that I get with the router where I set the router to the depth that I want let it just kiss the surface and it planes up that surface beautifully we're going too fast lick here why don't you use a bedrock plane I would never use a bedrock play and I have never found them advantageous in any way shape or form and you have to go back to the beginning when the bedrocks came out they could not persuade the craftsmen of that era for fifty or seventy years to use a bedrock plane because the weight was just too much you don't need a heavy plane what you need is just a regular Baili patent frog no real advantage at all to the bedrock plains not at all do I need a cross cut back so I should I get it I think actually it's a good question that because you often hear me say well I just sharpen all my smaller saws for a rip cut patent but I do have one or two where I've sharpened it for a cross cut pattern and if you can afford a second saw and you want to just change the pitch and change the tooth pattern yeah go ahead and get yourself you'll enjoy having a cross cut especially if you're doing a lot of cross cutting for shoulders sometimes I'll have one where I'm rip cutting with a rip and then I'll have a cross cut for cross cutting the shoulder lines very nice it's nice if you can do it okay about the weight of the plains I felt the same the lightest family barely made in England are perfect okay yeah I choose some very nice the nicer ones I made in America not England mr. Sellars regarding rebate planes how do you deal with the grain direction if you have it right Henry Whitley you just have to go with it it's very difficult because unless you have two planes you can you have to go with it you have to what you get is what you get but sometimes if you are using a rebate claim you can take the fences off and just pull it the other way Japanese woodworkers hammer it became because they really would okay - first - first let me scroll up a bit how do you feel about dowels why don't you use them I've never found any real value to dowels although back in the beginning of the last century dowels found their heyday because they wanted to get rid of them lots and tenon making because it was just too tedious and they wanted to make something that looked like it looked like the mortise and tenon version so they came up with jigs and they started boring holes and driving pegs in it and it does hold they do hold there's no question that they didn't hold it's just it was a cheaper way of joining wood and you don't really need it this is from boo boo hi Paul do you how many thoughts on getting into woodworking without space for a big workbench are there good alternatives regarding workholding I think if I was doing something like that I would have a bench that folded up against the wall that dropped down onto some kind of twin frames that came out at the ends so I could work on it and then easily lift it up out of the way and then work on sawhorses and things like that I think that would be a way to go this is a nice he's new for me why the u.s. Stanley's are better than the English one I think what it was was the u.s. Stanley's just had these very beautiful rose wood handles that's it for me I'm sold on rose wood handles and and then I think the quality of the work was better I found that the American early American style that song is just felt better than the UK ones I don't want to be unpatriotic but now they do I want to be patriotic if it's not deserved hi Paul is this trated necessary to check for flatness it is I use a straightedge all the time I have this one which is a registered pattern it's got proven straight I use that one and then I use one I just made from just a piece of pine I like that one for about 10 years and it's still as straight as it was when I first did it but I used quarter sawn pine so that works as well have you used Japanese swords like a Rio but what do you think of these I've never been raised with them and I think that's more I have found that I can achieve more with Western saws and I get more of a power cut with Western saws on a thrust stroke than I do on a pull stroke now that I'm not saying this is better I don't want the competition I'm not saying anything like that but a lot of times people are always telling me that hey you get a thin kerf it's like pulling a piece of string instead of pushing a piece of string all that rubbish it's not rubbish it's just that you know I've tested I have tested saw curves on the Western saws of this side that are similar to the Japanese style saws and I haven't found any different it's not the thickness of the plate it's the soccer and I haven't found very I mean these just barely a difference if ever and I've got a couple of saws that have a steel or brass back but actually are a thinner kerf than any of the Japanese swords I've ever used no I don't I don't want to get into the argument I'm sure I know that they make excellent sauce there's no question of that the other thing is I don't want a throwaway saw I will not buy a disposable saw I might buy one to do research or check on something but I would not buy any saw that's a throwaway just me not thinking everybody should do the same thanks Stefan just wondering why okay no no all that rubbish is not really sure I love you Paul Thank You Claudio yes how to fix mistakes video I think that's great I've often thought about fixing mistakes because sometimes I do some things automatically I fix a problem on a piece of wood fix a problem on a tool and just get back to tasks me and Izzy get together sometimes and if we've got something we'll make a Tuesday tip we have these Tuesday tips on Instagram that go out every every week and there and we'll show those so we're doing more and more of that it's just a bit intrusive sometimes while I'm working and I get this project there but a problem comes up and I fix it and I go should I show Izzy this and then if he comes in with my phone and we start doing a short video why does my plane Club between the iron and the cap it's very simple there's going to be a gap in there that's the only reason it can clog so there's a gap between the lever cap I mean the cap iron and the cutting iron so you just file the underside of that leading edge of the hump make sure it's flat rub it across the surface of the stone as near as you can to that edge and it'll take out any gap put them back together and you're on the way I think now this pole ever makes mistakes yeah but it's so bad you're so cool ask Izzy and Joseph and I just think you just need to ask them yes I make mistakes I make mistakes often not but I can usually just correct things in a matter of a second I'll take a plain stroke with us in the middle of a video and I'll be our I didn't set the plane I just sharpened it I forgot to set it and it's taking a gouge out of the piece of wood yeah I make mistakes all the time it's just that I don't admit them yeah okay Paul huh I have a back saw with a slight Bend the back is bent - how can you go about fixing this if you've got one close your vise on the saw like this tighten it and then turn it back one turn and then pull the saw towards you in the opposite direction of the bend and it'll take that Bend now now I just put bending - but that's what you do that will take that bend out so you need that pressure and this is gonna be my last question so Melanie Melanie and Matt Paul many thanks for your videos they've helped me greatly I'm in Spain where I have a lot of stone oak it is beautiful very hard but full of knots any tips to help work with such bad wood you know people think I am really opposed to belt Sanders and I'm not opposed to them at all and then it seems like a last resort but some woods just will not work well with hand tools and you just have to resort to something a bit more industrial so either that I'll put it through a machine even a machine would not probably do well with some woods you may end up with damaged blades but are cutting irons as they called I think it's just very hard if you have got that that kind of wood to think that you can tame it with a avenged plane you can but you have to be prepared to keep going back to the stone back to sharpening constantly so alright everybody I think oh yeah this is great I'm gonna answer this one Paul I see your bench vise is not recess to you do you prefer it better that way absolutely I do and the reason is it's very simple when I put my wood in the vise here like this see where my fingers are they write down in between I take my bench bababang take my shaving I lift it up open up I've got an overhand grip all the time if I don't if the vise is flush with there I have to go underhand all the time and it's a pretty underhanded thing to have to do I don't want it I would never use one there is no value to it people keep telling me when you can't clamp things to the event stuff I don't need to plant things to my bench stuff I never have done never will do 55 years of never having to do it I'm not going to start now I enjoyed having you you were great and thanks for your questions I hope you like this if you did like it and you're not subscribe to subscribe because I want to keep doing them and I want to keep increasing this so that this whatever I plant in you is going to go out beyond you and you're going to tell a hundred people about something that you've learned from me today and it's just going to keep expanding and this craft will kept we'd be kept alive by you doing it as well as me bless you all have a wonderful day see you soon I'm gonna pull the plug guys

Channel: Paul Sellers

Views: 40,742

Rating: 4.9752064 out of 5

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Id: 9_xk_wsSpHo

Length: 58min 52sec (3532 seconds)

Published: Thu May 28 2020