I'm hooked

Getting back on the horse

I’m fortunate to be from a generation that was taught woodwork at school (I started secondary school in 1985). Actually we were separately taught both woodwork and metalwork. I enjoyed metalwork, but it was always woodwork that excited me. My memories of warm workshops smelling of wood are something I’ve been trying to re-create ever since. That and the biscuits from the school canteen that had some cornflakes in them and a cherry on top. If you ever find me with a mouthful of biscuits and sniffing a handful of pine shavings, you’ll know I’m in my happy place. No nothing weird, although there’s probably a fetish club somewhere that caters for that.

On each of the identical benches in the school workshop were a basic set of tools. The good stuff was locked in glass-doored cabinets at the front of the room. The double benches were for two pupils, either side of a central tool-well, in which sat a pair of planes. I didn’t know at the time, but I now think these were probably 5 1/4 Junior Jack planes. The basic kit extended onto the ends of the bench, where for each student was a tenon saw, square, mallet and three chisels. The final item, with which we are concerned today, was a bench hook gripped in the Record face vice.

The school bench hooks weren’t like this one, but we’ll get into that shortly.

From those early steps in woodwork I learned the significance of the bench hook. There’s been at least one on every bench I’ve had since then. I did have quite a few years without a bench actually, when I gravitated towards the workshop in the basement of the School of Architecture, intended for model-making. Back then the education system seemed to offer workshop spaces all over the place, if you looked for them. I suspect reality is very different today.

I confess I’m slightly ashamed of my current bench hook, which was made quickly from a piece of green MDF with softwood screwed to it. But it does the job and that’s undoubtedly the reason it has survived. Invariably the jigs or tools you knock together in a rush are the ones that hang around for years, to remind you that you really are a shoddy twat. Or you can go with the cobblers children being the last to get shoes, if that Victorian-era saying makes you any feel better. Either way, it doesn’t hurt to be humbled from time to time.

I decided to try a different style of bench hook for my shame-lifting exercise. This type is cut from a single piece of wood, which is appealing as a small project, as well as being an efficient design. After an unintentional summer woodworking sabbatical, I wanted a simple project to ease me back into the flow. When people talk about work/life balance, I don’t think they mean your work is balanced on top of you like a giant boulder, crushing the life out of you. And yet so it is some of the time. With the assurance that comes from being a salaryman, comes also the risk that work spreads like a fungus into private places you don’t want it to. And none of us wants fungus in our private places.

Here we go.

I cut my blank from a section of 1 1/2” Oak that had already been planed to thickness, ending up with a piece that was 4” wide and about 10 1/2” long.

There’s no need to use a No.7 here, as the plane is clearly longer than the work, but that said it is so familiar in my hands when preparing stock, it just feels right.

The layout is simple: the crosscuts are marked 2” in from each end and 3/4” deep, with the rip cut running in from the other end to the bottom of the crosscut.

The crosscuts are made first, using what Robert Wearing called a “first-class saw cut”, which I’ll explain in the next image. A little wax on the saw plate eases things.

For the “first-class saw cut” you scribe a heavy knife line, then cut a notch with a chisel on the waste side of the line. The saw runs against the vertical wall created.

Because you can’t start the rip cut in fresh air, I used a crosscut to chisel a starting platform from the end, providing somewhere to begin the saw cut.

With the work flipped upright you can rip away - the cut isn’t vertical but that doesn’t cause too much of an issue. It’s more tiring than you think in Oak.

If your rip cuts are bang on, well done you - take a gold star. Mine weren’t so I did a bit of planing to correct deviations so the rip cut surfaces sit nicely on the benchtop

If it bothers you, you could make the ends parallel to the crosscuts. I decided to leave mine on the angle, as it holds perfectly well in the face vice as it is.

As you can now see, this is a beautifully efficient design (not mine) as there is very little waste and really only four saw cuts to get you there. I made the whole thing in about an hour and a half. I’ll make a second matching one soon, so that I have support for longer workpieces when I need it. I’ll also probably cut away half an inch of the ‘fence’ on the right-hand side so that small crosscuts have some support underneath.

This is a nice all-hand tool project for a rainy afternoon. It requires quite a few techniques, which means even for more experienced woodworkers it’s a good skill workout to stay frosty. By the way, my ever-tolerant wife reverse-engineered the biscuit recipe for me, which is here if you want it. Grab a handful of shavings and be ready to get happy.