The Watch and the Woodworker – Part 1

If someone tries to steal your watch, by all means fight them off. If someone sues you for your watch, hand it over and be glad you got away so lightly.

― John Mortimer

A watch is an essential tool to anyone who must perform a job within contractual time constraints, or when She Who Must Be Obeyed demands punctuality using the cat-o’-nine-tails that is her tongue (ツ). Not critical for fishing, cleaning rifles, or watching TV perhaps, but indispensable when engaged in work-related activities such as installing cabinets, pouring concrete foundations, or erecting structural steel frames.

In this series of articles your most humble and obedient would like to relate a few ways I’ve used my watches at work, and the sticky ends some of them met.

In this first article I will relate a true story of an effective, time-proven way to use an honest wristwatch to stave-off venal, criminal bureaucrats for good purposes. I don’t know the watch’s ultimate fate but, for a time at least, it ended up in the hands of an undesirable person.

As background information, I should first share my sartorial philosophy about timepieces, because after all, fashion is my life (ツ).

In our time, the wristwatch is the only jewelry, besides a wedding ring, a manly man can wear during manly pursuits. That said, my exquisite sartorial standards do not mandate fancy watches, for while a finely crafted diamond watch can make a serious fashion statement, IMO an expensive luxury watch clasped on the wrist says nothing positive about the man, manly or no. That said, at one time in my career in international construction I was compelled to buy, wear, and even drop a luxury clepsydra (wristwatch) in public. No diamonds…

Allow me to explain this contradiction.

At the time of this story I lived in Tokyo and was employed by a major Japanese general contractor, indeed the largest general contractor in the world at the time.

As you are aware, commercial construction requires many sheets of drawings. Nowadays, we think nothing of transmitting vast quantities of digital data instantly and very cheaply, via the internet, data devoid of weight and volume. But at the time of this incident, internet access was available only to a few major research Universities and government agencies, so architectural and technical drawings, which were all drawn by hand at the time and printed out as heavy, bulky, paper blueprints reeking of ammonia copy fluid, were delivered to government agencies, bidders, suppliers, subcontractors, and jobsites either by slow boat, airmail, courier or hand delivery. Accordingly, the cost of reproducing and distributing such bulky documents internationally was a major project cost that made UPS, DHL and Fedex highly profitable back in the day.

Time and traffic aside, the taxes and extortion these drawings and specifications faced when the customs agencies of some countries (actually, many countries taxes and tariffs) got their mitts on them were monumental.

In this case, my employer had been awarded a turn-key hospital construction project inside the Philippines through an agency called JICA. JICA selected the designers, and contractors (always Japanese companies) and funded 100% of the design and construction costs with all payments made following JICA procedures inside Japan. This means there were no transfer of funds within the country where the public hospital was erected.

As you can imagine, while the local residents no doubt appreciated the improved, indeed unprecedented access to health care this facility provided to the poor, the JICA system prevented the local government kleptocrats from embezzling or stealing the project funds, so they hated JICA projects with a dragons’ bitter hate. Gentle Readers familiar with both large bureaucracies and international construction will immediately grasp the ramifications.

Chief among these ramifications, IMHO, is the evidence it provides that corrupt governments would rather their citizens suffered and died if their survival meant local politicians and/or government employees might be denied an opportunity for graft and extortion. This is not even a tiny exaggeration.

In the case of international donations of this sort, it is standard procedure, indeed almost mandatory, for the local government and their many relatives and friends to work feverishly from day one to embezzle every last penny of the project’s funds without an ounce of concern for whether the project gets completed or not, regardless of how many innocent people in need of the donated facilities are impoverished or harmed. The only reason for not bleeding the project dry from the beginning is the time need to suck out progress payments through forged reports.

An example of just such a callous project, but on a bigger scale, in the United States is Boston’s “Big Dig,” a public works project began in 1991 scheduled for completion in 1998, but which actually finished in 2007, a 228% time overrun. The contractual, approved budget was $2.8 billion, but the final cost was $14.6 billion, a 521% cost overrun. “Acts of God” and “unforseen conditions” were the excuse, but it’s impossible to prolong a taxpayer-funded project project and increase the cost this much without the direct, criminal collusion by government agencies, politicians, consultants and contractors.

Another example of a project currently underway, and unlikely to ever be completed, is California Governor Newsom’s “Train to No Where.” With promises and fanfare, construction on this railway project planned to connect San Francisco to Los Angeles began in 2008 with a budget of $33 billion. In 2026, with zero stations built and no rail laid, the cost has exploded to $135 billion with no reliable date for completion established and no end to the fiscal bloodbath in sight. As of 2026, the construction costs have increased 410% and the schedule overun has yet to be determined. This is criminal theft worthy of a rope or a firing squad, but I guarantee no one will be punished, much less lying Gavin “let it burn” Newsom.

But I digress. I don’t know about now, but at the time Japanese taxpayers and general contractors smiled on JICA projects because they provided a an actual, physical, world-class hospital to people in third-world countries desperately in need of health care quickly, reliably and at a reasonable cost, thereby showing Japan’s benevolence to countries the Japanese military ravaged during past foreign adventures, all while maximizing retention of taxpayer funds within Japan. The Philippines is one such country.

But graft, corruption and outright theft are always a problem with construction in the Philippines, and the local politicians, at least those I knew at the time, also loathed JICA projects because funds for the construction work were paid directly to the Japanese construction companies, like my employer, in Japan, giving the famously corrupt government in Manila no opportunity to embezzle them. Likewise, Japanese politicians, also extravagantly corrupt, loathed JICA projects because the opportunities for graft and embezzlement were much much fewer than a standard construction project.

Here’s a word to the wise: Be extremely distrustful of any politician in your nation that goes to a foreign country to discuss, negotiate, or visit a government-funded construction project because it’s almost guaranteed that they will use the opportunity to open an account in the Bank of China and arrange to receive bribes from foreign governments, contractors and suppliers free from the risk of detection of wrongdoing by their own government. I say this based on direct experience.

But I digress. Meanwhile, back in Manila, at that time customs demanded payment of 25% of the full value of the actual physical construction work reflected in the drawings. Not just the cost of producing and/or printing the documents, but the cash cost of placing physical concrete and erecting actual steel. That’s a lot of money, millions of US dollars in fact, and involved a big time delay while the amount is evaluated and negotiated.

But as with most problems, there was a way to sidestep the problem. To whit, my superiors in Tokyo asked me to courier the drawings to Manila on several occasions. The reasons for this, as it was explained to me, is that Japanese companies have a history of being generally more agreeable to demands for bribes, so they are pressed harder than American citizens, such as your humble, befuddled servant, who have a reputation for refusing demands for bribes entirely, and then angrily calling on embassies to support them against undue pressure from foreign governments. It’s illegal under American law to pay bribes, donchano.

But because vague assurances from Philippine government officials of speedy, honest treatment could not be relied upon, in preparation for my visit at Manila Customs, my superiors required me to buy a Rolex watch, with my own funds, with the promise they would reimburse me in due time. So I bought a GMT-Master II.

At the airport I retrieved my bags and three big packages of specs and drawings and toddled off to customs inspection. As soon as the agents at Manila customs saw the heavy pile of drawings their beady, greedy eyes lit up, but before they actually demanded a percentage of the total construction cost, I followed my superior’s instructions, extended my left arm over the stainless steel inspection table, displayed the watch, deliberately released the catch on the watch band, and allowed the watch to fall clattering onto the table.

The inspector quickly picked up and examined the watch, and glanced at me questioningly. I just nodded to him respectfully, loaded up my documents, grabbed my travel bag, and left without saying a word. As I was passing through the doors isolating the inspection area, I glanced back and saw the custom inspector smile like a maniac, stuff my watch into his pocket, and wave his next victim to his station. And so the ancient game of taxes, tariffs, bribes and extortion continued.

Of course, my associates were waiting outside the airport in an automobile by the curb to receive the drawings. We drove straight to the office to drop them off, and then headed out to one of the many clubs in Manila to relax until my return flight to Tokyo was ready to depart.

Why a Rolex GMT-Master II watch, you say and not the Breitling Navitimer James Bond wore in Thunderball or Scaramanga’s Rolex Cellini King Midas seen in The Man with the Golden Gun, or even the economical Swatch GE218 that Blowfeld wore with such panache? This was before the fake “Swiss Made” watches deceptively sold by Rolex recently destroyed their reputation were available, but until recently Rolex watches were immediately recognizable and were considered as good or better than cash in many countries, including the Philippines. Indeed, it was standard operating procedure back in the day for businessmen of all nations to wear a Rolex watch as a last-ditch source of emergency funds, especially since the prestige and value of this brand of watch was instantly recognizable, unlike a cheaper Omega or a more-valuable but little-known Patek Phillipe.

BTW, this is exactly why the solid gold Rolex Presidential watch sold so well for a time in many backwards countries.

And why was I instructed to ostentatiously and noisily drop the watch onto the metal table and then walk away without a word? Three reasons.

First, because if one offers government employees cash, it’s obviously a bribe, a crime even if the customs officer demanded the bribe at gunpoint. And as in the United States, superior officers are always eager to use the color of authority to steal cash from subordinates. Just ask Congress, the US military, or the IRS where they misplace billions of US dollars every year. But a watch is just a timepiece without a receipt.

Second, human avarice being what it is, an argument about the amount or method of a cash payment is likely to arise, especially if the prospective recipient has the power to demand a look into one’s wallet, as the man with the gun often does. The Rolex simplifies all that.

Third, if one pays cash, unlike a single timepiece that cannot be easily divvied-up among other customs officials, arguments and long delays in backrooms will always arise. But if the bakshish is just a single watch of obvious value that cannot be divvied-up like cash, dealing with the custom agent’s coworkers and relatives becomes his problem to resolve after his shift is over and you and the drawings are long gone. Indeed, if he’s clever and discrete, they may never know the transaction occurred. This is the real goal, of course.

And lastly, if the customs agent suddenly decides a watch is not enough compensation, and in mighty, puffed-up, hypocritical umbrage pushes his extortion to the limit claiming a crime has been perpetrated, you can play dumb and insist you innocently, clumsily, or accidentally dropped the watch, and you thought the agent kindly picked it up to return it to you. Cash would not work for this approach.

Clever no? I didn’t think this technique up, but I saw it work well 5 times. Welcome to the wonderful world of international construction.

While it was good to provide a hospital to poor people, I’m not proud of my role in this tale. Gentle Reader will draw your own conclusions from this account, but I will be so bold as to state that it’s a stretch to criticize the person being extorted when the person doing the extortion is one government official among many making the same demand, and he has a gun.

Corruption always lead to destruction of civilizations and the suffering and death of innocents.

In future articles in this series well consider the attributes of a useful watch for the woodworker, and examples of how to use one to improve one’s efficiency at work.

YMHOS

If you have questions or would like to learn more about our tools, please click the “Pricelist” link here or at the top of the page and use the “Contact Us” form located immediately below.

Please share your insights and comments with everyone in the form located further below labeled “Leave a Reply.” We aren’t evil Google, fascist facebook, or a Whitehouse staffer and so won’t sell, share, or profitably “misplace” your information. If I lie may all my sawteeth shatter.

Ursula Andress, at one time considered by many in the West to be the most beautiful woman in the work, decked out as a blonde Ayesha

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Beginning Tools – Part 2 Planning Tools

There’s no clear water from a muddy well.

-Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man’s Fear

Sawdust production is the essence of woodworking, but a little planning early in the process will always result in more efficient work.

In this article we’ll examine the four planning tools and documents critical to efficient woodworking, and which beginners to the craft need to know (whether they decide use them or not): (1) Design drawings; (2) Bill of materials or cutting list; (3) Cost estimate and; (4) Schedule, or programme.

Planning Tool No. 1 – Drawings

A drawing of a 6-panel entry door. It needs dimensions and a cross-section, but as drawings go, it’s a good start. BTW, this style of door is also called a “cross and bible” door because the arrangement of rails and mullions in the top half create a cross, while the two panels in the lower half can be imagined to represent the Old and New Testaments in the Bible, three features that are said to prevent evil from crossing the threshold of such a door. Many say this is totally coincidental, but in light of the superstitions surrounding doors and entrances since ancient times, I think not.

There’s not enough time or space in this humble website to discuss drawings in any detail, but for purposes of solidifying your thoughts into a goal, and determining the objectives necessary to reach that goal, you will need a design, of some sort, recorded in a drawing, of some sort.

Without a drawing, even if it’s just a sketch on a paper napkin using a drinking straw and ketchup, you have no plan. And without a drawing, you lack the most important tool to maintain quality, cost and schedule. Do any of these factors matter to you?

For this purpose you would be wise to own the tools and develop the skills necessary to make simple technical drawings of your project including plan views, elevations (side views of all six sides) and cross sections. Isometric drawings are nice too, but not mandatory for most projects.

A computer with CAD software won’t hurt, but such expensive, complicated tools are not necessary unless you’re required to submit design drawings for review and approval by a paying Client, or perhaps She Who Must Be Obeyed. If a paying client, make sure you allow time in your schedule, and funds in your budget to revise and resubmit drawings. I strongly advise you to never begin making sawdust before your Client has approved (and ideally, signed) the design drawings, even if they’re drawn in Heinz ink.

For simple projects, such as furniture or joinery, dimensioned pencil drawings on plain paper will usually suffice. So you’ll need paper (mylar drafting paper is worth the cost for its durability), a board to tape your drawing paper to while you’re working on it, drafting or masking tape to secure the drawing, a square (a framing square will work fine), a 45˚plastic, steel or aluminum drafting triangle, and a straightedge to guide your lines, a pencil and eraser, a scale (e.g. 1/4″= 1′), a divider or two, and a drafting scale.

If a paying client or architect is involved, be sure to date drawings and annotate revisions for the record to avoid the confusion and harsh CYA (cover-your-ass) rash that often ensues.

Planning Tool No. 2 – Cutting List or Bill of Materials

Once your design drawing is near completion, you can get started on making a Cutting List or Bill of Materials (BoM)

A BoM (AKA Materials List) lists all the pieces, parts, components and supplies required to fabricate the project. You may not need that much detail, but you will absolutely need a Cutting List. The following are the primary reasons for making a cutting list:

  • Efficiency: Reduces guesswork and speeds up the build process.
  • Accuracy: Ensures each part is laid-out, measured and cut correctly.
  • Material Management: Helps you to accurately estimate the quantity of lumber needed, it’s minimum length, width and thickness, as well as its cost.
  • Organization: Keeps your workflow structured, so you know what to cut, the most efficient order to cut each part, and the location/orientation of each part in the final assembly.
  • Reproducibility: Acts as a record should you want to recreate the project in the future.

A cutting list is simply a table, often written in MS Excel, Google Sheets, other spreadsheet software or even by hand on a paper notepad in ketchup. Professionals purchase or develop cutting list computer templates for the type of project they typically undertake, but this only make sense in production work.

List all the major wooden components of your project in this table, including the name of each part, its location in the assembly, all its dimensions (length, width, thickness) and species of wood, if more than one is used, and its designation. If your plan includes special surfaces treatments (e.g. roughsawn, hewn, adze, paint, stain, pink candy apple glitter with rhinestones, etc.) those details too should be listed against the corresponding locations in your list.

Regarding the term “designation,” this is simply a non-permanent marking convention you employ at your discretion in order to prevent confusion. Whatever method you choose, you need to be able to place this mark quickly, legibly and directly on each part, in pencil or lumber crayon. Indelible marking pen, for instance, is not good because it’s permanent and can bleed through the finish months after the project is finished.

A glance at any mark you’ve made should tell you exactly where it belongs within the assembly, and its orientation (front/back, up/down, first/second level, right/left etc.) in an instant.

I use a version of the cabinetmaker’s triangle. Include these marks in the cutting table to describe each individual part. Please also mark this designation directly on the wood so there is absolutely no confusion.

Consistency is mandatory and care must be taken to avoid confusion. If you do a good job developing and employing your marking convention it will serve you well for many years and many projects turning frustrating glueup sessions into tea and cakes. This is a big step in developing professional-level skills.

Dictum: Popwoodwork: FineWoodwork

Can you get by without a cutting list? Sure you can. But you save nothing by not preparing one, not even time, and can loose much. Moreover the process is excellent training that will give you confidence moving forward. It may improve your overall analytical capabilities too.

Planning Tool No. 3 – Cost Estimate

If Gentle Reader has bottomless pockets, such that the quantity and quality of wood available to you is unlimited and procurement thereof instantaneous, then a cost estimate may be unnecessary. But even then, I encourage you to prepare a cost estimate because, as a wise construction estimator named Warren (RIP) once told me, you can never truly understand a project until you’ve made a cost estimate. Why? Because to make a cost estimate you need to analyze the project in detail and list (1) all the materials and (2) the dimensions and quantity of the parts, calculate anticipated waste, estimate the time to make and assemble all the parts, and then multiply the quantity of materials (perform a quantity takeoff) required by the unit cost of those materials, and add the labor cost.

As you can see, a cost estimate is the natural expansion of a cutting list, which in turn is a natural extension of a design drawing.

This may not be an easy job, but if you aspire to professional-grade skills, then the exercise is worthwhile even if the resulting accuracy the first few times is not stellar. Two steps forward one step back is still progress!

Planning Tool No. 4 – Schedule

Part of creating a final cost estimate, as in a commercial bid, is to breakdown the work required to accomplish the project into pieces and assign a time value and unit price to each, analyze the best workflow combining all the tasks, and then to concisely reflect this information into a document called a “schedule,” in countries influenced by USA where the CPM (critical path method) schedule was first formally developed for planning and managing factory shutdowns and shipbuilding, or a “Programme” in the UK, or a kouteihyou （工程表) in Japan.

A schedule is the actual step-by-step plan for the build. Is it absolutely necessary to write one? No, of course not, but until you can write a simple schedule, you don’t have a real plan, just a SWAG (scientific wild-ass guess).

Computer programs are commonly used to write and manage schedules nowadays, MS Project, SureTrak (now defunct) and Primavera P6 are some your humble servant has used over the years. There are even free versions available in Excel. Such software is extremely convenient and even useful, at least they were until Oracle got involved. That said, I learned to write and manage schedules by hand long before commercial computer software was available, and continue to make rough schedules for even complicated construction projects by hand, so fancy software is not mandatory, especially for hobby woodworking projects.

The key points to pin down when writing a schedule are to first plan the the project with drawings and cutting lists, and to then identify the various task or jobs it will take to get the job done, and time it will take to complete each (duration). Then figure out which of those tasks can only be done one after the other (relations), and if they can be worked on consecutively, what the timing of the work progression will be.

For instance, when making a door, the parts must be cut to size before the joints can be cut, which in turn can only begun after the wood has been procured, thickness planed and jointed. On the other hand, you can procure the wood, hinges and begin thickness planing before, or even at the same time some of the joints are being cut.

For example, your breakdown might include the following tasks, some of which you may perform directly, or you may subcontract out to others, finishing for example.:

  1. Produce drawings: 4hr
  2. Procure materials: 16 hrs
  3. Mark materials: 1hr
  4. Saw materials to approximate length and width: 8hrs
  5. Thickness plane and joint one edge of materials: 3hrs
  6. Layout: 1hr
  7. Cut joints: 8hr
  8. Test-ft & Glue-up: 1hr
  9. Cleanup: 0.5hr
  10. Finish sand/plane: 2hr
  11. Apply finish: 3hr
  12. Install hardware: 1hr
  13. Deliver/install final product: 6hr
  14. Invoice Final Payment: 1hr

In the case of hobby woodworking, formulating a detailed schedule may be psychologically onerous, taking all the joy out of the project. On the other hand, it can help prevent simple projects and small cash investments from morphing into complicated, expensive projects. But you never know until you give it a try.

Conclusion

Gentle Reader may be off-put by these steps and document-prep because they seem like actual work, contrary to the spirit of woodworking as an excuse to drink beer hidden away from the flaming eye of She Who Must Be Obeyed. But please keep two absolute truths in mind: First, regardless of how or when or to what degree of detail you perform the tasks I’ve described in this humble article, none of them are busywork. Indeed, documents have been found (on papyrus, no less) that evidence that Pharoh’s project manager for the pyramids did the same.

Second, whether you realize it or not, in one way or another you will do every single one of these jobs before the project is complete, you just won’t realize you’ve done them until after the fact. And if you proceed without a plan, you will have done them in a disorganized manner, out-of-sequence, on the fly, inefficiently, and perhaps with haphazard results. Such is human nature.

While the planning and documents these steps require may seem like they will make the job take longer, the truth is it will go quicker, with better results, and with better quality at less cost. I promise.

Until we meet again to gather herbs and posies in the troll woods, I have the honor to remain,

YMHOS

Translated title : Here is a piece of a troll herb which nobody else but me can find by John Bauer (1882–1918). From a tale written by Alfred Smedberg and published in the 1912 edition of Bland tomtar och troll (Among gnomes and trolls)

If you have questions or would like to learn more about our tools, please click the “Pricelist” link here or at the top of the page and use the “Contact Us” form located immediately below.

Please share your insights and comments with everyone in the form located further below labeled “Leave a Reply.” We aren’t evil Google, fascist facebook, or a Whitehouse staffer and so won’t sell, share, or profitably “misplace” your information. If I lie may all my sawteeth shatter.

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Relevant Articles

The Best Striking Chisel for the Job?

A 48mm oiirenomi by Hidari no Ichihiro

When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.

Thomas Sowell

A couple of questions prospective Beloved Customers frequently ask your humble servant is what variety Japanese chisel(s) they should purchase, and the best width(s).

In this article I will summarize the answers I most often offer, and list the advantages and disadvantages of 3 types of striking chisels. Perhaps it will be informative.

I started using Japanese chisels long before the internet was more than a group of linked university library research computers. I’ve learned a few things on the subject from Japanese language books over the years, but I’ve yet to read anything on the internet that was more than a regurgitation of marketing screeds and BS from self-proclaimed experts. Most of what I know about Japanese chisels I learned from Japanese blacksmiths and professional woodworkers in Japan, and from my own hands-on, trial and error experience using them to make a living.

Even after the internet expanded (or rather blew up like a dynamited outhouse) into world wide web we know nowadays, there was very little useful written information available in the English language anywhere regarding the varieties of Japanese chisels and how to maintain and use them. This frustration was my primary reason for establishing this website, in fact. But after starting this humble website I’ve noticed more and more people presenting themselves as experts on the internet who merely imitate, indeed plagiarize, what I’ve written. Do they do this to improve general knowledge on the subject of Japanese chisels, or do they have other motives?

Like monkeys jabbering trees, posers and copycats are fine entertainment no doubt, but will their stories based on mediocre knowledge and poor experience be of benefit to Gentle Reader? I encourage Gentle Readers to seek useful knowledge based on practical experience rather than ill-informed click bait.

Regarding my answers to the two questions listed above, let’s begin by considering the options I believe most likely to serve Gentle Reader best.

As this article: The Varieties of Japanese Chisels explains at length, there are two primary types of Japanese chisels: the tatakinomi striking chisel and the tsukinomi paring chisel. In this article we will examine only tatakinomi.

A 42mm oiirenomi by Sukezane

Tatakinomi (Striking Chisel)

The three types of chisels described below are categorized as “Tatakinomi” which translates directly to “striking chisel.” It’s name’s derived from the way one motivates it by “striking” the butt of its wooden handle with a steel hammer. No, not an inefficient, imprecise wooden mallet but a serious, differentially-hardened, high-carbon steel tool.

What is a Gennou Hammer?

Hammers to Use With Chisels Part 2 – Hammer Faces

Head Style & Weight

Tatakinomi, aka “striking chisels” are the best-known type of Japanese chisel, but there are other kinds, primarily “usunomi” or paring chisels.

Because high-quality chisels are not free, and because the powerful forces applied to tatakinomi may betimes place them at risk of damage, it’s important that those you procure be durable, so let’s next consider consider some factors that govern a chisel’s durability.

Keys to Chisel Durability

High-quality, hand-forged (vs. stamped, mass-produced) Japanese striking chisels differ from Western-style chisels in that they are intended to be wacked hard all day with a steel hammer, treatment that will quickly destroy Western chisels, but which professional-grade, handmade Japanese chisels enjoy with handfuls of chips and barrels of beer.

Why can our tataki chisels shrug-off abuse that would destroy all other chisels? There are three primary reasons. First, the handles are made of either Japanese red oak or Japanese white oak, varieties of hardwood native to Japan significantly denser and stronger than all species of American and European oak.

The second reason is that the handle is reinforced by a steel ferrule in the shape of a hollow “truncated cone,” called a “kuchigane,” which translates to “mouth steel,” carefully fitted to the contoured blade end of the handle.

This component doesn’t just perch on the handle like a pelican on a post but squeezes and compresses the wood fibers around the tang of the blade making it nearly impossible for the impact forces of a hand-operated hammer to split the handle. In fact, the harder the handle is struck the tighter the kuchigane becomes, the more constraining hoop pressure it applies to handle. This is a genius design detail, one commonly found in many ancient weapons (swords, spears, arrows and pole weapons) around the world, BTW. I’ll be dipped in chocolate and sold as a hairy truffle if I can figure out why European and America tool makers abandoned this technique a hundred or so years ago. Perchance a pre-internet example of enshittification?

The third reason the handles of hand-made Japanese chisels can eat up such abuse without complaining is another piece of furniture called the “crown,” what some people vulgarly call the “hoop,” a steel band with a particular cross-section encircling the butt end of the handle. If the crown and handle are fitted properly (the majority of Japanese chisels sold overseas are not, BTW), this crown will apply tremendous hoop force on the wood preventing it from splitting.

An important detail worth knowing is that this crown doesn’t just sit on the handle like a metal hatband, but is designed to slowly move down the length of the handle as the handle becomes shorter over the years providing continuous support for the handle without the need for future adjustment. Ergo the nickname “sagariwa.” Clever stuff.

Another less-obvious reason high-quality chisels can happily endure such abuse is the fact that the handles are hand-turned of dense, well-dried, defect-free Japanese hardwood with minimal runout, and hand-fitted to the blade by an experienced Japanese craftsman who specializes in making handles (the honorable Mr. Hasegawa, in our case) with many years of experience, to ensure a proper fit between wood and steel components. Such handles cannot be procured in bulk from Chinese farmers. Why does this matter? A sloppy fit between steel and wood will not only reduce a chisel’s useful lifespan, but will actually reduce its efficiency, meaning the forces of the hammer will not be transmitted properly, as you can tell by the strange harmonic vibrations they transmit to your hand.

The Three Types of Tatakinomi

Let’s next consider the three main types of tatakinomi: the oiirenomi, hantatakinomi, and atsunomi.

Top: 48mm mentori oiirenomi chisel. Sukezane brand OAL = 222mm, t = 8mm, wt = 226gm Center: 48mm mentori hantataki chisel. Nagamitsu brand OAL = 270mm, t = 9mm, wt = 356gm Bottom: 48mm Mentori atsunomi chisel. Sukemaru brand OAL = 295mm, t = 11mm, wt = 426gm All 3 chisels are fitted with Japanese white oak handles and black furniture

The Oiirenomi Chisel

The most popular type of tatakinomi striking chisel sold nowadays is the mentori oiirenomi, pronounced oh/ee/reh/noh/mee). This is the Japanese chisel best known outside Japan. A couple of variants are the older-style kakuuchi oiirenomi and the slimmer shinogi oiirenomi.

The oiirenomi is a smaller, lighter, more economical version of the bigger, older atsunomi style chisel. Just as I have done so often in answer to questions from prospective Beloved Customers, I’ve compared some of the key advantages and disadvantages of the oiirenomi compared to the hantataki and atsunomi below. Horses for courses.

Oiirenomi’s Advantages:

  • More compact (shorter and slimmer) than the atsumomi and hantataki chisels, the oiirenomi is extremely handy for making light cuts in tight spaces, for making furniture and cabinets, and doing installations. Being less bulky, oiirenomi take up less space in the toolbag/toolbox and on the workbench, and accordingly are easier to transport to and around the jobsite.
  • The oiirenomi’s lighter weight, compared to atsunomi and hantataki, makes them easier for those with weaker hands to use.
  • Oiirenomi can be motivated with a lighter hammer and/or less force for more precise work in some jobs.
  • Less costly than atsunomi and hantatakinomi.

Oiirenomi’s Disadvantages

  • While compact and lightweight, their blade, neck and handle are shorter in length than atsunomi and hantataki limiting their reach and making them unsuited for some deep cuts. This is seldom a problem when making furniture and cabinets, but their shorter reach may decidedly limit their effectiveness in some carpentry and timber framing projects.
  • Their reduced weight is achieved by reducing the amount of metal used and employing a shorter handle that some users with large hands sometimes find inconvenient.
  • Most importantly, the reduced weight is achieved by incorporating less metal in the blade, neck and shoulders making the oiirenomi relatively weaker and less durable when subjected to the heavy pounding required to cut the large joints and hog the large volume of wood required when timber framing. For the same reason, wider blades (36mm+) may not be adequately supported by the thinner neck and lighter shoulders of the oiirenomi.

The oiirenomi is perfect for most furniture and cabinetry tasks around the shop, and is very portable for jobsite use, but it may not be suited to heavy carpentry, timber framing or for use by those with large hands. I have smallish hands by Western male standards (I like to flatter myself they are “artisan size” (ツ)), and even for me oiirenomi are a bit dainty.

Professionals that use chisels from morning to night, however, prefer the atsunomi for even small jobs simply because it’s stronger, cuts with more authority and lasts much, much longer.

The Hanataki Chisel

The hantataki chisel is a larger, longer version of the oiirenomi, or depending on your viewpoint, a smaller version of the atsunomi. It has both advantages and disadvantages when compared its brothers.

Hantataki’s Advantages

  • Hantataki chisels are an “in-between” chisel built longer and somewhat beefier than oiirenomi chisels, but shorter and lighter than atsunomi chisels, depending on your viewpoint again. They take up less space in the toolbox/toolbag than atsunomi and are therefore easier to transport.
  • Their greater length compared to oiirenomi makes them handier for those with larger hands.
  • Hantataki can cut deeper/longer joints than oiirenomi can.
  • While not as heavy-duty as atsunomi, hantataki are significantly beefier and stronger than oiirenomi and therefore better suited to cutting joints in large timbers using heavier hammers. They make great chisels for carpentry work in the field.
  • Our hantataki chisels are priced nearly the same as our oiirenomi chisels, making them an economic choice.

Hantataki’s Disadvantages:

  • Hantataki chisels can’t cut as deeply as atsunomi, but this is seldom a serious limitation except in timber framing work.
  • While heavier and tougher than oiirenomi they are lighter than atsunomi. Horses for courses.
  • They are not as strong as atsunomi and may be at a disadvantage for some heavy timber framing jobs. Although we carry them in 54mm width, this may be a little too wide for the shoulder to adequately support during heavy use.

The Atsunomi Chisel

Atsunomi (ah/tsu/noh/mee) are the largest standard size chisel. There are special-order chisels with longer necks, such as the anayanomi, for cutting special joints (no longer made), but this is the chisel used for serious, heavy-duty carpentry and all timber framing jobs.

A specialized 54mm anayanomi (a long-necked atsunomi) by Nora. The long neck is for making deep cuts.

Atsunomi means “thick chisel,” which explains it well. As an example, our 48mm wide Sukemaru-brand atsunomi are 295mm long (OAL) 11mm thick, with an 85mm long blade, 70mm long neck, and weigh 426 grams, almost twice the weight of our 48mm Sukezane-brand oiirenomi chisel.

Two of your humble servants well-used chisels by Kiyotada. Top: Oiirenomi with white oak handle. Bottom: Atsunomi with red oak handle.

Atsunomi’s Advantages:

  • Long blade, neck and handle allow this chisel to make deep cuts in heavy timbers, this chisel’s greatest advantage.
  • Thicker blade and neck make the atsunomi much stronger and tougher for hard cutting all day long.
  • The extra mass of the atsunomi cushions the impulse shock acting on user’s hand and wrist joint compared to the same impulse forces acting through lighter oiirenomi or hantataki.

Atsunomi’s Disadvantages:

  • Being bulkier and heavier, transporting atsunomi by bus, train, bicycle or mare’s shank is relatively more work.
  • Their extra mass requires a heavier hammer to motivate in order to make the same cuts as the oiirenomi and hantataki. This requires a greater expenditure of energy.
  • Being heavier, the user may need stronger hands and arms than when using smaller chisels.
  • Although the extra weight and increased moment of inertia makes the atsunomi more stable than other chisels, it requires greater skill when making delicate cuts.

Blade Width

“What’s best blade width for the job” is another question people always pose, but it’s a a bit more difficult to answer. The following are some points to consider.

First, if you will use the chisel(s) to cut mortises you either need to (1) determine in advance what width mortises you will need to cut; or (2) The likely range of mortises. The difficulty of answering these questions, and the fact that the answer varies from job to job, is why professionals end up owning more than one or two chisels.

But how to decide? If the mortise is fairly narrow, say 6~15mm, then owning a chisel the same width is most efficient. In the case of wider mortises, it’s often best to use a chisel a little narrower than the mortise hole, and then pare the walls to final dimension. Why? Because, unless you’ve had a lot of practice, and your chisel has tight tolerances, it may tend to bind in the mortise hole and maybe even gouge the sidewalls. But by paring to final dimensions, the width of the mortise hole can be kept within tolerances and the sidewalls kept free of gouges.

When all’s said and done, and when speed and precision are critical, it’s best to check, adjust and maintain the tolerances of your chisels.

Another point to keep in mind when planning mortises is that it’s almost always most efficient to match the width of the mortise to the dimension your chisel can most easily, precisely and consistently cut rather than planning the mortise width around some specific dimension, e.g. precisely 6mm or 1/4″. One then cuts each specific tenon to fit each specific mortise instead of some dimension on a drawing. Once you have your chisel setup properly and a mortise gauge with a matching setting, there will be no need to measure mortise width at all.

People always ask what 3 or 4 chisels they should purchase to get started making furniture, for instance. The easy answer is 6, 9, 12, 24mm. Why not wider? I love wide chisels, but if you only have a few chisels, you will need one on-hand that does a great job of paring. 24mm is about the maximum width the average guy can precisely motivate a chisel pushing it by hand without using a hammer. Of course, this capacity will vary with the joint being made and the hardness of the wood, but 24mm is standard.

While we’re on the subject of paring, the handles of oiirenomi are too short for a powerful grip and good control with two hands, and the steel crown tends to be hard on one’s hands. For these reasons, the usunomi paring chisel with its thinner, longer blade, neck and handle, and lack of a crown is ideal. If you don’t have any yet, you will find usunomi to be wonderful tools and great friends.

Conclusion:

The oiirenomi is a compact, lightweight, nimble and less-costly striking chisel suited for light cuts with moderate weight hammers. It’s the typical starter chisel for Japanese woodworkers, and the only variety of Japanese chisel most Western woodworkers know. Perfect for making furniture, cabinets, and most joinery. Being lightweight, it will not endure long sessions being pounded on with heavy hammers. Also, being short, it may not be suited for those with large hands.

The hantataki chisel by comparison is slightly larger than the oiirenomi. It’s relatively inexpensive, not especially heavy, and can cut deeper joints. It’s perfect for those with larger hands that find the oiirenomi uncomfortable to use. And it will do everything the oiirenomi can and more.

The atsunomi is the largest, heaviest, strongest and most durable of the Japanese chisels. It’s ideal for heavy work such as timber framing and wasting large amounts of wood quickly. Besides carpenters and timber framers, many professional craftsmen in Japan, even those that never work on construction sites, prefer to use atsunomi even for delicate work because of their relatively longer blades and cost-effectiveness.

Because of its greater size and weight, the atsunomi is not as nimble as the smaller varieties of tatakinomi and demands greater strength and skill of the user. But on the other hand, it’s much more stable in the cut, wastes wood with impressive gravitas, and will endure many decades of hard daily use in professional situations without complaining.

YMHOS

A set of fusuma sliding doors painted by Kano Hogai with the classic motifs of “ancient” plum tree, bamboo, and birds. All it lacks is pine trees, but those were no doubt painted on adjoining doors back in the day. These panels are designated “natural treasures.”

The Varieties of Japanese Chisels

The Mentori Oiirenomi (面取追入鑿）

The Kakuuchi Oiirenomi (角打追入鑿）

The Hantataki Chisel

The Atsunomi （厚鑿)

The Usunomi Paring Chisel

If you have questions or would like to learn more about our tools, please click the see the “Pricelist” link here or at the top of the page and use the “Contact Us” form located immediately below.

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Trees, Wood, Carbon and Bugs

A giant California redwood tree located at the time of this photo near my former home in Forestville California. The gentlemen shown have done a marvelously clean bit of work up to this point using only a two-man saw and their axes. A serious job performed by serious men.

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.

J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

Thank you for visiting our humble website, focused primarily on woodworking tools, especially those made by Japanese craftsmen for Japanese professional carpenters and woodworkers.

Consistent with the educational and contemplative nature of this website, in this article we will examine the nature of wood itself including the trees that produce it, two of their controversial by-products, and a couple of techniques for dealing with wood’s inherent weaknesses of which Gentle Reader may not be aware. It will a useful read without being boring, I swear by Grabthar’s Hammer!

The Miracle of Trees

As a matter of common sense, most people assume that trees, such as the California Redwood shown above which once grew very near my old house in Forestville, grow to such height, diameter and mass by extracting minerals from the ground at their roots. That huge mass must come from somewhere, right?

Of course trees do extract some minerals from the ground, along with many tons of water. But if it’s as simple as that, please consider why trees don’t create correspondingly huge depressions in the soil into which they are rooted, depleting minerals and biomass from the soil. Moreover, please consider how trees add biomass to the soil they’re rooted in instead of making a hole. You’ve heard of conservation of energy, no doubt, but is conservation of mass a thing?

Most people think plants and trees are made of minerals robbed from soil, but the fact about trees and plants so heavily hushed-up nowadays is that they are built almost entirely of carbon extracted directly and entirely from the atmosphere. Yes, from thin air.

Clearly, despite what the doom goblins wail on TV in order to shame and coerce actors and politicians for support, to solicit clicks, and to extort donations, carbon dioxide is a useful substance critical to all plant life; it’s not the poison the smelly, screeching environmentalist orcs claim it is. Consider what would happen to this planet and all creatures who live on it if carbon dioxide went away. Or if oxygen went away.

If you aren’t clear on this point, please spend some time and effort to learn, or risk being an environment cuck. Ah! Could it be there’s no money to be made speaking the simple truth rather than inciting panic?

A climate scientist fleecing the ignorant (and gullible) masses. I wonder if he has any of my favorite Idiotbegone pills in his wagon?

Of course, plants do extract a few minerals from the soil along with great amounts of water. Powered only by sunlight, plants and trees remove carbon from the air and use it to create cellulose, a material very similar to sugar, BTW, and which many insects and animals, but not humans, can digest. Think grass and other plant matter.

Show me a single “scientist” that can replicate this miracle in a lab and I will bow down and kiss his bulging bunions. Good luck in your search for that miracle worker, but in the meantime, I won’t be needing any scientific kneepads.

Plants need free carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to grow, and animals, including me and thee, need both plants and oxygen. Indeed the greater the concentration of CO2 available, the more plants grow, the more CO2 they remove from the atmosphere, and the more oxygen they produce. Indeed, every molecule of oxygen surrounding planet earth was produced by a plant. Hmm, sounds almost like an endless, natural cycle, one that animals and humans rely on unconditionally. Imagine that…

Plants are marvelous sunlight-powered miracles. And don’t forget, except for the salt, every crumb of every ingredient in your peanut butter, humus and boiled mutton sandwich on rye originated with plants produced using sunlight, carbon, and water.

The Importance of Wood

Wood is a wonderful material, used by humankind since well before the archaeological record to produce heat, light, shelter, clothing, tools, weapons, food and water. Even today it remains the supreme catalyst.

Although computers, concrete and carbon fiber get all the attention nowadays, and those who evaluate the complicated “environmental” impacts of materials on this world carefully ignore it, there would simply be no human civilization without wood.

There are those who disagree with this statement, mostly highly edumacated individuals affiliated with supposedly serious organizations, many of whom are short-sighted, financially-conflicted souls with short attention spans that never exceed the news cycle, and who, despite clear evidence to the contrary, choose to equate the use of wood with the destruction and/or pollution of the natural environment for fun and profit.

Of course, they believe, or at least profess, that the carbon released by the combustion and decomposition of wood is wholly poisonous. These nitwit geniuses instead promote the supposedly “ecological” use of steel and concrete and petroleum products instead, all materials that require huge amounts of energy to fabricate, transport and recycle, all while releasing millions of tons of truly (versus imagined) poisonous substances into the natural environment annually. Alas, the medicinal cure for idiocy your humble servant strongly advocates is apparently not yet widely available.

Wood contains a tremendous amount of energy, as Gentle Reader has observed in wood-fueled fires. The immutable laws of thermodynamics state, in essence, that all heat comes at a cost. Oil costs money to pump, transport and refine as well as special machinery to use it, but the heat given off by wood is simply the conversion of sunlight gathered by the plant while it was alive back into heat and light. A complete and pure circle.

Sure, the combustion and decomposition of wood releases carbon back into the ground and atmosphere, but every molecule of carbon released by wood was originally extracted directly from the atmosphere by many, many plants over many many cycles. Therefore, plants remove carbon from the atmosphere, and only release that carbon when they return to the big lumberyard in the sky. This is true “net zero,” without the production of an ounce of pollution, unlike steel, concrete, oil, coal and every other fuel and material used by mankind without exception.

I’m not suggesting the use of petroleum and coal and windpower, within limits, is irresponsible, but if the environment is important to you, as it should be, then using organic materials and non-toxic fuels instead of oil, coal, steel, concrete and wind turbines should be a high priority.

Furniture Pests

Our Beloved Customers use our tools to make elegant, useful stuff out of wood. This wood is formed of cellulose, the most abundant organic compound on Earth, one very similar to but fundamentally different from the sugars we consume for energy. Many animals, including herbivores such as elephants, cows, rabbits and termites have the built-in ability to convert the cellulose in the plant matter they eat into energy by a process we cannot replicate. Humans have yet to to figure out a way to accomplish this apparent magic without the intervention of animals, insects or fungus. Once again, puffed-up prideful science can’t do what every carpenter ant and every mushroom obediently does without even be asked to.

A part of the “carbon cycle” relies on such animals, bugs and micro-organisms. If left to their own devices bugs and fungus quickly recycle wooden objects, including houses, furniture and parts of our tools made from wood. You may not have noticed these pesky critters, but you’ve probably seen the holes they chew and the wood dust they excrete. Check an old tool handle, handplane body, or antique table leg for evidence of death watch beetles of powderpost beetles, two common varieties of bugs commonly called “furniture beetles.”

I don’t know about you, but I hate the very idea of icky bugs eating my furniture, tools and handiwork. But what to do?

There are plenty of chemicals manufactured to make wood taste yucky to bugs and fungus, but most of those are toxic and/or carcinogenic so you wouldn’t want to leave them in contact with your skin or lungs for any period of time. But what’s a safe way to keep bugs and fungus from chewing on your workbench, furniture, tool handles or plane bodies? And what can be done once some of them have taken up residence therein?

Termites are are problem bugs, too of course, but most of them prefer a higher moisture content in the wood they dine on than is typically found in houses and tools. That said, I’ve seen subterranean termites and Formosa termites in Guam swarm and eat interior furniture and wooden doors down to hollowed-out toilet paper tubes in front of my eyes. Scary stuff. This is precisely why people don’t build much of anything from wood on that island but spend lots of money on chemicals to prevent termites from turning cellulose into bug crap.

For example, while living on Guam, I had a neighbor in the US Airforce stationed there who’d imported some beautiful Amish furniture made of American Cherry wood from his home in Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, there was a crack in the concrete slab-on-grade floor underneath his beautiful dining table with a corresponding gap in the ceramic tile on top that allowed the local termites to access a single cabriole leg of that table unseen. The table collapsed into a pile of sticks and red termite crap after a year. I kid thee not. Vicious, vile bugs.

If Gentle Reader has ever frequented flea markets and antique shops, or even perused photos of antiques, you will have seen the many holes left by furniture beetles. I own several old hammers, axes and planes with their wooden components riddled with bugholes. But how can you prevent bugs from infesting your valuable wooden objects in the first place without using highly-toxic, corrosive, and expensive chemicals containing lead, chromium and/or arsenic? Easy peezy. Borax is the answer.

A Non-toxic and Inexpensive Method of Wood Preservation

There are any number of effective chemicals available for wood preservation against insects and fungus. Borax is what I recommend based on direct workplace experience. Its a naturally-occurring white powder sold everywhere as a laundry detergent additive. But it’s not just for washing Gentle Reader’s crusty socks, oh no. It’s essential in many industrial processes, including blacksmithing, where it’s used as a flux when forge-welding iron and steel. Indeed, Japanese blacksmiths use it to forge our tools.

The vast majority of borax is mined in California where there are huge deposits in ancient lake beds. You may have heard of the famous “Twenty Mule Team” wagon trains once used to transport borax from Death Valley, California.

For this application you don’t need wagons or mules, just water and borax powder, but NOT Borax-brand washing detergent. Both are sold as laundry additives in the supermarket and big-box stores, so don’t confuse them.

2 mule team wagon
A borax mine in Boron, California USA

To prepare this wood preservative and insecticide, dissolve borax powder in warm water to make a 7-10% mixture. Then spray it onto wooden objects at-risk, or better yet, soak the wooden objects in this mixture and let dry. Be careful not to spray the cat or the carpet.

Borax messes with the internal functions of bugs and fungus, but it’s harmless to humans and domestic animals to handle, so long as you don’t soak in it or ingest it. In fact, borax is much less toxic than table salt, and is the only sure way I am aware of to protect wood against bugs and rot without putting human life and health at risk. No VOC risk. No carcinogens. It won’t pass through skin. No environmental contamination risk (that’s important). It won’t corrode metal fasteners. It has no odor. And it’s cheap (ergo no profits for chemical companies). These are all important reasons for woodworkers to use borax.

There are only two downsides to using borax. First, since it’s water soluble, you need to keep wood treated with borax from repeated wetting or the borax will leach out. Second, you need to keep wood treated with borax out of direct contact with soil because moisture in soil will, once again, leach borax out of wood.

I add borax to the water I soak my sharpening stones in to prevent crud from growing. It works for years at a stretch, and doesn’t harm any variety of sharpening stone, synthetic or natural, nor does contact with dissolved borax harm me, or even irritate my skin, so long as I don’t drink it (see the Wood Finisher’s Pledge above). That said, I don’t bathe in it, and I understand that some people have a reaction to it, so don’t go crazy.

Borax also makes the water alkaline preventing rust. I add it to the water I use to clean my blades when sharpening and for cleaning my muzzleloading rifles. Entirely historically correct too.

But before using this mixture for any purpose, please recite the Wood Finisher’s Pledge along with me now: “I will not drink wood preservatives, use CCA impregnated toothpicks, nor wash my face with oven cleaner.”

A Quick, and Cheap But Slightly Toxic Way to Eliminate Bugs from Wood

Borax will kill bugs already in the wood given time, but is there a quicker way to get rid of those voracious beasties?

Here’s a technique to deal with wood-eating bug infestations I learned from woodworkers in Japan. I’m sure its not unique, and suspect it’s as old as oil wells, but I’ve never heard of it being used elsewhere.

Before employ this methodology, please recite the Wood Finisher’s Pledge again, but with more feeling this time.

Simply find the entrance/exit holes bugs chew into and out of an infested wooden object and, using a syringe or pipette, squirt or drip a little gasoline into each of them. You might even soak the wood overall in a bit of gasoline.

But, be warned, because Murphy rules the universe and truly wants to hurt you and yours, so be sure you do this outdoors well away from anything flammable. Also be sure to put out your stogey, give your Puffco Cupsy bong a rest, and dial down your “electrifying personality” because “hair on fire” is not simply a real risk around uncontained gasoline, it’s garan-frikin-teed.

After judiciouly and carefully applying this small amount of gasoline, you can wrap the object in plastic, or place it into some kind of airtight container, to allow the gasoline vapors to permeate the wood. Do this outdoors, once again, and refrain from smoking. The gasoline fumes will promptly send the bugs, their eggs, and all their chilluns to the big lumberyard in the sky. In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti, Amen.

After a few days, unwrap/unseal the wooden object and place it outdoors in the sunlight to remove the smell of gasoline.

This technique works perfectly, every time, and costs almost nothing.

The chemical companies don’t make a penny on either of the highly-effective processes described herein which is why you’ve never heard of them before.

Until we meet again and all your bugs have been purged, I have the singular honor to remain,

YMHOS

I can’t believe those damned bugs ate my favorite bow! If only I’d followed Stan’s advice and treated it with that white powder…

If you have questions or would like to learn more about our tools, please click the “Pricelist” link here or at the top of the page and use the “Contact Us” form located immediately below. You can also reach us at Covingtonandsons@gmail.com

Please share your insights and comments with everyone in the form located further below labeled “Leave a Reply.” We aren’t evil Google, fascist facebook, or the Congressional IT department of the Democrat Party and so won’t sell, share, or profitably “misplace” your information. If I lie may bugs eat all my tool handles, and food taste like charcoal.

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Japanese Handplanes Part 9 – Maintenance & Storage

Preventive Maintenance: Don’t start today by doing yesterday’s work.

– Deniece Schofield

High-quality handplanes are not cheap, and when you have a good one in good fettle, the time and effort it takes to maintain it ready to rock and roll immediately is never wasted. Indeed, it’s a solid investment that pays higher dividends than General Electric stock ever will, I promise you, on condition that the maintenance is done right, and your handplanes are stored and transported properly. On this subject as in many others, knowledge is power, so let’s get some.

Maintenance

There are several items to consider when maintaining your handplane. We’ve discussed how to set-up and fettle a Japanese hiraganna handplane in previous articles, all listed at the end of this article. In this article we’ll examine how to maintain it while we’re using it, and how to store it when we aren’t.

Sharpening

A dull plane may make excellent firewood, but it’s as useful as a screen door in a submarine, so the first step in keeping it useful is sharpening it. The true value of the high-quality-forged blade in your plane is that it’s easily and quickly made extremely sharp, and it will retain that sharp edge a long time, reducing the time, trouble and cost of maintaining it. Does your time have value?

For detailed directions about sharpening, please read the series of 30 articles linked at the end of this article. They will explain the what and why of the blade of a high-quality plane. And of course, there are supernatural aspects worthy of review (ツ).

Maintaining and Storing a Handplane While In-use

The following is a list of maintenance items you should consider performing and the specific conditions under which I think they’re applicable. These are suggestions not rules, of course, but unlike most of the woodworking gurus on the internet, I didn’t steal them from noobtube, nor suggest them because they’re good clickbait, or fish them out of my fundament because they smell like lilacs, or because I think they’ll sell tools or books to the gullible. They are simple and they work, but it’s important to understand the applicable conditions. Each item assumes that the blade is sharp, but if isn’t, sharpening it should be first priority.

The Essential Oilpot
  1. Condition 1 – Overnight Storage: The plane is working fine, its blade is still sharp, and you intend to use the plane in the same place for the same jobs tomorrow, but just need to set aside on your workbench for a few hours, perhaps overnight. You may want to take the following actions:
    • Don’t remove the blade and chipbreaker, but simply wipe the body with a clean, dry rag and clear dust and shavings out of the blade opening with a clean, dry brush. Purpose: To prevent wood resin from accumulating and gumming things up (depends on the wood), and to prevent corrosion (yes, sawdust can cause rust).
    • Oil the cutting edge at the sole using your trusty, ever-faithful oilpot.
  2. Condition 2 – Short-term Relocation & Storage: The plane is working fine and the blade is sharp, but you need to relocate it to another location for a short time. In this case, you may want to take the following actions.
    • Safe the blade by retracting it into the body using your wood, plastic or leather mallet so it doesn’t become damaged, or damage other tools while lounging in your tool box or tool bag during the relocation.
    • Remove dust and shavings from the plane, especially the mouth opening, because they will make the toolbox or tool bag dirty.
  3. Condition 3 – Short-term Storage: The plane is working fine, the blade is sharp but we need to store it out of the way short-term.
    • Remove blade and chipbreaker entirely (see previous article)
    • Clean the blade and chipbreaker of sawdust and wood resin. Resin may have accumulated on the blade and chipbreaker which, if not removed in a timely manner, can harden over time increasing friction. Use you oilpot and a clean rag and/or a small stick of wood to scrape-off built-up resin resin. If that doesn’t work, use acetone or lacquer thinner.
    • Clean dust and shavings from blade opening and mouth with brush/rag.
    • Wipe down the plane’s body with a clean rag.
    • If the body is dirty with oil, sharpening stone mud or fingerprints, clean it all over with your oilpot and wipe. If that doesn’t make it clean, dampen a clean rag along with drop or two of dishwashing liquid (neutral PH), then wring it out as hard as you can. Scrub the body clean with this nearly-dry rag. Caution: We need the soap and water to remove oil and dirt, but making the body wet may cause it too warp. When you’re done, make absolutely sure the body is perfectly dry.
    • Oil the blade and chipbreaker.
    • Reassemble the plane but leave the blade’s cutting edge retracted up inside the mouth opening. How tight should you fit the blade/chipbreaker? Tight enough to firmly retain blade and chipbreaker so they won’t rattle out, but no more.
  4. Condition 4: Long-term Storage:
    • Remove the blade and its chipbreaker entirely.
    • Clean the blade and chipbreaker removing sawdust and all accumulated wood resin as described above.
    • Apply a protective coating of a paraffin wax-based corrosion prevention product such as CRC 3-36. For longer storage under more difficult conditions, CRC SP-350 or CRC SP-400 are even better.
    • After the carrier has evaporated to some degree, wrap the blade and chipbreaker in aluminum foil and store them together with the wooden body so they won’t become separated. Don’t assemble the parts!
    • Clean the wooden body removing all dust, shavings, dirt and fingerprints.
    • Place a mothball in the body’s mouth and wrap the body, along with the blade and chipbreaker, in newspaper, or place it in a plane bag. This will be good for a number of years in any condition except underwater.

Plane Storage on the Workbench, Atedai or Planing Beam

There is some disagreement about how to set down one’s handplanes when they aren’t being used. I won’t consider all the possible options, but will simply present the one that I was taught and use.

The old boys who trained me insisted that it is improper set down a plane with its sole touching the workbench, atedai, tatami mat, carpet or ground for any length of time, but one must instead rest it on its side. After many years of using handplanes, I feel this is a good habit to develop for both Japanese and Western handplanes.

Since I’m right handed, this results in the plane resting on its right side with the cutting edge oriented towards towards the left side as shown in the photo below. This position takes up less space on the workbench, and protects the cutting edge and sole of my plane from contacting anything but air.

80mm and 60mm hiragann handplanes at rest but just wiggling in anticipation of yummy shavings.
Resting on its side, even a larger plane like this 80mm hiraganna plane can be picked up and put to use quickly and deftly.

This position is also makes it quick and easy to pick the plane up and get it back into battery without fumbling.

Is it rude to rest the plane sole-down, or will it damage it? Probably not, but seeing a handplane with it’s cutting edge oriented up or down instead of to the side bothers me like a bug crawling on my neck. OCD?

I also rest my planes on their sides when placing them in boxes, toolboxes or toolbags even for long-term storage.

A Japanese carpenter back in the day with his hair done up in the traditional”chonmage” haircut, wearing his employer’s “happi” jacket, and carrying his open-topped wooden toolbox on this shoulder

One can place a plane on any stable surface it’s willing to sit on, and where it won’t be kicked or fall from, even a chair, bench, board, carpet, floor tile, or other flooring material, but never directly on gritty surfaces such as bricks, paving, concrete, or heaven forfend, the naked ground. You see, carelessly allowing hard grit to become embedded in the sole of one’s wooden-bodied handplane is an act that will surely invite harsh judgement in the Great Lumberyard in the Sky.

Place the plane resting mouth-down only when the plane is actively being used or it’s wrapped in cloth or newspaper.

Do all Japanese craftsmen follow this rule? Heck no. Why do I recommend these habits? Well, first of all, because this habit shows proper respect to my tools, to the craftsmen that made my tools, and to those who taught me how to use them. Second, because these habits help my tools last longer with less damage. Thirdly, because it helps to keep my workplace better organized. And don’t forget judgement day!

Until we meet again, I have the honor to remain,

YMHOS

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The Japanese Gennou & Handle Part 23 – Finishing the Job

A man in love is incomplete until he has married. Then he’s finished.

– Zsa Zsa Gabor

This is the last article in our series about designing and making a handle for a Japanese gennou hammer.

In previous articles in this series Beloved Customer completed designing, shaping and fitting the handle of your gennou hammer and attached the head. Then you tested it and perhaps made adjustments. Assuming Beloved Customer is satisfied with the results of those adjustments, at least for now, the time has come to sand it and apply a finish.

Finishing Options

There are a couple of approaches your humble servant might propose on the subject of finishing tool handles. The first is perhaps the oldest, and easiest, and that’s to do nothing. After all, tools are made for hands not museums, and flashy finishes too often make otherwise honest, workmanlike tools look silly.

In addition, most woods (except for those that might cause allergic reactions) perform just fine unfinished, thankee kindly. In this “au natural” approach, you may choose to leave tool marks on the surface of the handle without sanding them into oblivion, lending your handle undeniable gravitas and dignity, even character.

If the au-naturel approach appeals to you, I recommend erasing marks left by files and rasps and replacing them with crisp marks and cleanly cut surfaces left by sharp edged tools like knives, carving tools, and spokeshaves.

An unsealed, unfinished handle will, however, unavoidably become stained and discolored, and it’s head may not stay attached as long as a well-sealed, well-finished handle. I say this from experience.

Unless a chemical sealer/finish material is applied afterward, a plain sanded finish is probably the worst surface treatment possible, whereas a surface cleaned with sharp blades will serve you better. I often use this texture for the endgrain butts of my hammers and saws.

A convenient and expensive light-duty finish material for an au-natural handle is a quality non-slip floor paste wax like Johnson’s well-known product in the yellow metal can. Does it seal the wood? No, but it does help keep the handle looking cleaner. Why floor paste wax? Some waxes, for instance those used to polish furniture and automobile paint, are intended to provide a slick surface that encourages water to run off and to which dirt doesn’t adhere well. History has shown that slippery waxes used on floors will result in slips, falls, and a transfer of wealth to the legal profession. Accordingly, carnuba automotive wax is not ideal for tool handles, while non-slip floor wax is, IMHO.

And then there are the chemical finishes such as linseed oil (BLO), milk finish, tung oil, shellac, varnish, lacquer, polyurethane, etc. To one degree or another, these chemicals tend to seal the wood reducing the penetration of dirt and oil, and (sometimes) slowing the movement of moisture into and out of the wood.

But what chemical finish is best suited to a gennou handle? It is far beyond the scope of this humble scribble to properly describe, much less evaluate, the many varieties of finish applied to wood, so I will simply provide a few comments.

Linseed oil and BLO, a by-product of the flax plant, are organic materials used for centuries if not millennia as a traditional finish in Europe. It was once used widely for paint and, until it was replaced by rubber and later petroleum products, flooring and waterproofing materials. Have you heard of “linoleum” floor tiles? They were once extremely popular covering thousands of square miles of floors, including the floors of every school I ever attended, and for a long time most of the offices I worked in as an adult. The death of these floor tiles, however, was the unfortunate practice of mixing in asbestos, a decidedly hazardous material. Of course, this was back in the day when lead was a common ingredient in paint and even makeup.

I had thought linoleum had gone the way of disco, but on a recent project here in Tokyo I learned that not only are floor tiles made from linseed oil still available commercially, but the equivalent of “sheet vinyl” floor covering made of linseed oil is too. It still has that smell of processed linseed oil I remember from my deranged youth, but without the asbestos filler.

Linseed oil no longer has much value as an applied finishing material for wood because it never really dries without adding problematic, even toxic, chemicals called “driers,” it seals poorly, collects dirt, and discolors badly over time. But because it’s constantly mentioned in old writings, which many people trust just because they are old, linseed oil products are still in-use today.

To advocates of liquid linseed oil finishing products I say “make sure you soak your oily rags in water and dry them outside well away from any fuel (like your house).” You’ve been warned.

I am a fan of the modern milk paints, but do not like them for tool handles. Nonetheless, it’s a valid option.

Tung oil is an ancient finish, but the price nowadays far exceeds its value, assuming you can even find an unadulterated source. The immoral and corrosive CCP corrupts so much that was once good.

Shellac creates a beautiful surface coating but it’s far too delicate for tool handles.

Standard synthetic varnish, nitrocellulose lacquer, urethane and polyurethane are readily available, easy to use and can create a beautiful, durable finish, but when used in the traditional manner, the surface film coating they produce eventually chips and cracks with time, exposure to ultraviolet light, and expansion and contraction of the wood to which they have been applied. And every scratch accelerates this degradation.

Why is degradation of film finishes the a problem you say? The obvious downside of a once beautiful finish looking ratty aside, every defect in a surface film finish promotes the movement of moisture into and out of the wood, and of course increases the swelling and shrinkage of the wood it’s intended to protect. What most people don’t realize is that, as time goes by, the solvents and compounds in film finishes intended to provide flexibility in dealing with expansion and contraction of the wood dissipate causing the finish to gradually become more brittle, and break down, crack and peel at a ever-increasing rate, independent of dings and other defects.

In modern times, the use of latex rubber in water-based paints has greatly reduced this problem, but such paints are not especially durable as a tool handle finish.

Sanding

If you prefer a smoother finish, and are prepared to apply a chemical finish, then by all means sand away. But please do not sand the tenon. If you decide to sand the handle before installing the head, please apply masking tape protection to the tenon.

How fine should you sand your handle? I think 600 grit is fine enough, but I’ve gone as high as 1200 grit on fine-grained, hard woods like black persimmon. Did using such fine sandpaper make a difference? Nah.

After you’ve sanded the surface to where you like it, the next job is to eliminate hidden hairs. No, this does not involve applying hot wax to delicate areas of the body and then violently ripping out body hair so that you look delightfully-sleek in your new sequin string bikini, but rather it’s the job of encouraging the naughty ends of wood fibers still connected to the handle, but currently pressed flat onto and into the handle’s surface, to stand up so we can cut them off using sandpaper.

Dealing with these fiber is always important when finishing wood because, with time and moisture, they may pop up over time creating rough patches in the finish encouraging degradation. Once they are standing and no longer hidden, we can cut them off at the base with sandpaper to create a durable, smooth surface long-term even when exposed to moisture and sweat.

Although it’s not used much nowadays, sanding sealer was originally a shellac product developed specifically for this purpose.

To raise hairs, lightly wet the handle’s surface (but never the tenon) with water and allow it to dry completely. Some hasty people like to dry the wood quickly with a forced-air blower or even propane torch at this point to make any loose fibers stand up immediately in preparation for the next sanding pass. But simply allowing the wood to dry naturally is effective too.

This is an ancient, very effective technique. Please do this at least twice, after which you can apply the finish material of your choice.

Kanō Hōgai, Two_Dragons_in_Clouds (1885), ink on paper. Philadelphia Museum of Art. Father and son dragons are depicted playing in the clouds.

The London Finish

There’s a durable wood finishing technique I learned from custom gunstock makers that I wrote about in an earlier article about handplanes called the London Finish. This is the finish I recommend for hammer handles too. It can be as subtle or as flashy as you like.

A pretty handle is nice, but the key objectives for applying a finish to your gennou handle should be (1) to moderate swelling and shrinking of the tenon during seasonal and climactic changes in humidity; and (2) to prevent oil and dirt from penetrating the wood making it look grubby. This matters because such swelling and shrinking can cause the head of your gennou to loosen and do naughty, acrobatic stuff at inconvenient times. And a greasy, dirty handle is no way to treat a friend.

If the head is attached when applying the chemical finish of your choice (I recommend it be so), please tape it well to keep finish off the metal. Apply masking tape to the hammer head on all four sides of the eye, but leave the end of the wooden tenon exposed.

Tape the rest of the head well with masking tape.

Soak the finish material (flat varnish or polyurethane thinned 100% with high-quality thinner) into the eye and the butt as deeply and thoroughly as possible. Plan for three or four applications allowing time for the material to soak in and dry.

Do no use low VOC thinners as they contain politically-correct compounds of water, acetone, emulsifiers and other counterproductive substances the State of California’s poorly-educated but thoroughly-conflicted and richly-corrupt environmental lawyers have determined will save the polar bears while crippling the State’s industry, but that will weaken the finish.

If you faceted the butt and want to keep it that way, you must be careful when sanding it or the facets will disappear. This is a matter of personal preference.

Of course, be sure to apply lots of finish to other surfaces of the handle, and wet sand them well as described in the article linked to above. Don’t allow a surface film to dry except for the first time as described in the webpage linked to above.

Hammers are lifelong tools, but too often handles are not. You can help your gennou’s head stay tight longer, and the handle stay cleaner and look better longer by applying a London Finish instead of a thick surface film finish.

I hope this series of articles has been useful. I’m certain the lifetime friend you will make by following this tutorial will be grateful for your kind diligence.

YMHOS

A fairy princess discussing the best lures for trout fishing with her friendly blue bird. I wonder which brand of outboard motor fairies prefer…

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The Japanese Gennou Hammer & Handle Part 22 – Tasting the Pudding

True perfection is unattainable, but if you chase perfection you will catch excellence!

Vince Lombardi

In previous articles in this series about a craftsman-made gennou hammer handle, we discussed how to design and make a handle to fit Beloved Customer’s body and way of working. This article assumes you’ve mostly completed your handle, attached the head, and are now ready to test it. So let’s get started.

Why Testing Matters

I don’t know about you, but after all the research, design and fabrication work we’ve invested in your gennou handle, I need to see how it performs and determine if its performance is superior to a Minion impaled on a stick. Being a Beloved Customer and therefore highly intelligent, you’ve asked yourself the following three indubitably perspicacious questions about testing.

  1. What can I learn from testing?
  2. Against what performance standards should I compare my most excellent new hammer handle (besides to a Minion on a stick)?
  3. How should I conduct that evaluation?

To perfect your hammer, you will need the answers to these questions and more. You can get them over years of use, or get many of them now by testing it in a methodical manner and paying attention, but one way or another, you must get answers, bro.

Desired Testing Results

We can learn several things from testing our gennou with its new handle, but I encourage you to do your best to ascertain the following two things at minimum.

The first thing, of course, is whether or not the hammer with its new handle is comfortable and stable to use, and if possible, what needs to be improved to make it more stable and comfortable. This may entail many small details depending on your requirements and powers of perception.

Whether it’s comfortable in-use or not is subjective and entirely up to you, but you can probably identify problems easily through this testing process. Pain, soreness and blisters and the lack thereof are solid indicators (ツ).

Whether or not it’s stable in use is another important thing to determine early. Does it tend to track straight on the downstroke, or does it want to twist off your intended path of travel striking chisel handle or nail head erratically? When it hits the chisel or nail, does it convey its energy into the target smoothly, or does it wiggle like an eel on a hook on impact?

An unstable head and handle combination may perform well for one or two consecutive strikes, but because Murphy’s Law of Buttered Toast irrevocably dictates that small errors accumulate to maximize damage, an unstable head will often wiggle off-line enough for the third swing to hit weakly, even miss entirely, ruining your rhythm, damaging your confidence, and eliciting snide looks from resident bench cats. Oh, the shame…

A second thing you need to learn is whether or not the face of the hammer is striking the chisel/nail squarely and if the center of mass of the head is aligned with the vertical axis of the chisel handle or nail. Please make sure you understand the meaning of the previous sentence.

With this experience and the answers to these questions under your belt, you will be in a position to adjust the handle to perform its best for you and the way you work.

Testing Procedures

Out of an abundance of well-deserved humility combined with a strong desire to avoid looking even more the fool, your humble servant will refrain from suggesting any specific objective tests, or urge you to use quantifiable standards, or seek concrete empirical results because that would be too silly to even contemplate. Unless, of course, Beloved Customer will conduct these tests in your super-secret laboratory, possibly located at the heart of a dormant volcano on an uncharted South Pacific island, maybe covered by coconut palms with cold beer taps, probably surrounded by hundreds of horny bikini babes, likely frolicking in crystal surf. BTW, if you do have such a lab, please text me the address!

In this super-secret lab you will probably have access to equipment and software suited to more scientific, empirical, replicable methods of comparison, such as those developed for analyzing and improving the apparent performance, marketability and profitability of mass-produced sports equipment such as baseball bats, golf clubs, and green dildos (シ). Sadly, while your humble servant does not possess such equipment, most (but not all) humans own and operate one of the world’s most refined super-computers and sensor networks: our bodies and brains. I therefore propose you focus these formidable tools on this analysis. (brains and bodies, that is, not dildos).

Below are four absolutely subjective tests only you can perform, the results of which only you can evaluate.

Incorporating Test Results

To thwart the confusion promulgated by Murphy and his multitudinous malevolent minions, I strongly recommend you use the results of your analysis to guide you in making incremental improvements to your handle over time rather than large changes immediately, so to that end, please plan to remake your handle, once, twice or even thrice, improving it a little each time. Such is the true path of the craftsman.

Please update your handle drawing each time to record the improvements you’ve made and ensure no “increments” are misplaced.

In scobe veritas. (“In sawdust, truth”).

The Grip

As you are aware, for any testing other than drinking beer or women choosing wall paint color to be meaningful, some basic techniques must be established and followed to reduce variables to a manageable degree. How you hold the gennou handle to be tested is just such a basic technique.

The handle design presented in this series of scribbles is intended to work best when gripped in a particular way, so when performing the following tests, it’s important that you grip the hammer correctly thereby removing one huge, often-problematic variable.

Of course, I’m describing a particular grip here as being “correct,” but that’s just my well-informed opinion. In any case, I promise your hammer will work more efficiently if you abandon the so-called “hammer grip” (what I call the “Hobbit-killer” grip with the handle grasped in your fist) right away and switch to this more advanced grip.

I didn’t invent this grip, BTW, but observed and consulted with craftsman I respected in the USA and Japan who used it for many decades, all of whom are now working overtime in the big lumberyard in the sky. I later came to call it the “Sam Snead grip,” after the extremely successful pro-golfer of the same name who made it famous, and him rich, in tournaments and in dozens of books he wrote on the subject of using golf clubs skillfully.

We’ve talked about this grip in some detail in Part 13 of this series, but please review the photos below to confirm your understanding.

The first photo labeled “Bridging the Palm” shows how the hammer’s handle is NOT held in a fist, but is angled diagonally across the palm, supported on the first joint in the index finger, as well as the heel of the palm.

You can see how the index finger wraps around the handle while the thumb is pressed against the side so that the handle is strongly clamped between index finger and thumb, but can still pivot the handle if the operator so desires. This grip affords the joints of the forefinger and thumb, digits accustomed to fine motor control (unlike the fist), absolute control over three critical surfaces of the handle.

This grip also provides better control, more power, and greater reach without forcing the wrist to do the strange, unnatural contortions the Hobbit Killer grip does.

Bridging the palm
Index finger wrapped around the handle with the tip pressing against the rounded front edge of the handle.
Handle pressed between tip of the thumb and first joint of the index finger. The tip of the index finger presses against the rounded front edge of the handle, and applies most of the force required to return the handle to battery.
Notice how the handle is pressed between the pad of the thumb and the side of the index finger in the famous “Sam Snead” grip.

The Three Tests

Following are three tests to help you ascertain how well your new gennou and its handle suits your body and your work style.

Before attempting these tests, however, it is important to use your new handle for a time to establish a connection between it, your hand, and your eye (using the proper grip, of course).

Besides moral virtue and a sense of humor, you will need a few things.

  1. A wood chisel suitable for cutting a mortise hole, around 24mm.
  2. A piece of light-colored scrap wood for cutting a test mortise hole;
  3. A stick of light-colored wood approximately the size and shape of the handle of the chisel you would normally use for cutting mortise holes:
  4. An ink pad, wide-tip marking pen, or Dykem.
  5. A lab assistant. I recommend a buxom, young lass with a cute giggle wearing a sexy lycra lab uniform (Warning: bad stuff may happen if you let She Who Must Be Obeyed meet, or even see, this assistant!)

So, now that we have our supercomputer and its sensor suite warmed up and focused, our tools laid out, and a bubbly lab assistant standing by, sound the trumpets and let the testing begin! We who are about to dye salute you!

Test No. 1: The Blind Retrieval Test

After you have used your gennou with its new handle for a few weeks such that your hand has become accustomed to it, please give your bench dogs a few treats, shoo away any arrogant bench cats, set it on your de-cluttered bench, step back a few steps, close your eyes and turn in-place once or twice like a ballerina with hairy legs. Now, have your lab assistant, perhaps a child, a friend, a neighbor, your girlfriend, or wife, or even a clever bench dog (but never your neighbor’s girlfriend’s wife’s cat!) change the gennou’s orientation on your benchtop by turning it over, switching it end for end a few times, spinning it, or whatever. Random orientation is what’s needed.

Next, with your eyes still closed, grab the gennou with your hammer hand in a correct grip ready to rock-n-roll. Notice how easy or difficult it is to grip the handle correctly, without fumbling and without opening your eyes. If it’s not easy to do, however, you need to know it now. It may be simply that you’re not accustomed to your hammer, or that the geometry or details are out-of-wack.

By “correctly” in the previous paragraph, I mean (1) the flat striking face of the head is facing away from you and toward the chisel or nail; (2) the handle and head are aligned straight in your hand, and not twisted, (3) the heel of your hand is pressing against the flat spot on the back edge of the handle adjacent the butt; (4) the distance from the center point of the face to the heel of your hand is located precisely the distance shown in your design drawing.

BTW, whether you picked up the habit from your daddy or some internet guru, choking-up on the grip is an inefficiency you should discard simply because it’s counterproductive and silly, like a powerful cane corso dog wearing flower brocade.

If the grip area of your handle is shaped as shown in the drawing with a flat back edge and sides perpendicular to it, a radiused front edge, and flared toward the butt, it should be easy to instantly grip the handle in precisely the proper place, with the intended striking face oriented properly, without opening your eyes and without any fumbling whatsoever. 

If, on the other hand (the one with six fingers (ツ)), your hammer doesn’t leap into your hand in perfect alignment without argument or eyeball action, some adjustments to the handle are called for.

For example, a frequent cause of confusion between handle and hand is the leading edge of the grip being square instead of rounded. Or the sides and butt of the handle being angled wrong. These details can all be adjusted once you know they need to be adjusted

A gennou that naturally orients itself in your hand with the striking face in the right direction, the same distance from the striking face first time every time without your having to look at it, will provide you a tremendous advantage in speed, efficiency and confidence. It will become a good friend and companion.

BTW, just for gits and shiggles, try this test with any name-brand one-size-fits nobody nail bender you have laying around. The virtues of your new handle will become immediately apparent.

Test No. 2: The Blind Swing Test

This test will teach you something about handle length and other details.

Once again, perform this test after you have used the gennou with its new handle for some time and have become accustomed to it. A sexy lab assistant (one who doesn’t talk too much) in slinky woodworking togs is optional (ツ).

Grip the gennou properly in one hand and the stick shaped like your chisel handle in the other just as you would an actual chisel. But instead of placing the end of the stick against something as if you might cut it, please keep the stick in the air without butting it against anything. Now, with your eyes still closed, swing the gennou at the end of the stick of wood.

You should be able to strike the stick with the flat end of the gennou solidly and squarely on the first, or perhaps second try. Success in this test is common.

If your hammer misses the stick consistently, it may be because you aren’t yet accustomed to the handle, or it may be that you are choking-up up on the grip, or it may be you need to make it shorter or longer, or the grip shape needs to be adjusted. Or it may be that Murphy keeps distracting you by sending dickpics. It’s absolutely worth figuring out.

Once again, if you consistently miss the target, pay attention to why and where you are missing. Is the handle too long? Is it too short? Are you missing off to the side? Make notes recording the results and your observations on the design drawings to incorporate into your Mark II handle.

If accuracy can be improved by shortening the handle or modifying the grip, go ahead and make the necessary changes a little at a time. It’s easy to shorten the handle, but lengthening one requires an ACME Wood Stretcher Mark 2. I can lend you mine if you don’t have one (ツ)

Test No. 3: The Ink Test

Never fear: this test has nothing to do with gossip screeds or Rorschach drawings. It will help you determine if the handle of your gennou is the right length, if it is cocked at the most effective angle, and whether or not it should be canted to the left or right, and all without pulping an innocent tree.

This test works best if preformed after the Blind Retrieval Test and Blind Swing Test.

Begin by coloring the striking face of your gennou with an ink pad or by applying dark marking pen ink or Dykem to the gennou’s striking face (the flat face). Clean or sand the end of your chisel’s handle to produce a clean, white surface. Then cut a mortise using this gennou in the same posture you assume when cutting most of your mortises.

For instance, if you mostly cut mortises in wood located at a constant height on your workbench, such as drawers and furniture parts, you should employ that position. Or, if you tend to cut mortises in timbers while sitting on or straddling them using the venerable butt-clamp, please assume that position.

The impact with the chisel’s handle will wipe ink off the face of hammer and deposit it on the end of the chisel’s handle at the same time. This ink transfer will print the story you need to read. Check the ink on the gennou’s face and the end of the chisel every two strikes.

This is a time-tested technique professional golfers use to select/design golf clubs, BTW.

If the ink at the center of the striking face is scrubbed clean first, and the center of the chisel handle becomes inked first, then you have made your handle the right length with the head angled correctly. If not, you should make notes describing the results in the handle drawing you made earlier, and adjust the design of your next handle accordingly.

Again, you may find it enlightening to perform this same test with conventional hammer with a standard handle.

When your done testing, be sure to record your conclusions. Either erase and adjust the drawing, or trace over it to make and date a new drawing with your revised details. Tracing paper is our friend.

In either case, be sure to add a date and/or revision number to the drawing to ensure you don’t confuse it with older, superseded drawings. Don’t put this off but do it right away before you forget. This applies to all the tests described herein.

Adjustments to Your Handle

You should use the results of these tests to make small, incremental adjustments to your handle, as you deem necessary, rather than big, drastic changes.

For instance, you may need to shorten the handle. This is easily done if your handle is a little long and you’ve made the neck as I recommended. Worst case, make notes, adjust the drawing and remake the handle with as few changes as possible to avoid confusing over-complication.

A common correction you may want to try is, after becoming accustomed to using the hammer, to reshape the grip area to distribute pressure more evenly over the hand, and to reduce stresses induced in skin, muscle, tendons and bones by easing edges and corners while maintaining control and indexing. Most importantly, you should shape the handle so it doesn’t twist in your hand stretching your skin in uncomfortable ways, a common cause of blisters, especially in plastic-handled one-size-fits-nobody hardware store hammers.

If I may share an example from my experience, every new hammer handle I make tends to produce a blister on the first joint of my right hand index finger. Obviously a lot of pressure focus on this location on my hand. So I know to smooth the transition from back edge to the side just where this joint bears to avoid blisters.

This modification creates an obvious dent in the smooth lines of my handles, but your humble servant is resigned to sacrificing beauty for performance when necessary. Just look at the sorry state of my career as a fashion supermodel if you doubt my dedication to performance.

Another less-common problem is the hammer’s face striking the chisel handle or nail head at an angle instead of being centered on, and at a 90˚ angle to, the long axis of the chisel handle. The ink test will reveal such impish behavior.

This tendency usually improves with practice, but you can adjust for it by making a new handle with the head skewed to the left or right as necessary.

As a way to determine how much skew is required, you can plane down the sides of your test handle, glue on slips of wood, shape them as you see fit, and test the results. Once you’ve determined how much total correction is necessary, you can remake your final working handle accordingly.

Once again, work patiently to achieve small, incremental improvements, and be sure to record the results on your drawings.

Don’t hesitate to methodically scrape, shave and experiment with this first handle.

The design of this handle, and the process your humble servant has described for making it, is suited not just for Japanese gennou hammers but for all short-handled hammers and axes. Give it a try and you’ll see what I mean.

In the next article of this series we’ll apply a protective, and maybe even tastefully elegant, finish. Please remind me to call Ramon and beg him cater the unveiling party! I simply love his cheesy shrimps on crackers, don’t you?

YMHOS

A list of our gennou heads: C&S Tools – Gennou Hammer Head Pricelists & Photos

If you have questions or would like to learn more about our tools, please use the questions form located immediately below. To see a list of our tools and their pricing, please click the “Pricelist” link here or at the top of this page. To contact us please use the Contact form below or email us directly at Covingtonandsons@gmail.com.

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Brother Saint Martin and the Three Trolls by John Bauer. Supernatural creatures are everywhere, if you have eyes to see.

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The Japanese Gennou Hammer & Handle Part 21 – Installing the Head

No one should be ashamed to admit he is wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.

Alexander Pope

In the previous article in this series we finished fitting and shaping the handle of our gennou hammer in accordance with our design document. Some refinements may be pending the results of testing, but in any case the time has come to attach the head.

This is an important task, perhaps not as easy as it sounds, because this is a craftsman’s handle, made with love and skill, not a mass-produced cockroach killer ground out by barefoot Bangladeshi farmers and secured with crude wedges. Nor is it typical of the tools sold at Home Despot designed to fail quickly and be tossed into a landfill soonest. And because the head is not secured with barbaric wedges but relies entirely on the extremely tight fit between the eye of the steel head and the tenon Beloved Customer cut on the end of the handle, some careful, but nonetheless violent action is required to successful connect head and handle. The purpose of the article, therefore, is to help you install it carefully with all due violence.

Installing the Head

Beloved Customer can install the head either before or after sanding and finishing the handle, but in this example we’ll attach the head before testing and finishing the handle. This approach will be most efficient if you decide to adjust or rework the handle after performing the tests I recommend in the next article.

In this case, I use the word “finish” to mean to apply a chemical “finish material” to the wood, not to “complete” the work or “conclude” the job. This difference in definition matters to me because confusion regarding the dual, even treble meaning of the word “finish” has caused problems for me in the past. So there you are.

Preparing the Tenon

First, remove any tape remaining on the tenon and, if necessary, use a solvent such as lacquer thinner to remove any adhesive residue. DO NOT USE soap, water, or any water-based chemical as this will make the tenon swell! After cleaning there should be no finish material, wax, oil or unicorn wee wee left on the tenon.

Depending on the relative humidity the handle is acclimated to, it may be advisable to make an effort to shrink the tenon a bit by placing the handle in a low-humidity environment for a time. Please do NOT microwave your handle, cook it in your oven, or heat it in your toaster, not even with cheese and Tabasco Sauce.

There are several ways to remove moisture from the tenon in order to shrink its width and thickness a bit without ruining the handle or burning down your workshop. Perhaps the safest way is to store it for a time in a tightly-sealed plastic container with packages of silica desiccant. Other ways include placing it in a warm spot close to an operating gas furnace, or indirectly exposing it to an electric room heater for a day or so.

If you use any method that involves heat, make sure you are nearby to monitor progress and deal with scorching and fires.

Orienting the Tenon

You’ve already shaped the handle, and shaved and lightly chamfered the tenon so it should partially fit into the head’s eye almost as deep as the chamfer, but should go no further using only hand pressure.

Please keep in mind during this process that it’s extremely important to get the tenon started in the eye straight, and to keep it straight, without allowing it to become cocked.

It’s also important to install the head in the correct orientation. This usually means its flat striking face is oriented towards chisel or nail, and the brand oriented towards the handle’s butt.

Some people like to orient the head’s brand so it faces up (away from the butt) when using the hammer. I can understand this compulsion, and while it makes no difference in performance one way or the other, you should be aware that it’s seen as bass-ackwards among professionals in Japan.

Starting the Tenon

Of course, in accordance with your humble servant’s advice in previous articles, you’ve already created an elegant dome on your hammer’s butt to prevent these taps and strikes from damaging the handle.

I like to place the head on a working surface such as a benchtop or a softwood board like pine or cedar resting on the floor/ground cushioned by a piece of leather or rubber to prevent slipping.

Insert the tenon into the eye, and, after sighting the handle and head from multiple directions to check alignment, when you are absolutely certain the tenon is poised to go into the eye straight, tap the handle’s butt with a flat-faced hammer, genno (not a domed-face hammer) or mallet. After a few taps, stop tapping, check your progress, and make sure the tenon is going in straight and not cocked.

Although the tenon should not have entered the eye more than a millimeter or two, it should be an extremely tight fit, with each tap making barely any progress.

I can’t describe the sensation in writing, but if the fit is too tight at this point in the process, you may need to scrape or sand the tenon a little.

Driving the Tenon Home

This is where the “violent” part of the job begins.

With the tenon properly aligned and started in the eye, stand up, hold the hammer in a fist with the head hanging straight down, and strike the butt of the handle with your hammer or mallet paying attention to its progress into the eye with each strike and the friction created. Gradually adjust the impact force of your strikes accordingly. Don’t be surprised if it takes literally dozens of extremely hard strikes to install the handle completely. If the tenon just slips in, however, we have a problem, Houston.

If you find that the fit is too loose, however, don’t despair, simply shim it with quality paper as described in the last section of the previous article. Remember, most people find it difficult to get the tenon/eye fit right the first time. Such adjustments to a new handle are nothing to brag about, but neither are they something to be ashamed of. It’s more the rule than the exception until experience is gained.

Some people like to make their tenon extra-long so it projects out of the eye 6-12mm or so. Nothing wrong with this approach, but it looks silly to me in the case of a new handle. Once again, beauty is in the eye of the bean holder.

I was taught that the ideal is for the tenon of a new handle to remain recessed inside the eye a few millimeters. The purpose for this goes back to one of the reasons for the gennou handle design described in this series of articles, namely, that the handle does not have a tumorous swelling below the head but the neck is approximately the same dimensions as the eye for a portion of its length to permit the user to tap the handle further into the eye should it loosen. By leaving the end of the tenon short of the end of the eye in the case of a new handle, one provides visual evidence that (1) the handle is tightly fitted and; (2) that plenty of tenon length is available for making such adjustments.

Accordingly, a tenon projecting a long way out of the eye indicates to the knowledgeable observer that either the handle is old and has been adjusted many times, or the tenon fit was sloppy from the beginning. In my humble opinion, a tenon of a new handle projecting from the eye a significant distance looks odd, but in practice, it doesn’t make much difference. The choice is yours.

In the next article in this series of articles about danger and violence, we’ll test you’re new handle. How exciting!

YMHOS

If you have questions or would like to learn more about our tools, please use the questions form located immediately below, or email us at Covingtonandsons@gmail.com. To see a list of our tools and their pricing, or to contact us, please click the “Pricelist” link here or at the top of this page.

Please share your insights and comments with all Gentle Readers in the form located further below labeled “Leave a Reply.”

We see data miners and their bilious bots as dastardly sneak thieves and so promise to never share, sell or profitably “misplace” your information for any reason. If I lie may all my hammers swim away from me!

Title: Cormorant. This ink drawing was made by Japan’s most famous swordsman, Miyamoto Musashi (c. 1583 – 13 June 1645). This style of art (suibokuga) is not well-known outside Asian countries, but despite the few materials used (paper, ink stick, inkstone, brush and water), it’s an extremely difficult art to master. Why? There’s no pencil layout to follow, so the artist must have the drawing planned down to the last stroke in his mind’s eye. Each stroke must be made precisely but without hesitation or mulligans. The ink is black, so color gradations can only be achieved by altering the speed of the brush and the ever-changing water/ink balance contained in the brush. High-speed, high-precision, powerful lines, no wasted strokes. Very much the work of a swordsman.

A list of our gennou heads: C&S Tools – Gennou Hammer Head Pricelists & Photos

If you have questions or would like to learn more about our tools, please use the questions form located immediately below. To see a list of our tools and their pricing, or to contact us, please click the “Pricelist” link here or at the top of this page, or email us at Covingtonandsons@gmail.com.

Please share your insights and comments with all Gentle Readers in the form located further below labeled “Leave a Reply”

We see data miners and their bots as dastardly sneak thieves and so promise to never share, sell or profitably “misplace” your information for any reason. If I lie may my eyes go blind!

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The Japanese Gennou Hammer & Handle Part 20 – Making Sawdust

 

Woodworking minus patience equals firewood. 

– Author Unknown

In the previous article in this series, we selected and prepared the wood for our gennou handle and layed-it out in accordance with our design drawings.

The next step in the process is to gather our tools and begin the fun work of making sawdust.  Yeeehaaaa!

Tools

I prefer to use the following tools when making a gennou handle. You will need to have similar tools on hand for layout and fabrication, but the specific choice is entirely yours. 

  1. Divider with sharp points (transferring dimensions and tenon layout); 
  2. Sharp pencil (making pencil marks (ツ); 
  3. Small try square (laying-out and checking tenon); 
  4. Marking gauges (Titemark and kama kebiki. Marking tenon and centerlines) ; 
  5. Marking knife (layout); 
  6. Hozohiki rip saw and/or dozuki crosscut saw for cutting the tenon (in hardwood, a sharp hozohiki rip saw frequently makes both rip cuts and crosscuts cleaner and more precisely than a crosscut dozuki saw);
  7. A fine saw such as a fret saw or coping saw for making curved cuts;
  8. Auriou cabinet rasp (Lie-Nielson) (optional); 
  9. Boggs-pattern flat-sole and curved-sole spokeshaves (Lie-Nielson. Optional but very handy and pleasant to use if you can tolerate A2 steel);
  10. Sandpaper; 
  11. A board to support the handle-in-progess. I suggest dimensions of 300-400mm long x 50-60mm wide x 40-50mm thick, with a “V” groove cut full-length and a cross-stop inlet about 2/3 its length. The handle will rest, more-or-less securely in this groove, and be restrained at one end by the stop when using spokeshaves and rasps. This support board can be clamped in a vise, or clamped to a workbench with a C clamp. I also find it most efficient to place this board on my benchtop with the gennou handle resting in the v-groove with one end touching my chest, perhaps cushioned by a rag, and use rasps and spokeshaves pulled towards me to shape the wood.

Safety

I dislike safety nannies and never want to become one. But Gentle Readers of this humble website include everything from venerable old-timers to fresh newbies, so it would be unkind of me to write for the benefit of only accomplished woodworkers while ignoring the new guys. And since the operations described herein include sharp tools, and potentially harmful substances, please plan to work safely. The following webpages may help.

In addition, before you start making (and sucking into your pretty pink lungs) the millions of the tiny airborne wood particles that comprise sawdust, please check that the species is not dangerous in general, and that you do not have allergies in particular. The website at the link below might be useful.

Wood Allergies and Toxicity

The Tenon and the Unblinking Eye 

Let’s start by cutting the tenon and fitting it to the gennou head’s eye. 

You’ve already layed-out the tenon, so next use a fine precision rip saw like a 210mm hozohiki to cut the four cheeks being extremely careful, like a big-eyed kitten stalking a grasshopper, to stop short of the layout line. Be careful to work very precisely with your saw to not cut too deeply as any excess meat removed from the tenon, or sawcuts left in the tenon, will fatally weaken it. I’m not kidding!

I humbly confess to making this mistake more than once, ruining all my work to that point and wasting some nice wood. Indeed, it may be best to cut the shoulders shallow and trim with a chisel, once again being careful to not cut too deeply. Ruthless, merciless, unrelenting control of your coke-snorting inner-badger is critical!

At this point, the handle is a chunky, graceless block with square edges, flat surfaces and a stubby tenon sticking out at one end. That’s alright. There’s no need to contour the handle yet.

Cut itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny chamfers on the end of the tenon to help guide it into the eye without cocking and binding. A big chamfer will benefit nothing and look ghastly.

Mark the reference face annotation on the corresponding tenon cheek because you don’t want to mistakenly force the tenon in bassackwards.

Test fit the tenon into the eye a few millimeters but without driving it all the way on. It should not start by hand pressure. 

Although you shouldn’t have yet tried a full-length, full-power test fit, when you are satisfied that the tenon will fit into the eye of your gennou head without the tight fit shaving off much wood, and marked the reference faces, then tape the tenon with masking tape so you don’t accidentally knick or shave it. Don’t ask me why I know this risk exists.

With the tenon close to completion, let’s next shape the curved front, back and side surfaces to fit.

The Back and Front Edges 

The tools you use don’t matter so long as when this step is complete the back edge is perpendicular to the reference face, the opposing side face, and is consistent with the layout lines. 

Cut the back and front edges (surfaces parallel with the long axis of your gennou head) to your design profile using saws, rasps, knives and/or spokeshaves. The two guiding details in this process are the butt and the tenon, with the tenon being most important. These two surfaces should be shaped to smoothly connect the butt with the tenon, not the other way around.

However, leave the corners of the neck and handle area square for now to help guide you in shaping the critical back and side surfaces because, if you start rounding and smoothing edges and corners now, it often happens that the geometry which aligns the hammer’s face with chisel and nail will be compromised.

I recommend you cut outside the layout lines plus a millimeter or two because accidentally cutting deeper than your layout lines will not only disrupt the even flow of the design but may damage the structural integrity of this elegant, minimalist tool. 

Do not shave the handle’s sides flush with the tenon yet, but leave them just a hair proud. 

When done with the this, lightly remark the centerline and extended the eye’s lines. 

The Sides 

At this point in the process the right and left sides should still be flat and parallel, perpendicular at any point with the back surface, and have neat, square corners.

Use the paper/cardboard profile pattern from your design drawing to mark the handle’s layout on the back and front edges. 

Just as with the back and front edges, cut the side surfaces using saws, rasps, knives and/or spokeshaves.

Although some prefer handles with a broken dogleg shape, I recommend you make the transition from tenon to butt gradual and smooth.

As you approach the final dimensions, be careful to avoid tearout or gouging in the neck area since removing these irregularities may require you to reduce thickness too much. 

Do not cut or shave the sides flush with the tenon’s cheeks yet, but leave them just a hair proud. 

Smoothing and Rounding 

I find it most effective at this point to shape the back edge (opposite the flat striking surface of the head) flat with slighty relieved corners, not rounded-over corners. You can always change it later.

Some people like to make the back edge of the handle oval or egg-shaped, but I recommend you leave it flat at first and then adjust it to fit your hand as you use the gennou. 

At this point your industrial-designer sensibilities will scream at you in a voice like a nazgul commanding you to round the the back surface entirely or to make it oval or egg-shaped, but while such surfaces might look better hanging on a peg in a hardware store, or in pictures in a magazine, or as an image on you facebook or Instagram page, and may even feel better when used to kill cockroaches, I promise you it is counterproductive when doing serious work.

Why? Because, despite what you may think, a flatter back surface does not bite into the hand in-use, but because of the greater surface area in contact with the hand it provides, it actually reduces the pressure of impact reaction forces on the hand reducing fatigue and bruising. More importantly, it helps with quickly and unconsciously indexing the striking face of the head correctly.

With the back edge where it needs to be, next round the front edge into the design profile. I prefer this surface to be more-or-less a perfect radius at any point in the handle area, but some guys feel an egg-shaped cross-section fits their fingers better. Six of one half-dozen of the other.

In any case, this surface must smoothly morph into a flat surface with slightly radiused corners in the neck area, and finally with no radius as it approaches the tenon. Yes, you read correctly: no radius.

I usually round-over the flat on the back edge right where my index finger wraps around to the side just a little to avoid developing a blister. But keep in mind that the only way to tell what small details works best for you is trial and error. 

Doming the Butt 

A Hiroki head (bright finish) with a handle of ushikoroshi wood. Notice the domed butt.

The butt should be flat with sharp edges at this point in the process. 

You may find a domed butt strange, but it has both practical and aesthetic purposes.

Let’s consider the structural, practical purpose first. If the wood is adequately hard, and the tenon is not too skinny, you will need to pound on the butt like a son-of-a-gun dozens of times to get the tenon into the eye. That’s as it should be. Don’t start yet, but when the time comes you must be careful with the accuracy of your hammer strikes to avoid damaging the butt or breaking the tenon.

If the butt is flat with crisp edges, unless you have perfect aim with every swing, your hammer might chip or even split it. A domed butt, by comparison, directs impact forces of your hammer away from the edges of the butt and into the neck to help to prevent chipping. Likewise, a domed butt will also reduce damage to the handle over many years of hard service.

Moving on to aesthetics, a domed surface is more organic and, to my beauty-deprived sensibilities, more elegant than a flat one because straight lines seldom exist in nature, are boring to the eye, and are seldom aesthetically pleasing

A warning. Everyone has different opinions about what pleases the eye, as you know. Beauty is in the eye of the bean holder, or something like that, so I entirely understand if you dismiss the aesthetic reasons I’ve suggested. But please don’t ignore the practical, structural reasons if you want to avoid wasting your time and wood.

Assuming the butt is flat and its surface is more or less perpendicular to handle’s centerline, use a marking gauge set at ¼” to scribe a shallow line on the butt’s face (the part the will be domed), and around the butt’s sides (the handle’s sides and front and back edges). These lines will be the limit of the chamfer between the grip and the butt. 

Next, mark a cross on the butt using the front and back edge’s centerline, and a perpendicular line parallel to the back edge. This cross will be useful in maintaining the centerline while profiling the butt. 

Use a knife, chamfer plane, block plane, files or other tools to make a 45˚ chamfer up to the lines just scratched.

Next facet the butt using planes or a sharp kiridashi kogatana knife and remove all tearout and filemarks Try to keep it symmetrical if you can.

The butt can be left faceted (my preference) or smoothed using sandpaper later. That decision must be made before finishing the handles, but need not be made now.

Why might one elect to leave the butt faceted instead of smoothing and polishing it? I’ve done it both ways, and if I’m in a hurry, I sand it smooth and get it over. All commercial products nowadays are machine made and so smooth and symmetrical. And of course, a factory cannot facet a curved surface easily. A faceted butt sets my hammers apart from all commercial products while giving them the craftsman’s signature.

Fixing a Loose Head

So here’s the “I toljaso” in advance.

If you were not as careful and clever as big-eyed kitten stalking a grasshopper when fitting the tenon, you may find it becomes loose and the head begins to wiggle with the passing of a few seasons. A Sergent Elias moment!

I won’t say it out loud, but just between you, me and CCP, you can remedy a loose head by removing it and shimming the eye with quality high-rag-content typing paper. Don’t have any typewriter paper left in your bat cave? It may be your not using your IBM Selectric much nowadays. Are there alternatives?

Don’t tell the Secret Service I said so, but nothing works better for shimming a tenon than a strip cut from a dollar bill. Crane Stationary makes the best paper in the world, and by no coincidence, also makes the paper used in US currency.

In the next few articles in this series we will attach the gennou head to the handle, apply a London Finish, and sample its performance. Yummy!

Until then, I have the honor to remain,

YMHOS

Lena Dances With the Knight by John Bauer 1915

If you have questions or would like to learn more about our tools, please use the questions form located immediately below. To see a list of our tools and their pricing, or to contact us, please click the “Pricelist” link here or at the top of this page, or email us at Covingtonandsons@gmail.com.

Please share your insights and comments with all Gentle Readers in the form located further below labeled “Leave a Reply”

We see data miners and their bots as dastardly sneak thieves and so promise to never share, sell or profitably “misplace” your information for any reason. If I lie may my eyes become egg-shaped!

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The Japanese Gennou & Handle Part 19 – Laying-out the Handle

Not all those who wander are lost.” 

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

 

Introduction 

In previous articles in this frightfully sexually-charged series, Beloved Customer produced a design drawing for your gennou handle based on the parameters of your actual gennou head and your body. You should have also selected, or at least rolled out of bed onto the floor, bumped your head, partially opened one sticky eye, and seriously considered selecting, an appropriate stick of wood. Assuming you’ve procured said stick, let’s get to the layout. 

Tools 

There are as many ways to layout a hammer handle as Carter has pills, so I won’t insist you do it my way, nor will I dictate what tools you use, but after making dozens of gennou, hammer, axe and adze handles for myself and customers, I’m confident in recommending the following minimum set of tools:

  1. Divider with sharp points (for finding centers and transferring dimensions and lines from drawing to stick; 
  2. Sharp pencil; 
  3. Small try square; 
  4. Marking gauges (Titemark and kama kebiki for quickly laying out centerlines and other details); 
  5. Marking knife; 
  6. Calipers (vernier, dial, or digital. For measuring internal dimensions of the eye, and precisely laying out the tenon)
  7. Handplanes (for dimensioning purposes).
Dominic Campbell’s atedai workbench (in-progress) and his tools, including his gennou with classical-style Kosaburo head and beechwood handle

Preparing the Stick

You need to prepare the stick or board you selected after bumping your head to have 6 flat, parallel, square sides. As far as dimensions go, we need it to be a little oversized, e.g. longer, wider and thicker than the maximum final dimensions shown in the drawing.

You can prep this board or stick using electrical tools, but if you can’t do it with handtools alone, I strongly encourage you to work on your basic skills. Not as flashy as a halfgainer with a twist of lemon while falling from the bed, but surprisingly few have these skills nowadays.

Looking back on the old texts, one of the first tasks assigned trainees in cabinetmaking technical schools and apprenticeships was making a number of sticks or boards with six precisely dimensioned, flat, wind-free, parallel, 90˚ sides just like this because this simple job combines many of the essential woodworking skills, readily makes mistakes apparent to encourage improvement of basic skills, and helps one’s develop an understanding of the material.

Your humble, bumbling servant too was once required to make several boards and sticks just like this using handsaws, handplanes, a trysquare and marking gauge in front of others before I was permitted to be taught more advanced skills. Powertools are fine, but if you haven’t done this before, now is the time to perfect your technique.

Layout 

The following layout steps assume the stick has already been dimensioned as described above.

  1. Begin your layout by selecting and marking a flat and wind-free side of the selected board corresponding to a profile view on the drawing to be the “reference face.” You can write “RF” on it to avoid confusion. I just draw two quick lines in pencil at an angle across the board’s surface at both ends. Don’t forget to label this critical surface somehow so there will be no confusion moving forward.
  2. Plane the surface of the board that will form the handle’s back edge (seen from above in plan view) flat and perpendicular to this reference face. All further layout will be indexed from these two faces. 
  3. Mark the maximum thickness of the handle on the surface opposite the reference face, as determined by the widest dimension of the butt, using a marking gauge against the reference face.
  4. Plane all the surfaces flat, free of wind, and where appropriate, planar. This needs to be done pretty precisely.
  5. Use a marking gauge to draw the appropriate centerlines on both sides, edges, ends of the board/stick.
  6. Use dividers to measure and layout the width of the eye, plus a little extra, centered on the centerline you just marked, and spin this around the eye, butt, back edge and front edge. 
  7. Make paper, cardboard, or wood patterns based on your design drawing of the handle’s elevation and profile views. Paying close attention to minimize grain runout, especially in the tenon and neck area, position the patterns and mark the board accordingly. 
  8. Using these cardboard patterns, carefully layout all the tenon’s dimensions on the board, measured from the reference face and back edge. Be sure to make the tenon a half-sheet of copy paper too large in width and thickness. This can be trimmed down later if the fit is too tight. Layout of the tenon is critical so don’t f* it up.
  9. Adjust the lines of the handle design to meet your requirements for beauty.

In the next post in this series we will begin making sawdust. Oh joy!

GennouHandleDwg85Kosaburo20160415Download

YMHOS

Two Trolls by John Bauer, 1909. Not wanting to pay the construction costs of the bread oven with its gracefully artistic hinges your humble servant has just installed, exceedingly parsimonious Granny Troll is trying to convince me to climb inside the hot oven and do a closeup inspection. Will I fit? More importantly, do you like my fetching new safety shoes?

If you have questions or would like to learn more about our tools, please use the questions form located immediately below. To see a list of our tools and their pricing, or to contact us, please click the “Pricelist” link here or at the top of this page, or email us at Covingtonandsons@gmail.com.

Please share your insights and comments with all Gentle Readers in the form located further below labeled “Leave a Reply.”

We see data miners and their bots as dastardly sneak thieves and so promise to never share, sell or profitably “misplace” your information for any reason. If I lie may the heads of all my hammers fly away to Valinor!

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