A half set. This pictured half set is nearly all that you will need to reproduce the various moulded edges of all period pieces, regardless of period. It’s also much more than many hobbyists will ever need.
When I first became aware of hollows and rounds I read about the heralded “half set.” A half set of hollows and rounds is 18 planes, nine pairs, that incrementally increase in radius from 1/8″ at the low end to 1-1/2″ at the high end. The half set of planes is generally the even numbered pairs in the previously referenced chart. (A full set is 36 planes, and also includes the odd numbers.)
A half set of hollows and rounds is an extraordinarily comprehensive grouping of planes that allows the owner to produce a range of moulding profiles that exist in the smallest spice box and largest secretary. Centuries ago, the half set was often acquired over time.
For many users, myself included, the half set covers an unnecessarily broad range of work, and represents an undue expense. Many woodworkers narrow their plane choice down to match the scale of work that catches their fancy. For example, if you work only with 4/4 stock, then sizes above No. 8 may go unused. Starting with just a single pair of hollows and rounds – and an efficient method to accurately establish rabbets and chamfers – allows the production of dozens of different profiles.
The simplicity of combining only one convex and one concave arc might seem limiting. There are, however, scores of profiles you will be able to produce with just a single pair of hollows and rounds. These profiles will often contain minute differences – adding a vertical or horizontal fillet, or flat, adjusting the size of that fillet, increasing the curvature or changing the general angle of the profile. These small differences are important and are often glossed over or neglected on a router table.
Small differences. The differences between these profiles can appear as slight. To many woodworkers, however, they are significant.Examples Continued
Adding a second pair of hollows and rounds to your tool chest, a step I always encourage, increases the number of possible profiles far more than two-fold. Not only will you be able to create the 41 profiles shown above in two different sizes, you will also be able to mix the concave with the convex to form various cove and ovolo combinations and ogees. Additionally, you can mix concave with the concave and convex with the convex to form elliptical shapes. It is at this stage that you will unlock the true versatility of these planes.
Add a pair. A second pair of hollows and rounds will allow you to, when building a chest of drawers, make mouldings that complement each other. They will not be merely derivatives of the same circle.
Planemaker and author Matt Bickford in his home shop in Haddam Neck, Conn.
I imagine a lot of people had Matt Bickford figured out.
Born in the Binghamton, N.Y., area (specifically Endwell) Matt lived there through the 8th grade, along with his parents, and his older brother and older sister. When the IBM plant shut down there was a mass exodus from the area, which included Matt’s family (his father worked for IBM). They ended up in Hyde Park, N.Y., in the Poughkeepsie area.
Matt played sports. Mainly football and lacrosse. A little basketball. “Being tall was always a handicap because you ended up being the first picked and it led to a lot of disappointment,” he says, laughing.
Matt attended Yale University, played football (he was a lineman) and intended to study math or economics. But through friendships with older football players he learned that he could get the job he wanted without spending four years immersed in math. He liked history, reading and writing, so he declared history as a major. “Going off to Wall Street was the goal,” he says. “Medical school, law school or Wall Street was the general goal of everybody that I was acquainted with at school.”
And so, that’s what he did. Three months after graduation he landed a job at a prestigious finance firm in Philadelphia where he worked his way up to becoming a market maker. He worked as a proprietary trader in most circumstances, but as a block trader in others, where folks from hedge funds or mutual funds would call Matt and ask for a price on varying sizes or larger lots, ranging 50,000 to 100,000 shares of stock or larger. Using the company’s owners’ money, Matt and his colleagues directly participated in making the literal market. And he was good at it.
“The company that I worked for was actually a pretty awesome company,” Matt says. “The way that they taught risk tolerance, taking on and betting and playing the market, was through poker.” Keep in mind that this was before the poker craze of the mid-2000s.
The company didn’t seek out finance majors or economics majors. Rather they wanted employees with a clean slate of knowledge who were willing to adopt their strategy — people who played sports (like Matt), or were into games like poker, backgammon, Magic the Gathering and chess. They recruited from the World Series of Poker and gaming conferences. And in the beginning of Matt’s employment, he, and all his colleagues, were required to play poker — against each other and their bosses — for hours.
“Most things were taught at the poker table,” Matt says. “Whether it was risk tolerance or betting strategies or just learning how to gauge not only what you’re doing but what you think the other person is doing or what you think the other person thinks you’re doing. All that back and forth of thought and being able to follow your thought process to define your own thought process, all that was done through hours and hours and hours of seven-card stud.”
Matt married his wife, Molly, in June 2001. Molly grew up in a small town in Connecticut called Haddam Neck, and Matt likes to joke that 10 percent of its population is related to his wife. Because of this, Matt and Molly made the trek from Philadelphia to Haddam Mack often, visiting Molly’s family.
Let’s pause here. Near the end of our interview Matt was talking about his future and his interest in custom mouldings. Even in high-end construction, stock moulding is the norm. But for a nominal amount of money, Matt says, it’s easy to make custom moulding that fits a room. The angle of presentation for moulding can and should vary in a room with an 8-foot ceiling versus a room with a 10-foot ceiling versus a room with a 12-foot ceiling. It’s just that most people don’t realize it.
End pause. Matt and his family are making week-long visits to Haddam Neck several times a year. During one of these visits they see a longtime family friend — Don Boule. Don had a workshop and in it, he was building a sleigh bed.
“It was just one of those things that I had never considered, despite how many museums or houses I had been in,” Matt says. “It just never really occurred to me that you could make these things.”
Up until this point, Matt was stock moulding. He was a good student, who played sports in high school and college, attended Yale University and landed an impressive job at a Philadelphia finance firm. He and Molly were growing their family with kids. He was living the life he had dreamed of, the life everyone thought he would.
But the visit to Don’s shop changed Matt. On the way home to Philadelphia he bought a miter saw. He soon added a router, table saw, jointer, planer, band saw and dust collector. He started making things and then, during his family’s week-long visits to Connecticut, he would spend the week working in Don’s shop, knocking off corners and sanding.
Don favors Dunlap-style furniture. He had made several armed Chippendale chairs, and one of those chairs became Matt’s goal. “Every project that I made as a hobbyist was geared toward being able to make a chair like that with the joinery and the carving and everything else,” Matt says. “It’s funny, because I really like the style, but it’s more that I like making it, I guess, than actually having 24 or 36 ball-and-claw feet around my house. It’s just fascinating to be able to make something that has that level of detail and intricacy. I’m just still fascinated that you can make this stuff by hand.”
Nine of the ball-and-claw feet Matt currently has in his home.
The further Matt got into his hobby, the more he found himself copying — copying grain direction, proportions, curves, carvings, everything. But he couldn’t always copy mouldings. Even though he owned 20-30 router bits, those bits weren’t able to produce everything. And so he’d have to make sacrifices.
Through Larry Williams (who is now a planemaker with Old Street Tools Inc.) Matt became aware of hollows and rounds as a means of being able to make any moulding. Matt bought a half set of antique hollows and rounds, which he tried to tune — but he could never get them working the way he expected them to work.
Then Larry, through Lie-Nielsen, came out with a DVD on making moulding planes. Lie-Nielsen also started producing and selling tapered moulding iron blanks and floats. Something clicked. “Just like I had never really considered making furniture by hand, up until that point I had never considered making moulding planes by hand,” Matt says.
Around this time Matt had major back surgery. “I wasn’t able to lift anything for months and months so I decided to make my own planes because it was a small enough piece that I was able to lift it and work with it,” Matt says. “I made a bunch for myself and the first ones that I made for myself worked better than any antique tool that I had tuned up to that stage.”
During this time Matt was a member of the Montgomery County Woodworkers’ Guild in Pennsylvania. Matt took his planes to a meeting and there he met Chuck Bender (now of 360 Woodworking), who asked Matt if he’d make him some. “I said, ‘Nope. I’m never doing that again. I have mine and I’m not going through that process again.’”
About two years later Matt ran into Chuck at a Woodworking in America Conference in Philadelphia. Again, Chuck asked Matt if he’d make him some planes. This time, things were different. The day before, Matt had quit his job.
“Some people last six months and some people last an entire career,” Matt says about the field of trading and finance. “I lasted 9-1/2 years before I decided that I had enough. I kind of concluded that nobody should feel the way you would sometimes feel at 9:35 in the morning. I enjoyed the arguments. I enjoyed the back and forth and the swings of emotion earlier on but towards the end the good days just weren’t as good as the bad days were bad. So I walked away from that.”
It was 2009 and Matt was going to take a one-month vacation. He and his family were going to do all the things in Philadelphia they never did while living there, before moving to Molly’s hometown, Haddam Neck, Conn.
But Matt never took that vacation. Instead he made planes for Chuck in exchange for carving lessons. “I was never really able to translate the acanthus leaves that I saw in the Philadelphia Museum of Art into my own work and he was running his acanthus workshop at the time so I went up and carved with him in the mornings and then I would go home and work on his planes at night,” Matt says. “Never really got the house ready for sale,” he adds, laughing.
Matt and his family moved to Connecticut, and all the while Matt was trying to figure out what to do with his life. He decided to contact the six people who had reached out to him over the years, asking him if he would make them planes. He contacted them all at once, hoping one would say yes. Five said yes. “I was immediately overextended and much to my parents’ chagrin I stopped looking for a job and started doing this.”
In a world where so many think stock moulding is the only option, Matt recognized the importance of the angle of presentation based on the height of the ceiling in a room. Matt was stock moulding in room with 12-foot ceilings. It wasn’t right.
Seven years later, Matt’s still making planes.
“It is awesome,” he says. “I’m amazed that it’s working out. As is Don, my parents, and everybody involved,” he adds, again, laughing.
Molly, Sheldon, Thaddeus, Roger and Matt Bickford, visiting Lost Art Press in November.
Today Matt, Molly and their three boys, Sheldon (11), Thaddeus (9) and Roger (6) live in Haddam Neck, Conn., on an acre of land with six acres of fields behind it and woods behind that — a far cry from their home in Philadelphia with houses 15 feet from each other. And they know most everyone. “Everybody in town jokes that [the town] is a throwback to the 1950s,” he says. “It’s a great town in that the relationships are cross-generational.”
His wife homeschools their children, which allows the entire family to travel together when Matt teaches plane using and making across the United States. Matt keeps defined shop time — 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on weekdays plus a half day on Saturdays. Often, he’ll tack on another few hours after dinner.
Matt’s shop in Haddam Neck, Conn.
The family’s lifestyle allows for frequent contact, despite Matt’s sometimes long hours. The morning of our interview Matt’s son Thaddeus was in Matt’s shop, making a little handheld crossbow. “I tried to encourage him to make something [with me] so he learns about grain direction and everything else because he had it all backwards and it will break this afternoon,” Matt says. “One of these days he’ll sit down and we’ll go through the process but he’s more interested in making it at this point than learning. He’ll eventually learn through failure.”
Another view of Matt’s shop in Haddam Neck, Conn.
Matt averages two planes a day, although he doesn’t work from beginning to end on two each day. “It doesn’t get tiring,” he says. “I will say that when I started doing this I was concerned of when it would get tiring but I don’t foresee it. … Whether I’ll be doing this for 10 years or 20 years is to be determined, but I’m still fascinated with the tools, I still like making the tools. Every tool that I send out, every one is the best one that I’ve ever made. It’s still pretty neat. I’m fascinated with what the tools can do and I’m fascinated with what people can do with them.”
Matt also is one of the four members of the Haddam Neck Woodworkers’ Guild, which meets any time there’s a fire call or medical call during the middle of the day, because they all also are volunteer firefighters (and the only people in town during the day). They also meet every Tuesday night, and given that they’re all professional woodworkers they make it a rule that on Tuesday nights they can only work on projects for themselves. Matt is currently trying to inspire himself to build a highboy.
In addition to traveling in conjunction with teaching gigs, Matt and his family enjoy skiing. They visit Vermont a lot. Matt swims every morning. He coaches a Little League team, despite never having played baseball in his life. Matt’s oldest son, Sheldon, enjoys shooting so the two go shooting every Friday together. “He’s better than I am, so it’s getting less fun for me,” Matt says, laughing. He wants to make a grandfather clock someday.
Matt published his book, “Mouldings In Practice,” with Lost Art Press in 2012. “I became aware of hollows and rounds as a means to being able to do anything and once the tools are in your shop you soon realize that just because they can do anything doesn’t mean you’re able to do anything,” he says.
An article in Fine Woodworking in the 1980s by Graham Blackburn was one of the only how-to articles Matt remembers reading on the topic. And while Graham starts using a hollow on a square and using a round on a chamfer, Matt uses a round starting with a rabbet and then, being steered by the rabbet, uses the chamfer to guide the hollow. “The hollows and rounds are steered by the rabbets and the chamfers and you get a much more predictable, desirable result,” Matt says. “I’m not really sure how I came up with it. I’ve always just been somebody who learns in their basement and so I never really took any woodworking classes or was involved in reading about it on the internet. I was just somebody who went home and figured stuff out in my basement. My table saw safety probably leaves a little to be desired and the same with some other tools.”
Going back to how he came up with his hollows and rounds method, Matt says “I think I probably did Graham Blackburn’s method, the way he teaches it, and I probably did it backwards one time and maybe just dumbed my way into it.”
Matt began using his method regularly, and then began explaining his method to customers. Don McConnell (a partner planemaker with Larry at Old Street Tool Inc.) came out with a DVD using hollows and rounds in a similar fashion — which to Matt, verified his method.
“Everybody has different methods,” Matt says. But he hopes the way he describes his method simply allows a newcomer to hollows and rounds to produce desirable and repeatable results. “The more somebody uses the process and uses the tool the less I imagine they’ll follow the exact process that I describe in the book just because the more experience you have with the tool, the more adept you become at steering the tool and manipulating the profile the way you want.”
For now, Matt is content making planes and teaching. He has no plans to make furniture for a living, calling it a tough game. But he’s intrigued about the idea of someday working with architects on custom moulding. “Everything is a stock 45°,” he says. “I think for a nominal amount more somebody who is involved in that trade and has customers that are looking to invest [a lot of money] in something, to actually present them with different profiles and show them something truly custom for their house — that would be interesting.”
Which, in many ways, is exactly what Matt did, for himself.
“Live and let live,” he says. “I don’t know what makes you happy more than you know what makes me happy. To grant that permission and freedom to somebody is really what’s important to me.”
A Chippendale apple secretary desk and bookcase featuring triple-cusp scrolled returns. Colchester School, possibly Hebron or Lebanon, Conn., 1785-1805.
Dimensions: height: 76-5/8″, width of lower case: 42-1/8″, depth of lower case: 19-3/4″, width of upper case: 40″, depth of upper case: 10″, width of cornice: 42-7/8″, depth of cornice: 11-1/4″.
This Chippendale apple secretary desk and bookcase features subtle decoration executed with fine quality and strong lines. The tall and stable straight bracket feet are adorned with triple scrolls, featuring a large lobe, a small pointed return and a second smaller lobe. The graduated asymmetrical returns are a simple but effective design showing awareness of more sophisticated New London County furniture made in the urban centers of Norwich and New London. However, this secretary was made in the Colchester area, likely in the successful farming community of either Hebron or Lebanon. Instead of complex serpentine forms or carved decoration, the cabinetmaker relied on the inherent beauty of native apple. He relied on his skill at creating quality lines and form to exploit the interesting patterns within the material. The irregular nature of the grain in apple makes it a challenge to use in furniture. The reward is the beautiful figuring and warm reddish-yellow tone. The large at panels used in the bookcase display apple at its nest. Two bookmatched sections of apple are used for the two door panels, each with the pattern of striped figuring is set at complementary angles. To accentuate the natural beauty of the panels, the cabinetmaker has created a bold projecting cornice moulding. The layering of narrow and wide sections meets in the front corners with flaring lines pointing back toward the panels. The original owner of this secretary may have lived in a rural farming community, but he was successful enough to own books. Displayed in an 18th-century home, the secretary was a statement that the owner could read and write. This was an important status symbol at the time and was a sign of education, knowledge and success.
A table saw has a fence, a powered jointer has a table, your bench has dogs or a stop. Like any other task in our craft, bracing a piece while working is necessary. The solution is not always obvious. A sticking board is the appliance you will make to hold your work as you create profiles using your planes.
A sticking board in its simplest form is a base, a backer board and a stop. I use 1/2″-thick MDF (medium-density fiberboard) with screws set in a few inches from the end for the stops.
I add screws on both ends of the sticking board for the times when I need to plane in the opposite direction so the board’s grain runs in my favor. I make the sticking board wide enough so that it can be pinched between the dogs on my workbench and puts the work near the front edge of my bench.
Most of the force you exert upon the piece with these planes will not simply be downward against your bench. The piece you are working is often angled, so the planes are held at an angle, too. Simply clamping a piece between two bench dogs is not ideal for several reasons. This is one of those reasons.
A sticking board gives you a backboard to press against and resists this lateral pressure. The sticking board can be clamped in your bench between dogs and/or held down with holdfasts, screws or numerous other solutions. A firmly held sticking board prevents the workpiece from snapping out of the dogs and you from doing a belly flop across your bench and damaging the plane, iron and the moulding being stuck on your bench.
The sticking board will also prevent the clamping pressure of the two dogs from distorting a thin moulding.
Sticking Board Dimensions
Because the piece being worked upon is not usually pinned in the sticking board, gauging your progress does not require you to bend down and look for gauge lines, leftover rabbets or at spots in less-than-ideal light. Simply pick the piece up, rotate it and examine it.
As a moulding becomes more intricate, so does the sticking board. The rabbet for a picture in a frame is cut first, making it more difficult to work from that point. Attaching a perfectly dimensioned piece to the board can make a non-square piece sit square again.
Sticking Board Options
Attaching an angled plate to the sticking board allows the user to attach a crown moulding to the board.
The options for specialized sticking board design are too many to list. Change the board to fit the piece.
Finally, a sticking board, if rigid enough, can turn a typical 7′-long workbench into something more than 8′ long. I even have a game plan for the time when I need something even longer.
This weekend I will be teaching a class at The Connecticut Valley School of Woodworking. The students attending this two day class will build a round and leave with the tools, material and understanding to make the matching hollow at home.
We will cover all of the essential elements included in the process: including making a proper fitting wedge, bedding an iron, profiling the sole, creating the matching iron and sharpening profiled edges.
Whether someone intends to make a series of planes for themselves or rehabilitate antique planes, these specific steps are the major necessities.
