gettin’ jiggy wit it
Hammerstone Newsletter 2/13/2024
Here's a photo of my partner Chris watering the summer garden last year
Did the unseasonably warm weather in the past week have anyone else dreaming of spring? I took a nostalgic look at summer photos the other day and was take aback by just how green everything was. It almost hurts to look at! I’ve lived in the Ithaca area for a total of 8 years now, but without fail there’s some degree of forgetting that happens each winter. I forget how bright this landscape becomes, what it feels like to be sun-kissed and tired from outdoor work…
Thankfully, there are only 35 days til spring! And with the mild weather, we can still get some sunshine here and there. I hope you all are faring well this February, perhaps planning for the year ahead, doing some woodworking, or just savoring this slower time.
Happy Hammering!
Kimberly and The Hammerstone Team
What's In Your Toolbox?
Jig
Gettin' Jiggy Wit It takes on new meaning when you start woodworking.
Na na na na nanana 🎶
Put simply, a jig is a tool that allows you to perform a specific, repetitive task. That could be cutting, drilling, measuring...it's really more of a tool category. I think of a jig as a tool that constrains or guides the movement of another tool.
Woodworkers use jigs all the time to make work more efficient or results more uniform. If you've taken our 2-Day Carpentry Basic Skills course, you used a jig to mark the angled cuts on your subtops. With the jig this took less than 5 minutes. Without, it probably could've taken half an hour.
With a close look you can see the angled cutouts we laid out with a jig before cutting.
One popular jig you may have seen at Home Depot or in DIY tutorials is the Kreg Jig (Kreg is the brand and the actual name is Pocket Hole Jig, but everyone calls it a Kreg Jig). Combined with a drill/driver, this jig allows you to fasten wood components together with "pocket holes" - these are pre-drilled pilot holes at a specific angle and depth.
Pocket hole joinery is surprisingly strong, and is used in everything from basic furniture making to cabinetry. We teach how to use a Kreg Jig in our Tiny House finish carpentry courses: Interior Trim, Exterior Trim, Cabinetry Basics: Carcasses & Drawers, and Cabinetry Basics: Doors & Drawer Fronts.
Here's a drawing I made at Hammerstone to try to help students visualize the pocket holes they were drilling.
The Kreg Jig is something that's easily found at the hardware store, but there are myriad other jigs that you can either order online or build yourself. Name a woodworking task, and there's probably a jig to make it easier. One great online and print resource for jig ideas is Fine Woodworking.
Check out this reader-submitted jig featured in Fine Woodworking (August 2022). Anyone can come up with a jig!
Tamar Hannah of 3x3 Custom is a self-taught woodworker who shares excellent video tutorials and woodworking plans on her YouTube and Instagram - follow her if you don't already! Her projects are often simple but highly functional, like this Mini Mortising Jig.
We have an ever growing collection of jigs at Hammerstone, some of them central to our courses. When we teach Kumiko, there are no fasteners to hold joints together, so mating surfaces need to fit almost perfectly. Rather than marking this angle manually on each and every small component, we use jigs to simply guide the movement of the chisel as it cuts.
upcoming classes
Learn to design your own projects in Intro to CAD: SketchUp Basics
Refine your hand saw and chisel skills while creating a beautiful asa-no-ha panel in Create Decorative Kumiko
Learn to apply thinly sliced wood veneer in decorative geometric patterns in Intro to Parquetry *two spots left*
Learn to measure, mark, and cut with confidence. Get practice with the circular saw, drill, and more while building your own set of sawhorses in 2-Day Basic Carpentry Skills
Happy Valentine’s Day
Remember to ask for a dozen router bits instead of roses!
We hope you enjoy this holiday whether you're celebrating romance, friendship, family, or self love.
That's all for now! Coming up in the next newsletter are some glamour shots of Venus, our 2023 tiny house, and a close look at some of the details that make her exceptional.
Hammer On!