Teacher, Mentor, Friend…and now he is gone.

Sam Maloof passed away this past Thursday at his California home. At the moment all I can say is that my life has been blessed ever since our paths crossed 31 years ago. I am sure there are thousands of woodworkers and patrons who share similar sentiment… Today is a tough day.

On behalf of the Bridge City family, we extend our heartfelt sympathy to Sam’s family, friends and crew.

I am proud to say that I have never met anybody who touched as many people as Sam. His absence is beyond my feeble words.

Blessings and Peace Sam.

–John

This is a story of betrayal and deception. And it could happen to you.

I rarely am seduced by wood but the Douglas fir plank pictured below has a lot in common with Benjamin Franklin–I traded a piece of paper with Ben’s picture on it for this board.



It was an eight foot long S4S  two by six and finished out at 1-1/2″ thick. With my discount it cost me $82 bucks–now this board has something in common with George Washington too.  Not bad for a board with secret.

A friendly clerk took it into a back room and hacked it into 24″ lengths, a free service that allows the boards to fit in my car and are just big enough so Louie dog would not declare them chew toys–my life gets complicated at times.

Back at the shop and with one board firmly clamped in a vise, I took a swipe with a bench plane and the surface was like….(insert cliche here)…glass! All I needed was one more pass to clean up the entire edge.

Yikes–the last pass created ridges that any experienced woodworker would recognize as a nicked iron x 100. Out comes the iron and I thought to myself, this iron has to be defective because there is no way Douglas Fir is more abrasive than teak (which everybody knows is a hybrid wood made of stone and some kind of petrified brown grass.) Furthermore the nicks were HUGE.

The iron checked out to be hardened (a file skipped across a corner) so I sharpened it and went back to work. One pass, and it was awesome… the second pass was trash. Great. Now I have a mystery to solve. It would have been more fun if I had a hot assistant (As Seen On TV!) to help guide my thoughts.

I needed more wood, a different species of course (quick learner here)  because I was running out of time. While I was perusing the lumber stash, Carl, my favorite resource for obscure wood knowledge ambled by and we started our ritual chit chat. When I mentioned my experience with the Douglas Fir his eyes went straight to floor– looked like Louie dog when caught chewing one of my shoes…

“Oh, somebody should have told you about that wood.”

“What about it?” I asked.

“We got a really good deal on that stuff–the timber crews had to get special carbide tipped chainsaws to cut the trees. We don’t know how to work it without wrecking tools.” After a few awkward seconds of silence, Carl asks,

“You want some more?”

“No.” I replied. “Where did it come from?”

“Off the side of Mt. St. Helens–the profit margin is awesome–can’t believe nobody wants it but us!”

I did a little further research and learned that the pyroclastic flow of pumice and rocks and steam and mud was traveling around 400 miles per hour when this tree got in the way. Unbelievably, the finer particles penetrated the entire tree.

“Thanks Carl–see you in a couple of weeks.”

Case solved.

–John

The project I am going share came from a ¾”x ¾” x 18” stick of Eastern hard rock maple—and I only used half of the stock. It was made entirely without electricity.

All four faces of the stock were hand planed and I tried my best to keep them square…more on this later.

With two lengthwise rip cuts (used our JS-7 saw) I had two strips 18” long approx .21” thick. These two strips were ganged in a vice and I peeled off four .21” square pieces. Each piece had two adjacent faces planed smooth, all I cared about was that they were bigger than 3/16” square—my target size.

The little system below consists of a base material (I don’t know what it is) and some scrap maple. Took the plane over to our table saw and put two small pieces of 3/16” acrylic on the table and rested the nose and heel of the plane sole on these height gages. Using double stick tape, I fixed two acrylic skid plates to the sides of my plane flush with the table saw top. The “gap” was 3/16”.  Actually, this whole setup relies on double stick tape.



Each stick was placed in this little jig with one good face down, and the sawn faces were planed parallel (you know you are done when the plane quits cutting). The stock needed to be dead square so I took great care to make sure the iron wasn’t skewed. And then the strangest thing happened…

The gap in the fixture that traps the stock from side to side was approximately ¾” wide (I didn’t want to wear the iron in only one spot). I noticed when I began to plane that these little sticks bent (front end of the stick hits a stop) from the cuts. And yet, all four sticks came out dead square!

Apparently, the bend in the stick somehow kept my top surface perpendicular to the sides. I don’t know how this works, but I have done this enough to know that it works. Others smarter than me can chime in if you understand what is at work here…

For those of you that understand the concept of “tolerance stack”, this project was a disaster in the making if I could not control my net sizes. Check this out, after tweaking the iron just a bit, my sticks ended up between .185 and .1865—every one of them. This little planer works fantastic. If you think I am crazy to work to these tolerances, you are selling yourself short…

For this project I needed 34 pieces of wood, 2 needed to be exactly 3.406” L, 11 needed to be 2.33”L, and there were 21 pieces 1.26”. Using the Jointmaker Pro and digital calipers, the pieces were cut, plus a bunch of extras. The net length of all my pieces all were within two thousandths of an inch. This isn’t bragging, the project is not doable without this precision.



The only joinery were corner bridle joints–lots of them. Each stick had a male and female end. The males were cut first. I spent about an hour on setups and about 5 hours to cut all the joints. (The females took the longest [duh] because after the shoulder cuts I nibbled out the center with multiple passes.) Great care was taken to make sure the depth of each cut was perfect—there was no way to clean up the joinery after assembly so I needed net perfect results.

Not a fancy setup–notice the paper shim on the left  to kick the reference face square–all of this was scrap stock.

The little business card strips on top were flip-down shims to nibble out the center portion of the bridle. The scrap dovetail piece had a piece of sandpaper on the end–my fingers got sore holding these little pieces without help. Lastly, there are two rulers stuck to the tables so my parts did not fall through the gap between the tables.



With much care, the setups were finally confirmed.

Once the joints were all cut, I waxed the faces of each stick—this is the only finish required for this project.

Next, I started assembly. So for this project I was fighting, stock cross-sectional tolerances, length tolerances, joinery tolerances, assembly tolerances and glue. The results bring a smile to everyone who has had a chance to hold it….



There are six sides to this cube–each is unique. Looking through the piece is joyful exploration. None if it possible without working as carefully as one can–and truly the work was another reward.

So, like most ideas, they have offspring…

–John

I recently had dinner with Marc Adams and his family (founder of the Marc Adams School of Woodworking) and he shared a story that makes my head hurt.

Marc uses a Bridge City try square in one of his trade show demonstrations (it is about 25 years old, crusty and beat up, but reliable.) Recently however he could not find his square so he hopped over to a booth that had Chinese made machinist squares for sale.

He grabbed a square in hopes of borrowing it for his joinery demo. The proprietor of the booth informed him that would not be a good idea because that square–and all the others–are out of square. He then informed Marc that he tells every prospective buyer that the squares are off before they pay for them.

Marc asked, “And they still buy them?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because they are cheap!”

If you can figure this out please write me because I really feel stupid.

–John

Every company goes through inventory shortages and we are no exception.

We recently caught our shipping clerk stealing from us. The picture below is from our security camera.



Needless to say, it will be awhile before Delano Andrew Goff finds work. We do hope however that his mother (who many of you know as Marissa) returns to work soon.

–John