Good news: Alexander Brothers is now selling a new stick chair kit for the Curved Back Armchair in “The Stick Chair Book.” The kit supplies all the parts you need in red elm (my favorite chair wood) for $295. The kit will also build the similar Irish armchair featured in Fine Woodworking magazine last year.
Alexander Brothers does a fantastic job of selecting straight grain for the sticks and legs. I trust them to pick wood for me. So if finding the wood for a stick chair has been holding you back from building one, this kit can fix that problem.
Alexander Brothers carries kits for many chairs and even Megan’s Dutch tool chest. Here’s a link to see the other kits.
These red flags attach to long lengths of lumber that extend out the back of your truck or car. The flags alert other drivers that they shouldn’t tailgate you (unless they want a mouthful of splinters). Also, a flag of some sort is required in many jurisdictions for loads that extend out the rear of a vehicle.
In the 20th century, these flags also developed as a marketing gimmick for your lumberyard, so you find many antique ones printed with a company’s name or logo.
Our warning flag is cotton – like the vintage ones – with a wire sewn into the top edge. The wire keeps the flag stiff, and a loop in the wire allows you to fasten the flag to your load with a bungee cord, twine or a staple. Our flag is made in the United States and is printed here in Covington, Kentucky. The flags are 17-1/2″ wide x 18-1/2″ tall and cost $21.
You can open up your holdfast holes a tad with a slightly oversized bit.
After a few years of drying, my workbench’s benchtop shrank a bit. It’s not a big deal, but the drying process also shrank my 1” holdfast holes. And with a few of the holes it became difficult to insert the holdfast’s shaft.
There are a few ways to open up the holes a bit. Reaming them out with a 1″ drill bit and “wallering a tad” works, but it can take some effort to get the middle section of the hole to size.
A second expensive-but-precise method is to use a tool called a “bridge reamer” or “car reamer.” These construction tools have a slight taper and are used to correct misaligned holes in steel construction and the like. These cost $100 or more, which is a lot for a single task.
The third option is to buy an inexpensive 1-1/16” drill bit such as this one. Before running this drill bit into your holes, I recommend you open up the top rim of the hole with a rasp so the bit won’t tear up your benchtop’s surface.
For drilling, use a corded drill with a side handle, especially if your benchtop is made of a hard wood. Yellow pine is especially tricky because of the differences in density between the earlywood and latewood. Take your time, don’t rush and you’ll get through it.
Holdfasts work best where there is a close fit between the shaft and the hole, so don’t over-do it.
Here’s the news. We are closing out two of our historical reprints: Joseph Moxon’s “Mechanick Exercises” and Peter Nicholson’s “Mechanic’s Companion.” The books are now $13 each until we run out of stock. Act quickly to avoid disappointment.
I’m grumpy about this sale because I hoped to keep these two properly bound, nicely printed books in our backlist. But we don’t have enough space at our warehouse to do this. We are expecting about 12 pallets of new titles in the next two months, and I have no desire to (again) store books under my bed.
So this is your last chance to buy these two historical texts, which I consider the foundation of the craft in English-speaking countries.
These are well-made books: they are printed offset on a web press on heavy uncoated and natural paper. The signatures are sewn, glued and taped. Then the book block is fastened to the boards with a heavy paper hinge. All done here in the United States (Michigan, to be exact).
We are closing out the last 400 (or so) copies of our two translations of A-J Roubo’s “l’Art du menuisier” in order to make room for new editions of these books.
The savings are significant. Act quickly to avoid disappointment.
We are closing out both of these books to make way for deluxe editions with improved paper and images (indeed, things can get better over time in some situations).
If you have ever wanted to own translations of these earth-moving historical texts, but you couldn’t justify the cost, this is your chance.
