A set of try squares made by George Walker, co-author (with Jim Tolpin) of “Euclid’s Door” and other artisan geometry books. Leave a comment on this post, and you’ll be entered to win the set in a random drawing.
George Walker made the lovely set of walnut try squares shown above, following the step-by-step instructions in Chapter 4 of “Euclid’s Door.” (I don’t know if he had to refer back to his own writing or not…I know I sometimes do!) If you’re interested in adding them to your tool kit, leave a comment on this post by noon on Thursday, Sept. 21, 2023. I’ll pick a random winner from among all commenters that afternoon, and send them out as soon as I get the winner’s address. Below are the introductory paragraphs to the try squares chapter.
– Fitz
I spent my early years as a machinist in a bearing factory in Ohio. A string of red brick buildings that employed thousands of workers. Making bearings is all about precision and the heart of that was a department called the “Cold Room,” an island kept at 67°F and constant humidity behind a set of heavy double doors. The workers inside wore white shop coats and stood at benches with chrome-plated vises. They were the high priests who guarded that precision. Most of us regular shop rats avoided the cold room if we could. The factory was Africa hot in the summer and stepping in and out of the cold felt hellish. Reluctantly, I paid a visit one hot August afternoon. I’d just bought a precision engineer’s square and needed to get it certified. An engineer’s square has a steel fixed blade made to a high level of accuracy. A bored looking lab technician with tobacco-stained fingers took my square and placed it in a machine called an optical comparator – sort of an industrial microscope that projected the silhouette of my square onto a screen. He slid my square up against the side of a master square, a perfect steel cylinder with a mirror-like finish, and the comparator shined a light beam from behind to measure its accuracy. Any variation showed up as a sliver of light that the machine could magnify and measure.
That was years ago, but when I think about it now, a couple of things stand out. In a modern precision setting, we used essentially the same method to check for square that builders have used for thousands of years. Hold it up to a light and variation shows up glaringly. Secondly, the comparator exaggerated the error through some fancy optics to precisely measure variation from true. In this chapter we will go through the building of a set of wooden try squares and learn some geometric methods to create then test it. We can produce a tool that has an astounding level of precision.
We often get asked where one can buy apron hooks (both for our Workshop Waist Apron and other aprons), and we typically answer “French eBay” (which is where Chris got his). But artist/toolmaker/woodworker/metalsmith Eleanor Ingrid Rose has a new handful for sale on this side of the Atlantic, modeled on Chris’s with his permission, and they are gorgeous! Check out her Instagram post for more info.
The following is excerpted from Christian Becksvoort’s “Shaker Inspiration.”
Opinionated? Yes. Informative? Absolutely. Interesting and inspiring? You bet.
Not too many woodworkers can claim five decades of business success, but Becksvoort is among them. In “Shaker Inspiration,” he shares not only his woodworking knowledge and some of his best professional techniques for producing top-quality work, but also the business advice that helped him establish and sustain his long career in a one-man shop.
Plus, he shares measured drawings for 13 of his own well-known furniture designs and seven Shaker pieces that he’s reproduced.
One of the most difficult tasks when starting a business is pricing your work or product. Many woodworkers, especially those just beginning, seriously underprice their work. Hobbyists, especially, have no idea. Let me tell you, it’s really tough to be at a show next to Joe Basement, who is selling his very nice coffee table. He has no concept of the actual hours he spent, but his $140 worth of wood has turned into a $200 table. Wow, a $60 profit…wrong. The most basic pricing involves the cost of materials + overhead + profit. Lets take a look at these one at a time.
Materials are your wood, hardware, glue and finishes – anything that ends up in the customer’s possession. When working with a variety of woods, you’ll have to refigure the price for each species. That can run the gamut from a couple of bucks for No. 3 pine or poplar to $60 per board foot for exotics, to more than $100 per sheet for top-grade plywood with fancy veneers (in 2017 dollars, as are all prices in this book).
Working almost exclusively in cherry, and paying roughly the same amount for the past 20 years, makes pricing for me much easier. Not only that, but I get to use leftovers and offcuts for the next project. At this point in my career, I know the exact board footage for all pieces in my catalog. When starting out, you’ll have to do a bit more math. When you come up with the board footage, add 10-20 percent for waste, depending on how fussy or frugal you are regarding knots, defects, sapwood and general waste. Besides the wood, also include screws, hinges, locks, knobs, glides, glass, hangers and your glue and finish of choice. Speaking of hardware, I always buy the top grade. It takes just as long to install a cheap hinge as an expensive one. Cheap hardware will come back to haunt you, and result in unhappy customers.
Overhead is an all-encompassing term that includes the expenses you pay as the cost of doing business, but of which the customer does not take possession. Here is a partial list: your shop building or rent or mortgage, insurance, vehicle, electricity, heat, office supplies, telephone, internet, tools, advertising, freight charges, accounting, postage, licenses and taxes, and a few others that I may have overlooked. The bigger items, such as the mortgage, vehicle and large power tools can be amortized over a long period of time. Don’t, however, forget to include small tools such as routers that need to be replaced, specialty bits and tooling for a specific project, etc. Again, it will be difficult to estimate these costs when first starting, but after a year or more of good bookkeeping, you’ll have a pretty good handle on what it takes to run your shop. Divide the yearly total expenses by 12 to give you a monthly figure, divide that by 30 to give you a daily figure, and divide the last by eight to give you an hourly overhead cost.
Buy the best-quality hardware you can get your hands on – including extruded hinges and cast locks. It takes just as long to install cheap hardware as that of highest quality. These are by Whitechapel, Horton Brasses and Ball & Ball.
Finally, your profit. Yes, we’d all like to make $100 per hour take-home pay, but let’s be reasonable, especially when you’re just starting out. My profit, or hourly wage, when I opened my shop in the mid ’80s was $20 – which I thought was pretty good. It has since gone up considerably, but only after a few years. You can’t start out with astronomical prices when you have no track record, no reputation and no customer base. That comes with time, working efficiently, keeping your nose clean and keeping your customers happy.
A few random thoughts on prices and shop finances in general. First, if you give a customer a price quote, stick with it. You’re only as good as your word, and your word is your reputation. I’ve eaten my fair share of underpriced projects. It’s all part of the learning curve. Customers don’t want to hear “This took a lot longer than I thought….” They want results, not excuses. On the other hand, if a customer requests changes for alterations to the original design, then a change in price is warranted. Keep track of any additions or alterations made after the original quote.
I don’t dicker, and I try to be fair. I don’t gouge customers because they drive up in a Mercedes. The same hourly rate applies to everyone. Once that price is established, it’s fixed, unless times and circumstances change. My shop rate is based not just on time, materials, overhead and profit, but also on my experience, craftsmanship and reputation as a craftsperson. When potential customers try to talk my prices down, I tactfully end the conversation. Now they are messing with my self-worth. Remember, once a customer asks for and receives a discount, they will expect one from then on. And word spreads.
I have a policy in my business that once a customer leaves a deposit, that price is firm, no matter what the delivery time. That can be due to my backlog, or the customer’s circumstances. I’ve had a few instances where the customers’ houses took far longer than anticipated, or their financial situation changed, and the piece was not actually delivered for three years. Even though my prices had gone up, their deposit locked in their price until they were ready to take delivery.
Which brings me to yet another important point: a business escrow account. You need to have one for customer deposits. Remember that a deposit is not your money until the piece is actually finished and delivered. I check with my customers before I start to build, both to see if there are any changes needed and that they are ready to take delivery on a given date. If they’ve changed their minds after a nine-month wait, then I return their deposit. I keep the interest. It’s only happened twice in my career, but you need to be prepared, just in case.
A few thoughts on scheduling. Again, your word is your bond. Nobody likes to be put off, especially when they’ve been expecting a handcrafted creation for which they’ve been waiting almost a year. I used to schedule very tightly but soon discovered that was not a good idea. There are always circumstances beyond your control that affect your schedule and work output: supply hang ups, illness or subcontractors who don’t deliver on time. For the past few years, I’ve arbitrarily added a few months to my anticipated delivery schedule. For a desk that should be done in June if all goes well, I tell the customer July or August. That gives me a nice time cushion. Then if the piece is really done in June, the customer is thrilled and it makes me look good. It’s way better to deliver before the anticipated due date rather than after.
Krenov plays with a sailboat and one of his Airedale dogs in the Cook Inlet. Photo courtesy of the Krenov family.
The following is excerpted from “James Krenov: Leave Fingerprints,” by Brendan Bernhardt Gaffney. After years of research and more than 150 interviews, Gaffney produced the first and definitive biography of Krenov, featuring historical documents, press clippings and hundreds of historical photographs. Gaffney traces Krenov’s life from his birth in a small village in far-flung Russia, to China, Seattle, Alaska, Sweden and finally to Northern California where he founded the College of the Redwoods Fine Woodworking Program (now The Krenov School).
“I remember my first trip up north,” John began. “In ’24 I took a post as a schoolteacher in a small native village about two hundred miles up the Kuskokwim river. It was a dreary place, and the work was difficult. A teacher in Alaska is a sort of guardian to the natives under his care, being in fact doctor, minister, counsellor and sometimes even policeman. But he must first of all be the natives’ friend. For he can get along only if they trust him, and he in turn tries to understand the strange ways of his charges. There is a peculiar fascination and pride in this sort of work. It grows on one, as does the north itself.”*
*An excerpt from an unpublished short story “The Forgotten Stones,” by James Krenov, written in the late 1940s or early 1950s. Krenov had a habit of interspersing autobiographical details in the short stories he wrote in his 20s and 30s, often switching his name or details for that of his fictional character, as he does here for the character of John.
The Krenovs arrived in Seattle on Oct. 29, 1923, with $100 each, “just enough to be allowed to land,” as Julia notes in her memoir. An immigration document lists their place of residence on arrival as the Commerce Hotel. This inexpensive room in a hotel along First Avenue helped the couple stretch their meager funds. With a short amount of time before their pocketbook would be empty, the two of them set out to find work. Dmitri’s initial job in a factory left him with a finger injury and perhaps a greater wound to his pride; this employment was well below his qualifications as a lawyer. While working or out looking for work, the two left their young son at a daycare; the nurses complained that Krenov refused to nap or eat, and instead “stood on his cot and screamed at the top of his voice.” Julia decided that she had to find employment with a family that would allow her to keep her son with her during the day.
A photograph Julia had taken while the family was in Seattle, early in 1924. La Pine & Rogers was a well-known photography studio, and the photograph would have constituted no small expense for Julia. Photo courtesy of the Krenov family.
At The Young Women’s Christian Association of Seattle, Julia met a young woman who offered her employment as a live-in nanny and housekeeper, taking care of a young boy the same age as her son. Her pay for this work was only $7 a week, with room and board in the family’s home. Julia served their meals and, only after the family was done eating and out of the house, she would clean up then cook for herself and her son. The young woman’s husband was a traveling salesman selling footstools, and while their home and status was above that of the recently arrived Russian immigrants, they didn’t provide Julia with adequate food for her and her young son; Julia remembered spending most of her salary providing for her and her son’s basic necessities. Over the course of a few months, the young woman slowly lessened Julia’s pay until she and her family left Seattle to live with her parents, apparently broke after the failure of her husband’s business. Their house was repossessed by the bank, and Julia was back to looking for work.
Julia found a second job, this time as a live-in caretaker for a seven-room boarding house for factory workers run by a Norwegian woman. She and her son had no room to themselves, instead sleeping on a sofa in the parlor, only after the workers had finished their card games late in the evening. The environment was bad for a child, Julia thought, but her son was enamored with their Norwegian host. Krenov fell ill during his stay in the boarding house, which Julia blamed on the “horrid lavatories with faulty plumbing and obscene scribblings on the walls.” Krenov recovered from this illness, but Julia was desperate to find another option for the family.
Julia, young Jim and the rest of the villagers of Sleetmute that were caught in town piled into boats for the flood in the spring of 1925, caused by a blockage of broken ice downstream. At its worst point, the water rose above the village’s windows, and one of the village’s children was killed by exposure during the 48-hour flood. Photo courtesy of the Krenov family.
While she was working at the lodging house, Julia met a sea captain in Seattle who made regular visits to Alaska. After hearing about their time in Siberia among the Chukchi people, the captain prompted Julia and Dmitri to seek employment with the Bureau of Education in Alaska. At this time in Seattle, work was short, especially for recent émigrés from Russia, who were arriving in droves; an appointment for permanent employment, especially one that capitalized on their experience from Siberia, was a saving grace for the family. After visiting Mr. W. T. Lopp, the chief of the Bureau of Education, Alaska Division, and taking a short class in nursing, the Krenovs received an appointment from Washington to an outpost in Sleetmute, a small settlement in the interior of Alaska several hundred miles up the Kuskokwim River. Dmitri and Julia were hired as representatives of the United States government in the small village, and Julia became the sole schoolteacher of the village. The pay and conditions were marginally better than those they had lived through in Seattle, but the family was together, having been separated during Julia’s work as a nanny and boarding house caretaker, and Dmitri and Julia were able to use some of their advanced education in service of the natives.
In the summer of 1924, Dmitri, Julia and their young son sailed up the Pacific coast to Bethel on the Caroline Frances, an old schooner operated by Captain Worth, who became Jim’s friend during the journey. The Captain entertained the toddler on the bridge, showing him the navigational charts and compasses. Already, Krenov was showing an interest in boats and sailing, one that took root and grew over the course of his childhood.
At Bethel, a large settlement and trading post at the mouth of the Kuskokwim River, the Krenovs switched from the schooner to the “prehistoric flat-bottomed boat ‘Tana’ with an enormous wheel instead of a propeller,” as Krenov notes in his later writings. After a month sailing up the coast, they were now sailing up the river on a delivery boat, which stopped along the way to deliver cargo and trade at the villages on the banks of the river.
“To take Jim to the North from China was a crime,” Julia wrote in her memoir. “But so was life in Seattle in the homes of strangers. We had to survive somehow, seize the opportunity offered, risky as it may be, make the best of it. Adventurers like myself had no right to have children.”
When the family arrived in Sleetmute in 1924, what they found was nothing like Uelen and the Chukchi, with whom Julia had found comfort and camaraderie. Sleetmute had been established as a trading post with the Yupik natives by early Russian settlers in the 1830s to trade for furs and locally mined whetstones and ore. In the century since its founding, the indigenous people in this area had traded much of their traditional homes, clothing and food for that of the traders and settlers, which were ill-suited to the region’s harsh climate.
Jim and his classmates in his mother’s one-room schoolhouse. The chalkboard at the back of the room is a lesson on America’s Independence Day; the irony of a recent Russian émigré teaching indigenous children (whose family histories stretch back far before the purchase of Alaska from Russia decades earlier) is interesting to consider. Photo courtesy of the Krenov family.
“The warm igloos were replaced by poorly-built drafty log cabins,” Julia noted. “Instead of fur parkas and moccasins, they wore imported out-of-fashion coats made of cheap cloth, calico dresses and high-heel shoes.”
With those changes and exposure to the European settlers came tuberculosis. Of the 25 families in the village, Julia remembered only one older man who had never shown signs of the lung hemorrhages associated with the illness. In their first spring in Sleetmute, the entire population also suffered from influenza, and the family’s sole occupations were fetching water, cutting firewood and tending to the sick. Julia also cared for a young boy with meningitis in the same season. The illnesses were a seasonal occurrence, and though she had attended nursing classes in preparation for their assignment in Alaska, Julia was overwhelmed by the work. Her treatments were also subject to some scrutiny by the native people. That same spring, upon the outbreak of influenza and the case of meningitis, a local shaman arrived, but only after Julia had started the boy’s treatment with western medicine. The shaman refused to treat the boy, “once the white woman had been at the boy’s bedside,” and the 5-year-old died of his infection. By Julia’s account, the mournful parents had shown little faith in either the shaman or the Western medicine offered; their unfortunate position between the two cultures had left them without a comfortable place in either.
Sleetmute was not only set upon by the trials of “acculturation” and illness but also by natural disasters. The Kuskokwim river flooded its banks in the Krenovs’ second spring, due to a dam caused by an ice jam downstream from the village. For 48 hours, the villagers who had been in the town when the flood began had to float in an improvised raft. The flood killed one child and devastated the village’s buildings, having risen well above the windows of the poorly built structures; it took months to rebuild and rehabilitate.
The next year, a forest fire sparked by a forager’s careless bonfire upstream threatened the town’s existence. Sleetmute’s residents managed to save the town by digging trenches and using buckets of water to douse the flames that leapt from the pines and firs surrounding the town, but Julia remembers several weeks of uneasy sleep in the wake of the fire.
Julia’s main occupation at the village, when she was not functioning as an impromptu nurse and caretaker, was as a teacher in the one-room log schoolhouse. Though determined at her post, she was discouraged by the listless and inert pupils in her charge. After school, Julia made her rounds to the households of the village, caring for any of the sick and checking in with the families. Her presence was appreciated by the oft-unwell villagers whom she joined for tea, sitting on the floors of their log cabins.
Julia also took to recording and translating the stories of the people of Sleetmute, befriending an older Russian-speaking woman, Palageya Adrianova, whose family had settled in the village when Alaska was still a holding of Russia. It was Palageya who, at a young age, had been given the privilege of lowering the Russian flag at the settlement when Alaska was purchased by the United States from Russian in 1867, nearly 60 years earlier. The old woman spoke an old dialect of Russian alongside the local native language, and was able to share these old stories with Julia, which included creation myths, stories of famed chiefs and shamans, fables and local lore. These legends came to form a significant presence in her young son’s mind; later in his life, Krenov recalled these legends as an important part of his mystic considerations of the natural world around him.
1) The Workshop, including the design and construction of workbenches, tool chests and wall cabinets. There’s also an entire section devoted to “appliances,”which are workshop accessories such as shooting boards.
2) Furniture & its Details, includes a discussion of all the important Western furniture styles, including their construction, mouldings and metal hardware. This section also includes the construction drawings for many important and famous pieces of furniture examined by Charles H. Hayward during his tenure at The Woodworker magazine (1939 to 1967).
3) Odds & Sods. In addition to offering its readers practical information for the shop, The Woodworker also asked it subscribers to think about the craft and its place in modern society. We have included many of our favorite philosophical pieces in this final section.
This combined shooting board, mitre shoot, and “donkey’s ear” can be a real asset to the craftsman. It will last a lifetime and prove invaluable in the construction of small photograph frames, and for bench work generally. Skill in its various uses quickly comes with practice, and the parts are easily interchanged.
Many home craftsmen do not bother about the shooting board, but no man who has experienced its use would be without one. This design of board serves several purposes. It is as well to make it of prime timber. Rift sawn stuff is the best, as it resists abrasion better, and tends to stay flatter. Possibly a couple of short ends may be procured from firms specialising in flooring timbers. Note how the annual rings run in rift sawn timber (Fig. 5, C). Fig. 1 is an exploded drawing of the shooting board, giving main sizes. The length may be increased if desired.
The 3-in. wide board (A) takes the bearing of the plane. Its top surface must be planed absolutely true and checked with winding strips. Three bearing pieces are tenoned into the board (A), and it is as well to run the mortises right through the board. Fit the bearers (B) and glue and cramp them home, securing by wedges from the front edge if the mortises have been taken right through (A). When the framework is dry, plane it flat and check its truth again with winding strips.
Fig. 2 (left). WHEN USED AS NORMAL SHOOTING BOARD. Fig. 3 (center). MITRE SHOOT. Fig. 4 (right). DONKEY’S EAR SHOOT.
If board (C) is planed true and even in thickness, its top surface should form a plane parallel with that of board (A) when it is fastened to the runners. To secure board (C) in place insert screws through holes and slots in the bearers as shown in Fig. 1. It is inadvisable to make a shooting board by simply attaching a narrow board to a wide one, since air is excluded from the contacting surfaces and twisting or warping may result.
Furthermore the three bearers (B) act as clamps to board (C) holding it flat.
Stop. The slot for the stop D is a diminished dovetailed housing, details of which are given in Fig. 5 (A), and (B). The stop itself is made longer than the width of the board, fitted, and tapped tightly home. The end that overhangs board (A) is then cut so that the stop fits flush with the edge of board (C). Do not be satisfied until a good fit is obtained. Check the squareness of the stop with the edge of board (C). This may be done with the try-square if you know your square to be accurate, but woodworkers’ squares are notoriously “near enough” and if in doubt a celluloid set-square can be used. Now fit a batten to the underside of the three bearers in order that the shooting board may be held in a vice. This is shown in Fig. 2.
FIG. 5. DOVETAIL GROOVE TO HOLD STOP.
Mitre Shoot. So much for the plain shooting board; the adapting block for the mitre shoot is shown in Fig. 3. This should also be checked with a 45° set square as shown. The block is screwed to board (C ) from underneath, and should be tight against the stop.
Donkey’s Ear. Fig. 4 shows the adaptation for the donkey’s ear. This consists of a built-up block (A) with a piece (B) screwed to its end to act as a stop. 1-in. timber is suitable for the block, the pieces being glued and screwed together. The width of the timber need be only 4 or 5 in. It is as well to make the block longer than required, and saw it to size and shape. The bottom face is most difficult to true, and should be planed first and checked for truth with winding strips. Next plane the far end square and vertical to the base, and true the slant-face last. The piece (B) is screwed to the end of the block and, by fitting against the main stop of the shooting board, is reinforced to take the thrust of the plane. Screws fasten the block to the board as before.
The donkey’s ear must be true in two directions. The 45° angle may be checked with the set square against the sole of the plane. The 90° angle, i.e. the angle between the stop and the sole of the plane, can also be checked with the set square.
