Lessons from today

[Corey]

Well, I did some work on the bookcase today (first project for adult ed class). And I found out a couple of things along the way.

1) I had glued together boards for the pieces, but the pieces weren't flat. Rather than taking a chance on sanding to take out the uneven board joins, I decided to plane them even. Problem was that I only have a block plane. So I used it to plane 3' boards. I was successful in evening up the boards. But it wasn't easy pushing that block plane along the boards. I put lots of gouges in the board faces that took a lot of sanding (and a few still remain). Lesson learned (I think), use the right tool (longer bed plane - I think).

2) For the first sanding, I tried 100 paper. It was taking forever to smooth out some of the gouges I created with the block plane. So I went down to 60, and found much greater success. So lesson learned here was to not try to skip sanding steps.

Who knows what I'll discover next.

[patriarch]

"Corey" wrote in news:tR%9d.3802$gd1.375@trnddc08:

You'll discover that there a bunch of right ways to do things, and even more wrong ways to do things.

You'll discover that a number of us will say: "Should have used (insert favorite tool/method here) to accomplish that." You can learn from most of us, and/or ignore most of us.

You'll discover the methods, eventually, that you are comfortable with, from a tools/complexity/risk/space/physical exertion/financial perspective.

You'll discover that you can design & plan more projects in your head than you can build in your lifetime, assuming you have any sort of life beyond woodworking. You'll learn to choose, eventually.

You'll discover what you're good at, and enjoy doing - not necessarily the same things.

I hope you're having fun.

Patriarch

[Michael Baglio]

My money's on "patience". :)

Michael "Been there, done _all_ of that." Baglio

[oilyhuman]

And careful planning :) steve

[George]

Mostly you should discover how to sharpen that plane. Nothing wrong with a block plane used for smoothing. Smaller blade makes for more strokes, but if the smoother is marginal, I have no problem picking up the block.

As one who used to be one, can't say too little for your teacher. The order of stock preparation is part of day one's machine familiarization.

"patriarch [e-mail]" "Corey" wrote in news:tR%9d.3802$gd1.375@trnddc08:

[Larry Blanchard]

Amen to that! I'm still working on the "choosing" part :-).

[Howard]

Actually, you *do* tend to get good at things you enjoy doing, simply because you spend the time practicing. Conversely, you tend *not* to get very good at stuff you don't enjoy doing.

[Dan]

On Sat 09 Oct 2004 08:01:13p, "Corey" wrote in news:tR%9d.3802$gd1.375@trnddc08:

Did you try planing from several different angles? I've taken a pretty sharp plane to a glued-up panel, and I find that when the old timer's say "Go WITH the grain", they mean it. When I sent that plane in one direction, I got a lovely little ribbon off the wood. When I went in the opposit direction, it hung up, gouged, and generally misbehaved.

I should also note that for some reason I have a lot of trouble "reading" the grain. Seems like the only way I know the right direction to plane the wood is to try it and if it resists, try another one. But once I find it, it's a beautiful thing.