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Like Amanda, Thomas is a veteran student. Last year he built an outdoor table. This year it was a two-drawer unit. He built all of the parts by himself. To cut the wood he used a Japanese rip saw, a back saw and a coping saw. He planed the boards with a Record # 4 plane. He chopped the rabbet and the dadoes with a chisel. Then he cleaned up the joints with a router and a rabbet plane. The only parts he did not make were the drawer pulls. Rabbets and dado making became a de-facto prerequisite for all my students. So many of them want to build a box, a bookshelf, a drawer or another object that includes a right angle joint. By teaching them how to make a rabbet joint I, by default, teache them the proper use of a saw, a chisel and a plane (rabbet plane for rabbet joints, router plane to dress up dadoes). Once they learn the basics of drawing, marking, sawing and chiseling, the sky is the limit…
