Our warehouse will begin shipping all of the pre-publication orders on Wednesday. Then it should take about five to seven business days for the book to arrive in your mailbox.
This is the final volume of “The Woodworker” series, and it caps many years of work by people all over the country and globe. The four volumes comprises 1,492 pages of work spanning 30 years of writing in The Woodworker magazine in Great Britain.
The final volume covers two broad topics: the workshop, plus furniture forms and styles. The workshop section discusses workbenches, tool chests and useful appliances for handwork. The section on furniture forms and styles gives you an education in different historical styles (and their hardware), plus hand-drafted shop drawings of historical pieces.
The book is $39 (that price includes shipping to the U.S. and Canada) and can be ordered from our store here.
Like all of our books, this one is made entirely in the United States: printed and bound in Michigan from durable materials. The hardback book is casebound. The signatures are section-sewn, glued and assembled with a tough fiber tape.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. Many readers have asked if we are going to offer all four volumes as a set for a special price. The answer is: no. We never punish our customers who are early adopters. The price can only go up, as the cost of raw materials goes up.
Moulding plane cutters are of two kinds; those used with wooden moulding planes, and those made for the Stanley Universal plane. Except that the latter type is short, whilst the former have a long projecting part which reaches up beneath the wedge, there is little difference between them, but there is one feature which affects the sharpening; the wooden plane cutter must be sharpened so that its edge follows the shape of the sole, whereas there is no shaped sole in the universal plane. This means that, although it is desirable for the cutter to keep its original shape as far as possible, it is not vital.
Since the sharpening of the wooden moulding plane is the more exacting job of the two, we will deal with it here. When first obtained, the cutter is ground to the shape of the sole, and it requires only to be given a keen finishing edge with oilstone slips. As an example take the cutter in Fig. 1 which will work the moulding section, shown at A. Two separate operations have to be carried out; the small hollow shape which works the bead has to be sharpened with a small round slip, and the rounded portion which forms the hollow has to be treated either with a flat slip or on the ordinary oilstone.
FIG. 2. Sharpening hollow with oilstone slip
Take first the small hollow. Select an oilstone slip which approximates to the shape when it lies along the bevel. The fact that it fits or not when held at right angles to the cutter is no test. Place the slip flat on the bevel. If anything it should be of slightly smaller section. Apply lubricating oil, and, holding the cutter at the edge of the bench, as in Fig. 2, rub the slip back and forth. Do not consciously start a fresh bevel, but press the slip slightly towards the cutting edge, otherwise there will be a great deal of metal to remove and the work will take a long time. Avoid dubbing over, however.
One important point must be watched. In an endeavour to get an edge quickly there is a temptation to rub the sides of the shape at the cutting edge only, so that the bevel begins to assume the tapered shape, shown at C, Fig. 1. This is clearly impractical because the back or heel of the bevel is narrower than the shape at the cutting edge, and it will be liable to bind. If anything the bevel should taper the other way as at D, this affording a slight clearance. Test for sharpness by seeing whether a burr has been turned up.
FIG. 3. Rounded part of cutter being sharpened on oilstone
The rounded part of the cutter can be sharpened with a flat slip, or on the oilstone. Some men prefer one method, some the other. Fig. 3 shows the normal oilstone process. A sort of rocking movement is adopted, an effort being made to keep to the original bevel as far as possible. Finish off by reversing the cutter flat on the oilstone and rubbing back and forth once or twice.
Now place the cutter in the plane and, giving a minimum projection, see whether it follows the sole contour uniformly. If not, note the high parts and rub these down more. Note, however, that the corners of an old plane are bound to have worn more than the rest, and it would be an obvious mistake to follow these. Corners intended to be square should be square. When all is satisfactory strop the edge to a final keenness and so get rid of all burr. This can be done with a piece of leather dressed with oil and fine emery powder. If folded it will approximate to the shape. The back is stropped on leather held down on a flat board.
FIG. 4. Avoiding wear on moulding plane cutter by using bench plane to remove bulk of shavings. Black portions show wood so removed
Some cutters are simpler than this; others more elaborate, but the principle is the same in all. If you have not a slip that will fit in a small hollow exactly (and it is unlikely that you will be able to buy an exact fit), you can always alter the section by rubbing it down on a piece of marble, using fine emery powder and oil or water as an abrasive. Extra hard stones may require fine carborundum powder.
A little experience in sharpening a moulding cutter will convince you that it can be a lengthy operation, especially if really dull. The best plan, then, is to sharpen as soon as it shows signs of becoming worn, and to do as much preliminary work as possible with the ordinary bench plane which is clearly much more straighforward to sharpen. Fig. 4 shows three sections, in which the black portion could be removed first with the bench plane.
We have new information on these three Lost Art Press projects for you this Monday:
The Woodworker, The Charles H. Hayward Years, Vol. IV, The Shop & Furniture The final book in our series from “The Woodworker” is supposed to finish up at the bindery this week and be put on a truck to our warehouse on Friday. If we don’t run into any transportation snags, that means we’ll start shipping the book to you next week.
With All the Precision Possible: Roubo on Furniture The standard version of this book is still in production at the printing plant and is on track to ship to our warehouse in mid to late March. In the meantime, designer Wesley Tanner is laying out the deluxe version of this book and it should be ready for the printer by the end of the month.
The deluxe version is going to be printed at the same plant that printed the deluxe version of “Roubo on Marquetry” and we are trucking the entire press run to New Mexico to be bound and have the slipcases made by hand. The deluxe edition of “Roubo on Furniture” will be the same width and height as the deluxe “Roubo on Marquetry,” but it will be much thicker. “Roubo on Marquetry” was 248 pages; deluxe “Roubo on Furniture” will be 472.
We have ordered 1,000 copies of deluxe “Roubo on Furniture” and the price will be $550 for U.S. customers. The book will be available for Canadian and international customers with an additional charge for postage. It will not be sold through our retailers.
Like the deluxe “Roubo on Marquetry,” all customers who order the book early can opt to have their name listed in the book as a “subscriber.” Also like the deluxe “Roubo on Marquetry,” this book is a significant financial risk for us. We know it will be a fantastic piece of work, so we’re happy to do it.
Because of all the handwork involved in this book because it is oversized, my guess is we will open ordering in about a month and the book will ship in June.
Roman Workbenches We have sold out of the 500 copies of the letterpress version of “Roman Workbenches.” What happens now? You can still buy the pdf of the book for $15. After we print and ship all the copies that have been ordered, we might have a handful of extras that we will sell online. We also hope to have some unbound copies for sale.
I know this all sounds vague, but it really depends on how many copies are destroyed during the binding process. Commercial binding can destroy up to 30 percent of your press run (I know that sounds crazy).
Several people have asked if we’re going to offer a standard offset-printed version of “Roman Workbenches” and the answer is: We hope to.
I have two research trips coming up this year. If they are fruitful and people seem interested in the topic, we’ll print an offset version that is expanded with lots of photography and the additional information from Italy and Germany.
Most readers know that the vast majority of chairs are made by tenoning (and sometimes dowelling) the seat rails into the legs. Normally there is no difficulty, the mortises (or occasionally the tenons) being at a slight slope to allow for the splay of the rails. In certain period chairs, however, this is awkward in that the plan shape of the seat is curved. There are no angular front corners, the whole thing taking the form of a continuous sweep as in the Queen Anne chair shown in Fig. 1. Thus to enable the rail shoulders to be square the top rectangular portion of the leg has to be cut down considerably as at A, Fig. 2. This means a loss of strength in itself, but in addition there is a little wood left in which the mortises can be cut. In fact there is only the roughly triangular shape left, and the tenons are necessarily restricted in length. Furthermore the shape of the rails means that there is a great deal of cross grain.
Still, this system of construction was sometimes followed, and the craftsmen got over the difficulty by fixing stout inside brackets (see shaded part at A, Fig. 2). These had the effect of binding the two rails together. Since the brackets might be anything up to 2 in. thick the strength was sufficient for the job.
Alternative Construction. The awkward form of construction must have been realised, however, and this, no doubt, was the reason for the alternative method by which the front and side rails were halved together, the shape cut in them, and the leg either tenoned or dovetailed up into the frame so formed. The dotted lines show the squares of timber required to enable the shape to be worked, and it should be noted that the inner shape is plotted so that the thickness is considerably wider over the legs, so avoiding much loss of strength owing to short grain.
Fig. 2, C. shows the first stage in which the parts are halved together, and the rear shoulders marked round. In practice the craftsman probably cut and fitted the rear tenons first as it would be awkward to fit them after the frame was assembled. After cutting the tenons the halved joints would be glued up as at C and, the glue having set, the shape sawn out as at D, Fig. 2. Some chairmakers preferred to cut tenons at the top of the legs, and corresponding mortises had to be chopped in the frame. Others cut a dovetail shape as at D, Fig. 2, and formed a notch to receive it in the outer surface of the frame as shown by the dotted lines. In either case the dovetail or the tenon passed right across the halved joint and so served to bind it together.
It will be realised that all these Queen Anne chairs were cross-veneered around the rails, and this hid any unsightly joints. The top-moulding forming the rebate for the loose seat was either planted on the top edge, or was let into a rebate worked around the edge before veneering.
GOLD and silver; earthenware, pewter and china, have, in different times and under different circumstances been used for plates. Our own forefathers relied on wood. From the earliest times to days well within living memory the wooden platter, the bowl, the drinking vessel, the spoon and even the knife and fork lay on the rude trestle table for daily meals.
Many countrymen recall the wooden implements of childhood memory, and the writer himself remembers the flattened wood porridge plate and the coarse surfaced bowl of the wooden spoon.
Until early Tudor times the wooden platter was almost universal. Then, and for long before (indeed, too, for long afterwards) the common table was found in every home, the humblest stable boy “supping with his titled lord.” His only dish might be a square wooden platter such as (A) in the illustration, whilst for anything approaching an implement such as a knife or fork the fingers and teeth were sufficiently dexterous for the purpose. Later, as ideas of refinement crept in, superior wooden vessels were found at the head of the table, whilst cruder ones were provided for retainers at the lower end.
Dogs (many of them) did much of the cleaning up. When wooden knives, forks and spoons, rather more difficult to fashion, came into general use it was the custom of visitors to bring their own with them.
The gradual development of the plate is interesting, although its various forms cannot be traced with absolute accuracy. Naturally they vary in different countries. Quite obviously, the earliest plate was a mere platter – a roughly squared board (as A), perhaps about 8 ins. To 10 ins., with its upper surface smoothed for reasonably comfortable use. The first innovation was a shallow circular sinking in the board as at (B), the depression preventing the overflow of gravy. The addition of a smaller sinking at one corner for salt came later.
Larger flat trenchers from which the food was handed round the table took a rectangular form and might be 18 ins. by 12 ins. or more. These would have rounded corners, whilst, after dishing came to be introduced, they frequently took an oval or square-oval form. A deeper cavity at one end to take the gravy has in pewter and earthenware dishes, continued to the present day.
The dishing, or hollowing, of platters gradually brought in the circular form, of which (C) is the earliest. At first the centre of the plate was kept flat as at E, 1), but hollows such as those at (C),
(D) and (E, 2) became more frequent. The section at (F) is a later development. These circular plates might be from 6½ in. to 9 in. in diameter, but often for special purposes exceeded this size. Note that at (D) there is practically no rim. At (C) the rim is hardly more than a bead, whilst at (E) and (F) the rims are much wider. As craftsmen gained skill in turning, the bowls of these plates became deeper and better suited to their purpose; delicately moulded rims appeared, and, as the under surfaces were worked to a pleasing and useful section, the plate became lighter to handle. Sycamore was the most generally favoured wood for dishes in which cooked food was to be placed. For bread and uncooked fruit, beech plates were more common.
— From The Woodworker magazine, edited by Charles H. Hayward
“The Woodworker, The Charles H. Hayward Years, Vol. IV, The Shop & Furniture” wasn’t supposed to arrive in our warehouse until next week, but it’s here now. And, according to the photos John sent me, it looks fantastic.
