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.

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

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.

A wood chisel suitable for cutting a mortise hole, around 24mm.
A piece of light-colored scrap wood for cutting a test mortise hole;
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:
An ink pad, wide-tip marking pen, or Dykem.
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.

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

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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.

Divider with sharp points (transferring dimensions and tenon layout);
Sharp pencil (making pencil marks (ツ);
Small try square (laying-out and checking tenon);
Marking gauges (Titemark and kama kebiki. Marking tenon and centerlines) ;
Marking knife (layout);
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);
A fine saw such as a fret saw or coping saw for making curved cuts;
Auriou cabinet rasp (Lie-Nielson) (optional);
Boggs-pattern flat-sole and curved-sole spokeshaves (Lie-Nielson. Optional but very handy and pleasant to use if you can tolerate A2 steel);
Sandpaper;
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

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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:

Divider with sharp points (for finding centers and transferring dimensions and lines from drawing to stick;
Sharp pencil;
Small try square;
Marking gauges (Titemark and kama kebiki for quickly laying out centerlines and other details);
Marking knife;
Calipers (vernier, dial, or digital. For measuring internal dimensions of the eye, and precisely laying out the tenon)
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.

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.
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.
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.
Plane all the surfaces flat, free of wind, and where appropriate, planar. This needs to be done pretty precisely.
Use a marking gauge to draw the appropriate centerlines on both sides, edges, ends of the board/stick.
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.
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.
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.
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!

GennouHandleDwg85Kosaburo20160415 Download

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?

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Procuring Wood

We are men of action. Lies do not become us.

― William Goldman, The Princess Bride

No doubt Gentle Reader will agree that the sights, smells and other sensations of working wood are wonderful. And of course we all appreciate owning beautiful, enduring, useful objects made from wood with our own hands and tools, but how best to obtain this supremely sustainable environmentally-friendly material for our projects?

For purposes of this article I am assuming Gentle Reader does not use fully-milled S4S (surfaced four sides) boards exclusively, nor that you start each project from standing trees or even logs, but rather begins your projects with rough-sawn lumber of the sort pictured above and sold not at home centers but at lumber yards.

If this assumption is correct I encourage you to build a relationship with small sawmills, often located far from the beaten track, who are willing to sell directly to craftsmen at their yard. This may take some hunting and travel. And you will need to build mutually-beneficial, respectful relationships with the owners of these small businesses. To that end, I encourage keeping a few things in mind and acting accordingly.

Remember that, while sawmills are small businesses, Sawyers aren’t shop keepers, waiting by a register at Home Despot with nothing to do but play Candy Crush Saga on their iPhone until you arrive. They are always busy, their profit margins are thin, and their time is money, so if you want to do business with them, you would be wise to not waste their time. This requires forethought, planning, preparation and action as outlined below.

Planning

Your humble servant is fond of making a good plan, and then working that plan, while remaining flexible and responsive to reality. In commercial situations, a good plan for woodworking must include complete drawings with dimensions and clear details, materials specifications, a cost estimate, a time schedule and a reasonable contract to be reviewed and approved by all parties involved before work begins. And shop drawings too must be produced and approved, of course.

But in the case of personal woodworking for pleasure, I like to leave the details of the plan a little looser, a little more flexible to allow me to better adapt to time, cost and material constraints and to permit interesting improvisation. My tools love improvisation. What about yours?

When it comes time to procure wood, we need at least an initial plan that lists approximately how much wood we need, its species, length, width and thickness. This plan must take into consideration the limitations of the tools (e.g. jointer, planer, bandsaw etc.) we have at our disposal to mill the wood after we purchase it. With this in hand, and assuming a realistic fudge factor of 13~20%, we’re ready to go hunting for wood.

Seeking a Source of Wood

Home centers and lumber yards are convenient to purchase wood from, but the cost may be relatively high and selection may be poor and/or boring. Given the option, and the ability to transport the wood (or to have it delivered), I prefer to purchase directly from small sawmills instead.

When I was residing in the USA, locating sawmills was not easy. I ended up purchasing hardwood mostly from Amish sawmills in Central and Eastern Ohio, and both hardwoods and softwoods from mills in the mountains of Northern California and Southern Oregon. But nowadays the internet appears to make sourcing much easier.

Father and son surfacing boards in an Amish sawmill

I enjoyed purchasing wood from Amish mills. No frills, no BS, just honest wood sold by honest men. They’re not as convenient as Home Despot. They don’t advertise, don’t have websites, may not have telephones, won’t do email, and they’re always closed on Sunday, but if you drive into Amish country and ask around at local stores and gas stations you can usually find them. They are deeply religious and absolutely family-oriented folk, so watch your language, be polite and respectful, and be sure any women accompanying you dress modestly.

I don’t trust evil Google anymore, but a quick search on DuckDuckGo just now listed dozens of sawmills selling lumber to end-users around the US. A local Chamber of Commerce might be able to direct you too.

Other sources of information about sawmills I’ve had good luck with are cabinet shops, stair shops, custom door shops, millwork contractors, and interior contractors, all businesses that buy a lot of roughsawn wood. Better to drop by and ask in person than to just telephone or email.

If there’s a woodworking club or guild in your area they’ll know the local suppliers for sure and for certain.

Storage

Before you select and purchase your wood you should make sure you have space to store it unless, that is, you plan to cut it all up in a day or two after purchase. Be sure you don’t buy more than you can conveniently and safely store.

Improperly storing lumber so it’s not supported correctly will cause it to warp. If it’s exposed to rain and snow the resulting differential moisture content will always cause warpage. And of course, your boards may become dirty, or bugs may infest it. I hate wasting good wood.

If your ceilings are high enough, you can stack boards vertically, leaning against the wall in a corner of your apartment, house or garage. Be sure to stack it carefully so it won’t warp. Most importantly, tie it off securely so it can’t fall over and crush your kiddies. Notice I wrote “can’t” not just “won’t.” This deliberate choice of language is evidence of my deep confidence in Murphy’s active inclination for malicious harm. Indeed, here in Japan, most lumber is stored vertically, and many injuries and even deaths have resulted from toppling lumber.

A Gentle Reader pointed out that storing lumber this way with the board’s end resting directly on soil may invite termite infestation. Of course this is absolutely true, assuming the ground touching the board is infested with termites and the moisture content of the soil and wood are inviting to such insects, conditions that are often easily met. Best to elevate the boards above the soil by resting on concrete, bricks or cinder blocks, or on the floor of your apartment, house or garage, as noted above.

A Japanese lumber warehouse with vertically-stored product.

The best and safest way to store lumber, IMHO, is to place some stickers (three minimum) on a level floor, in a place protected from the weather, and to neatly stack your lumber on them. 2×4’s placed on edge are usually good, but you may want to skew them a bit for improved stability in the long direction of the lumber they will support. Be sure these stickers are all the same width and that once placed the top edges of all your stickers are situated level and planar (in the same plane). Don’t assume for a second that the floor or ground are level. If your check confirms it isn’t, shim the stickers so they are level and planar.

Use a spirit level to confirm the top edges of your stickers are level, and a stringline (aka “dryline”) to confirm the top edges are all planar.

Place thin stickers of uniform thickness between each layer of your lumber, so it will continue to dry without warping.

It’s easy to store lumber outside under the eaves of a building, but since it will be more exposed to rain, snow, weather, dust and critters, a few extra precautions may be called for. Once again, place your stickers properly and lay plastic sheeting on top of them. Then stack your lumber on top of the plastic, and wrap the plastic over the top of the stack so rain and snow can’t wet the wood, but leave the ends loose and tented so air can circulate. It may be best to place a few sheets of plywood or roofing material over the stack, well-weighted down so it won’t blow away during a storm.

Once your lumber is stacked, place newspaper or other paper on top to protect your beautiful wood from airborne dust and grit. Plastic is OK if the stack might be exposed to rain, but be aware it may slow the wood’s drying and/or cause the growth of discoloring mildew, so you may want to plan for some air circulation.

Another storage option is to attach steel or wooden brackets high on the wall of a garage, barn or outbuilding that can safely bear the weight. The top edge of these brackets needs to be level and planar to prevent the wood from warping. Don’t place your lumber directly touching these steel brackets, however, but lay down plastic or wood under your lumber to prevent dark lines of iron corrosion from developing in the wood.

Again, place newspaper on top of the stack to protect it from dust accumulation. Getting wood safely onto and down from these high brackets may be challenging, so be careful.

Preparation & Action

Once you’ve formulated a plan, located some potential sawmills or sources, and arranged safe storage, it’s time to take action. I recommend the following preparations and actions.

Call ahead or visit and make introductions, describe your needs in some detail, and arrange a time to select wood. Make sure the proprietor understands that, after an initial perusal, and on condition he has the wood you need, you will conclude your purchase immediately with hard cashy money and without any tedious paperwork. The Amish, for instance, accept only cash.
Know what variety, and approximately how much wood you need before calling the sawmill. For instance, you need to be ready to say something like “I need 200 board ft of 8-quarter (2” thick) maple, 10’ long 10” wide. ” He may not have that species wood, with that figure, in that size, in that quantity in-stock. Even if he doesn’t have exactly what you need, he may be able to suggest alternatives, or point you to other suppliers.
Be sure to ask if the wood he can supply has been kiln-dried or air-dried and how close he thinks it might be to equilibrium moisture content. He may not know, and that’s alright too. On the other hand, if he says everything he has in-stock is freshly milled and sopping wet, you may want to look elsewhere unless you’re prepared to wait for a couple of years for the wood to dry in storage.
Learn how to evaluate lumber grades and how to calculate board-feet.
Ask the following questions:
1. “Do you have a minimum sales volume or dollar amount?” He’s not a Home Despot focused entirely on high-volume retail sales in small quantities, after all.
2. “How late are you open?” Sawyers tend to start work early, so you need to be done with your selection and complete payment well before he locks the gate at the end of his workday.
3. “Can I bring my truck into the yard to load, or must I park out front?” and “Where should I park my truck so it’s out of the way?” Customers parking willy-nilly and blocking traffic are a frequent problem for most lumberyards. If he won’t let you bring your truck into the yard, you’ll need to bring/borrow a cart or be willing to hand-carry your boards to your truck.
4. “Are there any varieties of wood or stacks not for sale?” Sawyers often receive orders from regular commercial customers months in advance and keep partially-filled orders set off to the side, so while it may appear he has plenty of the wood you want, it may not be for sale, or he may be unwilling to break down a stack for the few pieces you intend to purchase. If he does have such reserved stacks, find out which ones they are, don’t touch them, and don’t pester him about them.
5. “What are your safety rules in your yard?” As mentioned above, the Sawyer may require you to use full PPE (personal protection equipment) including safety shoes, hardhat, safety vest, safety glasses, ear protection, and cut-resistant gloves, or he may be OK with your usual business-casual attire of frayed jeans shorts and flip-flops. Fashion statements aside, it’s just professional to be prepared and learn the rules beforehand.
When you visit the mill, bring all the safety equipment the yard rules require. Even if they are not required, please have the sense to wear certified safety shoes, an orange or yellow reflective safety vest (very important in a lumberyard where vehicle and foot traffic meet in tight quarters), and to have cut-resistant safety gloves tucked into your belt. It is also wise to bring safety glasses, ear protection, and a certified hardhat just in case. You may think you don’t need this PPE, and perhaps you won’t, but the Sawyer’s yard safety policy and/or insurance may require it. Best to be the prepared professional.
Bring a tape measure and moisture meter with you to check the actual moisture content of the actual wood yourself before you purchase it because, if it’s too wet, you will need to sticker/store it while it dries. Be sure you understand the acceptable range of moisture content you buy. 12% is pretty good for lumber stored outside, and 18% may be just fine, but 30% MC will be too high. High moisture content may not be a problem if you know how, and are prepared, to deal with it, but even then please don’t pay full-price for lumber you’ll need to dry for a year or so before it’s useful.
Be prepared to attach at least one red or orange safety flag to any lumber you purchase if it projects out past the end of your truck’s bed much (6′).
Bring enough rope and/or ratcheting safety tie-downs to keep the lumber you purchase from shifting in the bed of your truck while underway. Watching your newly-purchased pretty boards spread artistically all over the freeway in your rear-view mirror may be exciting for you, but I guarantee you folks in the vehicles following will not thank you.
Be prepared to do all your own grunt work, including sorting, lifting, carrying and loading. Don’t expect the sawyer to do more than use his forklift to move stacks around for you, even if you’re accustomed to other retailers accommodating your bad back. Bring a helper if necessary. Bored sons and young boys are useful for this and can benefit from the experience, at least that was my father’s viewpoint, and in retrospect, I heartily agree. Be sure any young folk that accompany you are cautious, respectful and follow the sawmill’s rules, as will you. Provide cut-resistant gloves so their mothers won’t berate you for any cuts or slivers they manage to collect. Modern mothers are irrational about that sort of thing. And hi-viz safety vests can prevent crushed kiddies.

In the Lumberyard

Dealing with retail customers that purchase in small quantities is a pain for all businesses, so if you want to develop a reliable source for good wood without buying by the trailerload, make of yourself a mellow, good customer. The following tips will help.

Jimmy Choo’s Safety Shoes from his new “Prostate Exam” Collection

Leave Fido, your pet goat, your mother-in-law, and all small children at home where they’ll be safely out of the way. I grew up in lumberyards, so I know how dangerous they can be with trucks and forklifts operated by tweaker teenagers zooming around, teetering stacks of wood aching for a chance to topple, and sharp slivers, nails and bloodthirsty staples sticking out everywhere. If you bring a teenager to help, be sure he too wears the required PPE.
Most Sawyers are not setup for efficient retail sales, and few can process credit cards or online payments. Of course, checks from people they don’t know well are never welcome. In fact, he may not agree over the phone or by email to sell to you directly at all, but once you are face to face, cash in hand, and you flash your best Brad Pitt smile, everything should be fine. In any case, it’s important you help make the selection and payment processes go as quickly and smoothly as possible, so unless you have an account with the Sawyer, be prepared to pay the exact amount in cash, without requiring change for big bills.
If you need to park your truck in spaces between stacks, leave your keys in the ignition when you step away for a bit so the Sawyer can move it to allow large trucks or loads of wood to pass.
When sorting through lumber stacks, set some stickers (at least three 2×4’s on-edge) on the ground nearby (out of the way of passing trucks and forklifts) to temporarily place the lumber you’ve removed from the stack and to keep it off the ground and clean.
Never place a board directly on the ground or pavement until you’ve paid for it. And don’t ever be so rude as to toss boards you haven’t paid for.
Never step on wood until you’ve actually paid for it. It isn’t yet yours to mark with your pretty pink boots from Manolo Blahnik’s Ironworker Collection.
Never place the end of a board into dirt or gravel until you’ve paid for it.
Keep a running count of the board feet and approximate grade of the boards you have selected to purchase. Tell the Sawyer your final count, and show him your calculations, but be prepared to defer to his count if it differs, at least until you become a large-volume customer.
Lumber dealers, and especially those who are accustomed to selling in volume to commercial accounts, dislike customers who “cherry-pick” their stacks taking only the best boards and leaving mediocre boards behind. More despised are those rude, lazy souls destined to roast for eternity spitted and rotating over Satan’s tar-fired barbecue pit who leave stacks a disorganized jumble inducing the remaining lumber to warp. Please firmly control your inner penny-pinching Scrooge (excruciatingly difficult for many) and select a mix of boards, not just the best ones. They’ll all come in useful. If the only boards you can find are hopelessly useless, discuss the problem with the Sawyer using a non-belligerent, even apologetic, tone of voice. If it’s your first time visiting this sawmill, consider buying some sub-standard lumber just to get off on the right foot. Hopefully he’ll make it up to you next time.
After sorting through a stack of lumber, if reasonably possible, be sure to expend the time and effort to fix or realign the stickers so their top edges are level and parallel (a spirit level and a stringline are handy for this task) and always neatly restack the boards you’ve moved but won’t be purchasing so the stack looks better, is more orderly, and more stable when you leave than before you touched it. This is supremely important. Besides looking tidy and saving the Sawyer work, this minimum human courtesy (vs. arrogant, pigish rudeness) will help preserve the value of the lumber you leave behind, it will show respect to the Sawyer, and will earn you respect in turn so you’ll be welcomed back again. Sawmills often give slightly better rates to return customers with such professional manners who make less work for them. The inverse is also true.
Bring something to share with the guys at the lumberyard and office they can enjoy and that will cement your cherubic face in their memories. For example, personally hand each one a cold beverage, or a couple of your wife’s award-winning double-death-by-chocolate chip cookies. It helps to make friends.

I hope this little article has been a little useful.

YMHOS

Just where the heck is that stack of 8/4 zelkova wood he mentioned?

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We Wish You a Ripper Christmas: A Guest Reviews 3 Handsaws

by Antone Martinho-Truswell

[This article was written by the energetic Doctor Antone Martinho-Truswell, a Most Beloved Customer and Dean at St Paul’s College, University of Sydney. While not as scholarly as his fascinating and romantic earlier guest post titled Permanence, in this article Antone has graciously shared an aspect of his woodworking experience that will resonate with many Gentle Readers. Please enjoy.]

“Arise and be merry

And sing out while you can

The world will never see the likes

Of dear old Stan.”

From “Dear Old Stan”, by the Dreadnoughts, concerning a different Stan, equally worthy of your meticulous study.

A few weeks ago, I was putting the final touches on my most recently finished, and largest, woodworking project to date. Over the past 18 months, interspersed with dozens of smaller and more pressing projects, I’ve constructed this tea-house styled cubby house for my daughters, complete with engawa, shoji screens (already torn and patched), Aussie-style “tin roof”, and tiny roofed reading nook overlooking Australia’s Blue Mountains National Park. My daughters made the paper garland to celebrate the opening of their new palace.

With this project I set myself the challenge of making the entire structure using only handtools (save a cordless drill for the roofing screws), and to use primarily reclaimed timbers. The timber frame, floors, and inside surfaces of the wooden walls were all hand-planed with a kanna, and all of the joints hand-cut. This involved cutting some 300 joints, and an almighty amount of handplaning.

But it was the ripping that did me in. Or rather, did in my tools. Between the wall panels, floorboards, shoji frames, and the joints themselves, this involved a tremendous length of rip cuts in very hard Australian woods. As I celebrated the completion of the project with a glass of vintage Château Thames Embankment while gazing across the verdant valley, I considered the small collection of exhausted Japanese rip saws the project had left in its wake.

I had been using modern, disposable-blade, induction-hardened Japanese saws on this project, and two, in particular, gave the ultimate sacrifice in the process.

One saw was a rip single-edged kataba already fairly used up on other projects, the other a fresh but inexpensive ryouba that I dedicated to this project in particular. As Stan has noted before, these induction-hardened and mass-produced Japanese saws are excellent tools – sharp, effective, and long-lasting. Moreover, I had been putting them to more punishing work than usual – “in the field” rather than the workshop, cutting reclaimed timber replete with grit, dirt, and other dulling faeries that grinded away their cutting edges.

I am normally meticulous in following Stan’s advice to clean one’s timber and remove dirty, gritty surfaces with dedicated roughing tools before putting quality blades to work, but this project called for a different approach – there was too much timber to efficiently clean before working it, and the inexpensive saw was purchased and dedicated to the project in order to prevent needless back-and-forth while assembling the structure in the garden, so it served as both roughing and finishing tool.

Later, while enjoying a refreshing beaker of Château Fleet Street, I realized two things. First, that my much older furniture-making ryouba had also been dulled by local faeries; and second, that I needed to replace my other workhorse handsaws.

Naturally, this meant contacting Dear Old Stan, the only solution when tools that work are wanted. (Stan, I’m waiving my copywriting fees for that tagline.)

After some back-and-forth with our reliable proprietor, I settled on three saws to renew the capabilities of my saw-box. Our discussion covered a few considerations:

I have no shortage of fine-tooth saws like dozukis and hozohikis, all of which are working fine and providing good service.
I am up for the challenge of re-sharpening rip teeth, but am wary of the time investment versus benefit of trying to sharpen the complex shape of Japanese crosscut teeth.
These new saws would be used for sawing stock to rough dimensions. I frequently make furniture from locally-sawn slabs, and so need to make long rips and crosscuts to efficiently break these down into smaller components.
I wanted saws that are nicer, more real, and more meaningful than mass-produced tools, if possible.

Gentle Reader will not be surprised to learn that Stan delivered all I needed and then some.

The first cab off the rank was an antique 300mm ryouba labeled as being made of Tougou steel – a now rare tool steel produced by Andrews Steel of Britain. This is a stiff bladed, large ryouba, and a very handsome saw. Stan offered, and I enthusiastically agreed, to have this saw tuned, sharpened, and teeth re-profiled for hardwood by his saw-smith, Takijiro.

Takijiro trued and tensioned the blade, leaving behind the telltale henpecks seen on the sides of the blades.

This new saw’s first challenge was crosscutting a slab of camphor laurel planned for a coffee-table top, about 650mm wide and 40mm thick (after giving the slab a good scrub with a wire brush first). It took me about 2 minutes to complete this cut, and it was exceptionally easy to keep straight. I followed this with a 1200mm long rip cut through the same in about 4 minutes and equally satisfying. The cut surfaces were exceptional – very smooth and very straight, even with my paltry skills.

I could not have been happier with this saw, which came from Stan’s “miscellaneous ryouba” selection, and the decision to have the blade tuned and the original teeth replaced with dedicated hardwood teeth is something entirely to be recommended to all potential purchasers.

But one is never enough. And after years of reading Stan’s enthusiastic praise of them, I also wanted my own bukiri gagari, a much rarer and more specialized saw. Here, Stan was able to provide this beautiful 330mm blade made by Takijiro, again, sharpened, trued, tensioned, with hardwood teeth, and with a beautiful natural wooden handle to boot.

Nakaya Takijiro Masayuki, sawsmith extraordinaire

This saw is a joy to use. It’s much bigger than its 330mm size might suggest on first read. It feels like a much bigger, more substantial tool than the 300mm ryouba, despite the blades being notionally similar in size.

I soon became accustomed to using a pull saw with a “pistol grip” handle (aka “shumoku” handle), and sure enough it delivered a straight cut and quickly. I put this saw to the task of making the matching 1200mm rip cut on the other side of the slab, and the results were, as expected, fantastic.

I can’t overstate how much easier it was to make quality cuts with these quality tools. I’m not a professional carpenter, but neither am I a turnip, and can usually make a fist of accurate work even with subpar tools. And while I have some higher-end dozukis and other fine-toothed saws, I had kept my ryoubas and rough work kataba saws cheap and cheerful to this point. These saws were, if not quite like the light that shone round Saul on the road to Damascus, at least a bit like scales falling from my eyes.

The third saw I ordered from Stan was a mass-produced and induction-hardened crosscut ryouba, with an exchangeable 300mm blade – larger than is easily found here in Australia. The reason for this choice was explicitly related to one of my purchasing criteria above, namely that I suspect that I will not be attempting much crosscut saw sharpening any time soon.

The aforementioned ryouba and bukkiri gagari saws are both traditional, handmade saws with teeth that will require regular sharpening.

Stan kindly included in his package a tiny specialized saw file to accomplish this task. But I will be babying the crosscut teeth on the ryouba out of my own hesitancy to try to sharpen them. As such, I thought it wise to make use of the best of modern technology in this affordable, induction-hardened saw to be used whenever extensive rough cross-cutting, sometimes through less than immaculate timber, is required. It cuts very well indeed, and quickly, if without some of the romance and spirit of the handmade saws.

These saws are already the new front-benchers in my workshop, and doing excellent work. The only thing I recommend more strongly than Stan’s tools are his advice and counsel in selecting, using, and caring for them.

There are many people selling tools. But the world will never see the likes of dear old Stan.

As we say in Australia, here’s wishing you a Ripper Christmas! May the greatest of all carpenters be a light unto you and your loved ones.

Antone

*Christ in the House of His Parents*, oil on canvas by John Everett Millais (1849-1850), at the time a controversial painting much criticized by the likes of Charles Dickens because of its realistic depiction of a country carpentry workshop, especially the dirt, sawdust and shavings on the floor. But surely this is what a poor carpenter’s workshop in rural Nazareth would have looked like when Jesus was a small boy. Joseph is shown working on a simple battened door joined with nails, a standard carpenter’s job in all places at all times, but he’s stopped work to examine an injury on Jesus’s hand, perhaps caused by one of those nasty nails, foreshadowing future wounds, while Mary comforts her boy with a kiss. By no coincidence, a drop or two of blood has dripped onto the child’s foot further hinting of unpleasantness to come. In the background grandmother Anne takes over the job the injured child had been doing prior to the accident of clipping clinched nails, while young cousin John on the right (later known as John the Baptist) brings water to cleanse the wound, another ominous foreshadowing indeed. The apprentice shown on the left is said to represent Jesus’s future apostles while the sheep seen gawking through the open workshop door are said to represent the flock of Christianity. The ladder and the dove resting on it are also symbolic.

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 the Chinese Communist Party’s coordinator for blackmail, and so won’t sell, share, or profitably “misplace” your information. If I lie, may the tang of my bukkiri gagari saw break off.

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Japanese Handplanes Part 8: Operator’s Manual

There was no such thing as luck. Luck was a word idiots used to explain the consequences of their own rashness, and selfishness, and stupidity. More often than not bad luck meant bad plans.”

― Joe Abercrombie, Before They Are Hanged

n this article we will consider how to use the Japanese “hiraganna” plane to prepare boards, sticks, beams and posts for woodworking projects. For those earnestly focused on becoming proficient with the hiraganna, and desirous of avoiding most of the confusion and difficulties those without a kind mentor whispering guidance in their shell-like, and wacking them upside the head with a memory mallet to correct their mistakes, this article will have special value.

Let’s begin this adventure through fields of daisies by breaking down the work of the hiraganna handplane into two primary activities, namely dimensioning and finishing.

What is Dimensioning?

I apologize if this first part seems tedious to those Beloved Customers already well-versed in using handplanes, but as I’ve written many times before, the Gentle Readers of this blog include newbies, professionals, and many in-between, so a few extra words to aid the comprehension of less-experienced persons will not go amiss. Your excellency’s indulgence is humbly requested.

“Dimensioning” in this case means to reduce the thickness, width and/or length of a wooden log, board, stick, beam or post to predetermined dimensions using axes, adzes, froes, drawknives, spokeshaves, saws, handplanes, files and even electrical equipment. It’s a part of a larger job called “material preparation.”

Depending on the starting sizes of the lumber you’re using, dimensioning material can consume a lot of time and energy, which is why electrical equipment such as bandsaws, tablesaws, circular saws, jointers and thickness planers are so popular. But such equipment, especially if it has the capacity to mill thick, wide lumber, can be expensive, take up a lot of space, generate ear-damaging racket and belch veritable clouds of lung-clogging sawdust. And all of them are eager to nibble on yummy fingers with or without hot sauce.

But in the smaller shop in the hands of an energetic, skilled craftsman keen on doing a higher grade of work in a calmer, more creative and healthier environment, the ancient handplane reigns tranquilly supreme.

Planes used for dimensioning must be designed and setup to accomplish the goal of removing material quickly and precisely yielding straight, flat, square surfaces free of wind on the faces, sides and edges and ends of the target board, stick beam or post.

On the other hand (the one with six fingers) planes used for “finishing” tasks are setup and tuned with different goals in mind. We will examine these two types of planes in more detail below.

It’s important to understand that, at the conclusion of the dimensioning stage in the process of material prep, the surface left by the plane need not be perfectly smooth much less shiny, just the right size, flat, free of twist and with square edges.

For this job the Arashiko and Nagadai planes are the tools of choice in Japan.

The Arashiko Plane

The Arashiko (荒仕子鉋) plane is more-or-less equivalent to the benchplane or jackplane in the Anglo-American tradition, typically a general-purpose plane suited to quick, hard work.

While the arashiko plane can, of course, take long, continuous shavings beginning and ending at the board’s perimeter edges, the job of efficiently flattening and truing boards requires more planning and technique than most woodworkers imagine.

Being shorter than, for instance the nagadai jointer plane, the arashiko plane is easier to control and therefore excels at work requiring shorter cuts including those started and/or stopped inside the perimeter of the surface being planed, to shave down high spots and ridges while avoiding valleys and ditches in accordance with a sequenced plan the craftsman formulates for his work, a technique not commonly taught to newbies, but one Beloved Customer would be wise to master.

Despite what many imagine, to use an arashiko efficiently the craftsman needs to have a plan in his head for working each board, as described above, along with trained eyes and physical skills sufficient to effectively and efficiently execute that plan instead of just thoughtlessly pulling his plane around like a goat dragging around a tin can snagged on the hair of its tail.

The Nagadai Plane

The nagadai (長台) plane is the other variety of plane typically used for dimensioning. It performs more-or-less the same role as the Bailey-pattern foreplane or jointer plane.

With a jig length longer than the arashiko, it’s especially suited to flattening bigger surfaces using longer strokes, and shooting straight, square edges, but it usually does its best work when employed after the arashiko has quickly and efficiently conquered more problematic areas on the board. It too can be used for “stopped cuts,” but not as deftly as the arashiko.

Horses for courses, as it were.

What is Finish Planing?

After a board is dimensioned, whether by hand or electricity, its surfaces, especially if they are wider than the craftsman’s plane, will often display steps left by the corners of the arashiko and nagadai plane’s blades, or shallow ditches and ridges left by start/stop cuts, or striations and ripple marks left by the circular cutters of electrical saws, planers and jointers.

The finish plane specializes in taking thin shavings to remove these residual defects producing a uniform, smooth, and even shiny surface ready for joining. And because it takes thin shavings, it does so without significantly changing the thickness or width of the board or stick. However, this is only true if one limits the number of passes with the finish plane, ergo the importance of having a plan for one’s arashiko and nagadai planes and working that plan.

The well-tuned, expertly-manipulated finish plane, therefore, is the perfect compliment to the electrical jointer and thickness planer, which explains it’s continued popularity in a world under the brutal dominion of noisy pig-tailed tools.

Although it can produce flat, planar surfaces, the sole of the finish plane is setup different from, and will typically not work as efficiently at dimensioning as, the arashiko and/or nagadai planes. More details can be found in Part 6 in this series.

In short, the finish plane, or “shiage ganna,” (仕上げ鉋) must be setup and fettled to closely follow the contours of the surface it is cutting, rather than bridging over small defects and undulations, with the goal of taking thin, uninterrupted shavings of uniform width and thickness.

Please note that the first few passes made with this plane following the ministrations of the arashiko/nagadai planes will not typically produce uniform shavings because of the thinness of the shavings it takes compared to the depth of defects left by planes and equipment during the dimensioning phase of material prep. However, two or three passes will usually remove these last few defects and get the job done, depending of course on the skill of the craftsman or goat motivating it and the nature of the wood.

We neither need nor want the finish plane to take thick shavings which would substantially change the dimensions of the board already achieved. Please be sure you understand this point and its ramifications

Next, prior to making shavings, let’s do some housekeeping.

Clean the Wood.

Before you touch any piece of wood with your valuable, noble planes, please evaluate the wood’s condition and clean it if necessary.

Please do not dismiss this admonition unless, that is, you despise your edged tools, revel in wasting money, love to see your sharpening stones pointlessly turned to mud, and feel joy at spending extra time resharpening unnecessarily dulled and damaged blades. How brutish!

The answers to “The Mystery of the Scratched Blade“ may provide some useful insight.

Let’s next consider how to make and execute a plan for planing.

Planing Plan

Most people, including me for a long time, allow their planes to wander wherever their goat pulls them without much control, happy so long as they’re cutting wood. Why? I think it’s because most people never think to make a real plan for planing. Of course, many simply get carried away with making shavings imagining that shavings equal progress. And without a real plan they end up planing areas out of proper sequence, so instead of efficiently flattening the board, they waste much energy, time and steel digging valleys and trenches deeper. While natural and satisfying, this is decidedly not professional technique.

Miyamoto Musashi depicted in one of his famous duels. He was unique among sword masters for not only winning 62 duels beginning at age 13, some against multiple opponents at the same time, but for using improvised wooden items such as carved boat oars as weapons during these challenges instead of his swords. The power of wood is not to be disdained.

Beloved Customer may recall the words of Japan’s most famous sword saint Miyamoto Musashi In his book titled “The Book of Five Rings,” (ca 1645) quoted at the top of Part 6 of this series: “First lay his plans with true measure and then perform his work according to plan.”

With these words Master Miyamoto instructed the craftsman to do 3 things:

Formulate a work plan;
Delineate that plan with accurate dimensions;
Execute the work in accordance with that work plan.

I believe these to be wise words even if they were written by a brutal killer of men. But how do they apply to using a plane?

The first step in formulating a plan for planing is to evaluate the condition of the board, stick, beam or post to be planed and identify problems by sighting down the sides and edges of the board from a low angle so that any deviations from straight/flat are apparent. It often helps to have a low-angle light source shining on the surface you’re evaluating to make defects and problems easier to spot.

Don’t forget to identify and mark any problem areas that will prevent the board from resting flat and stable on your workbench, or that might cause it to deflect, twist or wiggle lewdly when subjected to the pressure of planing.

Next, check the board carefully with a straightedge, lengthwise, crosswise, and diagonally too.

But the job doesn’t end with eyeballs and flashlights. As you identify them, mark bows, hollows, humps, high spots, low spots and twist with a carpenters pencil or lumber crayon using any marking convention you find convenient so there will be no confusion about the location and nature of any areas that need to be shaved.

The next step is to formulate the sequencing of the job.

With problem areas marked and tasks identified, at least in your mind, you can formulate sequencing based on the condition of the board and your priorities for executing the tasks.

When using handplanes to dimension lumber, your first priority must be to cut down any high spots before removing a single shaving from low spots. The marks you make will guide your work to minimize wasted time and effort.

It may sound like a lot of work, but with practice most boards can be evaluated, marked, and the requisite sequencing established in a few seconds without incurring permanent brain damage.

This completes step two of Master Miyomoto’s directions.

Preparation for Planing

Statues commemorating the famous duel between Miyamoto Musashi and the handsome, well-dressed Sasaki Kojiro. Musashi, depicted on the right, showed up to the duel very late in a small boat from the sea. Without waiting for the small boat to be beached, Musashi jumped into the surf and attacked Sasaki with an oar he had modified on the boat with his short wakizashi sword. The battle was over in a few seconds. Guess who won.

When you are ready to begin planing, make sure the board is supported on a flat, stable, rigid surface free of wind. This is important.

A workbench, atedai, or planing beam is the conventional working surface, but it need not be pretty.

When planing the first side of a board or stick, if necessary (and it usually is), position slips of wood or cardboard to fill gaps between the board’s off-side and your workbench’s surface to prevent the board from deflecting downwards (away from your blade) excessively, twisting and/or wiggling, movement which will mess up your pretty plan. It makes a difference.

Depending on the condition of the board and its grain, planing it flat and true may require many changes in the plane’s direction of movement and many “stopped cuts,” so tighten the razor-wire choker around the neck of your inner badger and patiently and thoughtfully work the plan. Speed will come with practice. Remember the moto of emperors Augustus and Titus, and the Medicis: “Festina Lente.”

Plan to frequently use your straightedge to check the board’s length, width and its diagonals.

Its OK to plane one side (the off-side) of the board roughly flat and then switch to the other side so the shimming material previously placed can be removed soonest. Then switch back to the first side and finish it.

Let’s next examine how to best to hold and motivate the Japanese handplane in a professional manner.

Teamwork

Let’s consider some basic teamwork techniques for operating Japanese handplanes, none of which involve goats, thankee kindly.

Imagine if you will a halcyon day under blue skies when Beloved Customer used a short shovel, perhaps as a carefree, optimistic youth, to move heavy mud or push wet concrete around on a farming, construction or cleanup project. You will recall it was hard work, but that the job went faster and easier when both hands, joined together by the shovel handle, worked together as a team transmitting the motivating power of shoulders, back and legs into the tool. It’s the same with handplanes, except for the yucky mud and concrete.

But whether shovel or plane, such teamwork doesn’t develop automatically for most people. Indeed, more often than not a human team in the real world either doesn’t really form or it breaks down quickly. C’est la vie, mon chéri? But when a team comes together working with a single mind to a common purpose, well now, that’s a beautiful thing!

It’s a simple thing for hands and body to work in harmony, but there will be failures at first, so let’s consider a common breakdown mode to make detection and remediation easier.

For example, instead of both hands working in concert with the wooden body of the eager handplane, frequently one hand/arm does most of the work while the other hand/arm just tags along, pretending it’s working hard but actually just freeloading. Of course, seeing this, the shoulders, back, hips and legs become disgusted and end up sitting in the shade dozing and drinking beer instead of helping in the teamwork. Do you have a brother-in-law like that?

The point is, please make sure both hands and your entire body are working together and not shirking.

So with that bad example behind us, let’s assemble our effective team by assigning each hand a specific role.

But first, please carefully examine the craftsman’s hands in the photo below.

The Right Hand’s Job

Assuming (1) you are right-handed, and; (2) you will be pulling the plane towards you along your right side, the right hand’s job is to press straight down on the plane focusing pressure primarily on the contact strip in front of the mouth.

It’s a fundamental trait of right-handed people (not goats) to want to use their right hand to apply heavy pushing or pulling forces on a tool, and their left hand to control its direction, so the division of labor your humble servant is proposing may seem clumsy at first, but if you focus the teamwork will become second nature quickly, I assure you.

I know I’m being irritatingly repetitive, but for good reason, so please remember that your right hand’s job is NOT to pull the plane, not even a little, but rather to apply downward pressure on the plane’s body causing the contact strip in front of the mouth to firmly press on the board in turn while keeping the plane’s body level.

Next let’s look at how the right hand should grip the plane’s body.

With the blade’s face (the side with the brand) and chipbreaker facing you, place the tip of your right thumb on the left hand side of the plane’s body aligned with the mouth and about 3/4 down the side.

Place the tip of your right hand’s middle finger in the same position on the opposite side of the body. You may need to adjust your finger’s positions somewhat, but if placed correctly a well-made plane should balance nicely between just these two fingertips when you lift it. This is an intentional design feature, BTW, and one reason why standard finishing planes are seldom wider than 70-80mm.

With your fingertips positioned thusly, lower your palm so it rests on the upper surface of the body, touch the tip of your index finger against the blade’s face or the chipbreaker, and press your ring and pinkie finger on the right side of the body.

Using this grip the plane should be absolutely stable in one hand, even when held in the air or upside down, assuming your hands aren’t small or weak.

If you can’t control the plane with this grip, you may be doing it wrong, or the plane may be extra long, or extra short, or the plane’s body may be too wide for your hand. Please adjust your grip as necessary.

The Left Hand’s Job

A woodblock print of the duel between Miyamoto Musashi and Sasaki Kojiro. Musashi performed many of his duels against famous teachers of the sword, many the proud heads of kendo schools with many students and disciples that would attempt to ambush him before his battles against their teachers, and gang up on him in retribution at the conclusion. To deal with these sneak attacks and ambushes by multiple skilled opponents, Musashi became adept at using two swords at the same time, one in each hand, all while dudes in sandals were trying to fillet him. Teamwork, Gentle Reader, teamwork extraordinaire.

The job of your left hand is NOT to press down on the plane but only to PULL it towards you. This division of labor between left and right hand is important.

Place the pad of your left thumb on the blade’s face. It doesn’t need to be centered.

Place your index finger either on top of the blade’s head, or wrap it behind the blade. Depending on where you placed your index finger, your middle finger can either stretch behind the blade and rest on the wooden body with your remaining fingers press against the flat end of the body, or you can position your middle, ring and pinkie finger all pressing on the tail end of the body. Use whatever position feels most comfortable and pull the plane in a straight line.

Moving a plane using only the left hand is pretty much the opposite of how Western planes with their tote handle and knob are used. But once your body learns this division of labor your effectiveness and efficiency using Japanese handplanes will skyrocket, I promise.

Combining the Right Hand and Left Hand

Now that we’ve assigned different but complimentary jobs to each hand, we must next put them to work as an harmonious team like the draft horses and plowman in the photo above.

This will feel unnatural at first, and indeed, until muscle memory is developed, most people quickly forget these principles and revert to the careless techniques their pet goat taught them. You will too. But when your plane stops behaving, review the words in this series, wack yourself in the forehead with your wooden “memory mallet” as if you were a green apprentice back in olden times, and get back to work. The pain will feel so good!

Now that we have our grip, the division of labor and our team figured out, let’s bring the rest of our body into the dance.

The Handplane Shuffle

Using a Japanese hiraganna handplane can involve many stances, some standing. some walking, some sitting, and even laying down occasionally. Interesting footwork is sometimes necessary.

When sitting or standing while planing shorter boards or sticks, no special footwork is necessary unless you get an irrepressible urge to boogie down, baby. Indeed there simply isn’t enough space in this humble, unworthy blog to go into the subject in exhaustive detail, but there is one standing technique I would be remiss to neglect, one that has never seen the footlights of the Soul Train stage, one that your humble servant calls the “hiraganna shuffle.”

Unfortunately, C&S Tools’ IMAX video studio is closed for renovation and our photography crew, lighting and sound technicians, makeup artists, drapers and choreographers are currently all on a well-deserved vacation, probably enjoying prodigious quantities of neon-colored adult beverages containing colorful fruit and little umbrellas right about now, so we won’t be producing a video about the hiraganna shuffle starring hip hop hamsters and hipper combat robots anytime soon. Sorry about that. But I will try to explain the technique.

A good example of a carpenter using a finish plane on both solid wood and glulams with joints cut by CNC machinery can be seen in this video.

Obviously this scene of good old Shoyan the carpenter at work wasn’t staged, nor was a professional makeup artist involved in this serious example of the hiraganna shuffle. And unlike the photo at the top of this article, it’s not narrowly-focused kezuroukai stuff, but typical of 90% of high-quality classical architectural structural woodwork.

It’s worthwhile noting that the beams he’s working, even the glulam, are made of well-behaved, easily-planed softwood, probably hinoki cypress. I wish all woods were so pleasant to work.

If I may be allowed to digress for a moment, this carpenter (he has many practical videos on youtube, BTW) makes two comments Beloved Customer may find interesting.

One of his comments is that the shine produced by a handplane will vary with the direction of the cut, so it behooves one to pay attention and vary the planing direction accordingly. Obviously a pro of the first water.

His second comment is that the final planed surface will not only have a shine, but will repel both water and dirt making the beam last a long time even when exposed to the elements. This is an important and true observation supported by scholarly research at top Japanese Universities. Just one more reason the finish plane reigns supreme and why so many wooden Japanese temples and shrines have lasted centuries without stain, paint or varnish.

Anyway, so just what are the steps in the hiraganna shuffle, and can it be done in steel-toe safety shoes?

Stand on the left side of the board facing the end where you intend to begin the shaving.
Place the plane on the end of the board with its mouth just off the edge.
While gripping the plane as you prefer, lean forward over the board while extending your arms, and take a half-step back. At the same time extend your right leg back and keep your left leg under you. Most of your weight should now be on your left foot and your right hand, with little weight on your right foot and no weight on your left hand. Don’t move the plane during this step.
To initiate the cut move your hips along with your body’s center of gravity backwards while directing the forces of this movement of your legs and hips through your left hand into the plane while applying downward pressure with your right hand. Don’t try to use the devastating power of they mighty arms, Oh Lord of Thunder, but just the momentum produced by your legs, hips and back.
Have faith and pull through the stroke with a positive attitude. The speed you generate will depend on the wood and your urgency, but it’s your mind that will get the job done, so long as your plane is sharp, so pull through the stroke without hesitating.
Depending on how long the board and the stroke you intend to take are, as your hips and hands shift backwards you will reach a point where the weight is gone from your left foot and you will begin you lose the leverage needed to keep pulling the plane. Just before you reach that point, however, stop the plane’s movement briefly, shift/shuffle your left foot back and your center of gravity with it, and then move your right foot back and extend your leg, while once again moving your hips back while extending your arms.

With practice, the pause in the plane’s movement in step 6 can be eliminated, but it’s sometimes difficult to do smoothly when making heavy cuts. In any case, try to keep the pause brief so you don’t lose much momentum, and most importantly, don’t lift the plane or allow the blade to shift to or fro, side to side or up and down during this pause because any shift of the blade will result in a discontinuity in the cut and perhaps even a step. Yikes!

When making fine finishing cuts in well-behaved wood, the cut can be kept continuous by taking tiny backward steps as this guy is doing.

Execution

As in most things, a good start is the key when planing. Once the cut is started with confidence, just keep your hands working as a team, connected by the plane, and confidently pull through the cut like a draft horse pulling a plow, all while keeping the plane’s body level.

As an example of how its done, let’s feed my favorite 80mm (2-sun) finish plane a snack. It’s a happy tool with a wide body but slender mouth and only one big, very sharp tooth. It always beams a silvery smiles and sings a little song of steel and oak as it munches on yummy wood.

I’ll take a single, uninterrupted shaving from one end of this board to the other. Even though most cuts with a handplane are not this boring, it will illustrate some important techniques Beloved Customer will need to master.

I’ll start the cut with the plane’s mouth resting just off the far edge of the board, the tail end hanging entirely off the board, the contact strip in front of the mouth and the contact strip at the leading edge of the plane’s sole firmly resting on the board. In this position, so long as I don’t apply any downward force with my left hand, there won’t be any downward force trying to tilt the plane out of level.

While gripping the plane’s body and pressing down with my right hand, and pulling the plane towards me with my left hand, a shaving will begin to flow out of its mouth, assuming the board is fairly flat, the blade and sole are in good fettle, and the blade is adjusted for a nice cut.

The plane is moving along smoothly now, but just guess what will happen if I carelessly apply downward pressure with my left hand about now? If the plane is an arashiko or nagadai specialized in making flat, straight surfaces, nothing tragic will occur except perhaps the cut will wobble a bit. But since it’s my finish plane, the setup of the sole will cause the blade to be levered entirely out of the cut depositing rotten egg on my face. I hate it when that happens, so I’ll do my best to not press down with my left hand. Daijoubuka?

The plane continues it’s run and before you can say bobsurnunkel, the contact strip at the leading edge of the plane’s sole runs off the end of the board and the blade stops cutting, even though the plane’s motion continues. Because I am a highly intelligent craftsmen (or was it a wild and crazy guy?), I’ve been thinking ahead, and shifted the downward pressure of my right hand so it acts just on the contact strip in front of the mouth, relieving pressure on the sole everywhere else. As the plane’s mouth goes off the end of the board (did I just hear a little scream of fright from my gentle plane?) I hold onto the plane with both hands to keep its body level and prevent a Peter Pan performance, then follow-through for perhaps half a plane length, ending this pass.

Repeat as necessary.

Please note that this requires one to actually manipulate and intelligently control the plane using one’s hands rather than just thoughtlessly pulling it around like the aforementioned goat does his tin can.

Final Tips

Prevent Deflection

As mentioned above, in order to plane truly, the board or stick you are working must be firmly supported on a relatively rigid surface.

You also need to prevent the downward force your plane applies when in motion from deflecting the board or stick downward away from the cutting edge because the plane can’t cut a surface that deflects away from it, and therefore cannot make it flat. If such a support condition is left uncorrected, your plane’s best efforts will be as productive as a goat.

To resolve this extremely common problem, you may need to roughly plane the off-face of the board or stick oriented downwards, and/or shim the board to prevent excessive deflection/twisting. Remember, you located and marked areas on the board likely to deflect like this during your planning efforts.

Many will studiously ignore this advice. To those I am prepared to offer a wonderful deal on a huge parcel of shovel-ready resort hotel property located on the banks of a majestic chrome-plating settlement pond in North Korea. Great fishing!

Keep the Body of Your Plane Level

Please observe that these techniques don’t rely on fancy hand movements, psychic abilities or a masters degree in wood butchery, but rather on always focusing pressure on the contact strip in front to the mouth, and instead of simply pressing down on your plane like it’s an iron to make your pleated pink apron pretty (say that 10 times fast), you must use your hands as a team to keep the plane’s body flat on the board you’re planing, and level as it leaves the end of the board.

Imagine that, real hand skills!

Use Your Whole Body

Remember to not rely on just the strength of your arms, oh might Thor, but rather on the strength of your shoulders, back, hips, and legs. They will add a lot more momentum-retaining mass and provide better control too.

Cut Confidently

Start cuts with confidence and pull through the cut. Any hesitation and your plane will giggle at you through its narrow little mouth.

Perform Timely Dental Hygiene

Sometimes the mouth of your noble plane will become clogged with shavings, but frequently allowing the mouth to develop a tightly-compacted clog will damage it, so if you feel a clog starting, stop work immediately and give it a dental exam to figure out why. Depth of cut too deep? Blade setting wrong? Chipbreaker getting in the way or not functioning properly? Slivers of wood, pixie toenail clippings or fragments of divorce lawyer’s hearts jamming the mouth? The only way to know for sure and prevent more clogging is to check.

Clear the clog by either removing the blade and chipbreaker, or using a splinter of wood to pick the mouth.

Keep It Lubed

Oil the chipbreaker’s edge, the blade and the surface in your plane’s mouth opposite the chipbreaker’s bevel whenever you remove the blade to help shavings flow freely and to reduce clogging. You do have the essential oilpot on-hand right?

Clean the Wood

Before planing use a steel brush to scrub and clean the surface of wood that has been exposed to dust and/or grit. You must get any embedded dirt/soil/sand out of the wood first or your tools will be damaged and your time wasted like tax money in California.

Cut 1/8″ from each end of each board, stick, beam or post, or at least use a block plane or drawknife to chamfer the ends before planing to remove the most stubborn, deeply-embedded and well-hidden grit. This is really important because the grit will always be there even if you can’t see it, I promise.

Conclusion

In my experience, many of the Westerners who receive these instructions without benefit of a mentor or memory mallet close at-hand immediately and meticulously ignore the critical points, and then, when their results prove inconsistent, assume the instructions are crapola smothered in piquant marinara sauce. I strongly urge you, Beloved Customer, to do better, please, because if you internalize these instructions and develop the correct muscle memory, for the rest of your life you will find Japanese handplanes to be joyful and efficient tools for working wood. Thus it was with your unworthy servant.

This article is by no means exhaustive or comprehensive, but it should be enough for a good start. It’s far more than I had for many years.

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.

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Japanese Handplanes Part 7: Bedding the Blade – Correcting Some Common Misunderstandings

Rokuza the carpenter adjusting his plane close by old Edo’s Nihonbashi while thinking wistfully of his lover, no doubt a great beauty and dab hand with a sharpening stone. Mount Fuji can be seen in the background.

Whether made into a wooden pillow or table, wood with excellent fine grain is a guarantee of splendid poems, and the composition of perfect documents.

~Liú Shèng (d. 113 BC), “Ode to Fine-Grained Wood,”

s Gentle Reader is no doubt aware, quality Japanese handplanes, like those we are deeply honored to share with our Beloved Customers, are simple tools with excellent blades but relatively few parts compared to its Western counterpart, the Bailey-style metal-bodied handplane, and therefore present fewer opportunities for dull blades and misadventures.

Sadly, there is much confusion on the subject of how to setup and maintain such tools. Indeed, the path to enlightenment in this regard is blocked by mist-bound mountain passes of ignorance and hedged about with bottomless pits of boiling BS that prevent many noble woodworkers around the globe from gaining a true understanding of their tools.

In this article, your humble servant will attempt to untangle some of that confusion, dispel some of those dark mists, and using pump and shovel, fill in a few of those roiling pits. So please don your headlamp, put on your rubber mud boots, shoulder your shovel and join me as we travel a little further along the path.

The Two (problematic) Methods

In Part 4 of this series we briefly discussed how to fit the plane’s wooden body to its blade. Such a happy wedding it was! I dance like a gleeful baby goat in new pajamas whenever I view the photo album.

While the explanation in Part 4 was not meant to be comprehensive or exhaustive, just today a Gentle Reader posed some perspicacious questions the answers to which may benefit others, and so with fear and trembling I make this addition to the series. Your noble indulgence is requested.

The Gentle Reader’s question was as follows:

“I have encountered two schools of thought about fitting blades. The first is that the blade should be bedded more or less uniformly to the dai (i.e.: with heavy contact, ideally across all points ). The second, which I have seen more experienced practitioners espouse and teach in classes, is to maintain contact across a U-shaped area of the bed, under the side grooves and along the mouth, and removing significant material from the rest.”

Your humble servant is aware of and has even tested these two hit-and-miss methods, and while general befuddlement is the rule in all human endeavors, I was simply shocked, shocked to learn there are lost souls who boldly brag in their befuddlement and actively promote either. Call the gestapo and round them all up!

Casablanca jokes aside, please humor your dimwitted unworthy servant as I attempt to perform a brief, summary, comparative analysis beginning with the conclusion thereof because I was trained to begin any analysis that way, and I find it most helpful.

As mentioned in Part 3 and Part 4, when setup and maintained properly, the forces that secure the blade in the wooden body (dai) are solely friction acting on the top and bottom faces of the right and left portion of the blade contained inside the two retention grooves cut into the sidewalls of the blade opening, NOT friction between the back of the blade in general and the bed of the dai. Ergo, neither of the two methods listed above are useful IMHO.

This is the essence of the matter, but since many still struggle to understand, a deeper analysis is called for.

How did this worm of confusion gnaw its way into the brains of woodworkers to take up squatter’s rights? Some dark malfeasance by Murphy? Perhaps, but dollars to donuts I’d wager it springs from a difference in traditions.

But this begs the question: what traditions or knowledge or experience regarding Western planes could engender such misapprehension about Japanese planes? Hmmmm.

Perhaps it’s the knowledge of and experience dealing with the potato-chip thin blades of Western planes that rely on screws, complicated linkage mechanisms and high pressure between the blade and its cast-iron or ductile iron bed in order to retain and adjust, and to prevent them from vibrating/chattering in-use?

Oh oh oh! Could it be that those accustomed to Bailey-style planes feel compelled to deploy similar chatter-prevention measures in their Japanese planes?

Or could it be brain worms, maybe?? Don’t sneeze on me, pleeze.

I’m clueless about the source of these repugnant brain worms and the reasons behind this widespread befuddlement, but what is not fuddled is that the Japanese plane has an entirely different blade and body that relies on entirely different retention and adjustment systems, and experiences entirely different forces acting in entirely different vectors, and so requires entirely different solutions.

Realization of these facts is necessary and wonderous, but even the blessed defuddled few will experience grief if they attempt to indiscriminately apply setup and maintenance solutions effective for Western planes on Japanese planes. In fact, I’ll go one step further: the misapplication and/or co-mingling of Japanese and Western setup and maintenance techniques causes many entirely avoidable problems.

These points are worthy of further consideration, but to ensure we are singing from the same sheet music, let’s take a quick side-trip in our comparative analysis to examine the Bailey-style plane.

The Bailey-style Handplane

The Bailey design includes an arched cap iron (aka “chipbreaker”) and a flat cutting iron (aka “blade”) attached to each other by a screw “springing” the blade slightly, and forming a single unit. This is good and necessary considering how thin and prone to vibrate the flimsy blade is.

The lever cap, using a clever cam mechanism, applies forces to the cap iron acting through the lever cap screw flowing into the frog, thereby clamping the assembly comprised of blade, cap iron (aka chipbreaker) and lever cap to the frog. Lots of caps…

The frog, in turn, is attached to the body via two machine screws, in the case of standard Stanley planes as shown in the illustration above, or a more complicated arrangement of hold-down pins and locking screws in the case of the old Stanley Bedrock planes and the modern Lie-Nielson reproductions.

A lateral adjustment lever attached to the frog is used to shift the blade to left or right to correct the angle of the blade through the mouth.

A lot of parts providing many opportunities for Murphy to twerk his spotty bottom with glee and swill celebratory tequila shots with cocaine chasers.

Please note that it is the frog, not the plane’s metallic body, which supports the blade, and that tolerances between the blade and its froggy bed must be fairly tight and apply fairly uniform pressure to keep the potato chip cutting without twisting and vibrating.

Too make matters worse, despite shiny surfaces and pretty paint jobs, the manufacturing tolerances of complicated Bailey-style planes are often sloppy to the point that achieving precise work without a lot of tuning is difficult.

But despite these failings and their poor-quality blades nowadays, Bailey planes will often still take shavings, and so, to the amateur, they appear to be working well. Who was it who said “ignorance is bliss?”

By comparison the Japanese plane is the essence of simplicity, and much less likely to misbehave, but on the other hand, it is comparatively less tolerant of improper set-up and shoddy maintenance. If the blacksmith has done well, these are primarily woodworking tasks and therefore the job of the craftsman that owns the plane.

The Japanese Handplane

The blade of the Japanese plane is no sea salt and vinegar snack but a comparatively thick blade which includes a lamination of dead-soft iron that is highly effective at preventing chatter. Please, don’t take my word, just try and make it vibrate.

I suggest you study the metallurgy, shape, tapers and curves of the high-quality Japanese plane blade as described in Part 3 of this series to better understand the details of this deceptively simple but highly sophisticated part to confirm the truth of my babbling. After a careful review of the information provided in Part 3, if you imagine any of these details to be less than carefully planned and entirely functional, then I prescribe immediate, thorough and frequent applications of massive quantities of Idiot-be-Gone salve sufficient to gag Beldar and Prymaat. Sorry we’re entirely out-of-stock right now, but a squirt or two of Windex may be somewhat efficacious and improve symptoms of halitosis at the same time.

The blade, therefore, doesn’t need to be clamped, damped or supported by a cast-steel frog, nor does it need pressure on its back, much less near the cutting edge, to function perfectly, despite what some befuddled folk imagine.

In the case of the Japanese plane it’s useful to have more-or-less uniform contact between the blade’s back and bed to help keep the blade aligned in the dai and to aid adjustment, but unlike the Bailey plane, more than just a tiny bit of pressure serves no useful purpose at all, while high pressure is definitely detrimental.

Allow me to restate. The blade does not need pressure between its back and the dai to prevent chatter or to make it work. Period. Anyone who says otherwise has their engineering mind and scientific eyes stuck in Bailey land, a common ailment. Another bucketful of ointment may be called for.

Accordingly, there is no need for either pattern of pressure between bed and blade outlined in the two questions above.

In fact, if you pay attention to the shape of the bed of a quality Japanese plane, you will observe that the cross-sectional area of the wedge-shaped volume of wood that forms the bed decreases, indeed thins, moving from the top surface of the body towards the mouth, making it progressively weaker and less-resistant to deflection when pressure is applied by the wedge-shaped iron and steel blade to the bed.

The weakest point of the wooden ramp that forms the bed and supports the blade, therefore, is located near the mouth where it is thinnest, so pressure here can be especially problematic. This blows the “U” method of fitting the dai to the blade entirely out of the water.

The indisputable result of this geometry, combined with the engineering properties of wood, ensures that any high-pressure forces occurring anywhere between the blade’s back and the bed will distort the dai downwards away from the blade creating a protruding sole. But how much is too much?

No pressure = no problem.
A little pressure = little deflection = little or no problem.
A lot of pressure = large deflection = large problem.

Please grasp this concept with all your might with both horned heels, both clawed hands, both thorny arms and all your needle-like teeth because excessive pressure and the resulting excessive deflection of the sole will cause a plane to cut erratically and even stop cutting entirely, depending on the depth of the blade’s projection through the mouth and the body’s fettle.

If you ignore this warning and your planes fail to function consistently, which they will, please check this area carefully to save your tool and maybe even your sanity.

Concluding the analysis, what we need are nice pinching forces acting uniformly on ONLY the back and face surfaces of the blade (not the side edges) contained INSIDE the retention grooves, usually a strip about 4~5mm wide. And we need only the lightest contact and practically no pressure between the blade’s back and the bed. Anything more is pointless and often counterproductive.

Teachers, Tubers and Trolls

I don’t care how much you paid for the book, video or class, or how famous your teacher or PoopTuber may be, anyone who argues with these obvious facts is simply bragging of their ignorance of engineering principles and/or lack of practical experience with Japanese handplanes.

Personal opinion and preference is fine, and like fundaments, we all have at least one, but not all warrant a sniff.

I’m confident these last few paragraphs will offend some self-taught teachers and all self-designated geniuses. Any Gentle Readers among that gaggle of silly geese need not send an invitation to your birthday party. All others are welcome to attend mine.

As always, RSVP + PWP (please wear pants).

YMHOS

If you have questions or would like to learn more about the tools we sell, 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 the CCP’s IT manager for Hillary’s bathroom server farm and so won’t sell, share, or profitably “misplace” your information. If I lie, may I fall face-first into a bottomless pit of boiling BS.

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Japanese Saws: The Carpenter’s Dozuki & Hozohiki

“I see!” said the blind carpenter as he picked up his hammer and saw.

– Old wellerism.

n this article your most humble and obedient servant will be so bold as to do a show and tell of a matched pair of custom-forged Japanese handsaws of a type seldom seen nowadays.

In previous articles we examined similar saws, the famous Japanese dozuki handsaw, the tool that first brought attention to Japanese woodworking tools in North America, and the hozohiki handsaw, a rip version of the dozuki crosscut saw, identical in all aspects save the quantity and shape of their teeth.

The shaku (270mm) carpenter’s dozuki crosscut handsaw (handle not attached). The tape measure displays centimeters/millimeters on the lower scale and Japanese sun on the upper. Please notice the mysterious but intentional brown discoloration on the blade. This blade was shaped, beautifully finished, and tapered using a hand scraper called a “sen,” not grinder or sandpaper. The small dings visible on the plate’s surface are tiny hammer marks left by Takijiro when truing and tensioning the plate, an almost entirely forgotten skill nowadays, one at which Takijiro has not match.

As described in the pages linked to above, the dozuki is a crosscut saw specialized in, and named for, the task of cutting the shoulders of tenons quickly and precisely obviating the wasteful step commonly thought mandatory in the West of paring shoulders to final dimensions. It can perform many other crosscut tasks too, of course, but for making tenons it is indispensable.

Some of Takijiro’s scrapers (“sen”) on a rack in his forge (left). He uses these to scrape and shave steel from sawblades to taper and finish them A pile of shavings produced by his sen are seen on the right.

The hozohiki saw, on the other hand, is a rip saw, one that takes its name from its primary task of precisely and cleanly cutting tenon cheeks.

Because the quality and precision of the shoulders and cheeks of the tenons a craftsman cuts determines not only the quality of the products he makes, but also the ease and speed of assembly of his joinery efforts, the tasks these two handsaws are specialized in accomplishing are critical to the professional woodworker in making tight, beautiful joinery quickly.

So what’s the difference between a regular dozuki and the carpenter’s dozuki? Ah, another of those perspicacious questions with which Beloved Customer is constantly illuminating the world!

The shaku (270mm) carpenter’s Hozohiki rip handsaw (handle not attached).

Well, the carpenter’s dozuki is extraordinarily similar to the standard 210mm dozuki handsaw, essentially a thin, high-precision saw used by joiners, furniture makers, cabinetmakers and sashimonoshi for making joints requiring fairly shallow cuts, except in this case, the saw’s cutting edge is longer (270mm), the plate is accordingly wider, and it has more teeth.

Indeed, except for a few cuts in the larger components of furniture and cabinetry, few need to be very long or deep, so keeping the sawblade of the standard dozuki and hozohiki narrow and short not only saves steel, cost and time but makes the saw more rigid while retaining a thin blade.

On the other hand, carpenters, especially temple carpenters and architectural joiners, often need to make many extremely precise, clean cuts for the complicated, elegant joinery included in their customer’s projects. But because the members they need to work are frequently much larger than those used in other trades, a saw larger than the standard dozuki or hozohiki to make deeper, but no less precise, cuts is necessary. Ergo pergo ipso facto, the carpenter’s crosscut dozuki and rip hozohiki came into being somewhere back in the swirling mists of time.

But because only the most accomplished and trusted craftsmen are given the opportunity to do fine work in larger timbers, and because they are more expensive to forge, these big girl saws never gained the same degree of popularity as their daintier, more fashionable sisters.

A view of the kumimono and nijibari at the main entrance roof of a buddhist temple known as Shibamata Taisahkuten founded in 1629 in Tokyo. Constructed mostly from keyaki wood (zelkova), this is exactly the sort of work the saws presented herein are intended to execute.

As you can see in the photos, a piece of folded mild steel is attached to the back of these saws by friction to provide a higher degree of rigidity to the ultra-thin, tapered, hammer-tensioned blade, thereby improving the precision of the cuts it can make while with the same stone reducing the likelihood of the plate buckling, the bane of thin saws.

These backs are handmade and hand-filed from mild steel, and are finished in traditional burnt silk.

Backs are fine and necessary additions, but alas not all is blue bunnies and fairy farts because the back’s downside is that it physically limits the saw’s maximum depth of cut, a problem for some jobs. But by making the sawplate wider and the distance between the back and teeth greater, the carpenter’s dozuki, and its sister the carpenter’s hozohiki, are superior at cutting precise joinery in larger pieces of wood.

These saws are also used by joiners who perform high-end interior and architectural woodworking. For example, stairs, handrails, built-up moldings, fancy doors and windows, and coffered ceilings are a few types of work for which these saws are indispensable.

A temple interior with hand-planed and hand-carved beams, elbows, kaerumata, and coffered ceiling all of hinoki wood. Gorgeous work.

The saws shown in this article are a recently-completed matched set custom forged by Nakaya Takijiro for an exceptionally Beloved Customer. The nominal (versus actual) length of their cutting edge matches the traditional Japanese unit of measurement called a “shaku (approximately 12” = 0.33 meter), but the actual length of this type of saw varies by area and blacksmith. In this case, Master Takijiro forged the cutting edge 270mm (9-sun) long.

But what about the all-important teeth? Master Takijiro forges handsaws almost exclusively for elite Japanese craftsmen such as joiners, cabinetmakers, furniture makers, sashimonoshi and luthiers, etc., professionals who are very particular about their requirements for, and performance expectations of, their handsaws, especially the teeth.

Therefore, in accordance with tradition and Takijiro’s standard procedures, this Beloved Customer provided physical samples of the wood he uses most in his business, including, among other species, the North American varieties of maple, cherry, white oak, and black walnut.

After test-cutting these samples, Takijiro hand-filed the crosscut teeth of the dozuki saw at 18.4T/in., and the rip teeth of the hozohiki saw at 15T/in (non-progressive), and shaped them to quickly and precisely to best cut the samples provided, a big improvement over standard teeth specifications.

As of this scribbling these two toothy sisters should be gleefully winging their way to the USA to meet their new master. I only hope don’t they attract too much unwanted attention in US Customs by wiggling and giggling too impatiently! You know how young ladies can be (ツ)。

YMHOS

If you have questions or would like to learn more about our tools, please use the “Contact Us” form located immediately below. Please share your insights and comments with other Gentle Readers in the form located further below labeled “Leave a Reply.” We aren’t evil Google, incompetent facebook, or sketchy X and so won’t sell, share, or profitably “misplace” your information. If I lie may I suffer the fate of Simon the Zealot.

Simon the Zealot, Helsinki Cathedral. Notice the large saw.

Simon the Zealot (Acts 1:13). Notice the large two-man saw. Your humble servant does not recommend this application for safety reasons.

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Little Turtle Scrub Brush

Never discourage anyone who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.
– Plato

In this article your humble servant would like to introduce a Japanese version of a most mundane tool, one especially useful to the woodworker: the Little Turtle scrub brush.

Your slovenly servant is not a neat freak, nor do I have a cleaning fetish, much as my long-suffering mother tried to stop me eating leftover dog food off the floor as a toddler. But there is one area of human endeavor where maintaining cleanliness in an otherwise dirty world is important to me, namely sharpening woodworking tools.

This is the story of a lowly brush, not a tool we typically sell at C&S Tools, but one we often provide as a service to Beloved Customers who purchase sharpening products from us. I don’t believe it can be purchased outside Japan, but the purpose of this article is to help Beloved Customer better understand an indispensible accoutrement for sharpening your woodworking tools. So with your kind indulgence I’ll try to present this subject in a sanitary manner.

Why a Scrub Brush?

As described in our previously published series about sharpening, a basic, effective set of stones for sharpening chisels and plane blades should include a rough stone or diamond stone of 400~800 grit, a medium stone 1000~2000 grit, and a finish stone 6,000~8,000 grit. The list can be found at this link.

A nagura stone is also extremely useful IMO for cleaning and flattening sharpening stones and reducing the time required to get them operating effectively.

As mentioned above, these stones are almost always used in series, with the nagura dressing them all.

A couple of extremely common problems we face when sharpening is dust and other hard particles, many of which are airborne, contaminating our precious stones and reducing their effective grit. For instance, an 8,000 grit stone contaminated with a bit of silica-based dust will be unable to produce scratches finer than, let’s say, a 1,000 grit stone, resulting in poor results, wasted time, money and steel, and dashed expectations. I’ve written on this subject elsewhere. Link

There are few tools mankind uses that are routinely made as sharp or sharpened as often as high-quality woodworking tools, a process that, when done efficiently requires 2-4 sharpening stones to accomplish, usually used in series. And high-quality sharpening stones, be they synthetic or natural, are pricey, so the wise woodworker who needs excellent results will seek maximum performance at minimum cost and time expenditure.

How do we prevent nature from effectively turning our expensive stones to bricks? Four ways.

First, when not in use keep stones covered to reduce the dirt and dust that falls on them. Wrapping them in a clean rags or clean, ordinary newspaper works fine. I like newspaper best.
Second, before using a stone and/or nagura, scrub its faces, sides and ends with a clean bristle brush and rinse to remove contaminating grit.
Third, before using your fine-grit stones, especially if there is any doubt about their being free of embedded contaminants, work their faces with a nagura stone to dig out contaminants, then rinse off the mud produced along with any contaminants thus exorcised with clean water.
Fourth, before sharpening, use a brush and clean water to remove dust and grit from the tools that will spend time frolicking on the stones.
And finally, during sharpening use a dedicated source of absolutely clean, chlorine-free water to wash tools and stones and to re-wet them. What’s wrong with tap water? Depends. I use distilled water to eliminate chlorine with a bit of borax powder added to adjust the PH to reduce the potential for corrosion. In my workshop I store this water in a plastic laboratory wash bottle with a bent tube. In the field I carry a smaller volume in a plastic mustard or ketchup bottle. Whatever floats your boat, as the saying goes.

So exactly why do I say you need a scrub brush in your sharpening kit? Because if they do their job, the bristles of a quality brush are more effective at digging dirt and contaminating grit out of sharpening stones and the nooks and crannies of plane blades and chisels than any other tool including water faucets, hoses, chemical sprays, micro-fiber cloths or even kitten tongues (シ). Or did you imagine a simple wash in water or a wipe with a wet rag had stripped away all those nasty particles away just because you didn’t notice them anymore? Please restrict your optimism to reasonable limits.

The Scrub Brush

This is the smallest of the kamenoko brushes. A handy size for a field sharpening kit.

But isn’t one scrub brush much the same as any other? Nay, Beloved Customer, nay.

In the case of sharpening stones, we need to thoroughly clean our stones and tools without transferring contaminating dirt and grit from one stone to the next. I have found that the hard grit of sharpening stones becomes permanently embedded in the plastic and nylon bristles of every such brush I have examined, and even if I thought I had cleaned the brush thoroughly, hard grit particles remained and were transferred to the next stone by the brush.

How to avoid this? The solution is simply to avoid scrub brushes with nylon or plastic bristles. In my experience natural bristle brushes, and especially the Kamenoko (Little Turtle) brand brushes, simply last much longer than plastic and nylon bristle brushes, are more easily cleaned of sharpening stone grit, and tend to transfer less of it from one sharpening stone to another. These three points are the crux of this article.

Japanese tawashi brushes are made from the fibers of coconut husks. As Beloved Customer is no doubt aware, in his eternal wisdom the design team the Good Lord assigned to coconut palms provided them fibrous husks to protect and float their seeds long distances over wide, soggy oceans for years at a time. To accomplish this Homeric feat, the fibers of these husks are caused to grow tough but resilient and resistant to degradation from long-term exposure to water, microbes and even detergents.

It’s a traditional product that’s been around a long time in Japan with one company producing them for over 100 years. Here’s a video of tawashi brushes being made in Japan, and another video of production in Sri Lanka.

These brushes are also good for cleaning dirty, greasy hands, scrubbing pots and pans, cleaning car tires and wheels, and getting mud off boots with very little scratching.

If they have one downside, it’s that, being made of natural and recyclable fibers, and despite not becoming mushy when wetted for long periods of time and drying quicker than plastic brushes, they still take a bit of time time to dry and can develop mold if neglected. There’s a stainless steel wire binding the fibers together with a loop on one end that can used with a string to hang them for drying. Problem solved.

I’ve been using one Kamenoko Tawashi brush for cleaning tools and sharpening stones for over 20 years. I don’t say they’ll last that many years in the kitchen or garage, but they still last 5 times longer than plastic or nylon brushes and are therefore much more cost effective.

Most importantly, they help me keep my stones cleaner and ensure they sharpen to spec.

YMHOS

A museum-quality antique sumitsubo ink-pot depicting a snake hunting a frog around the ink pond. Mr. snake’s tail wraps around the wheel.

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 thuggish Twitter and so won’t sell, share, or profitably “misplace” your information. If I lie may all my little turtles sunbathe on the freeway.

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Why Testing Matters

Desired Testing Results

Testing Procedures

Incorporating Test Results

The Grip

The Three Tests

Test No. 1: The Blind Retrieval Test

Test No. 2: The Blind Swing Test

Test No. 3: The Ink Test

Adjustments to Your Handle

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Previous Posts in The Japanese Gennou & Handle Series

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Installing the Head

Preparing the Tenon

Orienting the Tenon

Starting the Tenon

Driving the Tenon Home

Previous Posts in The Japanese Gennou Hammer & Handle Series

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Tools

Safety

The Tenon and the Unblinking Eye

The Back and Front Edges

The Sides

Smoothing and Rounding

Doming the Butt

Fixing a Loose Head

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Introduction

Tools

Preparing the Stick

Layout

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Planning

Seeking a Source of Wood

Storage

Preparation & Action

In the Lumberyard

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What is Dimensioning?

The Arashiko Plane

The Nagadai Plane

What is Finish Planing?

Clean the Wood.

Planing Plan

Preparation for Planing

Teamwork

The Right Hand’s Job

The Left Hand’s Job

Combining the Right Hand and Left Hand

The Handplane Shuffle

Execution

Final Tips

Prevent Deflection

Keep the Body of Your Plane Level

Use Your Whole Body

Cut Confidently

Perform Timely Dental Hygiene

Keep It Lubed

Clean the Wood

Conclusion

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