Rob Cosman Live: Q & A (6 June 2020)

I'm happy to announce we have our third t-shirt in our series this one says wood for good it's in military green we've enlarged the logo to make it easier to see help us spread our cause get yourself a t-shirt you we're live right now no we are that much time hi folks welcome to whatever number this is our Saturday night substitute for date night and this is our question and answer so there's a bunch of questions we're gonna get to them and we're also gonna try to bring in some live ones so if you have a good question we got the colonel he's sorting through he seems a good one he'll text it to frickin we'll be able to we'll be able to bring it up so I need to introduce the crew tonight Jake's behind the camera do a swing around Jake - I always like to see you they always asking do a swing around yeah you go smile big now over here we have Megan Jake's wife what are you doing tonight Megan oh you're tracking PHP donations and over here we have mark Smith that is his real name - yes it's not just an alias he picked one that would be easy to remember mark if you can if you can't tell by the arms is his combat engineer Canadian Army he's still active duty and mark started working here with us a couple weeks ago been paid yet good food - so in behind Frick as Rex Rex is my oldest son Rex started working here with us working on tool production what are you doing tonight Rex yeah he made dinner and he's an excellent cook he's also and he also has he also always was the kid that had the memory he could remember stuff that nobody else could and last but certainly not least with the earphones on Frick yet this is us a glitz free evening and yours truly I have my voice back to the chagrin of many what else are gonna remember oh so just briefly we're gonna bring ray Doron tonight ray is Vietnam vet Ray was in our class this past year I can't remember what number but and Ray is from Louisiana and it was a great guy to have around you'll enjoy talking to him he's got a bit of an accent yeah I always think of ray because I always say it ray used to drive tell me the name of it what was it called was that little vehicle the funny-looking thing that is named after a an animal isn't that mule a mule right so the funny sir I'll tell you tonight the story about coming down the hill in the mule while the mine sweepers were coming up the hill it's an awkward place to find yourself so this is our we do this every Saturday night six o'clock Eastern we do it as a service for you some entertainment hopefully we also do it as a means of raising funds for a purple art project briefly purple art project is a service that we provide to combat wounded veterans six times a year one a month from May to October I'll dress that momentarily we run a sixth day very intense into a workshop when I say intense I mean we started eight in the morning when we go into 11 p.m. for six days we learned how to freehand sharpen we learned how to cut dovetails we learned how to cut through and half blind dovetails we learn how to take a rough board and make it flat smooth and square ready for a finish on all six surfaces we also learn how to cut mortise and tenon joints we learn how to sharpen planes and chisels I think I mentioned that excuse me even our dovetail saw and now we're adding in a new a new project we're going to make a candle box so I've got a few samples here that I just happen to have out the other day so I'll share them with you that was full of money it can't lift it Shh don't say that out loud oh no it's all changed just ponies pennies pennies yeah so here's a couple of examples we give you quite a bit of latitude in terms of the lid the idea is to dimension all the wood so the words that we dimension on Wednesday will then be cut up and used on Thursday Friday and Saturday as we build the box half blind dovetails you have the option half blind you can do through dovetails with a step dovetail which will allow for a groove to be cut to house the bottom there'll be some form of a lid this one had a sliding lid we may be able to entertain that if somebody wanted to and small because you got to be able to travel with it to take it home and it's challenging and it it'll-it'll tasks you it'll it'll put you to little challenges I guess that I should say anyway so that is our Purple Heart project that's also known as the training the hand workshop you can find out information about it Luther will put a link down stairs not down stairs down below and so what we've been interrupted this year our May class has been moved to August help me August what what they know when it ends oh okay so you know why am I telling you the June class has been moved to October the July class the decision we made on the 21st of June which is when they open or attentively are opening the borders if not July will be put into a first week of November the good news is that they were going to introduce legislation that meant everybody had to wear a mask in any public building and they just changed that so hopefully runner we're on a good we're in a good role on a good roll so anyway so anyway in each training the hand workshop there's room for six combat wounded vets and six civilian spots now we have not opened up 2021 for people to sign up because until we find out what's gonna happen in 2020 if need be we have to leave though 2021 available to the people who didn't get to a 1022 because of the virus as soon as we do that we will open it up if you're a combat wounded vet if you know of a combat wounded vet this is just a few stipulations number one they have to either be active duty or honorably discharged and they have unfortunately they have to be able to prove that they have to have suffered a combat related wound whether it be a physical wound or a mental wound we recognize both and they need only to apply again Luther will put it in the section below the link to the questionnaire that you fill out and we make the selection twice a year so Super Dave Benson who is works with us he takes care of the August September October class and retired colonel Luther Sealy takes care of May June and July so we stopped we December and June I think our dates where we stopped to make our selection and if you need any more information about that don't hesitate to contact us or even hopefully it'll you can put that amount of questions for tonight if you have them specific yeah if you would like to participate and help in our again the link will be on there you can participate monetarily you can participate in sending us something we can auction off we had a great I wish had it here I took it home beautiful shaker boville box and number eight massive thing and we had some bids on that we also have a guitar that was donated to be auctioned off and where is our Strummer it was gonna be our one of our features tonight but we haven't we haven't found them anyway the only i think i need to mention is our t-shirts so we have three one says more threesome says wood for good the first one was wood is good and the middle middle one is wood doing good has our Purple Heart logo on the over the left breast and that is designed to raise awareness so as you wear it out and about people bring up the topic what is that all about and that gives you a chance to tell them and that is how we find these individuals who need our service most severely combat wounded vets in terms of PTSD do not leave their homes so the only way they can find out about this is from somebody they know finding out and making them aware all right am I forgetting anything no I'll just give you a quick route just quick overview this is our current project in our online workshop and due to a major screw-up we had to redo this we just did it this last four or five episodes had to take the face of this which was already finished and remove 1/16 of an inch then come in and take a piece of cherry and start from scratch take a sixteenth of an inch slice and put it back on here so we could save you have no idea how valuable this piece of wood is that piece of wood came right off of there so our next move is to take a thin slice off of here and glue it onto the front of this so that when you put that drawer in there it'll match if you come to this end real quick I'll just show you what I mean even though I can't get it out there's a drawer right there because that piece came out of there so can we get it up Jake no yeah it okay we're not done anyway I accidentally got the piece that was supposed to be over here turned around and that's why we had to go through that whole process of starting over so that interest you there's a link down below you're gonna have a free month come on and try it there's over 2,500 stored episodes of all the stuff that we've done since 2011 we started doing this let's take our first question are we uh are we giving away any prep oh yes yes sorry sorry so we did we ever every timed as kind of a reward for those of you who come on here and watch we give away $100 gift certificate we draw names for a hundred our gift certificate at every $1,000 increment in donations so last week we had six Megan and the week before that we had nine so your call but we'll give it will give away a hundred or get certificate and you can use it to buy whatever you want as long as it comes from our store all right anything from any of you oh yes yes yes and something else before she says the vets Angie and Lynn are here as well of course and Angie Lynn okay so I'll have to compare I'll address that right now so when you buy a t-shirt and it comes so nicely folded in a beautiful little sleeve with a picture up in the corner of two people one you may recognize the other one you may not have dinner do too that would be Angie can Anthony works here where this is Ken on tonight he said he might make it later so this is Ken's cousin her name is Angie and because of an illness she's confined to her bed but she's going to get better and she tells me and she's coming to work here so Angie is Angie Pat and Lynn package all of our t-shirts and when you get your t-shirt there will be a little seal and there'll be an A on there and that's Angie's that's Angie's a saying big thank you to the both of them that in your way and last but not least if you are a combat wounded vet that has been to our class as one of our scholarship vets we would love to say hello to you and give you a shout out so all I need you to do is in the comment section state what class you were in combat wounded vet your name or class you were in Meghan will spot it tell me and I'll give you a shout out and if you are a previous vet been to one of our classes we have a new program called the bench brigade where we have civilians who volunteer to build a bench for you and deliver it to you that fantastic we were looking for 36 we ended up with over 80 in fact we had to halt it at 80 because we had more we have more volunteers now than we have people to get the benches to incredible response absolutely I tip my hat to you people fantastic speaking of Jackson so let the gang know that the visors came in apartment say again Jax to let you know to let everybody know that the vices have come yes the vices device has arrived middle of last week there at the front door they'll start going out this week so big job huge stack of Isis but yeah they're on their way they will be on their way awesome so don't forget please speak up let us let us give you a shout-out and acknowledge your presence tonight yeah so so far we have Kevin Buress hey Kevin how are you brother Gary Burnett Gary Burnett these are our standards always great to have you guys and Pete Pete with deputy Dan Bruce the infamous and the famous Pete Ambrose maker of the roubo bench Pete's he was on recently Pete and and Ray were in the same class they were actually side by side both both Vietnam vets okay interrupt me at any time please all right ready yeah so the first question we're actually gonna take directly from the chat it comes from Daniel Martin and he says Daniel from where it doesn't say like that nowhere I'm sure he'll let us know he says I have so much trouble getting a full shaving and I always end up with a hump in the middle of my board and I'm trying to chew up the board here this one a lot so what you have to learn how to do it's almost always in fact I'm gonna ask Jake can you think of any time when that type of press question a problem was not a sharpening issue you know the only exception I can think of is that it could be a bad plane now if you have an expensive plane a lot of times they're not even close to being flat that may cause a problem but it's almost always a sharpening issue so you're trying to get I can't I don't apologize that's the question answer if the answers are gonna be long cuz I'm gonna give it to you the way you need to hear it that was you if you if you didn't see our toilet paper YouTube we did at the beginning of the coronavirus that was that was the piece of paper that was a piece that we did it but maybe Luther will find that and put it I'll put a link in the description down below all right so full wit savings in order to get that the boolean the number Seven's really sure your blade has to be straight from here to here straight is defined as the shortest distance between two points so how do you do that well let's walk through the process I'm gonna give you a commercial every time I can if you don't have a good plain screwdriver we Gus when we start making these making well we do we we don't sell them as we get them so it's a really stout screwdriver there's no taper here Jake actually goes in and fix this a tip we wrap it like we do a hockey stick so you can get a great grip on it and it's really good you want something regular screwdriver the tip is tapered and that rex the top lip on the screw especially on the brass screws so that's what's nice about these is that they fit in there and and that does not happen at all so start there let's come over here so what I'm going to do is I'm just gonna walk you through a little bit of this sharpening procedure there's a few things that you have to remember first I'm gonna do a little flattening of my 16-thousand which is my finishing stone some finish with the six thousand some with an eight I prefer 16 want to keep the stone flat that's critical to that's all part of it your stone has to be flat if it's not then you're not going to have a straight edge okay so here's my blade I have to hold this the proper way by that I mean you have to put you have to provide just weight distribution or pressure evenly across the entire width if you fly if you were to plane like that what you'll end up doing is taking off more in the middle than you will on the outside if you plane like this you're gonna take off more on the outside and not in the middle so believe it or not that blade will actually flex into the weight of your fingers hard to believe but it's true so I have one two three four fingers distributing the pressure uniformly and that's difficult because you push a lot harder with your index finger than you do with your ring finger or your pinky and you have to learn to think through those fingers so that you're pushing the same amount applying the same amount of pressure when I set that down there and this is an own flat stone I set that down there on the primary bevel I raise up a few degrees and they do these little circles now while I'm doing that I'm careful not to make too big circles because then you're rocking like this so I like to keep them nice and tight I have light to moderate pressure somebody said the other day they liked my description if you can imagine the amount of downward pressure it would take to gently compress a firm grape that's about how much in fact what I usually do up about ten seconds of work on this as soon as I can detect the burr stopped there for a second oftentimes when we team we have a classroom or teaching people want to know well how much pressure do you apply so I'll get them to lay their hand on the bench and then I'll come over and I'll put my fingers down like that and without exception they're always shocked oh really that light yes that light the harder more pressure you apply the more likely you are to screw things up that's just the way it is light pressure lots of control excess pressure you lose and control now I need to verify that this edge is straight and the best way I can do it is by detecting a slight burr that runs corner-to-corner if the bird doesn't go corner to corner then obviously there's a problem if this now there's a few variables let's check them out let's check them off this has to be flat check that one off pressure I applied it must be uniform check that one off now if I get a burr corner-to-corner that tells me from here to here should be straight at that point I can leave the 1000 and come to the 16,000 I'm gonna do the same thing I did on the 1,000 with one exception after locating the primary bevel that's the big one I'm gonna raise up just a few degrees higher than I was on that first stone and I'll do the same tight circles now this stone has a tendency to wear much quicker than the previous one so I'm actually while I'm doing this little tight circles I'm slowly migrating forward just to spread the wear out evenly and I do about 10 seconds of work on this one at the end of 10 seconds without changing anything I'm simply gonna push down a little harder on the right side of the blade with my right index finger then I'm gonna push down a little harder on the left side of the blade with my left pinky just three seconds each fact it takes me longer to explain that to me I actually intend to spend doing it final step steel rule on the edge of the stone lay the blade down on its back three seconds working right on the edge to remove the burr that's called the Charlesworth ruler trick David Charles worth of England developed that technique back in the early to mid-1970s and it really didn't get become well-known until two thousand three four or five and now I consider it's probably probably the single most beneficial influential aspect of sharpening that I think it's ever been brought out the only thing that would come close to it would be the the tertiary bevel and the tertiary bevel is what that tertiary bevel which is what I did on the sixteen thousand and the ruler trick combined to make sharpening easy and quick okay chip breakers on pulled back about 1/32 of inch from the edge I'm just going through all the checklists here verify that the face of the Frog is nice and clean put the blade in there so nice to be able to talk without gasping furrier put the blade in there make sure that sits firmly on the face of the Frog put the lever cap on with enough pressure that it'll prevent the blade from sliding accidentally but still allow me to make adjustments like this now don't forget your magic wax commercial number five well that was all worn off do I have my other one Jake no yep great stuff for lubricating the sole your plane so that your effort is spent pushing the blade you're gonna use it through the wood yeah yeah just to set this up first so your effort is spent pushing the blade through the wood instead of pushing the plane over the wood now I'm holding a plane like this can you kind of get a side profile so they can get and get an idea so right now I'm looking right down the sole if I drop this just a little bit and to make it even neater I'm gonna put a white a bright white background I dropped the plane down just a little bit so that I now see the toe and the heel and there's about an inch apart in terms of looking this way the throat is right here so as I start to spin the adjuster knob that's this thing and I'm gonna spin it in a clockwise rotation as I spin it it will eventually pop out okay now I see it but I see a lot more on the left and I do on the right and it just shows up as a thin black line I'm taking the time to do this because so many people don't get this since I see more on the left and on the right that would result in an uneven path or prob swipe meaning I would leave more material on one side than the other and it'll throw the edge of a square so using my lateral adjustment lever down here I'm gonna push it toward the high side so if the left is protruding more than the right I'm gonna push it to the left and in doing so the blade kind of swings around a little bit so that now it appears to be parallel to the sole at that point I'm gonna retract the blade by spinning the adjustment of the opposite way and as its laid disappears it allows me to go in to make any Corrections okay now I'm fully retracted no blade exposed at all a little bit of magic wax on there I'm gonna start calling it that now this is gonna allow me to sneak up on the board so as I start moving the plane I'm gonna start spinning the adjust knob I want to discover where the blade is in terms of projecting through the soul okay I'm getting a lot more shaving on the right than the left so I'll make a very slight adjustment I'll finish this pass and start a new one so what have we got I got a full width shaving looks to be maybe just a little bit heavy on the right I say that only because if you look right here you see it's almost translucent right there and it's obviously heavier here so a little a tiny adjustment moving the blade like that let's try it again real important that you apply the pressure right down through the middle of the plane still a little bit this is a really fine adjustment if you think about it that shaving is probably coming off at about ten sigh part of me seven tenths of a sau you can measure that's better okay hopefully that answers the question it's almost always in the sharpening and you did mention a hum so the way a plane works if you think about it is actually it's almost lose faith in it add power jointer your infeed table the fact let's walk over here when you operate a power jointer I'm sure I want to contrast the way the to work because they're radically different a piece of wood you going back to work mark yes all right yeah you do I'm looking for a piece of wood yeah this will do now I'm gonna drop that table down quite a bit so we can exaggerate this other way now okay this table and that table this is called your infeed that's called your own feed are both supposed to be parallel there'll be at different heights but they're supposed to be parallel the top of a cutting circle meaning as this thing spins the top of the cutting circle needs to be on the same height as the outfeed table so as you bring your board along what gets removed by the cutter head gets compensated for by the outfeed table and your board is properly supported and you go all the way across you end up with a nice straight cut now if you look at they could contrast that to the way a hand plane works you essentially have a flat piece of steel with a blade projecting down the middle do them do the thought and so I think that process through and it says oh how does that thing even work well it doesn't really because on a straight edge it will always eventually take you to a convex surface if you continue to plane that's just the way it happens so rather than trying to figure it out just learn how to work with it so what I do is I would come in and I would toll out the middle purposely and the way I would do it I'd start here I would take a pass and I would continue to go a little farther and come a little farther back and I might have to come back in here again and take another short pass always lifting well in a forward motion too as not to leave a skin tag on there and you would just keep doing that moving back a little bit each time I may have to come in and do it again and then I would eventually make a complete pass or two or three until I eventually get it so that that board is nice and straight so I've created this and as I start to plane before it goes back to this I need to stop at that flat point takes a little bit of work but if you learn to sharpen this is an easy process but fighting with a dull blade or a plane not properly set up make just makes it so frustrating that people have a tendency to give up you got to learn how to sharp nothing more to save with that next four I'll try to make some of them give us some short ones didn't mean to wake you all right this one comes from Robert Severini from Aurora Ontario Robert he says I'm building their kitchen cabinets which we already know this one Bob first from the fronts yeah what are your thoughts on using popular for face frames and top-line poplar poplar for face frames and door rails and stiles um before you before you answer that Philip Lawrence is on Kevin's Mary Jo Kevin's Meera thank you yeah tell me tell me your your tell me your saw showed up please I just I just email with him the other day gray is on cool right made it home good present when you see here from you shortly um perfect why don't we just set up Kevin right now Kevin okay for next week Oh Jeff's mirror next week please we'll chat what's the question Oh poplar popular great wood great a great paint grade wood pretty boring as a for anything else great secondary wood but it'll hold paint well the advantage it has over pine it doesn't have that pitch if you use PI and you paint it and there's any pitch it'll bleed right through the paint poplar is a great a great secondary wood in fact a lot of the furniture you find built there's any solid wood in it regardless of what color it's been stained it's very often poplar it's it's probably the most common secondary wood good choice brick all right this next one comes from Bob II just from KS and Bob from Kansas City if I resaw a one inch by four inch by 18 inch piece of wood to make a box should I set the two pieces aside for a period of time to allow for movement or go ahead and work them right away well that's that's not an easy question to answer simply because if how long has it would been in the environment that you're working if you just bought would home from the lumberyard and you and it's either more moist or less than your environment and you split it open in the middle it's going to move I think your best bet is always to if you're gonna do that is to rip it wider than you want and let it stand let it sit and when you let it sit I always have my drawer parts in particular stand them on edge don't lay them flat if you lay your looking for some drawer parts if you lay your drawer parts flat then the moisture is only going to try or is going to more conveniently either escape or get absorbed on the open side than there is going to be on the bottom side that's laying flat against the table so stand your stuff on the edge I'll use this as an example after you've cut it leave it on its edge like that or you can sticker it if it's gonna be a long time stickering simply means you're getting you better little strips of wood I used to cut like mine little since ape of a triangle I saw some really cool ones up in Ontario where they've got a an even better way so there's less contact between the sticker and the wood but you stack them so the air can move around through them yeah always best to let your wood acclimate before you actually start building with it particularly if it's not been in that environment that you're working for a very long period of time next okay we also have Patrick Tackett here detect and did I think he went through number one yeah he he asked where his his was and see pretty even formed in that they put it on a mouse in cinah his way so this is a number one this is an original stanley number one there's all kinds of stories as to what this was for i the one i believe most is that it was a Salesman sample it fully functional in fact I'll even show you how functional it's a dangerous place here we have a piece of I hope he's feeling the pain right now what he's feeling the pain of this he's hijacked this this question all right so now number one's never had a lateral adjustment lever they have an advance and retract and adjusting knob but they never had a lateral adjustment leaver so you had to move it by hand or with them more with it yeah a little brass hammer that's very spinning Super Dave dancing I think I actually sharpened this up for one of my kids to use but it's too small to be used as anything much more than I wouldn't even call it a good block plane so there you go is it being sent to you the answer is no but you can get your own because Wood River actually makes that number one which I was quite impressed with I think it's actually better machine than that original Stanley by the way those these using retails are in good shape for somewhere around two thousand dollars the original stanley number once a little on the rare side you find one if you want it really bad next michaela Cosmin would like to know your way too many did we have a question we're gonna answer and then megan had somebody that you want me sad to have more vets that was one inch by four inch by 18 inch okay she's got some more names go ahead ok so Sean McDermott Sean Abbey pardon heavy a be in we're in Utah arm lift was no no no he's just Salt Lake I that's what I meant by northern yeah marshal room rimmel rimmel rimmel rimmel be in the military you name a marshal Rommel Patrick does not have a dovetail on my boy Lawrence is on but who doesn't Philip Lawrence knows this is the original Philip Guston from the first class yeah I'll fill this I think so anyway this is Marshalls dovetail incredible dovetail on the first class be taught and that's Phillip pest systems Jake I'll zoom in there show you so good to see a gentleman glad you're here and then one more we have a Brandon Beach that's coming to the classes this year Brandon which class you don't know let's hope let's hope okay back to questions ok the cause one wants to know your skin care routine I'm just kidding Cortinas okay so this question comes from the chat is from Terrence Baath and he says hey Rob with all the drawers you have shown during the drawer making episodes it is obvious you are not a fan of drawer slips or your techniques technique does not require them please explain drawer slips good chance to do so advertise the online workshop too so here's a here's a drawer slip if you have a drawer that is going to get high use kitchen cabinets would be a good example you think about how many times how many times my kids would open the kitchen drawer it would be measured in the hundreds per day that's a lot of where now if drawers are built properly according to me it's a box fitting into a hole and the tolerances should be touched that there is such that there's no side-to-side movement so that means that the weight of the drawer is running on the edge of the drawer side and it's running right here well if you've ever seen a piece of antique furniture that was properly built that way that eventually will cut grooves in here you think of how many times tell us the one back and forth to do that but it'll cut grooves in there and it'll sag a little bit so drawer slips are a way of increasing the surface area the running surface area without increasing substantially the weight of the drawer if you have big wide drawer sides yes you'd have more surface area but think of how clumsy and clunky that would be so instead now I minor two-tone the outsides Aspen and the drawer slip is actually made out of mahogany so this piece you can see is glued on and then the groove for the drawer bottom is cut in it and you see it that you can do all kinds of treatment here you can cut a little fill it in there so it's easier to get dust out of but whatever the whole idea is to increase increase the running surface area without increasing the weight of the drawer and I don't use them a ton it's a lot of it's a fair bit of extra work I do it once in a while as obvious by this piece but I like them it's a very very much an English tradition I would say and what more can we say to that next okay next one comes from Adam in Grimsby Ontario can you square up the plane blade without the help from a torn edge style grinder talk about squaring up plane blades so you I always advocate developing the skill if you're relying on a jig to cut your dovetails or to sharpen your plane blade you're not developing a skill you're simply the motor that's making that particular tool work if that jig breaks you're no farther down the road of learning how to sharpen than you were when you started and you either go buy another jig why not just learn the skill well all right same thing with a grinder if you're totally hand tools not interested in power tools I would say I would submit you might want to consider bending that a little bit and getting a grinder because this will work so much faster than trying to as use question was squaring up the edge of a blade this will removes such a small amount of metal this will remove a large amount quickly but there's a couple of things that you have to see that are gonna make this job even easier so let me grab a blade from any number of my extra blades so if my blade was on a square and that sometimes happens especially when you're learning freehand remember as I said you put more pressure you tend to put more pressure with your index finger than your pinky so sometimes that happens so what I have set up here and Jake how were we were well-stocked on these and these right okay so you're in luck the grinder bran does not matter this is a variable speed I could care less they typically come if they're not variable speed they either come at 1725 rpm or 3450 get either one doesn't matter what you want and what the most important part of it is right here and right here the inexpensive grinders come with really cheap to arrests so what you need to do is just throw that away and buy one of these this is a Wolverine grinding jig we have the one way actually manufactures it for us so that it's just that's all you're getting is this thing right here called the base plate and this thing called the platform assembly and mines clamped on because I needed to make a new one but that you can see how much grinding we do that's just bolted or screwed to the same table that the bench grinder is so it'll fit any bench grinder now you may have to go in and block this up if it needs to be a little higher or you may have to block this up whatever but it'll fit you can modify it to fit any grinder it's nice because everything works on a cam so you just squeeze it like that and it fits there it tighten now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna loosen this I really like this platform assembly because it's a nice big thick hunk of steel gives you lots of surface area PACS is a great heatsink and solid as a rock so first thing I would do is go in here and I would get this tool rest so it's supporting the blade or presenting the blade to the stone at 25 degrees which in this case is my primary bevel now I want it close I want it well supported and lock that down now I'm gonna assume that that is angled on there's already 25 degrees I'm just gonna match it I got to turn that light on J cuz I'm gonna be able to see it needs to come up higher but and then this just lifts out and rotates so you can keep it out of your way now I've moved it away too far so I'm gonna bring it in it's Chris too far as Chris to fire on tonight but Dave super name is yep he doesn't get sharing art anymore he's become like the furniture okay now I can't see cuz I'm looking right into that light which is kind of a dumb move I'm just gonna spin that and see if I can't see where it's making contact up high so I need to move this a little bit more lock it fit in there nice and tight come on every time you pull it in you change the first time I've done this bit more tried to come up with a way of doing that was three he could set it but there are so many variables especially when it comes to chisels that is difficult to do yeah it'll work okay before I turn it on this is a CBN wheel now we have there's so many of that and so many advantages that you have to ignore the price because they're the advantages far away the fact that it cost so much more than a regular wheel as soon as you put it on it's already balanced so you don't have to go in there and keep switching it around and trying to get the wheel to run true never needs to be dressed it doesn't need to be balanced has grit on both primary on three surfaces here here and out here if you want to be have access to a flat grind you can use that as well typically right now I'm just gonna use this surface it has an 80 grit wheel 80 grit grit 80 grit abrasive so it cuts very fast the single biggest advantage because it's a big hunk of Steel in fact I'll show it to you it weighs what do we guess eight pounds it's a big hunk of Steel so it acts as a heat sink so when you're grinding that heat has to go somewhere a lot of it goes off in the sparks a lot of it goes into the blade but in this case a lot of it goes into the wheel and it makes it so that this does not overheat you can do it if you're not careful but it's pretty easy I'm trying to bring this back to being square so it only makes sense to have a square in my hand well look and see if I pick up on that isn't no that one is but if it wasn't I would go in if I was high over here other words it was slope like this then I would go in and I would just lightly that's the key light light me work that corner it's a lot easier to see what's going on when you look over on this side I got to just a little bit that's better so I just keep working that corner and when I do this instead of trying to move across here and you end up hitting that side as I'm moving across once I get into the wheel somewhere then I start to move in and before I exit out here I pull away so that I'm engaging disengaging engaging disengaging but I don't weigh down here he's time he just working back and forth keep track over here so yeah see how you can see that line it's really easy to tell and I'm low here high here so I go back in and I'm gonna work just area I'm gonna avoid this area I keep turning it over and checking in my progress and if you need to get your Square on there and see what's going on which to be pretty close still a little bit load here so I would continue to go in there and avoid that corner now if I'm really bad meaning it's out by a lot then what I would do I would reduce my tool rest so it was almost straight on and I would go in and I would purposely reshape the edge until it was square why do I say that because if it's really about the other square and you're trying to reshape it doing this you're going to eventually be working with just a feather edge and that's easy to burn I find it easier to go in and shape it by blunting the end of the blade until you get it squared up again you're just gonna put your square on there check once you get it square readjust your tool rest and go back in and now just drop it down until you bring this back to being a point but if there's one example in my shop of where the equipment makes a huge difference I can't think of too many areas more so than the grinder if you use a traditional wheel it takes forever it's constantly overheating the pain of putting the wheel on there so it doesn't vibrate is a nightmare I choose not to have to go through again and that's a little bit how expensive is that how much is the wheel 180 so it's $180 for the wheel and it's 70 $70 for the tool rest what grid is that 80 grit and for the next five to seven years you won't have to worry about fearing using the grinder makes it makes the job so much easier and one of the best finds we made in the last five years in terms of improving performance of our equipment in here and as we grind a lot Jake does all of the 17 degree chisels all the half-blind dovetail chisels anything else we do all our cutters and all the cutters yeah so we do a lot of grinding okay next Rick all right this one comes from the chat and it is from how are we for numbers by the way I have 786 on YouTube okay and five unfazed book 5 welcome killing it yeah ok so this is a question about the Cosman workbench from the new video yeah and it's from Brian proffer and he says I have I know Brian I have my one inch MDF for my cosmic workbench cut but not glued yet I was cleaning out the garage and had to move it outside for a few hours in the Sun and the piece on top bowed /warp is there any ways to fix the top piece of MDF did Wow well I would number 1.i my first thought is okay it's not rigged it's not worth risking your bench because of one piece of MDF but before I toss it out I would bring it back into the garage and I would set it I would set it on its edge somewhere and see what happens over the course the next couple of days the old trick was lay it down on a concrete floor where it'll absorb a bit of moisture so if it if it if it cupped like this right so if my board yeah this is a good one it's flexible if my my piece of wood or MDF weird a cup like that that means this side has taken on more moisture than that side because as the sweat as the the surface has grabbed moisture here and has caused it to swell its only option is to bend and expand the underside the opposite so if you took a piece of MDF that has been has cup like that and laid it down on a concrete floor then the bottom is going to absorb some moisture out of the concrete and that may bring it back around to being flat it's the only thing I can tell you there and if it doesn't it doesn't straighten out in the next couple days then kiss it goodbye and go eat yourself another piece no we're not we're trying to work with something like that hello wife Kimberly yes quick all right ready yeah next one comes from Mike in San Diego he wants to know if you have more shooting boards or Joe presses if I have more shooting board oh do you have more shooting board surgery drill presses yeah by five we have more we have more drill presses than we have shooting boards and children that's shooting boards I have one two three four five five active shooting boards right now no no that's not true either there's two more over there seven shooting boards and we probably have 14 drill presses I can stand here and see one two three that's it four and then out there we'd have five 19 or so six seven eight nine ten yeah we actually may be down with you start buying some more next all right Klaus from Germany Berlin plus he wants it hi I just bought a Veritas stuff just saw and it binds in the wood any tips besides wax yeah my saw I next yeah next you can alan peters used to take the secret to getting a really nice straight cut in a piece of wood with your dovetail saw is to have minimal set and if the time came that he had too little set on there what you can do is is just run a little thing of magic wax along there and then just spread it with your fingers I don't know I never like doing this because you're applying glue directly to the glue surface and then that'll help but if it's really binding then obviously there's not enough set and you need to you need to put the set back on and that involves oh here's one here a saw set where you go in and there's an anvil so there's the the round part is the anvil now that anvil has if you work all the way around that anvil you see how these slope changes so depending on how much set you want you adjust it then lock it in place and when you set that down there and and it when the blade touches here and here it's in the right at the right height and then you're going in there and that as you squeeze the trigger that pushes the tooth against the anvil to the right amount of Bend so but the hard part is we're doing a small saw like that is you got to go in and identify which tooth is going that way which tooth is bent this way I used to go in and put the headgear on so I can see and with a little mark touch every other one it's a pain to do and then you got to go in there and it's it takes some work but the answer I'd love to say yeah I'm biting my tongue on so that would limit myself to what I just said next we just reached our first thousand dollar angry okay so we are drawing for at least one $100 certificate tonight right all right this one Oh actually no this one comes from the chat yeah and it is from Rob Switzer hey Rob he wants to know if you can talk to rob not sure mishandle oh yeah I sent him a picture okay I hope I did I took the picture I bet I forgot to send to him sorry Rob I'll do that tonight I took the pictures on my phone go ahead what t1 so he wants to know if you can talk about proper flame break etc on your large tenon saw and also how to properly sharpen a crosscut saw hmm no no no I got to be set up for that but I will address it there is no flame on there my tenon saw so my tenon saw my dovetail saw my medium tenon a rip teeth and the teeth yeah what he's referring to is the face of the tooth on the right file the face of the tooth when filed that's too big of a file is like this so a flame would mean that there'd be some angle in the face of the tooth like on a crosscut but on a rip saw I don't put any there's no none much whoever it's zero to grease so zero this way what was the rest that concession in crosscut we'll do we'll do that eventually but that's that's gonna take a while that would be another one of those 25-minute answers that might not go so well tonight really quick question from a tree I will address that really quick question for major he wants to know if your saws or push or pull sauce western-style saws cut on the push Eastern stars Japanese saw is cut on the pole why one over the other and there's obviously debate on this well a dovetail saw in hardwood the dovetail saw was designed with a heavy brass back that was and is fairly close to the tooth line so I don't know why it's not you see dovetail saw some of those short stubby ones and the teeth are way down here when you were ever gonna cut dovetails in drawers are gonna be any deeper than what you would allow right there and the closer this is to this the more stout that blade is going to be the idea is you want that saw to hold its shape and to not follow the path of least resistance so that the surface okay now how do you test it well you take the piece after it's been cut and you put it back on there and you should have a perfect joint whether it's this surface or you spin it around like that typically in a joint you're gonna have the side of the tail side of the pin and you want a nice flat surface Japanese saws I don't even have one anymore dude to describe for sure you use a very thin blade and that little thin blade I love the philosophy that you can pull a blade of grass between your fingers but you can't push it however on Western hardwoods that little thin blade will want to follow the path of least resistance so everyone says oh it's so much easier because you're you're pulling to start instead of pushing no hear me out in the process of doing that you'll have a straight cut here straight cut down here but you look on the back side and that little blade like I said is wandered to follow the path of least resistance sometimes they're curved their plates down to 12 thousandths of an inch whereas this is 20 on really light wood that's fine but on stout hardwoods you need that solid brass back to help support that so that that cut comes out with a perfectly flat surface so western style western hardwoods cut in the push and it's not a by the way it's not hard that's the reason why on my dovetail so I put those little tiny starter tees in fact I have them on on my big tenon saw I have on the medium tenon saw all them have the same feature the little tiny teeth with a relaxed with a love relaxed cutting face so you can go in there do that just to start to cut and then that provides a track so when you follow up with the big teeth they hold on course and you get a nice fast accurate and most importantly straight cut good question next all right I think we'll do one more and then we'll try and bring the right ray on well with time but this question comes from Roy Wilson in nine in Imoh BC what what are the most important tools to start making small boxes I'm assuming you're talking hand tools so my most important tools to start making small boxes well I would have to say your number one is gonna be over here you gotta have good stones cuz nothing else works without it so I would say your sharpening gear I would always advocate a five and a half because it works so well on a shooting board which if you're five-and-a-half is number two you're shooting boards number three you need some chisels and if you're doing small boxes you could probably get away with just a quarter and a half however the one thing they can't do is what you can do with a eight-inch which will be ready soon as Jake says so so those three chisels if you're gonna cut dovetails and you need your dovetail saw you need at least one marking gauge no need to all right Jake says to you need your if you tell them they need to do you need to marking it actually I tell you you need three okay well why not four all right and I only got three here so marking gauges then you need your small measuring tools you need I like that little 6-inch combination square I used to travel with that as a means of doing a lot you need your fred saw for you for your dovetailing you're gonna need a mallet if you're doing small stuff I like my little tiny mallet ruining finesse is the key as opposed to scuba power the the Lee Nelson Stu block plane is great if you're going to actually it's great for a lot of things but through a running play yeah if you're going to cut grooves to house the bottom on your small box and you again you're not doing power tools then you're gonna need this this will go in and allow you to cut a groove to house that bottom such a fun tool to use so quiet and peaceful and I just jammed it up twice and Devon the how come that one doesn't have an opening needs it yeah what else dig small boxes okay I think I think that would cover well true you're gonna use your dovetail marking knife if you want to make accurate dovetails I mean if he's talking about a would hinge box and he will have tail marker palette dividers Wow he's talking would hinge and also need the kit yeah yeah ask that question again on the chat and be more specific are you talking specifically about hand tools are you talking specific Doug dealing these small boxes and I'll try to address that the better in the meantime while you're doing that we're going to introduce ray door ray is a combat wounded vet from Vietnam era that lives in Louisiana he came to our class he was an absolute delight to have I consider ray a good friend and I'm gonna let ray take it over it's all you Ray go ahead we can hear you honey mile drive from this place to Bangor 90 miles back and can pick up me and Pete Evie and another serviceman I don't remember his name now but what Rob does is is truly amazing what you did was amazing just tell we're just trying to we're just trying to say thank you know I would just love you Oh driver can you tell the story about driving the mule over the hill yeah you got done with a mule is a mule is a flat flat vehicle with a cage on the front with the steering wheel in the clutch and brake and and it's has low pressure tires on it no no suspension how long would it be it's it's like a sheet of plywood a little bit bigger you know probably like a sheet of MDF maybe a little bit bigger I guess but one person one person driver one person driver ride and when I first got to Vietnam I was me and another little fellow named Gunny Slayton more I mean another little fella named Bert Lance cast gundy Slayton's personal working party yet it's hauling trash and water and stuff which was really good for my first two three weeks in Vietnam and we Wed kam little bridge and and part of our company was that kam low bridge was which watering site and the rest of it was at kam low hill so one day Gunny Slayton told me to go up to the hill and get something out of him remember what it was and being a newbie I I got on the mule and I start driving to the hill and I meet the mine sweepers coming down the roads clearing the road between the hill and in the bridge and it's like hey fellas just stay in my tracks it's clear of that back that way realizing that I could have gotten hurt I stood here to mind that Charlie might have placed in the road you know instead of waiting for the minesweeper so I learned and after that waited for the mine sweepers but when I wasn't driving to mule I was the mule because being in a mortar squad in the infantry team in the Marine Corps you carried a lot of weight so I didn't do anything special I lived on the ground for 13 months I did what I signed up for training is a lot more fun the actual application of it you survived it we did anything special so but Rob does a lot special his family supports him there's a lot of organizations that do things for service not very many individuals that do what Rob does hands-on brings you up there naturally you're gonna come home with products but he's gonna give you something it's gonna give you some skills that you can go home and get lost in and forget things gone wrong you know we're just kovetz things going on and having a social distance I've told my wife I said you know socially distance and it's not really too hard for me I voted my shop clay my shop six seventy dollars come on and I do that all the time it's and I'm comfortable so and I'm out there trying to do two things I learned and I started woodworking a long long time ago and I have a friend that we were in Nam together I'm trying to get him to go take your class he's had some medical issues and she's improving from that and hopefully he'll be able to go and take your class once this has gotten past him and and we went to a reunion one year and I'm running around looking for lumber yards this was in San Antonio he was you know he was like let's go drink some beer you know yeah he's what you want to do with this wood and then many years later he was he discovered what I discovered a long time ago what Rob is trying to give us and and can't thank you enough for all well ray you keep saying me but a lot of the folks that are listening to you are the ones that are making this possible if you think of the effort that Colonel Luther puts in Jake and Megan Ulric and Super Dave these it's it's a big effort I just happen to have my name on the front because it grew out of my own business but there are so many people that are contributing yes I wanted to hear directly from you what it did for you so that they will be confident to tell the people that they know who are suffering that this just might be the solution to help control what's in your head I learned that like I'm saying I I started woodworking many many many years ago and as a hobby and I studied the people that you talk about I studied paint Fred and Clawson and a lot of those people I studied this after I retired a few years ago my woodworking started to wane some and and and I discovered you on YouTube just a few months before you know I enrolled to go to your class and and thankfully it's it's really you know what I discovered years ago and I thank you you're welcome ray yeah we appreciate what you did I'm glad it's helped you and I hope that you're able to help somebody else point them in our direction so that we can do more of this I'm trying you know that skeptical don't be you've been through boot camp you've been through worse Rob's little week of boot camp is nothing and you'll have fun you'll laugh you may ya allergies may act up a little bit but you'll have a good time how are you dovetails I haven't I haven't really cut any doctor dovetails in South less and thankfully you started the brigade for the workbenches you do need a workbench I have a cheap little hog Freight workbench and I've tried doing it on that and it does are you got what are you on the list right yes I am good good he was just waiting on the on the vices vices rep well this will make a huge impact so I expect I'd like to see a good dovetail within the next month and I have a project I want to make for another brief some of that I'll work to it whose brother passed and and I'm making a display for him which he doesn't know and and naturally I want to make it nice I want to make it like one of your boxes with the hidden hinges and dovetails and I definitely have a nice project in my well I'll expect pictures right oh all right thank you for doing this in such short notice yeah we have birthday parties my granddaughter first time I've seen this is to Colgate's oh right right well things are easing up here - yeah good thank you Ray and everybody what Rob does is very infectious you can tell by the number of people signing up for the bench brigade and you know like super Dave and other people that go and join him doing I would like to do it one day I need a wait until my wife that's finally retired but if you'll have me I'd like to go up and ill all right I'll remember that okay thanks ray thank you see you Jake just reminded me this is to remind me to say this is June 6 which is the anniversary of d-day and unfortunately we've never had a world war two vet come to our class might be getting up there in years but we've had guys that were almost that old anyway remember that he fought his way all the way across Europe okay next question Frick did we get did we get clarification on that question about what tools to make boxes he did mean hand tools yeah okay all right quick question from mark wheeler in Kansas City hey Mark what is the Matt you have under your sharpening stones and where did you get it no what is that take it set that piece of rubber Luther did it's for pet bowls right yes it's not a big fan of it no no just something oh wait what I do is I eat when I build my sharpening station we always slope it we always slope it so it's a couple of degrees so that the the runoff will stay off of my bench but the spray gets on it so I took a piece of rubber that's underneath here a piece of rubber and it goes right up on right up underneath just to try to protect it but it's a it's messy business next all right this next one comes from Dennis Heine Ezek from Chicago hey Dennis in Chicago he wants to know how you determine the hang for your sauce Oh so the hang if you don't understand that terminology the hang is the angle between where you're holding it and what has and well it's the angle of the handle to the saw and how well that happened 12 years ago so yeah what was that formula I use super dave was doing that it was linked yes Dave as he's going on that to improve it maybe you could speak up and address it in the meantime I just I remember playing around with it and just trying to find something that was going to be comfortable now I will say this I don't think it's nearly as big a deal as some might make it out to be I think I could cut a dovetail with any very any variations of that it could be three or four degrees in either direction I don't think I would ever even really notice so I'm not I wouldn't call myself a fan of of that being a critical factor in choosing a saw or using a saw so it was just more or less a comfort thing so if you if you're holding it the most natural position if that's in my hand like that and I'm cutting dovetails at that height I suppose if anything I'd want that to be parallel to the bench top is it yeah it's pretty close well that's to protect from going in the too low in the backside yeah that you do need to determine the hang on you're next son yeah I got actually gonna play around with that a little bit so this is our baby dovetail saw that's in the works this is for doing really small work and this is gonna have a very smooth thin blade 15-thousand III do I do think that's out a little too high but I'm gonna put my finger recesses back in I'm gonna play around with that a little bit so actually the handles thinner as well quite a few changes but as I said that is going to be specifically for cutting little tiny drawers that we did done some of the furniture pieces that you've seen us do in the last 11 years or however long we've been doing this next all right this one comes from the chat and it's from Carlos cotton he wants to know how you suggest sharpening for someone with back problems I know you are fairly adamant about bending over but it's not easy yeah well you know we have we do have that occasionally mmm well you're just instead of leaning over well but there's some people that cannot lean now I'll tell you a couple of things you can spread your legs so that you can drop your height down without having to move your back bend your back the problem with trying to sharpen a bench height is you're you're pivoting from your wrist and I always found that when free and sharpening the farther away you could get the pivot point meaning moving it from your wrist to your shoulder it was much easier to maintain those angles so I would try maybe bringing this up a little bit and just spreading your legs so you can draw it lower your height without having to necessarily bend over trying to think of we addressed anybody else with that issue number one make sure you have stones that cut really fast so it limits the amount of time that you have to be bent over if you can do it at all and if you can't if you can't I'm not saying it's the end of the world if you have to use a jig but why can't you just why can't you raise it up until it's at a comfortable height well yeah you can play around with all of those things I mean doesn't it doesn't have to be sitting on their bench but it could be just at the end of their arms reach yeah you're gonna actually use the angle trainer you could use the angle trainer support it too but I mean that's really not a long-term solution I'd have to think about that almost enough to have the person with the problem there so that we could address it because they're gonna be taller shorter whatever so it's I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all on that and when we do have people come to the class loses friend Mike had had lost a hand he was a kid with an m-80 so he had he just had a hook and we played around a little bit to help him get to the point where he held it with he holds his hand he held the blade was one hand and he just used his his hook against the hand at the wrist if I I think just to kind of stabilize it so individual individual answer for that question and I'm sorry that I can't give you any more than that but if you were here we'd help you here's an invitation Paul's on Paul from Australia yeah so is Danny hey Paul Danny Danny Bell Danny Bell dad doesn't need a last name anymore he's like Cher and we have a couple people on there coming to the class um John Beck John coming to coming to the class in the summer hey John Crosland Ferris Bueller Butler yeah well we can't be late yeah Harrison dr. doom not long ago also yeah go on there's one more I'm trying to find his name Super Dave told me that we had our second Ozzy vet apply ever real for for next spring yeah really and he's actually on the line already good names Tony Tony yeah what's the only name they have down there that's great does he does he know ash I know did you come because of ash I'd like to know that then and let us know please okay my Intel source is pretty lame yeah Intel Intel's not that great faulty Intel coming through upstate New York yeah he's talking about us and I'm Luis Frank ricin all right so this one also comes from the chat is from Aaron Fenn how would you recommend cutting dovetails on a narc as in around an edge or part of a circle can you wanna grab that Rex way up there I'm gonna pause that question until Rex comes back so gun to the next one okay this one comes from Brian proffer in Bakersfield California he wants to know when should you use veneer over MDF for a desk or table top as opposed to using solid wood well oh well I've done both Allen Peters would always use veneer to save timber and the example there is if you've got a if you have a nice big slab of beautiful bird's-eye maple well you're using an inch and half and you're seeing the surface that could be sliced in the veneer and you can make two houses full of furniture benefiting from that same beautiful piece of wood so there's that consideration of course stability is a big deal MDF is such a beautiful substrate because there are no voids if you use plywood plywood is several layers of wood that are that are glued in opposing directions and sometimes there's voids underneath sometimes it would swell differently I certainly would not put ply or solid wood plywood as my number one choice for a substrate in veneering applications MDF always in fact I prefer MDF plywood over over veneer core plywood so I would say when stability is going to be the primary concern and also when if you're using a solid top then you have to allow for that expansion and the wider it is and more it's going to expand so in any kind of an application where stability is the number-one concern that's when I would definitely say veneer over solid wood but I built that big-ass desk I don't know where we have a picture of it I said I know I have a picture right over here I built a big-ass desk yes good be careful always say that don't I that was that big-ass desk and it couldn't be veneer because the very native the very design of it was such that it it required solid wood there it is so that was a big slab of ash with walnut on the sides all dovetail and then the same process repeated down here in the base and do I have any other you had the same haircut as my wife's favorite picture of me this this top not a desk I understand that that is solid wood this stop is veneer over mb a-- over MDF banded on all four sides and then really pretty little back ash veneer that's all the pictures i have gone anyway okay so round before you before you get to that tony from australia does not know ash but he plans on touching base with him soon good good please do have they get together oh you guys need to connect both send me an email and i'll put you in touch with each other they're communicating other co yeah they're it's even better keep me out of it okay so here's dovetails on the round now see if I can address this this this could only really go together one way right so you couldn't you couldn't slide this piece on this way you could only bring this piece down on that way so that meant two tails needed to be on this piece and in terms of laying them out the the difficult part is that the grain is such that you end up with some real severe angles so you still want your slope to identify it as a dovetail but and I can't I wish I could tell you exactly how I did it but I think by I was more than anything else so uh here if you if you got too much slope this way you got a lot of really short grain right up here on this top corner and get a pencil so I can point so when you're on the slimmin you're on a slope like this if I'd had an O I mean you might think well maybe the dev test should look more like that but then that makes for some really short grain wood up there so you have too many meaty Mediate that by backing off on the angle this is the only normal one up here where it's pretty much straight grained though I could actually hit a little more slope on that so it's a little bit on the difficult side I don't know what kind of a round application you're thinking of but the one thing I would tell you is that you have to pay attention to the grain and don't avoid really short grain out there in the corners and that's why you can't undercut too much in those applications okay next from the chat username is the lord seth one what teachers do you consider the best when you started oh well I'll tie this into what books I think with the best I think Allen Peters was my mentor and what I appreciated most about Allen was his level of precision that he just he just did things perfectly I mean I I was well into my career when I went over and examined some of his furniture in 2005 and with a trained eye I couldn't find I couldn't find any flaws I couldn't find anything that I could say oh wow you kind of scrimp there no it was perfect thank it's how you make money doing that because if you've watched me build this thing and you see now fussy we've been I guess can you imagine if you're trying to actually sell that a hundred thousand dollars more time I was done nobody's gonna pay that much so Allen Peters now I also worked as Alan's assistant the summer of 87 and Allen wasn't the greatest in terms of expressing himself and teaching he more or less would do it and then you kind of had to follow along so there's the ability to do and there's the ability to teach the ability to do and teach and that's a rare combination TAFE rid was I thought he was a great guy and his books they wrote three books published by Taunton one was on finishing one was on joinery and one was on veneering and here easy to read books as as far as a teacher his accident was strong in those thick enough that it was difficult to understand a lot of what he was saying I was around him for two weeks before I understood it so the people were taking a one-week class I'm sure the first three or four days they didn't know what he was talking about but very knowledgeable where was tage from hey he was a Great Dane but I don't my greatest in the United States I think we'd been in the 50s in Kirby I think he and Kirby was a great is he still alive I think he and Kirby is a great craftsman and a great instructor and Ian wrote a series of books never did finish it back in the in the 80s and I owe me I have two of them he had planned to do a whole series on something happened but I think I think you hear those two books were some of the best on the topic one wasn't called down to a line and there's all about sawing and plane and yeah sawing and planing and whatever and whatever else I can't remember the title the other one but if you can find anything in Kirby's books I think Ian is an impeccable craftsman and a really good teacher deal nish deal was still was my mentor deal was a great craftsman and a great instructor wasn't overly he wasn't terribly patient with people who didn't care put it that way if you if you were if you really strove to do your very best then deal would have been the greatest instructor you ever met if you were the one who just wanted to get it done you did not want to be taught by deal because he was harsh in that way so who else can I mention in there great craftsman talams Sam aloof was Sam aloof was a wonderful human being who treated everybody wonderfully and was a great craftsman and a great instructor and just all-around made you feel great so I've done quite a few really good ones Munro Robinson Munro Robinson I thought was a very great crafts impeccable craftsman and a really good guy I really like Munro those would be some of the most influential on me the ones that actually changed our made me change my direction to a path of do it right and don't settle for anything less yeah not great business it's not great business advice if you're trying to do this for a living because most people could care less probably should have I mentioned right in the pack with Rasim but David Benton Oh super David Benson is the king of the bunch I mean there's nobody better yes sir he epitomizes I'm fine woodworking just until you see a chicken coop built like that you haven't seen the chicken coop next please nothing well just really quickly as part of this topic Brian Tyler wanted to know if you ever built a Maloof rocking chair with Sam I did yeah it was one it was the last picture in that book it's over there by the ladder oh sure yeah so this is how this happened yeah I can't remember the year I'm gonna guess this a was 1986 I was at BYU Dale was on sabbatical that year which I was ticked about but I understand and it Hinckley took over and Edie got this idea that we all packed in a vehicle and we went to spend a weekend watch this a Maloof build a rocking chair in in Colorado and when we came back he put together a class there was only three of us in the class and the class was to build a Maloof rocker I chose to do mine out of Paducah it's very intimidating when you start but when you break it down and say you mean look at that thing oh my goodness where would you start but it just said well let's just start with this piece well that leg wouldn't be too hard to make and then let's go to one of these back pieces and let's do that upper credit crest three on the back let's do that so when you did it like that it was it was doable yeah yeah I was fun there's a lot of fun not my style I'm not the sculpture type but it was fun to do and really appreciated the work that he put into it and yeah nice I still have that my kids dropped it knocked it over and broke the arm so it's I think that woman no dick challenge in my memory let's meet at Paducah challenges you're meeting in my parents living room until actually pretty much time we could bring it home I don't think Chloe's gonna destroy anything all right question from Brandon in the chat question for a humid South Florida my shop is not air-conditioned extremely humid could I use a dehumidifier to reduce my sweating without my sweating without causing the wood to shift I'm assuming his time with avoid not him without the wood to shift after it leaves my shop oh wow that's a real challenge you know your we're working with this live well somebody beat me up on that we working with this material that is always in search of equilibrium with the surrounding atmosphere in a moist the low-pressure system comes in this is going to absorb moisture and swell and get wider and the high pressure system comes in and it gets dry this is gonna give off that moisture and it's gonna shrink and get thinner so you build something in Florida which most of the year is hot and humid and you ship it to somebody in Arizona Oh what's gonna happen I've done that over the years way back when I'm glad I didn't do it anymore and I remember when we brought we brought fern I lived in Utah for five years from 1984 1985 to 1989 and we I had made a lot of furniture my wife insisted that I stopped selling it so we'd have something to bring home I brought a lot of furniture home and I moved from a very dry high plain desert into the coast of Atlantic Canada and that furniture some of the stuff just went nuts and I remember drawers refitting drawers three or four times over the course of a couple years before they finally stopped swelling on me to the point where you couldn't open them so that you're talking about a huge challenge huge as far as you're always in an ideal situation to keep your workshop environment the same as where this is going to go so if you're working in an uncontrolled garage and then you're gonna bring this stuff into your house Wow all I can say is good luck just expect everything to shrink or expand depending on where it's going if I if I had if I had the magic bullet for that I'd be writing and replacing Bruce Lee's book on understanding would read that one then maybe you can answer the question for us by the way that's a good book to have to Bruce Hoadley wrote a book understanding wood and you have to have as good understanding of this material as possible before you can adequately and effectively build with it good example I wish I could tell you more but there is no magic bullet to that oh hey you know what there is try try working with torrefied wood torrefied wood is not supposed to absorb moisture and you can buy it in most species get a hold of Mel my friend at exotic woods in Burlington Ontario tell him you want some torrefied wood I'll show you a quick bump quickly show you a piece here's this here's a piece of maple this is a piece of maple that has been torrefied so what they do is they put this in an oven and they draw they raise the temperature to a point where if there was oxygen present it would burn but because there was no oxygen it doesn't and my understanding is that according to Mel this was a technique developed by the who's gonna say Aztecs what Vikings to prevent wood from rotting well how does wood rot it has to involve moisture so if you somehow managed to come up with a way of limiting or removing Woods ability to absorb moisture then would it rot the answer is No it also doesn't expand so my first experience with this smell was told me about it and I said now you mean to tell me that you have never cut a ripped a piece of torrefied wood and had it closed in on the blade and he said never needed 5/8 of an inch and it was closer to 7/8 so I took the board on its edge ran it over the table saw flipped it around like this and finish the cut and the eighth inch piece leftover went like that fell flat on the bench and from several months afterwards I kept it around it never moved had never cupped and if you've ever done that with a piece of wood you know how prone it is to cupping I was quite impressed so now we make all of our winding sticks we make all of our winding sticks out of torrefied maple that very reason if they don't absorb moisture then they don't move and winding sticks made out of winding sticks made out of any wood are subject to being moving and having to beetroot all the times but these have stayed true so that's torrefied maple and they are for sale on our site so try that try getting your has your self some torrefied wood I've seen torrefied maple I've seen torrefied anything else that's that's not any kind of a stain that's all the way through the wood that's a piece of maple now the only downside to it is it weakens the wood slightly but I wouldn't say weakens it a lot I would not make it I would not call it detrimental I at some point in the near future I want to make a set of drawers and using the torrefied stuff to really put it to the test cuz wouldn't it be great if your drawer sides did not move next okay this next question comes from Mark minke from Ohio mark that sounds very familiar how was a concave spokeshave sharpened how is a concave okay he needs to he needs to tell me whether he I think he's talking about this so this is a concave spoke shape no I don't use this a ton but how would I tackle that well very similar to sharpening blades out of out of moulding planes you're better off just to go in and keep honing the flat face instead of going in and changing this but if I mean if that was dull needed to be sharpened the first thing I would do is go in and I would I would hone that face so it was nice and smooth and if I had to go in here and address this bevel I would put a micro bevel on there I would use a slip stone which is just a very which tends to be around or a radius to stone and I would go in and I would just dry address that ever so slightly or what you can do is take a take some really fine sandpaper we can get you can get sandpaper up to four or five six thousand grit and wrap it around a dowel and use that to go in there and just address that you don't want it you want to change the angle too much want to stay close to this but you don't want to lay right on the bevel because then you're working way too much material so by raising it up just slightly and I would start at the top and I just worked my way through putting a little micro bevel on there you can verify it with the burr on the backside as soon as you get it knock off the burn away you go that's pretty sharp I have only used this one to go next all right this comes from Paul NeoGeo from Queens New York hey Paul he says is the angle trainer trainer specifically for you some plane blades but can it also be used for chisels chisels you can use it I didn't as I didn't develop it for sizzles but you can use it for a chisel oh I just got done making 50 angled trainers but I don't have any of them right here but I have an old one kicking around don't we joke Jake wasn't there one made out of that grey here it is right here so the angle trainer these guys don't realize what big favors they do us by asking questions like that the angle trainer is designed to help you develop the ability to serpent freehand but plane blade primarily however we could do a chisel so it has two angles on it a one side has 26 to 29 degrees and the other one has 31 now the new ones we make are all made out of white IRA bone colored Swan stone and with the label on there by the way we just got new labels the labels that we were using they would wash off when they got wet they weren't supposed to but they did but now we have ones that do not wash off Rex would you go do me a favor go grab one we just did new one so I can show them so what I would do starting on the 29 degree side and this is where it pays to use a little bit of dish detergent in your water set your angle trainer down on the 29 degree side let your chisel down there slide it forward until it makes contact and then you can go in and you can address that secondary bevel primary part me yeah secondary bevel this is helping you hold the angle as soon as you can detect a burr on the backside then you're gonna do the same thing open it up for me just so I can see on your 16,000 oh now you're gonna turn this around so you're a couple degrees higher move forward now you're sitting at 31 degrees go in there and do this same thing 10 seconds or so and then remove that you're gonna lay that flat no rule a trick on the chisel get rid of any burr on the backside and there you go the whole process we're doing a chisel especially something that narrow shouldn't be any more than 20 seconds so here's the new ones that we just did so there's the new labels and they're waterproof so that they don't that does not wear off so there's your 29 degree side there's your thirty one two really powerful magnets one on either side that'll help hold that and like I said the idea of that is not a give you a sharpening jig it's there to help you develop the feel and the ability to be able to sharpen freehand then it'll wear out you're running this over an abrasive stone the material is eventually gonna wear out it's only there long enough to get you to the point where you can do it without it okay next Megan how many how many drawers are we doing just was everybody taking the night off well we have a lot of people on now that we're not early we're up to 1343 Wow when you last really talked about okay well let me let me just we'll keep going so the reason we do this we started off by doing it just because we thought well what a nice way to interact with people and give them an opportunity to to ask their questions and then we had the idea when they said well we're always trying to raise funds because in the Purple Heart project we cover their airfare their hotel their meals we send each vet home with somewhere now or somewhere around 32 to 35 hundred dollars worth of tools now we actually provide them as a bench as well the volunteer provides the materials we provide the Vice and the bench dog so of course all that costs money right so a lot of people want to participate so here's how you get to participate you can make a donation that will go directly towards one of those expenses so you go to our website under the PHP the link will be in there on the screen somewhere down below and you can choose whatever level of donation you want it cost we got a we got to revise this but we say $3,500 per vet it's actually more than that now that we've included the the bench so if you want to cover the entire cost of a vet it's $3,500 if you want to cover anything in between you're welcome to do that we we applaud you for doing it but you will be the benefactor trust me that's the reason why we do this you feel so good about being able to do something to help alleviate their suffering that it just makes you feel like you just climb Mount Everest so what we do to help to give you back something for that is we do a draw at the end of every end of the night for hundred dollar gift certificate and every $1000 increment of donations we throw in another $100 gift certificate and that comes from you not from the donations yes that doesn't come I didn't ace that comes out of RC woodworking yeah I know what are we what's our business calls RC woodworking hand tools Inc thank you Frank I see it on my checks yes once a year it doesn't pay him either Frick donates this time to this as does Rex as does Jake as does Megan as does Ken Anthony as does Luther as does Super Dave I forgetting anybody and Frick also does a barbecue if you're in New Brunswick it's called the freakin good barbecue and we do that as a means of generating revenue for the for the Purple Heart project Henri's raise local awareness are you ready for another question yep all right this is from Scott Mayer from Tallahassee Florida Scott do you use a right or left-handed not do you use a left or right-handed skew block plane when cutting the rabbit for dovetails and is one better than the other well so yeah what Scott's referring to is the little rabbit or Rebate rabbit if you're in Canada United States rebate if you're in the UK and what it is it is a no I'll just do it so if I was gonna dumb till this board I want to be able to register the two pieces the tail board to the pin board so on the tail board people often mistakenly put this on the pin board this goes on the tail board kind of you scribe a line like that now I use the rights cube and I'll show you why in order to do this you need to have Jake you need to have the board supported on your bench needs to lay flat but it needs to hang over so that I can operate this plane you don't want hanging out too far because I'm gonna push down now what I'm going to do is I'm gonna loosen the thumb screw so that I can slide the fence over and I want the blade to be right on that line lock it the blade is skewed the nice thing about that is two things number one it'll leave a smooth possible surface when cutting across the grain number two the action of the skew pulls the plane this way to keep it tight to the end of the board you have to start this with just this little area for reference and gravity is wanting it to fall back like that so this hand is turning like that should mention the fence oh yes Jake Jake actually now provides fences so when you well sells when you buy Billy Nelson tool it doesn't there's no wood involved except for the knob right here so this comes extra and the reason why I added is because I like to have some registration of the plane before the blade engages and when I end I like to have some registration so the blade so that I'm not swinging around like that at the very end so we now make SKU block fences that come beveled like that with the screws and all set to attach I choose the right and the right skew opens up on the right side as I hold the blade in the user position if I was left-handed and I my bench would be reversed then I would want to do the other side if I was using the left skewed if I had the left skew here I wouldn't be able to do it this way I have to clamp it on out there in the end I find it awkward I used to have the both the right and the left I sold the left was I never used it so what you do is you engage like so now I suspect that that boards not perfectly flat because it's skipped right here and you cut a little rebate or rabbit always better to take multiple light passes than to try to do it one heavy pass now that ended up with a really smooth surface now when I would lay that tail board on top of the pin board that little rabbit would help the wood would register the two pieces precisely comes up against that little that little ledge that we cut comes up against the underside of the pin board and you don't have to were trying to line them like this it's great I highly recommend this Lee Nelson's makes a great plane I think I prefer this one over anybody else's version of the skew block I can't tell you why I just am very comfortable with it like it I think it's a good deal in fact so much so that we added to the tool list of tools were sending vets home with this year and that's one of them we're we're going to end Lee Nelson was very gracious I asked him he provides us with two mortise chisels for each vet every time we teach complimentary I asked him if he would allow us to buy the new block planes at a wholesale price to give to the vets I said you don't need to donate it you're doing your part and he graciously said yes this year may be dicey because they've been shut down for a long time because this coronavirus so we don't know what's gonna happen but we get over his crust now all my fingers crossed make sure this thing goes we got a big time for no words one more well it may be it's a short one when they got to go ahead freak maybe it's a shrimp well yeah this one kind of it's from Joey Walsh in North Carolina hey Joey and he's wondering about the PHP he said is there anything a less experienced wood worker can do besides donate to the help the PHP I'd love to help with the benches but I don't believe I have the experience well how can how can you help with the Purpleheart project well buy a t-shirt now we don't the proceeds don't go to the Purple Heart project this is we sell these t-shirts to help raise awareness our single biggest problem is finding the people who need it unless you suffer from PTSD then we have no idea what it's like but I've been around enough them to know that it's a real battle it's a battle that claims 22 a day so the need is great so yes you can help by telling everyone you know conversation is easy to bring up and if it's hard for you to talk about it we're shirt somebody's gonna ask you what is good wood for good we're doing good what's that all about well now you need to come now you can tell them second way is financially we can always use funds it's it's the unnecessary part of this it costs money nothing goes down in price everything goes up third way is we recently had someone donate a well Paul Rigney has donated a good guitar made by the East Tennessee luther's guild that we are going that's being auctioned off and that those proceeds will go to Purple Heart we recently received a beautiful remember the chops named shaker box he's from Michigan yeah buta box and we're going to auction that off for the perp art any other ways they can pray for us pray for the vets pray for the people that really need it well we can find battle creek michigan battle creek michigan oh yeah i apologize i can't remember his name but it was beautiful work I featured it last week you can come and take the class if you want to participate the purpose on participate in the you said you didn't think you have the skill well you never know what to you try but Jack Blaine is in charge of the bench brigade and you can contact every well contact jack now we're we're kind of filled right the moment we've had the 80 volunteers but anybody else would like to help out we'd love to have a donation to cover the cost of the vise we have a stack of vices at our front door that's two feet high a two feet high by four feet by four feet the the vise is there two hundred and sixty-five dollars or something the the bench dogs are twenty five dollars apiece 30 yards apiece and we got a ship each one of those two all the different people that have signed up so you just think about the postage on all that it's gonna be expensive and we've had other people donate things to be like Jeff's shaving kit and yeah stained-glass window for one the shaving Bowl well that's out there we should show it wrecks qu you get that shaving Bowl as a shaving just you know where it is well Jeff sent me if you go on Jeff's site what's Jeff's Facebook page number cuz Jeff saw Jeff and Jeff actually made one and donated it O'Connor woodworking is it Jeff O'Connor would recognize just O'Connor woodwork O'Connor woodworking and Jeff makes minds made out of a BA gasps bog oak and he just sent me a bowl with soap so I could get to use it tomorrow do I get a shave once a week Mitch does my shave for me I pay him well gives a hot towel treatment the whole bit and the shave Bryce have waited so long to actually get that we use it every time anyway so yeah be creative come up with a new idea someone recently suggested that if you want to donate a tool pay for the cost of a tool they will use and donate that back to to one of the vets in the class Rick any other short ones no you should wrap it up yeah this is fine how many drawers are we doing just one ooh wonder that won't take long well let's be nice and do to every anywhere near 2015 we'll do two anyway all right so next week is our we're back to working on Angie's Angie's bed desk it's a side hung drawer first time I've ever done this it's gonna be fun submitted of northern white pine beautiful wood beautiful warm wood and and she's getting anxious to get her desk can it can actually sent me a funny one thousand dollar donations thank you who would did that Kenneth Coleman Kenneth Coleman thank you thank you that case will draw three coming in on future classes we have Erik Carlos Robert and Matt Eric Carlos Robert and Matt I hope to see you guys really soon we would have already had we would have already had our first class over and done and getting ready for our second class feels weird to have gone this long without doing it but hopefully all this crap will be behind us very soon we'll be able to do it I so look forward to it you don't know it is a ton of work but you'll never experience a week go by faster than this you just need to see some new faces you're sick of ours who needs newspapers every day why is it to happen to what that super names wife needs it to happen yeah yeah yeah yeah the reason why super name is a happy marriage because we take him half the year I'm just going to say that at the beginning of the episode when you were talking about all the intro stuff and you said am I forgetting anything and this is before you mentioned Angie and Angie yelled at the screen and said me and she's so happy that your voice is better and I think the rest of us thank you ken gives me all the messages from you and I was doing what my wife told me and she had me she had me full of good stuff that made me better nice to have voice back how we die we drying up we're drawing God 3 3 3 yep that Jake all right our first winner is tad Bennet from Georgia tad mm-hmm dad congratulations winner number 2 Roger Dunn from Arizona Roger congratulations and last but not least Tony joy from Maryland Maryland Tony from Maryland congratulations alright last thing I want to tell you about this don't forget to get a t-shirt this is our new one in you call that khaki green olive drab is an olive drab some wood it was someone said it was general the general green like the you're almost not quite very close actually it is very close and we make we took the Fond off of mash because I'm a big mash fan challenging me on a math question next time so that's wood for good and that's got the new logo so the new logo is a little larger easier to see and we switched it around thanks to Frick that was actually an accident that was I knew it was an accident I said thanks to Frick wood is good we're doing good we haven't been small medium large extra large 2x large and 3x large and there are seven days in a week and you want a new shirt for each day we have people to do that all right anything any final words next week six o'clock bring a friend don't forget to subscribe to our Channel hit the notification bell so you'll know what really we were releasing to very well very professionally produced videos each week frikkin and Luther work a long time before the video is actually released tell us what you think new thumbnails the whole bit trying to improve our presence to the public and don't forget our newsletter our newsletter is full of content we just released it what was the topic of this time dust collection so there's always one or two videos on the topic as well as a written article we haven't sent that it o hasn't gone out yet over there you get a chance to see it before it even comes out so in the in the description to be a place where you can register for the newsletter okay so we'll be back to the Q&A in two weeks next weekend is our build have you ope have a good week enjoy yourself enjoy your time in the shop be nice to everybody and please thank a vet see you [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: RobCosman.com

Views: 17,973

Rating: 4.957356 out of 5

Keywords: live with rob cosman, live episode with Rob cosman, rob cosman, rob cosman live, woodworking, q&A, Questions and answers, Live Q&A, woodworking questions and answers, woodworking questions, hand tools woodworking, hand tool woodworking

Id: 1ySfXyo13kc

Length: 124min 15sec (7455 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 06 2020