(cheerful music) marc: well you know what? since kaleo is here he has a much stronger grasp of some hand-tooltechniques and things and i figured it's something that
woodworking tools for a beginner, i tend to gloss over it a little bit. i don't really get a chanceto go over some details. none of this was planned ahead of time. we're just gonna kind ofgrab a few tools off the wall
and hopefully reviewsome real basic things dealing with hand-tools whether it's even chisel technique or sawing technique, block planes, very basic stuff. we're really just- we're not trying to make the dude work while he's here. he's only here for a couple hours, but we're just gonna have some fun with it
and see what we can do. i'll probably wind up mannning the camera because nicole is busy andwe'll just have some fun. kaleo: yeah-yeah. marc: all right. cool. all right, so kaleo is going to show us- i think we're going to start with a mortising for a hinge just chopping out a littlehinge spot there for you
so pretty simple, but i think this is one ofthose things that if you don't review these simple things you can kind of pass it up andthink it's easier than it is so it's nice to getthese foundation things under your belt. kaleo: yeah, you know, i think sometimes we get too caught upwith the big techniques, you know, you got to, you go to
know the milk before you can eat the meat. marc: amen to that, that's nice. i'm gonna have to use that. okay, so i'm gonna man the camera. kaleo: okay. marc: i'm gonna let kaleo do his thing. kaleo: yeah this is just- i'm not even doing this by measuring i'll just draw a little-
let's see a little mortise. marc: just a hypothetical mortise. kaleo: yeah. now i guess normally youuse a nice marking guage and a marking knife andall this good stuff. marc: so that if you did- well i have it here somewhere, but we probably don't want to search everything down,
but if you want normally you would use some sort of marking knife to- kaleo: yeah traditionally i do just to get that nice shoulder beginning shoulder line on each of the mortise for the hinge. marc: okay. kaleo: so traditionallyyou write that down. then you also do the depthof the hinge on the side so you have a shoulderto sit the chisel in.
so i always go in- with the marking knifeyou get that nice line so i always stay off thatline a little bit to start and you always put thebevel to the wayside and you just want to try and keep your chisel straight. give it a nice little tap and work around real quick. and i always use a chisel that's
appropriate for the job so, you know, if you have a nice longstretch you got to go use the biggest chisel you have. marc: there is a wider one there if you feel like using it. the one all the way on the right. the big daddy. kaleo: the big one. you just do that so youhave a nice straight line
the whole time and you don't even need to actually pound it. and this is how i cut dovetails, too, i come in and i pairoff that shoulder line right to that line you just created. so it just kind of givesyou a reference mark the whole way around. marc: so just that littletiny tapping you did went deep enough that now
you could just pare away. kaleo: you can pare away alittle bit of the material. kaleo: just so you can see- i don't know if you can get in there, but you can see there's anice little shoulder line there now around where that marking was. then you can go back and clean up. get a little bit closer to that line. ultimately you won't touch that line
until your very end and you'll know when you need to chop back down some more because the chips won't come off as nice as they, you know, youcome down here right now they just fall right off. marc: so your initial scoring cut you're pretty well insideyour line at that point. kaleo: yeah, at this pointi'm really inside the line. the other beautiful thing about-
you know, you want to keep- you spend all that timeflattening your chisel backs and this is why so youcan keep your chisel nice and flat as you're paring this away. marc: just a real basic review. kaleo: i'll go grab the saw. i think a lot of us have a saw, you know, that doesn't necessarily mean that we know how to use it,
so anything you could teach us and stuff that you learned, proper holding technique and- kaleo: this is my favorite saw. i have this one too. kaleo: and i like this saw. i like pistol grip saws personally because my hands are a little bit bigger some of them i can't getthem into the other saws.
i always check the set on my saws too. i usually mark a few lines on a board. so let's see let's take this board out. marc: just if you coulddescribe for anyone who might not know what set is. kaleo: the set is the teeth of the saws when they file thesesaws the set is the kerf. basically the distanceof the kerf of the saw so sometimes when you get a brand new saw
you track it so you- just like a bandsaw youdraw some lines on a board. it would probably work better on the end grain actually if you do it with the dovetail saw. one thing that i'velearned about hand sawing is your stance is really important so you want to keep the saw- i hold the saw with my pistol finger
like your trigger finger out like this and get a good stance not too wide, but one foot kind of inthe back of the other. you want to keep your arm so your arm is movingin a straight motion. and i always- you let the saw do the work. a lot of guys will try to start off- if you try to start a sawoff by pushing so hard
it jumps across the wood, but you let the saw do the work and i always start- i always use my thumb as a guide and you always juststart with that kind of one backward pull to getthat nice little kerf for the saw to rest and then you just let the saw do the work. you don't have to push too hard.
and you just try to cutdown that line you did. that line you made you try to cut straight and the reason you hadthat line is so that you're cutting down. if your saw tends to wander you know where the set is too heavy and then what i always doif the set is too heavy on one side i just take a waterstone with any grit and just kindof swipe along real quick.
marc: so essentially you remove that set and what it winds updoing is creating almost a razor thin line that alwaysseems to track straight. marc: i mean if you'reoff at the beginning you may have an angle, but you're never gonnareally curve very much because the set is so thin. kaleo: some guys will take this set completely out of their saw.
i don't do that because the set is there to help remove the waste and sawdust so i don't take it completely out, and the other thingyou have to remember is as i was teaching for thefirst week the students since last few weeks ago. the students kept coming up to me and asking "oh, you know, my saw "is not cutting straight,my saw is not working well,"
and i'm like, oh, here, let me see and i mark a few lines and bam, bam, bam, straight down the lines and i'm not tooting myown horn, but, you know, i would just say no,no, it's not the saw man you got to practice moreand hand their saw back and it's really true it's about practicing especially cutting straight and you want to cut straight, you know,
your dovetails if you've got to hand cut dovetails you need tobe able to cut straight. my other little tip that i like is when you're cutting dovetails you always mark the base as far as you can go down so when i cut i always cut up like this at an angle so that i know as i'm watching my saw here
get close to my baseline i know that it's nowhere here near because i'm not looking. marc: right. kaleo: you know, sothen as i get close here i just kind of tilt the saw forward and i pull the saw outand 9 times out of 10 you're right on that line. marc: great.
kaleo: right at the bottom. marc: very cool. kaleo: next, we're going to go over some ingrain planing. ingrain typically is just a pain to plane so thatkind of rhymed real quick. marc: yeah. kaleo: so you can see this is some of that beautiful tiger maple that marc used on his latest creation.
marc: that's my backup board in case i screwed up really bad. kaleo: well it's beautiful. i haven't seen nice maplelike this for 2 years. so on the end grain i always like to use a block plane or specificallya low-angle block plane. i have a nice veritas number6 low-angle jack plane i think it is that i use too, but i use a low-angle block plane.
now some of the keys to planing end grain is as you're planingacross you're gonna notice right here at this edgeit's really fragile so what a lot of guyswill do is just come in and just slightly shear off that edge. nothing too extraordinary just because- so then you can plane down marc: that's a lot of end grain. and i didn't pick the best board for this.
sorry about that. kaleo: maybe i'll just focuson this side over here. marc: yeah, that's fine. kaleo: you can't get that part because i can't get over there, but you'll notice thatthere's no real chipout on that edge and we wereplaning pretty aggressively to get there and so thefarther you do down, you know, you got to come back.
if you need to plane some more then you have to go back and check for that alittle more and keep going. okay, so for anybody who doesn't know kaleo does a podcast this week in wood and i think in the future from what we were talking about it sounds like you might be venturing into some videos which will be really cool
so if you want to plug your stuff let everybody know what your website is in case they don't already know because we talk about you all the time. kaleo: yeah, kaleosworkshop.com i'm starting to getbetter content on there. i've been kind out ofschool, out of a shop and moving so. marc: well moving back to the country.
marc: and just havinga kid i think you got your hands full. marc: a little bit so. kaleo: i'm really looking forward to getting the shop setup and then doing like a- i really want to dohands-on type of stuff, teaching things, and things like that so check back often. marc: do you think thepodcasting is going to
take control of yourcareer? like it did to mine. kaleo: no, i don't think so. i don't think it will get to that point. marc: yeah, that's alwaysan interesting path to take, but it will influence itthough i can tell you that just by doing it and talking to people about your work andespecially if you start showing your projects as you build them it definitely changesthe dynamic a little bit.
it's thought provoking for sure. kaleo: it's really good.i really enjoy interacting with everybody and, youknow, getting comments and getting the feedback on things and it's really interesting to hear other people's stories and other people's views on things, i mean, i know you experienced it with that table. marc: uh-hum, big time yeah.
kalea: it's really goodto get people's opinions on things because a lot of times you might get stuck in a rut on something so people can offer you help and you can bounce ideas off of people. march: yeah definitely. do you find like asyou're designing things in the school did youget a lot of feedback on your design in termsof you're going down
a certain route and maybe your instructor doesn't think it's the right way to go. i mean did they confront you in that way or they just kind of letyou be what you want to be and make what you want to make? kaleo: it was really interesting. i had 2 different heads ofschool while i was there. the first one he was a master craftsman so we learned a lot ofgreat techniques with him
and he's a great designer, but the new guy, the second guy, or president or whateveryou want to call him he is a designer and he'sa furniture maker too, but he's more into the design so it was really interestingtalking design with him because they would ask you build- my one project was a cabinet project and i didn't want to buildthe traditional cabinet
so i built this coffeetable that contained a cabinet and all these weird things. you could see it on my blog, but as i talked with him he would always give me feedback that would be positive,but also push you more so it was always why are you doing this? why do you want to putthat there? why this? because you want to be able
to justify what you're doing. you don't want to go oh well because i think it looks good. no, you're putting this there because this curve here accentuatesthe straight lines here. marc: okay, all right.so you have to justify? kaleo: justify your designs. marc: yeah, not justdesign for designs sake it's form following function or something.
kaleo: yeah there's a medium in there a happy ground there whereyou justify everything, but at the same time youcan do things on the fly. i'm more that way. i more like to start building something- i'll draw an initialconcept and as i'm going i'll go oh, i don't like that so much i'm changing this now. marc: sure, just be flexible.
kaleo: yeah, whereas sometimes the program was more get everything out, get it all down on paper, get it all technicaldrawings, everything out done, then build it and i wasn't, that's not, i'm not that way. marc: i find that harder. i think once you startseeing things in 3d space it suddenly changes your impression
and you can see things now that you couldn't see on paper and you couldn't predictit until you got there so you have to have alittle bit of flexibility in your design becauseif you just kind of, you know, go toward the finish line and only follow your plan you may miss an opportunity i think. kaleo: yeah, and at the end
you might not even like it. marc: yeah, after it's all said and done. kaleo: i designed a chairand i did the whole thing just like that i did this chair it was all designed i got6 weeks into the chair and just completely hated it so i threw it away and started it new. marc: that's rough. kaleo: yeah, it makes you cry.
marc: yeah, i'm sure it does. well kaleo we are allvery excited i'm sure to observe your journey into the world of woodworking and we'll be- i'm sure a lot of people will be checking it out and hopefully- kaleo: well thank you.thank everybody else. it's been a pleasure being here. marc: yeah, it was great.
believe it or not kaleojust flew out for the day from san diego and he'sflying back tonight. it's not that far, notthat big of a flight. kaleo: no, it's like an hour flight. marc: but still thoughto me to get on a plane that's a big deal i'm a baby like that so i appreciate you coming out here. kaleo: hey anything to come meet the wood whisperer.
marc: yeah hey, but noone else can just kaleo. thanks for watching everybody and keep your eye kaleosworkshop.com kaleo: .com yeah. marc: and lots of goodstuff there, so cool. kaleo: cool. marc: peace. kaleo: i get to play with all these tools. it's been so long. what happened to marc?
marc: i was replaced.i'm very replaceable. they sit on the wall for decoration so it's nice to havesomebody actually use them. now the question i have for you is do you find that sandalshelp you cut straighter? kaleo: i find that sandals. marc: [unintelligible] kaleo: while flying are the best. marc: okay (chuckles)
