Update: Sold. (I’ll let y’all know when I clean out my own basement…).
I’m clearing some stuff out of the Lost Art Shop cellar to make more storage room for Chris and his family (it’s their house, after all), and came across this poor, abandoned almost-done sugar pine Dutch tool chest from a class I taught two years (possibly more) ago. The bottom is dovetailed; the backboards are three wide tongue-and-groove pine boards (and as you can see, it features Rivierre forged nails). The battens and fall-front catch are red oak; the tool rack and “lock” are walnut.
It has sustained a modicum of water damage – but nothing that can’t be cleaned up with a little planing – and it needs a lid (I gave the lid for this one away to a student).
Given the fixes it needs – and the need for it to be gone – I’d be happy to take $100 (as-is) in exchange, just to cover the materials – the catch is, you must be able to pick it up at Lost Art Press in Covington, Ky., by August 9.
If you’re interested, please send me an email; my signature below is linked.
My daughter Katherine and I have just completed shooting and editing a short and free video on how I sharpen a card scraper. This technique works for both curved and rectangular scrapers.
This video shows a slightly easier way to deal with the faces of the card scraper. Several years ago when I started studying the burnishing of wood and other organic materials, I started wondering if a carbide burnisher was able to smooth and polish steel to the degree that fine sharpening stones do.
Even without wax, a polissoir will burnish and polish a piece of oak because the compacted broom corn is harder than the wood.
After a few years of experimentation with this technique, I have concluded that it works. And it works really well. I have stopped stoning the faces of my scrapers. So now my technique is to:
Burnish the faces of the scraper to fold any hook or burr up onto the edge of the scraper.
Stone the edge with a #1,000-grit waterstone to remove the fatigued metal and to cut a square and sharp arris (aka a corner). Then polish the edge with a #5,000-grit waterstone.
Burnish the faces of the scraper to polish the steel faces and start deforming the metal up to the edge to make the cutting hook easier to turn.
Burnish the edge with the burnisher parallel to the floor and edge of the tool.
Tilt the burnisher 7° to 10° to turn the cutting hook.
After sharpening hundreds of edges, I can report that the burnisher polishes the steel like a mirror. And the edge continues to improve with every sharpening as the polish improves on the faces of the tool.
I haven’t tried this with high-speed steel (HSS) burnishers, only the carbide ones. So feel free to experiment yourself. I suspect the HSS burnishers will work fine, as long as they are harder than the steel in the scraper.
EDIT: Sold. (But I’d be happy to build another if asked!)
With my extra time during the lockdown, I was able to complete this hand dovetailed sugar pine Anarchist’s Tool Chest. Its exterior dimensions are: 39-3/4″ wide x 23-1/2″ deep x 24-1/4″ high (including the battens – aka rot strips – on the bottom). It has hand dovetailed bird’s-eye maple tills with quartersawn white oak shiplapped bottoms affixed with cut nails. All three tills are 8-1/2″ from front to back. The top two tills are 2-3/4″ high with 1/2″-thick bottoms; the bottom till is 5″ high with a 5/8″-thick bottom. The top till is 36″ wide, the middle till is 35-1/2″ wide, the bottom till is 35-1/4″ wide.
The remainder of the interior fittings – the slides for the tills, the tool rack and the moulding plane corral – are of figured hard maple.
The tool rack is slightly different than what is shown in the “Anarchist’s Tool Chest” book; I bump it out from the front chest wall to allow for the hanging backsaws behind the chisels, screwdrivers and other tools in the tool rack. (I find this not only protects them, but makes the saws easier to grab than from a bottom-mounted saw till.)
The chest bottom is tongue-and-groove pine boards affixed with forged Rivierre nails. The hand-forged hardware is the new “Anarchist’s Tool Chest Re-forged kit” from Horton Brasses.
The chest is $4,200 as is (including your General Finishes milk paint color of choice); that also includes crating (LTL shipping is paid by the buyer; it’s typically less than $250). Add-ons (real milk paint, an iron crab lock, casters (either new or re-conditioned vintage), custom interior fittings, etc.) are available as well. First one to respond with a definitive “yes” gets it. (My signature below is linked to my email.)
If you’d like to see more (including entirely too much on dovetail how-to) and outfitting the interior, check out my Instagram feed.
Bench.Talk.101 has just posted my “Chairmaking for Flat Woodworkers” talk on its YouTube page. Click here to watch it. I gave a 25-minute presentation (with props) and then took questions for another 30 minutes.
It was a fun format, and it was very kind of them to invite me.
We always have fun with the scraps from ripping the Cold-Bend Hardwood down.
For the last nine years I’ve experimented a lot with “cold-bend hardwood,” which is also known as “compwood.” It’s basically wettish wood that can be bent radically when it’s at room temperature. And when it dries, it keeps its shape.
I first learned about the stuff from furnituremaker Jeff Miller, who showed it to me during a shop visit. Since then, I’ve purchased it from a variety of sources, including one local place that used to make its own (now they don’t) and Pure Timber LLC.
I don’t want to repeat the basic information you can get from Pure Timber. If you read the company’s descriptions and watch the videos you’ll get a good idea of what this stuff is capable of.
Instead, this blog entry is to talk about my experiences with the material and why I use the stuff.
This armbow took minutes to cut, bend and clamp. The extra length makes it easier to pull around the form. I cut it off and use it for something else.
First, let’s get the economics out of the way. Cold-bend Hardwood is expensive when compared to green wood that you’ve split from a log or lumber that you’ve bought from the yard. However, the math works for me.
Obtaining, moving and storing green lumber when you live in a dense urban area is possible. I’ve done it many times. But my supply is sporadic. The tree service I work with keeps its eyes peeled for me, but street trees are not always the best for splitting.
Then there’s labor and time of splitting it out and containing the mess in our small garden. Then there’s the agony when a bend goes sideways. The stick breaks or delaminates – or cracks when drying.
Our kiln. Two lightbulbs and a box made from foil-covered insulation board.
With Cold-bend Hardwood I’ve had only one bend fail in nine years. And there is almost no waste. It shows up in a box. I cut it to shape on the band saw and bend it in the form without a windlass or hydraulics. I then put it in an insulated box with a couple lightbulbs for a day (sometimes two days for big pieces). It comes out of the form ready to use with no springback.
For a chair, I need about $70 to $90 in Cold-bend Hardwood to make the armbow and crest. The time I save makes this expense work for me.
Simple bar clamps allow you to bend the pieces.
Cautions
Before you use the stuff, please read all the directions. Don’t try to machine the stuff on a jointer or planer when it’s wet. It will self-destruct. Cut it to size on the band saw. I use a single-point fence on my band saw for ripping. You can crosscut it by hand or with any power saw with no problem.
My fancy “single-point fence” is a dowel. Plane a flat on one face and clamp it to the fence.
Our small drum sander is great for removing the marks from the band saw.
If you have a drum sander, you can use that to clean up the band saw marks before putting the stuff in the form.
After it’s dry, I have had decent luck working with it most electric and hand tools. I plane and scrape the stuff. But have your handplane prepared as if you are working curly stuff – you need a tight mouth or a tight chipbreaker. If you run into trouble, rasps and sandpaper will get you out of trouble.
My No. 1 recommendation: Start with a light cut with any machine or hand tool. See what it gets you. Learn from there.
It finishes fine – just like regular wood.
All in all, I like the stuff. I also like steambending furniture components when I can get the right wood. I don’t see the two techniques as mutually exclusive. Instead, it’s another option that is open to all of us. And there are some projects where Cold-bend Hardwood is the best solution for highly unusual bends.
— Christopher Schwarz
Disclaimer: As always, I purchase all my materials and have never received anything of value from Pure Timber (or any other manufacturer). This post is not sponsored by anyone.
A crest rail comes out of the form ready to shape after one day in the kiln.
