Typically when we announce an open house I get three or four complaints along the lines of “why didn’t you let us know sooner.” So for those three or four people:
The 2023 Summer Open House at the Lost Art Press storefront is on July 29. We’ll open the doors at 10 a.m. and lock them behind you at 5 p.m. We will probably have a special gift, guest demonstrations, etc. But I don’t know anything more than the date at this point. (And we will of course let you know more when we figure it out.)
Fig 4.1 Learn to chop mortises accurately and efficiently and you’ll be able to build most anything. Joint stools will give you lots of practice – there are 16 joints in each one.
The following is excerpted from Chapter 4 of “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree,” by Jennie Alexander and Peter Follansbee.
Joint stools are a fascinating piece of British and early American furniture. Made from riven – not sawn – oak, their legs are typically turned and angled. The aprons and stretchers are joined to the legs using drawbored mortise-and-tenon joints, no glue. And the seat is pegged to the frame below. Because of these characteristics, the stools are an excellent introduction to the following skills.
• Selecting the right tools: Many of the tools of the 17th century are similar to modern hand tools – you just need fewer of them. “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree” introduces you to the very basic kit you need to begin.
• Processing green oak: Split an oak using simple tools, rive the bolts into usable stock and dry it to a workable moisture content.
• Joinery and mouldings: Learn to cut mortises and tenons by hand, including the tricks to ensure a tight fit at the shoulder of the joint. Make mouldings using shop-made scratch stocks – no moulding planes required.
• Turning: Though some joint stools were decorated with simple chamfers and chisel-cut details, many were turned. Learn the handful of tools and moves you need to turn period-appropriate details.
• Drawboring: Joint stools are surprisingly durable articles of furniture. Why? The drawbored mortise-and-tenon joint. This mechanical joint is rarely used in contemporary furniture. Alexander and Follansbee lift the veil on this technique and demonstrate the steps to ensure your joint stool will last 400 years or so.
• Finishing: Many joint stools were finished originally with paint. You can make your own using pigments and linseed oil. The right finish adds a translucent glow that no gallon of latex can ever provide.
Now we can return to the framing parts, starting with the stiles. The first step is to lay out the mortises. We’ll outline these steps one at a time because it can get confusing. We will call the mortises for the front and rear rails “straight” mortises, those for the canted ends of the stool we will call “angled” mortises.
Stack the four stiles together, with their beveled inside corners touching, and with radial faces up.
These radial faces become the “front” and “back” faces of the stool. Take one stile, and work on its radial face.
Fig. 4.2 This story stick is another example of something for which we lack period evidence; but its effectiveness can’t be beat. In addition to serving as the principal layout reference, it functions as a wooden notebook. If you make a number of different stool patterns, mark them with the date.
To lay out the stiles’ square blocks and the straight mortises, it’s easier to use what a carpenter now calls a “story stick” that is marked with the stiles’ details, rather than working from paper drawings or patterns. This shop-made stick records the markings that are then transferred to the stile. We have made these sticks to record different stools. The locations and heights of the squared blocks, turning details and positions of mortises can all be taken from the stick to the stile. It is best to mark ONE stile from the stick, then the other three stiles from that first stile.
Make sure the foot of the stile is trimmed square. Line up the foot of the story stick and the feet of the stile. With an awl, mark the limits of the square blocks and scribe these marks across all four faces of the stile, with one exception – the top of the stile is marked only on the radial face and the corresponding inside tangential face (where the straight apron mortise is located).
Now line the stick up on the inside face and mark the locations of the mortises on this tangential face.
Fig. 4.3 Prick the points with the awl, then scribe them with the square and awl. Sharpen the awl with a file from time to time. Careful, it can draw blood when it’s sharp.
One thing to keep in mind is that the top of the apron mortise is not at the same height as the top of the stile. This mortise drops down about 3/4″ from the stile’s top end. Eyeball the top of the apron mortise and scribe it with the awl and square.
The next step is to mark the mortises with the mortise gauge. To set the gauge, make a mark with your chisel’s edge perpendicular to, but right against the stile’s arris. Next, move over one chisel width and bear down hard enough to make a mark in the wood. Then set the pins of your mortise gauge according to the location of this second chisel mark. The result is a mortise that is set in from the face of the stock the thickness of the chisel. Our mortises are usually 5/16″, set in from the face 5/16″. This spacing is based on studies of period work; 5/16″ is almost a standard from what we have seen.
Fig. 4.4 (left) This is a technique that if we heard it somewhere, we have forgotten where. It works very well. No ruler, no fiddling with the gauge up against the chisel’s sharp edge. Mark the timber with the chisel, then put the chisel down. Very safe and simple. Fig. 4.5 (right) Now move the chisel over one chisel-width. And lean on it. Now your setting is marked on the timber, and you just need to set the mortise gauge according to the chisel marks.
Fig. 4.6 Using both hands on a marking or mortise gauge might seem like overkill, but the oak is very fibrous, and when it’s green it can catch the gauge’s pins. The result can be irregular and it’s hard to re-mark a line once it goes astray. Extend the marking lines beyond the top and bottom of the mortise; this way you can check the spacing of the joint if you find you need to reset your gauge – if, for instance, it falls on the floor.
The Angled Mortises To find the location for the angled side mortises, use an adjustable bevel set to the desired flare angle. A slope of 1:6 is what we have used on several stools. Our studies of 17th-century stools show flare angles right around that figure, some less, none more. To set the bevel, set a straightedge on a framing square, positioning it at 1″ on one leg, and 6″ on the other. Then adjust the bevel to this angle and lock its nut to secure the setting. You can then scribe this angle on a piece of wood, or even scribe it on the wall. Like the adjustable gauges, the bevel can lose its setting if bumped. Having the angle scribed somewhere makes it easy to reset it. Alexander turned an adjustable bevel into a fixed one by threading a bolt through its stock and blade.
To lay out the side mortises, you must carry the line that designates the top of the stool from the front radial face across the side tangential face. Set the bevel with its handle on the front face of the stile. Line it up with the marked top of the stool, with its angled blade pointing upwards on the other outside face of that stile. Scribe this line with the awl.
Fig. 4.7 (left) Here is an adjustable bevel, and the modified one Alexander turned into a fixed bevel. If you are using one flare angle regularly, this is the way to go. It’s easy enough to come up with an extra adjustable bevel. Fig. 4.8 (right) Marking this angle is the same as any layout; a couple light passes will carefully scribe a line on the stile. We have often joked that this step requires two consecutive thoughts. It might be three.
Then use a square to carry this line across the other inside face. So the sequence is square, bevel, square. Remember that it’s best to carry the lines across the outside faces; the inside faces are unreliable. This layout is both simple and complicated at the same time. Sometimes it helps to stand the stile up and tilt it as it will be in the finished stool. Then you can easily visualize where the angled mortises are and how they rise up higher than the straight mortises.
You can repeat this process for the top edge of the stretchers’ mortises. Or you can mark this from the story stick, this time lining up the top of the stool with the scribed line that designates the top of the side apron.
Now mark the mortises’ height and width on these faces of the stile. After you mark out two stiles, lay them side by side and check that they agree. A front or rear pair should have their radial faces matching, with the straight mortises aiming at each other, and the side, angled mortises rising up toward the top of the stool.
Mortising Once you have struck the layout of the mortises, secure the stile on the benchtop near its edge. Shove one end of the stile against the bench hook then secure the stile with the holdfast.
Fig. 4.9 (left) This is the first pair of blows with the mortise chisel. Note the chisel’s bevel is just about plumb. Fig. 4.10 (right) Here, the stile is held in place by a holdfast, with a scrap of pine between the holdfast’s “pad” and the stile. This prevents bruising the stock.
Begin mortising by holding the mortise chisel with the handle tilted away from you, leaving its bevel just about plumb. Position the first cuts with the mortise chisel about in the center of the mortise’s length. A blow from the wooden mallet drives the chisel downward. Turn the chisel around, and make another chop aimed at the first. The result is a V-shaped opening at the middle of the mortise’s length. Alternate the chisel’s position in this way, enlarging the V-shaped cut; the goal is to reach the depth at the center of the mortise as quickly as possible. Then the rest of the work is just cutting down the end grain to lengthen the mortise. As you get to the ends of the mortise, bring the chisel upright so that its back surface is perpendicular to the stile’s surface.
Fig. 4.11 (left) Coming at the mortise first this way, then that way requires some shift in posture. Experiment with different methods to see what feels best. The idea is to get the mortise chopped quickly and easily. Fig. 4.12 (right) The amount of work that is split between hand pressure and mallet-driven will vary. Moisture content plays a role in this; drier stock is less forgiving with hand pressure. But either way, oak will convince you to use your whole body.
There are a few stances and postures we use that increase the efficiency in mortising. For most of the work the chisel is driven with a mallet, but sometimes hand pressure is useful as well. When using hand pressure, it helps if you rise onto the balls of your feet and come down with your whole body to drive the chisel. Lean on the top of the chisel handle with the front of your shoulder to help drive the tool into the wood. Then you can pry the waste up from the bottom of the mortise. In fig. 4.12, the left hand is used to position the chisel, and the right hand and upper body are driving the tool into the wood.
It is critical to keep the mortise chisel parallel to the face of the stile. You can sight against a square positioned on the benchtop. Drive the chisel into the mortise, then step back and sight it against the blade of the square. With practice you will learn to sight this against the face of the stile, and not need the square.
Fig. 4.13 A nice stout mortise chisel is essential when prying the material out of the mortise.
The moisture content of the oak is important at this stage; usually it’s fairly wet inside when you chop these joints. The stock in the photos was planed wet from the log less than a month before cutting these joints. The straight-grained nature of the riven stock makes mortising easier than ever. The same principles that apply to splitting apply here as well. In effect the chisel is entering the wood directly on either the radial or tangential plane.
Chop the mortise to a depth of about 1-1/2″. It’s easiest to get that depth at the middle of the mortise; at the ends it requires a little more attention. There is a tendency to pry against the end grain of the mortise – this will bruise and deform the wood there. Stay away from the final ends of the mortise at first, that way you can pry against the end grain that will end up as waste. Finish up by taking cuts straight down the end grain with the back of the chisel perpendicular to the stile.
Fig. 4.14 (top) Here, the mortise’s bottom is ragged, but it doesn’t need to be much cleaner than this. The tenon will never reach that far. Fig. 4.15 (bottom) This photo and the previous one were shot between a piece of oak and a pane of plate glass. This allows a cross-section view of a chisel cutting a mortise. This experiment was quite helpful in understanding what goes on during the mortising process. Thanks to Roy Underhill for teaching us this technique.
To get the last bits out at the bottom of the mortise’s ends, chop straight down into the ends, then turn the chisel around, and with the bevel down, drive the chisel into the midst of the mortise, and come toward the ends. Now bring up the chip on the back of the chisel.
We’re closing out our reprint of the “Stanley Tools Catalogue No. 34,” and are selling remaining copies for $10 each, simply to free up space on the warehouse shelves. Every purchase comes with a free PDF copy – once the 450 (or so) print copies are sold out, we’ll continue to offer a free PDF of the 1914 catalogue here on the blog.
This catalog shows nearly every tool needed in a hand-tool shop 100 years ago, from the chisels to the butt gauges to every sort of plane in the company’s line. The text explains what each one is used for and how it functions differently from other similar tools.
The catalog also has fantastic exploded views of many of the complex tools, such as Stanley’s miter boxes, the multi-planes and handplanes. It’s a great resource to have on hand at a tool meet or antique market – not only to identify vintage tools, but to see if all the parts are intact.
If you are just getting into hand tools, we think you will find this catalog a delight to read, hold and learn from. The information in it is factual and straightforward – not the puffery you get from many modern catalogs. And if you collect or appreciate vintage hand tools, we think you will love this catalog, which reproduces the vintage drawings with remarkable clarity.
Once these are gone, we are not reprinting. So get it now or forever hold your (Harvey) peace.
Bean – newly released from his “don’t lick your nether regions collar” – is happy to be able to get this close to anything, much less a fresh batch of the wax that helps to buy him treats.
Katherine (aka the Wax Princess) has a fresh batch of Soft Wax 2.0 in her store – just in time for this week’s chair class.
This is the finish Chris uses on his chairs, and that I use on everything that isn’t painted. I particuarly love it on walnut and cherry – it warms up the grain and brings out its beauty (as well as offering just enough easily renewable protection), plus it softens my hand and smells good.
Katherine cooks up this wax in the Lost Art Press machine room using a waterless process. She then packages it in a tough glass jar with a metal screw-top lid. She applies her hand-designed label to each lid, boxes up the jars and ships them in a durable cardboard mailer. The money she makes from wax helps her make ends meet at college. Instructions for the wax are below. You can watch a video of how to use the wax here.
Instructions for Soft Wax 2.0 Soft Wax 2.0 is a safe finish for bare wood that is incredibly easy to apply and imparts a beautiful low luster to the wood.
The finish is made by cooking raw, organic linseed oil (from the flax plant) and combining it with cosmetics-grade beeswax and a small amount of a citrus-based solvent. The result is that this finish can be applied without special safety equipment, such as a respirator. The only safety caution is to dry the rags out flat you used to apply before throwing them away. (All linseed oil generates heat as it cures, and there is a small but real chance of the rags catching fire if they are bunched up while wet.)
Soft Wax 2.0 is an ideal finish for pieces that will be touched a lot, such as chairs, turned objects and spoons. The finish does not build a film, so the wood feels like wood – not plastic. Because of this, the wax does not provide a strong barrier against water or alcohol. If you use it on countertops or a kitchen table, you will need to touch it up every once in a while. Simply add a little more Soft Wax to a deteriorated finish and the repair is done – no stripping or additional chemicals needed.
Soft Wax 2.0 is not intended to be used over a film finish (such as lacquer, shellac or varnish). It is best used on bare wood. However, you can apply it over a porous finish, such as milk paint.
APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS (VERY IMPORTANT): Applying Soft Wax 2.0 is so easy if you follow the simple instructions. On bare wood, apply a thin coat of soft wax using a rag, applicator pad, 3M gray pad or steel wool. Allow the finish to soak in about 15 minutes. Then, with a clean rag or towel, wipe the entire surface until it feels dry. Do not leave any excess finish on the surface. If you do leave some behind, the wood will get gummy and sticky.
The finish will be dry enough to use in a couple hours. After a couple weeks, the oil will be fully cured. After that, you can add a second coat (or not). A second coat will add more sheen and a little more protection to the wood.
Soft Wax 2.0 is made in small batches in Kentucky. Each glass jar contains 8 oz. of soft wax, enough for about five chairs.
A syringe with splash guard is good to have on hand for deep wound if you live far away from a healthcare center.
The following is excerpted from Dr. Jefferey Hill’s “Workshop Wound Care.” The book – the newest offering in our pocket book series – delves right to the heart of what you need to know when faced with common workshop injuries, from lacerations, to puncture wounds to material in the eye. Dr. Hill is an emergency room physician and an active woodworker. So he knows exactly the information a woodworker needs to know when it comes to injuries. And he presents information in a way that a non-medical professional can easily understand it.
The initial steps of wound care are critically important to creating an environment that promotes healing with a quick return to normal function and (if it’s a concern of yours) good cosmetic outcomes. As we covered in Chapter 4, Wound Healing Primer, there are a number of factors that can affect the healing process.
Wounds that heal well have minimal tissue damage, don’t get infected and have tissue layers that line up well. The amount of tissue damage is, generally speaking, a function of the way the injury occurred (crush injuries mean more tissue destruction as opposed to lacerations, which have minimal destruction apart from the severed tissue layers). Sometimes, however, actions taken early in the wound care process can worsen some of the existing tissue damage, or, in the very least, can fight against creating the optimal healing environment.
Stopping ongoing bleeding is clearly the first step in addressing a fresh wound. But assuming the wound is small-ish and the bleeding is not severe enough to prompt you to seek care at your local urgent care or emergency department, your next steps should be focused on cleaning the wound to prevent infection.
In preventing wound infections, the single-most important step is thorough irrigation of the wound. Even a dump truck full of antibiotics won’t prevent an infection in a contaminated wound that wasn’t cleaned. Why? Exponential growth is the reason. A characteristic of exponential growth is that things seem fine until they aren’t and when things get bad, they get bad quickly (see the global COVID-19 pandemic).
Staphylococcus aureus, one of the more common bacteria on your skin and a frequent cause of wound infections, has a doubling time of about 90 minutes. So two bacteria become four in 90 minutes, four becomes eight in three hours, eight becomes 16 in four-and-a-half hours, 16 becomes 256 in six hours. Not too bad, honestly. By 24 hours you’re up to more than 130,000 bacteria in the wound. But, let’s say instead of starting with a wound with only two bacteria, you start in a wound that has 100 bacteria. This time, by 6 hours you’re at 1,600 bacteria. By 12 hours, 25,600. And by 24 hours, more than 6.5 million bacteria are in the wound.
Antibiotics are great and all, but by the time you get them prescribed, filled at the pharmacy, into your stomach, to the bloodstream and out to the wound, they would be greeted by a mass of hundreds of thousands to millions of bacteria.
This isn’t to say that antibiotics don’t have a role in preventing wound infections. They do, and are prescribed in certain circumstances based on the types of tissues injured, risk of infection and ability of the patient to fight off infections. But, the single-most important thing you can do to prevent a wound infection is to clean the wound thoroughly and decrease the bacteria cell counts in the wound. Get that number small enough, and the roving white blood cells that come to a healing wound will usually be able to take care of things.
‘Dilution is the Solution to Pollution’ Bacteria find their way into wounds in a number of ways. First, understand that bacteria are literally everywhere. They are on you, your skin, your chisel, your table saw blade, that nice piece of white oak that gave you a splinter while you were trying to rive out some leg stock. Everywhere. Bacteria can be forced from your skin into a wound by the chisel or whatever else caused your injury. They can catch a ride on a tiny sliver of wood or metal. Or they could be pressed into the wound as you try to hold a grimy rag to it attempting to stanch bleeding.
The goal of irrigation is to rid the wound of as many bacteria and as much bacteria-laden detritus as possible. As the old surgical maxim “dilution is the solution to pollution” suggests, the prime way that this is accomplished is through flowing a large volume of water over and through the wound. The surest way to clean the wound of bacteria and any foreign bodies is through a combination of volume and pressure.
The setup for this irrigation is shown in the photo [Above]. The splash guard is basically a fancy 19-gauge blunt plastic needle with a shield to keep water from spraying everywhere while you irrigate the wound. The combination of the syringe and this splash guard results in a flow of saline/water with pressures around 25 to 35 psi.
What About Tap Water? How much volume is enough volume? The general rule of thumb is that wounds should be irrigated with 500ml to 1L of fluid. But in practice, the real goal is to make sure the wounds are completely free of foreign bodies. Wounds that are clean in appearance to begin with might get away with smaller volumes of irrigation depending on location, depth of the wound and mechanism of injury.What About Tap Water?The type of irrigation just described is important for wounds that are relatively deep or fairly contaminated. Most of the wounds you’ll sustain in the workshop will be relatively small nicks, cuts and skin tears. For these minor wounds, thorough irrigation with tap water will do. In fact, there are a number of studies that show no difference in infection rates for wounds cleansed with tap water vs. saline, even for larger wounds. This of course assumes that the source of the tap water is clean – not really a concern for most municipal water sources, but could be a concern in developing nations or in underdeveloped and under-resourced pockets of the United States.
The process for irrigating a wound with tap water is quite simple (if a bit painful). Turn the tap to lukewarm/body temperature water (those newly exposed nerve fibers will be exceedingly sensitive to any stimuli). Let the water run over the wound for several minutes. Re-examine the wound to see if there is any debris remaining. If there is, you can try to irrigate again, or try to irrigate with the pressure irrigation setup described above, if you have a syringe with a splash guard. However, if the wound is that dirty you might need a more thorough irrigation in a healthcare setting.
Why not Hydrogen Peroxide, Iodine etc. Apart from water or saline, the only other thing that should be used to clean a wound is a mild soap and maybe a dilute iodine solution.
My experience while growing up in the United States Midwest was that every scrape, nick or cut should be cleaned out with hydrogen peroxide every day until the wound healed. And why not? It bubbles like mad, stings a bit and the wound looks a good deal cleaner afterward.
There are a number of problems with using hydrogen peroxide to clean wounds. For starters, it does a much better job of killing red blood cells than it does of killing bacteria. This can be helpful for wounds that have a lot of dried, caked-on blood as can often happen with wounds in hairy areas. It is far less helpful for your standard wound. For wounds that are a couple of days into healing, hydrogen peroxide has been shown to separate newly minted skin cells from the healing tissue at the base of wounds. And, in experimental conditions, hydrogen peroxide has been shown to delay wound healing. If you do choose to use hydrogen peroxide to clean dried blood off, be ready for some heat. The chemical degradation of hydrogen peroxide to water and oxygen is exothermic (it gives off heat). It’s not enough to cause any thermal burns to the area, but it is quite noticeable.
Iodine is frequently used to clean wounds and does have some advantages over saline irrigation alone in some situations. Iodine is sold in two formulations: a solution and a scrub. The scrub was designed for use on intact skin and for cleaning the skin surface prior to surgery. The detergent mixed into the scrub is toxic to tissues and shouldn’t be used in open wounds. Iodine solution is typically sold at a 10 percent concentration. When it is diluted to less than 1 percent, it is safe for use in open wounds and has excellent antibacterial, anti-viral and anti-fungal activity. In the emergency department, iodine-diluted solutions are typically used for irrigating wounds at high risk of infection (based on mechanism, contamination, location).
Iodine must be diluted to be used in open wounds.
Chlorhexadine is a surgical scrub soap that is also widely available. It was also designed for use primarily with intact skin. If you have had an elective surgery you may have been instructed to shower with it for several days/weeks prior to the surgery. The reason being that it builds up on the skin surface and has potent anti-bacterial properties (great for decreasing the risk of surgical site infection). It also has a detergent that can be toxic to the tissues in open wounds so its use in wound irrigation is discouraged.
Soaps work by liquefying fats and oils, making them soluble in water and able to be carried away by running water. Because bacterial cell walls are made of fat, soap is able to dissolve some of these cell membranes, killing the bacteria. Commercially available soaps are all generally quite mild in their fat-busting properties (they are fairly mild detergents) meaning that they should not be particularly toxic to open wounds.
Putting it all together, how should you clean your wound? First inspect the wound. Large, gaping wounds or wounds that have a lot of debris in them will likely need to be cleaned and repaired in a healthcare setting. Some initial irrigation of these wounds with running tap water may help you triage the wound and may help lightly clean it in preparation for a more thorough cleaning by a medical professional. After you irrigate under running tap water, cover the wound with sterile gauze that has been dampened with sterile saline and head to your local medical facility.
Smaller wounds, scrapes and lightly contaminated wounds that you feel can be dealt with at home should be first lightly cleaned with soap and water. Then allow lukewarm tap water to run over the wound for several minutes until it appears to be clean to your eye and no debris remains. If you still see some debris, you can try to use the aerosolized saline wound washes that are available in your local drugstore. It’s not clear how the pressures generated by these products compare to the pressure irrigation setup used in your local emergency department. As a general rule of thumb, if the wound still appears dirty, then you’ll need more aggressive cleaning by a healthcare professional and should seek care.
Do note that oftentimes the process of cleaning and irrigating the wound may cause it to start bleeding (you may have washed away the blood clots that stopped any previous bleeding). That’s OK. After you have finished cleaning the wound, you should be able to stop the bleeding again with a combination of direct pressure and maybe a pressure dressing.
After the wound is cleaned thoroughly and the bleeding has been stopped, you’re on to dressing the wound to keep it clean and promote healing.
