I implored Chris to let me have this one day of the 2020 gift guide to share a favorite of mine: the long-blade model of the R. Murphy Hand Carving and Dental Lab Knife. I inherited this knife and other hand tools from my grandfather, and it’s the only tool of his that I use on an almost-daily basis when I’m at the bench.
It’s great for scooping out relief cuts on the backs of tails and making flat cuts at the baseline to remove that scoop of waste. I also use it for quickly cleaning out any lingering waste at the base of pin boards.
Sure, you can use a chisel for relief cuts, but it’s not quite as efficient or comfortable. I’ve found this narrow-knife blade, with its flat cutting edge and comfortable handle, the fastest and most satisfying tool for these relief cuts I make on almost every one of my projects (I cut a lot of dovetails).
In fact, I like it so much that I just ordered a backup. It’s available from a number of stores for about $20, but I went right to the source: R. Murphy.
I think my grandfather used this knife for chip carving – so if you’re into that (or dental lab work of some kind), it’s multi-purpose!
A detail of the 1888 photograph seen earlier shows a chimney as well as windows in the chamber (upper floor) of Fisher’s shop. Approximately 60 years earlier, there was a small windmill on this roof to power his sawmill, lathe and grindstone. – Jonathan Fisher Memorial.
Who better to write a book about Jonathan Fisher, a late 18th century/early 19th century Maine woodworker and preacher, than Joshua Klein? Like Fisher, Joshua and his family are homesteaders in rural Maine, doing their best to live completely off the land. And Joshua is using in his own shop many of the same types of tools that Fisher had in his collection (not a surprise to those who know Joshua as the founder and editor in chief of Mortise & Tenon Magazine, a periodical that celebrates the preservation, research and recreation of historic furniture). As the crow flies, the Kleins live about 7 miles from Fisher’s Blue Hill farm.
In November 1810, Fisher began building a model of a “wood house.” Never one for technological stagnation, Fisher envisioned a building next to his house that was dedicated to producing lumber on a wind-powered sawmill that would also power his lathe. As a lumbering town, Blue Hill had numerous water-powered sawmills in Fisher’s days, but on his property at the top of the hill, Fisher had no access to a river or stream. What he did have, especially after years of clearing his property, was wind.
Although the memories of New England’s windmills are nearly faded, their abundance, especially along the coastline, is well documented. (2) As early as the 17th century, windmills (primarily for grinding grain) were being built in areas of New England without direct water access so they were not an unusual sight by the early 1800s.
As commonly known as they were, however, the construction of such a mechanism was beyond the skill of most craftsmen. One author has noted that the millwright’s job required a precision and care equal to the shipwright’s. The vision of a rural farmer building a windmill to saw his own lumber is quixotic. It seemed a project doomed to fail.
Although water mills were much more common in Maine, New England, as a whole had many windmills, especially along the coast. – Drake, Samuel Adams, Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast, Harper & Brothers, 1876, p 344.
Reading through the journals during the two-and-a-half-years of construction of the mill is agonizing, especially as the recorded tally of his investment that included his own labor rises at $1 per day (the same rate as Joseph Murphy, a cabinetmaker of South Berwick (3) ) in the midst of numerous frustrated attempts at sawing.
We know the mill was generating power as early as April 1812, because Fisher recorded having his grindstone running “by wind.” After investing substantially and working on it for more than two years, Fisher recorded on April 19, 1813: “Worked upon saw gear and made an attempt to saw wood. Broke the [?]. Greatly disappointed in my hopes. Endeavored to resign to the will of God but found it a hard trial. I doubt not, however, but God intends good by this cross. Expense of wood house, etc. = $215.50.” The next day all that is recorded is: “Made a new experiment to carry my saw for sawing wood by wind – discouraged in it. Laid it aside = $216.50.”
Despite his discouragement, Fisher carried on and a few days later wrote, “first commenced sawing wood, with some, though small, good effect.” From here, only periodic sawing is recorded. The anticlimactic success of the sawmill is startling after so much labor and expense.
The roof of this Estonian spinning wheel shop was equipped with a small windmill for powering woodworking machinery. Fisher’s was probably similar. – Courtesy of Lost Art Press.
The wind power was also harnessed to drive the lathe. June of that year, Fisher documented: “Worked upon turning gear and set my lath a-going by wind.” Powering lathes with water power was common in production shops but wind-powered lathes were much less common. It’s hard to envision the practicality of such a setup. The irregularity of the wind must have been a challenge to deal with for the turning he was doing. The idea is not unprecedented, however. Windmill historian, Roy Gregory, has documented the use of an 8.5′-tall tower mill in a Lancashire, England, shop that powered a lathe and circular saw. The mill is described as having four 8′ long common sails with gears for regulating speed (4). Ants Viires, a historian of Estonian woodcraft, has photographed a small tower mill attached to the roof of a mid-20th-century spinning wheel workshop. It is likely that Fisher’s was similar in size.
The design of the wood house’s lathe is unknown. In Fisher’s room-by-room probate inventory taken in 1847, it listed a lathe and its chisels in the barn of which his son, Willard, was half-owner. Because two of the existing poppets do not fit the surviving lathe, it is assumed that Fisher had another lathe in the shop that was discarded when that building was taken down. Because no lathe (or any workbenches, for that matter) are listed in the probate inventory, it may be that these shop fixtures were built-ins. Often, probate inventories exclude these items because they were considered part of the shop building.
Although we know Fisher built at least two lathes, this is the only one that has survived.
It is apparent that Fisher achieved his primary goal with this windmill project because he was able to generate lumber to some degree. But it must not have revolutionized his production enough because in June 1821, he disassembled the tower of his mill, never to speak of the mill in action again. Neither the 1824 Morning View painting nor the 1888 photograph of the wood house show any evidence to testify to the existence of the mill.
The up-and-down “sash” saw marks from the mill can still be seen on the inside and backside of much of Fisher’s casework.
That Fisher referred to a least a portion of his wood house as his “shop” suggests that he eventually moved his tools out of the barn and into this dedicated space. The transition between workspaces must have been gradual because the installations of a new workbench and lathe are carried out over time amidst other woodworking projects. It is also conceivable that there always remained a small shop space in the barn for convenience sake.
In June 1823, Fisher was busy setting up his “shop chamber.” He moved his grindstone to a new location, built a “cupboard” for tool storage, constructed a portable workbench and installed a new stove. The reconfiguring of this workspace was likely due to his feeling “the infirmities of old age creeping stealthily upon him.” Perhaps this rearrangement facilitated his work.
This detail from Fisher’s A Morning View of Blue Hill Village shows the arrangement of the Fisher homestead from the side. Moving from left to right, we see the original barn, the hog house and some other outbuildings, the original red house attached to the yellow 1814 addition and finally the black “wood house.” – Jonathan Fisher, A Morning View of Blue Hill Village, 1824, oil on canvas, 25-5/8″ x 52-1/4″, Collection of the Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine; Museum Purchase, 1965.1465.134.
2. Lombardo, Daniel, Windmills of New England: Their Genius, Madness, History & Future, On Cape Publications, 2003. 3. Burch, Abby, By His Account Rendered: The Business of Cabinetmaking in York County, Maine, 1815-1840, a modified master’s thesis, 2008. 4. Gregory, Roy, The Industrial Windmill in Britain, Phillimore & Co., 2005.
“Make a Joint Stool from a Tree,” by Jennie Alexander and Peter Follansbee, was an early Lost Art Press book – published in 2012, not too long after Christopher Schwarz left Popular Woodworking. Eight years (and change) later, there are but a couple hundred copies left, so it’s time to go back on press. And that’s an opportunity to rethink the “form factor”; the new version will have a printed hardbound cover (and add a new preface from Peter Follansbee).
To make room in the warehouse for the new printing, LAP has reduced the price on the remaining first editions to $27. So if you’re a first edition kind of person and don’t already have this one, now is the time.
I – and possibly Bean – will be on @bench.talk.101 today from 3:30-4:30 p.m. EST to talk about my enduring love for tool chests (and current obsession with the Dutch tool chest form in particular) and cats. You can join the conversation by clicking: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81164688577?pwd=b1ZOOWgzQi9ZeExsVDYyWkJMNXdkQT09 at about 3:30.
Or click on the link in the @Bench.Talk.101 Instagram bio, which will appear 5 minutes before the meeting is about to start.
P.S. These meetings are recorded and published on the Bench.Talk.101 YouTube channel, so by joining the conversation, you are giving permission for the talk to be recorded and the recording to be made public for all to enjoy. You can watch previous episodes on the Bench.Talk.101 YouTube channel.
Whenever I take our dog, Joey, to the vet, he treats me to an ear-splitting performance of terror and woe. Just getting in the truck prompts panic; although I took him everywhere when he was a pup, he’s spent most of his adult life in the house, yard or shop. As a result, the truck has come to signify just one thing: that terrible destination where he gets poked, palpated and robbed of all agency. We turn from Woodyard Road onto Smith Pike and all hell breaks loose: the angry barks and plaintive cries, the look – part-imploring, part-accusatory. “Mom! NO! You CANNOT take me there! PLEASE! I won’t go! I can’t stand it! Turn around! MOM!!!” – all on repeat.
But I’ve always been struck by what happens as soon as I park the truck. His demeanor instantly shifts from avoidance-at-all-costs to single-minded resolution: OK then, let’s get this over with.
I thought of Joey last Thursday as I contemplated the pint or so of “Mochaccino Smoothie” barium sulfate suspension I was going to choke down between 7:30 and 8 the next morning (it turned out to be just fine, even if it would fall short of the expectations some might have based on the cup of foamy cappuccino and random chunks of chocolate that illustrate the label), followed about a half hour later by another 10 or so ounces, before driving to the local radiological center for a CT scan.
“How is it possible that I am doing this to myself?” I marveled, as I always do when facing a frightening medical procedure. I’m still the person who, as a 6- or 7-year-old kid with an extreme fear of needles, was struck one day at the doctor’s office by the realization that I had the power to walk right out the door. And so I did. As I recall, my mother and one of the nurses ran after me, but for those few moments the sense of agency was potent. It lasted until my mother informed me I’d have to swallow two pills the size of grenades if I wasn’t going to have the shot. (I still chose the pills, which we pulverized.)
Last Thursday, the urgency of my desire to know what was causing my vague but increasing abdominal discomfort shifted me into resolution. I thought of Joey. (It wasn’t the first time I’ve regarded a dog as an exemplar.)
I parked the truck, signed the consent forms and followed the technician through the labyrinth of offices, radiological suites and exam rooms to our destination, where I replaced my jeans with a pair of pants that would have fit John Candy and lay down on the table. The tech stuck an IV in my arm, not without some wincing from me, and described the sensations I should anticipate when the contrast medium went in.
After 42 interminable hours of waiting, my doctor called with the results: there was a mass on my pancreas, and it was likely malignant. The reading didn’t come as a complete surprise; this medical mystery tour had started with an abdominal ultrasound the week before that suggested reason for concern. The next step would be a biopsy.
The biopsy was performed at the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis, confirming the preliminary diagnosis. I never imagined I would write the words “I had a biopsy this morning (possibly the most pleasant endoscopic experience *anyone* has ever had – the nicest people, most respectful/non-paternalistic doctors, and totally pain-free procedure),” as I wrote to Chris Schwarz later in the day, but there you have it. I have an appointment with an oncologist next week to learn more and discuss where we might go from here.
My maternal grandmother died of pancreatic cancer. I’ve known others personally, as well as followed news of prominent people who have faced this diagnosis. I am well aware of its gravity, so please spare all of us any ominous warnings you may feel moved to share in the comments.
Why this post on a blog devoted to woodworking? For a start, woodworkers are people; all of us face devastating news at one time or another, and I’m not the first person to note that no one gets out of here alive. The more we acknowledge these Instagram-unworthy dimensions of life (despite their dampening effects on the kind of commerce that thrives on implicitly denying so much of what makes our lives truly worth living), the more responsibly we can act, and the better we can savor what life has to offer. Knowing you’re not alone in your experience is golden, whether of breast cancer or back surgery, sudden homelessness in the wake of a hurricane or fire, or having to choose between keeping your home above freezing and being able to purchase the medicine on which your life depends.
There’s also value in sharing honest appraisals of the experience for those who may come behind. As much as I dreaded yesterday’s endoscopy, I faced it with less fear than I would have, had I not heard about a friend’s experience of the same procedure. A frank assessment of how easy “Mochaccino Smoothie” barium sulfate is to swallow is no less valuable to anyone facing a similar procedure than an honest review of the SawStop slider to a woodworker with a relatively small shop.
Mostly, though, I would love the company of any readers who might like to be my companions in this adventure, which I would obviously have preferred not to have thrown in my path. (You can follow by subscribing here.) Many readers of this blog have become friends in real life; I also appreciate the back-and-forth I’ve enjoyed with some of you I haven’t yet met. Lost Art Press is home to thoughtful and intelligent readers from a variety of backgrounds, and I’m honored to be in your company.
It’s important to emphasize that despite the diagnosis, and apart from the abdominal discomfort, I feel fine. I seem to have no other symptoms – I have plenty of energy, even if the endless waiting and existential upheaval of the past two weeks has made it hard to focus on getting “real work” done. I plan to keep up the series of profiles categorized under “Little Acorns,” and I have a few design jobs, along with a wall of built-ins I have underway in the shop. We’ll go from there.
