Drawers

The carcase is done, except for the back, which will go on after finishing:

I have amused myself thinking about how I want to make the drawers for my tool chest.  Books have been written on the subject and I have little to add save my own preferences and some practical considerations.

As I've written, somehow the traditional half-blind  dovetails on the drawers for a tool chest don't feel right to me, sort of like wearing a tuxedo into the shop.  I am not arguing that this makes sense, only that it's my feeling.

A comment suggests through dovetails which would obviously show through the front of the drawer and this appeals to me.   There is a complication in that the dovetails would have to be laid out very carefully or the dados for the runners in the sides would have to be stopped.  I decided to pass.

I could of course make the drawers in the modern fashion--a box with butt joints and a false front.  Based on experience with the custom cabinets in our house, they hold up better than you might expect and I could pin them for strength.  Don't like them.

I went on in this vein for some time and finally came back to where I started with a twist.  What if I used half-blind dovetails with a single tail and pinned the tails in addition?  For whatever reason, this just seems more like what I want to see on a tool chest.  The extreme case is the 3" drawers which, with 1/2" pins will have a tail 2" wide, so I decided to see what they would look like:

These look right to me and I think a couple of 1/8" pins in the tail will look fine, so this is what I am going with.  I think they will have sufficient strength for shallow drawers like this.  A 1/4" dado will run down the middle of the tail.  You may also notice that I am using oak rather than a secondary wood.  I have a lot of alder but I am not sure how it would wear on the runners.  I also intend to take these drawers out a lot and put them on my bench, so they will look nice completed in oak.  There just isn't the cost saving there would be on a large piece.

I happened to stumble across some 24"x30" baltic birch plywood panels on sale so that is what I am going to use for the bottoms, glued solid in slips (Surprisingly, the plywood is actually 1/4" thick, so I can make the groove with my plow plane.).  I know that many of you don't like this, but I think plywood has substantial advantages in this application--these drawers will be very solid.

Stopped dados and runners

The shallow stopped dados turned out to be easier and quicker to create than I expected and they will definitely improve the chest.  My technique is to create a knifeline and then deepen it with a wide chisel on both sides of the dado.  Then I use my router plane to remove the rest of the waste to a uniform depth of 1/16".  I did get a painful lesson in the obvious:  it is very important to deepen the knifeline to full depth before turning to the router plane because the latter can pry out pieces from the sides of the dado if you don't.  Dumb.

I installed the front of the oak runners a uniform distance from the front edge with glue and a fixed screw.  My idea is that they will do double duty as drawer stops.  The back two screws are in elongated holes so the sides can move and the ends of the runners are shy of the rabbet for the back.  I think this will work well, but we'll see.

I decided that I would have (approximately) two 3" drawers, two 2 1/2" drawers and two 1 1/2" drawers.  The bottoms of the drawers are going to be in slips, and they will use up 1/2" of the depth.

I am still thinking about the drawer joinery.  My question is this:  Am I really going to create 6 half-blind dovetailed drawers for a tool chest?  I watched a video of Rob Cosman making one half-blind joint in seven minutes.  I am not that proficient at them and they would definitely take me a whole lot more time than that and possibly more than one try in some cases.  By the way, here are a pair of videos with some really innovative techniques for making half-blind dovetails that I ran across:

Half-blind dovetails, part 1

Half-blind dovetails, part 2

It would never have occurred to me to use a scraper and drill press this way.

Here's a thought.  I have no aversion to using quality baltic birch plywood for the drawer bottoms and there are obvious advantages to doing so.  They can be glued in solid and, in so doing, will add tremendous strength to the drawer.  On drawers this shallow, a glued-in bottom would take a lot of load off the corner joinery.  I am not sure that sides pegged in a rabbet in the front wouldn't be more than strong enough.  I admit to a vague feeling that they would be uncraftsmanlike.  A disadvantage is that this design requires making a rabbet on the edges of the undersized plywood so it will fit precisely into the groove.

What would you do?

Tool chest progress

So, I closed my last post with the observation that I hadn't cut dovetails in a while and that I should practice before beginning the case.  I was right.  Unfortunately, I ignored my own advice.  I wanted the dovetails to be nice and tight and, even though I know better, decided that a little encouragement with a mallet was in order. It wasn't.

The split wasn't clean, so I had to start over.  Of course, this was the last corner and I wasn't about to switch to pins first in the middle of a project, so my tool chest will now be 22" wide.  Actually, I think it will be better anyway, as it will fit on a 2' wide shelf unit I have.   That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

With just a couple exceptions on the first corner, the dovetails did come out tight, though not without an inordinate expenditure of time.  Conveniently, Shannon Rogers of The Renaissance Woodworker just did a nice podcast about fixing gaps in dovetails.

The only way I can get them real tight is to leave the pins very slightly proud and trim them to fit, which takes time.  As my sawing improves I cut closer and closer to the line, which makes things go faster.  I'm also very slow in chiseling out the waste so I don't disturb the knife wall.  I'm encouraged that speed is my challenge, which isn't a high priority anyway.  For the most part, it is just a matter of practice.

The old chest had dados on the sides of the drawers and runners fastened with brads to the sides of the chest.

Seasonal wood movement loosened the brads so that the runners sagged or came off.  Someone had made replacements for several of them and put staples in others to hold them.  Not a good arrangement.

I want to do my drawers this way, but there obviously has to be a better method for attaching the runners.  Screws in slots might well be OK, but I'm opting for belt and suspenders.  Unless one of you has a better idea, I'm going to create 1/16" stopped dados for the runners, glue one end and let the side move on screws in slots in the middle and on the other end of the runner.  Stopped dados take time, but I don't think ones this shallow will be too bad.  Six drawers, twelve dados.  Stay tuned.

Machinist's tool chests, old and new

I inherited this machinist's tool chest from my father-in-law 25 years ago.  He was a frugal man and doubtless acquired it at a flea market for a few dollars, so it has more than paid for itself over the years but, truth be told, it is very poorly constructed.  Judging by how it's made, I suspect it was built in the fifties about the time Disston and Stanley tools were sliding downhill.  It has fallen apart numerous times and I have just banged it back together with a rubber mallet.

The joinery was accomplished with something like a drawer lock bit in a router or shaper and is wholly unsuited to the task.  Keep in mind this is 1/2" material:

The drawers are made the same way and then fastened together with brads.  The plywood panels on the front and back have completely delaminated and cracked.  Every joint has failed.  I long ago concluded that there was just no way to fix it.

I have been reluctant to start a major project because our house is on the market and we have to keep it ready to be shown at all times, so I was casting around for a smaller project and decided it was time to build a new chest.  Regardless of the poor condition of the one I have, I really like having it and find it very useful.  I think they are a nice complement to a traditional tool chest.  Experience has suggested some modifications to the design of my current one though.  First and foremost, I am going to build it to last.  If there is one place that seems especially suited for through dovetails, this is it.  By putting the tails on the sides, the joint mechanics will provide vertical strength.  I've also decided that I want to make it bigger.  My old chest is 12"x20"x8."  With a rabbet on the back, a groove for the front panel and knobs on the drawers, that means the drawers are only 5 3/4" deep, a real limitation.  I'm not going to be moving this chest around a lot and want lots of space, so I settled on 16"x24"x10".  In view of the larger size, I decided to increase the thickness of the case from 1/2" to 5/8".  Finally, I haven't found the half-width drawers to be advantageous so I am going to have all of my drawers full width.

It's time for true confession.  Since I unplugged my chopsaw, I have been able to make all of my cuts to length in my Millers Falls Langdon Acme miter box, an amazingly precise and quick machine.  However, today I discovered that the adjustment to increase the width of the board that can be cut has frozen.  I'll have to take it all apart to unfreeze it, so I decided to bite the bullet and saw the pieces out with the panel saw I restored and sharpened recently.  I attempted it first on a sawbench, which was an abysmal failure, so I tried it like Paul Sellers does with the board vertical, using the sideboard on my Nicholson bench:

The knifewalls minimized splinters and helped me get the saw started straight.  The cuts actually came out better than expected, mostly within 1/32".  I don't have a shooting board big enough for a 10" board so I had to plane it down exactly square in my Moxon vise, which was tedious but it worked.  If I do much of this, I'm definitely going to make a bigger shooting board.

How did I thickness the boards?  I flattened one side with planes and then ran them through the planer.  I also ripped them to width on my bandsaw.  These are two of the power tools I'm keeping, mainly because I'm lazy.

So, I'm  ready to go.  Every time I cut dovetails, I feel like I am starting over.  It's like a musical instrument:  you can't just pick it up once a month and expect to play well.  I probably should cut a few practice joints, but . . .

Moxon vise redux

My posts on Moxon vises are among the post popular I have written, and understandably so.  I have found mine to be absolutely indispensable, near the top of my list of essential tools.  I can't recommend them highly enough to you.  There have been some developments in the past year, so here's an update.

Several major manufacturers have new or revised offerings.  Benchcrafted has significantly changed its design from one in which the screws protruded through the wheels to the front to one in which they are attached to the wheels and protrude through the back.  It's 24" between the screws and the maximum opening is 2 1/4." A complete vise with 1 3/4" jaws is available for $399 and a hardware kit is available for $199.

Lie-Nielsen has a new offering.  Based on its chain drive twin screw shoulder vise, the company's dovetail vise is 18" between screws with 2 3/4" maple jaws.  According to the company, its maximum capacity is 6" and it is available for $385.

My vise cost approximately an order of magnitude less, a really dramatic difference!  Is it worth paying ten times as much?  That's a question woodworkers can only answer for themselves, but for me the answer is no.

I think the new Benchcrafted design is an improvement, but I still don't like the big iron wheels on the front for my saws to find.  Think about cutting half-blind dovetails, for example.  I prefer my wooden handles for that reason.  Another disadvantage of the Benchcrafted design is its very narrow maximum opening, which is OK if you only use it for dovetailing, but I have used mine open to 6" on a number of occasions and like the versatility of being able to do so.

I find the Lie-Nielsen offering to be the better of the two.  The steel on the front is much lower profile, and therefore safer in my opinion.  For the reason already stated I like the much greater maximum capacity and think it would come in very handy for many woodworkers.  There is also the chain drive feature, which could be handy.  In practice, I find that I am usually just loosening and tightening one of the screws for repetitive operations once the other one is set on the first piece.  I suspect the vise is quite heavy due to the chain drive and very thick jaws.  It also precludes skewing the jaws, although in practice I have never wanted to.

I think that the acme screw I bought and made wooden hubs for is a great cost-effective solution.  I would still like to have a wooden screw version someday, but that won't happen until somebody makes an affordable, high quality tap and screwbox or somebody begins offering an affordable pair sized appropriately for a Moxon vise.

The major issue I encounter with my version is that I sometimes want to clamp pieces in the top half of the jaws, which makes them rack considerably in the vertical direction.  This product isn't long enough so I have been thinking about making something similar.

You may recall that this is my only vise and that likely affects my preferences.  I keep intending to install a bench vise on my Nicholson bench, but I have become so accustomed to the many ways to hold workpieces on my split top bench that I have never felt a compelling reason to do so.  You get used to it and it is almost second nature.  When I watch Paul Sellers work almost completely in his vise for virtually every operation, it makes me feel like I must be doing it wrong, but I seem to be able to do everything he does without a vise.  Maybe a better way of saying it is, I don't feel that I would do any better if I had a bench vise.  I have gotten as far as deciding that, if I do install a bench vise, it will be either the Lee Valley twin screw vise installed on the end or a leg vise with one of those beautiful wooden screws from Lake Erie Toolworks.  The former seems more practical and the latter more aesthetically pleasing.

Southwestern woodworking

For spring break, my wife and I traveled to the mountains of northern Arizona, mainly to hike in the sunshine.  One of the other things I wanted to do was see if I could find any distinctly southwestern style of contemporary artisan woodworking.  What follows is a far from exhaustive, probably unrepresentative description based on what I saw.  I hope that anyone who is more familiar with southwestern style than I am will correct or add to my observations.  Unfortunately, I don't have pictures as the galleries and stores I visited frown on photography.

It does appear that there are some unique characteristics of contemporary southwestern artisan woodworking.  The main ones seem to be:

1. They seem to like a more rough sawn or weathered look and to give the appearance of something roughly made, even in pieces that are very well executed.  No mistaking it for Ikea furniture, that's for sure;
2. A lot of the hinges and other hardware were large, apparently hand forged and stylish;  
3. They use a fair amount of natural looking dyes on their furniture, the colors of their landscape;  My wife, who is from Arizona, thinks this is the Navajo influence;
4. They incorporate a lot of other materials into their pieces, including copper, silver, stainless steel, wrought iron, leather and stones. My hypothesis is that this reflects the relative scarcity of wood in the high desert environment.  I thought these elements often (but not always) looked very nice.

This is quite different from the pacific northwest.  We have so much wood in so many varieties that we seem to use contrasting woods more than different materials in furniture.  You do see a fair amount of furniture made from reclaimed wood though and live edges are common.  I don't see a lot of colorfully dyed pieces.

Seeing all this on my trip got me thinking.  Can I think of creative ways to use materials other than wood in my pieces?  Do I want to?  I did use copper panels in a pie safe, but that's it to date.  Of the materials I saw used in  the southwest, I would be most interested in using either leather or copper.  But, there's a rub.  I don't know anything about hammering copper or tooling leather.  Do the woodworkers work collaboratively with artisans in these other fields or can they do it all themselves?  I am personally less enthusiastic about steel and wrought iron.

As for the colorful dyes, it's an intriguing and potentially attractive idea but I'm drawing a total blank, likely because my artistic ability is nonexistent.  Pacific northwest native artists made and make beautiful pieces with natural dyes and this is where I would turn for inspiration if I ever decide to give it a try.  Their sense of color is the most appealing to me that I have ever seen, although the Navajos are a close second.  I have mostly seen their carvings, but I don't see any reason their sense of color couldn't be adapted for furniture.

In case you haven't sensed this already, this trip made me acutely aware of my limitations, but also of the seemingly endless directions you can go with woodworking.  Your boundaries are created by your imagination, your preferences and your skills.  Come to think of it, that's true of life in general . . . but I wax philosophical.

Carriage maker's rabbet planes

Recently my wife and I stopped at a garage sale on an impulse.  After a quick trip around the clothes and dishes I was heading back to the truck when my wife asked me if I had seen the tools, pointing to a five gallon plastic bucket.  I turned back and looked in to see mostly junk except for a plane tote peeking up from the bottom.  I pulled it out and saw a plane that I was not familiar with; it looked like a Stanley #4, maybe Type 16, except that the blade protruded through the sides to the full width of the plane body.  I wondered what a rabbet plane like this would be for as I asked the price.  Told $1, I bought it despite the fact that it was encrusted with grime and rust.

I took it home and, to my surprise, it cleaned up very readily in only a couple of hours and was without any significant defects:

Cast into the body is "No. 10 1/2" and research here revealed that it is a carriage maker's rabbet plane.  Stanley made three versions.  The #10 is basically the rabbet plane version of the #5 jack plane, the 10 1/4 is the same except it has a tilting tote and knob and the 10 1/2 is the smooth plane version of the #10, about the size of a #4.

I'm not sure how carriage makers used them but I do know that I am unlikely to make a carriage so I wondered if I would ever use it.  Further research revealed that they are also used for timber frame construction and raising panels, and I can imagine using it for the latter.  Until now, I have used a standard #4 bench plane to raise panels, as taught by Paul Sellers, and have found it quite satisfactory.  I was also interested to learn that Lie Nielsen makes replacement blades for them.  The biggest surprise, however, was that sellers on Ebay are asking $200-$500 for them!  That doesn't mean they're getting that much of course, but it still gives an indication of how highly valued these vintage tools are. This is probably because they were less common to begin with and they are very susceptible to damage due to the inherent weakness of the castings.

Lee Valley and Lie Nielsen make similar planes.  The Lee Valley Bevel Up Jack Rabbet Plane comes with a fence, has knickers on both sides, a tote that tilts to either side and an adjustable mouth.  They also make a Skew Rabbet Plane.  The Lie Nielsen No. 10 1/4 Bench Rabbet Plane has both a tilting knob and tote as well as nickers.  They also make a Low Angle Jack Rabbet Plane.  I am surprised that there is enough demand for planes like this to justify these fine manufacturers making so many versions of this tool.  All of them seem like significant improvements over the historical versions, in particular because of the knickers.  Personally, I think I prefer the Lee Valley Skew Rabbet Plane, which is based on the Stanley #289, but it's hard to say without trying all of them.  This is one more example of the incredible variety of high quality hand woodworking tools that are being manufactured today.  Makes you feel like a kid in a toy store.

As many woodworking blogs as I read, I can't recall ever reading any posts about any of these tools in use.  Here is one that argues the Lee Valley Jack Rabbet is the Swiss Army Knife of planes.  I am not sure that having one plane that will do everything is a high priority though.

I am looking forward to using my vintage 10 1/2.  Perhaps, as I often do, I will find out that this is a tool you don't know you need until you have one.

Quick boxes

If I had a shop song that I could play to make me a better woodworker, it would be  The 59th Street Bridge Song by Simon & Garfunkel:  "Slow down, you move too fast . . ."  Nevertheless, I find myself regularly making small boxes to give to family members and want to speed up the process.  Dovetailed boxes take me a long time and they aren't always the look I'm after anyway.  I've been thinking about a hand tool design I could make quickly that would still look nice because I expect to make nearly a dozen over the next year and don't want to spend more than a couple hours on each one.

I settled on mitered corners as the fastest, easiest, best looking alternative; that was the impetus behind making a donkey's ear.  Mitered corners make fitting the bottom quick and easy:  I just use my plow plane to create a groove.  Like everything else, though, there is a price to pay and, in the case of a mitered corner, it's the inherent weakness of the joint, which relies entirely on glue.  While they would probably be OK for a small box without reinforcement, I am just not satisfied.  When I had a table saw, I used a jig for cutting splines that was a great alternative.  Make the splines from a contrasting wood and they become a design element.  You  could do the same thing with a handsaw, but you have to make parallel cuts and then chisel out the waste.  My problem with this alternative is that my smallest chisel is 1/4" and splines this thick look too big to my eye for small boxes.  I like about 1/8".

There is another alternative.  While some of you may cringe at this, I think that putting a pair of dowels in each corner could look nice.  The main disadvantage is that the dowel would be very close to the corner, so breaking it out is a distinct possibility in 3/8" stock.  However, in a box all the dowels would work together and the force would be applied in the opposite directions between pairs of corners, so I think it would be OK and want to give it a try.  You've got to make or buy very small dowels to do this, so I started to look around to see what is available and found that Lee Valley sells 1/8" beech micro dowels for joinery.

I think that I could make half a dozen of these boxes in a day or so.  Here's the process:

Cut the miters:

Refine them on the donkey's ear:

Cut the groove for the bottom with a plow plane:

Use the plow plane to create the side rabbets in the top and bottom, which are identical:

 (I had to define the cross grain rabbets with a saw because my plow plane doesn't have a knicker.)  Here's a neat trick I read somewhere for the glue up.  Lay the pieces out and apply masking tape.  Turn the assembly over and apply glue to the miters.  Tape the final corner when you assemble the box.  The tape pulls the joints tight enough that you don't need clamps:

Here's the result:

A funny thing happened.  I thought this box was ugly, so I cut it off.  Much better:

That left a cutoff that I decided to test:

That is 50 lbs. perched on top of one of the corners applying force on the diagonal of a cutoff only 7/8" wide.  I also twisted it in my hands quite forcefully and it held together.  Maybe glued up miter joints are stronger than I thought.  I'm still going to reinforce the corners though.  It's a belt and suspenders thing.  I've ordered the micro dowels and a 1/8" chisel.  :)

Does your donkey's ear hang too low?

Of all the specialized woodworking names, donkey's ear is definitely my favorite, although until now I haven't felt the need for one.  That changed recently because I  wanted to make a box 3" high with precise mitered corners.

I built one very similar to what you commonly see, basically just a 45 degree ramp with a fence:

Not hard to see why it's called a donkey's ear.  It is made to be used with my shooting board:

For now, I just clamp it in place.  It is made from scrap pieces of baltic birch plywood, glued and nailed together in an hour or so.  Baltic birch is ideal for this because it is stable and flat, but there was a problem for me.  Since I sold my table saw and am unwilling to use my handsaws on plywood, I could only use my old chopsaw to cut out the pieces.  Even after several tries, I just couldn't get the pieces absolutely accurate, which caused me to ponder what to do for several days.  I'm not about to plane plywood to true it up.  I decided that I would make mine as accurate as I could and then resort to my usual:  shims made from playing cards with the possibility of adding adjusting feet later.  When I got it done, I found that it was off about half a degree, enough to produce a very slight gap.  I was about to shim it up when I realized what is likely obvious to the rest of you: my plane has a lateral adjuster!  Slapping my forehead, I tried it and, sure enough, the result was quickly dead on.  There is something immensely satisfying about producing a box with four perfectly mitered corners in just a few minutes.

There are some really beautiful donkey's ears offered for sale that are made to extreme tolerances.  I'm not sure it matters.  As long as you can get a consistent angle across your donkey's ear that is close to 45 degrees, you can use your lateral adjuster to get a perfect fit.  So, if your donkey's ear is too low, don't worry.  If you are so inclined, however, this looks like a nice one.

Like a shooting board, a donkey's ear is a handsawyer's enabler:  you can go from close to right on without a lot of fuss.

Tails but no pins?

I often look at Mathias Wandel's website and Youtube channel to see the latest of his many ingenious devices, which are sometimes whimsical and sometimes practical.  You don't often come across someone designing and building wooden bandsaws that actually work well.  He is clearly a clever and creative individual.

As much as I enjoy seeing what he does, I don't find too much of it applicable to my hand tool woodworking, but this week was different.  After cutting a test joint on the table saw dovetail jig he is working on, he got the idea to round the corner and, when he did, a remarkable result occurred.  He started with this:

and ended up with this:

Photos used with permission.  Read about it and watch his video here.

This came as a total surprise to me; I am just amazed.  Given that woodworking is millennia old, it seems quite likely that someone has discovered this before, but I have certainly never seen or heard of it.  It is as if there are two sets of rounded tails and no pins at all.  There's no endgrain.  To me it looks like the interlocked fingers of two hands.  Now that I have seen it, I can understand why it looks this way, but I never would have guessed.  I find it aesthetically appealing and quite suited for many contemporary pieces.  There is something very attractive about the melding of the straight lines of the dovetails with the curve around the corner, a sort of complex simplicity for lack of a better way to describe it.  In addition, I think the joint is quite eye-catching because it is unusual and it is not apparent how it goes together after the joint is assembled.

This joint reminds me of a weekend course I took with Andy Chidwick in which he demonstrated how he makes the curved, flowing joints of his rocking chairs, which are similar to those made by Sam Maloof.  Oversimplifying, you create the joints while the pieces are in rectangular form and then shape the joined pieces after they are assembled.  Andy does this with power tools, an angle grinder in particular, but I think the technique is particularly well-suited to hand tools.  You can imagine the debris flying everywhere when you do this with an angle grinder and a rotary carving tool, so I left the class with a strong preference for the hand tool alternative!

The outside curve of this joint could be made with hand tools quite readily I think.  Draw in some guidelines and remove most of the material with a rasp.  (You could also saw off the outer corner before taking up the rasp.)  Finally, you can finish with a file or handplane to create a smooth radius.  The inner curve would be more difficult to make with hand tools and more work than I am willing to undertake.  As I think about the applications I have in mind, though, I don't think I would want the inside curve anyway.  A box, for example, would look just as attractive and be more functional with corners rounded on the outside and square on the inside.

Hats off to Matthias for this discovery.

Start at the bottom

My son's birthday is coming up soon.  He is in law school and I decided it would be nice to give him a Cross pen and pencil set I purchased as a young professional some forty years ago.  That led naturally enough to the idea of making him a box to hold desk items:

It is made from scrap pieces of walnut and cherry I had.  I really like the contrast between the two, particularly the way it accentuates the dovetails.  My dovetails continue to improve and I was quite pleased with the way these turned out.  I also like the way the sliding lid looks and works, an idea I got from Paul Sellers; to me, it makes the box look sleek and clean.  In addition, I think there are a number of applications where being able to remove the lid as opposed to having an open, hinged lid is preferable.  Since I have a small plow plane, it was a breeze to make.

There is something quite unusual to me about the lid, which is bookmatched.  You will notice that the back half is darker.  The odd thing is that if you look at the box from the other side, it's still true--the back half looks darker.  I can guess at the explanation but I have never been aware of this before.  Wood is a fascinating material.

To me, the most interesting aspect of making this small box was what to do about the bottom when using hand tools exclusively.  Paul Sellers just glues on the bottoms of his boxes, which I have done in the past.  I guess I have been indoctrinated, but it's just not something I am comfortable with.  I don't want the bottom to split in the next forty years, and it seems like seasonal expansion and contraction could take quite a toll.  I also don't think that a bottom sticking out from the sides would look all that good with a sliding top, but that's purely a matter of taste.

I made an effort to estimate the maximum amount of movement that might occur.  Making the worst case assumption of a maximum change in moisture content of 6%, I got a change of 1/16" over a 4" bottom using this shrinkage calculator.  That is more than I expected and seems like it might be enough to split the bottom.  My assumptions may not be realistic but this calculation was enough to convince me that I don't want to glue solid bottoms onto boxes.

It's funny how when you actually begin making an item, you run into issues that woodworkers have been addressing for years but which have never occurred to you before.  The alternative I chose is one that is generally recommended against for hand tool work because it is, in the vernacular, a PITA, but I didn't find it all that onerous.  I plowed grooves in the sides and made stopped grooves in the ends into which I fitted a bottom panel with 1/16" room for movement.

It's the stopped grooves that take time with hand tools.  I made mine by chopping a small "mortise" in each end and then using a router plane to plow out a groove between them.  I think the reason that it went relatively fast for me is that I have the optional fence for my Lee Valley router plane.  I have been surprised on several occasions at how well it works.  A not very skilled user like me can plow very straight grooves quite easily.  The only thing that slows the process down is that you have to keep adjusting the blade as you deepen the groove, but if you do both sides at once it really doesn't take all that long.  If you were making a number of boxes at once, you would only have to make these adjustments once, so that would cut the time per box even further.  I think the result looks nice and matches the look of the top.  You could also make this stopped groove with knife walls and a chisel and, given the short length, it wouldn't take all that long.

There's obviously many ways to skin this cat and here are a few.  I found a post by Bob Rozaieski in which he suggests plowing a groove in a small molding and then fitting the molding to the inside of the box.  Seems like a good option to me.  One small disadvantage, though, is that the molding would stick out from the sides of the box on the inside.

Mike Siemsen contributes several other approaches.  One, which he says has been demonstrated on episodes of The Woodwright Shop, is to miter a portion of the corners where the bottom will go and then plow grooves on all four sides.  I understand this in theory, but I think it might be hard for me to get my dovetails and the miter to close up simultaneously.  Still, it's a creative idea if you can pull it off.

Another idea Mike says was used historically is to create a cross grain rebate on two sides of the box, cut your dovetails normally and then plow the groove on the thicker portion of these sides.  Quite an elegant solution if you have the means and skill to cut accurate cross-grain rebates.

In part you should choose a method based on the tools you own.  If I had a nice rebate plane, I think I would try that method but, since I don't and I do have a router plane with a fence, I am happy with stopped grooves.

Saw bibliography

I think it might be useful to provide a bibliography for those wanting to learn more about restoring and maintaining saws.  Below are the references I recommend.  I hope that you will add to them by posting additional ones in the comments.

http://thesawblog.com

--Matt Cianci's website devoted to sharpening, maintenance and use of handsaws.

http://logancabinetshoppe.com/blog/2009/09/episode-7/

--Bob Rozaieski does a great job using and teaching others about vintage tools.  In addition to this podcast about saw sharpening, he restores and sharpens handsaws for others.

http://norsewoodsmith.com/content/sharpening-hand-saws

--Lots of information about saws, this site also contains templates for a variety of ppi that are very helpful for restoring and/or retoothing saws.

http://www.vintagesaws.com/cgi-bin/frameset.cgi?left=main&right=/library/library.html

--Saws and accessories for sale.  Contains a good primer on saw filing.

http://www.disstonianinstitute.com/

--The authoritative reference on Disston saws.

 Hand Saw Sharpening, by Tom Law

--A highly regarded DVD

Popular Woodworking Hand Saw Value Pack

--Three DVDs, including two about handsaw maintenance by Ron Herman and one about building a saw bench with Christopher Schwarz

Saw Sharpening by Paul Sellers

--An online video (requires free registration).

Lie Nielsen saw sharpening videos  (rip and crosscut)

--Two videos by the owner

Daryl Weir's tutorial on saw restoration

--Daryl restores and sells vintage saws.

An anarchist once more!

I have been chuckling all evening.  Let me explain.  I built my tool chest, the one described in this blog earlier, prior to the publication of The Anarchist's Tool Chest by Christopher Schwarz.  You may recall that mine is made primarily from Baltic birch plywood.  When the book came out, I was quite chagrined to read him making an emphatic case against plywood.  Here is an excerpt:

I don’t know about you, but I’ve developed a hate-hate relationship with sheet goods. . . .  [P]lywood has become so awful – warped, wet, full of voids – during the last decade that it is hardly worth the trouble. . . .  In 2008, I . . . decided I wasn’t going to ever work with plywood again. 

Christopher Schwarz. The Anarchist's Tool Chest (Kindle Locations 394-402). Lost Art Press LLC. 

It's true that he is only describing his own decision, but I found it quite absolute and doctrinaire, not in keeping with my understanding of anarchy.  The Baltic birch plywood I used was high quality, not wet, not warped and without noticeable voids.  I had the opposite problem:  I just couldn't find good quality wide pine boards to use.  Further, plywood has many attractive features for something like a tool chest.  It doesn't split or move with the seasons, for example.  The design I used permits using thin material.  It has drawbacks too.  It's not hand tool friendly and it isn't a traditional material.  All things equal, I'd prefer not to use it, but all things weren't and aren't equal.  Sometimes it makes sense to use plywood, but, on the other hand, there is nothing wrong with a decision to avoid it.  It's a personal choice.

Fast forward to today, when the very same Christopher Schwarz wrote a blog post entitled Screw this Anarchist's Tool Chest Stuff.  I'll let you read it for yourself.  But, guess what?  He is filming a DVD of making an anarchist's tool chest from--wait for it--plywood.  Not dovetails, screws.  And, he's strongly defending it as a decision that can make sense.  This reminds me of the song the British band played when Lord Cornwallis surrendered at the Siege of Yorktown:  The World Turned Upside Down.

While the case for a plywood tool chest is primarily one of expediency, there are other situations in which plywood is just plain better.  In fact, I encountered one this week and talked myself out of it.  I was making a small walnut and cherry box for my son's birthday.  I just am not comfortable with gluing on a solid bottom like Paul Sellers does, so I floated a solid wood bottom in a groove.  Since the corners are dovetailed, that requires making a stopped groove on two of the sides, a time consuming task that I accomplished with chisel and router plane.  I thought about gluing in a thin Baltic birch bottom on top of a mitered molding, but had this vague feeling that it would be wrong.  The advantage I see is that it would allow me to have very thin sides because the solid bottom would give the box stability and strength.  Birch looks nice and the edges aren't seen.

You can probably tell that I am defensive though.  It's the traditional material issue.  However, it doesn't take a lot of research to reveal that plywood, or at least laminated wood, is in fact a traditional material.  It has apparently been found in the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs and was used in 17th and 18th century English woodworking.

My problem with plywood is sawing it.  It will be interesting to see how Christopher Schwarz saws plywood for his tool chest.  I suspect he used power tools.  That's what I do.  Depending on the size of the piece, I either use a circular saw and a guide or I use my bandsaw.  So far the blades seem to stand up to it, although I don't use plywood often.

From one anarchist to another:  welcome home Chris.  This is probably the right place to tell you I am thinking of making another tool chest myself, this time from pine and joined with dovetails.  My advice to the rest of you if you are considering making a tool chest is, do as you like.  It's now clear that a case can be made for either approach.

Saw restoration

As I've written here, I frequently run across nice saws at garage sales and flea markets for very low prices, but the problem is that the teeth are often badly uneven and misshapen.  Restoration is considerably more challenging than just resharpening a dull saw with nice straight, even teeth.

Such was the case with the backsaw you see pictured at the top of this blog when I bought it.  At that point, I was unwilling to attempt the restoration myself and so I sent it to an expert in northern California named Marv Werner whose forum posts I learn a lot from.  He did an outstanding job and I highly recommend him.  If you are interested in his services, you can email him at werner161 (at) mchsi.com.

When I reached the point that I wanted to try restoring a saw myself, I had trouble finding good information about how to do it, so I recently asked Marv in a forum discussion to describe how he goes about it.  He generously responded with a detailed pictorial essay which I think is extremely useful.  With his permission, I am reposting it here in lightly edited form.  I have included some annotations of my own in [brackets].

This may look somewhat daunting but the key to his method is to do a little bit at a time, jointing and filing to reshape the teeth multiple times.  If you practice on a $5 saw, there is very little downside, so take the plunge.

*************************************
Just so happened to be fixing a backsaw today that exhibits some of the same problems we were discussing. This saw isn't as dramatic looking but is a little more difficult due to the small 14-1/2 PPI and missing teeth. As you can see there is quite a gap in the middle of the tooth edge on this saw.



This shows the amount of jointing on the belt sander for the first jointing. Only about 1-1/2" at the heel end. [I don't have a belt sander so I used a file in a Veritas jointer/edger. It occurs to me that you might be able to cut a sanding belt and mount it on a piece of mdf as a substitute for a belt sander. The advantage is that you could more easily get the entire toothline exactly straight.]



This is what the first filing looked like after the second sanding or jointing.



Here I'm sanding again



This is how much jointing was done on the last sanding. I leave just enough of the gullets to identify the spacing. As you file, you are moving the gullet left or right, in an attempt to shape the teeth to be the same width. It's a judgment call on each tooth and doesn't all get done on the first or second jointing and filing. You do a little more moving of the gullets each time. [This was a key lesson for me, to repeatedly joint the saw and move the gullets a little bit each time. I did this by eye but it might be useful to use one of these templates.]



This is how the teeth look after four jointings on the sander. I'm now filing all the teeth, but there are still some that are not spaced right or are full size. Two more jointings and filings will be done after this, a total of six times before filing in the fleam angle. This saw had another problem besides the dip in the middle; there were several teeth that, due to poor filing, were down to almost nothing. This required more jointings than usual to make the teeth grow back.



Here the fleam angle is being filed. Prior to filing the fleam, the teeth are set. I set them at about .005 each side. This is more than is needed, but some of it will be filed away during the final shapening. Filing the fleam angle and sharpening are two different things. Explained below.... If you look closely you might be able to see black marks under every other tooth. Those marks are felt tip marks to show which teeth get set from that side. The same on the other side, but alternating teeth. You don't want to set two teeth that are next to each other the same direction.



At this stage, the fleam angle is filed and I'm now doing a light jointing and will give the teeth a final touch-up or sharpening. Jointing the teeth right after filing the fleam angle shows the teeth that didn't get filed exactly even, leaving some teeth a little longer. When filing the fleam angle, the thing that is different from sharpening the teeth is, you must file so that you get a point on both teeth on each side of the file when you file from right to left, every other tooth. You do the same thing when filing the other way from left to right. Remember that the teeth are shaped like rip teeth and have a straight across edge. When sharpening, on the other hand, you first lightly joint the teeth, then file only half the small flat from every other tooth, from right to left, then do the same thing from left to right. When you file the fleam, you are creating a point that will be located to the outside of the teeth on both sides of the saw. When you sharpen, you are sharpening those points.



After the final light jointing and sharpening, do a light side jointing of the teeth with the saw blade laying on a flat surface. I use a slip stone and slide it over the teeth a couple times on each side.

Then put the handle back on the blade and go do some happy sawing...

My problem with waterstones

. . . is that they require more strength of character than I possess.  My shop is in a garage, on rare occasions it can freeze and it has no utility sink.  I lack room for a dedicated sharpening station.  I'm too cheap to spend $170 on a diamond flattening plate so I had to use a granite plate and sandpaper.  Getting everything  out, soaking, flattening, the mess . . .  kept me from interrupting my work to touch up my edges as often as I should have.  Sharpening must be an ongoing process in which you pause for a minute from what you are doing to hone an edge and then get back to work.  I came to the conclusion that for me to use waterstones like this I would need a dedicated sharpening station with a sink, and that wasn't possible.

I accept that water stones are likely the "best" sharpening method, particularly for A2 steel, but they just aren't for me.  I'm too lazy, a known character flaw.  If I had it to do over again, I would only buy tools with O1 or vintage steel, get myself a few nice oilstones and live happily ever after.  I watch Bob Rozaieski with his oilstones and vintage tools and feel jealous.  Unfortunately, I bought a fair number of plane blades and chisels with A2 steel, so that's not an option.  To show you just how strange my thinking is, I keep thinking about selling them and reverting to O1 and vintage steel.  The old chisel that I wrote about earlier sharpens incredibly easily to a very keen edge.  For those of us of a certain age, keeping it sharp is almost like the barber taking a few strokes on a strop with his straight razor before shaving your neck.  This more than compensates for the fact that the chisel dulls quicker.  I just don't care because it is so easy to resharpen it.

I feel somewhat sheepish to tell you what I have been doing.  Basically, I have been doing my sharpening on a Worksharp 3000 with the top table, mostly freehand but sometimes with a jig if I get off track.  I have all the grits up to the micromesh 6,000.  The key for me was to buy a footswitch that is only on when you press on it.  After sharpening like this, and throughout the day, I use a strop.  Not the best probably, but it works.  Now, I want to improve on this method so that routine resharpening at the bench during the day is unplugged, very quick and convenient.

Paul Sellers had the same reaction to waterstones as I did but went in another direction.  He uses course, fine and superfine diamond stones followed by a strop.  He still uses a little bit of water (window cleaner actually) but his sharpening setup is quick, convenient and effective.  He uses all three stones and the strop every time he sharpens so as to continuously maintain the convex bevel that he prefers.  Sharpening a chisel takes him only a minute, as you can see.

Here's what I decided.  I have the Worksharp 3000 and it works fine for creating primary bevels.  I want a quick, convenient method for honing secondary bevels at the bench so I will be encouraged to touch up my edges regularly.  I've purchased a two-sided fine/superfine diamond stone and I'm going to keep using the strop.  Basically, I've adopted the last three steps of Paul Seller's method, but not the first.  Everything is a step away on a large, sturdy metal tray that I can put on the bench, use and put away in no time.  Given that I have so much A2 steel, this is the closest I can come to the traditional use of oilstones.

So far, it seems to work as I expected.  Because it is so easy to maintain my edges throughout the day, they are sharper on average.

I know that many of you will strongly reject this approach and I don't challenge you at all.  This is an experiment and I may reject it myself.  Sharpening is incredibly important, but it is also one of those things where personal preference is strong and different woodworkers adopt sharply different methods.  I wanted to share what I am trying, but even if it works for me it may not work for you.  You wouldn't expect all baseball players to use the same bat, would you?

Chopsaws with no cord

As a transitional woodworker, I have made a commitment to myself to eliminate one stationary power tool per year from my shop.  I know that I am going to retain my bandsaw and my lunchbox planer, but everything else is in play.  Last year it was the tablesaw.  This year it's the chopsaw.  Since in the past I have used the chopsaw installed in a nice station, I decided to mount my miter box in a repurposed and modified portable chopsaw station I built some years ago:

Very simple, it's just two lengths of square tubing, a platform for the miter box, a couple of plywood boxes and some t track.  I really like t track, because it's a convenient way to use stops for precise repeatability and for hold downs.  I used this work station a lot with my chopsaw when I did carpentry work on my ranch.  I could carry it to where I was working and set it up on sawhorses.  In part, my miter box station is this way because that's what I had on hand, and, in part because, being portable, it is compatible with a small shop.  It could be stored on a shelf and put on the workbench for use.

This miter box is a Millers Falls Langdon Acme that I purchased (with no saw) at a garage sale for $4.  Many believe it is one of the best ever made.  They are amazing tools, extremely capable and very accurate.  You sometimes read that miter boxes aren't accurate, that they are off a degree or two.  Possibly, but I think that view may sometimes stem from not realizing that they can be adjusted, something I learned when I disassembled mine for derusting and cleaning.  There is a threaded brass bushing with an off-center hole in it that is used to micro-adjust the angle of the saw.  I fussed with mine until I got it dead on.  I suppose there is some slight play in the guides but it's very small.  Something else you may not be aware of is that the miter box can be adjusted to cut a board as wide as 10 1/2" at 90 degrees.  There are brackets on either end of the base for cutting crown molding  or other compound angles which I'd like to try.  There are depth stops on the guides and I think it would be interesting to try defining dados with them.  I suppose you could also cut tenon shoulders with them.

Do I need a miter box?  No, I could saw everything freehand and doubtless become nearly as fast and accurate as I am with it.  Do I want this miter box?  You bet I do.  There was a reason they were so popular.  As for my repurposed workstaton, is it a good idea?  I have no idea but I expect to find out.

If you are interested in more information about this miter box, the original instruction manual can be downloaded here.  I know there are other good ones as well, but I don't have any experience with them.  To the best of my knowledge, there are no good miter boxes currently in production.  Intriguingly, though, Lie Nielsen states on its website that "[w]e are not yet making a miter box but we do have plans..."

Saw sharpening and the 80/20 rule

For a long time, I was dissuaded from trying to sharpen handsaws and backsaws by reading too many forum posts by saw experts.  Passionate arguments about the effects of being off on rake or fleam angles by a degree or two, the need for absolute consistency etc. left me scratching my head.  I knew there was no way I could meet the standard they were setting.  They made it seem like small errors would ruin the saw.

Fortunately, there were a few voices expressing a different point of view:  that you can make a saw cut acceptably well with less than perfect sharpening.  Viewed from the perspective of the 80/20 rule, this made sense to me.  In case you aren't familiar with it, the 80/20 rule suggests that you get 80% of the effect (a sharp saw) from 20% of the cause (sharpening skill).  Not literally or exactly, but as a very general guideline.  On top of this, I asked myself the following question:  what if it's wrong?  In my case, the answer is I may have damaged a nice old saw I paid $3 for and spent a few hours on, but probably not to the point where it can't be salvaged.  It really doesn't matter very much if you screw it up; you just have to get over your fear of failure.

So, with this in mind, I got myself a good file (Grobets are available from Lee Valley, Lie Nielsen and others) built myself a vise, read and watched what I could find online, got from Lee Valley the filing guide described previously and a magnifier and found a suitable patient:  a nice old 11 ppi panel saw in good condition with truly terrible teeth.  Starting with bad teeth is more difficult, but that's what I mostly find at garage sales and I wasn't about to start on one of my good saws, so that's what I did.

The first thing I did was joint the teeth about half way off.  Then I did my best to even up the gullets by "moving" them in the right direction and making their depth uniform, not worrying a whole lot about rake or fleam.  My biggest challenge was seeing clearly; the magnifier has a focal length of about 6" which I find awkward.  I repeated this process several more times until the gullets looked about right.

At this point, I put the filing guide on and started shaping the teeth.  It went better than I expected it to, just slower.  I had to keep stopping, looking at the saw in profile and adjusting to make sure I was getting the teeth even.  I made a number of passes before I was satisfied.  Then, I gingerly applied a small amount of set and gave it a try.  I hadn't applied enough set, so I had to do it again.  Trying the saw again, I was very surprised.  It cut to a line and took almost 1/4" per stroke, as far as I am concerned good for a small panel saw.

Did I do a great job sharpening this saw?  No.  To the naked eye, the teeth look uniform; under magnification, not so much.  Is the rake angle just right?  No.  I used 10 degrees, which makes it start easy but cut more slowly.  Is the fleam angle optimal?  Doubtful, and I know for sure that it varies a degree or two at least.  Could an expert do a much better job?  Absolutely.  Forget all that.  The saw is very serviceable and I can make good cuts with it.  That is all.  

Shop-made saw vises

Very satisfactory saw vises are quite easy to make using inexpensive or scrap material.  In an hour or so you can make one like Lie-Nielsen uses.  I made mine from a 2x4 and some plywood offcuts:

Although Lie-Nielsen uses scrap pieces of leather for "hinges," I used standard hinges because they keep the jaws even.  Originally the jaws were rectangular but I found them to be knuckle bangers when filing, so I remade them as you see here.  This design is made to be clamped in a shoulder vise and you can make it long enough that you don't have to reposition the saw during filing.  It's a bit cumbersome to position the saw while you tighten the vise but, all in all, it works very well.

Since I still don't have a vise on my new workbench and I was feeling inventive one day, I decided to come up with a free-standing design using a rule I enjoy:  I restrict myself to scrap materials already in my shop.    It sits on top of the bench and is held in place with a clamp or holdfast:

The vise is made from Douglas-fir 2x4 offcuts and is 26 inches long to accommodate my longest handsaw.  When I want to file from the other side, I leave the saw clamped in place and just turn the vise around.  Oversize holes in the legs for the lag bolts allow the jaws to move just enough to clamp the saw in place securely.  The legs are in shallow dados and are screwed in place from the inside.  One thing I learned is that it helps to plane the jaws with a slight toe-in so they come together at the top first as a way of minimizing vibration when you are filing.  I used a french curve to approximate the cut-out for the saw handle.  The vise works very well.  The only thing I don't like about it is that the clamp handles stick out on one side of the vise, but they don't really impede filing.

One thing you may notice is that the jaws are deep enough that you can't file backsaws with narrow blades.  I liked the design well enough that I made another one for backsaws:

The design is very similar, smaller obviously, except that I planed a rabbet in the inside bottom of each jaw large enough that the back of the saw can fit.  That way, I can file a backsaw with a blade as narrow as an inch.  This keeps the jaw very stiff while still allowing sufficient clearance.  You could do the same thing with the Lie-Nielsen design.

I am happy with my design, although I have seen much fancier ones made by other woodworkers.  One thing I like about it is that the saw is raised up to just the height I like for filing standing up, which I prefer.

I hope I have gotten you thinking about designing one for yourself.

Veritas saw filing guide

Before Christmas, I wrote on a forum that I had asked Santa for the soon to be released Lee Valley/Veritas handsaw filing guide and was wondering if Santa would be able to get one in time.  To my surprise, Rob Lee replied that it was in the final production stage but that he would send me a pre-production version.  He did and here it is:

The guide attaches to the end of your file with a setscrew.  You set the fleam on the top scale, the rake on the bottom scale, tighten the thumbscrews and, presto, you have an excellent visual reference for both angles.  There is a comfortable place on the end to hold the guide with a thumb and forefinger.

Many experts don't use a guide at all but I am not able to maintain accurate rake and fleam angles without a visual reference.  There are a number of shop-made solutions that are perfectly adequate, but I strongly prefer this guide for its simplicity, accuracy and ease of use.  It is very well made, typical of Lee Valley, and I particularly like the fact that it is based on a historical tool in the company's collection.

If you are a beginning or intermediate saw filer, I strongly recommend that you purchase this guide when it becomes available, which should be very soon.  I really like it.

On a related matter, quality saw files have become hard to find.  My local hardware store carries some, but they are junk.  The two sources for good files that I know of are Lee Valley and Lie Nielsen.

The only other thing that you might also consider buying is a saw vise, either vintage or this new one, which I've read is excellent.  For reasons I will explain, I think a homemade one is better and it is certainly a lot cheaper.  My version will be the subject of the next post. 

Vintage handsaws

As I was walking away from a garage sale recently with yet another very restorable Disston handsaw from the apple handle era that I paid $3 for, I was thinking about what the price tells me (I'm an economist).  Sadly, it's this:  from a market perspective these tools are essentially worthless.  You and I don't think they're worthless, of course, but there is sufficient supply that the market price approaches zero, at least in Oregon.  Lots of sellers, not very many buyers.  This is in marked contrast to Stanley planes and other tools from the same era. Why?

I think there are several reasons, but part of the answer may be sharpening.  The days of a good local sharpening service for handsaws are in the past for most of us.  Mine told me that handsaws don't have rake or fleam angles!  No matter what saw I sent them, it came back with zero degrees rake and zero degrees fleam.  If you are going to use western handsaws, you have to learn to sharpen them, just like chisels and planes.

To me, there is a progression of sharpening skills:

1.  Start with a ripsaw that is somewhat dull but has good teeth and sharpen it;
2.  Same with a cross-cut saw;
3.  Same with a dovetail saw;
5.  Take a garage sale saw with missing or misshaped teeth and restore it;
6.  Take a garage sale saw, file off the existing teeth and start from scratch.

To this point, I've focused on 1-3.  I have several strategies with garage sale saws that have bad teeth.  I sent the big backsaw at the top of this blog to Marv Werner for retoothing and sharpening and it came back better than new.  For most others, I've sent them to the local sharpening service and started with a saw that has well-formed teeth with no rake or fleam, since that's all they know how to do, and gone from there.  I filed off the bad toothline on one 5 1/2 ppi ripsaw and cut in new teeth with a template.  It was a good first effort.

I've decided that I want to try to become a proficient saw filer in 2013 and have been working on a strategy, which will be the subject of the next several posts.  As I've done on other subjects, I will try to create a bibliography of links to the best information on the internet and in books or DVDs.  I'll summarize the information I've gleaned from forum posts and I'll write about the equipment that I've made or purchased.  Hopefully, you will find it useful.  

Here's my pitch:  buy yourself a $3 saw and have at it.  What's the worst that can happen?  As for me, I've got to stop for now.  This is enough handsaws for one woodworker, don't you think: