Website: EdReinsteinFineWoodworkiing.com
Address:1230 SE 32nd Place, Portland, OR 97214
Phone: (503) 230-0541
Email:
[email protected]True Woodworking Craftsmanship Takes Training and Experience
Creating beautiful wood crafted items with your hands is a rewarding experience, but can be a very frustrating one if you’re just learning. Knowing the proper tool to use to get the finished look you want is one of the challenges – and knowing exactly how to use that tool is another. That’s where experience or some type of training can benefit you greatly. Even dealing with the storage of stock and the expansion and shrinking of it can make the novice’s life miserable.
Learning to use the most common tools properly can make all the difference in your finished product. While you might have a great grasp of the more modern power tools, the intricacies of some of the earlier hand tools can make a dramatic difference. You can spend hours at the table sanding to remove milling marks, saw or rasp marks and still not have a smooth surface. That’s where a card scraper comes into the picture.
A card scraper is a piece of flat steel no larger than an index card. It’s inexpensive but does the job far quicker than medium or coarse grain sandpaper. You can even create your own by polishing a flat piece of steel and creating a sharp burr to cut off high spots on the wood. Learning the right technique may take help plus plenty of practice.
If you don’t understand all the intricacies of the power tools, you can destroy a pet project or even hurt yourself. Taking just a few days of training with a master craftsman can help you create furniture and other woodworking items faster, while keeping you safer. Simple hints, such as the proper feed direction for stock when using a router, can give you more control and prevent dangerous kick out. Since you can use the bit in an up or down direction, knowing which direction is against the rotation of the bit can be a little confusing. While you can read articles, follow how to do books, and glean much information by experience, the simplest way to learn without the pain of error is with training from a wood craftsman. No matter how you learn, taking time with fundamentals can save you headaches, time, and money.