Roy Underhill announced he will close his Woodwright’s School in Pittsboro, N.C., at the end of the 2023 season. But this is not the end of the school or his career as a woodworking educator.
There is a new television show under discussion. Plus his school may appear in another location or in another guise. The most we can say right now is to stay tuned.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. Ed Lebetkin’s tool store (upstairs from the school) will also close its doors, so it’s time to make that pilgrimage to complete your tool kit.
“Ingenious Mechanicks” is my worst-selling book. Since it was released in 2016, we’ve sold about 4,000 copies. But I don’t care. That book changed my workshop life more than any other project I’ve been involved in.
Roman workbenches are insanely useful creatures. The only operations I don’t use them much for are dovetailing large casework and planing large tabletops. Otherwise, I can always find a way to hold my work and get the job done.
Since I built my first Roman bench, we’ve had one or two of them in the shop constantly. And when someone else is teaching in our bench room, I take a seat on the Roman bench and get to work on my personal stuff.
Last week, I built a stick chair plus the base of a dining table on my Roman bench while Megan Fitzpatrick taught a tool chest class.
Most of the work is secured by my body or by pressing it against the Hulot block at one end of the bench. Or I pressed the work into one of the holdfast holes in the bench with one hand and planed the stock with the other hand.
For complex shaping operations, I used my carver’s vise to hold the odd pieces then could freely plane, rasp and scrape my work. Carving the legs of the dining table was easy with my body holding the work against the benchtop (though I wish I had more padding in my rear end for this job).
One thing I cannot overstate is how much energy you save while using these benches. Sitting down and working allows me to work longer hours, and I’m less whupped at the end of the day.
Heck, you don’t even really need to build a Roman bench using the plans from my book. This bench is a sitting bench from Skansen I made years ago. Then I made a few holes in it. Any sitting bench will do.
If you have limited mobility, or you have a tiny shop space, limited funds for a bench or you work in the living room, a Roman workbench is a good thing.
Furniture maker Phil Lowe once showed me two 55-gallon barrels filled with clear stuff that looked like sand. He got the barrels from a factory that made gummy bears (I think he said the factory went out of business). Anyway, he used the stuff in the barrels – gelatin – to make his hide glue.
Since that day I’ve had the following stuck in my head: gummy bears = hide glue.
Today I decided to see if I could reverse-engineer the process and turn gummy bears into hide glue.
I bought a package of Haribo Goldbears gummy bears from the gas station up the block from Roy Underhill’s school. I put them in a cup with a little water and put the cup into his hide glue pot.
An hour later, the bears had melted and stirred like thin hide glue (I might have added a little too much water). Gummy bears are not just pure gelatin, of course. They have a lot of sugar and other stuff in them. But despite all this negative information running through my head, I had a question…
Does it stick?
I painted some Gummy Glue on a piece of poplar and performed a rub joint. The glue tacked right up with some nice pink squeeze-out. After 10 minutes, the stuff gelled up. The joint looks promising (right now).
I’ll let the joint sit overnight to see how strong it is.
Whenever Megan Fitzpatrick and I pass through West Virginia, we make a stop at Tamarack Marketplace in West Virginia for gas and a look at the furniture and crafts.
Some years we are wowed by… how do I put this?…. what people will pay good money for. Other years there is a balance of beauty and future firewood. This year was one of those good years.
We saw a lot of epoxy tables. (I promise you that this form has a half-life and will not endure. In fact, we might be entering the Late Epoxy Period.) But we also saw some nice pieces of work. You might think I’m joking, but I almost bought a Crown Royal-themed quilt.
Below are some of the photos I took, along with some occasional snark. If you have ever wondered if Tamarack is worth a stop, the answer is yes.
— Christopher Schwarz
I am unapologetic about my dislike for this epoxy stuff. I am certain it will start showing up in landfills in short order. Because of the epoxy, you can’t really burn it when you get tired of it.
We saw a couple nice Maloof-ish rockers. Good craftsmanship. This one was $3,900 – I couldn’t make it for this price.
A couple displays had incredible wooden facsimiles of tools. These are all wood. They are amazing.
Ahh, the firewood section of Tamarack.
The quilt I wanted.
It’s rare that I like a piece such as this. But this one was done quite well.
Jack planes are the most-used tool in my hands. Hands down, hands forward and hands back. I’m on my third jack plane iron since 1996. I’ve never even come close to wearing out a plane iron for a smoothing or jointer plane.
(I have eaten through some block plane blades, though I blame that on carpentry jobs and nails.)
When students ask for my recommendations for a jack plane, my first recommendation is a vintage Stanley No. 5. I have an old Type 11 from around the turn of the last century. Rosewood knob and tote. Beautiful lightweight casting. Just perfect.
But a lot of students are unwilling to take my advice. They have good reasons.
They don’t have the skill or time to fix up an old plane.
They are afraid that a vintage plane bought through the mail will be a POS.
They don’t know enough to buy a vintage plane.
They just want a tool that works without any fettling. Sharpen and go.
So here’s what I tell them: Get the Lie-Nielsen No. 62. What is sometimes called a low-angle jack or bevel-up jack. Here is my reasoning.
A jack plane should be fairly lightweight and simple to use. The Lie-Nielsen No. 62 fits that bill. It doesn’t have a frog, chipbreaker or lateral-adjustment lever. This keeps down its weight, its complexity and its price.
So what are we talking about when we discuss the weight of jack planes? Here are the ones we have in our shop, from lightest to heaviest.
Wooden jack plane: 4 lbs. 1 oz. Stanley No. 5: 4 lbs. 6 oz. Lie-Nielsen No. 62: 4 lbs. 10 oz. Veritas No. 5: 5 lbs. 4 oz. Lie-Nielsen No. 5: 5 lbs. 8 oz.
In use the wooden jack, the Stanley and the No. 62 all feel about the same. Once the tool tops 5 lbs., I notice the increased weight.
I know some experienced woodworkers don’t like the low-angle/bevel-up planes. But I have found that beginners really take to them. Likely because they are simple to set up. (There are other makers of the No. 62-style plane, including Veritas, Wood River and a variety of offshore white-label brands. I’ve used the Veritas and can recommend its quality, but it is heavy. The other brands I don’t have any experience with. Avoid the modern Stanley No. 62. I have yet to use one that didn’t have a fatal error in its bed machining.)
So why not a wooden jack? I love wooden jacks, and there are some great makers of new jacks out there. It’s difficult to recommend a vintage wooden jack for a greenhorn woodworker because the tool might need a lot of work. Heck, it might need something only a fire can offer.
So my recommendation is based on my desire to get a student going with the minimum amount of fussing with them before class, at lunch and at night.
And when three students show up with this plane, I know I have offended the woodworking gods somehow and must make a sacrifice to appease them.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. Scrub planes are too short for the jointing operations I ask of a jack, and its iron has too much curve for my taste. I’m sure that if I started in the craft with a scrub I would love it. But I didn’t. And so I don’t.
