OldTools Archive

Recent Bios FAQ

-16 "Kurt W. Andrews" <71603.776@c...> 1970‑01‑01 Bio

Ok... so here goes nothin!!

Hi,

My name is Kurt W. Andrews 

I'm 33.  I live in south St. Louis county.  I'm married, and have one son.  I
have a B.S. in computer science, and I'm a thesis away from an MS in management
information systems.
I'm a senior software engineer by profession and a woodworker at heart.  At
least I hope to be. 

I fell in love with woodworking when I was in high school, but haven't had the
space or the tools to do much of it since then.  We bought a house a couple of
years ago, and I can have a small space in the basement to set up shop. I've
decided to do all of my work with hand tools because of the limited space and
funds, as well as the fact that the shop is in the basement.

I've got two problems:
   1) most of the trainning I got in High School was on power tools
   2) I'm going to have to start from ground zero.

I've got a couple of dilemas I'm trying to solve in setting up shop.  If anyone
has any suggestions, help would be greatly appreciated.

1)  my wife bought me one of Norm Abrahm's books and I was trying to figure out
how do do some of the projects using just hand tools until I noticed that all
but three of them required boards or panels at least 73 inches in length.  I
bought the best bench I could afford, Garret Wades small shop bench, but it has
a max. clamping distance of 54 inches.

2)  I'll probably be outfitting my toolbox from Patrick Leatch's  inventory, but
I've never tuned any of these types of tools before.  How can I be sure the
sides of a plane are square to the sole and the sole is flat.  I'm really kind
of worried that I'm gonna make this investment and then destroy all of the
tools.

I hope these questions don't seem to stupid, but I'm thowing out most of what I
learned in school until I can be sure I understand how it fits with using hand
tools exclusively.

3) Where can I find a well made shooting board.  I'm not sure I have the skills
yet to make one but I guess I could try if I could find plans somewhere.

4) What is the hand tool of choice for doing round - overs, chanmphers, ogees
and the like on the edges of boards & panels.  I've tried to find out more about
combo & multi planes, but these seem to be used to mill the surface of boards as
with molding.

I hope these questions don't seem to stupid, but I'm throwing out most of what I
learned in school, until I can be sure I understand how it fits in with using
handtools exclusively.

Getting this message to you is some what of an experiment for me.  I sent it
directly from my compuserve acount to the address listed for public reply in the
messages in your archive.

Thanks
   --Kurt



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