Extremely Average

In Vol 28, No. 164, on page 6 of Woodsmith magazine is the article which describes the Adjustable Panels Cauls.  It was sent in by George Johnson of Canton Oklahoma.  They give the dimensions and I followed them somewhat closely.  I visited my local Home Depot to buy the goodies I would need to make my cauls.  I purchased (4) seven feet long, 1 x 2, in hard maple.  I like hard maple.  I also purchased (4) 36 inches long ½ x 3 inch pieces of Oak.  I only needed one piece of the oak, but I wanted the other pieces for another project.  So only buy 1 if you don’t want extra, and to be honest, I didn’t use the entire one piece either, I only used 18 inches.

As for the hardware, I came very close to making a tightening handle blunder, when I nearly bought a handle with the male threaded rod attached.  This would have been a mistake.  The handles need to be female which allow the threaded part of the 5/16^th carriage bolt to pass through.  Which brings me to the quantities of stuff I needed, the plans required 4 handles, 4 washers (I bought 8 to allow for losing a few), (24) #8, 1 ¾ “flat head screws (I bought a box).  I also bought a box of 1 1/4” flat head screw, because I didn’t believe the instructions.  The 1 ¾ looked way too long.  They were not too long and actually worked wonderfully.

Being new to woodworking, I lack confidence, so I bought extra stuff, which I didn’t need.  I then reinforced my fears when I purchased (3) 5” 5/16” carriage bolts and (1) 5 ½” carriage bolt.  I blindly trusted the little bin that told me I was buying 5 inch, and it was very sneaky in giving me a 5 ½ bolt.  I fixed the problem by buying (3) 5 ½” and (1) 5” the next day.  So I have an extra set that will allow for thicker boards to be in my glue up.  In the photos I used the 5 ½ inch bolt.  I may buy some longer ones too.  The reason one can’t just buy really long bolts is that the threads don’t go all the way down the bolt.  If I had bought a 7 inch, I wouldn’t have been able to tighten them all the way down.

So here is how I built my cauls.  I cut (8) 36” pieces of hard maple, using my Japanese hand saw.  I was amazed at how quickly it cut through each piece, and how beautiful the cuts turned out.  It was definitely the right tool for the job.

 I like sanding.  I have read that many woodworkers don’t like sanding their projects.  It is considered drudgery.  I took 2 pieces and clamped them into my vice and sanded the top to a nice rounded edge on the outside edges on the top side of the two pieces.   My reasoning was, it was a waste of time to sand the inside edges, so I didn’t.  I also didn’t sand the bottom edges, because I wanted them to remain flat.  So I sanded up each pair.  I used 80, 120, 220 grit paper and my mouse sander.

The next step was to cut off 1 ½“blocks from the piece of oak.  My Japanese hand saw handled this task as well.  The blocks are used as spacers between the pieces of hard maple.  There are 3 spacers per caul piece (top and bottom) and created the gap that allows the carriage bolts to be threaded up through the top and bottom.  It means that one is able to move the clamping handles in to the edges of the wood when clamping, to apply the most pressure onto the wood being glued up.

So with 12 pieces of oak cut, I stacked them together and sanded the tops, rounding the edges.  This was done for aesthetics.

The next step was to screw everything together.  I placed a spacer in the middle, at 18 inches and one on each end, set in 1 ½ inches from the edge.  I have no idea why they weren’t all the way out to the edge, but in the article, that is how George Johnson did it, and it looked good to me.  I then flipped the pieces of wood upside down, with the rounded edges on the table, and placed my oak spacers in the correct positions.  Next I clamped everything together, before drilling pilot holes.   I then used a countersink bit to drill out a bit of space for the flat head screws to set into the wood.  To make my life easier I got out both of my cordless drills, using one as a dedicated pilot holes driller and the other for the countersinking and the screwing in of the flat head screws.  ( I am not sure all of the verbs in the last sentence really exist, but I digress)

Once all of this was done, I just needed to cut some blocks to hold the carriage bolts.  The instructions called for 3 ½ inch blocks, but I had a lovely piece of hard maple that was 12 inches long, so I went with 3 inches for each block.  Yes it was a daring move, but I am not afraid to live life on the edge.  I sanded the 12 inch block before I made the cuts.  I also drilled the holes, first with a Fostner bit, then with a regular bit.  This meant that after I cut them into their 3 inch lengths, they were ready to go.

The last step was to check the flatness of the bottoms of each caul section.  I had focused on making sure that the tops were flat, because I intended to flatten any that needed it, using my router.  There was only one that needed flattening, so I used my 2 inch flush trim bit.  It is a really nice bit, made by Amana.  I spent $128.00 on this bit.  That seems like a lot, but I have already used it a bunch of times.  And it cuts like a hot knife through brie.

When I finally assembled the cauls, they looked even better than I had hoped.  Now I just need to find a project that requires a glue up.

I have been giving one tip to people for years.  It is so simple, I hesitate to even call it a tip, but alas I don’t have a thesaurus handy, so I have little choice.  This applies to every photo, whether it is an image of your latest woodworking project or a prize winning picture of a yeti.  The last thing I do, before I press the button, is to slowly force myself to run my eyes around the edge of the image.  I know it sounds dumber than Jethro Bodine, but that is because it is so easy.  In the words of a thousand commercials for footwear, ‘Just Do It’. 

When you start to look at the rest of the image, not just the finely turned bowl, you will notice that there is a corner of a box of diapers sneaking into the image.  You will also get better at taking pictures of people.  The stop sign that is ‘growing’ out of your girlfriend’s head, or the car with your angry wife driving by the shoot, will suddenly pop out to you, and thus you can make slight adjustments (like making sure you take pictures of your girlfriend only when your wife is visiting her sister in Saginaw).  This tip will work with any camera you have, though I still think you should get those lazy six years olds their first job, and get a fancy pants model.  But I digress.

Along a similar line, when taking a picture of your work, if you wish to put some extra items in the background, like tools behind a project in process, or a delicious ham behind the aforementioned finely turned bowl, try to use a shallow depth of field.  Depth of field is the distance (or depth) in the image, which is in focus.  This generally applies to SLRs (Single Lens Reflex…aka…fancy pants cameras), but there are some point and shoots which have this capability.  My mom’s camera, the Powershot G10, is able to set the f-stop.  So when I say shallow depth of field, I mean a small number on your camera’s lens, or a small f-stop.  For example an aperture setting of 3.5 will cause the background to be out of focus, thus causing the subject to stand out, while f22 (f stands for aperture, I could make up a story for why they use f and not a, likely involving a priest, a Rabbi, and an Episcopalian yak farmer, but I have already digressed.), would leave everything in focus.  It is also important to understand how aperture works with light.

Shallow depth of field requires less light than a longer depth of field.  This is helpful when you are taking pictures in artificial light, because the shutter doesn’t need to stay open as long as it would if you were trying to have everything in focus.  If you are getting really excited about photography and are starting to read up on the subject, you might run across the term ‘fast lenses.  This confused me for a long time.  It is simply a lens that allows for a very shallow depth of field.  They are generally much more expensive than a normal lens.  For instance a zoom lens that goes to 300 mm, can be picked up for 3-400 dollars, a ‘fast’ lens, the giant lens that the photographers use on the sidelines of football games, those start at about $7000.00.  This is not a lens you should need, as it is too ‘long’, for shooting your work, but it brings me to my next and last subject for the day.

This photo shows tilt shifting in the table, an annoying shiny bit from a Jet clamp in the top right corner, and also demonstrates shallow depth of field.   This image can be improved substantially by simply removing the clutter in the top right corner.  Were I to shoot it again, I would also slide the mortar slightly to the left.  It feels slightly out of position where it is.

The amount of zoom you should use when shooting.  If you are limited in space, you can use the wide angle portion of your lens, or zoom out.  Zooming out, a back up the image, but it also causes something called bowing.  Have you ever taken a picture of a tall object, like a dresser, and in the photo it looks warped?  That is bowing.   If you are taking a picture of a tall building, the building seems to bow out and the edges don’t run parallel with the sides of the image.  That is tilt shifting.  It can be corrected in Photoshop CS 2, 3, or 4, but that runs you another $1000 and 8 or 9 months of intensive study to master, so fixing it, is not the best solution.  It is better to try to take the image of your dresser from a greater distance and then zooming in on it.  This will give you much better results.  If you can put the dresser in one room, and stand out in the hall and zoom in, you will be much happier with the results.  One last note, if you are taking a close up of your girlfriend’s face while your wife is in Michigan, then try to stand further away, such that the zoom is at 135mm.  This will be much more flattering.   That is all for now.  I am off to do some woodworking.

If a day goes by without my doing something related to photography, it’s as though I’ve neglected something essential to my existence, as though I had forgotten to wake up.

      -Richard Avedon

I didn’t know about the work of Richard Avedon before his exhibit at the Corcoran at the end of 2008.  As a volunteer docent at the gallery I got to hear a lecture from the curator of his traveling exhibit, and learn about his amazing works.  I became a fan.  This wasn’t the beginning of my love of photography, but it definitely gave me a jolt of energy to continue to practice and work to improve.  My weakest area is the use of lighting; in fact, I just had 3 of my images rejected for ‘poor or uneven lighting’.  I am not kidding, as I was typing that sentence I stopped to check a message from Shutterstock, and sure enough the images I used in the blogs ‘The English Plane’ and the image of the ‘stack’ were rejected.   I don’t sweat those setbacks, because I submit my images to 6 different sites, and it is rare that the inspectors agree, so they will probably get reject by 2 of the 6.

The point is that the subject of proper lighting is somewhat subjective.  There are however universal sins.  Harsh lighting is always bad.  The most common cause of this unfortunate faux pas is the use of an on camera flash.  How does one tell if the lighting is harsh?  The truth is in the shadows.  If one wants to improve their photography, striving to eliminate the hard shadows is a great first step.  I am not an expert, as I have said, but I can share the tips I have learned.

In learning how to create ‘saleable’ images for stock sites, I have read thousands of forum posts, several books, and a few tea leaves, trying to unravel the mysteries.  One of the first tips I would give is to take your photos, with the camera on a tripod, and use the timer.  The reason for this is that you are able to shoot in situations where the light isn’t spectacular.  I don’t mean to digress again, but I should mention a little bit about light, and the way cameras work.

Assuming you not shooting in manual mode (and if you are good enough to shoot on manual, you don’t need to continue reading, so go eat a donut and come back in a paragraph or two), your camera is using the tiny computer inside of it.  That computer is taking a reading of the available light and it is deciding how quickly it need to open its shutter to get a picture that you will be proud of.  Your camera really wants to do a good job for you.  When you and your camera are shooting outdoors, with natural light, the camera has a lot more flexibility with how it is able to take the shot.  But when you are indoors, in a workshop for instance, under artificial light, the camera looks out into the room and sees almost total darkness.  It decides that in order to get a shot that  has enough light it must keeps its shutter open for 2, 3, 5 or more seconds.

Now that may not seem like a long time, when compared to the life of a  star, or even the time it takes to learn woodworking, but in the world of photography it is an eternity.  To hand hold your camera, it needs to open and close its shutter in 1/60^th of 1 second.  If it is open for twice as long or 1/30^th of a second, the vibration from your pulse will cause there to be camera shake.  This will lead to a slightly blurry image, and force your significant other to lie to you about how much he or she likes your picture.  This is why we want to use a tripod, we don’t need to hold the camera, hence the camera can keep its shutter open until it feels there is enough light to get a clear image.  Having the camera lounging on a tripod isn’t enough to eliminate camera shake though, you must also use the timer, lest the slight vibration from the pressing of the button, undo your efforts.

In the world of stock photography, the top photographers shoot medium format Hasselblad, with Carl Zeiss lens, and a digital back.  This set up will set you back fifty to sixty thousand dollars.  Do you need to run out and buy equipment of this quality?  Well, yes you do.  I would recommend, if your children are young enough, that you sell a couple them.  Another, less recommended option, is to keep the children and introduce them to the joys of spending their afternoons working in a sweat shop.  You should still be able to get some nice Nikon or Canon equipment.  That being said, it will still take you a little while to get your new equipment, so you will need to get along with your current set up.  This is fine, as long as you don’t let it go on for too long.  If you have a digital camera, even if it isn’t a fancy pants Nikon or Cannon, it is likely that there will be different write setting which determines how the camera takes the image and writes it to the disk.  Once you find the different settings, there will likely be something like, small, medium, large, fine, and raw, or something along those lines.  Basically it is determining how high a quality image you are taking.  The important one is Raw.  Shooting in raw will drastically reduce your memory card capacity, but that is what you want to use.  The reason is that in raw, your little camera is basically capturing all the information it needs to make lots of adjustments after the fact.

I can tell by my word count that I have rambled on a bit, and I am not close to finishing my photographing woodworking rant, so I will make this a multiple part series.  So before I put this drivel to bed for the night, let me reiterate the main points.  Use a tripod, because it gives you flexibility with regards to lighting, and shoot in raw, because after you shoot, you can make adjustments to the image, to get it to look the way you want.

Once you have shot the image and downloaded it to your computer, you will be given an option to open the image in an editing program, usually included with the camera.  This is where you can play with the image.  You are able to overexpose (make brighter) or underexpose (make darker) the image.  You are able to adjust temperature of the light (a future post will go into greater detail about warm vs. cold light)  I have included 4 images, the 1^st one is cold, the second one is warm, the third one has the black increased, and the 4^th one is desaturated and darkened to create a black and white image.  They are all from the same single shot, taken in raw.  I hope this illustrates the value of raw and will encourage you to give it a try.  I also have included a shot showing my lights.

So class, I expect that you are all eager to try out the tips from today’s lecture.  Your homework is to write a brief description of the camera equipment that you have in the comments section.  Also I invite you to pose any specific questions you might have, though I must warn you that I am not good with world capitals or the periodic table of the elements.