voiceover:the woodwhisperer is sponsored by powermatic, the gold standard since 1921 and by clear vue cyclones,clear the air and breathe easy. (lively jazz music) marc:well i just got back from woodworking in america 2013in covington, kentucky. it was a great three days,lots of education, camaraderie. got to meet a lot of oldfriends and make some new ones. i figured i'd show you alittle bit of what i saw
in terms of instructorsand also the vendors, because they love talkingabout their products. you'll see some of the new tools, and they're a littlebit pricy, some of them. let's get into it. my weekend began with this, roy underhill hewing a massivelog on a rickety stage. working a log with an axe isn't exactly on my to-do list but i just couldn't miss an
opportunity to see a legend in action. i also attended classesfrom the likes of renowned marquetry expert silas kopfand venerable chuck bender. yeah that's right,chuck, i said venerable. while the classes were great much of my time was spent on the vendor floor. this is where you'll see vendors of unique and in many cases very expensive tools. you might also see this guy.
let's listen in on what he has to say. (froggy voice) my lifehas changed so much since working with marc spagnuolo.oh, you like him too? chortle. enough about him, let's see what some of these folks have for sale. daneb:for a long timethe biggest problem in sharpening has been gettinga decent honing guide, something that will actuallyhold the blade well. we've been working for anumber of years on a solution.
we decided to deal with that by making our own guide that clamps from the top. you're referencing offthe top edge of the blade so any thickness blade isgoing to give you the same angle based on the projectionoff the front of the jig. if you put this in, clamp it down. finger tight is all ittakes with this guide. no one guide is going to do everything, so what we've done with this is make
the jaws that hold the blade removable. pops off that easy. you've got a capturedscrew, you can't lose them. there's little index pins that locate off of these holes in the top of the jaw. we've got a skew jaw, allows youto, if put the pair on there. you can sharpen at an 18 degree angle. we've got a tall jaw for doing mortice blades or very thick blades.
we've got long jawsfor doing short blades. there's a whole range of them. this jig, as its basemodel with the standard jaw and a tall mortice jaw isgoing to be about 100 dollars. this is what's called a plow plane. it's based off a number43 miller's patent. it's a form that wasused back in about 1850, and its changed, the plowplane, the overall design and features of themhave changed quite a bit.
this is a very classic, elegantapproach to the whole thing. i like to come in underneath the bar here, put my palm up against there, my thumb right on top of the tool. as i start on the short end, come in with a cut and work your way back. the little spill builtin on the blade cap kicks the shaving out to thebench side of the tool. it's great for drawer bottoms,
all sorts of otherapplications for a groove. as soon as you get downto the depth stop you stop cutting and you end up with a continuous, clean bottomed groove, and nevera need to plug anything in. norman:we're proud toannounce the shenandoah mallet which is a woodworker's premium mallet. this one happens to be made of zebra wood. this is an all-american product. we designed the handleourselves and we turn and
finish the handle in ourshenandoah valley workshop. this particular mallet is a one pound mallet and it can beheld in two positions. one position for chopping and chiseling, or you can choke up on it forlight tapping and for carving. we also offer a one anda half pound mallet which is exceptionally good formorticing and heavy chopping. jeff:this is our six inch marking gauge. it features a fingernailgrind on the blade
which helps to keep thefence and the line true. it won't track the grain. it even works very well with the grain. the gauge rides in a slidingdovetail to keep it square. it has a very shallowfence that allows you to do the work on the bench instead of having to always hangyour work off the edge. we do sell them in thefour and the six inch versions and it's morecomfort of the hand than
it is for the distance that it will mark. the panel gauges, i make them out of just about any kind of woods. they're 28 inches long.they feature a special locking mechanism thatpositive locks the beam so there's no movement inany of the six directions. you can turn it around and it's a pencil gauge for doing your rough work. the new traditionalgauge features the same
clamping system that's in the panel gauge. they're eight inches long,four inch wide face and they just allow moretraditional feel for the guys that think my regulargauges are a little small. tico:people ask me, "i have a 3,000 dollar tablesaw, festool, chop saw. "why would i ever wantto use a shooting board?" this little jig demonstrates that. i might want to get a certainfit between these two points.
in my case i will stop the table saw after i get about this close to my knife line. then i'm going to bring the work piece over to the shooting board. what we're going to do here is basically do "go, no go" with this piece. what i'm trying to gethere is this kind of fit. you'd call it an interferencefit if you were a machinist. in jointery we havecompression at both ends.
if i want to achieve that kind of fit on a table saw i'm going to go past it a number of times beforei get it just right. this is a way of dialingin that perfect fit. let me show you this super shoot now. this is my basic model. i'm demonstrating here withthe veritas shooting plane. it's a ramp shooting board. it distributes the wear along the edge
so you're not hitting the same spot. it keeps that edge keener for that much longer and it wont deform it. also ergonomically it'spitched away from you so i can use my leaning weight down on it. now i can engage my gluteus maximus, i can use my gravity andthe weight of my torso. ergonomically this rampshooting board is really nice. the super shoot has three fences.
has a 90 degree fencethat's micro-adjustable. the super shoot has a easilyinstalled miter fence. it's got these two linerbushings and diamond pins. there's a steel platedirectly underneath here, so when i activate this mag jig, which is a very powerful force, it's going to hold thisdown securely to the board. now i can work to my finished knife line. when the two pieces are shot like that the
end grain fibers arevery smooth and straight, and when you put the jointtogether you get this kind of precision and tightness of joint, such that you could actually put some hide glue on here and rub it and the joint will hold by its own becauseit's so perfectly fit. carcass miters you can visualizethe side of a box or a lid. if there are larger piecesthey could be bracket [feed]. that kind of corner joint is great on
this with the donkey ear attachment. it holds the work in a way where, say for this little piece, i don't have to get anywherenear a spinning blade. i just drop the piece in. it's snug to the front of the plane. all i have to do is hold itand plane straight across. to verify the quality of the joint i'm going to put those two pieces against a
common straight edge and see how they fit. i can live with that. scott:i'm scott meek,scott meek woodworks, and these are a few of the planes i make. i've got everything froma six inch block plane, and this one specifically is a tiger maple resin-infused reallysturdy, really tough plane. we've got a smoothing plane. we've got a 12 inchjack, 16 inch jack plane.
then we've got jointers that run from 22 inches, 28 inches all the way up to 36 inches. a couple of main differencesin the wood-bodied plane. one of my favorites isjust the tactile feedback. when you're using the plane you feel exactly how it's working, you feel anytime you get a tear out, you feel if the blade is getting sharp.
it translates because you've got a solid wood from the sole to your hand. it just feels differently than any metal-bodied plane out there. also it's just a different grip. when you're holding it there's multiple different ways you could hold it. it's a lot more comfortable, especially in extended planing times.
you're not holding on to a handle where it's really rigid in how you hold it. you could also pull itif you really want to. (scratching) ron:marc, this year for wia we have debuted two new knife products. instead of [circling] woodworking tools we decided to try somethinga little bit different. we have come up with akit to make a knife that
looks like that for thefive inch chef's knife. we also have a three anda half inch paring knife. these are kits, they'll be sold like this. the blade, three pins, norivets. these are easier. we just epoxy this all together. we will be selling some micarta for knife handle material which is inert, as opposed to wood which can be volatile. although most woodworkershave some precious little
piece of wood nearby thatthey would love to use for a knife handle and isay more power to you. this is bubinga because i happened to have some bubinga around. dave:i'm dave jeske withblue spruce toolworks, and i'd like to talk about a new mallet that i'm just developing. it's for morticing and doing jointering. it's a heavier duty malletthan my usual round one.
it's 24 ounces. the headis made from infused maple, it's infused with acryllicresin so it completely fills all the wood pores with the resin and makes it extremely tough and durable. it's got two faces. thisface has a leather face for assembling your jointeringwithout marring your woodwork. this side is just the pure infused maple. you can hit it, your morticingchisel, just ... (smack) it doesn't dent or anything,
it's basically a lifetime mallet. it uses a nice hickory handle. it's got two areas to grab onto. for your heavy hittingyou can hold it back here and if you want alittle bit more controlled hitting you can choke it up, like that. it's got a nifty leather thong. it's going to retail for 145 dollars. it'll be on my websitein just a couple weeks.
jaun:my name is jaun vergaraand i make infill planes. an inffill plane is socalled because you fill in the space between the sidesof the plane with wood, preferably exotic wood.this is a very exotic wood. hard to get unless you live in california. it's what i call a california stink wood. it's eucalyptus, blue gum eucalyptus, and the damn stuff grows everywhere. but it has gorgeousfigure. if you can find the
right wood it hasabsolutely gorgeous figure. this one weighs about fourand a half or five pounds. there is a frog, a steel frog riveted to the inside just behind the mouth. it's half an inch high, two inches long, and spreads the width of the plane. that brings the center,it adds weight and mass, and it brings the center of gravity on this plane right about there.
with an infill plane it'sthe mass that does the trick. because of the mass,even though it's heavy, it's actually easier to usean infill plane than it is an ordinary plane. besides thatit's a hell of a lot of fun. marc:unfortunately most ofthese tools are a bit out of my price range but that doesn'tstop me from drooling on them. if you get a chance toattend a conference like woodworking in americai highly recommend it. between the education,the camaraderie and the
opportunity to get somehands-on time with tools, you just can't beat it. (calming guitar music)