Interview with plane maker Steve Knight Fine Woodworking

 
Smoothing plane. Before he sent them out, Steve tuned his planes to take the fluffiest shavings.
Photo: Steve Knight
It has been at least five years since I first saw one of Steve Knights wooden handplanes. Ive always found them attractive and the word on the forums was that they worked great--and thats the real test of a plane. I always had it in the back of my mind to buy a plane from him, just to support him. But then I started making my own and I never got around to it. So, I felt a bit guilty when I went to his website recently and discovered that Steve no longer sells wooden handplanes, at least not completed ones. He does sell kits for wooden planes: a smoother, a pocket plane (bevel down), a jack, a jointer, and a scrub. I gave Steve a call and asked him to send me one of the kits--a smoother with a 55 degree frog--for review. Ill write a separate blog about it. (I am really excited about the prospect of making and using the plane. My job doesnt suck!)
When I was on the phone with Steve, he and I got to talking about his experience as a plane maker and the story was interesting. Ive always wondered how hard it would be to make a living as a "boutique" tool maker. There are a lot of guys out there now who are making saws, infills, or chisels for sale. I think thats cool. Ive also noticed that many of those guys owed a lot of their success to internet forums. It was on an internet forum that I first heard of Steve, and Mike Wenzloff, and Chester Toolworks, and Blue Spruce, and Ron Breese, and many others. So, I decided to interview Steve and share his story with you. Heres what I learned. Enjoy.

Panel raising plane in curly maple. Steve Knight achieved a high level of craftsmanship in his planes. He used the Krenov method of plane making, even on traditional ones like this panel plane.
FWW: What was the first tool you made? Why did you make it?
SK: I think it was a smoother. My hands were really suffering from all of the sanding I did making furniture. I had heard about hand planes, so I bought a No. 4 smoother from Patrick Leach. Mind you, I couldnt even use a plane at that time, and I dont know if I ever got that No. 4 working. But I did want more planes. Unfortunately, I couldnt afford them, so I had the idea to begin making them. It was a struggle and for a while none of the planes I made worked. I had a boxful of non-working planes. I made those early planes out of red oak, I think, and glued on an ebony sole to combat wear. I then gave up on woodworking for about a year. I didnt get back into it until a friend asked to use my shop. I let him, in exchange for cleaning it. My shop, which is small, was so stuffed that it took him about two weeks to clean it! With the shop clean, I started making planes again. This time something clicked and I was off. Those first curly shavings really hooked me. Still, it was a struggle. I was not an accurate woodworker and my planes werent square. It took a lot of effort to get the bugs out and to get the planes working. I was learning to build planes, tune them, and sharpen the blades all at once.
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Three Legged Race

Here’s a little recap of what’s been going on in the shop.

The Greene & Greene Adirondack Chair features a nice tapered indent on the front legs. This feature is much easier to make than it might first appear. A simple jig (inspired by Darrell Peart’s design) straddles the leg and when used with a router outfitted with a straight bit and guide bushing, its a no-brainer. A perfect indent every time!

Now because this is a Guild Build, I like to show alternative options whenever possible. So I decided to try my hand at carving a foot similar to one I saw on a Greene & Greene plant stand. I have absolutely no training in carving so I just did my best to replicate the design and the results were passable. Still needs some refinement and I can definitely use more practice. But you get the idea.

As a third option, I showed how to make a leg that is commonly found in Greene & Greene pieces and it features nothing more than a little slope at the foot on all four sides. Here’s a nice shot of all three leg options. I’m still going with the tapered leg indents, but it was nice to review a few different designs.

The next thing I worked on was the side legs of the chair. The trickiest part about these bad boys is the angled tenon. But my Incra 3000 was up to the task! Some careful attention to the miter angle along with a razor sharp dado blade results in perfect angled tenons.

After a test fit, I noticed my tenons were just a little long. So I decided to shave a few thousandths off using my smoother. I just sharpened the iron last week so I was anxious to see what this puppy could do. After a couple passes I was pulling up .002¨ shavings. Now that would put a smile on any woodworker’s face!

If you’re interested in joining us on this build, check out all the features and benefits of a Guild Membership!

And on a completely off-topic note, Jax and Lexi wanted to say hi. Don’t let Lexi’s smile fool you. She’ll rip your face off if you try to come into her yard. And Jax, well, let’s just say he has been working for years on his special trick: balancing a single blade of grass on the tip of his nose.

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Its A Matter of Perspective

A week or so ago I was chatting with a new SketchUp user. He was asking if he could control the perspective in his views of his model. As it turns out there is a lot of freedom to control the SketchUps camera. In the Camera menu you can choose from Parallel Projection, Perspective or Two-Point Perspective.

Typically the default camera setting is Perspective. As you can see  in the image above, the horizontal lines, although parallel in reality, appear to converge toward vanishingpoints on the horizon. Things at greated distance will appear smaller. Although it doesnt show in this view, the vertical lines also converge toward a third vanishing point. If the cameras point of view is from above the horizon the vanishing point will be below the horizon. this can make the model look smaller at the bototm than at the top. This image was created with the camera set to 28mm focal length to bring both vanishing points within the drawing window.

The default setting for the camera in Perspective view is 35°. The perspective effect from the converging lines is fairly obvious here. You can even see that the vertical lines appear to converge.

With the camera set to 28mm, the perspective effect is quite strong.

At 85mm, the perspective effect is subdued but its still there. This is actually a pretty nice view for furniture pieces.

A focal length setting of 200mm compresses distance and lines dont appear to converge at all.

To addjust the angle of view of the lens in Perspective mode, you can either go through the Camera menu and choose Field of View or you can click on the Zoom tool. Then just type the value you want. You can type either a focal length or the angle of view in degrees. If the label in the Measurements box shows "Field of View" and "deg." and you want focal length in millimeters, enter the units, i.e. 85mm and hit Enter. The label with change to "Focal Length" and the value will be shown in millimeters. If you want to go back to Field of View, add "deg" after the value.

You can also choose Two-Point Perspective which will cause the vertical lines to be drawn parallel to each other. After selecting Two-Point Perspective from the Camera menu the cursor will change to the Pan tool (white hand). You may find you need to pan the camera up or down to see the entire model. Note that if you select the Orbit tool the camera will go back to normal Perspective.

Finally, the Parallel Projection mode results in lines drawn so they dont converge at all. this is also referred to as Isometric Projection. There is no reduction in size as distance from the viewer increases. This view is a common "3D" view created by 2D technical drawing methods. There is sometimes value in this sort of drawing especially if you need to be able to scale parts off of the drawing. On the other hand, it can be a bit jarring for those who arent used to looking at this type of drawing. If you are making images for a client to look at, you may find they have a better time reading perspective views instead of Parallel Projection. In any case, you have your choice.

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Editing SketchUp Materials

Sometimes I find I want to give the idea that the wood grain material Ive used in my SketchUp model has been stained, shellacked or varnished. there are some limited controls available under the Edit tab in the Materials browser. Often, though, it is nice to be able to use an external image editor such as Photo Shop. Fortunately this is very easy to do in SketchUp. Before you can actually do the editing in your external image editor, you have to tell SketchUp what editor you want to use and give it the path so it can find it. Go to Window>Preferences>Applications on the PC or SketchUp>Preferences>Applications on the Mac. Browse to find the program you want to use and choose it. In my example, I am using Paint.NET which is a freeware application that works quite well. You only need to make this setting once and it should be available any time you need it.

So to edit a material first get it into the In Model materials library. You can either apply the material to a face or faces in the model or you can simply right click on the material thumbnail and choose Add to model. In this example I painted all of the surfaces with this material. Then, in the In Model library, right click on the thumbnail and choose Edit Texture Image.

The image editor you selected in Preferences will now open with the material image ready for manipulation.

Make the desired changes to the color. If you use additional layers in the image editor remember to flatten the image before saving.

After youve made the desired changes to the image, save it. Once the image file has been saved, go back to SketchUp, youll notice the thumbnail image and any faces to which youve applied the material will show the change automatically.

Short, easy and sweet. Note that this doesnt modify the texture image in the original library. It only changes the one in the In Model linrary. If you wish to save the modified texture, open the secondary pane in the Materials browser. Set the lower pane to the destination library then click and drag the thumbnail from In Model to the other library.

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Showing Off Your SketchUp Inventory

  It recently occurred to me that I could create display rooms of my furniture models in SketchUp. Im not sure what benefits I can achieve by doing this, but it is fun to assemble furniture in the context of the rooms in the house. I suppose this was partly an experiment - how many furniture pieces could I include before SketchUp bogs down. (I never reached a point of noticeable degradation in performance. )Yes, this creates big files, as these pieces of furniture are very detailed and full of complex surfaces. And I just scratched the surface, not applying textures, colors, and fancy room treatments.
Here is my redwood shed out back with included furniture. The shed - a timber frame construction - was designed in detail in SketchUp. Ive included several pieces of Shaker furniture installed there - a garden bench, blanket chest, cupboard, table, and Windsor chair.
Here is our family room that includes, a corner cupboard, Maloof chairs, lowboy, entertainment center, breakfast table, Windsor chairs, mahogany bookcase, and sideboard.

This is so much fun, I may just assemble furniture in all rooms of the house.
Tim

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Elongated Holes in SketchUp

In my book Chapter 9, Step 30, there are instructions for placing elongated holes in the Top Frame for fastening the Top. Theyre elongated to account for seasonal movement of the Top cross-grain.

Here is one of the elongated holes shown with a Back Edges Style so you can see the hole all the way through the Top Frame.

After making one hole, I ask the reader to copy the hole to the other locations in the Top Frame. Here I am moving a copy of the hole down the red axis.

After placing it, the reader will surprisingly notice that the hole is "covered over" - having a face. So, is there a hole there or not?

Also, you are horrified upon clicking the hole covering, the entire face of the frame piece is selected. You cant get the small face of the hole to select only. My book explains this phenomenon - it is normal SketchUp behavior. As explained in Step 30 - "trace over a small part of the hole outline" and the hole face can be selected and deleted, leaving a hole.

Here is way not to "trace over a small part……". These are extraneous lines and will cause problems in removing that face of the hole.

Rather, make sure you zoom in close and, with the Line Tool, trace over a line segment endpoint to endpoint.

 

Now youll be able to select the hole face, and delete it.

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