Lost Art Press

Month: September 2021

A Special No. 5 Handplane

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What do you get for the woman who already owns all the blue fleeces on the planet?

I’m talking, of course, about Megan Fitzpatrick, who celebrated a birthday on Aug. 7. After much thought, I decided to get her something that would indirectly benefit me. You see, Megan is constantly borrowing my beloved old Stanley No. 5, which I have owned since I started woodworking.

I don’t mind her borrowing it, except when I need to use it. My No. 5 is – far and away – the handplane I use the most. I bought it before I knew a lot about handplanes from a stoner at an open-air market. And it was the best $12 I ever spent. 

It’s a Type 11 Stanley plane, which means it was likely made between 1910 and 1918. Stanley made tons of these planes – they aren’t rare. But they are spectacular. Rosewood knob and tote. A frog with lots of bearing surface. And – in general – superb fit and finish.

So I decided to get Megan a Type 11 just like mine, and I pieced one together from a good basic plane and some donor parts. But I decided that wasn’t enough. Megan works hard every day to keep me sane at work.

The sidewalls of my No. 5 plane are engraved with the logo for “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest,” which Catharine Kennedy engraved for me about 11 years ago (she is now retired from engraving). For Megan’s plane, I decided to ask Jenny Bower, who both Megan and I admire greatly.

Jenny agreed (yay!), but she was concerned because she hadn’t engraved the particular metals used in the old Stanleys. What if the lever cap didn’t engrave well? She was concerned she might ruin a valuable and old plane.

Then I told her I’d get another lever cap for $10. And I explained how the tool itself – while spectacular – isn’t rare at all. What was going to make the plane special was the engraving.

We received the finished plane this week, and it is better than photos can convey. Jenny is a hand-engraver, and the results are incredibly three-dimensional. If you ever have thought about getting a tool engraved, I recommend her highly. Check out her Instagram feed to see the sort of work she does (and the fun costumes she makes, too).

During the last 11 years, a lot of people have asked questions about my engraved plane. (My favorite: “Isn’t it amazing that you found an old plane that had already been engraved with the logo from your book?”) The most common question people have is: “Why did you get the plane engraved?”

Usually I make a joke at first: “Now it’s a tax write-off.” But the serious answer goes something like this: “My tools are my ticket to work for myself, outside of the corporate world. They mean the world to me. Engraving a common but incredibly useful tool forces people to regard it differently. When I’m gone, I hope a future owner will pick it up at a flea market and understand just how much this common-as-dirt No. 5 meant to its owner.”

Oh, and if you want to read more about Jenny’s journey as an engraver, woodworker and person, check out this Little Acorns profile Nancy Hiller wrote about her.

— Christopher Schwarz

Wood for Stick Chairs

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WAIT, FROM THE LUMBERYARD?
You can build a stick chair with almost any wood. Yes, you can rive it from green wood. But you can also buy it at the lumberyard and get parts that are plenty strong enough.

Editor’s note: What follows is a short excerpt from “The Stick Chair Book,” which is scheduled to be released in hardcover form in early November. Until that date, you can buy an “Early Adopter Digital Package” of the book for $25. This digital package includes lots of extra goodies. When the hardcover book is released, this package will go away forever.

Most chairmakers are ridiculously worried about the wood they use in their chairs. Is it strong enough? Is it dry/wet enough? Is the grain straight enough? Can I get the parts I need from this chunk on my workbench?

But aside from those narrow concerns, there is a lot of flexibility when it comes to the wood you use to make a chair. The wood can be:

• almost any species
• air-dried, kiln-dried or vacuum-dried
• a softwood or hardwood
• sawn or riven
• ring-porous, semi-diffuse-porous or diffuse-porous
• from the lumberyard, the log yard or your backyard.

Put another way, almost any wood can be used in a chair as long as it is strong enough, dry enough and the right size. What follows is how to evaluate your stock in terms of its strength, moisture and size – without turning you into an intern at the Forest Products Laboratory.

TWO STICKS, ONE DISASTER
The stick at top has grain running its entire length. The one below has short grain and is doomed to snap. Training your eye to see short grain at a glance is a helpful skill.

Strength
Every stick of wood is a bundle of wood fibers. If the fibers run continuously from one end of the stick to the other, that stick will take far more abuse compared to a stick where some of the fibers run across the width of the board (sometimes called “short grain”).

You can create one of these super-strong sticks using a few methods. You can rive the wood – like firewood – so it splits along its long fibers. You can saw it out by following the direction of the fibers with your saw blade. Or you can use a combination of these two methods.

Neither method is magic. As long as the fibers run straight through the stick, you have done your job.
The other aspect of strength derives from the species of wood. A strong species, such as white oak, can be extraordinarily tough when it is only 1/2″ in diameter and its fibers run continuously from one end to the other. A similar stick of cherry or walnut might have to be 3/4″ in diameter (or larger) to possess equal strength.

While it sounds like I am about to offer a chart, graph or equation to determine the optimal-sized chair part, I’m not. Instead, I’m going to suggest you find a sledgehammer.

SLEDGEHAMMER TEST
When I make a chair, I make a few extra sticks and hit them with a sledge. I recommend it. You will learn a lot about how wood breaks and how some species (like ash) seem indestructible. Below are two victims. Short-grain walnut and brash cherry.

You can easily test a sample chair part by propping it up on two blocks of wood, one on either end of the stick. Hold the stick in place with one hand and strike the stick with a small sledgehammer (2 lbs. or 3 lbs. will do). If the stick survives the strike, the part is strong enough. If it snaps, you should increase the bulk of the stick or find one with straighter grain.

Why isn’t there a Holy Chart of Diameters and Species with recommendations for chairmaking? Because wood is so variable. For example: Slow-growth and fast-growth oak can be radically different when it comes to strength. (Slow-growth oak is far more porous and easily snapped.) How the tree grew, how it was dried and how straight you cut it all play a part in how strong a stick is. But one way to resolve all the variables is to hit a sample stick with the sledge.

The idea for this test came from fellow chairmaker Chris Williams, who was looking for a way to test wood for brashness – a defect where the wood is so brittle it can be snapped like a corn chip. It is also a method that the USDA Forest Products Laboratory has used to test brittle woods.

How hard should you hit the stick? Like you are striking a nail. Should you use a surviving stick in the chair after you hit it? It’s your call, but I usually use them.

— Christopher Schwarz

The Kieran Binnie Memorial Fund for Craft

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When Kieran Binnie died by suicide in April, I had to take some time to think it over. I’ve had other friends and family leave the world this way, and there is a lot of anger, confusion, regret and loss to digest. At least there is for me.

Kieran and I met in 2014 when he was a student in an “Anarchist’s Tool Chest” class in England. While I try to keep a professional distance from students when I teach, I immediately bonded with Kieran over music – both playing it and listening to it – as well as the normal stuff (woodworking, tools and beer).

And it wasn’t just an international fling. Kieran and I kept in close touch since that class, meeting up in person a few times at woodworking events and classes – and always trading music recommendations back and forth. As well as staying in touch online.

At the time of his death, Kieran and I were working on a book together about the intertwined history of books and bookshelves and bookcases. I don’t know if I have the strength to complete that project on my own, but I do want something good to come out of his death.

Derek Jones, luthier Sue Johnson, Kieran, me and Paul Mayon in 2014.

Shortly after Kieran’s funeral, I talked with Rachel Moss, Kieran’s wife, about something we could do together that would help the craft, help build community (a very important thing to Kieran) and help people who might be struggling with mental illness.

I immediately thought of JoJo Wood and Sean, who run Pathcarvers in Birmingham – the same city where Kieran lived. Pathcarvers is a special organization that helps bring woodcraft to segments of the population that might not ever experience it, including people in drug and alcohol rehab, prisons, mental health services and those with low incomes. They do this in addition to offering courses to the public at large.

Rachel and I decided that Pathcarvers was a perfect fit for our efforts. And so I am pleased to announce The Kieran Binnie Memorial Fund for Craft. This fund goes directly to Pathcarvers to support their work. No administrative fees. No strings attached. This money will expand the courses that Pathcarvers offers and fund tuition for people who cannot afford it.

Pathcarvers has opened a GoFundMe page here. If you are interested in helping others through craft, I can promise that your money will be put to good use.

Please take a moment to read about Pathcarvers here. Plus some of the people who teach courses there (and have been themselves helped by the programs) here. And if you can donate – even a little – please do.

— Christopher Schwarz

Stock Alert No. 2: Beer Steins and Bandanas

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Good news everyone. We found some more dirt.

Our ceramics supplier has just filled our entire order of Lost Art Press Beer Steins, and they are now available for immediate shipment. The mugs are $39, made in the USA by an artists’ collective and hold 20 ounces of beer, bourbon or coffee.

These mugs are handmade, dishwasher-safe and a joy to use.

We also have a new bandana design available in our store. This bandana features construction drawings from one of the comb-back chairs in “The Stick Chair Book.” The bandana was designed by Tom Bonamici to look like a blueprint. These are printed by One Feather Press in Tennessee, which makes the nicest bandanas we have found. They are pre-washed, soft and crisp.


Please note that because of ongoing supply-chain problems, we may not be able to restock these items if we sell out of them before Christmas. So if you are considering these as a gift, act now to avoid disappointment or shipping delays (remember last year? We do).

— Christopher Schwarz

A Selection of Tools You Can Make

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Fig. 1

Editor’s note: Following the success of “The Essential Woodworker” – our second-bestselling time of all time – we worked with Robert Wearing to republish a book filled with some of his best jigs, fixtures and appliances for handwork. During his career, Wearing had published two books of jigs for woodworking (both out of print), that are filled with insanely practical and simple devices.

With Wearing’s help, we picked out the best jigs for hand-tool woodworkers from his two books and compiled them into one volume: “The Solution at Hand: Jigs & Fixtures to Make Benchwork Easier.”

Just like with “The Essential Woodworker,” we had to recreate the book from scratch – all of the text, photos and drawings had been long lost to the publishing machine. And once again, the royalties to this book went to help Wearing, who was in an assisted-living home, after an incredibly rich and long career.

You can read more about Wearing’s life in this lovely 2017 profile. Shortly after “The Solution at Hand” was published, Wearing died at age 99 (read our obituary here).

The following tools are selections from Chapter 3: Tools, of Robert Wearing’s “The Solution at Hand: Jigs & Fixtures to Make Benchwork Easier,” a hardbound book of our favorite jigs from Wearing’s career. The book covers a wide swath of material, from building workbench appliances for planing, to making handscrews (and many other ingenious clamps), some simple tools that you cannot buy anywhere else, to marking devices that make complex tasks easier.

In all, there are 157 jigs, all of which are illustrated with Wearing’s handmade drawings. The book is designed as more of a reference book than something you read straight through. Already after editing the book, I now find myself returning to it and thinking: I know Wearing had a solution for this problem. And he did.

— Christopher Schwarz

Oil Pad
“Park your plane on its side lad.” This is a folk custom dating back to the age of wooden planes. The blades of these planes were firmly held by a tightly hammered in wooden wedge. Following this advice, however, will disturb the lateral setting of an iron plane whose blade is nothing like so firmly held. Instead park the plane on the oil pad made by gluing a strip of carpet to a plane-­sized board [Fig. 1, above]. This is a tidy ar­rangement which both protects the blade and reduces friction. Very little oil is needed.

Beam Compasses
This excellent and virtually cost-free tool is shown assembled at Fig. 9 A. In constructing it, first machine an overlength piece of square-section material, say 5/8″ x 5/8″ (16 mm x 16 mm). Cut off five pieces to make respectively, pieces a, b, c and d. All except d are sawn in half. The inside ends of c and d are finished quite square and all other ends are angled. Glue the a pieces to the stem and c and d between the b pieces using a short waxed block cut from the stem as a spacer. Hold the pieces together flat on a piece of polythene sheet. Drill a hole in end B for a pencil or ballpoint, the latter is often better, then drill a small terminal hole of 3 mm (1/8″) and a lateral hole for the clamp screw. A brass roundhead 12 gauge x 1-1/2″ is well suited for the cramp up. Drill halfway at 1/4″ (6 mm). Drill the remaining distance at 1/8″ (3 mm). Saw the slot with a saw having a wide kerf. Screw up and test with the chosen pen or pencil. File off any protruding screw point.

A similar routine is adopted for the sliding point unit. There are several possibilities for the clamping screw. Either put a clear hole halfway through and tap the other half 1/4″ BSW, or metric equivalent. Use a thumbscrew to tighten or make one by soldering a wing nut on to a piece of screwed rod. Or solder a wing nut to a brass woodscrew. Screw in a normal woodscrew first, then replace with the one made up. Or drill clear holes right through and use a 1/4″ (5 mm) coach bolt with wing nut.

The point can be made by grinding up a piece of silver steel of about 3/32″ (3 mm) diameter. Clean up the whole job, lightly sand and finish either with a poly­urethane varnish or teak oil.

Fig. 9

Awls
Of this large family of tools from the days of handwork, only the bradawl remains in the cata­logues. The convenient materials for making awls are tool steel, silver steel (commonly stocked in good tool shops) or old or un­wanted screwdrivers.

The bradawl, A, is most used for screw holes and is either filed or ground on both sides and after hardening and tempering is honed to chisel sharpness on the oilstone.

Marking awls, B, are made out of thinner material ground or filed to a long, fine and round point. Small electrical screwdrivers with plastic handles convert easily. This awl is not really suit­able for work other than marking as it cannot remove wood.

Fig. 34

The four square awl or small hand reamer, C, is useful in the bigger sizes for enlarging holes and in the smaller sizes for making pilot holes for small screws. It is filed really square in section and after hardening and tempering is carefully honed to give four keen cutting edges. It can be made from either round or square material.

The hooked awl, D, is particularly useful for marking out the second stage in dovetails. A good material for making these is old-fashioned steel knitting needles.

Turned hardwood handles with ferrules are well worth the trouble taken. Fit the blades into the handles by drilling slightly under size, filing the end of the awl to a chisel shape and then driving on in a vice. If the section is big enough the handle and blade can be drilled through and pinned.

Fig. 34 cont.