Wood-working for Beginners: A Manual for Amateurs

by Charles G. Wheeler

Grindstone.—When you get to the point of having a grindstone, get one which is somewhat soft and fine, for if too coarse it will produce a rougher edge than is desirable for your tools.

Do not allow your grindstone to become softened in spots by being left partially immersed in a trough of water, as it will wear away irregularly. With the best of care a stone will, however, become untrue after continued use, not merely in its circular outline, but the face will become hollowed and uneven. It must then be trued, either by some one of the contrivances now made for the purpose, or by simply turning the stone into the correct shape by holding the end of a piece of soft iron, as a piece of pipe, against the surface, without water, moving the iron as occasion requires, until the stone becomes true.

Grooving.—Grooves of different dimensions are often required for various purposes in wood-working. By far the best way, as a practical matter, is to take the work to a mill and have the grooving done by machine, which is not expensive. It can be done by hand with the planes devised for the purpose (as the plough), but though these are valuable tools, they are largely superseded, or becoming so, by machine-work, and it is usually fully as well for the amateur to take such work to the mill as to buy the tools.

In some cases the sides of the groove can be sawed by the hand-saws and the material removed by the chisel, but this is not easy if the groove is long. Pieces are sometimes clamped beside the line to guide the saw and sometimes even attached to the saw itself, or to a piece of saw-blade. The lines for the groove can be scored with the knife or chisel and the wood between removed by the chisel, much as in cutting a mortise.

In nice work, as fitting a shelf in a bookcase, it makes a better joint not to fit the entire end of the shelf into a groove, but to cut a tongue or wide tenon on the end of the shelf, with a shoulder at each side and the front edge, to fit into a corresponding groove, as shown in Fig. 284.

Half-Round File.—See File.

Fig. 537.

Fig. 538.