Lost Art Press

Author: meghanlostartpress

Sunburns and Forum Reading

Posted on by meghanlostartpress

6-Board-Chest

After spending the weekend staining our deck I am too sunburnt to go outside again for days. I thought when you hit adulthood you became wise and remembered to reapply sunblock. This seems to not be the case. So, here I sit. This means I have all kinds of time to read the forum. The good news is, there is lots to read. Remember, if you have a question about our products, procedures in our books or anything related to Lost Art Press, the fastest way to get an answer is our forum. Check it out here.

Deficiency in the prototype 6-board chest?
Jacob was at the Lost Art Press storefront on Saturday and liked the 6-board chest that was for sale. (photo above) After leaving he was curious what Chris didn’t like about it that he changed for his next design. Curious to find out too?

Soap finish: soap to water ratio?
Has anyone had success with the “soap soup” finish from “The Anarchist’s Design Book”? If so, Mark is looking for your tips that worked for you. What was your soap to water ratio? What type of soap did you use?

_lostartpress-9N62-image

Alcohol Torch Question
James bought this Alcohol Torch (which I have to add that I think it is awesome) and is looking for someone who is able to tell him how to turn it off properly. The torch spout continues to draw once it is turned off and a stream of alcohol leaks out. Know the answer to his question? Answer here.

Campaign Card Table
Justin is designing a table with a drop leaf that has stored support legs. He is curious to see what people think of using hinges or if they have other ideas that may be more stable. Weigh in with your design here.

Pricing Criteria for woodworking projects
Anyone here sell their work? If you do, Gary is curious what you charge. Here is the link to help him out. 

bench

Cherry Bench
Last week we posted on the forum to help Daniel recover from some bad breaks on his bench project. After recovering from a cracked leg and other setbacks, here is the bench. Congrats Daniel!

— MB

When Your Bits Give Trouble

Posted on by meghanlostartpress
Fig-1
FIG 1. THE SNAIL COUNTERSINK. A shows the appearance of the bit, and B the correct shape. At C the cutting edge is dubbed over. The cutting edge needs undercutting at D (see dotted line). At E the part d is too high.

An excerpt from “The Woodworker: The Charles H. Hayward Years: Volume I” published by Lost Art Press. 

Bits often come in for a good deal of neglect. A man will keep his chisels and planes keen and have his saws sharpened, but just won’t be bothered to touch his bits when they become dull. It is a pity because you can’t expect to bore clean, accurate holes if your bits are dull or out of order. Not that a bit should be sharpened too often. Remember that there is a limit to the number of times any bit can be rubbed up, especially those having threads. The secret is never to allow a bit to become really dull, and to avoid running across hidden nails. The last-named do a lot of damage and necessitate a lot of filing—in bad cases the bit may be made entirely useless.

The Snail Countersink. This is for wood cutting only. If the cutting edge of this becomes dull it means that you have to apply considerable pressure to make it cut at all. Furthermore it is liable to form an uneven recess. Fig. 1 shows at A and B the correct shape and makes clear the features to be noted in the sharpening. Note first that the cutting edge, a, is undercut and is sharpened only at the inside. If dubbed over as at C it will fail to cut at all because the actual edge does not touch the wood to be removed. What has happened is that someone, not understanding the principle of the cutting, has filed the outside instead of the inside.

Another cause of bad cutting is shown at D, a fault less easily detected. The edge may be apparently sharp, and the sharpening may have been on the inside as it should be, yet the bit cuts poorly. The fault is that the edge is not undercut sufficiently. In all probability a flat file has been used so often that the undercutting has been almost completely removed owing to the angle having been gradually changed. There is no harm in giving a final rub with a flat file or oilstone slip—in fact it helps to keep the edge straight—but the gullet, b, should be deepened occasionally by using a rattail file. The dotted line in D shows how the metal should be filed.

The last fault at E is not likely to happen in a bit of reliable make, but may be found in a cheap one. It is clear that the surface of the cone at d is higher than the cutting edge, and the latter cannot therefore touch the wood. The remedy is to file down the part at d.

Most wood bits have a fairly low temper to avoid being brittle, and they can therefore be filed. Use only a fine file to finish off, and follow if possible with an oilstone slip.

Fig-2
FIG. 2. THE ROSE COUNTERSINK. Sketch of bit is given at A. Correct shape appears at B. At C the angle is wrong so that the bit merely scrapes.


Metal Countersinks. Two bits fall under this heading, the rose bit for brass and the iron countersink. They have a common feature in that both are too hard to be sharpened with the file. The oilstone slip or grindstone must be used. Fig. 2 shows the rose countersink and it will be seen that the grooves must be treated with a 90 deg. slip. Note, however, that the latter must be held over at an angle so that the edge cuts rather than merely scrapes (B). If sharpened as at C in which the angles are equal the bit would have poor cutting qualities.

Sharpen each groove the same amount so that all the edges are level and keep the edges pointing to the common point.

Fig-3
FIG. 3. DETAILS OF IRON COUNTERSINK. A is side view, B, plan, and C edge view.

In the iron countersink in Fig. 3 the edges are ground back at an angle of about 60 to 70 deg. so that a fairly acute edge is presented to the metal. Keep both sides equal, and note that the slope is 45 deg., thus making the over-all angle 90 deg., the correct slope for countersunk screws.

— MB

The 4th of July Edition – Forum Update

Posted on by meghanlostartpress

boarded-bookshelfHappy Fourth of July! Here is what is happening on the forum on this holiday weekend. Remember, if you have a question about our products, procedures in our books or anything related to Lost Art Press, the fastest way to get an answer is our forum. Check it out here.

Boarded Bookcase Done
Joshua finished his bookcase (right) and has been kind enough to share. It looks great and has apparently been such a hit around the house that he might have to make some more…

Removing lacquer from brass
Anyone know of a good way to remove lacquer from brass? As always, the less elbow grease required the better. (Some is expected though…)

Borate-treated lumber for workbench?
Jonathan just moved to Hawaii and is looking for wood to build his workbench. It turns out that anything larger than a 2×4 is green treated. He is wondering if borate-treated lumber would work. Any thoughts?

Words of Advice?
Have you ever had a project go so wrong that there is no way to salvage it? Daniel feels your pain and is looking for motivation. What keeps you going when you feel like hours have gone down the drain?

A Boarded Campaign Chest?
The same Joshua of boarded bookcase fame (above) is making a chest of drawers and needs to do it as quickly as possible. In order to save time his solution is to rabbet and nail the sides and tops of each carcase box together. Will this work? What would you do?

— MB

One of NYC’s Largest Trees Lived in Prospect Park

Posted on by meghanlostartpress

It was circa 1870 when a European elm tree was intentionally planted in a quiet southwestern corner of Prospect Park in Brooklyn. It was late 2015 when the tree was declared dead and cut down.

This tree is one of the few things in NYC that had remained unchanged for that century and a half. Think about it. When planted, dirt roads, horses and farmland surrounded it.  By the end of its life, it neighbored a gas station taking credit card transactions and nearly every person walking around it had a smart phone in their pocket.

Andrew Ullman, Brooklyn’s Director of Forestry, was the one tasked with making the decision to fell the tree after it had become a danger to park visitors.  “18 and 24 inch limbs [had] been broken off in the hurricanes and tornados,” Ullman says. Upon interviewing Andrew, I had all but forgotten that tornadoes had recently touched down in NYC. I recalled a few years ago when I was riding my bike down Dekalb Avenue in Bed-Stuy and saw every tree in a two-block area decimated by a twister.

It was also Andrew who encouraged the Park Service to seek out RE-CO BKLYN to mill and dry lumber from the tree instead of chipping it to be sent to a landfill. We will then go on to build a custom conference table for the NYC Parks Prospect Park offices in Litchfield Villa with lumber from the tree. Andrew closes the interview with, “The worst thing we could be doing is just throwing this stuff in a landfill. One of the best things [ . . . ] we can do with it is mill it into timber and [ . . . ] build lasting products out of it.” Hearing this type of progressive thinking come from the NYC Parks Department is a major step in the right direction. We are passionate about keeping as many NYC trees out of the chipper as possible and especially focused on NYC Park trees because of the personal connection that the public has with the trees.

The process of felling the tree, breaking it down and transporting it to our facility took months of planning. A crane was used to help fell the tree, then two log trucks with cranes and a large loader worked together to get the logs onto multiple trucks.  We rented a 60,000 lb. excavator to offload them upon arrival in our yard. When we first started RE-CO BKLYN, we were moving logs around with 2×4s and milling them with a chainsaw on the sidewalk. We could never have anticipated this.

This business is a constant surprise, so we’ll keep moving forward, anticipating the next adventure around the corner.

— Dan Richfield
(re-co bklyn)

 

The Rules of the Workbench

Posted on by meghanlostartpress
French-style-bench
My daughter’s bench. This French-style workbench has yet to fail me. It is sturdy, heavy and easily holds boards when working their faces, edges and ends.

This is an excerpt from “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” by Christopher Schwarz. 

Workbench
I have written two books on workbenches that agonize over the details of joinery, wood selection, vises and so on. But if you don’t want to buy those books, here is the down-and-dirty data you need to pick a bench design.

Note: Before you write me an angry letter about this list – you don’t have to have a good bench to be a good woodworker. You can work on the kitchen table and make world-class work. But a good bench will make many operations easier. It’s simply a tool: the biggest clamp in the shop.

Rule No. 1: Always Add Mass
For workbenches, here’s my maxim: If it looks stout, then make it doubly so. Everything about a workbench takes punishment that is akin to a kitchen chair in a house full of 8-year-old boys.

Early Roman workbenches were built like a Windsor chair. Stout legs were tenoned into a massive top and wedged in place. Traditional French workbenches had massive tops (up to 6″ thick), with legs that were big enough to be called tree trunks. Later workbenches relied more on engineering than mass. The classic Continental-style workbench uses a trestle design and dovetails in the aprons and vises to create a bench for the ages. The 19th-century English workbench uses an early torsion-box design to create a stable place to work. And good-quality modern workbenches use threaded rods and bolts to tighten up a design that lacks mass.

Many inexpensive commercial benches are ridiculously rickety. They sway and rack under hand pressure. You can push them across your shop by performing simple operations: routing, sawing, planing. If the bench looks delicate or its components are sized like a modern dining table, I would take a closer look before committing.

A big thick top and stout legs add mass that will help your work. Heavy cabinet saws with lots of cast iron tend to run smoother than plastic ones. The same goes with benches. Once your bench hits about 300 pounds, it won’t move unless you want it to move.

French-Bench
Permanent. The sliding dovetail and through-tenon on this French bench makes a bench where the base and top act as one.

Rule No. 2: Use Stout Joints
Overbuild your workbench by using the best joints. These are times to whip out the through-tenon and dovetail. If you followed rule No. 1, then rule No. 2 should be no problem. Your joints will be sized to fit the massive scale of your components. If you cannot rely on mass, then you should beef things up with superior joinery. While dovetails and through-tenons are overkill for a towel rack, they are de rigueur for a bench.

That’s because you are applying wracking force to the workbench with typical operations and your vises will do their best to tear apart your bench. All wooden vises need to be overbuilt or they will self-destruct when you cinch them down hard. I’ve even seen a vise rip a benchtop from its base.

Make your tenons thick and your mortises deep. If you know how to drawbore a mortise-and-tenon joint, this is one good application. Have you ever been in a timber-framed barn? Did you look at the joints? They’re massive and pegged. Imitate that.

I think benches are a good place to practice your skills at cutting these classic joints, but some woodworkers still resist. If that’s you, you should investigate hardware to strengthen your bench. Threaded rods, bed bolts, special bench bolts or even stove bolts can turn a spindly assembly into something rigid that can be snugged up if it loosens. The hardware won’t give you mass, but it will strengthen a rickety assembly.

— MB