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 kara@lostartpress.com. You can read more about the submission process here.
I used a wire brush all over the chair to wear down the softer earlywood, to give it some texture.
Then a lot of burnishing with a deer antler and a smooth rock, especially near the hands and at the back of the head rest.
Then, a mix of BLO (boiled linseed oil) with some earth pigments, more like a wash than a paint, just to get a consistent deep color underneath.
Then I made a thick mix of Old Fashioned Milk Paint in Lexington Green, and globbed it on and wiped it off, mostly around sticks. The oil was dry, but I didn’t want it to cure because I wanted to be able to wipe some of the paint off.
John Porritt uses a heat gun to get the paint to peel, but I didn’t want to light mine on fire yet (with the layer of BLO underneath), so I just tried to let it dry a bit before rubbing it off. That helped it come off in patches.
Then I did the same with Real Milk Paint Co. Arabian Night on the top. I had to use a 3M pad with a little water in places where the paint needed to be blended better.
Then, I mixed a little burnt sienna pigment with BLO again on the top (like a wash), rubbed that in, then some Liberon Black Bison wax in dark oak.
The following is excerpted from Matthew Bickford’s “Mouldings in Practice.” In this book, Bickford shows you how to turn a set of complicated mouldings into a series of predictable rabbets and chamfers that guide your hollow and round planes to make any moulding that has been made in the past or that you can envision for your future projects.
The first half of the book is focused on how to make the tools function, including the tools that help the hollow and round planes – such as the plow and the rabbet. Bickford also covers snipes bills and side rounds so you know their role in making mouldings. Once you understand how rabbets and chamfers guide the rounds and chamfers, he shows you how to execute the mouldings for eight very sweet Connecticut River Valley period projects using photos and step-by-step illustrations and instruction.
The term “moulding plane” is an inclusive one. Dedicated moulding planes (also called “complex moulders”) have soles that consist of multiple curves, flats, quirks, steeples and anything else centuries of art have imagined. Dedicated planes create one profile and do it well.
Fig. 2-1. Ovolo with two fillets. The profile this plane creates is similar to that of a window sash.Fig. 2-2. Cove with two fillets. Take note of the angle at which these planes are held relative to the wood. These planes are sprung; the angle at which they are held is the “spring angle.”Fig. 2-3. Ogee with fillet. Like the other planes, this ogee plane creates this single profile at a single location relative to the edges of the board, at a single angle.
These planes, when small, are easy to push and are often much quicker to produce a profile than any router bit, if only because the router surface needs to be sanded. A 1/8″ side-bead plane creates a bead along an edge that is ready for finish after 10 quick strokes. A thumbnail plane creates a convex ovular shape and adjoining vertical fillet, and can consistently and quickly cut profiles along 20 edges of five drawers in a dressing table. A 4″-wide crown moulder, with help from a few friends (and perhaps a horse), creates a complex cornice that is completely uniform from piece to piece across splices and from wall to wall and through mitered corners.
The profiles these planes create are precise, uniform and consistent. Therefore, any time a uniform profile is needed, but the mouldings cannot be cut from a single long piece, a dedicated plane is desirable. A drawer, after all, has four sides – and the lips of individual drawers may sit a mere 1/2″ apart – so efficient consistency is required.
There are dedicated planes that execute just about any moulding, including all those already mentioned. Many of these dedicated planes are also desirable for the craftsman who produces the same edge many times, such as a harpsichord maker who adds a small quirked ogee to the bridge of multiple harpsichords made months apart.
Fig. 2-4. Dedicated harpsichord bridge. This common profile in Italian and German harpsichord bridges will always be 5 minutes away from completion for the user – less if the tool remains set up.
These dedicated, single-profile planes, however, serve little purpose to the craftsman who produces numerous small lengths of moulding in an ever-changing portfolio. These single-profile planes are dedicated to one profile and, like most router bits, they do only one thing. Though the profile these create can often be manipulated to some degree (by removing a fillet, for example) specialty planes are without value if you need to control the details of a profile, or create something with major or even minor differences.
To fresh eyes, the complex profiles integrated into these planes’ soles are apparent; the integral fences and depth stops the planes often include, however, are not. The fences require the plane to contact the edge of a board as a reference, limiting the plane’s angle, spring and location. The depth stop ensures a consistent depth of profile, but often makes it impossible to use the plane to create part of a larger, more complex moulding.
Fig. 2-5. A complex moulder. The width of the iron is the same as the cutting edge illustrated above. No portion of the iron is present at the fence and depth stop. When the plane has progressed to the extent that the depth stop registers against the face of the stock, the iron will stop contacting the wood.
Most dedicated planes also demand proper setup steps to be performed prior to their use.
Without the minimal rabbeting setup in the example in Fig. 2-6, significant edge maintenance will be required because the edge closest to the fence takes dozens of passes more than the edge closest to the depth stop. When the edge nearest the fence deteriorates, the entire blade profile will need to be sharpened in order to keep the iron matching the sole.
Fig. 2-6. The rabbets required. The minimum number of rabbets desired for using a complex moulding plane is similar to those created when using hollows and rounds. You, the user, will need to determine how much stock removal is necessary for each profile. I imagine there are times when preempting a complex profile with a rabbet plane, plus hollows and rounds, is ideal. After all, these few planes with individual curves are easier to maintain than a highly complex profile.
Fig. 2-7. Many passes required. The portion of the iron that is closest to the fence may take 40 passes before the edge farthest away takes one. When it is time to sharpen, the entire edge must be addressed, despite only a small portion needing it.
The genius of dedicated moulding planes is in their absolute consistency, made possible largely by their integrated fences and depth stops. However, these same features also limit the versatility of the planes, and make them poorly suited to address many people’s primary motivation for investigating moulding planes: eliminating excess tooling.
The planes we will discuss in the pages to follow do not share these limitations. We are going to focus on rabbets, hollows, rounds, snipes bills and side rounds. Each of these planes serves a different function. All these planes, however, share a similar characteristic: They have neither integral fences nor depth stops. Without these two characteristics the planes are remarkably versatile. And by using simple stock preparation techniques, the user can impose steering and depth control on the planes to direct and focus their versatility to create all manner of profiles precisely and simply with just a handful of planes. These planes have no fences. We will make guides. These planes have no depth stops. We will make gauges.
But how do these tools work? These planes cut specific portions of an arc in a profile. Each size cuts a segment from a circle of a specific radius. While a plane’s cut matches the circumference of a specific circle, the percentage of the circumference is up to the user. There are no fences that need to be registered on the work, no spring lines to obey and no depth stop to adjust.
Fig. 2-8. The limits of side beads. A 1/8″ side bead can efficiently establish that profile on the edge of the board. It cannot make a bead set in from the edge or the convex portion of an ogee as the No. 2 hollow does above.
With hollows and rounds, the plane that cuts a side bead on the edge of a board is the same plane that cuts the convex portion of an ogee set 1″ from the edge of a complex waist mould. Unlike a dedicated moulding plane or even a Stanley No. 45 plane, these planes do not need to reference an edge while being held at a specific angle.
Whether the specific arc created by these planes falls along the narrowest edge of a board or onto the widest portion of a linenfold panel, the arc’s location is not predetermined. If the arc you need is a minimal 60° of a circle or more than 180°, that function is not determined by a depth stop. Whether the arc stands alone or in a sequence is a decision made by the user, not the planemaker.
These planes do not have predefined purposes other than cutting an ideal radius. Executing any moulding along a straight edge is achievable with these planes – whether you are making moulding on a board that will be applied beneath the top of a piece or even to the top itself.
Fig. 2-9. Geometry of the sole. The sole of this hollow and this round is one-sixth of a circle. The sole’s width is equal to the radius of the circumference it creates.
The soles of hollow and round planes represent 60° of a circle. Thanks to basic geometry and the properties of an equilateral triangle, we know that the width of each plane’s sole is equal to the radius of the circle each creates.
These hollow and round planes generally come in pairs, one convex sole (round planes) and one concave (hollow planes). The pairs vary in radius, which means they also vary in width. There are several numbering systems used when describing these planes, some dependent upon the maker, some on the origin of the tool. For this book, the following numbering system will be observed.
In this system, the plane’s number (usually stamped on its heel) designates its radius in 16ths of an inch up to 3/4″, or 12/16″. The numbering system then breaks, as subsequent planes increase in radius by 1/8″ instead of 1/16″.
There are a few other planes we need to learn about that assist the hollows and rounds – snipes bills, side rounds and rabbet planes.
Hollows are to rounds as snipes bills are to side rounds: The first has a concave sole and cuts a convex shape, while the second has a convex sole and cuts a concave shape.
Fig. 2-10. Other planes. Snipes bills (left) and side rounds are helpful planes for some profiles.
Fig. 2-11. The rabbet. A rabbet plane is rectangular in form and cuts square rabbets.
Many people look at the above planes and, for good reason, do not recognize their purpose. But you soon will.
Visit the store page of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest: Revised Edition” to get a free copy of the book’s PDF. There are two links to download it in the first paragraph – the paragraph in italics – on the sales page. No need to give us your name, your number or your firstborn. Just click one of the two links.
– Fitz
p.s. If you find any errors, send them my way: fitz@lostartpress.com. (I do have the few already sent following the earlier subscriber PDF from The American Peasant substack and will be making updates before we reprint.)
Fourteen years after the release of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest,” Christopher Schwarz spent almost a year revising every sentence and idea in the book. The result is a text that is even more pointed than the original. The message: Buy good tools (here’s how). Build a chest to protect them. And while you’re at it… quit corporate America.
“The Anarchist’s Tool Chest: Revised Edition,” paints a world where woodworking tools are at the center of an ethical life filled with creating furniture that will last for generations. It makes the case that you can build almost anything with a kit of fewer than 50 high-quality tools, and it shows you how to select real working tools, regardless of their vintage or brand name.
“The Anarchist’s Tool Chest: Revised Edition” will guide you in building a proper chest for your toolkit that follows the ancient rules that have been forgotten or ignored. And it makes the argument that building a chest and filling it with the right tools just might be the best thing you can do to save our craft.
About the Revised Edition
For the revised edition, Schwarz went through the list of tools he recommended in the original text and tightened it up. And after building the chest over and again with students, Schwarz (and his shopmate Megan Fitzpatrick) came up with many ways to make construction of the chest easier – without sacrificing strength or beauty. He rebuilt the chest for the revised edition using these hard-won ideas and managed to create more space for tools, with easier ways to get at them.
The physical book has also been improved. Like the original, “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest: Revised Edition” is printed entirely in the United States using domestic materials. For the revised edition, we upgraded the paper’s weight and its smoothness. The result is type and photos that are crisp, with deep blacks and a full tonal range of grays.
We also redesigned the interior pages from scratch, using a larger, more readable typeface and greatly improved line spacing. (The original edition was supposed to look like a manifesto, using free fonts plus an intentionally amateurish design scheme. It indeed looked like a manifesto – but the text was a little difficult to read for older eyes.) The revised edition uses a very readable Garamond Premier Pro 12 point type.
Despite all the physical upgrades to the book (including some nice printed endsheets), we decided to keep the book at the old retail price of $51.
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 kara@lostartpress.com. You can read more about the submission process here.
Today’s pick is from Brad Reiser. Thanks, Brad!
— Kara Gebhart Uhl
I was just reading The Stick Chair Journal No. 2 issue article about using a tenon cutter [“Control the D#^& Tenon Cutter:].
I think I have mastered the technique … sort of.
I made a set of plugs for each of the different sized cutters, up to a 1-1/2″ cutter. The plugs run from 1/2″ to 1″ long. On one side of each plug I drilled a shallow hole to match a rare-earth magnet, inserted just slightly proud of the surrounding surface.
These are glued in place. Usually gently tapping the cutter face down will dislodge the plug. If not, I use an awl to pull it out. I ordered the magnets from Lee Valley. They are fragile. And very strong.
