Editor’s note: Our Mind Upon Mind series is a nod to a 1937 Chips from the Chisel column (also featured in “Honest Labour: The Charles H. Hayward Years”), in which Hayward wrote, “The influence of mind upon mind is extraordinary.” The idea being there’s often room for improvement.To that end, we’ve asked you what else you have thought of, tried out and improved upon after building projects from our books.
Send us your own ideas! Email [email protected]. You can read more about the submission process here.
Today’s pick is courtesy of Brad Reiser. Thanks, Brad!
— Kara Gebhart Uhl
I call this my “stick stop.” The spacing dimensions can be arbitrarily set for sticks of different diameters. The slots hold one end of the stick. On short sticks, the other end is usually held in your off hand. Long sticks work best pressed against your abdomen. As I am 79, I like to sit on a tall stool when shaping my sticks. This little device helps steady and support one end of the stick. I use mine on every chair project.
It’s easy to make, and it helps stabilize the stick vs. applying a lot of forward pressure.
Editor’s note: Our Mind Upon Mind series is a nod to a 1937 Chips from the Chisel column (also featured in “Honest Labour: The Charles H. Hayward Years”), in which Hayward wrote, “The influence of mind upon mind is extraordinary.” The idea being there’s often room for improvement.To that end, we’ve asked you what else you have thought of, tried out and improved upon after building projects from our books.
Send us your own ideas! Email [email protected]. You can read more about the submission process here.
Today’s pick is courtesy of Chris Corich. Thanks, Chris!
— Kara Gebhart Uhl
A mistake led to a usability upgrade on my doe’s foot.
The angle between the “toes” is still a perfect 90°, but they’re rotated with respect to the long edges of the board. One is 40°ish, so the other is (math!) 50°ish.
This allows one to set up with the fixture pointing in slightly different directions on the bench, which can be real nice when one way happens to cover your holdfast holes.
Editor’s note: Our Mind Upon Mind series is a nod to a 1937 Chips from the Chisel column (also featured in “Honest Labour: The Charles H. Hayward Years”), in which Hayward wrote, “The influence of mind upon mind is extraordinary.” The idea being there’s often room for improvement.To that end, we’ve asked you what else you have thought of, tried out and improved upon after building projects from our books.
Send us your own ideas! Email [email protected]. You can read more about the submission process here.
This tip may not rise to the level of a breakthrough, but I’ve found it very convenient in my shop.
For a sharpening station, try a sandwich of plastic lunch trays.
It keeps the dust off the stones when not in use, collects swarf water from a squeeze bottle, and keeps the stones in place while carefully draining the pond. I ended up with two different tray sizes and have never seen reason to change, but I don’t think it matters one way or another.
Editor’s note: Our Mind Upon Mind series is a nod to a 1937 Chips from the Chisel column (also featured in “Honest Labour: The Charles H. Hayward Years”), in which Hayward wrote, “The influence of mind upon mind is extraordinary.” The idea being there’s often room for improvement.To that end, we’ve asked you what else you have thought of, tried out and improved upon after building projects from our books.
Send us your own ideas! Email [email protected]. You can read more about the submission process here.
I often find it easier to mark my octagons on the ends of my leg blanks using this little guy instead of measuring and marking from the outside in.
He’s 1″ tall and makes a 1″-interior-diameter octagon. Tracing the outer diameter makes an octagon that’s roughly 1-3/8″.
The octagon marker allows me to scribe the interior finished octagon size and the outer octagon shape to use as a guide, all while holding it in place at the end of the blank.
Sometimes my blanks don’t have equal sides or are perfectly straight-grained from end to end, so this also allows me to fudge my octagon a little either way to get a perfect shape.
On this not-perfectly-straight-grained chair leg you could shift the octagon marker to one side on to avoid runout.
I had it printed using an online service called JawsTec. They used nylon (the cheapest option they offered). As I understand it, most 3D printers can use a .stl file to print stuff (and save money).
Editor’s note: Our Mind Upon Mind series is a nod to a 1937 Chips from the Chisel column (also featured in “Honest Labour: The Charles H. Hayward Years”), in which Hayward wrote, “The influence of mind upon mind is extraordinary.” The idea being there’s often room for improvement.To that end, we’ve asked you what else you have thought of, tried out and improved upon after building projects from our books.
Send us your own ideas! Email [email protected]. You can read more about the submission process here.
Today’s pick is courtesy of Jay Abramovitz. Thanks, Jay!
— Kara Gebhart Uhl
I wanted to build Peter Galbert’s shavehorse (as detailed in his book Chairmaker’s Notebook), but I didn’t have adequate floor space in my shop. So I came up with the following adaptation of Galbert’s design, which mounts easily and securely to my benchtop, can be stored under the bench when not in use, maintains the key functional elements of Galbert’s design and can be operated from a sitting position. In addition, the entire shavehorse can be made entirely out of 2x4s from the home center with the exception of 1″-thick material for the front end of the shavehorse platform and the treadle.
Each joint is glued and secured with four 1/4″ x 4″ Spax PowerLag screws at the four corners of the joint (two screwed in from one side of the joint and two from the other side).
The horizontal brace rests on the top of the bench with the vertical brace flush against the front of the bench. A holdfast secures the horizontal brace against the benchtop.
A 12″ length of 2×4 slides into the back of the shavehorse platform and is pushed up until it touches the bottom of the benchtop. A clamp across the back end of the shavehorse platform holds the 12″ length in place. This provides additional support for the shavehorse platform when in use, and allows for easy installation and removal of the shavehorse when the 12″ length is removed.
The vertical brace nests between the two pieces of the horizontal brace at the top and the shavehorse platform at the bottom, and is glued and screwed as noted above. A length of 17-1/2” for the vertical brace positions the shavehorse platform at the ideal height on my 34″-high bench when sitting on a chair in front of the shavehorse. But the length of the vertical brace may need to be increased or decreased depending on the height of your bench and the preferred height of the shavehorse platform.
The rest of the shavehorse construction follows Galbert’s design.
I’ll also plug Galbert’s Shavehorse Adjuster and Benchcrafted’s Crubber, both of which I used in my build and would recommend highly.
