A Frustrating Conundrum

My shop is in a basement. Don't get me wrong, it's a nice basement... in fact, I'm rather fond of it. It’s spacious, dry, and stays a constant temperature year round. None of these positives change the fact, however, that my shop is located in a concrete-lined hole in the ground with a house on top of it. There's little to no natural light and it can only be accessed through a steep narrow stairwell that leads down from my kitchen (which I'm also rather fond of). Bringing large heavy machinery down that stairwell is about as easy as fitting a baby elephant through a cat flap: it's technically possible, but the most likely outcome is a damaged structure and a pissed-off pachyderm. So, I'll be sticking with my tiny 10” Craftsman bandsaw for the foreseeable future. Honestly, it’s fine for most tasks except for one: resawing. As luck would have it, Andre Roubo solved my resawing conundrum way back in the 18th century. I guess Monsieur Roubo’s shop was located in a basement, as well.

A Solution Presents Itself

In Plate 278 of his now-famous book L’Art du menuisier, Roubo illustrates a large frame saw intended for two-person operation. This modern version is scaled down for use by a single operator. These are essentially just rip saws on steroids, but that's exactly what I need for large resawing tasks.

The tensioner rides against a stainless steel plate

My saw is based on Tom Fidgen’s design, which he first detailed in the book The Unplugged Woodshop. I purchased the blade and hardware from Bad Axe Toolworks. When it comes to building tools, I'm a big believer in using the materials that I have on hand, so I built the body of the saw from a plank of maple that's been taking up space on my lumber rack for years. Unfortunately, this board was only a heavy 4/4 so I needed to glue up blanks for the four main components to achieve the required thickness. Once the glue was dry, I milled the components and cut the joinery. The long side stiles connect to the front and back rails with housed mortise and tenon joints. These joints are not glued; the saw is held tightly together by the tension on the blade and can be completely disassembled for repair, if necessary. Bad Axe includes a cardboard template to shape the front and back rails, similar to Roubo’s illustration. I used their template for the front rail, but I chose to follow Tom’s lead and shape the rear rail into a handlebar instead. This configuration feels more comfortable, and I was able to customize the handles so that my hands will always be approximately shoulder-width apart while sawing. To polish things off, I added four small wenge diamond inlays; it gives the saw a little je ne sais quoi.

The front blade bracket is drilled and tapped to accept a large eyebolt which rides against a stainless steel strike plate that I installed flush to the surface of the front rail. The eyebolt is used to tension the blade. The rear blade bracket sits inside a dado cut into the handlebar to prevent it from shifting from side-to-side during use. The blade is held in the brackets with two U-bolts.

By the Numbers

So what are the overall statistics on this monster? The saw’s overall length is 37”. The front rail is 18” and the handlebar is 26” wide. The blade is 2 1/8” wide and 30 1/2” long with some monstrous rip teeth at 4 1/2 TPI.

The handlebar with some sweet wenge inlays. Oooh, fancy!

Overall, I’m genuinely surprised at how fast this saw cuts. So far, I've enjoyed using it, and it brings me one step farther down the path of transitioning to hand-tool-only woodworking. It’ll probably take me years to fully make that transition, but my feet are firmly planted on the path, and that's good enough for now.

Next Steps

The frame saw is surprisingly easy to start and it cuts fast, but there's definitely a learning curve for tracking to a line. I’m getting better, but I still have a ways to go. I’d like to use this saw for cutting 1/8” thick veneers, so my next project will be a kerfing plane to help improve cut accuracy. Stay tuned for a future post on that once it’s completed.

My till holds my full inventory of planes with a little room for new acquisitions.

My hand plane till is finally done! It looks great hanging on the wall, and fulfills my requirement to hold my full inventory of planes while still providing some space for future acquisitions. The basic look of the piece is inspired by a till that I saw in an old issue of Fine Woodworking magazine, but I made significant changes to the joinery and tool holding details.

The cabinet itself is a fairly simple design: it’s a dovetailed cherry box with a single horizontal divider dadoed into the case sides. The top section has a piece of cherry plywood to hold bench planes, while the small bottom section is left open as a general storage shelf. The cherry plywood is housed in dados on all four sides that recline it at a slight angle. Strips of solid cherry on the plywood surface act as dividers. I attached the dividers with only screws, just in case I ever want to reconfigure the cabinet. Realistically, I’ll probably never do this, but it makes me feel better knowing that I have that option.

One of my most important criteria for this hand plane till was compactness. I’ve seen similar wall-hung tills that store hand planes on a reclined surface using gravity alone to hold them in place. That’s a convenient method because it’s easy for the user to remove and replace the planes. A quick calculation using the Pythagorean Theorem, however, will show you their biggest drawback: in order to use gravity as the primary means of holding the tools in place, the surface needs to be reclined at a significant angle, making the whole cabinet stick too far out from the wall. My cabinet is only five inches deep, and I was able to achieve that by reclining the storage surface a measly five degrees.

Since my planes are resting at such a steep angle in this till, I wanted some additional insurance to hold everything in place. I decided on a two-prong approach: I keep the heel of each plane from sliding off the divider it rests upon with a wooden clip, and I hold the toe of the plane tight to the surface with an embedded rare Earth magnet. My block plane is small enough that the wooden clip isn’t needed. Magnets aren’t effective on bronze, so I used a wooden spinner at the toe of my smoothing plane, instead.

So far, so good. My tool holding strategy makes it easy to access the planes, but holds them securely when they’re in the cabinet. I wish I had built this till years ago; it makes working in the shop just a little bit more enjoyable!

hand tools

Frame Saw

Hand Plane Till