Two quick notes. You have until midnight on Oct. 31 to purchase our new “Sharpen This (the Video)” for $50. After Oct. 31, the price of the video will be $75.
Also, today we posted the first of 20 additional videos that are included with your purchase. The newest video shows two ways to sharpen scorps. One method uses a piece of fine sandpaper. The second method allows you to grind and polish your scorps safely on the table saw.
(If you have already purchased the video, you will be notified by email that the new video is available and the email will give you a link to view it. Or you can use the link that came in your initial email after you purchased the video.)
Here is a partial list of the 20 additional videos we are working on for this series:
Marking Knives and Marking Gauges Spade & Auger Bits Shop Knives & Pocket Knives Spokeshaves Gunstock Scrapers & Chair Devils Dividers, Awls & Planing Stops Narrow and Odd Chisels The Terrible Flattening Brick The Edge-on-Up Sharpness Tester
Here is a quick business-related post here that may help you in your woodworking (or nematode lingerie) business.
In any transaction there are only three roles: the seller, the customer and the product. As one of the owners of Lost Art Press, I might occupy any of those roles at different times. And if I don’t understand my role in the transaction, I can make a fatal error. For example:
When I post on Instagram or Twitter, I am the product. This is a sometimes-startling realization for people. But if you aren’t the seller (Instagram) or the buyer (advertisers) then you are the product. (Cue the theme to “Soylent Green.”)
When we sell books to you, Lost Art Press is the seller, you are the buyer and the product is the ideas of a third person – the author.
However, when we are negotiating with an author about whether to publish their book, the roles change. Lost Art Press is the customer, the author is the seller and the product is the unpublished manuscript (aka the author’s ideas).
During the last 32 years of working in publishing, I have watched a lot of smart people completely forget how this works. One frequent problem at Popular Woodworking magazine occurred when an author would propose a story for us to publish. If we declined, the author might berate us, call us names, throw a fit (sometimes online) and generally be an ass.
You can get away with that sort of behavior when you are the customer (such as when you are a subscriber to the magazine, and we cocked up your subscription). That’s because in our service-oriented culture, the customer is always right (even when they’re not).
But a seller belittling a potential customer is not cool. And that abuse can be fatal for the seller’s business.
At the magazine, authors who abused us were sometimes confused when we stopped returning their calls or considering their proposals.
Whenever I step into a weird financial situation (publishing rights purchased through an agent from a foreign publisher? Ugh), I draw a little triangle on a sheet of paper. I label the points: “Me,” “Other Dude” and “Thingy.” Then I draw arrows that show who the money goes to. At the beginning of the arrow is the customer. At the end of the arrow is the seller.
Then I know how to behave.
How does this blog entry help a small woodworking business? It is a reminder about how to deal with institutions. It’s easy to treat companies like they are always the seller and you are the customer. But that’s not always the case.
Draw the triangle. Draw the arrows. (Or get used to the indifference.)
Almost 30 years ago I was making furniture on the back porch that could best be described as in the style of “Dangerously Doweled” or simply “Prolapsed Flatpack.”
Then I visited this place. At the time I was a junior editor at a magazine that covered politics and government, and the bosses decided the editors should go on a retreat. I’d never heard of the place we were going, and I wasn’t the one driving.
I don’t remember what we talked about at the editorial retreat – probably our feelings – because I was all over the furniture, the windows, the peg rails, the trestle tables.
Soon after that, some close friends – Chris and Lee Poore – told me they were going to take a handwork class at the University of Kentucky. Would I like to join in?
Today I returned to the West Lot at the Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill for the first time since that day 30 years ago. The West Lot doesn’t see many visitors because it’s a couple miles from the main village. But I made the trek this morning to see if it was as beautiful as I remember.
I am so happy to announce our latest book “Henry Boyd’s Freedom Bed” by Whitney L.B. Miller. This illustrated children’s book is about the life of Henry Boyd, one of the unsung furniture geniuses of the 19th century.
The book traces Boyd’s life from his birth on a Kentucky plantation, where he was enslaved, to the deadly Kanawha salt works in what is now West Virginia. After Boyd purchased his freedom, he moved to Cincinnati and – after much tribulation – set up his own furniture business that employed both white and Black woodworkers.
Boyd specialized in building beds. And perhaps his greatest contribution to the craft was the invention of an ingenious way to join the bed rails to the headboard and footboard. It involved using a traditional threaded screw at one end of the rail and a reverse-threaded screw at the other end.
The design was so successful it was widely known as “The Boyd Bed” and others began copying it. The invention was eventually patented.
Boyd’s woodworking cleverness also served him well during his work on the Underground Railroad.
Author Whitney L.B. Miller in front of a recreation of Boyd’s storefront at the Cincinnati History Museum.
This book has been years in the making, beginning with extensive original historical research. Boyd’s story was brought to life by Miller, who wrote and illustrated the tale. Miller is a local television reporter, woodworker and maker, and her lightly fictionalized account of Boyd is suitable for children ages 3-8 (though even adults will learn something).
In addition to Miller’s lovely telling of Boyd’s life, “Henry Boyd’s Freedom Bed” also features an extensive historical timeline of Boyd’s life. The timeline was created by researcher Suzanne Ellison, and it dispels many of the myths about Boyd that have been circulating in newspaper accounts for more than a century.
“Henry Boyd’s Freedom Bed” will be available for purchase in early November. In addition to the book itself, there will be a deluxe edition available (more details on this coming soon). You can sign up to be notified of the book’s release here.
This book, though slim, was a monumental effort for so many people. Miller developed a new illustration style for the book, and taking a person’s entire life and boiling it down into a story for children was no small feat. Ellison’s research on Boyd can be described as nothing less than relentless. We have shared it freely with local museums, and it was the foundation upon which the Cincinnati History Museum created its exhibit on Boyd (now a permanent exhibit). And then there was our own Kara Gebhart Uhl, who helped Miller with the mechanics and storyboarding to create the book.
This book is the first to examine Boyd’s life, but we hope it’s not the last.
Rounding over the long edges of the sole is important.
Sure, we all know to keep our handplanes sharp, clean and lubed. But when was the last time you did maintenance on the tool’s mouth and the edges of its sole?
These areas are fragile and take a heap of abuse. Yet little is written about how to regularly maintain them.
Let’s start with the mouth of the tool. The area of the sole right in front of the mouth gets worn away from use. Not decades of use. Usually just a few months of heavy use will cause noticeable wear.
Why do we care? If the sole in front of the mouth isn’t pressing down the wood fibers, then the cut will happen ahead of the tool’s cutting edge. And that’s tear-out.
If the wear is shallow, you can remove it by rubbing the sole on some #220-grit sandpaper affixed to a flat floor tile. (If the wear is deep, you will need to file the front of the mouth, which I will cover in a future entry).
You can see I have a lot of work to do on the sole in front of the mouth.
To flatten the sole, paint some red marker on the sole surrounding the mouth. Then rub the sole on the sandpaper until all the color is gone. I usually dress my plane sole every six months, and the dressing can require 5-10 minutes of work.
Once the sole is done, you should bevel the edges of the sole – with sandpaper or a file. Why? The edges of the sole are fragile when they are a sharp corner. They are stronger when they are rounded over. So if your tool has a sole with rounded edges it is much less likely to develop a burr when the plane collides with a fellow tool or a knot. These burrs look like plane tracks on the work and frustrate beginners.
To round over the edges, I tilt the plane 45° and round over the plane’s long edges on the sandpaper (see the photo at the beginning of this entry). Then I file the front and rear of the sole with a fine needle file – these areas of the sole take the most damage – to create a bevel. Then I round over that bevel with some fine sandpaper.
File the front edge of the plane.
Then round things over with sandpaper.
These small efforts make a huge difference. Your plane will produce less tear-out. And it is much more likely to leave a flawless surface behind.
