OldTools Archive

Recent Bios FAQ

45833 kpopple@e... 1998‑07‑03 Bio: Ken Poppleton
Hi all,  I have been a listening from under the porch for about a month
now and would like to come out to see who is doing the talking.  I have
been looking for a group like this for many years, just knew there had
to be others that liked to work wood nice and quietly.  It is nice to
have found this porch.

Ok Me: I am Ken Poppleton in my late 30's, and reside in Salt Lake City
Utah, USA.  Grew up in the Seattle area where I make annual returns.
Have a wife and a 3 year tool user who also dislikes noisy things.  Most
of the day I am a Software Engineer/Electrical Engineer.  On the wood
front, I have been doing serious shavings since about 1988 and many
small items as a small boy.  Family wise for wood work, my
great-grandfather was a door patcher.  As told by my grandmother, "He
would patch a stack of doors in a day.  The process of patching a door
was to first identify the bad places in the door, and use a sharp knife
to cut a diamond shaped chunk of wood from the door and then replace it
with a good piece.  After the patch was in place you could not even see
the patch."  I assume this is a veneer patch (much like seen on
plywood).  Am I correct?  does anyone know more about the door patching
occupation?

My wood working has included many items, a couple of items I will share:
Built my workbench over a period of about 3 years.  I found that the
workbench would have really helped, but of course that is why I was
building it.  It is a European style bench with a single row of dog
holes (square) and a end vise.  The shoulder vise has not been completed
yet.  This is made of all hand worked hard maple.  It was a lot of work
to hand plane the rough 8/4 stock for the top.  the top is made of 3
boards, tongue and grooved together.  The tongue was cut with a Stanley
#78 I purchased while on a trip to Oregon about 1 year into the project.
When I got home I looked up how to cut a grove to match, and just knew I
had to get a router plane.  I was lucky, in visiting a antique shop the
next day (where only a couple of wooden planes are ever found) there on
the shelf was a Stanley #71 1/2 router plane!  That allowed me to finish
up the bench.  It has been very useful over the years.

Another project has been a narrow table out of hard maple.  Again the
top is 8/4 and tongue and grooved 2 6 inch wide pieces together.  I
started on the Legs which are to be turned, but have not yet completed
the lathe to do the turning on.  The Legs have been rough cut using the
Lathe rails clamped to the bench and a small electric sewing machine
motor (SWMBO's sewing machine still attached) to turn the block of wood.
Oh to get the 16/4 leg stock, which I could not find except at unheard
of prices, I surfaced and glued two 8/4 chunks.  I found that a scraper
really helps to take small areas of wood off, so I built a scraper
plane.  This plane looks like a jack plane, ~20" long but with the blade
stuck in the wrong way.  It works great!  After many weeks of work on
the leg halves, the two surfaces matched so well that the two halves
would stick together (or so it felt) when attempting to lift on off of
the other.  They do stick, much like two pieces of glass will if they
are flat, as I was able to lift the lower leg on one end by lifting the
top piece! Well SWMBO has been very patient with this project.  It has
been sitting idle for about 3 years now while I work on our house
addition.

The last project is a pair of 12" x 10" windows.  Again hard maple, and
all cut by hand tools.  I even had to make the molding plane as I did
not have what I wanted.  I must admit I have been using noisy p*w*r
tools as I have just completed building another 13 full sized windows
which I needed to complete in a minimum of time.

That is enough for a bio.  I will be posting some questions to the group
that I have been attempting to get answered for a long time. Maybe some
more stories later also.

Till then, take care
Ken Poppleton



Recent Bios FAQ