Welcome to Gus’ Guild! A blog dedicated to sharing information about building Arts and Crafts furniture. From designing to finishing we’ll eventually cover every aspect. So sit back and enjoy the journey; or sit up and drop me a line–feedback and comments are always welcome.
This is part 2 of a three-part post on Sharpening, Installing, & Setting up a Mortiser. The first post can be read here.
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With the hollow-chisel tune-up complete, I turn my attention to sharpening the auger. This can be accomplished with a wide array of tools, including a flat file, a triangle file, a sharpening stone, or an auger bit file. I use a combination of these options, starting with an auger bit file and finishing with a small sharpening stone.
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If you cut a lot of mortise and tenon joints, like I do, a good mortiser can be a very handy tool in your shop. Like most power tools, when its cutters become dull, their effectiveness is greatly reduced. But unlike most power tool cutters, a mortiser’s cutter, comprised of a hollow-chisel and auger, is quickly sharpened using readily available shop tools and techniques. Another important reason to master this technique is that in working with oak, which Arts and Crafts furnituremakers have been known to do, our mortise-cutters dull quickly and frequently. It’s also a good idea to use this technique as a honing step before installing a new mortise-cutter in your mortiser. In this series of posts I’ll show you how easy it is to sharpen a mortise-cutter.
Well, we’ve done it again — Saturday afternoon we released 5 new Arts and Crafts tables into the wild! Thanks to Tom, Gerald, Gary, Mike, Chuck and Kelly Mehler’s School of Woodworking.
Last weekend while attending the annual Arts and Crafts conference in Asheville, NC I spent a lot of time at the Antique Show. One of the benefits of this is being able to study a large sampling of arts and crafts furniture. In this post I’ll show you the many different ways I found to construct solid-wood legs. The following photos show four different ways that settle legs were assembled circa 1902 – 1910.
AKA: Staff Instructor– the pseudonym the Fairfax County Public Schools ACE program has bestowed upon me. For those local to the Washington DC/Northern VA area, I will be teaching how to “Building an Arts and Crafts Tabouret Table” next spring; the class runs 6 consecutive Saturdays beginning April 2nd through May 7th. Details of the class can be found on page 6 of FCPS ACE’s online catalog.
I’m excited to announce in 2011 I will again join Kelly Mehler at his School of Woodworking in Berea, KY. I’ll be teaching my Arts and Crafts Table class the week of 21 -26 March 2011. Class details and registration information can be found on Kelly’s website. I hope your sign up to join us.
Kelly Mehler School of Woodworking; Build an Arts and Crafts Bedside Table; Arts and Crafts Bedside Table