Setting hoops on Japanese chisels

When you buy a brand new Japanese chisel there is some work to do before it can be used.

Like with western chisels, the back of the blade must be flattened and polished to a mirror finish and it has to be sharpened to a very fine edge.

With Japanese chisels however, the tool is not ready to be used, the hoop on the top of the handle must be permanently set.

Here's how:

• http://www2.woodcraft.com/pdf/77B66.pdf
• http://www.imcclains.com[...]JapaneseChisels.pdf
• http://japanwoodworker.[...]instructions.pdf
  

This may seem like a lot of extra work, but I guarantee you that it will be quite rewarding. There is nothing more satisfying than working with a sharp tool that is properly tuned.

Dovetail nirvana

A while back, while doing some research on dovetailed carcass construction I came across this article by John Bullar.

I kept the original link in one of my Firefox tabs but it seems that it is no longer available. *

Luckily there is the Internet Archive... pretty amazing!

I've seen some crazy dovetailed projects, but this one beats them all!

There are a total of 120 dovetails in this piece, and if that wasn't enough, every other pin is 1/3 shorter to add visual interest to the joint.

* The article is available again at it's original location.
(edited on 26-Mar-2008)