From an illustrated version of Giles of Rome’s, De Regimine Principum, early 16th century.
It is not often that my love of tool geekery and word geekery coincide. But over several posts about “Grandpa’s Workshop” and the besaigue (bisaigue) there have been some questions about the tool and how to pronounce the word.
It is pronounced, bees-ay-goo with the last “o” there kind of swallowed.
Maurice Pommier the author and illustrator of the book, offered up this info on the origins of the word.
From the “Robert Dictionary:” feminine noun, dates to the 12th century, from Latin, “bis acuta”, sharpened twice – a carpenters tool with two cutting tools, one a mortise chisel, the other a chisel.
From “Larousse Dictionary:” feminine noun, from Latin “bis” – twice, “acuta” – sharpened.
The gold standard for traditional tools in France is Daniel Boucard, who has published several books on the topic including “Dictionnaire des Outils” and traces the first mention of the word to 1160, and says that the word was originally spelled “BESAIGÜE”
After four years of work, we are ready to take pre-publication orders and deposits for a special edition of “To Make as Perfectly as Possible: Roubo on Marquetry” by Don Williams, Michele Pagan and Philippe LaFargue.
As mentioned before, there will be two editions of “To Make as Perfectly as Possible: Roubo on Marquetry.” The special edition will be oversized and similar to the 18th-century first edition of “L’Art du Menuisier” (about 11” x 17”) and printed in the United States using the best materials available. It will have a special binding, full-size plates printed in the original color, color photos and a unique page design.
Additionally, all customers who purchase this book before Jan. 1, 2013, will have the opportunity to have their name printed in a “List of Subscribers” at the end of the volume.
There will be only one printing of this special edition. But please note this: Everyone who makes a deposit on this book before Jan. 1, 2013, will receive a copy. Mark that date on your calendar. We will also print some additional copies of this edition to sell in 2013, but once those are gone, this large-size edition will be gone forever.
To place a $100 deposit on this book and guarantee you will receive this special edition, visit our Lost Art Press store. The final price of this edition is still undetermined, though we expect it to cost about $400 and ship in March 2013. You will be contacted when the books are ready for shipment and to collect the balance that is due.
Note that we will take foreign orders on this special edition. Please contact John Hoffman at john@lostartpress.com for information on how to place your deposit.
For those of you who do not want the special edition, we will sell a trade version that is much like all of the books in the Lost Art Press portfolio. It will be about 9” x 13”, Smythe sewn with cloth-covered boards, black-and-white illustrations and black-and-white photos. And, like all of our titles, it will be printed in the United States. This version will have an entirely separate page design compared to the special edition and should cost about $60. It will remain in print for many years (we hope), unlike the special edition.
We will have more details on ordering this trade version of the book in 2013.
If my teaching schedule for 2013 doesn’t wreck my marriage or alienate my children, then nothing will.
Here’s a list of where I will be teaching in 2013. Note that I don’t control registration at these schools, and I am never sure when each school will open registration (hint: ask the school). I do know this: If a class is full and you want to take it, sign up for the waiting list. There is a good chance you will get in.
Feb. 1-3 Highland Woodworking, Atlanta, Ga.
I’m demonstrating at a Lie-Nielsen event at Highland that weekend and then teaching a Sunday class in building precision layout tools: a straightedge, winding sticks with inlay and a Roubo try square.
March 10-29 Melbourne Guild of Fine Woodworking, Melbourne, Australia
Yup, I am going below the Equator for the first time to teach in Australia. While I am very excited about seeing the water swirl the opposite way in the toilet, I am more excited about the classes I’ll be offering: The Anarchist’s Tool Chest, Hammer in Hand: The Dovetailed Schoolbox, and a Shaker Wall Cabinet. Plus I’ll be visiting Chris Vesper and French kissing a wallaby.
April 15-21 Rosewood Studios, Perth, Ontario
Another first: Teaching in Canada! I’ve been to Canada many times, but I’ve never taught a class there. At Rosewood, I’ll be teaching The Anarchist’s Tool Chest (renamed to get me through immigration), and a short course on the Shaker Wall Cabinet.
April 27-28 Marc Adams School of Woodworking, Franklin, Ind.
This is the annual class I teach on handplanes with Thomas Lie-Nielsen. It is a surprisingly good introduction to handplanes considering it’s only a two-day class. Many of the students from this class have gone on to great things.
May 6-10 Marc Adams School of Woodworking, Franklin, Ind.
Marc Adams is always willing to indulge me. So this year he is letting me teach a class on designing and building a campaign chest. Every student will design something that suits them and learn the techniques particular to this form of furniture to build one of the stacking cases for a chest. It should be a fun, but crazy, class.
June 3-7 Kelly Mehler School of Woodworking, Berea, Ky.
In this class we will be design and build Roorkhee chairs (and if there’s time we’ll also make a Roubo camp stool). This class promises to be a lot of fun. You can learn to turn (if you like). Learn leatherwork. Shellac finishing. Riveting. And a whole lot of other hand skills.
June 17-22 Dictum GmbH woodworking school, Niederalteich, Germany
This is my fourth year of teaching at the Dictum workshop, and my German language skills continue to molder. This year, I’ll be teaching a class in making a Roorkhee chair (see above) and a very cool bowsaw. This school attracts students from all over Europe (and beyond). If you’ve ever considered a vacation in Bavaria, this is a very nice place to begin (or end) your journey. The school is in a beautiful monastery and we all spend every evening closing down the local gasthaus.
July 8-12 Marc Adams School of Woodworking, Franklin, Ind.
Design and build a trestle table. This is another new class that I am very excited to teach because it relates to my “Furniture of Necessity” book. Students will design their own trestle table in any style they please (with guidance) and then execute it using the awesome equipment at March Adams’s school and their hand tools. You’ll learn about trestle tables from the 14th century to the 21st and be able to build whatever you desire.
July 20-21 Kelly Mehler School of Woodworking, Berea, Ky.
A weekend course on building the three essential wooden layout tools: a straightedge, a pair of winding sticks with inlay and a Roubo try square. THis is a great foundational class in handwork as these three tools are built entirely by hand and have many lessons embedded in them.
Aug. 3-9 Connecticut Valley School of Woodworking, Manchester, Ct.
At this fine school I’ll be teaching The Anarchist’s Tool Chest class and a two-day class in building a six-board chest. The six-board chest class will be a hoot, perhaps a bit like a reality show. You’ll be given two boards and a task. And then we will all find the best path forward.
Aug. 26-30 The Woodwright’s School, Pittsboro, N.C.
By request: The Anarchist’s Tool Chest class with Roy Underhill and me. It’s a fun a nut-tastic week with Roy. You will become a good dovetailer at this class. And a good mortiser. And your liver will be a wreck.
Sept. 2-6 Port Townsend School of Woodworking, Port Townsend, Wash.
OK, so we’ve sold more than 10,000 copies of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest.” That’s surprising. What’s more surprising is that people are building these chests. I bring the show to the West Coast. This school is in on of the most beautiful hilltops in the world. Even if you hate me and the class, you’ll be soothed by your surroundings.
Oct. 12-14 The Woodwright’s School, Pittsboro, N.C.
Six-board chest deathmatch and quilting bee. By all rights, six-board chests shouldn’t survive the travails of wood movement – yet thousands have. No two six-board chests are exactly alike, yet they all look cut from the same cloth. And how do nails help this humble but noble form of furniture survive the centuries?
You’ll learn all this – and more – as the most hirsute instructor at the Woodwright’s School (me!) leads you on a journey of discovery through the construction of this sometimes inscrutable form. You’ll begin the class with two boards, a handful of tools and a deadline. A steady saw, a hungry chisel and a ferocious hammer will guide you as you construct the chestiest of all the traditional American furniture forms – the six-board chest.
“There is a wonderful similarity between the traditional work of Korea and Japan and much of the early Cotswold School. The directness and honesty of construction and approach, with nothing contrived; the general lack of sophistication; the sheer joy and spontaneity that comes through into the finished work itself, which I believe is a direct result of contact with the materials at all stages with hand tools and hand skills. I now know what Edward Barnsley feared, and with some justification.”
— Alan Peters on the 1955 electrification of the Barnsley workshop. From “Cabinetmaking: The Professional Approach” (Linden)
When I first dove into handwork, I could barely afford diapers, wipes and formula – never mind a nice Bed Rock or infill handplane (this was before we had premium bench planes).
So I bought all my planes at antique markets and fixed them up using techniques I had to invent for myself – many of them too silly to even mention here.
The point? I had to fix up (and mess up) a lot of planes before I could get my tools to plane anything and everything I put under them. I wasted a crapload of time doing stuff the wrong way. Eventually, however, I perfected my methods after I talked to machinists, fellow woodworkers and abrasive manufacturers to figure out how to do it correctly.
So I know how to tune old planes, not to mention the unmentionable junk from Groz, Anant et al. And earlier this year I put it all down in a DVD called “Super-tune a Handplane” that was produced by Popular Woodworking Magazine.
In this DVD I take an off-the-rack old Stanley plane and tune it to the highest level possible using home-center materials and basic skills. You don’t need to learn to scrape a sole like a machinist. You don’t need special dyes or tools – just stuff you can find at any hardware store.
In the DVD, I cover the following topics:
• How to purchase a vintage plane, including how to identify a solid candidate for restoration using a simple flow chart.
• How to disassemble, clean and de-rust all the parts using completely harmless materials you can find in the canning section of your supermarket.
• How to flatten all the critical surfaces, including the sole, the frog, the back of the iron and the sidewalls of the plane. You’ll need only some belt-sander paper, a floor tile and a block of wood to get results.
• How to decide if you need to upgrade to an aftermarket iron and chipbreaker.
• How to reassemble the plane, lubricate the key components and tune up the tool to take a fine shaving.
• Plus a lot of information on troubleshooting a tool that won’t take a good shaving – information you don’t see very often out there.
• And tricks and tips on planing boards that allow the tool to really do its job.
The plane I tuned for the DVD is a Stanley Type 11, which was made during the early years of the 20th century. This particular tool had good bones but needed a full restoration. At the end of the video, I can easily plane a row mahogany board with crazy interlocked and reversing grain — without tearout.
Tonight I took that same plane downstairs to my shop and put it back to work. It is indeed a super worker. And it took only a few hours of my time to bring it up to this level.
To demonstrate my confidence in the tool, I’m going to give it away to one of our readers in a little haiku contest. To win the plane, all you have to do is write the best woodworking haiku ever and post it in the comments section of this entry. Be sure to include your e-mail and real name – we cannot send you your plane if we cannot contact you. Deadline for entries is noon EST, Nov. 22, 2012.
Note that you will receive the plane with the tool’s original iron and chipbreaker. I use my Veritas breaker and iron (shown in the photo above) in my No. 5, which I also tuned to this level, by the way.
Oh, and if you want the DVD, it is being sold by Popular Woodworking Magazine at its ShopWoodworking.com site. You can pre-order the DVD for $24.99. Lost Art Press will not be selling the DVD, so ShopWoodworking is the best place to get it.
And one more detail, if you order through this link, I’ll get credit for the sale. No, I’m not an affiliate of the ShopWoodworking site or any other site. I don’t believe in affiliate logrolling. So I won’t get a percentage of the sale. But using this link will encourage them to do more DVDs like this one. Just saying.
In any case, fire up your haiku gene and win this plane. I’ll pay the shipping and feature the best haikus next weekend.
