Rasps seem to be under-appreciated in the woodworking world. They have a somewhat medieval appearance, lacking the outward elegance of a fine spokeshave. Some of us have had unpleasant experiences with cheap rasps that may have lead to the erroneous conclusion that this genre of tool is good for nothing more than hacking at the corners of a home DIY plywood project.

Au contraire, the hand cut rasps made in France by Michel Auriou and his small group of highly skilled craftsmen are magnificent tools capable of bringing the finest sensitivity to shaping wood. They must, of course, be well cared for, and this includes cleaning. The cove-like teeth will naturally clog as have the #9 and #13 grain rasps (left and right, below) while shaping mahogany. There are two stages to cleaning them. 

The Tools for Working Wood catalog transmits Michel’s advice to clean the rasps with a natural bristle brush since any metal brush, even brass, will eventually dull the teeth. I use and like the small natural hog brush sold by TFWW. I angle the bristles of this little brush toward the coves of the teeth and use vigorous circular and side-to-side motions to get the rasps adequately clean during a work session, as seen below. However, this does not completely remove the embedded wood, especially in the finer rasps. I do not want to repeatedly store them in this condition since eventually more teeth will become clogged, reducing the effectiveness of the tool. 

 A close up view of the #13: 

Here’s my solution. I get several drops of CMT 2050 (widely available at woodworking suppliers) on the rasp, spread it with my finger, and half a minute later brush it with the hog bristle brush. Voila! The previously stubborn embedded wood easily disappears and, after patting them dry as necessary, the clean rasps (bottom photo) are ready to be put away and await their next duties in perfectly ready shape.

CMT 2050 is a non-toxic solution with a pH of 9.5-10.5 (MSDS) and rust preventive properties. No rinsing is required. After using this method on Auriou and Nicholson rasps for at least a year, I have not found any rusting or undue dulling. Since I would not want to suggest to my readers a method that might do any harm to these valuable tools, I checked with Michel Auriou to see if this method was safe for his rasps. He graciously answered my inquiry and stated “I think there is no risk to the use of that product.” Knowing the excellence of his tools and having had the awe-inspiring experience of watching Michel stitch (cut) the teeth on a rasp at a Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Event a few years ago, I will take the advice of this superb craftsman.

With the holidays past, maybe you’ve got a nice gift certificate for your favorite tool catalog, or maybe you’ve got a few bucks left over after gift giving and feel that the time has come to be the recipient of your own munificence. Better still, maybe you actually need some new tools to complete a compelling woodworking project. Well, you’ve come to the right place for a bit of unsolicited advice. Here goes.

Personnel directors of pro sports teams and kids choosing sides for playground sports both know the value of choosing the best athlete available, often despite specific positional needs. A fine athlete who is assigned a role somewhat outside of his usual position will usually perform better than a lesser athlete even if that is the latter’s usual role. For example, even though a football team has enough safeties and needs a linebacker, they ought to draft the athletic safety over the mediocre linebacker and probably adjust their defensive schemes accordingly. Similarly, I would rather have a great math teacher, in preference to a mediocre history teacher, be the substitute for a history class.

You see where I’m going here: buy the best woodworking tools you can afford, choosing quality over quantity and narrow specificity. I would rather spend money on a Lie-Nielsen jack plane and sometimes use it for smoothing and jointing, rather than have dedicated but cheap smoother, jack, and jointer planes. I would prefer paring with an excellent bench chisel than a with cheap paring chisel, or ripping with an excellent bandsaw than with a cheap tablesaw. The more specialized tools can be acquired in due time, as the work demands.

More is not better, quality is. Woodworking procedures can often be adapted to suit the available tools without changing the project design. For example, one can clean up that slightly rough ripped edge from the bandsaw with the high quality jack plane.

Furthermore, avoid squandering your woodworking budget on gadgets. Instead, build a cadre of quality core tools that will prove their versatility and longevity. A woodworker will often build better shop jigs than he can buy.

There is another, less tangible benefit to surrounding yourself with high quality tools. They engender high quality workworking and a general orientation toward excellence. Indeed, I believe they will foster what we seek: happy woodworking.

I imagine it is possible to do good woodworking with mediocre tools, but who would want to if better options are available? Yet, it would be a rare woodworker who enters the craft with a full set of tuned, high quality tools.

Trying to coax good performance from a fundamentally poor tool is futile. A chisel made of lousy steel or a table saw with a wobbly arbor will never work well. Stay away from these.

At another level there are tools that are OK. They usually get the job done, maybe without a struggle, though not often with ease. These tools are not likely to inspire confidence. A woodworker reaches for this kind of tool not with eagerness but for lack of something better. Practically, however, used with a bit of finesse, these tools may be good enough, or maybe they just allow us money left over to buy other tools or to eat. My drill press falls into this category. That’s life, and so on.

Then there are the tools you really want, those that inspire confidence and are dependable. These are the shop players that you give the ball to in crunch time. While no one would reasonably contend that tools alone make the craftsman, these tools can help make you a better craftsman and are likely to extend your skill and range as a woodworker. Get them on your team.

The odd thing about all of this is that these thoughts gelled due to my recent experience with a very simple tool, a birdcage awl, also called a square blade awl. I had been using a widely available “OK” version without feeling particularly deprived. Then, at a recent Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Event, I was demonstrating at a bench next to Bob Zajicek and his array of Czeck Edge tools. I knew it was only a matter of time – I picked up one of his awls, tried it out, and . . . so that’s how the song should be sung! I could feel how this type of tool should really work. The handle is more than beautiful; it facilitates placing, pressing, and twisting the tool. The precisely formed edges of the blade do the actual cutting and allow it to fly into the wood.

So I bought it, and back home in the shop it is becoming a go-to tool for a variety of tasks including marking and starting holes, boring small holes, and other marking tasks. An excellent tool!

[As with other tool reviews on this blog, this is unsolicited and unpaid.]

I have been using this set of chisels for two years now as the primary chisels in my shop, mostly for chopping joinery but also for many general chiseling and paring tasks. They are beautiful. “Blue paper” steel has been laminated to the soft steel body which has been repeatedly folded to produce a wood grain pattern (mokume). While it was not easy to part with the money to buy them, they have been well worth it.

These chisels, with the exception of the handles, were made in the hands of one man, Teiichirou Ohkubo, who uses the market name “Daitei,” in his very small shop in Yoita, Niigata, Japan. (Spellings of his name vary among Western sources.) He works at a forge established about 100 years ago by his grandfather. I am inspired working with these chisels because, though I will likely never meet Mr. Ohkubo, I sense a personal connection with a craftsman putting some of his spirit into his product which, in turn, assists me in doing the same. That’s a good feeling.

The handmade inscription on the box in the photo below reads, I am told, “made by Dai Tei,” in the lower left corner, above the red personal mark (chop).

Now for the best part. They have been easy to sharpen on Shapton stones and hold an edge magnificently. I use a primary bevel of 27.5 degrees and a secondary bevel of 32.5 degrees. This gives excellent penetration and completely avoids chipping of the edges. Sometimes, just for curiosity, I’ll pause fairly well along in chopping some joints and am amazed to see the chisels can still shave hair on my arm.

They have an authoritative weight and balance in the hand. I have long enjoyed the ergonomics of Japanese chisels though I recognize this is a matter of personal preference. I believe the handles are Macassar ebony, contrary to the vendor’s description. Initially, I had some concerns regarding the handle wood being perhaps too brittle and prone to splitting. I properly set the hoops (I like Joel Moskowitz’ excellent step by step method), and, despite some serious working action with a mallet, have had no problems.

Any imperfections? Yes, of course, but not enough to cause practical problems. The handle on one of the smaller chisels is undersized and there is slight inconsistency in the angles of the side bevels among some of the smaller chisels.

It is exciting and motivating to work with personally made woodworking tools. Woodworkers now are fortunate to have this kind of tool available from not only Japanese makers, but, more than ever in my lifetime, from many outstanding Western toolmakers. By all means, seek out and use some of these personal tools for personal woodworking.

And the winners are . . . end mills! Here’s why.

I do most of my mortising with my trusty Elu 3338 plunge router, currently available as the DeWalt 625, in conjunction with various jigs, most involving a template guide riding in a slot. In the past, I used solid carbide upcut spiral router bits with generally good results, though I often encountered two problems.

First, 1/4″ and 3/8″ spiral bits are usually sold with cutting lengths of 1″ and 1 1/4″, respectively. I often want to make mortises deeper than that. Second, 1/4″ and 5/16″ diameter bits, especially some rare, long-length, HSS versions, will sometimes vibrate in the cut and produce steps on the mortise walls. Even a 3/8″ bit may be made with a surprisingly thin web at the core of the spiral which can cause the bit to flutter when cutting dense woods.

I like standard, four-flute, center-cutting, single end mills in uncoated solid carbide with a plain shank and a 30-degree helix. These are available in longer overall lengths with longer cutting lengths than router bits, thus allowing deeper mortising. I find the cutting action of these four-flute end mills has less vibration and is smoother and more balanced than that of router bits. This results in cleaner mortises. Furthermore, these end mills are generally less expensive than comparable router bits.

The photo at top shows, from left to right, 1/4″ and 3/8″ upcut, solid carbide router bits, and 1/4″ and 3/8″ end mills. The 3/8″ end mill is 4″ long with a cutting length of 1 3/4″. The router bits tend to strain in the cut whereas the end mills purr like a sports car. The mortise pictured below is 3/8″ wide, 2 3/8″ long, 1 1/2″ deep and was cut in bubinga, a dense wood, with the bit at the right in the top photo. The walls are very clean and true.

The disadvantage of an end mill is that the cutting diameter equals the shank diameter. Therefore, I usually mortise with a 1/4″ or 3/8″ end mill using a router collet of the same size for each. A 5/16″ end mill can be used with a shank adapter though I prefer to avoid these adapters. When mortising with end mills, just as with router bits, it is good practice to cut the mortise in small depth increments, always listening to and feeling the feedback from the machine and adjusting your technique accordingly.

Sources for end mills are industrial supply houses such as MSC, Enco, McMaster-Carr, and Grizzly. It will take a while to go through their catalog algorithms or directly study their catalog pages but these are good ways to learn about this type of tooling. The upgrade has been worth it for me.

Since buying the Festool Domino joiner about a year ago, I have developed some notions from the viewpoint of one who values hand tool woodworking. Machines, especially one this innovative, can change the way you work, but not automatically for the better. This tool is an invention to facilitate joinery. The principles of good joinery were not reinvented and should not be abandoned for the lure of a new gadget, even one this good.

Am I glad I bought the tool? Yes. Would I use this to join the legs and aprons of a dining table? No, the tenons are too short and do not give me enough options, such as haunched tenons. Does the Domino replace traditional mortise and tenon joinery? Not a chance.

Here are some impressions from working with the Domino:

• Holding the work and registering the Domino fences on the work surfaces are critical to success with this tool. The plunge must be parallel to the face of a frame member or perpendicular to the surface of a leg.
• Use the thickest, longest, and most dominos that reasonably fit.
• When assembling, apply glue on all surfaces to ensure wetting – generous on the mortise walls, light on at least first half of the portion of the domino that will be buried in single mortise.
• Lightly chamfer the entering edges of the domino to help distribute the glue on the mortise walls and prevent it from being scraped off.
• The surfaces of the dominos seem somewhat burnished. Consider lightly sanding them to improve glue wetting, but not to remove thickness.
• Consider putting a bit less of the domino in the long grain member and more in the cross grain member to make it act like a longer tenon. Adjust the mortise depths accordingly.
• It would be helpful if Festool made additional dominos sized for the full width cut (i.e. mortise length) which is 9.5mm (3/8″) wider than the domino. You could make your own. (Hey, Festool…)
• Longer dominos would be better but that would involve a different machine design.
• The dominos fit very tightly in the narrowest mortise length (13.7mm + bit diameter). If you do not have room or do not want to use one of the longer mortises, you can get a slight play by sanding off some of the width of the domino. I use a horizontal belt sander to do this quickly.
• On the earlier version of the machine with the metal registration pins (which I own), it would be better if the pins could fully retract when you do not want to use them, especially when they happen to be close to the edge of the work piece.

Bottom line: this is a good tool, but to make good projects you still have to be a good woodworker.

Much has been written about the Festool Domino joiner including reviews here and here, helpful discussions at the Festool Owner’s Group, and an excellent supplemental manual.

A Google search will yield many references to carbide burnishing tools used to form the hook on a scraper. I first came across the use of carbide in a commercially made burnisher in the old wooden-body version of Veritas’ Variable Burnisher which houses a short carbide rod. (The body of the current version is a molded man-made material.) I later purchased their Burnisher which has a 1/8″ carbide rod projecting 3/4″ from a simple handle. Despite its small size, I found myself using this tool in preference to all of the many (too many) steel burnishers I’ve bought or made over the years. I just needed more length.

Pictured above is my homemade Burnisher for Life. Three and one-half years ago I asked the folks at Innovative Carbide to make a 3/16″ diameter 12″ highly polished carbide rod. I explained the intended use and they recommended an appropriate grade of carbide (10S) with excellent wear resistance. It cost about $50. I drilled a hole in a $4 handle to house 5 ½” of the rod with a press fit, which thus is effectively stored for future use, though I doubt it will be needed any time soon.

This is by far, no contest, the best burnisher I’ve ever used. The very hard and smooth carbide gives effortless, controlled burnishing. The length, though more than necessary, allows a combination of forward and sideways motions creating smooth action against the steel.

There are a few other homemade carbide burnishers to be found on the internet, but currently there is no need to make your own. Lie-Nielsen and Blue Spruce make carbide burnishers that look excellent, as expected from these makers, though I have not used them. The Blue Spruce is listed as 1/4″ in diameter and the Lie-Nielsen appears to be similar. I like the pressure produced by the 3/16″ diameter but I’m sure 1/4″ would work well and, I suppose, be sturdier.

A full size carbide burnisher, store bought or homemade, is relatively expensive but I’ll bet once you try one, it will be the only kind you’ll want to use.

I find myself using only two of the three scraping tools pictured here. The odd one out for me is the #80-type cabinet scraper, with the spokeshave-like wing handles. While there is a wide range of valid opinion on this subject, and a legion of other scraping tools, here are reasons for my preferences.

The humble card scraper is the ultimate in simplicity and utility in a woodworking tool. I use .024″ thick scrapers for general smoothing, and .020″ scrapers for more delicate or focal tasks. I keep a .032″ scraper for unusually heavy work but find it too tiring to bend for general work. I do not use scraper holders since they decrease the sensitive control of the tool in my hands. Since I am using the scrapers for finishing a surface, not dimensioning it, the card scraper works well on areas up to a small table top.

All of these scrapers are hardened to about Rc50. Lie-Nielsen, Bahco, and Lee Valley are fine brands. I keep a few .020″ x 1″ x 2″ mini scrapers (from Lee Valley) that are very handy for touch up work in restricted places. I also keep some softer .020″ scraper stock to easily file into special shapes. Gooseneck and curved scrapers complete the set.

The cabinet scraper’s main disadvantage is its short sole. It lacks both the handiness of the card scraper and the control of the scraper plane. Despite skewing techniques, I find it is unreliable at the beginning and end of boards, and has neither the finger tip control nor the steadiness to avoid occasional blade chatter. The one pictured is a fine quality tool that I’ve owned for over 20 years, and the aftermarket Hock blade is excellent, but it now mostly sits idle. I’ve briefly tried the Veritas model which has a slightly longer sole but it didn’t fly for me.

The folks at Veritas have, fortunately for us, a healthy obsession with scraping, and one product of this is their superb Scraping Plane which has a variable blade angle and the ability to bow the .055″ blade. I once owned a Kunz version but it lacked the ability to bow the blade. Lie-Nielsen makes a similarly large scraper plane, an excellent tool, but its much thicker blade is a different working approach which I found too fastidious to deal with.

With the Veritas, cutting depth is controlled with a combination of the blade angle and the amount of bow. Varying each of these also alters the cutting feel, useful for different woods. The large sole keeps the work flat and prevents digging in, while the tool’s mass helps avoid chatter.

After much experimenting, I find it easier and more effective to prepare the blade with a 90 degree edge (like a card scraper), contrary to the usual recommendation of 45 degrees for scraper planes. This seems to give a more solid, though less aggressive, cutting action, and is pleasingly reminiscent of a card scraper, but with the mass and registration of the big body plane.