John Morris

I hope you are right, but my experience with folks around me, has not been as positive as yours Hat. I doubt it's even discussed in our public schools out here in CA anymore. Even the interviewer with the mic gets mixed up too, he references Memorial Day as a day for veterans, but hey, not to take away from this topic, I'm just sitting here having fun tonight guys. Hope everyone has a good and memorable weekend!

Holy Cow Cliff! You got a way to cut that all up, or does someone come over with a mill to do that? Welcome back, missed ya!

I would say your Dad earned the right to observe Memorial Day any way he danged well pleased! That's for sure! Hat, is your dad still alive today, sorry if this was covered before, just curious.

With machines as your tools, the tools would not matter that much Hatuffej, you are dead on.

Thanks Gunny, I am enjoying the experience myself greatly, it's a fun build. I love chairs.

Ron that is huge! There could be a car under that an nobody would even know. I have a question, do you know what kind of rock that is? It's pretty dark in color, out here in So Cal we have a lot of granite, gray in color, but nothing that dark in color.

The rockers are always fun to fit to a chair. There are some factors that could cause the installation to the legs to be disastrous, or not, there are only two outcomes with this part of the process, either it looks good, or it doesn't. So here we go, we are going to install the rockers onto the chair legs. The edges of the rockers were still rough from the initial band saw cut out two years ago, so I wanted to smooth the edges, first I put one of the rockers up in my bench vise and attempted to use my shave to smooth out the ridges left by the bandsaw, but my technique was lacking, this curly maple edge is hard to understand for me, the grain direction did not want to cooperate and I ended up with tear-out. I'll have to revisit my shaving skills on curly edges, and see where I can improve in that regard, if anyone has any suggestions on smoothing edged curly wood, I am all ears. So instead of making it worse I decided to go ahead and chuck up a small spindle sander with 80 grit and I was able to take the edges down to smooth, and followed it up with sand paper. After I got all the edges smoothed up on the drill press, I planed the old wood away to get a consistent surface throughout the entire chair, these rockers were sitting for two years, and they developed a patina darker then the rest of the chair, so with my No. 4 smoother I made it nice again. There is reversing grain in these rockers all over the place, I had to hold down one end of the rocker, plane, then reverse the rocker and plane the other direction. In another topic I was discussing this exact scenario for reversing grain and planning out your material usage for specific parts of a project. When I started building this chair I was still pretty much in my machine phase in every thing I did, two years later I am very much into my hand tool phase. Two years ago, reversing grain didn't mean much in this instance, now it means everything, knowing what I know now, I would not have chosen this part of the lumber that I did for these rockers. Once I planed the rockers smooth, I followed up with the scraper, there was a little tear out from the plane, the scraper is a great tool for dealing with tricky grains. I set the chair upside down on the bench in order to work on the bottom legs, there are notches that must be cut in order for the rockers to fit into. I just made this handy little template the morning I took these images. There is a small notch in the template where it meets the legs, so I can scribe a line accurately down the center of the leg bottoms. I did not have this template for the first chair I made, but browsing through Kerry Pierce's book on Shaker Furniture, I saw a similar handy template he was using and I decided to make one of my own, it works well. The lines have to be inline with each other, between the leg bottoms. This template ensures that alignment. Lined up and ready to measure out the notches. Before I start cutting into my leg bottoms, I wanted to layout the location where the legs meet the rockers, my story stick told me exactly where to mark out. With my notches marked out with a marking knife, and penciled in, I am ready to cut the notches out. I used a marking knife to cut some deep lines into the leg bottoms, in order for my saw to have a better chance of tracking well and cutting straight. The hole at the bottom of the notch helps when I go to chip out the waste. Here are the main tools I use to cut and shape my rocker notches, from left to right, a Japanese Iwasaki float, a small mallet, and a dovetail saw, the very fine teeth of the dovetail saw work really well for these precise cuts. I cut down the lines, and to the limit line at the bottom notch, then I chisel away the waste, very little by little. One slip up here it could mean a mess to fix, you have to be careful not to drive the chisel too hard, you could split the rocker leg. Here we have a complete notch for a rocker, and cleaned up nicely. The Japanese float comes in handy for the final fitting and shaping the notches. Since there is no cutting edge on these floats, as there are in most Western style files, you can file right up against the side of the notch with the flat of the file doing its business at the bottom of the notch. The rocker is set in place for about the tenth time during fitting, and the final fit is good. But, the fit is a tad tight, I had to press it in place pretty hard to get it seated into the notch, so I made a decision to make the fit a tad loose, I was concerned that with a very tight fit, and the stress the chair is under as it is being used, that the leg may split. So I used the scraper once again to take some micro shavings off the leg areas, and I finally got the fit I wanted. Now there we are, two rockers, fitting nicely, and ready for pinning. I'll post back here later tonight, right now family is needing dad, so I'll catch up with you tonight! Thanks for following along!

Well, there are boundaries Artie.

And that is all that counts Tom, bravo! Also, for projects reflecting efforts, those efforts include imperfect results, that show a human made it, and that is a good thing.

Very touching, and dramatic to see the context, just imagining if those boots were filled, and they were standing side by side, the space they would take up. 7,500 Boots Are On Display At Fort Bragg To Honor Fallen Service Members - Task & Purpose TASKANDPURPOSE.COM More than 7,500 boots on display at Fort Bragg this month served as a temporary memorial to service members from all...

You bet Artie! Right now I am sitting at my bench, watching wood steam. I'll get the shawl rail out of the steam box, bend it, then head on inside for a full lathe report!

You guys always keep me grounded.

Amen to all you said Jess, spoken truth, all of it. Just a quick comment, and a general one, in California we don't even know our neighbors, barely, not anymore, I used to know all them, we had block parties, we let our kids run to each-others home and just sit down for dinner, we all a big family looking both ways down the street. Now I can't even communicate with many of my neighbors, I have tried, but it's really sad, we are a world apart from each other. Quite the opposite in Mt. Pleasant Utah where my Army buddy and his family lived, we'd visit them, it's a small town, it's just like you stated Jess, the warmth, the closeness, the friendliness, I felt like I came back home when I visited a place I had never been too, I didn't want to leave.

That's right Tom. There is a reason why in our country, the most popular wood species to work with hand tools is Cherry, Walnut, Maple to start, and it's the reason why many of the old furnishings you see still around today are made from those species, oh and lets not leave out Mahogany, another wonderful wood to hand tool. Using hand tools has opened up my eyes more and more to the choice of wood we use. Since my own dive into hand tools, I find myself investigating the wood more closely before I use it, I inspect for grain direction, grain straightness, knots are a no no, and wild grain should be avoided. Even planing out a project using hand tools takes on a whole new meaning and level of attention and awareness regarding how and when you are going to use a specific piece, or part of a board. You have to plan how you are going to orient those boards because you want to avoid as much as possible reversing grain within two boards that you have to plane together after glue up. The list goes on and on how acutely aware you must be as you plan your projects, and how you are going to use the tools in those projects. With a machine, you can pretty much use anything in any orientation, just set up on the table saw and rip away, secure the boards together with your preferred method, and put them through the planer, sand them, reversing grain or not, just sand it all out. With hand tools you have to think about those things more carefully. Thus the reason that when you do use hand tools, the wood truly is speaking to you. Not to get all Zen with ya Tom, but there is a deep satisfaction in using hand tools, it just depends where folks are at in their woodworking, one way is not superior to the other, machined or hand tools, it just the journey that you want to take yourself on that is important. I'll go back to this quote that I know Gene has seen before, and I absolutely love. And that truly is the bottom line Tom, it's all about you and the journey into making that project that counts, the outside noise is just that, noise, don't let folks dissuade you. Speaking of noise, I find it very nice and wonderful that the noise level has been cut down significantly in my own shop, and you know what? My clean up has been reduced significantly. After each project I use to break out the compressor and air hose and blow the shop out, I have not fired up that compressor in a long time, most of my mess is just swept away now, shavings that just drop to the ground, or rest on the bench, and my lungs are thanking me as well. Hang in there Tom, I'd love it if you kept at it, because I am in the beginning stages myself in transitioning to hand tools, completely if I have my way and my patience allows it, for now I am in the hybrid state of my conversion, but slowly but surely I am turning to the scraper instead of a sander, a hand saw instead of power, a hand plane instead of 400 grit, and much more is happening in my shop with hand work. Welcome to the fold Tom, I hope I have a hand tool member here we can exchange ideas and methods and learn together.

Been there done that! Pushing hardwood through the table saw, why is my SS walking away from me?