When Dovetails Cry

My dovetailing progress has been quelled by circumstance lately as I deal with an injury to my right patella, which is to say kneecap.  What happened was some ice went gangster on me and showed out some slippery dealings.  Tomorrow my lovely (and pregnant) wife will drive me to Indianapolis to have a surgeon look at it.  Apparently they cannot deal with it in the city in which I live so I have to go down there.  Despite this I have managed to hobble around my workbench a couple times since and have dovetailed the frames for a drawing box and the bottom till in my tool chest.  The drawing box is for my drafting supplies and the top will fit a normal size piece of paper on it so I can draft out designs and such on the days when I am stuck at home, since I cannot drive right now.  I will have pictures of these things in the future and they will be excellent examples of what not to do when dovetailing.  Hopefully I can manage to get better at it.  I have plenty of time to keep my tools sharp now though, so that is good, and hopefully I can get into some woodcarving, learning that medium in the near future.  We shall see.

One of the things I have been able to do lately is watch and subscribe to a lot of woodworking channels on the you tubes.  Have you heard of it?  It is an amazing cultural phenomenon.  I give you my top five woodworking channels on you tube for your perusal not necessarily in any particular order.

1)  Paul Sellers.  He really is my favorite right now because of the simplicity with which he approaches all of this.  He will really help you get started in hand tools with the bare minimum of tools.  He has saved me a lot of money by showing me how to make some of my own things from scratch.  One does not need to go out and buy the fancy new tools that some of the companies peddle.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCc3EpWncNq5QL0QhwUNQb7w

2)  The Homestead Craftsman/Square inch.  He built a beautiful trailer house on wheels, making his own windows and doors from spruce lumber from the yard.  Plus, I love his accent.  I borrowed a lot of elements from him in the design of my shaving horse off of his video about his.  He uses a mixture of power and hand tools, and his style is very unique to him.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRWsQfRiwGqBaVP_29OrZVw

3)  Past and Present.  This fellow plies his trade in Trinidad and he really knows what he is doing as you will know if you look at the video of his finished products.  No one I have watched approaches it with the panache he can.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_U1UWJ5tZhFSMpkyJ7oJFw

4)  Chanhyeok Song.  These are videos of Korean craftsmen doing amazing things with hand planes, other hand tools, and homemade rope clamps.  It is fun to see things done a different way.  Their planes and saws cut on the pull stroke and they do not really use woodworking vices in their work that I have seen so far.  I am fascinated by their techniques and hope to one day be able to go learn from Korean craftsmen in person.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC55z9-L7abKcU9NHFjqwHxA

5)  Tom Fidgen.  His drafting table video blew my mind.  Few are as exact and precise as Tom Fidgen.  And where most people in this world of hand tool woodworking are making European style tool chests, his is Japanese style!  I like people who go against the grain.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaWR_UvszqJ0xIJYXcep3_w

That is all for now, signing off.  May peace come to this world and may strife between races and religions end.

Jeremy Stoltzfus

Old World Carpentry