My first serious commitment to working by hand was to purchase this No. 9 Miter Plane from Lie-Nielsen. The point of such a plane is to use it to “shoot” pieces of wood, truing edges with a plane registered against a straight edge. Getting true 90′s and 45′s by hand might at first, seem counter-intuitive–that’s what machines are for, idnit? But while machines can cut true and quick (provided everything is set up perfectly), they’re dangerous, noisy, dusty and generally unpleasant contraptions to dance with. Doing the same work by hand is slower, no doubt, but this also ensures that mistakes are smaller. Plus, it’s nice to be able to hear the ipod.
This was my first time to purchase a tool from Lie-Nielsen. That these folks are a different sort of company came clear after I put my order in online. I got an email telling me that they were just getting ready to do a run of miter planes and they’d let me know when they shipped.
Oh. This ain’t like ordering a Big Mac tool from Robot Tool Works. These folks are real craftsmen. I see.
Took almost 5 weeks to get the plane and had to wait till the weekend to play with it. The first thing I did was to build a shooting board from the pdf directions I downloaded from the Lie-Nielsen site. That took a few hours just to make sure everything was as right as it could be: 90′s and 45′s galore. Nothing’s perfect, I suppose, but this shooting board and attachments are damn close.
Put it to work on a couple of small boxes I’m building for my sister-in-law. They’re joined with keyed miter joints–a simple, but pretty effect on such small work. I’d done a few of them before using the router table to cut the 45′s, but the bird house jig made doing it by hand almost as quick and with much more control. Sweet! Davey likes.
Related posts:
- A Coarse Correction Ever since I saw the first video of the Saw...
- Butsudan Stand Finished This was a joy to build, for many different reasons,...
- Butsudan Stand I’m stymied with my kotatsu table because I haven’t bitten...
- Alan Peters Documentary Just received “The Maker’s Maker”, a DVD I purchased about...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.