Hasta La Ideas

[image via Peter Follansbee]

[image via Lost Art Press]

Did you ever wonder how craftspeople used to split thick wood into boards, prior to the invention of bandsaws and sawmills? They performed riving using something called a froe, and good God does it look tedious:

As you can see, the froe had to be banged downwards with a mallet or maul made of wood, for obvious reasons. (Ideally you’d want to make the mallet out of a tougher wood like maple; this guy makes them out of baseball bat blanks that have been deemed too heavy for the sport’s regulations.) Using a froe and mallet was used to create things like shingles, panels, chair backs as you just saw in the video, and anytime you had a thick board you needed to divide into multiple thin boards.

While it no longer has any commercial application, there are still hardcore dudes rocking this technique, both in the field and in the shop. Be thankful next time you’re resawing boards on a bandsaw…

Via Toolmonger

(more…)

Is there anything you use all the time, even though you know the design of it sucks? For me that thing is safety goggles. I have a hard time finding a pair that fits properly, particularly when worn with a respirator and/or ear protection. Some companies make them in different sizes to ameliorate the fit, but my local hardware shops stick with the one-size-fits-all variety, presumably to keep stock down.

3M is attempting to tackle both poor ergonomics and the retail inventory issue by designing the SecureFit, a purportedly better-fitting pair of one-size-fits-all safety glasses.

After studying models of the human face and sussing out contact points, they’ve calculated a (hopefully) universally-fitting wraparound curve for the lenses; coupled with the flexible temple you’ll see in the vid below, they’re claiming this will provide a better fit for many.

I’m eager to try them out if I can find a local stockist. The only thing that gives me pause is the permanently-pinned ear stems; since the glasses won’t fold up, that means they’ll be stuffed into a toolbox or drawer with a bunch of other tools in and around them, increasing the potential for my other eyewear pet peeve—scratched lenses.

I always assumed protective eyewear with design flaws was just the name of the game. Have any of you had good experiences with a particular pair, especially those of you with smaller heads? And has anyone had a good experience with prescription protective eyewear?

(more…)

I hate the imperial measurement system, and can confidently say that anyone who doesn’t recognize the superiority of metric is a freaking idiot. How nice it must be for you Aussies, Germans and Koreans to drill an 8mm hole, realize you need it a smidgen bigger, and yell down the ladder for a 9mm bit. Versus us Yankees drilling a 7/32 hole, then having to do an equation in your head to calculate if you need a 3/16 or a 1/4.

For the non-mathematically-gifted like me, dividing things with fractions is the worst. For example, when doing DIY projects you often have to calculate the midpoint of a particular piece—whether it’s wood, fabric or metal—and I’d be constantly scrawling equations onto the piece of wood I was working and having to sand the marks off afterwards. That is, until I learned this simple tip to easily find the exact midpoint without having to divide fractions.

Let’s say I want to find the midpoint of the board above. We take a tape measure to it…

…and see it’s 17-something. That’s all you’re looking for, ignore the finer gradations.

Then we take note of the nearest even number, whether higher or lower than the actual measurement. In this case the nearest even number is 18.

(more…)

Years ago, while studying ID at Pratt I had the pleasure of taking a sculpture class taught by the master crafstman Toshio Odate. It was in his class that I first used a block plane, and I was all wide-eyed at the gossamer shavings that came out of it.

I was reminded of this as I came across this video from the William Ng Woodworking School in California, where they offer a class where you make your own plane. (The video is not a tutorial but an unnarrated look at what you’d be doing in the class.)

For those on the West Coast, the three-day class will run you $385 plus another $75 for materials.

In an earlier interview we did with Otherlab’s Saul Griffith, he discussed the importance of creators fabricating their own tools. While he was referring specifically to modern-day digital fabrication, his point was something that woodworkers have understood for centuries. “Using a finely tuned wooden hand plane you make yourself,” reads the hand plane course description, “is probably one of woodworking’s ultimate experiences.”

(more…)

It’s been a while since we looked in on woodworker/inventor Matthias Wandel, and the man has not been idle. One of his recent contraptions that caught our eye is his Router Copy Carver, an ingenious sliding mount that you can use with a palm router to trace 3D objects; it’s essentially a pantograph with a Bosch Colt as the copying head.

The best part is that Wandel shows you how he built the thing, step by step, and you’re bound to be impressed by some of his solutions, like a trio of rollerblade bearings arranged in a triangle to hold the crossbar in position while allowing smooth travel. He’s even designed a box to hold counterweights opposite the router to prevent fatigue during extended use.

Here’s Part 1, where he builds the router-holding carriage that will handle the X- and Z-axes:

(more…)