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Here’s a tip from Raney Nelson at Crucible Tool. When we make our lump hammers we need to cut the excess wood above the eye after the handle and head have been wedged together. Typical flush-cut saws are too slow for production work. And they are usually so thin that they kink easily.

So Raney took an inexpensive Ryoba saw from the home center and removed the set with a few swipes of a sharpening stone.

Today I had a ton of tenons to flush and decided to do the same to one of our hardware-store Ryobas that is not quite good enough for fine joinery. I removed the set using a DMT diamond stone (the red one). It took about five swipes on each toothline.

I was concerned that the diamond stone wouldn’t work well stoning the impulse-hardened teeth (which are file-hard). The diamonds had no problem with the task. The detail shot shows the amount of metal I removed to remove the set.

The saw works great for flushing tenons. It’s about 11.4 times faster than my old flush-cut saw and powers through oak tenons.

— Christopher Schwarz

 

I stumbled across these chairs for sale via Leland Little yesterday, and it was like encountering a beautiful train wreck. I couldn’t stop looking at them.

On the one hand, they nailed all the angles. But on the other hand, white naugahyde.

The only information Leland Little offers is they are “circa 1950” and they are “American.” Yet another thing the world can be angry with us about.

— Christopher Schwarz

It’s no secret that Brendan Gaffney and I are obsessed with the life and work of Chester Cornett, a traditional Eastern Kentucky chairmaker who pushed into the world of art with his later chairs he built mostly in Cincinnati.

While Brendan and I have been studying his chairs for some time, we both have developed an odd affection for the hand-painted sign Chester had outside his workshop. The sign is made of bits of thin sheet metal that have been screwed or riveted together. The letters are orange (Brendan found a color photo that has the sign in the background).

If you don’t speak Kentucky, here’s what the sign says:

Handmade Furniture
Maker Of The
Cornett Chairs
We Make Anything
Or It Can’t Be Made

I love the misspellings. “Funiture?” “Chaires?” “Iney Thin?”

Brendan and I have been plotting to make a sign like this for our shop. Today we made a prototype using hardboard, grey primer and orange paint from the home center. After studying photos of the sign, I decided the letters were 5” high and determined the width and height of the sign based on that.

We bought an inexpensive stencil set and stencil brushes from the home center. Then we went to work. The entire project took about an hour.

We’ll hang this sign in storefront’s library. And now I’m going to find some used sheet metal so we can make the real thing. The metal sign will hang in the garden where it will age with the help of the elements.

This is one of the benefits of being unemployed.

— Christopher Schwarz