Lost Art Press

Category: Projects

The Train Wreck is Behind You

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I don’t sleep as well when I have French workbench in pieces in my shop. Even a little wood movement in the joints can make assembly a bear, or at least a ticked-off warthog.

Yesterday I fit the legs in their mortises. Today I got everything major assembled. Some specs for the curious:

  1. The base is drawbored with 5/8” hickory dowel stock. The drawbore offset was a strong 1/8”, and I drove the pins in with a sledge.
  2. All the joints are strengthened by Titebond Liquid Hide Glue.
  3. This bench is 9’ long – the most common size called out in “l’Art du menuisier.” It’s more than a 1’ longer than my bench but seems a lot longer.
  4. Height is about 31”, as per the customer’s request. A nice height – almost as nice as 38”.
  5. Benchtop depth is 21”, one of my favorite depths.

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Next comes the fun part. This customer asked for the full-on Plate 11 treatment. So it’s getting two Peter Ross holdfasts, the fully joined tongue-and-groove shelf, Peter Ross planing stop and iron bits for the vise, a dovetailed drawer, swing-out grease pot and tool rack at the back.

This will be the closest full-on Plate 11 bench I’ve yet built. The next closest thing involves a time travel machine, which Stumpy Nubs is currently fabricating on an X-carve in Baltic birch.

— Christopher Schwarz

Oh Yeah, the Japanese Toolboxes

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Sometimes I forget the unwritten rule of woodworking blogging: If you don’t show the finished project then everyone assumes you failed and threw the thing in the trash.

Earlier this year I wrote about some Japanese sliding-lid boxes I was building for a forthcoming article in Popular Woodworking Magazine that were based on a 20th-century example I’d found in Australia.

I wrote about the box design, the wood and some difficulties I had finding the right dome-head nails. And then, nothing more.

No, I didn’t burn them. I finished them up, wrote the article and shipped them off. One went to my dad; the other to one of my favorite customers. And then I dove back into “The Furniture of Necessity.”

Above is the photo that Al Parrish took of the finished boxes. Look for the plans in an upcoming issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine (and stop spreading those nasty rumors).

— Christopher Schwarz

Holiday Spatulas (From Scraps)

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Only once in the last 21 years have I gotten my act together during the holidays and made woodworking gifts for friends and family. Except for that “cutting boards Christmas” I’ve been too swamped with making a living to do the right thing.

So if you think I made those spatulas in the photo above, you are dead wrong. You can thank Rachael Boyd, one of the readers of the blog, for this clever idea for scraps.

Rachael used stock that was 3/4″ x 2-1/4″ x 10″ long. She says she made the first one by drawing it freehand, cut it to rough shape with a coping saw and tapered the main area with a spokeshave.

She saved the best one as a template.

“I have a feeling I will need to make a lot more in the future,” she writes. “If you make these be prepared to make a lot of them ‘cause everyone loves them.”

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The straight spatula shown above is made from a cutoff from a tapered leg that she took to the disc sander to finish up. (I have a bunch of these taper pieces in my shop, so this is the one I might make from some teak cutoffs.)

Thanks to Rachael for saving Christmas.

— Christopher Schwarz, who can feel his liver growing two sizes that day

Invent Nothing: Volume II

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In my early days at Popular Woodworking magazine, we would draw up the projects we wanted to build for an upcoming issue and present them to the other editors for review and comment.

On the one hand, it was a great idea. After years of the process I learned to receive criticism with grace and now look forward to it.

On the other hand, there are cupholders.

When presented with a design, a group of woodworkers will complicate it until it is unbuildable, unsittable and will require custom titanium hardware made by a water-jet cutter.

And that’s just for the birdhouses.

So I also learned to keep things simple. I’m always trying to take things away from a design instead of adding them. But last week I forgot that lesson.

Right now I’m building a traveling tool chest for an upcoming article that’s also a prototype for future classes. I spent two days designing the thing in SketchUp and was convinced I had created the Tardis of tool chests. It was a traveling chest that could hold a full set of tools, including full-size handsaws instead of the shorter panel saws. Plus a full working set of full-size planes.

On Saturday night I glued up the dovetailed carcase and I saw the folly of my design. While it might hold all these tools, I could see that the chest’s proportions were going to be totally wrong at the end. Ugly even.

I walked outside and stared at a tree for a good five minutes.

Then I came back inside and redrew the chest using the same proportions and principles I’ve used since I built my first tool chest in 1997. And these are the same proportions used since tool chests first emerged in the furniture record. I pulled some more rough pine from the woodpile and fetched my jack plane.

Anyone need a dovetailed pine casket for an Oompa Loompa? Cause I’ve got a nice one right here.

— Christopher Schwarz

An Aumbry for ‘The Furniture of Necessity’

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I am finally – finally – getting my butt in gear on “The Furniture of Necessity,” building the projects for my next book.

The most recent project has been this aumbry. What’s an aumbry? If you don’t follow my blog at Popular Woodworking Magazine, here’s the shorthand. An aumbry is an early case piece used to store food, books or anything of value.

You might argue that aumbries are only for holding the sacrament in a church, but you’ll have to talk to Victor Chinnery about that. (See also: Misnomers, Bible Boxes.) My interest in the aumbry stems from the fact that the form evolved into many pieces that we use today: bookcases, cupboards, armoires and the lowly kitchen cabinet.

Oh, and aumbries are dang fun to build.

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In essence, an aumbry is nailed together and features some gothic tracery on the front. The tracery is not merely decorative. It allows air to circulate inside the carcase.

The piercings were covered with cloth on the inside of the case to keep the bugs away. My guess (and the guess of others) is that the cloth would have been undyed linen, which is made from flax.

This aumbry was made from off-the-rack quartered and rift oak. The finish is boiled linseed oil, a wee bit of varnish and brown wax. The hardware is from blacksmith Peter Ross. If you are going to build one of these for yourself, you might want to drop Peter a line now to get in line for the lock, H-hinges and nails needed to build the piece.

All the hardware is secured by clenched wrought nails. It’s a fun way to install hardware (if you like driving while blindfolded).

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I haven’t installed the linen yet; I’m waiting until after a photo shoot next week. While I wait, I’ve been sketching up the drawings for the plate for this project and other plates in “The Furniture of Necessity.” The engraver is going to make these look very nice. So ignore my pixels.

The next project for “The Furniture of Necessity:” Welsh chairs. I can’t wait.

— Christopher Schwarz

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