I wear a shop apron almost every day, and so I’ve always wondered about “apron hooks,” which are shown in R.A. Salaman’s “Dictionary of Woodworking Tools.”
Here’s his entry on aprons that mentions these devices:
Carpenters and other woodworkers traditionally wear a white twill or canvas apron with a large pocket in front. It is fastened around the waist with long tapes tied in front, or with hooks that have decorative ends.
Yup. You read that right: Fancy stuff that is hooked above your buttocks. And yes, one of the hooks shown is a four-leaf clover, indicating you have a lucky butt.
I don’t think I want to know what the heart-shaped hook means.
But I am intrigued by the hooks because some days I can’t tie a bow behind my back.
Today I had a weird feeling. Not the kind in your pants – the kind in your head.
Because of a combination of odd events this afternoon, I ended up with about two hours of free time. No crushing deadline to meet. No frantic e-mails to answer.
So I designed the next chest for my book on campaign furniture. This one will be made using 40-year-old teak from Midwest Woodworking, which has been sitting in the corner of my shop for many months.
When I design a piece that won’t be painted, I begin by measuring all the pieces of lumber that I have picked out for the project. Unless I’m building an exact reproduction, I let the wood on hand provide the overall dimensions. If I have 17”-wide stock, I’m not going to draw a 20”-deep case.
Most of my teak is 18” wide. I have a 12’-long board and a 10’-long board. Plus three 50”-long boards and a shorter 13”-wide board for the drawers and thick chunks for the legs. These boards encouraged me to draw a chest that is 17” x 35” x 35” and that sits on 4”-tall turned feet.
How do I know that this will look good? I’ve spent the last two years (actually longer) collecting images and dimensions for campaign chests I like. I started looking at their overall sizes and sorting them into chests that were on the wide side and those that had a subtle vertical aspect to them.
This chest is going to be a little taller than it is wide. I pulled out images of about a dozen chests that are taller than they are wide and started sorting them into ones that had drawer arrangements I liked and those that were forgettable.
Then I fired up SketchUp.
When I draw things in SketchUp to build them, I draw only the things I don’t know. I don’t draw the joinery if it’s stuff I know how to make. I don’t draw drawer sides and bottoms and internal guides, runners and kicks. I know how to make all that stuff – drawing it will only slow me down.
If there’s wacky compound joinery, I’ll draw that. But that’s pretty uncommon.
When I work in SketchUp, the major question I want answered is this: Will this project look like something that will avoid the burn pile for the next 200 years? This is SketchUp’s superpower. You can draw a chunk of something and look at it from an infinite number of perspectives. You can put it in a room, by a loom or on the moon.
So I drew a bunch of 17” x 18” x 35” boxes and sketched drawer fronts on them. I drew a bunch of feet. Then I put the boxes together and looked at them from a bunch of perspectives. For a project like this, the entire sketching process took about an hour.
Before I quit SketchUp and fetched a beer (Bell’s Hopslam), I made a cutting list for the major parts and took that down to the shop and confirmed that the lumber on hand will support the design on screen.
And finally, with chalk in hand, I’ll start sketching my cutting lines on the rough stock.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. What about the stuff I draw for magazine articles? That is a totally different process. That’s when I draw everything the reader doesn’t know. So I draw every part, every joint, every assembly. But I do that after the project is complete.
After writing about the parallel-tip screwdrivers from Grace USA and Lee Valley, I received lots of suggestions about other makers I should check out.
However, in my wanderings through the netherworlds of screwing and unscrewing, I stumbled upon this English-made driver on my own. After getting my hands on it, I can say it’s like the makers were reading my mind. It’s called the Elemen’tary No. 1 Screwdriver, and here is why it makes most screwdrivers look as intoxicating as a Shirley Temple.
1. It has a wooden handle that is turned in the shape of a vintage turnscrew. So it won’t roll off your bench thanks to the flats. And it fits my hand like a baseball glove.
2. The finish on the beech handle is oil. It’s tactile, like the finish on the Grace drivers. Not slippery like a plastic screwdriver.
3. The screwdriver chuck has an O-ring that grips your standard bits, even snapping them in place. Many of these bits have a small groove that receive the O-ring. That’s nice. However….
4. The Elemen’tary driver also has a screw chuck that locks the bits in better than any other magnet or O-ring. This small knurled knob allows you to secure your bit so it won’t pull out of the tool. If you own any four-way screwdriver, you know how this is one of their major downsides.
The Elemen’tary driver includes six bits, though it will use almost any standard bit. This driver is going on the road with me this year and will replace five screwdrivers I carry to adjust tools and drive slot-head and Phillips screws.
While the bits that come with this driver are good, I upgraded mine by substituting ground gunsmith bits from Brownell’s. More on that in a future post.
I have only one quibble with this tool. (Don’t I always have quibbles?) Like all drivers, I think this one doesn’t need to be so long. This driver could easily lose 1” or 1-1/2” and be ideal. With woodworking, we almost never say: This screwdriver is too short. Usually the lament is: This driver is too long to get inside the cabinet.
Yes, I know that there is a stubby version of this tool.
You can purchase this tool from several sources. I bought mine from Hand-Eye Supply for $35.
Fish glue is the best that one can use for gluing hard woods and metals. It is made with the skin, nervous and mucilaginous parts of certain large fish [sturgeon], which are found in the Russian seas. It is in the north where fish glue is made, from where the English and the Dutch bring it to us, especially from the Port of Archangel, where it is a good business. Good fish glue has hardly any odor, and should be of a white color, clear and transparent. One must pay attention that is not contaminated, that is, mixed of heterogeneous parts.
To make fish glue melt, you take it in the following manner: You begin by cutting the hard, dry glue in little pieces, then you put it in a clay pot or a glass vessel with good brandy, noting that the latter covers the glue. Then you bottle up the vessel, which one must fill only half full, and you put it all on hot cinders just until the glue dissolves perfectly. Or, you can cut the glue as above, and you soak it in the brandy until it has softened, then you make it melt in a double boiler, as is normally done.
There are workers who, instead of brandy, put the fish glue in ordinary water to which they add a garlic clove. This is rather good, but is not the same as brandy, to which one can add a bit of garlic, which can only augment the strength of the glue.
One can do the same thing with good English glue; that is to say, put [it] in brandy and garlic. I have done it many times, and that has always been successful for me.
With the stool’s hardware mechanism working fine, this morning I made a set of three stool legs from mahogany left over from a run of Roorkhee chairs in 2012.
My design for the legs was inspired by the foot of an original 1898 Roorkhee, which is essentially a slightly flattened bead. I also added four grooves that straddle the holes through the legs and turned a gradual taper from these holes down to the ankle.
The fun part of the job was finishing the legs on the lathe. With the lathe spinning, I rubbed on some beeswax from farmer beekeeper and woodworker Will Myers (thanks Will!). Then, with the lathe still spinning, I used Roubo’s polissoir to burnish the mahogany and drive the wax into the wood’s pores. A final polish with some rough cotton cloth (an empty bag of grits) produced the final sheen.
I don’t know if it’s a non-non to use a polissoir on a spinning lathe, but it sure made short work of the finishing process.
For the seat, Ty Black is cutting out some of my “oiled latigo” leather I bought for a Roorkhee chair for a customer. That leather is from Wicket & Craig and has the shop nickname of the “sex machine leather.” It’s impossibly buttery and beautiful.
On Friday, I hope we’ll get the second prototype assembled – after I age the hardware.
— Christopher Schwarz
Oh, One More Thing…
During the last 10 years, the most common question I’m asked (aside from, “What wood should I use for my workbench?” Answer here.) is, “How do you manage to write, edit, build and teach as much as you do?”
I know that most people are paying me a compliment with the question. With others, the implication is that I don’t build all the projects I show here. Or that I sub-contract out the construction or finishing. Or that I am just really skilled in making photo-realistic images.
Here’s the deal: I went to journalism school and cut my teeth at a newspaper where we wrote 400 to 500 original pieces a year. I can write a blog entry, such as this one, in about 15 to 30 minutes without much forethought. It just comes out – like water from a well or crap from a porta-potty, depending on how you like my work.
Also important: I don’t watch TV, don’t like sports, don’t have a lot of friends and don’t have any other hobbies besides woodworking and listening to music while woodworking. Considering how much time I devote to the craft, I actually should be a lot better and a lot faster.
So I designed the next chest for my book on campaign furniture. This one will be made using 40-year-old teak from Midwest Woodworking, which has been sitting in the corner of my shop for many months.
Fish glue is the best that one can use for gluing hard woods and metals. It is made with the skin, nervous and mucilaginous parts of certain large fish [sturgeon], which are found in the Russian seas. It is in the north where fish glue is made, from where the English and the Dutch bring it to us, especially from the Port of Archangel, where it is a good business. Good fish glue has hardly any odor, and should be of a white color, clear and transparent. One must pay attention that is not contaminated, that is, mixed of heterogeneous parts.
