Because of some military redeployments, there are two spots open in my Dutch Tool Chest class at Roy Underhill’s The Woodwright’s School on June 18-20, 2014.
If you can skip out of work (or are lucky enough to be an “individual of leisure”), you can register for the class here. Scroll down on the page and you’ll see the class listing. Keep scrolling. Yup. Oops. Too far.
Thanks to Roy, these classes are highly amusing. Thanks to me, they are also hirsute. Megan Fitzpatrick (who is not hirsute) has threatened to be my assistant during the class. And the Pittsboro, N.C., shop is a great place to take a woodworking class.
The Dutch Tool Chest class is a great introduction to handwork – even if you’ve never picked up a tool before.
One of the variants on the Melencolia I square has its blade stretched out in width until it looks almost like a bat’s wing.
This square shows up in the late 16th-century Wierix plates shown from my first entry on this topic. A nearly identical square shows up in the title page to the book “The Childhood of Jesus,” by Hieronymous Wierix. (By the way, that plate is a treasure trove of rabbit holes for investigation.)
The Wierix square looks a lot like a modern SpeedSquare, with a wide and triangular blade and a small stock. The curves on the blade have a gothic look to them.
While it is easy to start thinking of uses for these curves, I think they primarily serve two purposes:
1. To make it efficient to cut two blades from one rectangular blank. After cutting out about a dozen of these early-style blades this week, I’m struck by how often the waste can be used to make an identical blade. This, I think, is more important than the decorative shapes on the blades.
2. The decoration exposes more end grain along the length of the blade, making the tool more responsive to changes in humidity.
These squares are even easier to make than the Melencolia I square. The stock in this example is 3/4” thick, 1-3/4” wide and about 12” long. The blade is 1/4” thick, 12” wide and about 20” long.
The stock of these squares isn’t always moulded – sometimes it’s just a rectangular stick. I planed two moulded edges on mine using a 1/2” square ovolo plane. Then I plowed a 1/4”-wide x 1/2”-deep groove along one edge.
The shape of the blade was the most difficult part. I mucked around in SketchUp for a while, but then found the correct arches by drawing them out on paper with a set of French curves. A saw and a rasp finished the blades.
Then I glued up the two parts, trued up the blade and added a coat of finish.
These are handy for layout because the blade rests on the work and won’t let the stock totter. This makes it easy to mark square lines across a board. As a result of the large blade, however, these squares are no good for checking an assembly for square on the outside of the assembly.
But for two scraps of wood, they are pretty handy.
The first project I can remember making on my own was a small wall sconce or shelf I had seen in a magazine. I told my parents that I wanted to make it and, being enablers, they got me started. We had a coping saw frame and no blades (I am sure my brothers and I had broken them all at some point), so my dad took me down to Perrozzi’s Hardware in Lompoc, Calif., and we picked up some blades. On the way home, he swung the Rambler American behind the Safeway store and found a fruit crate with wood suitable for my project.
It is important to know that both my parents grew up in the Great Depression so we learned the practice of thrift, something that shows up in my forthcoming DVD, “The Naked Woodworker.” My 90-year-old mother still saves more plastic bags than she will ever use under her kitchen sink, along with foil and other things one might need in a pinch.
The quality of pine in fruit crates back in the day was pretty good, so I had some decent material to work with. I sawed and nailed my shelf together and smeared on some mahogany-colored stain and varnish mix that was in the garage. I don’t know what happened to that shelf, but I am pretty sure that it was “lost” in one of our moves.
It is hard to believe that was more than 50 years ago. Since then I have built houses and cabinets, clock cases and coffins, even a wooden car. I still look forward to the next project with some of the same anticipation I felt as we searched through the fruit crates behind the grocery store for the proper shelf material so many years ago.
No matter your age or ability woodworking is great fun, so grab your coping saw and jump in! You’ll meet some great people along the way and you might even end up with a shelf, or a car!
One of the signs that this near-vanished square was an important part of the woodworker’s kit is that it was used in signs and heraldry related to the craft.
The above image is the Cabinetmakers Coat of arms of the Vienna Commercial Co-operatives, circa 1900 (thanks to Jeff Burks for digging these images up). What makes this image particularly interesting is the metal sleeve around the blade of the square.
Could the metal sleeve be movable? Perhaps secured by a screw at the end of the brass flower? If so, it might be the long-lost ancestor to the Veritas Sliding Square.
Exhibit B: This is a 1554 wooden sign commemorating work done by the cabinetmakers guild in the Church of the Brethren; the photo is from the microfilm collection at the Städtisches Museum in the city of Braunschweig.
The Melencolia square is shown intertwined with a try square, next to a compass and above a plane – three of the most iconic early woodworking tools.
Exhibit C: An 18th-century shop sign from France. The square is crossed with a compass and try square. Thanks to Maurie Pommier, author of “Grandpa’s Workshop,” for pointing out this one, which is featured in W.L. Goodman’s “The History of Woodworking Tools.” This image was hiding in the section on saws.
And lastly, here is the square shown in the coat of arms for the joiners guild in Germany during the last decade of the 19th century. In this image there is no try square – only a compass, plane and the Melencolia square.
Next up: The easy-to-make Wierix Square. Or, as I call it, “Die Fledermaus.”
When I look at the moulded grip of one of these now-uncommon squares, several thoughts surface again and again.
1. The moulded stock looks like an offcut. Could it be a section of bannister?
2. I’ve never seen a bannister that looks like those moulded shapes.
3. It looks like two pieces of crown moulding glued together.
4. But there is no joint seam shown in the drawings. The stock looks like one piece.
5. Moulding both sides of the stock would be inconvenient from a workholding perspective.
6. Perhaps I’ll mould one piece and glue up the stock from two pieces of moulding.
Then I go back to No. 1 and repeat a few times until I get to No. 7. (Shut up and have a beer, son.) So for the first four of my Melencolia squares, I made the stock from one 6’ length of moulding that I planed up with hollows and rounds (Nos. 5, 12 and 14 to be exact). Then I cut a rabbet on the back of the moulding and chopped up the moulding into 4”-long pieces.
(Yes, I know there are other ways to do this that might be better. But I wanted to be able to tune each rabbet to fit its blade before assembly.)
Then I glued up the stock with hide glue. Easy.
The next batch of squares will be more Germanic and the stock will be from one piece. I have some nice superchunks of sapele left over from Roorkee chairs.
When I look at the blade of the square, here is my thought progression.
1. Was the decoration perhaps useful?
2. Remember the nib on handsaws.
3. Could the decoration serve some purpose for layout?
4. Remember the decorative shaped toe on Dutch saws.
5. Could the steps on the blade represent different common widths used in the shop?
6. Nobody asks why men have nipples do they? They just do.
7. Could the curves on the Swedish one be useful like a French curve in drafting?
8. Nipples aren’t really all that decorative, are they.
So my guess is the decorations are decorative, and make for a decorative effect. But feel free to plug away with your own theories.
I made the blade 3/8” thick because I didn’t want to plane down the maple any more than necessary. The next batch will use 1/4”-thick blades. I merely glued the blades into the stocks. There is no evidence of pinning in the Melencolia square, though Moxon and Holme say it is both glued and pinned in the similar miter square.
So I’ll add some pins in the next batch.
Next up, a detour into the world of workshop signage and its connection to the square. Plus, a version that has an intriguing metal part.
