Well, I got my first commission, sort of.  I mean I was asked to make something for free.  A friend wanted something that would cover an outlet in their kitchen.  They used the outlet to plug in a number of devices like cell phones and a clock radio.  They wanted a box that would allow the cords to come out and they needed to be able to remove the box from time to time.  And….they wanted it to match their existing cabinets.

This was great since I have never made anything this small.  I have spent my time making large cabinets for computers and tv’s.  I also have some great curly maple sitting in my shop begging to become jewelry boxes, so this was a chance to practice.  I recently took the plunge and bought a moving fillister from Lee Valley.  I got a discount from being at the Woodworking in America conference.   I have a Record Rapier plow plane which works great, so the moving fillister was the next big thing.  With these two planes I was able to plow the groove for the top panel to sit in and I used the moving fillister to raise the panel. 

 

The first task was to decide on the thickness of the parts.   I decided to try and get close to ¼ inch in thickness as I thought anything thicker would make the box to heavy looking.  Since the thickness was going to be ¼ inch, I decided dovetails would not be the thing to do.  While writing that sentence, I am thinking I could have done dovetails couldn’t I???  Well, anyway, I did mitre joints, on the table saw.  I wanted to clean them up on my shooting board but the mitre attachment is not right to hold the work in place.  Chris suggested a Donkey’s Ear, I heard Donkey’s Ass, and took it as a reference to my work…Well I got straighten out and will make one soon. 

 

Anyway, here is a picture of the box.  I left the bottom of the box open; see pic below.  I say bottom when looking at the box mounted on the wall.  Not sure if “bottom” is the correct term for this part.  Sorry to confuse.  It is one side of the piece that is a different width.  Now the electric cords can pass through the box onto the counter.  I used a French Cleat to hang the box so it can be removed easily.  I didn’t spline the mitres, just glue.  I did reinforce them with a very small glue block however they were surprisingly strong with just glue. 

 

One last thing.  I proudly gave the box to my friend who seemed impressed.  He had it with him the next day at work.  Yup, I made it a hair to small, so I quickly made another.

 

- John

Thomas Lie-Nielsen sidled up to me with a drink in his hand, a sportscoat on his back and a sly look across his face.

He opened his green jacket to reveal… a stick.

I repressed my urge to pluck it from his jacket because I stank like a monkey’s armpit after hauling four workbenches all over the campus of Berea College for our Woodworking in America conference.

But Thomas (who raises horses and must be accustomed to large, malodorous hairy things) nodded that it was OK for me to grab the stick. I did. Then I squealed like a little girl.

It was a brass Warrington hammer and looked just like my favorite hammer of all time, the little guy shown at the top of this blog entry. I use the round end of this hammer for adjusting all my planes. A few subtle hammer taps adjust the lateral position of my iron with more accuracy than any lateral-adjust mechanism.

I’ll also use the round end to advance the irons of my planes that don't have mechanical adjusters. Oh, and I drive small pins with this end, too.

The flat end, called the “cross pane,” is ideal for starting nails. You pinch the nail with your fingers and use the cross pane to sneak through your fingertips to strike the nail’s head. Very handy.

There are probably 100 other uses for this little hammer because I take it with me whenever I travel with my tools.

So here’s the news: Lie-Nielsen Toolworks is going to begin making this hammer in both steel and brass. I don’t have information on pricing or availability, but who cares? I’m getting a set (or two) the minute they come out.

You see, I have a hammer problem. I probably have 20 or more of them, all different. Most of them came into my hands when I wrote about hammers for Woodworking Magazine a few years back, but for some reason I can’t seem to get rid of them.

But the Warrington’s size and weight have made it my favorite shop hammer (followed quickly by my 16-ounce Maydole hammer). And soon – thanks to Lie-Nielsen – you are going to be able to see if you agree with my assessment.

— Christopher Schwarz

All I'm saying about this photo is that I'm glad it's not scratch 'n' sniff.

This is a picture that my wife told me to get or not come home! Nice to have that kind of support. I don’t know how the kids would feel about her statement since my youngest is the only one that has ever said “no mommy, don’t kick daddy out!” Why tempt fate? So I made sure I got the photo.

This picture is of the second night at the Woodworking in America conference. I was un-stressing from the day. My first assignment was to introduce Mr. Michael Dunbar. Yes, that Mr. Dunbar. A person of legend whom I have never met. I hope I didn’t mess it up. On Sunday, I was slotted to introduce Mr. Frank Klausz another legend I have never met. After hearing him answer a question with “because that is stupid!” I was glad I called him "Mr." Klausz.

One of the great benefits of being Chris’s apprentice is being able to help out and go to these events. WIA was spot-on fantastic. It was hard to pick which seminar to go to. On day two, I was privileged to introduce Brian Boggs. Wow!  I had no idea of how much there is know about wood. I sat in awe as he explained things about wood that I had never heard before.  Hearing the meticulous way he monitors wood moisture and applies hide glue twice, it is no wonder his chairs don’t come apart. In fact one of the people asked him about joint failure on his chairs, to wit he said with sincere humility, I don’t know because I have never had a chair come back.

I got to hear about 18th century chisels from Adam Cherubini and watch him use his four-foot  plus bowsaw. He had to look behind him before sawing so he didn’t take someone out. I watched an attendee from Idaho round the corner and spy Adam. Her mouth opened and her camera came out. I bet that picture was a keeper.

Last but not least is my new international drinking partner, Phil from Phillyplanes in the UK, which reminds me of the only downside to the event. The 8 a.m. starting time.…

— John Hoffman

Sometimes when I look at old pieces of furniture, I can convince myself that perhaps old-growth timber is like melamine. It just doesn’t move with the seasons like modern wood does.

What else can explain the survival of so many pieces of furniture that defy the holy writ of hygroscopic activity? Tabletops are vigorously nailed to aprons without splitting. Stretchers and sides of sideboards have grain that runs contrary – the joinery should have pulled itself apart but it’s still tight. Wide backs that should have expanded and torn apart a carcase are still perfectly fitted.

Sometimes I think we over-engineer our projects to accommodate problems that will never happen.

This week I’m building a dry sink based on a circa 1770 Connecticut piece, and I’m torn between building the piece as it was originally made and building it to compensate for seasonal wood movement.

For example: The 26” x 26 door on the front of the original is made from two wide planks that are joined with a tongue-and-groove joint and battens. When I created my construction drawing in CAD, I drew it as a frame-and-panel door instead. I calculated that a 26”-wide plank door is going to move almost 1/4".

As I milled out the sweet-smelling Eastern white pine, however, I found that I had two 14”-wide clear boards that would make a door that looked just like the original. I held up the two boards and said: It’s worth the risk. The project will look better with a primitive wide-plank door.

Then came the problem with the top and the splash. On the original, the 26”-wide top is captured on all four edges by splash pieces that are nailed on. The top should have split or blown apart the splash, but it hasn’t.

I considered building it like the original, but I decided against it. I’m going to make the top so it floats in a groove in the splash pieces – basically like a solid-wood drawer. The end result will be indistinguishable from the original (except from the back), so I think that is a decision I can live with.

And then there are the hinges. The original has strap hinges on the door, but they are clearly later additions. But I have no idea what the original hinges looked like. And I like the strap hinges. So iron strap hinges are on order and in the mail.

And when the time comes to nail the living snot out of the piece, well, we’ll have to see what happens then.

— Christopher Schwarz

This week I had an unusual visitor in the office. Auctioneer Toot Ewalt loaned me the rare 18th-century dovetail saw that he brought to the Woodworking in America conference earlier this month. I had the saw sitting on my desk for 10 days along with all the other dovetail saws we own.

(If you haven’t heard the wild story about this circa 1770 saw made by John Kenyon, check out my blog entry at Woodworking Magazine.)

Between frantic bouts of editing manuscripts for the February 2009 issue of Popular Woodworking I picked up each saw over and over to get a feel for the differences in the handles. After 10 days I concluded that the Kenyon saw was as comfortable as the saw I’ve picked as my daily driver: the Lie-Nielsen Independence dovetail saw.

That’s good news because Mike Wenzloff at Wenzloff & Sons is building a reproduction of this saw. And if a reproduction isn’t good enough for you, then start watching the action catalogs. The saw’s owner says he’s investigating selling the original saw at auction.

If you haven’t noticed by now, saw and handplane handles are important to me. If the tool isn’t comfortable, it will be difficult to use. Now, as woodworkers, we have the tools to make our own handles. But have you ever tried?

I sure have. I’ve made several saw handles and plane totes during the last decade, and I’ve never been happy with my efforts. I’ve also taken a rasp to a few other handles with mixed results. My tendency is to make the curves too pronounced. And to reduce the handle’s width too much.

I’ve found that handles are much like the seat of a Windsor chair. When I make a seat that is really sculpted, it feels good when I first sit in it. But I quickly get tired of sitting in highly sculpted chairs. My most comfortable chairs have shallow saddles. (Correction: My most comfortable chairs have cushions.)

Same goes for handles. The overly sculptural ones aren’t comfortable after I cut a few joints. But dialing in the right amount of shaping has been a challenge for me. Hence, my obsession with finding saws with good stock handles.

However, if you want to try to make your own handle, then download this tracing supplied to Lost Art Press by woodworker William Duffield.

handle trace.jpg (122.72 KB)

Real Details
The other revelation about the Kenyon saw was its level of fit and finish. It wouldn’t pass muster in a modern shop. Heck, Mike Wenzloff would probably throw this handle on the burn pile. You can still see rasp marks all over the tote that look original (the saw shows no sign of being refinished). The slot for the blade is overcut – a no-no in modern work.

And yet this is the prettiest saw I have ever held. I even like the cringe-inducing hang hole.

My only regret during my 10-day affair with this saw is that I didn’t get to cut a dovetail with its 20 (or perhaps 21) ppi blade. The teeth are in poor shape, the blade has dropped, the handle is loose and the sawplate is significantly bent.

I guess I’m going to have to wait for Wenzloff to finish up his reproductions before I can experience the whole package. He promised that I can borrow one of his Kenyon saws (I thought about buying one, but I need another dovetail saw like I need another smoothing plane). When I get the Wenzloff saw in hand, I’ll file a full report.

— Christopher Schwarz

The waitress rushed up to me at the cash register with a desperate look in her eye. In defense, I held out a $6 tip, but she ignored it and fixed me in her gaze.

“Will you sign a placemat? Or a napkin?” she asked. “Do you have something you could sign?”

I shook my head and started walking to the exit.

“Sign anything,” she said. “The cooks will be so disappointed if you don’t.”

This was the final and odd scene of my four-day odyssey at the Woodworking in America show in Berea, Ky., where 350 hand-tool woodworkers got together during Nov. 14-16, to talk about tools, techniques and history.

The show itself was great fun, and I’ll be posting lots of photos and stories on my blog at Woodworking Magazine (one of the organizers of the show). But for the readers of the Lost Art Press blog, I saved this particular tale. It begins about an hour before getting rushed by the waitress.

After four days on my feet and 12 hours (total) of sleep during that period, I packed up our rented Ryder with all the workbenches, grinders and clamps we’d brought to the Woodworking in America show. Senior Editor Glen Huey climbed into the passenger seat of the truck and we drove north to get some lunch with some of the other magazine editors and John Hoffman, the other half of Lost Art Press.

We met at the Richmond, Ky., Steak 'n Shake, and our party of five snagged a window seat and started looking at the menus.

Our waitress took our drink order and when she returned, she asked: “Are you guys the Oakridge Boys?”

To which Hoffman immediately answers: “Yes.”

I start laughing and tell her that no, we’re not the country/gospel quartet. But she is undaunted.

“The cooks up there in the red ties say you are the Oakridge Boys,” she said, pointing to the rear corner of the store. I look back to see two young guys with enormous smiles on their faces looking right at me.

I point to Associate Editor Drew DePenning at the end of the table.

“He’s 23,” I explain. “He would have been a fetus when the Oakridge Boys were popular.”

She gives me a quizzical look but takes our food order. Glen Huey is chuckling so hard he’s having trouble ordering. Senior Editor Robert Lang is his typical placid and inscrutable self.

After the waitress walks away, I start singing the base vocal to “Elvira” and try to get Bob to join in. He smiles, but he won’t take the bait.

We eat. And as we try to leave, I’m ambushed by the waitress, who insists that I’m the band’s manager. “Don’t you have some posters or CDs you could sign for us?” She chases us to the door.

We all scurry to our cars. I fetch my laptop from Hoffman’s Honda and head back to the Ryder truck.

“Crap!” Hoffman says. “I locked my keys in my car.”

Hoffman calls a locksmith, who promises to be there in 10 minutes. We stand there for a minute and realize it is too cold to wait outside.

“I guess you gotta go back into the Steak 'n Shake,” I said.

“Oh no,” Hoffman said, shaking his head.

But then he turns and heads back into the arms of fame.

— Christopher Schwarz

P.S. After I got home, I looked up a photo of the Oakridge boys and busted out laughing. I can see it: John Hoffman is Joe Bonsall. Glen Huey is Duane Allen. Robert Lang is a better-coiffed William Lee Golden. And I’m Richard Sterban. And Drew? Just another 23-year-old gospel/country fetus, I guess.  

Years ago, we performed a year-long survey at Popular Woodworking to find out what sort of projects appealed to our readers. We were interested in what furniture styles they liked, but we were also interested in what furniture forms (tables, bookshelves etc.) that they most liked to build.

So in every issue we asked the readers to rate which projects they liked. After a year of data, we were shocked at some of the results.

Here was the wildest finding: Our readers really liked and needed plans for over-the-potty cabinets.

It’s easy to turn your nose up at this pedestrian form of furniture. Heck there’s never been a woodworking book titled “Best Dang Potty-Cabinet Plans” or a juried exhibition of studio furniture makers titled “Fine Cabinetry in the Can: Poetry and Motion.”

But maybe there should be.

One of the first projects I was ever really excited about personally was a potty cabinet. I thought it was a million-dollar idea when I came up with it. It’s a simple but fine-looking wall cabinet with delicate rails and stiles. The real cool thing about it is that the bottom of the cabinet dispenses washrags like a tissue box. And the interior guts of the cabinet are clever – the washrags never come spilling out when you open the door. And it has a cool handmade wooden hinge.

My co-workers still mock that cabinet (which is why it’s never been published), though my wife and kids use it every day. I know I still have the router pattern for the opening in the bottom of the cabinet (that took some doing to figure out). And now that I’m editor….

In any case, last week I finished up a new bathroom cabinet for our master bathroom. This was the last piece of built-in furniture I’d planned on building for our home’s addition, which was a project we started on seven years ago.

Because this project was for me, I was free to design it without worrying about co-workers or readers. So I could add details I liked, such as the divided lights in the door, which are just slightly recessed from the face of the door. And I could snitch details from other projects of mine without looking like a Johnny one-note – the top cap of the cabinet is stolen directly from my tool cabinet at work.

I built the cabinet using offcuts from the shop at work. The best part of the project was finding perfectly quartersawn stock lurking in the knottiest and nastiest board in the shop.

For my family, the best part of the project was that I designed it to hold six (six!) rolls of toilet paper, plus toiletries.

Here’s a TP design tip: Design your cabinet around the 5” dimension. A 5” x 5” x 5” space will do a good job of holding a decent-size roll (no promises on the super-jumbo-mondo rolls of paper).

If you’re interested in a simple construction drawing, you can download a pdf below.

Master_Bath_Cabinet.pdf (15.26 KB)

Maybe there is actually a book on this somewhere. Let me first see what Moxon says about potty cabinets….

— Christopher Schwarz

I have spent almost a year or so using only the Nicholson bench.  I am very fortunate to have both the Nicholson and the first bench that Chris made titled “The $175 Bench”.  The $175 bench is similar to the Roubo in that the legs are flush with the top which is thick and stiff and there is no apron.  I have kept a piece of hardboard on the top of the $175 Bench which turned it into an assembly table. 

 

Some thoughts on the different benches: 

 

Nicholson: First the length of the Nicholson is awesome.  In the first picture I have 21 items on it which all fit on the 8 foot top. The ability of a bench this long is that you can move different parts of your project forward at the same time or in my case work many different projects at once and not get any done!

 

Vises on the Nicholson:  These are great.  The wagon vise combined with the length of the bench make working the face or edge of board a breeze.  I move the dog where I need it and put the other dog in one of the two holes in the wagon vise and I am good.  I have also used the apron and leg vise to hold a piece that would have been two tippy in the wagon vise set up.  The holes in the apron were perfect for getting the board to the right height.

 

The leg vise has also been smashing!  It has a bit of leather on the inside of the vise and grips like a pit bull on a hobo.  It has been a superior means to hold work over the traditional face vise on the $175 bench especially since it is placed on an angle which allows the work to reach the ground without hitting the vise screw.

 

That said, the one major issue I have experienced with the Nicholson is the inability to use my holdfasts.  I am the proud owner of two holdfasts from Phil Koontz.  These are perfect and work extremely well.  It seems that the thickness of the top does not allow the holdfast to work.  I am not sure if another type of holdfast would work or not.  Since the Nicholson doesn’t have holes in the top like the other bench, I have tried to work around this with varying degrees of success.  The only other complaint I have is that the apron does not allow any clamping to the top and requires me to reach underneath it to push up the bench dogs.  I have also noticed that hammering anything is best done over the legs of the bench, whereas anywhere on the top of the $175 bench works fine.

 

Yesterday I unveiled the $175 bench from underneath its hardboard coffin.  I needed to put a card scraper to a thin piece of wood.  The ends were mitered and I knew the bench dogs would dent the ends if I squeezed them in the wagon vise.  Instead I used a piece of scrap and with a thrill I hammered my holdfast.  I did one side then switched it around.  This was awesome!  I also had the joyous feeling of putting my hands under the top without bending over.  That was so nice I felt an urge for a cigarette!

 

I think I have the perfect setup with the two benches.  I am going to keep the Nicholson against the wall which I have found to be an “ok” thing to do.  I like the ability to move around a project and have definitely had a time or two where I was in a physically challenging position because of the limitations that were caused by the bench being against the wall.  I would like to know if anyone else has been using their bench against a wall and have had problems with this configuration.

-John

 

When I first became intrigued by hand-tool woodworking, I kept encountering people who said things such as: “Yes, but Moxon says jointer planes should have their cutters sharpened straight across – not curved.”

“Moxon says you should cut mortises this way.”

“Moxon says you should test a handsaw by bending it.”

As Jan Brady of “The Brady Bunch” might say: Moxon. Moxon. Moxon!

At the time, I figured I should really try to take a woodworking class with Joseph Moxon. He seemed to have the ear of the entire woodworking hand-tool community. As I soon found out, however, Moxon has been dead since 1691. Not even the long arm of Marc Adams would be able to get that guy to teach a class. Nor would Marc want to. Moxon was a printer and globe-maker by trade. Not a woodworker.

What Moxon did, however, was remarkable. He published the first ever English-language account of woodworking shop practice. He covered tools, techniques and general shop practice in a series of pamphlets titled “The Art of Joinery,” which were later combined with accounts he wrote about other trades into the seminal “Mechanick Exercises.”

So I snagged a reprinted copy of “Mechanick Exercises” and read it several times. It was slow-going. The English language of the 17th century transposed the letter “f” for the letter “s.” So the sentence “…so shall the bounds of your mortise be struck” reads as “fo fhall the bounds of your Mortefs be ftruck.” Plus the sentence structure of the time can be a maze for the modern mind.

Fourteen months ago, I began to update the text of the chapters that comprise “The Art of Joinery.” I cleaned up the transpositions, shortened the run-on sentences without changing the meanings, and I added notes in the text to help the reader. I split up Moxon’s plates so the drawing of the paring chisel is with the text about the paring chisel.

Then I added my own plain-spoken explanation of Moxon’s original text, which can be bedeviling at times. I tried to explain what was going on in each section of “The Art of Joinery,” and I illustrated Moxon’s techniques with more than 40 photos.

It’s not an academic book by any means – I’ll leave that to the people with more college degrees. The text I added is from the perspective of a modern woodworker seeking to understand historical shop practice and find techniques to make life easier. And I did indeed find some good stuff in Moxon, from using a fore plane properly to using spit to sharpen.

I’ve put it all in a 96-page book that is now at the printer in Maryland. This will be a hardbound 6” x 9” book with a linen cover and embossed letters. The interior pages will be Smythe sewn – meaning the pages will be sewn together instead of simply glued. The entire book will be in old-fashioned black and white.

The book will be $17 and will be available here at Lost Art Press and through a select few woodworking retailers. It will not be available through mass-market channels. All copies sold through the Lost Art Press web site will be signed, of course.

As soon as the book arrives in house later this fall, we’ll update the site.

— Christopher Schwarz

Guess what?  I finally got my Wenzloff & Sons, Seaton tennon saw and it was worth the wait!  This is the 19” inch monster.  When I first tried this saw it felt too tippy to use.  Chris explained that this is an advantage that helps you saw plumb.  The reason is that you can use the tippy-ness of the saw to tell you when you are plumb.  When you balance the saw on the work, not tipping one side or other, the saw is plumb!  It is simple physics.  All you have to do is move it to and fro to get a perfect cut.  I know that there is a story floating around that Newton discovered gravity by watching an apple fall, but I don’t believe it.   It’s more likely that a woodworker already knew this because of his saw and told Newton about it.   

 

Anyway, I have been practicing Chris’s sawing technique for sawing tennons.  I marked out a couple of tennons and started to saw.  In the first picture below you can see how I have the work clamped in the vise.  This way I can advance on two lines at once.  The important thing is to stop when you hit the shoulder line.  The picture shows where I stopped sawing.  Flip the work around in the vise and do the same technique on the other side stopping in the same place.  The result is that both sides are cut down to the shoulder lines with a “hump” remaining in the middle of the work.

 

Now to saw the hump, clamp the work in the vertical position and roll the saw horizontal advancing down the hump (see the second picture).  The third picture is the result.  The tennon is ok.  You can see there is some of the line left on one side and nothing on the opposite side.  This problem is caused by our bodies.  To explain, if you extend your arm away from your body it is easy to roll your palm down.  When sawing I have noticed that us right hander’s push the saw plate out as we slightly and inadvertently roll our palms down.  This problem shows as the cut travels away from the line or across the line, depending on which side of the tennon I am sawing.  I think being aware of this tendency will help correct it.  I have done six cuts so I think another 94 and I might actually make something.

- John