Project 1: Winding Sticks

Materials: • 2 blanks of a stable and preferably dense hardwood at least ¾ x 2 x 25 • Dark and Light Scrap Wood for inlay at least ¼ x ¼ x 25 Tools: • Rip Saw • Scrub Plane • Jointer Plane • Marking Gauge • Wide Paring Chisel • Crosscut saw or Carcass saw • Smoothing Plane (optional) Process:

The below process assumes you have thin stock for the inlay and narrow stock for the sticks already kicking around the scrap bin. If suitable width stock is not readily available in your scrap bin, you can rip it to width by hand, but since we haven’t covered that yet, I’ll look the other way if you use a power tool. I would prefer you use a jig saw or something that does not cut a perfectly straight edge in order to challenge yourself during the edge planning work. The same goes for the inlay stock. If you need to resaw or cut to smaller size do so but try to avoid a tool that takes all the flattening work out of the picture. Make sure your inlay stock is wider than your rabbet so you can flush it to the stick surface after the glue is dry.

1. Flatten one face of each winding stick. Make sure to pay attention to the grain direction and eyeball the condition of the stock for cup, bow, and twist. If the board is in bad shape a scrub plane may be needed otherwise the jointer can be used. 2. Flatten and square the edge of the stock using the jointer plane 3. Determine the thinnest part of the board and set your gauge to that thickness. Scribe a line all the way around the board on the narrow edge. 4. Plane to the line keeping an eye out for the feathered edge that appears 1 or 2 strokes from gauged thickness. Again depending on how much stock needs to be removed choose your plane wisely. 5. Repeat the gauging process to create a parallel and flat narrow edge. 6. Plane to the gauge line paying close attention to keeping the edge square. 7. Gauge a ¼ x ¼ rabbet on the top front edge of the stick 8. Deepen the scribe line with stab cuts from the wide chisel on both the face and edge. Continue to chop until the waste can be broken away cleanly or pops free on it’s own 9. Use your paring chisel like a plane to clean up the rabbet 10. Flatten 1 face and edge of inlay stock then saw off a ½” strip 11. Glue the strip into the rabbet on the sticks and let cure 12. User the jointer plane to flush the inlay with the surface and if desired follow up with a smoothing plane to create a finish ready surface. 13. Saw the ends of the sticks flush and lightly chamfer the ends with a chisel 14. Apply finish of your choice. I used 2 coats of 1lb cut Shellac but Boiled Linseed Oil or Danish Oil would work as well. 15. Check surface in the house for wind!