I’ve followed Vintage Tool Shop on Instagram for a long time. They always post really nice tools for sale – plus their own line of handsaws that they make (by hand) in the workshop in the back of the store.
So it was a fanboy moment last week when we drove by their shop and I saw the familiar logo. “Ack – that’s the place I’ve been following for so long!”
I had no idea the store was so close to where I was teaching for Wood Dust Australia. After class ended on Friday afternoon, I begged a ride to Vintage Tool Shop from chairmaker Bern Chandley.
There, Mike Subritzky and his wife, Mari, greeted us, gave us a tour and then set us loose in the shop.
The storefront is absolutely filled with high-quality woodworking tools, all of them restored and in good working order as far as I could tell. The store has almost everything, from worker tools to high-end collectible pieces. I got lost in the hammers for a good 20 minutes. The French handplane section – yes, a whole section on French handplanes – was amazing. And just seeing how everything was displayed in vintage buckets, shelving and woven baskets was a real pleasure.
In addition to the vintage tools, the shop sells a full line of handsaws that they make on the premises called Heritage Saws Melbourne. The saws are made using simple machines and hand tools and look impressive.
After five full days of teaching, I was worn out. But I’m going back on Saturday (my day off) to take a close look at their inventory.
Seriously, Vintage Tool Shop is one of the most impressive tool storefronts I’ve ever seen. If you are ever in Melbourne, plan an afternoon to visit.
Kelly Mehler (left) helping student Jim Ferrell during a class at his woodworking school. It’s no wonder that most of the pictures I can find of Kelly in our archive are of him helping others.
It is with grief that I report Kelly Mehler died early Sunday morning, Oct. 5, 2025. As you might know, he’d been fighting cancer for some time, but I heard from him recently when he told me he was feeling great and doing well, and working on a tool chest in his shop. So this was shocking news.
Many people knew Kelly through his eponymous school in Berea, Ky., and through his bestselling “The Table Saw Book,” magazine articles and woodworking classes and conferences.
Kelly was a great friend to Chris and me, and I think to just about everyone else who ever met him. Kelly was one of my earliest teachers, and later championed me when I started teaching. He was one of the first people to ask Chris to teach, years before (and Chris will have more to say later).
Kelly is one of the most generous and funny men I’ve ever had the honor of knowing; I’m so glad I was able to call him my friend, and so very sad that he is gone.
At the request of his family, we’re posting Kelly’s memorial service information below. All are welcome.
No matter how well you typically cut dovetails, sometimes the gods are simply not smiling upon you. I have days when I pick up my dovetail saw, make a few cuts and quickly realize that I should instead rough out lumber, clean out the offcut bin or do something else that doesn’t require precision. And I should drink less (or maybe more) coffee the next morning, then try again. But that isn’t always possible Sometimes, gaps happen.
They are not usually the end of the world, and I often simply ignore small ones. After all, time heals all wounds. Or fills them with dirt, anyway. And rarely have I seen such gappy joints, even from first-timers, that the project won’t stay together (glue is amazing stuff…and glue plus nails more amazing still!). Filling gaps is almost always an aesthetic, not structural, choice. But if I have to fix some gaps (or teach others how to fill gaps) below are a few ways I’ve been known to go about it.
Shims I’ll start with my least favorite, which is gluing in wedges/shims. If your pins and tails aren’t at least a little bit proud (that is, they stick out beyond the mating surface), gluing a shim into the gap is pretty much the best way I know to hide it. And it is always, in my opinion, the best way to hide a gaping maw.
I grab whatever offcuts I can from my stock and cut a handful of shims in various thicknesses, hoping that I’ll end up with at least one of a given size to perfectly fill my gap(s). And I do my best to make sure that my offcut matches the color of the project where the gap is gaping. It does no good to insert a sapwood shim into a heartwood gap – instead of hiding the gap, it will draw attention to the fix. Ditto on the grain. I try hard to select an offcut that exhibits the same grain, so that the fix won’t show.
I would like to pretend I purposely cut gaps, but that would be untrue. I was having a bad day at the bench…but in the middle of a class, there is no choice but to carry on!
Then paint both sides of the shim/wedge (your shape needs may vary) with glue, and gently tap it into the gap. I recommend a small hammer and gentle use thereof; these small piece can easily break. Make sure to let the glue fully dry before flushing to the surface with a flush-cut saw. If you don’t wait, the glue will get into your saw teeth, then it won’t cut! (The hide glue I use is easy to remove when I’m overeager – a little hot water and a scrub with a toothbrush will clean the teeth, then I wipe the blade with an oily rag. For PVA, hot vinegar and more vigorous scrubbing does the trick – but the smell will give you away.)
Note that my fingers are not on the bitey side of the blade. This is important. Flush-cut saws love blood.
Controlled Spelching My usual fix for small gaps is to plane the end grain in the direction of the gap, hoping it will break off enough to fill said gap. Sometimes, it even works! But, you have to have enough material proud of the surface so that you can catch it with the blade to break it. If your joints are already flush, it’s back to the shims above.
Here, you can see the edge of the tail is breaking off a bit (spelching) into the gap, but there wasn’t enough material to plane and break to fill this. For this one, it’s to the shims!
Contravening most planing instruction, here, you do want to plane off the edge, intentionally breaking the grain into the gap.
This is the pin I was planing in the picture above; you see how fibers on the side of the pin broke off to fill the small gap. When I plane the pin flush and clean up the surface, this will disappear under the finish.
Bishoping I do not know the etymology of the term, but “bishoping” is just a fancy word for “mushrooming.” Get the end grain wet with water and let it soak in for a few minutes, then use a ball peen hemmer to tap the fibers and mushroom them to fill a small gap. But again, you have to have enough of a proud joint that your taps don’t cause a dent below the surface of the side.
Here, I crossed my baseline most shamefully…not only with the saw, but when I was chopping out the baseline with a chisel. A little water and a few taps takes care of the baseline gap. Then I plane or flush-cut the joint flush. The overcuts? Well, for that, I’ll need time and dirt. (Or I can glue in a toothpick, but only if I’m going to paint the project.)
What about glue and sawdust? Or wood filler? Like the toothpick mentioned in the caption above, those works only if the project will be painted. Glue will never take a finish, and no matter what the marketing says, neither will wood filler. At least not any that I’ve found.
– Fitz
p.s. Most of the gaps I’ve shown above in closeup likely wouldn’t show enough in the finished work to be worth fussing over. But some people like to fuss. This is for them.
My class from 2024 – great fun was had by all…I hope!
The 2025 London International Woodworking Festival (IWF) is fast approaching! Classes (for which you can still register) run Oct. 20-23, then the marketplace is open to all on Friday, Oct. 24 from noon-6 p.m. and Saturday, Oct. 25 from 9:30 a.m.-6:30 p.m.
While Chris and I won’t be there this year due to teaching elsewhere, we’ve already blocked off our calendars for 2026. I quite like teaching while looking out over the Thames. And I always enjoy a visit to see Hodge the Cat. And toffee.
Hodge, who is mentioned (and not kindly – Boswell did not like cats – in Boswell’s “Life of Samuel Johnson.”
Lost Art Press books and many of our Crucible tools will be there though! Classic Hand Tools, which carries pretty much our full line, will be in the marketplace, as will folks from Lie-Nielsen, Veritas, Philly Planes, Windsor Workshops, Oscar Rush, Nigel Melfi, Richard Arnold and more! “From immersive courses and expert-led workshops to inspiring talks and a bustling marketplace, the Festival is a celebration of woodworking skill, tradition, and community.” You can check out the full lineup and get more info on the London IWF website.
And we’ll see you there in 2026 – sorry to miss this year.
Several weeks ago, James Wright of “Wood by Wright” and his daughter, Melody, poked their heads in to see just what really goes on around Lost Art Press. With camera in hand, James and Melody, recorded as Chris gave the grand tour of our shop, offices, and Anthe warehouse.
You may recognize James from his popular Youtube channel where he posts daily hand tool woodworking, demonstrations and how-to videos. You can click here to see James’s channel and watch more content.
But before you do that, give the video below a watch if you wish to get an in-depth look of where we work, create and pee!
