Crap. I forgot to show this movie to the audience at Woodworking in America. I blame jet lag, alcohol and the boll weevil.
The week before flying out to Pasadena, Calif., for the show I built a lot of sawbenches to try to cut my time down to about 30 minutes. That would allow me to work at a pace where I could talk and not have sweat coming out of my nipples as I built the sawbench.
After getting comfortable with my procedure last week, I had my shop assistant, Ty Black, build the bench as I filmed it. He had helped me figure out some of the geometry, but this film shows the first time he gave my procedure a go.
Hinges are works mechanical that permit of a door to be opened, yet to remain attached at one side. Of hinges, there are three sorts; those being strap, pintle, and butt. Of these, the butt is formed of cast iron, and is the largest of the three. I like big butts and I can not lie. You other brothers can’t deny, That when a door swings out on an itty bitty hinge, And a round thing in your face, It gets sprung, You wanna pull it out rough. ‘Cause you notice that butt was stuffed Deep in the wood and it’s wearing. I’m hooked and I can’t stop staring. Oh baby, I wanna re-hang you. And take my hammer and bang you….
If you attended one of my sessions at Woodworking in America in Pasadena, Calif., on Saturday, this is the blog entry you are looking for. The rest of you can go about your business – or download these and be slightly confused.
Campaign Furniture: Below are two links. One is an all-too short bibliography on this style of furniture. The other is a .pdf version of my presentation.
The Furniture Style With No Name: Below is my “recipe” for a six-board chest. There is a .pdf document that explains the tools required and the cutting and assembly procedure I use. The second document is a SketchUp file that shows the construction steps in a visual way. After you open the model in SketchUp, click on the different tabs at the top of its window to move through the different scenes.
If you weren’t at my “60-minute Sawbench Class” yesterday at Woodworking in America, this download might not make total sense to you.
But as promised, below are the illustrated directions for cutting the compound angles on the legs of the sawbench. Plus there’s a tool list and a materials list for the sawbench I built during the class.
Two things I forgot to mention during the presentation:
1. Hammer the points of your nails to blunt them before driving them in. This will reduce the fir’s tendency to split.
2. If you have some woodworking machines handy, Take a few extra minutes to dress the dimensional stock to remove the ugly rounded corners. The sawbench will look much nicer.
Blacksmith Phil Koontz has decided to get out of the business of making holdfasts.
In my book, it’s a sad decision. Phil was one of the very few people who made holdfasts for anyone anywhere on the globe and was 100-percent reliable all of the time.
While unnamed ironmongers were making “holdfasts” that didn’t cinch down or broke under mild hammer pressure, Phil made holdfasts that bit your work like a ticked-off cobra. They were the first holdfasts I owned that really worked.
Why is he leaving the business? I’ll let Phil speak:
“I have decided to stop selling (holdfasts). I wanted you to be one of the first to know. Last winter I had a big rush on orders around Christmas, partly as a result of your very kind video evaluation of Megan Fitzpatrick’s holdfasts. Christmas seems to be the busy season for holdfasts anyway, and I have just decided that I’m not up to a lot of blacksmithing this winter.
“It’s a bit awkward that I really stocked up on steel last summer during barge season, so I don’t know quite what I’m going to do with 500 feet of 11/16″ bar stock, but I’m sure something will turn up.”
If you are one of the hundreds of people who dealt with Phil during the last decade, I know you will wish him well in his future Alaskan endeavors. And if you are one of those people who put off buying a pair of his fantastic holdfasts, sorry about your luck.