Friday 21 November 2014

My First Project: Jewellery Box - The Finish

I had read many articles and watched many videos that showed how a piece dramatically comes to life when finish is applied to it. So I was really exited about this step in the process. When I was done, what had started as a dry, white plank of pine had transformed in to something I was really happy with as my first project.


My finished Jewellery Box! (Click for more photos)


Selecting a finish


Getting your head around the plethora of options present in wood finishing can be daunting for any new woodworker. For a new Indian woodworker what complicates matters more is that the local terminology for these things is nothing like what you'll read on the internet. The lack of proper (or any, in many cases) labelling on the products that are available locally does not help either. Overall this can be rather frustrating for an inexperienced person like me.

After much confusion and hunting around I stumbled upon a ready to use shellac product on the internet, and perhaps because of my good deeds in a past life I actually found it in a local hardware store. It was marketed as a clear shellac finish so I assumed that it would be one of those blonde shellac varieties that have a minimal amber tint that's otherwise characteristic of shellac. And that's the kind I wanted.

Now while I was still working on the jewellery box build, it so happened one day that we needed to organize some kitchen space. So I took this opportunity to knock together a simple plywood rack and decided to try out my chosen shellac product on it. Lucky I did, because the turmeric yellow tint that it produced was not at all to my taste.

My plywood rack finished with a ready to use Shellac finish.
So it was back to square one for choosing a finish. This time I decided to waste no more time and picked up the first Polyurethane (PU) based wood finish I found on shop shelves. I chose one that said Golden Brown on the box, as I wished to give the white pine a slightly darker hue.


No! I did not rip off the label on that mineral spirit can. That's how it came from the shop! Sigh!

I prepared the finish by diluting it 50-50 with mineral spirit for easier application. Now if you doubt whether the plastic can in the above photo indeed contains mineral spirit that just shows how amateur and silly you are. It obviously is mineral spirit. Er... no matter there no label any kind. But hey, what else can it possibly be. 

Applying the finish


I removed the hardware from my box so as not to get any finish on it. This turned out to be a bad idea as when I subsequently installed it back once the finish was applied and done, the screws did not go in that tightly and one of the screws in fact caused a minor split. Not sure if this was due to pine being such a soft wood, but henceforth I'll always install the hardware last.

Once the box and the lid were separate, I sanded their surface down with #120 grit sandpaper followed by #220 grit. I cleaned off the dust with a damp rag. I then sprayed water on the whole thing and left it to dry. This resulted in raising the grain of the wood slightly, which I then sanded back down with some #220 sandpaper. This step prevents the wood-grain raising from happening on application of the first coat of your finish.

I got a 1" synthetic bristle brush and used it to apply the first coat of the diluted PU finish. It went on quite easily and dried completely in about 6 hours. Although I did leave it overnight for good measure.

The box after the first coat of the Golden Brown PU Finish.
Once dry I sanded it lightly with #400 grit sandpaper. I then repeated the process to put on a second coat. Finally I applied the third coat and by now the wood grains had really started coming in to their own. I even got a hint of chatoyancy in some parts. Although advised, I did not do a final round of sanding after the third coat had dried. The surface at the point was already quite smooth.


Third and final coat applied and drying.


With the hardware back in place I was almost done. The one thing that was left was to install the glass. I got a piece of 4mm glass cut to size. I had to sand its edges with #80 grit sandpaper in places to get it to fit. I then cut two little 3/4" squares, 1/4" thick out of some scrap. I cut them further in half to get 4 little triangles that I then shaped using a file to create little stops to hold the glass in place. I simply stuck these on to the inner edge of the lid frame to fix the glass between them and the 1/4" lip I had already had on the lid.


The little triangular pieces glued and held in place with some wedging action using two pieces of scrap.


To finish the box off I bought some maroon velvet cloth and stuck it to the inside bottom of the box.

The end of a beginning


The end result had come out all right. The process had taught me many things and was a delight to go through. Here are some more photos of the finished box.

My journey with kaath has begun on a great note!

Tuesday 18 November 2014

My First Project: Jewellery Box - The Build

From the time I started planning my first project I had decided that I would write about it. Given the amount of time I had spent on the design I expected my build to be fairly smooth. I imagined my write up to be something like - Step 1: Did this... Step 2: Did that.... so on and done!

However, soon in to my build I realised that this is not a craft that will suffer a fool for too long. By day two of my build it had become clear to me that my write up would be more like - Lesson 1: Made this mistake, learnt this... Lesson 2: Made that mistake, learnt that.

So here's my jewellery box build. One lesson at a time.



Lesson 1: A sturdy work surface and effective job holding equipment are absolutely essential for working wood well.


Like every new hobbyist woodworker even I had only a makeshift workbench. It was an old, bare bones study table with a frail, box-section frame and a sagging particle board top. In terms of clamps I had bought four C-clamps - two 2" and two 6". This is the only kind that seemed to be available in the local market.

Unfortunately this set up did not take me too far. When I started trying to square up my pine plank with my No. 4 smoothing plane the table shook and shifted vigorously with every stroke. This made planing next to impossible. Also, the shoe of my plane kept catching the C-clamps that I had used to fix the plank to the table top. This was clearly not working.

I was badly missing a woodworking vice. After looking around in the market for a bit I was not too happy with the quality of the ones I found for the price I was being asked to pay. Moreover, even if I got one it would be of little use without a half decent workbench to mount it on.

What does a tinkerer do when faced with such a situation. Why, build one himself of course. So I put together a design of what I called the Poor Man's Woodworking Vice! (more on that in a separate post)


My Poor Man's Woodworking Vice

This worked great for holding the plank for planing the edges, but planing the faces was still a challenge as the plank was wider than the limit of my humble vice. I finally made do by awkwardly wedging the plank between two pieces of thin MDF that were fixed to the table top with C-clamps.

Needless to say this arrangement yielded a board that was far from perfect in terms of stock preparation.


Lesson 2: Getting a piece of wood four-square is harder than it seems.


I proceeded to laying out my cut list on the plank and cutting out my main 8 work pieces (4 for the lid and 4 for the box). This was the first time I used Paul Sellers knife-wall technique for making a cross-cut. Actually doing it myself after having watched videos of the master do it over and over again was great fun!

The rip cuts were not nearly as much fun however. Despite my best effort my saw tended to slant slightly away from the line on the underside of the board. This left me with edges that had a slight taper.


The pieces of the box and the lid cut roughly to size. Notice the taper on the edges, particularly visible on the thin lid pieces.


It was straight on to getting the individual pieces four-square using my No. 4 and some elbow grease. Now that I had my vice in place things were a bit better in terms of holding the work pieces. This was aided by the fact that the pieces were now ripped down to widths that were within the limit of my vice jaws.

What followed was a frantic couple of hours of going in to the vice, a few stokes with the plane, out again, checking for square, in to the vice again and repeat. Somehow, no matter how hard I tried I just couldn't get all the faces and edges to be true and square. The wobbly table didn't help. Every time, there was at least a few places along the face or edge of the work piece where I could still see a tiny sliver of light shining between the wood surface and the edge of my square. I finally had to stop with the closest I could manage without planning down beyond my required dimensions. Much to my dissatisfaction.

Another challenge I ran in to was getting my box pieces down to the right thickness - from a little over 3/4" down to 1/2". I first tried to re-saw the pieces to thickness with my hand saw. But that proved to be too inaccurate. I had a hard time getting my saw to be in one straight plane. I then tried to use a chisel to remove material by splitting the long grain. But the length over which I had to work was too long and I just could not manage it without risking having the splits go across my marked dimensions. I finally resorted to planing it down to thickness. A lot of planing.

A note about planing pine with a plane that is cutting well - It is addictive! At least it was for me. It was a joy to see shaving after shaving whisk out of the mouth of my plane. Had I not been limited by the amount of wood I had, I am sure I would have planed through a few cubic feet of pine that day just for the feel of it... not to mention, with pine, the fragrance of it!



Lesson 3: Box joints were not meant to be cut by hand.


After the pieces were dimensioned it was on to joinery.

I laid out my box joints as per design. I cut the single, central finger on the two side pieces first. This was straightforward as I could do this just with a hand saw. For the back piece I had to remove material from the middle in order to be left with two fingers on either side. I did this by making two cuts down to required depth with my hand saw and then used a coping saw to cut off the part between the saw kerf left behind by the first two cuts.

I kept my cuts slightly shy of the lines. I then refined them down to the line with a chisel. But when I mated the two pieces together to form the joint they didn't fit well. I tried to refine the cuts further with a file but that turned out to be a bad idea. It resulted in a slight curvature on the surfaces of the fingers due to the natural hand filing action and also removed the crisp edges left by the saw cut. This further exposed the gaps in the joint.


My failed, hand-cut box joint.
It is not that apparent in the photo above, but my joint was loose as hell. So much so that when kept on the table like that, I could easily separate the side piece and pick it up without event moving the back piece!

I wanted to understand why it had been so difficult to cut a joint that seemed so simple on the face of it. Some reading on the internet revealed that box joints were made popular, if not introduced, along with the advent of machine woodworking. Apparently, with a table-saw and a simple jig one can cut perfect fitting box joints all day long.

The material also seemed to suggested that in the amount of effort and care needed to cut an accurate box joint by hand, one might as well cut a dovetail joint instead.

Hmm... now there was an idea!


Lesson 4: Doom comes upon those who try to cut dovetails on their first project.


I decided to try it out. I decided I would cut a single tail on the side piece, to fit between two pins cut on the back piece. I made a quick template for the tail using a piece of card paper. I laid out my lines and made the cut using the only hand saw I have - one that has just 7 teeth to the inch (yes, you're right - Ouch!). After the tail piece was cut I used it directly to lay out the pins on the back piece. These I then cut using the hand saw and coping saw. Refined the cuts with a chisel.

And then the moment of truth. I mated the two pieces... but it just wasn't meant to be. My coarse tooth saw had left behind too rough a kerf, that was also out of square, for the joint to have any chance of being good. Not to mention (ahem!) my lack of skill and experience.

Lesson learnt - there is a good reason why hand cut dovetail joints command the reputation they do.

After that disaster I made sure I proceeded in the right direction. i.e. when you fail on a difficult joint, you go on to trying an easier one... not one that's even more difficult. Duh!
 

Lesson 5: Three important rules of woodworking - Sharp tools, Sharp tools and Sharp tools!


I finally chose to go with a rabbet joint for the corners of the box. I decided I'd cut a 1/2" wide by 1/4" deep rabbet on the ends of the front and back pieces to receive the 1/2" thick side pieces. I marked them directly off the side pieces, then cross cut down to just shy of my 1/4" depth line and then used a chisel from the end-grain side to split and pare the rabbet to the final size. With my beginner's skill they did not quite turn out absolutely true and square, but they were good enough.

Next up were the 1/4" by 1/4" rabbets on the bottom edges of all four box pieces. These would form a continuous recess on the bottom of the box to receive the 1/4" thick bottom panel. One good side effect of the rabbets I cut for the corner joints was that now I only had to cut a through rabbet on all four box pieces, instead of stopped rabbets I would have had to cut on the front and back pieces as per the original plan.


Bottom rabbet on the front and back piece. Original plan vs. new plan.


These rabbets were slightly different to the ones I cut for the corner joints because both the cuts on these ones were along the long-grain. Neither could I make a cross cut using a knife wall on one side, nor could I come splitting and paring from the end grain side. I was not too sure how to proceed. I tried to use the chisel on the first one.

Working with the front piece, I laid it flat so that the inside face was now facing upwards. I placed my chisel vertically on the line and started with a small vertical chop. Then I tried to pare from the other side down to the depth of my chop. I repeated this to progressively go down to my required depth, and then proceeded likewise along the entire length of the rabbet.

Now, I had only sharpened my chisel once at the start of the project. So by now it was relatively dull. But I continued with it in my laziness, all the way along the length of the rabbet. I could feel the going getting tougher with every inch that I proceeded. I tried to compensate for the dull chisel by applying more force on my chops and pares. This made me loose control on several occasions, causing ugly blow outs.


Rabbet cut using a chisel. Notice the several blow outs on both edges of the rabbet.


So for the back piece I decided to use the saw. The idea was to make a rip cut from both sides converging at the corner of the rabbet. This proved to be quicker and easier, although once again my dull saw let me down and the result was still a rather ugly looking rabbet.


Rabbet cut using a saw. The cuts are not clean due to the saw not being sharp.
I finally realised it was time to sharpen up. I sharpened my saw and repeated the above technique on the two side pieces and got substantially better results.


A much cleaner cut with the sharp saw.
To finish off the box pieces I just had to cut a dado each on the front, back and the left-side pieces to receive the internal partitions. Having learnt my lesson, this time I sharpened my chisel before I started working on them. Things went much smoother thereafter.

With the box pieces finally done, it was time to glue them up. I used my shop made corner clamps to hold the corner rabbet joints in place.


The box glued up using my home made corner clamps. One of the internal partition piece also in place in its dados to help align the box during glue up.

Lesson 6: There is a right joint for every occasion. For everything else there is heartache.


With the box done, it was time to work on the lid. I had planned to join them using mortice and tenon joints, just so that I could try my hands at cutting one. My lid pieces were 3/4" thick so I laid out 1/4" thick mortices and tenons.


The mortices and tenons laid out using my home made marking gauge - another brilliant idea by Paul Sellers.

I used my drill machine to remove bulk of the material to form the mortice hole. I then proceeded to using a chisel to square up the corners of the cavity. And before I knew it, another disaster.


Trying to cut a 1/4" mortice surrounded by just 1/4" material with a 1/4" chisel was a bad idea.
There was very little material around the mortice I was trying to cut. It just couldn't withstand the hammer blows I was striking on the chisel. I guess every joint has a right time and place. This wasn't one for a mortice and tenon.

I had to think of something quickly to salvage the situation. I already had holes drilled for all the four planned mortices. Luckily I had not touched the tenon pieces yet, so they were intact. I remembered reading about the loose tenon/floating tenon joint. One where we essentially cut a mortice on both the pieces to be joined, and separately cut an independent tenon piece which is then inserted halfway in to both the mortices, thus joining them. I already had holes drilled in one side of the joint. I drilled similar holes in the other pieces as well. I then needed to fashion a loose tenon with a round profile (A loose tenon with a round profile!?... it's called a dowel you fool!)


Dowel stock made out of a long 1/4" x 1/4" scrap piece using drill machine and sandpaper. Note: Make sure to hold the sand paper with some padding in your hand, it gets really hot when the wood spins at a high speed while rubbing against the sand paper.
So I used a 1/4" by 1/4" scrap piece that had come out of the rabbet I cut on one of the box pieces, chucked it in to my drill machine and clasped a piece of 80 grit sandpaper around it as the stick spun around. I sanded it down to the same diameter as the shank of the drill bit I had used to drill the mortice holes.


My loose-tenon/dowel joint components ready for action.

It was a little tricky to align the two mortice holes perfectly with the dowel inserted such that all the edges and faces of the work pieces being joined were flush with each other, but overall this worked out great. Nothing that a little sanding afterwards couldn't fix. I soon had the lid glued up and in my corner clamp.




Next I needed some sort of a lip all around the inside edge of the lid frame to hold the glass. Originally I had planned to cut a rabbet in the lid pieces, much like the ones I cut on the box for the bottom panel. But since the lid pieces were rather small and I was not exactly sure how to cut stopped rabbets by hand, I decided that rabbets were not the way to go.

Finally I cut out 1/4" by 1/4" strips from a scrap piece of wood I had lying around, cut them to length, hand mitred the ends with a hack saw and knife, and simply glues them on the inside edges of the lid frame. This formed a nice 1/4" lip for the glass to rest on.



Had to resort to some creative clamping - few pieces of jute twine and an additional thin stick (not seen in the photo above) wedged between the two pieces did the trick. I repeated the same steps for the two short pieces once the glue dried on the first pair.

Lesson 7: The joy of one small success will erase the frustration of many a failure. Persevere!


With the basic box and lid construction done, the next task was to attach them with hinges. I got 1/2" by 1/2" by 2" brass butt hinges with matching brass screws. To set the hinges I had to cut out hinge mortices on both the lid and the box.

Starting with the lid, I laid the mortice out using the hinge itself. I then knife walled the cross-grain cuts on the ends of the mortice. I also made a knife cut along the side of the mortice that was along the long grain, very carefully trying to control my knife so as not to be (miss)guided by the wood fibres, instead to stay along my intended cut line. I used the marking gauge to mark the depth. And then went in with my chisel to begin to very carefully pare out the waste wood. I tried to be extra patient and resisted any temptations to bulldoze my way at any point. And it paid off!

My cleanly cut hinge mortices. The hinge held in place by itself, a sign of an accurately sized mortice. As an aside, I had to cut my screws down in length to make sure they were right for the thickness of my lid.
I was utterly delighted with the outcome. The edges were straight and square, the corners crisp and the hinges fit snugly in their mortices. This was highly encouraging and I couldn't wait to go on to the mortices on the box.

Deciding on the depth of the hinge mortices on the box was a bit tricky. I had to do several test fits before I got the right depth so that, when closed, the lid sat flat on the the box along all four sides. I in fact ended up cutting the hinge mortices on the box a little too deep and had to compensate by inserting little pieces of card paper packing between the mortice and the hinge.

Card paper packing to adjust the depth of the hinge in its mortice. Shh! Come on, no one is ever gong to see them in the finished piece.
Marked and drilled the holes for the latch on the front of the box, and I was ready for the finish!


Conclusion


Finishing the construction of my very first project was highly rewarding. After spending months watching and reading on the internet I had finally built something with my own hands. It was an overwhelming feeling.

Through the many mistakes I made along the way I learnt valuable lessons that will help me to hopefully do a better job on my future projects.

Onwards to applying the finish!

Tuesday 11 November 2014

My First Project: Jewellery Box - The Design

For my first woodworking project I decided to make a jewellery box as a gift for my mother on her birthday. I was inspired by a jewellery box design by Gary Rogowski as featured on this really cool video post by The Wood Whisperer - Marc Spagnuolo - another great woodworker I love to follow.

With that as the starting point, I had a few more constraints and considerations for my design. For one, after much struggle, I had managed to get a 4 1/2" W x 36" L plank of pine, a little under 1" thick, from a local plywood and hardware store. That was all the material I had to work with.

Secondly I wanted the lid to have a glass window, so that one could see inside without having to open it (Genius! I know...). This was more of a necessity for me because I had no where enough wood to glue up in to a board to make a wooden lid completely.

And lastly, I wanted to incorporate as many woodworking techniques as I realistically could in to the design so as to get a chance to work on them as part of the build.

This is the visualisation of the design I came up with. A much simplified version of Gary's original design.


Jewellery Box design visualisation. With the lid closed.


With the lid open. Made the 3D model using SketchUp and rendered using Maxwell for ScketchUp.

The Cut List

I needed nine pieces at the minimum. Four for the box, four for the lid and one for the handle. Ideally I needed more for the inside partitions but after the main nine pieces I wouldn't be left with any material for them, so I decided to make them out of some 6mm MDF I had. This is how I laid the various parts out on my piece of pine. I made sure I kept between 1/8" to 1/4" margin everywhere.

The main nine pieces laid out.

The Box

I decided to make the box out of 1/2" thick pieces, just like Marc's build. That seemed like just the right thickness, not too heavy not too light. Two short pieces for the sides, and two long pieces for the front and back. They would be joined together using box joints with a single finger on the side pieces and two fingers on the front and back pieces.


The front and back pieces. Unlike the drawing the dados for the internal partition would be 1/4".

There would be rabbets along the bottom-inside of each of the four pieces to receive the bottom of the box (to be made out of the 6mm MDF).


The side pieces. Again 1/4" dado instead of the 1/2
" in the drawing.

On the side pieces this rabbet would be through from end-to-end, whereas on the front and back pieces they would need to stop 1/4" shy of the end so as not to show through the box joints.

All four pieces would need dados to accommodate the internal partition pieces. The top of the box where the lid would rest, would receive a chamfer detail on its outside corner. The top of the box would also need mortices on the back piece for the hinges, something not shown on the drawing.

The Lid

For the lid I decided that the four pieces would be joined using mortice and tenon joints. I would have perhaps used a simple mitre joint to construct the lid, with a groove on the inside edge of each piece to hold the glass, almost like a picture frame. However I was tempted to try my hand at cutting a mortice and tenon.

I decided to have the side pieces span the entire width of the box, so that their end grain is visible on the front and back, and would kind of continue the alternating end-grain-long-grain pattern formed by the box joint on the box below (look at the visualisation above with the closed lid to see what I mean).

Front and back pieces of the lid. With a through rabbet to receive the glass.

Side pieces of the lid. Stopped rabbet to receive the glass.

Additionally, I decided to use rabbets instead of grooves/dados to hold the glass. I would have the rabbets face towards the box when the lid is in the closed position, the glass would sit inside these rabbets and then I'd have four little triangular pieces on the corners of the lid frame holding the glass in place.

Little triangular pieces to hold the glass in place.
This choice of a rabbet over a groove was down to the fact that cutting a clean groove over one entire length of each of the four lid pieces didn't seem feasible to me with my limited hand tools - essentially a (fairly coarse toothed) saw and a chisel.

To finish things off, the edge of the lid would receive a chamfer detail both on the top and bottom. And of course, the mortices for the hinges.


The Handle

This was the part that I thought through the least. Basically I came up with a shape that seemed nice to me and hoped to be able to carve it out of either the piece of pine in my cut list for the handle, or out of a scrap piece of teak I had managed to get from somewhere. The idea was to have the handle be of darker colour than the pine, to match the colour that perhaps the end-grain on the pine would end up with after applying the finish, so as to have a nice two tone appeal to the box joinery and the handle, like the one made by Marc.


Ambitious, you say?

So here I was, with a design for my first ever woodworking project that included box joints, mortice and tenon joints, through rabbets, stopped rabbets, through dados, chamfers, carving the handle and mortices for hinges - all to be made using hand tools alone (Gulp!).

In my next post in this series I shall detail the actual build. Time to make some saw dust! 

Monday 10 November 2014

My Journey With Kaath

Hello! I am an enthusiast woodworker from Pune, India and this is my woodworking blog - Kaath.

Kaath (काठ ) is a Hindi word for wood that originates from the Sanskrit word kāṣth (काष्ठ ) which literally means timber. While lakdi is the Hindi word for wood in general, kaath seems to be used in context where wood is used to craft something. So, this is the word that first came to my mind when I was thinking of a name to relate to my woodworking. 

My journey started about a year back when I stumbled upon some woodworking videos on the internet. There was something about woodworking that instantly attracted me towards it. I believe it was the idea of creating something with your own hands. Something that was real, physical, in three dimensions. Something that you could see and touch and feel. As a software engineer I was coming from a background of creating things that only existed in the abstract world of 0s and 1s. Working with wood seemed to offer this intriguing new world where one could actually bring a piece of work to life in the physical world.

For the longest time my woodworking hobby was limited to watching videos and reading on the internet. Almost all of this content was of foreign origin, mostly from the US and UK. It was primarily about enthusiast woodworkers talking passionately about their craft, demonstrating techniques with their fancy power tools and big machine tools, working out of their rather spacious garage workshops. And while my innate liking for tools and machines kept me hooked to this, I limited my enthusiasm in trying anything out myself with the thought that such equipment and material would be next to impossible to get my hands on here in India.

Then one day I stumbled upon Indranil Banerjie's blog - The Indian DIY & Woodworker. The first post I read was the - Project: Teak Bookcase. And I still remember the moment when I first laid eyes on a photo of his finished bookcase. That was a moment of liberation for me. It made me believe in the possibility of successfully pursuing this hobby even here in India. His blog has been nothing short of inspirational ever since.

In time I discovered the work of Norm Abram in his New Yankee Workshop. One must admit, there's something about Norm, his experience in the trade, his passion for his craft and his style of presentation that leaves you with that warm fuzzy feeling inside. For many weeks since my discovery of The New Yankee Workshop, dinner time at home started with a fight between me and my then 3 year old daughter as to whether we're watching that or Peppa Pig. And while my daughter mostly won the arguments, she sometime let me watch Norm Uncle, and to my utter delight she seemed to enjoy the show too. Well... for the first few minutes at least.

So here I was, with my fascination for woodworking bubbling over, eager to get my hands on some wood and tools and actually try something out. But every time I decided to start in right earnest I would get lost in trying to research the minimum set of power tools that I needed to acquire before starting anything. Among other things it was the cost of even this minimum set, and my inability to justify it for what could be simply my infatuation towards this craft.

The tipping point finally came in the from two things. The first one was that around that time we happened to engage the services of a carpenter to build furniture for our new flat. In our carpenter, Ramkaran Jangid, I got someone who I could readily go to with my question about woodworking in the local Indian context. And that was a big step forward for me.

The second, and perhaps the most instrumental one, was my finding out about Paul Sellers. His style of woodworking showed me what can be achieved with hand tools alone. This allowed me to dig myself out of my confusion over power tool options and cost, and the entry barrier that that had created. After spending some weeks soaking in Paul Sellers' work and philosophy, I finally took the plunge. I got myself his recommended set of essential hand tools (not even all of them in fact) and started my first project.

And last but not the least, I couldn't have pursued this hobby without the support of my wife, and her putting up with the space, time, noise and dust that this hobby entails.

This blog is my way of documenting my work as a hobbyist woodworker. I mainly intend to use it as a journal as I work my way through projects. Recording my experiences as I start on what promises to be a journey full of exploration, learning, creation and search for a sense of fulfilment.


Welcome to my journey with Kaath!