Lost Art Press

Category: Sharpen This

Four (no Five!) Books on Press

Posted on by Lost Art Press

After a long dry spell – the last book we sent to press was in December – we now have four books on press. (Actually, we have five books if you count the somewhat-cursed edition of Moxon’s “Mechanick Exercises” that has been on press for six months. More on that below.)

Today we finished our work on two books and won’t see them again until a semi backs up to the warehouse in 11 weeks. You can sign up to be notified when any of these books arrive in the warehouse on this page.

“The Belligerent Finisher” by John Porritt. This is our first book devoted to finishing, and it is a doozie. Porritt, a furniture restorer and chairmaker, shows many of the tricks he uses to add subtle (and beautiful) wear and age to a new piece. Porritt is not attempting to show you how to make fakes. He is trying to show you something deeper – how to add color and texture to a piece so its form matches its finish. Most of his processes use simple and common tools (a chainmail pot scrubber, a deer antler, a handheld propane torch, washing powder). The book walks you through all the steps for two backstools. Then there’s a gallery that shows how you can mix and match these techniques on other pieces. The book should arrive in our warehouse in September.

“Sharpen This” by Christopher Schwarz. I think of this book as a piece of historical fiction. What if someone wrote a book about how to sharpen, and that person wasn’t making sharpening equipment. And the internet didn’t exist. This is a pocket-book-sized treatise that boils down everything I know about sharpening media, steel and technique to give the reader a clear understanding of sharpening. The book embraces all the sharpening systems. But it focuses on how to work with a minimum amount of expensive gear. And how to work fast. This is a book I never wanted to write. But after teaching so many beginners who were so horribly confused, I decided to just lay it all out there. The book should arrive in our warehouse in September.

“Euclid’s Door” by George Walker and Jim Tolpin. Geometry lovers rejoice. Jim and George are back with a new book about how to make your own insanely accurate woodworking layout tools using simple hand tools and geometry that blew our minds. Honestly, both Megan and I had to step into the shop to confirm some of the geometric constructions really worked (they do). If you have been resisting geometry and whole-number ratios, this book will show you how to apply it directly to tools that you will use for the rest of your life. Really good stuff – and the book is entirely hand-illustrated by Barb Walker and Keith Mitchell. The book should arrive in our warehouse in late August.

The Stick Chair Journal No. 1. A crazy experiment. Can we make a beautiful journal about vernacular chairs and have it be slightly more successful than our money-losing posters? The first issue has techniques you can use, a tool review, folklore about a cursed chair and complete plans for a new vernacular chair design, which you are free to build and sell if you like. When you buy the journal you will also receive a download of the full-size patterns for the chair. The Journal should arrive in our warehouse in late August.

You can sign up to be notified when these books arrive in our store. It’s a simple process, and it is 100 percent not marketing. We are not trying to trick you into signing up for ads or some worthless newsletter. It’s a notification service that costs a lot of money to use. But we encourage you to please use it to make your life easier. 

Oh, and about that cursed edition of Moxon’s “Mechanick Exercises.” That has been at the printer since December. Then the plant shut down because of COVID. Then it shut down because of ransomware. Then they printed one of the signatures with a missing page and had to redo the signature. The whole situation is almost laughable.

The plant told me they would ship those books on June 24. I’m not holding my breath.

— Christopher Schwarz

Apologies for this Spade Bit Rant

Posted on by Lost Art Press
The new Speedbor (right) and the old pattern (left). Please let me have my teeth back.

Because we make tools, I hesitate to criticize other toolmakers. Today I am making an exception because the manufacturer is Irwin Industrial Tools, which is owned by Stanley Black & Decker, a company that is worth $28.4 billion (that’s with a “b”).

So no toolmaker is going to go hungry because of this blog entry.

For 18 years I’ve used Irwin Speedbor spade bits in my chairmaking. They are inexpensive, they cut fast, they don’t clog and they are perfectly fine for chairs.

In the 2000s, lots of Irwin’s competitors started making crappier spade bits. They ruined the cutting geometry, didn’t surface-grind the cutting face or they added a screw tip, making them almost worthless for furniture making. But Irwin kept making good bits, and you could get them everywhere.

About two years ago, however, Irwin “improved” its Speedbors by removing the cutting teeth at the rim, replacing them with little chamfers.

These new Speedbors are supposed to last twice as long and cut twice as fast. 

My first experience with the new bits was terrible. They cut slow and tended to leave a rough entry and exit hole.

I talked to my supplier at the hardware store about it. She said many of her customers also disliked the new bits and had the same experience I did.

I slapped together a rant about the bits and almost posted it. Then I thought: Maybe I should wait and use the bits some more. Maybe I’m doing something wrong. Maybe the bits can be improved with a little filing. Maybe I just got some bad bits, and the manufacturing will improve in time.

So for the last two years I stuck with the bits. And I can honestly say they still stink. I’m sure Irwin has some science that backs up its claims, but it doesn’t apply to working in hardwoods. Perhaps they did the test in Styrofoam.

I’ve searched for another brand available in the U.S. as a replacement, but I haven’t had much luck. I’ve tried four other brands, and none are as good as the old Speedbors. If you have a recommendation of a spade bit brand you use and adore, please post it in the comments. (Please spare us the “I’ve heard good things about Beaver Bits.” Or “Saul Pellers says spade bits are for punters.”)

Until I find a replacement brand, I’m sharpening my old Speedbor bits. This works great until you file the rim teeth away (I get about three filings before this happens). I’ve also purchased a two-year supply of NOS (new old stock) Speedbor bits from eBay. So I have a couple years to solve this problem.

As anyone who makes chairs will tell you, life is a never-ending search for decent or better bits.

— Christopher Schwarz

A closer look at the geometry of the new Speedbor.
A close look at the geometry of the older Speedbor.

What About the Back of the Tool?

Posted on by Lost Art Press

backside-of-plane-iron-IMG_6013
A typical vintage iron. The coarse grinding scratches from manufacturing still extend all the way to the tip of the tool.

 

I promise this post is not about sharpening. It is, instead, about what we read vs. what we see.

When I learned to sharpen, the entire first day of my lesson was all about flattening the backs of my chisels and plane irons. I was told to get them all dead flat and then polish them up like a mirror. It was a whole damn day of my life I wish I could get back.

When I started buying vintage tools, however, I looked at the backs and thought: I don’t think those people had the same teacher. I’ve examined hundreds of vintage planes and chisels, and I can recall only one or two that had the backside of the blade flattened or polished.

Sure, some of them looked like they had been pushed over a stone to remove the wire edge after sharpening the bevel. But not flattened and polished like I was taught.

How-to-whet-an-iron

Most 20th century instructions don’t talk much about the backside of the tool. You are supposed to work the bevel and then remove the wire edge by rubbing the back flat on the stone. (The Stanley instructions above are typical, which are from a 1941 booklet.)

Joseph Moxon, who wrote the first English instructions on woodworking, discussed this issue in “Mechanick Exercises or the Doctrine of Handy-Works” (1678). He wrote that after you sharpen the bevel of the tool:

“Then turn the flat side of the Iron, and apply the Stone flat to it, till you have worn off the coarse gratings of the Grindstone, on that side too.”

Basically, you have to stone the bevel and the back. The instructions were clear in the 17th century and they are clear now. So why does the archaeological record – at least what I have seen – seem at odds? Why are there so, so many tools out there that have been sharpened on the bevel but not on the back?

I think about these things a lot as I work at the bench. And I promise I do not have any answers. Only thoughts. Here are a few of the possibilities I’ve considered.

  1. Perhaps most of the extant old planes and chisels were used for carpentry (in softwood) or by homeowners. So getting the wicked sharp edge needed for tricky hardwoods wasn’t necessary. So the back remained mostly untouched (except for removing the wire edge).
  2. Furniture makers need a really sharp edge, but that profession has always been a less common one than carpenter. So the well-treated tools are much less common.
  3. The good tools that were sharpened properly were mostly used up. The tools that weren’t sharpened properly survived because they weren’t used much (perhaps because they weren’t sharp).
  4. Modern people have a much more extreme idea about what a polished edge should be. We take it beyond what was typical because we have the abrasives to do it. A mirror polish might be better in theory but it might not be necessary in actual practice.
  5. The user decided to go for a flat and polished back in a gradual fashion – by stoning the backside over and over as they sharpened the tool during the day/month/year. In other words, the tool would get gradually better over the life of the blade.
  6. We are too precious about our finished surfaces. A few errant grinding marks on the backside that transmitted to the work can be easily scraped or sanded out by hand.

I have a lot of other possibilities rattling around in my head, but the above six are enough for a blog entry. During the last two years I have been experimenting with these different possibilities with my own edges. I’ve learned some things that are definitely not doctrinaire with modern sharpening theory. But I’ll save those for when I’m ready to endure an old fashioned Internet thrashing. Today has been too much of a Monday.

— Christopher Schwarz

Whetstones for Dull Wits and Liars

Posted on by saucyindexer

Circa 1650 from “Cries of London.”

If you are a diligent woodworker you have a sharpening station, all your edge tools are clean and sharp and your sharpening stones nice and flat. How about your mind? Sharp, or nice and flat? What about your truthiness? It turns out the lowly whetstone has a few lessons to sharpen your mind and test your honesty.

‘The Whetstone of Witte’

Robert Recorde, Welsh mathematician and physician, published a wonderful book on algebra (stay with me), “The Whetstone of Witte,” in 1557. He opened his book, which has the first known use of the equal (=) sign, with a poem.

From the Smith and Plimpton Collections at Columbia University via the website of the Mathematical Association of America.

He explains the whetstone in relation to tools: “Dulle thinges and harde it will so chaunge/And make them sharpe, to right good use.” Recorde continues and advises the student what can be gained by studying his book. “Here if you lift your wittes to whette/Muche sharpness thereby shall you gette.” Delightful and in a math book!

Now, a riddle for woodworkers from a late 18th-century children’s chapbook titled, “A New Riddle Book, Or, A Whetstone for Dull Wits.”

Couzen or cozen = to deceive.

The ‘Other’ Definition

On we go to the punitive and satirical side of whetstones. This is from the 1955 edition of “Dictionary of Early English” edited by Joseph T. Shipley.

The definition continues with a record of punishment for deceit and other examples of usage. The primary sources for these were relatively easy to find and so down the rabbit hole we go.

Punishment of the Pillory and Whetstone

In the Letter Books of the City of London from 1412 there is an account of the deceit of William Blakeney, a shuttlemaker. “Under the guise of sanctity” and also barefoot and with long hair he pretended to be a hermit and “under colour of such falsehood he had received many good things from divers persons.” As a skilled craftsman he was capable of supporting himself but for six years he “lived by such lies, falsities, and deceits, so invented by him, to the defrauding of the people.”

“It was adjudged that said William should be put upon the pillory for three market-days, there to remain for one hour each day, the reason for the same being there proclaimed; and he was to have, in the meantime, whetstone hung from his neck.”

Son of a…

In “The Busie Body: A Comedy” a play written in 1709 by Mrs. Susanna Centlivre, we have another use of whetstone. Sir Francis Gripe is guardian to Miranda and Marplot. (Gripe is also in love with Miranda.) Marplot is described as a silly fellow and very “Inquisitive to know every Body’s Business, generally spoils all he undertakes, yet without Design.” In one response to Sir Francis he declares :

Philosopher’s Stone vs. Whetstone

This next reference is a canto from “Hudibras” a satiric poem written by Samuel Butler that was published in several parts beginning in 1663.

“The rate of whetstones in the kingdom” is explained in an 1819 annotated copy of the poem as a proverbial expression, in which, “an excitement to lie was called a whetstone.” The annotation also gives direction to a 1572 Puritan Manifesto directed towards Queen Elizabeth in which the term “lying to a whetstone” is found.

The best whetstone reference, also from the annotations, is from a “smart repartee” between Sir Francis Bacon and Sir Kenelm Digby. In one corner we have Sir Francis Bacon, Lord Chancellor of England, philosopher and father of scientific method (yay!). In the other corner Sir Kenelm Digby, a natural philosopher, alchemist, proponent of  “powder of sympathy” and described by the scholar Henry Stubbe as “the very Pliny of our age for lying.”

The two men were before King James, “to whom Sir Kenelm Digby was relating, that he had seen the true philosopher’s stone in the possession of a hermit in Italy; and when the king was very curious to understand what sort of stone it was, and Sir Kenelm much puzzled in describing it; Sir Francis Bacon interposed, and said, perhaps it was a whetstone.”

If your mind is sharp, your heart true, and you only want to sharpen some tools, the blog has a plethora of posts on sharpening. You can find the one to which I am most partial here.

— Suzanne Ellison

Round the Corners of a Plane Iron

Posted on by Lost Art Press

If the corners of a handplane’s cutter are not supposed to cut wood, then I remove them.

OK, let me put that a different way. Some handplanes are supposed to cut into corners: rabbet planes, shoulder planes, moulding planes and router planes (to name a few). So these planes need cutters with sharp corners so they will cut sharp corners in the wood.

Other planes are supposed to cut surfaces and not leave any sharp corners: bench planes, block planes and scraper planes (to name a few). So these planes need cutters that don’t create sharp corners in the wood – what some call “plane tracks.”

One way to avoid plane tracks is to make the cutting edge curved, such as in a scrub plane or jack plane. Another method is to round over the corners of the iron. My preferred method is to do both. I round over the corners of the plane iron and then sharpen a slight camber in its cutting edge.

The combination of these methods greatly improves the way the wood looks after I plane it.

So how to you round over the corners? After I grind an iron, I remove the corners on a diamond stone. You can use any stone (or sandpaper). The diamond stone is simply more durable than a waterstone or sandpaper.

After rounding the corners, I hone the iron and put considerable pressure on the corners to curve the cutting edge and blend my edge into the newly rounded corners.

There are other ways of accomplishing the same goal. And I’m sure your method works better than mine. But this is what I do.

— Christopher Schwarz

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