Wally and I are busy today helping students turn the sticks shown above into sawbenches. But Chris is back this week, eagerly awaiting your Open Wire questions.
So, please post your (succinct) woodworking questions in the comments below, and Chris will answer. You can also ask him about the massive wave of relief you might have felt emanating from Northern Kentucky and Central Indiana (where John lives) late yesterday. That was engendered by our finally having all the LAP/Crucible books, tools, clothing and sundries under one (now non-leaking) roof in our warehouse!
Randy Ogle weaving in a seagrass seat on a walnut dining chair, from “Backwoods Chairmakers,” by Andy Glenn.
Tickets are on sale now for the June 2 “Backwoods Chairmakers” Event in beautiful Berea, Ky.
The all-day event (9 a.m.-5:30 p.m. EDT) will feature 13 Appalachian chairmakers from Andy Glenn’s book. We’ve asked each demonstrator to bring some of their chairs so you can see the work in person. All the chairs will be assembled in a gallery for you to enjoy. We’ll also have four other “stages” going all day for you to visit:
• The Storytime Stage: Where chairmakers will share their tales of how they got into the craft and manage to keep their business afloat in a world filled with mass-manufactured goods. • The Turning Stage: Several of the turners use lathes in their work and will demonstrate how they make parts using this machine • The Shaping & Assembly Stage: Chairmakers will demonstrate the techniques they use to shape posts & rungs and assemble the chairs. • The Greenwood Stage: Splitting, hewing and hickory bark demonstrations will take place in this outdoor area. • Plus Andy will be there to sign books (we’ll have some books available, but if you already own a copy, bring it along!).
Please note that this is not a money-making venture. Berea College has donated the space for the event, and the organizers are donating their time and effort. Your ticket price covers only the honorariums for the chairmakers. If you would like to add a small amount to help cover incidental costs, we’d appreciate it!
Fig. 1.32 It’s a subtle curve, but here you see how the “corners” are lifted up. This keeps the hatchet from digging in as you hew with it.
The following is excerpted from Peter Follansbee’s “Joiner’s Work.”
Forget what you think about 17th-century New England furniture. It’s neither dark nor boring. Instead, it’s a riot of geometric carvings and bright colors – all built upon simple constructions that use rabbets, nails and mortise-and-tenon joints.
Peter Follansbee has spent his adult life researching this beguiling time period to understand the simple tools and straightforward processes used to build the historical pieces featured in this book. “Joiner’s Work” represents the culmination of decades of serious research and shop experimentation. But it’s no dry treatise. Follansbee’s wit – honed by 20 years of demonstrating at Plimoth Plantation – suffuses every page. It’s a fascinating trip to the early days of joinery on the North American continent that’s filled with lessons for woodworkers of all persuasions.
Don’t be put off by the scarcity of single-bevel hewing hatchets; you can perform this work with double-bevel hatchets, too. Larger hatchets take some getting used to, but in the end they are quite efficient at stock removal. I keep a large Swedish hatchet around for times when there’s a lot of stock to remove, then I switch to a finer hatchet for more accurate hewing. My largest hatchet has a double-bevel and weighs more than 4 lbs. Its cutting edge is more than 7″ long. Regardless of the head size, I use fairly short handles on my hatchets, about 14″.
While you can make either a single-bevel or double-bevel hatchet work in dressing stock for joinery, the single-bevel hatchet is ideally suited for hewing stock prior to planing it. Moxon’s “Mechanick Exercises” describes its use and shape to some degree:
“Its use is to Hew the Irregularities off such pieces of Stuff which maybe sooner Hewn than Sawn. When the Edge is downwards, and the Handle towards you, the right side of its Edge must be Ground to a Bevil…”
If you’re scouring old tools or want a smith to make one, here’s some of what I recommend you look for. My favorite hatchet is a single-bevel hewing hatchet made in Germany in the early 1930s by a firm called J. F. R. Fuchs. It weighs about 3-1/2 lbs., and has a cutting edge around 6-1/2″ long. In describing these hatchets, it’s easy to think of them as having a flat back, but that’s not exactly the case. The bevel is on the right-hand face for a right-handed joiner, as Moxon describes. But the “back” is not truly flat; it has a very shallow sweep to its cutting edge.
Fig. 1.33 A slight curve in this direction as well is another subtle detail found in the best hewing hatchets.
Think of it as a very large and shallow, incannel gouge. The benefit of this shape is readily apparent when you try to use one that is not shaped like this. A hatchet with a flat back digs into the wood; a proper one scoops the chips out. Additionally, there is a slight sweep from the eye socket toward the cutting edge. Some of this is the shape of the tool, some is exacerbated by honing.
I have another hatchet by the same maker, with an excellent refinement of its shape. The eye is cranked over, to keep your knuckles safe when hewing. This leans the handle away from the plane of action without having to make a bent handle. I use this hatchet particularly when hewing wide panels. These German hatchets are not readily found. One type of hatchet you will, however, find regularly in the U.K. and U.S. is the so-called Kent pattern hatchets.
Fig. 1.34 Here the back of the hatchet is sitting flat on the board, and the canted eye results in the handle being tilted upward.
There are several nice things about the Kent hatchets. Not only are they fairly common, they aren’t expensive. They can work, and – unlike many other hewing hatchets – they are reversible for lefties. Their symmetrically shaped head means you can knock the handle out and put one in from the other end. But often, the cutting edge is straight; I prefer a curve to the cutting edge. The shape of the back should be the same as those shown above.
Fig. 1.35 Some careful hunting around can often turn up a Kent-pattern hatchet in good condition.
Roy Underhill (left) and Whitney Miller (right) both graced the Lost Art Press shop this week!
Update: Comments are now closed.
We’ve had a grand week of visitors and video shoots. Roy Underhill made a quick trip to town, then headed a little farther northwest to experience eclipse totality. And Whitney Miller, author of “Henry Boyd’s Freedom Bed,” spent the week recording a video on how to make a Swedish tool chest. Not only is she the video star, she’ll be doing the editing…so you know it will be more entertaining than most of our videos! (Look for it in our store later this year.)
After a busy week, it’ll be a bit of a relief to sit at the computer and answer woodworking questions – so queue ’em up in the comments section below, and I’ll answer. As will Chris, once he’s back late today from a whirlwind trip to the Chicago area to drop off the projects for “The American Peasant” with Narayan for photography.
As always, brevity is appreciated.
Comments will close at around 5 p.m. (but we may answer later in the evening).
– Fitz
Whitney with the finished tool chest. (We planned to use pine or linden…but the wide cherry was just too tempting!)
Woodworker and musician Joel Paul – you might know him as 13starsfarm (and formerly as punckrockshaker) on Instragram – had a devastating accident while helping a neighbor to fell a tree. Joel’s injuries are severe, and his recovery will be long and expensive.
If you can spare a bit, please consider a donation to the GoFundMe set up by his daughter, Rachel. Any amount will help.
