http://www.scribd.com/doc/2378054/Woodwork-JointsHow-they-are-Set-Out-How-Made-and-Where-Used-by-Fairham-William

I leafed through it (virtually of course, lol) and found a gem right away. The author makes a point about shooting boards and says they seldom produce a truly jointed edge. This by itself was a revelation as I had always presumed shooting boards produce a perfect edge. He suggests alternating the boards so that you compensate for the inaccuracy and end up with a flat panel. The book also illustrates a lot of joints. I think I will read this book cover to cover tonight and become a bit more informed.

One thing I am not sure is the murky area of copyrights. If am violating any forum rules, I will be happy to remove the direct link.

I am hoping this is a temporary setback in my woodworking adventure.

iPhone is not the ideal device to follow the projects. Nor is it a good blogging device. I wonder if people find iPhone convenient for anything but a brief browse.

This is my second piece of furniture (and I use the word pretty loosely). I was walking around in my local Borg and noticed this piece of funky looking pine. I don’t know what this effect is due to. The wood in the dark spots seems really brittle and chips very easily. I suspect it is something related to fungus but I am not really sure. It was only ten dollars and I took it home with me after getting it cut into 2 four-foot long pieces.

I wanted to try my hand at building something more challenging than my first project. Personally, I don’t think it’s really necessary to look for challenges in woodworking; several present themselves in even the simples projects. How about learning to cut your very first dovetail joints in softwood which also happens to chip a lot? It was as frustrating as it can be and I damn near gave up the woodworking! All you guys make it look so damn easy!

Anyway, I stuck to it over three weekends. Finally, I got it completed to some level of satisfaction. I originally wanted to call it a Shaker Style Stool but changed it as I really screwed up many details and don’t want to offend any purists who might be reading this. Let me just call it loosely based on that fine Shaker Style and leave it at that.

I watched Alin Dobra’s videos (http://lumberjocks.com/jocks/alindobra/blog/2755) on cutting dovetails by hand (I just realized he is also a Computer Science Professor! I am a software engineer myself and the CS connection is pretty cool!) The need to find better ways to sharpen tools is now quite apparent. I am pretty set on getting a Work Sharp WS3000. I also realize I need a work bench with a real vise. So was the need to have a marking gauge (just how many tools does this hobby require anyway?) Anyway, I could see my skills improving with each tail and pin I cut.

I made tons of mistakes. When I dry fit the joints, I flipped the top board and thought I needed to fix the pins only to realize the mistake later. That led to that ugly gap which I filled with putty whose color doesn’t match the wood :( But I am encouraged by the end result and think I am improving. It is really sturdy and should last a while.

Thanks for checking it out.

Personally, I find it hard to sketch interactively all the time. I have always liked the text-in-graphics-out style the most. So, I ended up learning enough of SU API to create plug-ins. I have a plug-in to create a rail I will work on the stile soon and post another entry on it.

The table I am planning needs a bead but my plug-in can only do a bevel at this time. I have to research some more to fix this issue, but that is lower on my list of items.

The script is at http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dgh832np_27c73cd5gw. Save the text to a file in SketchUp’s plug-in directory and restart it. You should see a new Draw->Rail menu item which will start by asking for dimensions and proceed to create a rail.

Here is an image of the generated rail.