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catsittingstillI'm feeling discouraged.
Mostly because this whole hand tools thing is harder than I thought.
At first it was going swimmingly. You have to push the plane pretty hard, but you do get somewhere, and see you're getting somewhere, and the curls of shavings all over the workbench (and the floor, and your shoes) are kind of neat.
But then I marked the board and ran it (very carefully) through the bandsaw to cut the parts for the seat. And it turned out the damn board had a big old honking knot in its heart that ran the opposite way from the way I expected (I thought I saw where it exited the board, but it turned out that was a different knot). So the pieces were not going to be strong enough to be trusted as seat parts, and I had to start over.
The next chunk of board that I took was okay, so I bandsawed out the pieces that I needed (I figured I would check for knots first and then plane it) and set out to plane it all smooth.
I cleverly aligned parts of the same length so I could plane them together and get them the same thickness. However a seat has two long bars and two short bars and I couldn't figure out how to immobilize them all together (one reason to plane the plank before you cut, I guess). And while I was planing the long bars down to match the short bars I swapped one long bar head to tail and discovered that the long bars were not the same height all the way through--the tails were higher than the heads. And the short bars had the same problem, only less so.
Many curls of walnut later the long bars are pretty close to the same height at both ends. They're still a little thicker than the short bars. And I need to cut the short bars at perfectly right angles to the same length. Which is harder than I thought. Fortunately I have some extra length in the short bars because I figure I'll be nibbling them down bit by bit until I get the whole right angle thing correct. And then I have to cut the tenons. All the same length and at right angles. And the mortises.
I could just buy a seat, for about fourty dollars, but it would be some factory made piece of shoddy work that wouldn't last in the weather and wouldn't match the rest of the trim on my boat.
But on the other hand I couldn't work on the inside of the hull today anyway, because it rained all day and I need daylight to see what I'm doing. So I guess I wasted some work, but not really any time. And if I can actually make the walnut seat, it will be much nicer than anything I could buy. It's just so hard because I haven't done it by hand before. And presumably my arms are getting stronger. And on the bright side, cross cutting with an exacto knife produces a much more precise line than using even a sharp pencil. And starting a saw cut in that line is easier than starting it on a pencil line.
Maybe I need to have a sharpening day and sharpen all my chisels and my planes. That would probably help too.
Mostly because this whole hand tools thing is harder than I thought.
At first it was going swimmingly. You have to push the plane pretty hard, but you do get somewhere, and see you're getting somewhere, and the curls of shavings all over the workbench (and the floor, and your shoes) are kind of neat.
But then I marked the board and ran it (very carefully) through the bandsaw to cut the parts for the seat. And it turned out the damn board had a big old honking knot in its heart that ran the opposite way from the way I expected (I thought I saw where it exited the board, but it turned out that was a different knot). So the pieces were not going to be strong enough to be trusted as seat parts, and I had to start over.
The next chunk of board that I took was okay, so I bandsawed out the pieces that I needed (I figured I would check for knots first and then plane it) and set out to plane it all smooth.
I cleverly aligned parts of the same length so I could plane them together and get them the same thickness. However a seat has two long bars and two short bars and I couldn't figure out how to immobilize them all together (one reason to plane the plank before you cut, I guess). And while I was planing the long bars down to match the short bars I swapped one long bar head to tail and discovered that the long bars were not the same height all the way through--the tails were higher than the heads. And the short bars had the same problem, only less so.
Many curls of walnut later the long bars are pretty close to the same height at both ends. They're still a little thicker than the short bars. And I need to cut the short bars at perfectly right angles to the same length. Which is harder than I thought. Fortunately I have some extra length in the short bars because I figure I'll be nibbling them down bit by bit until I get the whole right angle thing correct. And then I have to cut the tenons. All the same length and at right angles. And the mortises.
I could just buy a seat, for about fourty dollars, but it would be some factory made piece of shoddy work that wouldn't last in the weather and wouldn't match the rest of the trim on my boat.
But on the other hand I couldn't work on the inside of the hull today anyway, because it rained all day and I need daylight to see what I'm doing. So I guess I wasted some work, but not really any time. And if I can actually make the walnut seat, it will be much nicer than anything I could buy. It's just so hard because I haven't done it by hand before. And presumably my arms are getting stronger. And on the bright side, cross cutting with an exacto knife produces a much more precise line than using even a sharp pencil. And starting a saw cut in that line is easier than starting it on a pencil line.
Maybe I need to have a sharpening day and sharpen all my chisels and my planes. That would probably help too.
