Several weeks ago I commented on a stick that changed my workshop habits. I have posted a video and explanation of that stick on my blog at Popular Woodworking Magazine.
— Christopher Schwarz
Author: Lost Art Press
Publisher of woodworking books and videos specializing in hand tool techniques.
Upcoming Projects from ‘The Furniture of Necessity’
Though I haven’t been writing much about it, work has continued on my next book, “The Furniture of Necessity.” It’s still too far away to predict its publication date, but things are falling into place to make a type of book that hasn’t been seen in a long time.
Here are some recent waypoints.
1. An Engraver. I have found a copperplate engraver who will make the plates for “The Furniture of Necessity.” She works in a very traditional manner. This book will be a partnership between her and me, so expect some eye-opening illustrations.
2. Thanks to Suzanne “Saucy Indexer” Ellison, the research for the book has been forging ahead. She has been collecting the limited literature on these forms, which I have been reading for many months now on long flights and in hotel rooms. Without Suzanne’s help, I’d be a year behind on this book.
3. Projects. I’ve been sorting through some of the projects I want to discuss and build for “The Furniture of Necessity.” Today I was looking at some of the English pieces I selected from a 1982 exhibit at the Stable Court Galleries at Temple Newsam. Suzanne dug up the hard-to-find exhibit catalog for me.
Here are a few of the forms that are finalists for the book.
Welsh Stick-back Chair (shown above)
I call this chair the “Cwm Tudu” chair because that was the area where the chair was found in Cardiganshire. (And because I have no idea if I’m pronouncing “Cwm Tudu” correctly, it’s fun to botch.) This chair has an elm seat. The arm bow is a naturally curved branch. And guests won’t be able to tip backward in it.
Countrey Stoole
Illustrated in Randle Holme’s “Academy of Armory,” this particular example was allegedly owned by Anne Cotton, the West Auckland murderess. These stools were used for everything from milking a cow to resting your feet.
Farmhouse Settle
The high-backed settles of England are one of my favorite forms. I particularly like the ones with a curved seat and back, such as this early 19th-century example. Ealier examples tended to have backboards of random widths.
Lodging Box
These very common boxes were used by every youth leaving home to go into domestic service. Most had a till for storing small objects. The boxes were commonly dovetailed and used for a variety of purposes in a household.
Drinking Table
A common three-legged table, usually painted white or left in the white. The three legs made it stable on uneven floors. This example is dated 1821, though this form is quite older.
— Christopher Schwarz
The Advantages of Saws with ‘Tapered’ or ‘Canted’ Blades
During every class I teach where we pick up a saw, a students always asks the following question: Why is your sawblade narrower at the toe?
This characteristic of some backsaws is curious at first to the modern eye. Many of the backsaws from the 19th and 20th centuries have blades that are perfect rectangles. And yet many old saws have blades that are narrower at the toe than they are at the heel.
Modern sawmakers who do this have different names for this feature. Lie-Nielsen Toolworks says the blades are “tapered,” which can be confusing because sawblades can also be tapered in their thickness. Gramercy Tools says their saws are “canted,” which is confusing because I don’t exactly know what that word means at first glance.
In any case, it means the blades are narrower at the toe. Many old saws have this shape. The question, however, is why.
Some woodworkers say that vintage blades are tapered or canted because of poor sharpening or because the blade has come loose from its back and has slid down. While both of these things are quite possible, my opinion is that the feature is very desirable and was commonly known among early sawmakers.
If you look at early catalog drawings of saws, the blades would have a tapered or canted shape. The most famous example is the page of saws in “Smith’s Key.” (I first wrote about the features of these saws seven years ago in this blog entry.)
So why were the saws tapered or canted? My opinion: It makes for a better saw.
Saws that are narrower at the toe have the following working characteristics.
1. The saw is lighter at the toe because there is less steel there.
2. On a related note, removing that steel shifts the center of gravity of the tool back a bit, making it feel lighter.
3. When you push these saws forward, every tooth is followed by a tooth that is a little lower. The saw feels more aggressive (to me, at least).
4. Most importantly: When you are sawing dovetails or any other joint, the canted or tapered blade allows you to saw to your baseline on the front side of the work and still be shy of the baseline on the backside of the work. Then you can look over the work and finish the job.
I love canted/tapered blades. I prefer them in all instances and for all of my joinery saws. Whether you buy into the historical argument or not is immaterial. Today we have a choice when we buy saws: tapered/canted or not tapered/canted.
I think the tapered/canted blades are clearly an improvement.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. I’m not recommending you throw away your non-tapered/canted blades. Quite the opposite. You can easily joint the teeth of your saws so the blade is canted/tapered. Just take more jointing strokes with the file at the toe of the blade. Then file the saw normally. After a few sharpenings your blade will be tapered like an old saw. Then you can file the toothline normally during sharpenings.
Coolest Stickers (Yet) for the Dutch Tool Chest
My little Dutch tool chest has seen a metric crap-load of miles (or kilometers or hogsheads) during the last 12 months. And wherever I take it, I like to pick up a sticker from a local gas station or convenience store to apply to the chest.
The stickers are not to reinforce the joinery. Promise.
Today, the president of the Kansas City Woodworkers Guild gave me the coolest stickers yet. Rob Young gets to spend some of his working life in Antarctica and brought back a sticker for the South Pole Station, plus a sticker that indicates you shouldn’t freeze whatever is in the package (it could be a well-dressed live penguin).
I can’t wait to add these stickers to the chest. Even though I haven’t been to the South Pole, and I have little prospect of teaching there (I hear there aren’t many trees. Yet), I love the stickers.
This year I hope to get stickers from Alaska, Alabama and England – three of the foreign lands in which I’ll be teaching in during 2014. (Sorry Alabama. I’m from Arkansas and you know that we’re constitutionally obligated to make jokes about you because… uh, we’re Arkansas.)
— Christopher Schwarz
A Glimpse at the Sausage Factory
Just like woodworking, publishing is a fractal. You can get lost in the tiniest of details inside of details. And when I say “lost,” I mean the good kind of lost. Like this.
Most of my career has been on the newspaper and magazine side of publishing, where the level of detail work isn’t (and cannot be) in the same league as a designer such as Wesley Tanner, who designed “To Make as Perfectly as Possible: Roubo on Marquetry.” But I’m coming around.
Today I flushed out some rough ideas for the cover of “Campaign Furniture.” These are rough. And did I mention they were not smooth? Rough. The idea is to make the cover look like the top of a traveling chest or trunk. Corner guards are placed at the corners and there is something in the center – either an Anglo-Indian pull or a plate with curved corners and the title of the book.
Yes, I might add screws to the pull or plate. Or I might not muck it up with too much detail. Everything is hand-drawn, which will work nicely with the dies that do the debossing on the cover.
I’ve also been sorting through all the color choices that are possible with this cover. Right now I’m leaning toward a cotton cover that will be a color called “mudpie” – it’s a brownish-red and looks like a lot of the 19th-century British woodworking books on my shelf. The stamp will likely be something coppery or gold-ish. Maybe. Or black.
Or I’ll put a giant smiling narwhal on the cover that’s pooping rainbows.
It could go either way.
— Christopher Schwarz