Monthly Archive

The other day I griped about early bidders on eBay. I also posted the entry on LumberJocks, where it got more hits (332) and comments (26) than any other I wrote over there. One great byproduct of that post (both here and there) was finding out what other people use to snipe eBay auctions. But first, a paragraph for the uninitiated (those who need to be taken on a snipe hunt).

Sniping is a method of bidding in which the bidder places their bid with just seconds left in the auction. Provided the bid is higher than any other, sniping gives others no time to top their bid with another. Some people would claim that this is unfair, but if they put in their maximum bid to begin with, they shouldn’t complain about not having an opportunity to top it. Sniping may be done manually - I do it sometimes myself - if you synchronize your watch with eBay’s clock (by refreshing the screen a lot to see if you’re in sync) and monitor the auction right up until its end. If you do this, be sure that you have gone to the bidding confirmation screen prior to sniping. But lately, there are several software programs and other services that do the sniping for you. So now on to the programs.

The comments on my eBay blog entry yielded five different online sniping services. Feel free to add more in the comments section. Here is a brief summary of all five:

• eSnipe: Free trial (14 days), and then you’re charged 1% of the winning bid (minimum $0.25, maximum $10.00). Keeps track of your older auction item descriptions, whereas eBay deletes them from your profile after 3 months. Offers bid groups (more on that later).
• Auction Sniper: Free trial (first three auctions), and then you’re charged 1% of the winning bid (minimum $0.25, maximum $9.95). Offers bid groups.
• Bidnapper: Free trial (15 days), and then you have monthly charges: $7.99 for one month, $18.99 for three months, etc. Offers bid groups.
• JustSnipe: Free service is limited to 5 snipes a week, with a snipe time of 8 seconds. Pay service is $5.00/month with unlimited sniping and a default snipe time of 5 seconds (but can be adjusted down even further). I could find no information about bid groups so it may not be offered.
• Gixen: Free service is limited to 10 snipes at one time, with a snipe time of 5 seconds. Uses your eBay login so no registration is required. Pay service is $6.00/year with no limits and a few other perks. Offers bid groups.

Bid groups are cool. Let’s say you are watching several Stanley rabbet planes. There are five auctions that end while you are on a weekend camping trip. You add all five to your sniping program and put them all in the same group. The first winning bid cancels all the other snipe bids in that same group.

Here’s my armchair quarterback summary: If you want a strictly free service, Gixen seems the better choice over JustSnipe. You can bid on many more auctions, and the snipe time is less by a few seconds. As for the pay services, eSnipe appears to have a few more features than Auction Sniper (for about the same price), while BidNapper seems a bit pricey. Of course, a frequent eBayer might save money in the long run with BidNapper’s flat rate.

If anyone else uses a different service, please list it in the comments along with the same kind of information I gave - website, prices and features. Hope this is helpful!

The following is a rant, provided free of charge to my readers.

I’m sick and tired of inexperienced eBayers who are jacking prices up on items I’m wanting to buy. I doubt that they are doing it intentionally. In fact, you may be among the guilty ones. Here is the kind of person I am ranting against:

You see a perfectly nice item, maybe even a perfectly nice old item. You see that it is listed for, say, $10.00. You commit and bid, thinking to yourself, “You know, I just may walk away with this beautiful 1930s tool with original box and replacement blades for only $10.00!” Let me guarantee you that you won’t. There are, no doubt, at least 30-50 (if not hundreds) of people who scour eBay every day for these old tools. They will not be troubled by your little $10.00 bid. All you have done is provoked them, along with a handful of other naive eBayers who think that they will win the tool for $10.50, $11.00 and so on.

My personal belief, and feel free to prove me wrong, is that early bids do nothing but jack up the final price of the item. Early bids get more people involved early, and will more likely result in bidding wars. All well and good for eBay and for the seller, but not for the buyer. This, incidentally, is the very same reason that when I sell on eBay, I start the bidding on every auction (no matter the item) at $1.00. I’ve only once gotten anything less than a fair price for what I sell.

I wish people would wait until the last couple of hours to place bids. I want the price to stay low as long as possible, to the extent that some people forget about the item in their ‘Watching’ list. I myself place one bid, as late as possible in the auction. I’ve already done my research and have firmly decided what my top bid will be. So if I am outbid in the end, I don’t mind.

I just hate having that bid topped with three days left in the auction, before I’ve even placed the bid. Jerks!

</rant>

P.S. I hope you all know that I really don’t take any actual offense to your eBay practices. I’m merely indulging in a little whining after seeing yet another sought-after tool go over my limit with plenty of time left in the auction. Don’t worry, I’ll pick myself off the floor in a while.

No pics today, but there’s not much new to look at compared to last week’s final fit. A big step was rabbeting the walls for the bottom to fit up into. After doing one wall, I got some very helpful feedback from Dave and Luis that I should do a dado instead that the rabbeted bottom would fit into. The advice came a day too late, although I did consider doing the dado on the other three walls. But alas, I don’t have a blade small enough (the smallest I have is my 1/4″ chisel) to make a very narrow dado, so I ended up just going ahead with the rabbeted walls. On the plus side, the bottom is fitting in very snugly, so I may just add a couple drops of glue on the ends, as Luis suggested, and that should do it; as long as my wife doesn’t drop a wrench into the box, it should hold.

One thing that I had mentioned in the post I wrote after doing the first rabbet was that I busted both pins (since the rabbet doesn’t go all the way to the edge, it’s tricky). It was frustrating, but I glued them up and moved on. Well, wouldn’t you know that I busted at least one pin or tail on each of the remaining three walls, no matter how careful I was? I tell ya, this is the last time I work in miniature (that’s what it feels like). But you know what? It actually helped me to relax more, as I trusted the glue and tried even harder to not bust anything on the next wall. I told my wife that even if she looks hard, I don’t think she’ll see more than two places (out of seven) where I had to glue up something I broke - if she even sees those.

So now that I’ve rambled on about the dovetails and rabbets, on to the next step: the top. Here’s what I’m thinking, and please give me your feedback on whether it’s a good idea or not. The end grain looks ugly and screams to be covered up. So mitered edges, yes? But how would it look/work if I used a strip of sapwood (same wood, kempas) for a little color variation like this:

I’m thinking that the middle strip would be pretty thin, like 1/4″ or less. What are your thoughts? Any other ideas? And as for size, I think that I will make the top just a touch wider than the walls, so there is just the very slightest bit of overhang. It seems appealing in a tactile kind of way. Then there’s the issue of glue-up and saw-off. It seems from the pictures I’ve seen that it’s okay to saw off the lid in between (or even on!) a tail. Is that right? Seems kind of funny to have the dovetails go *zoop!* up with the lid when you open it, but maybe that’s the way they do it.

So to summarize, here are my questions for you esteemed woodies:

1. Am I on target with my general box top design?
2. Will the use of sapwood sandwiched between heartwood present any problems?
3. Will I really cut the top off in between tails?

Thanks so much to those of you who have commented here and on LumberJocks. I’m learning a lot!

I just posted a product review over at LumberJocks on my new Japanese ryoba handsaw. Here is what I said:

I just got my very first Japanese handsaw the other day, and have really enjoyed breaking it in. I thought I’d just give you this review via some bullet points. Just know that my handsaw experience to date is a cheap Stanley crosscut saw (like any guy would own) and a Crown gent’s saw.

Pros:

• Because the saw cuts on the pull stroke, I found it extremely easy to start a cut with zero downward pressure.
• The saw cuts fast and does not require a lot of elbow grease to keep it going.
• The blade can be adjusted to be at a slight angle to the handle, which will allow for working at the occasional awkward angle.
• The double edge lets me rip and do cross cuts just as easily. I found it kind of tiring ripping and resawing with my little gent’s saw.
• The saw cuts clean. I mean clean. The picture above (click it for an even bigger view) shows a comparison of how my three saws cut. If you can cut straight, you probably wouldn’t even need to plane it.
• It looks freakin’ cool, man. And if we ever have an intruder in the house, I’m going right past the kitchen knives and heading for this puppy.

Cons:

• Since the saw is double-edged, it bends fairly easily. This requires greater concentration when sawing in order to keep the blade moving in a perfectly straight line.
• Because the blade gets wider as it moves away from the handle, you cannot use the back of the blade as a crude level. You need to more closely monitor how far down you’re cutting on the other side (dovetails, for example).
• The teeth are more fragile, since only the tips are treated. From what I’ve heard, this makes the saw stay sharp longer, but also means that the teeth are more succeptible to breaking. No personal experience on that yet, but it’s made me extra gentle with it.
• While you can sharpen it, most people advise against it, so you would have to buy a replacement blade. They only cost about $20, so no big deal I guess. A possible plus is if other Japanese blades (with different TPI for example) fit into my handle, which I haven’t checked on.

I got mine from The Japan Woodworker (via Amazon - I had a gift card) for about $35.

Okay, so you’d think that doing the dovetail joints would have been the hardest part of this box, right? Me too. I figured on this nice leisurely Sunday afternoon, I’d do the simple task of cutting the rabbets into which the box bottom would fit. Then I’d glue the dovetails and heck, maybe even glue the bottom on. But it turned out to be not so simple, and after much groaning (and nearly cursing), I’m left with two busted pins and only one rabbet done.

See, I realized that on the walls the rabbets have to be stopped, because otherwise I’d cut off the bottom pins and part of the bottom tails. I really wasn’t sure how I was going to do this, since I don’t have a tiny little saw or anything. So I started with a nice deep knife line - as deep as I could manage. Then I started carefully chiseling away toward the knife wall. But on nearly my first pass chiseling near the pin, I broke off part of the pin. Long story short, I had two breaks on each pin (see pic below). Fortunately, I have all the pieces so I will be able to glue them back together. I figured I’d might as well carry on chiseling since the pins were already shot. So in the end, I got an acceptable rabbet for one wall.

I’m kind of hesitant to begin the other walls. Part of me thinks I might be better off to just go ahead and chisel off each pin at the rabbet line, just get it out of the way, and then do the rabbet as normal and glue the pins back on. With such tiny pins and tails, it might actually be the easiest way.

Yes! Finally. The joints have all been cut, and the box is perfectly squared up. No glue yet, and the base and top have not even been started. This was a good exercise. And while the joints are far from perfect, it should look really nice when it’s all done. Interestingly, the joints didn’t necessarily get better as I went along. Each one had its own complications, and I have to say, I don’t really enjoy doing such small dovetails. My new Japanese pull saw arrived yesterday, so the last joint was done solely with that one. It was nice. Here are the thumbnails of the four joints, in the order I did them - click on any one to see a hugemongous version.

One of the biggest lessons I learned was about marking the base of the tails and pins. I had been marking them with pencil, and then following up with a knife before beginning to chisel out. But while I followed the guideline “always leave the lines” when cutting my pins and tails, I failed to follow that on the base. As a result, I cut a little too deep and there are tiny gaps in a couple joints. Here you can see what I’m talking about:

So now I have a few questions:

1. Should I try to fill those gaps? I heard something once about mixing sawdust with wood glue. I suppose I could also insert tiny wedges in there and cut/sand them down. It’s not the end of the world with them like that, but just thinkin’.
2. What do I do next? Do I glue first, before planing or sanding it down?
3. Regarding the bottom, what do you suggest - do a stepped rabbet (if I’m even using the right term) so that the walls go all the way to the bottom on the outside, and are recessed into the box bottom on the inside? Having the end grain exposed really takes away from the appearance so I want to cover that up.
4. Same thing with the top - I can’t just slice a piece of my board and hinge it on there up on top - the end grain really looks kind of vulgar. So would you do mitered edges glued to an interior panel? I’m really a newb at box building so maybe this is a fundamental thing here - I just don’t know.

I’ll close with a shot of the back, since I’ve already shown every other angle…

A couple of weeks ago I made a dovetail template to use when making the box for my wife (I’m halfway through the joinery, by the way). I blogged about it here and even posted it as my first ever project on LumberJocks. I was pretty proud.

Maybe too proud. I thought the folks over at Homestead Heritage (where I learned the template) were a bit narrow-minded when they only offered the 1:7 ratio (in addition to the square). I figured it would be even better to offer the 1:6 and 1:8 as well; after all, the template has four working edges, right?

The first time I tried marking out my tails, I realized a major deficiency: the template will only mark one side of the tail. You have to get a bevel gauge or protractor to mark the other side. No problem, I thought - I’ll just become a pins-first guy. My thinking was that I’d put the template on one edge of the end grain to mark one side of the pin, and then go to the other edge to mark the other side of the pin. Uh-uh. The angle is the same.

So this template is mostly useless (except for the square), and I need to make another one. I made updates to my blog entries and project page, for those who read it in the future. But I felt the need to make the “product recall” notice here as well, for those of you who read it and are planning to make your own. Stick to the original plan! Square on one edge, and both directions of a single ratio (I’ll probably do 1:7 or 1:8 since I mostly work with hardwoods). What goes on the fourth edge? Maybe I won’t even cut a fourth edge, or I’ll add another square.

I posted a poll over on LumberJocks, but for some reason the code would not work here. So if you’re interested in weighing in on whether I should look to get a Stanley #78 rabbet plane or a wooden shoulder plane, head on over there and cast your vote!

Funny. In Malaysia, land of rampant logging (legal and illegal), I can’t seem to find really nice wood. Well, maybe the wood is nice, but it is stored horribly. It’s typically kept out back behind the hardware store under a big tin roof, all stacked right on top of each other.

So you can imagine that I would be somewhat tempted by the beautiful boards lined up at the back of Ace Hardware (there are a few branches of Ace here in Kuala Lumpur). I’m so glazed over that I don’t even realize that they’re really just laminated poplar and oak, sold for shelving. On the bright side, though, the surfaces are flat and smooth.

Here are the prices of these boards - let me know if they are particularly high or low; my guess is insanely high. Prices have been converted to U.S. dollars:

poplar:
1×12x36: $29.29
1×6x72: $21.28

oak:
1×12x48: $50.57
1×12x36: $44.71
1×8x72: $53.05

Today when I finally got ready to start chopping my dovetails, I felt cramped way over on the left side of the bench where my handyman vise is precariously mounted in 1/8″ plywood. So I dismantled the sweet sharpening station setup I just blogged about and jimmied this little rig. It was solid, and apart from the worry that my saw would graze the clamp (it didn’t really come that close), it will do nicely until my bench is made. Once my bench is made, I’ll hopefully have my choice between a leg vise and wagon vise.

Oh, and since I feel so cramped on the left side of the bench, I’m thinking of angling my leg vise to buy me a few more inches. Landis talks about this in his book, and I think it’s a great idea. It’ll also allow me to clamp wider boards without worrying about the screw being in the way.

So I’ve finally gotten the walls of the box flat. Well, mostly flat. They still wobble just a bit when I put them together, but I don’t want to plane these things down to wooden cards trying to get it just right. Plus, it’s not like I’m face-gluing them together. When they’re joined together as a box, I think the variance will be negligible. Two of the walls were 1/32″ thinner (on average) than the other two, so those were the ones I cut down for the short sides. The picture above simply shows the walls propped up on the base (or maybe it will be the top, I haven’t looked at them yet to decide).

So now before I cut the tails, I have two questions:

1. What looks better on a box - tails on the front walls or pins on the front walls?
2. Should I clamp the opposite boards together and cut the tails on both at the same time?

I’ll likely begin this tomorrow. Pictures, as always, will follow!

I’m glad that I had a sharpening session directly on my temporary workbench, before I finished (or even started, ahem) my “real” bench. After a while, the water and slurry started to fly, and the amount that sloshed over my simple little sharpening stone base would have given me a fit over my nice workbench surface. Time for a dedicated sharpening station.

But with a 6×8 shop, I’m hesitant to “dedicate” space for anything outside of my bench. Fortunately, the shop has a big huge windowed area that is covered by a big huge grate (this used to be the external wall when the house was first built). I’ve learned to put that grate to good use, and will likely use a lot more of it as I go along. Here you can see what I’ve got set up there so far: a C-clamp rack, a torpedo level mount and two shelves made from scrap. I screwed little blocks onto the back of the shelf brackets, and that’s what’s holding them on. I can just lift up and pull them right off or move them higher or lower.

And here is a closer look at my new sharpening station. Soon, I’ll mount some short dowels underneath the base that will slide into matching holes on the shelf. That way I can use the shelf for other things until it’s sharpening time again. But the shelf is plenty sturdy during sharpening - no movement whatsoever!

Before I get to making the dovetails for my wife’s dovetail box, I thought I’d make this little template. The design came from the fine folks over at Homestead Heritage, where I was privileged to receive a day of hands-on joinery instruction.

I did modify the design somewhat. The original design has a square on one side and a 1:7 dovetail angle on the other, and is identical on the flipside. Since many woodworkers advocate using a 1:6 ratio for softwoods and a 1:8 ratio for hardwoods, why not have them all represented? So I have a square and a 1:7 on one side, and on the other side I have both 1:6 and 1:8. I think I’m going to follow up with my woodburner and burn those ratios on the appropriate face, just so I don’t have to guess.

I think I will get a lot of use out of this jig, and not just for dovetails. Having a tiny square can be pretty handy sometimes. I know that I have on occasion cursed my huge 12″ Starrett square, nice as it may be.

EDIT 2/14: This template, as I designed it, is useless. Read more on my newer entry.

So I’ve got the pieces for my box cut mostly to size. The walls are all currently about 5 1/2″ - I’m going to trim just a bit off of two of them (to get them to 5 1/3″) and I’ll trim the other two down to 4″. But first, I have a planing issue.

I suppose it’s just part of my journey, but I can’t seem to be able to get my pieces (any of them) really flat. First, I was dealing with tearout. Apparently, even when you’re going with the grain, there is a direction the wood likes to be planed and a direction the wood doesn’t like to be planed. Or is it simply time to resharpen? I think a good sharpening is in order regardless.

Having a good flat face kind of affects everything, though. If the face isn’t flat, then you can’t square the edges, even with a shooting board, because you’re not resting the board flat against it.

When I put all four walls up against each other, they are all over the place as far as evenness. So what can I do? Do I try to clamp them all together, edge to edge, and plane them all at once? And then flip them all over and do it again?

Argh.

On a brighter note, I did feel some sense of accomplishment with my planing at certain points. It was cool to see end grain shavings - a first for me.