Lump hammers are back in stock at Crucible Tool. They are $85 plus shipping.
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Soft Wax News from the Soft Wax Princess
During the last couple months, Katherine and I have revamped her soft wax business to fix some problems and improve the overall product. And today, she is ready to ship out a big batch of 8 oz. glass jars of soft wax made using a waterless process.
If that’s all you need to know, click here to visit her etsy page. If you’d like to know more about the changes, read on.
After selling hundreds of tins of the stuff, we listened to customer feedback and the few problems and complaints that came up. Here’s what we heard:
Problem: There was some rust in the bottom of the tin.
At first we were making the wax in a slow cooker that was aided by a water bath – each batch took two hours to complete. If the heating process took too long, then water would condense on the lid, and a little would drip into the wax. The water would end up at the bottom of the tin and rust.
Solution: New process and jars
We devised a different manufacturing process that uses no water. We rapidly heat the solvents in a temperature-controlled glass kettle-like device (it takes only two minutes) and then add that to the wax. It quickly melts the wax. This change does two things: There is no time for a significant amount of water (even from the atmosphere) to get introduced to the process. Second, there is a lot less time dealing with hot solvents, which is safer.
Second, we eliminated the tins. They looked cool and vintage, but the lids didn’t screw on and they would rust. We switched to a cosmetic glass jar with a metal screw-on lid. The interior of the lid is coated with a waxy and sticky substance to lock the lid during transit and prevent the lid from rusting.
Problem: Katy ran out of wax all the time
Solution: Use bigger jars and buy beeswax in bigger volume
We now use 8 oz. jars instead of 4 oz. tins. Because we sell by volume (not weight), you actually will receive about three times the volume of wax that we shipped in the tins. There is more room in these jars, and they can be filled much closer to the brim.
The retail price of these new 8 oz. jars is $24, which is twice the price of the 4 oz. tins. And you are getting way more wax. How did we do this? We bought beeswax in volume.
Earlier, Katy was buying wax in 8-pound increments. However, we decided to bite the bullet and buy a 55-pound box, which cut the per-pound price in half.
(Have I mentioned that Katy is learning a lot about economics with this business?)
There are lots of other improvements – a new Indestructo box and live shipping rates. You pay exactly what it costs to ship the jar.
If you would like to order a jar, here’s the link. Thank you for your patience as we made these improvements.
— Christopher Schwarz
More Lump Hammers Coming on Friday
Our second big batch of Crucible lump hammers will go on sale at noon (Eastern time) on Friday, Sept. 28. The price is $85 plus shipping. Details on the Crucible blog.
The Next Chapter: The Boarded Settle Chair
One of the furniture forms I’ve had a long obsession with are settles. These high-back benches were common in early homes and were handy for keeping warm by the fire. One of their variants, the settle chair – is somewhat less common. But it is just as delightful.
These boarded chairs are made from four planks that are nailed or screwed together. And – if you take what you know about stick chairs and apply it to a boarded chair, it can be pretty comfortable. Much more comfortable than the crate or coffin that it resembles.
The trick is to angle almost every joint so the backrest leans back, the chair leans back and the giant boarded sides open up to the sitter like the arms of a mustachioed aunt with boundary issues.
There are 100 ways to build this chair that are difficult. For the last several months, I’ve been tinkering with the construction process to make it as simple and foolproof as possible. Finally, on Friday I decided that drawings and CAD could take me no further. I had to build it.
This chair will be the next new chapter for “The Anarchist’s Design Book” expansion. If you have questions about the expansion, here is an FAQ.
I started with No. 2 common white pine 2x6s from the home center and glued them up into four panels:
1 Seat: 1-1/4” x 26” x 19”
1 Back 1-1/4” x 21-1/2” x 41”
2 Sides 1-1/4” x 19 x 49”
It’s a lot of wood, I know. But 2x6s are cheap. I also knew I was going to cut the side pieces with a decorative pattern, but I wasn’t sure what the pattern would be. Had I known the pattern, I would have glued up the sides in a way that greatly reduced waste.
I could bore you with all the mental gymnastics that came up with the steps to build this chair. If you come up with an easier way to do it with simple tools, I applaud you.
Let’s hit the highlights.
Cut the dados in the side pieces that will hold the seat. These dados are angled 97° off the back, which creates part of the “lean” to the back. The dados are 1/2” deep and start 15” up from the bottom of the side pieces.
Cut or plane a 9° bevel on the back edge of the side pieces. This bevel makes the sides open toward the sitter (remember the aunt joke?).
Screw the back to the sides with No. 9 x 3-1/8” screws. No glue. You will want to disassemble the chair to make things pretty. You can glue it up later if you like.
Glue 5”-wide blocks to the back edge of the sides, creating the back feet. You’ll have to cut the 9° bevel on one long edge of these blocks. Note that I’ve already cut an angle on the bottom of the sides to add some more lean. I recommend you do this at the end of the construction process.
Make the seat fit its hole. Here I’m using pinch sticks to get the measurement of the seat at its narrowest point. Cut the seat to size and fit it in the dados. Screw the sides to the seat.
Cut the decorative profile on the sides. I drew mine with trammel points. The three arcs for the top curves are all a 9-5/8” radius. The curve for the bottom is a 7-1/2” radius. I was trying to imitate the traditional wingback chair with these curves and exaggerated things to make it look more “ersatz hillbilly.”
Clean up the edges. Screw it back together and then see if you like it.
I’ll build a couple more of these chairs with different profiles and then get to work on writing the chapter for the book. This prototype is good enough to get cleaned up and finished. I’ve asked my daughter Katy to paint it – perhaps we’ll offer it for sale here if we’re both satisfied with it.
— Christopher Schwarz
A Primer on Copyright for Those Living in the 21st-century Wild West
Last week I wrote a blog post about my visit to the Wharton Esherick House, my last stop on a two-week work trip to the East coast. It was a job to find the place (I have it on good authority that they’re working on better direction signs); I was so over everything by that point in the trip that I nearly gave up and turned around to head home. Fortunately a kind driver stopped to set me straight at the final intersection, as my GPS had already told me I’d arrived. (I clearly hadn’t.)
My grumpiness dissolved as soon as I entered the office to buy a ticket for the house tour. I’ve long been a fan of Esherick’s woodblock prints and furniture. Now I was surrounded by stunning prints for sale, informative posters about the artist’s life and books about the man and his work. The Esherick House, essentially a work of sculpture in which the artist lived, has been on my top 10 pilgrimage sites since I first saw pictures of the place.
We should all know by now that it’s essential to get permission before photographing anything in a museum – and this includes house museums. Different places have different rules. The Cheltenham Museum (now known as The Wilson) told me it was fine to take pictures but not to publish them on a blog without express permission and payment of a fee. The Harriet Beecher Stowe House Museum in Hartford, Conn., permits picture taking for Instagram posts, while the neighboring Mark Twain House does not. (Major downer.) So I dutifully asked whether it was permissible to take interior and exterior photos at the Esherick House. The staff person said yes, and yes to posting on Instagram, but not for publication.
“Publication” is a tricky word in our time, not least considering that Instagram is a publishing platform in its own right. I knew I wanted to write a blog post about the place. Blog sites, contrary to what many imagine in our laissez faire “sharing” age, are no less subject to copyright restrictions than traditional forms of publishing on paper. So before writing my post, I contacted Julie Siglin, the executive director of the museum, to request permission, which she granted.
Bottom line: Ask before taking.
Yesterday evening I came in from the shop to find a message from Julie who was puzzled that my post had appeared on another site – with no credit to the original publisher or author – AND under another “author’s” name. I looked up the site, wrote to the purported author, told him to remove the post from his site and told him I was going to report him. While there, I noticed other posts he had taken from Popular Woodworking, so I notified the editors there. Then I read his disclaimer, excerpted below. I’m guessing that the owner of the site is not a native English speaker and that “Brandon Hamilton” is not his real name.
This immediately had me picturing a guy sitting at a kitchen table trying to come up with the most plausible name for a woodworker. What name says flannel checks and three-day stubble?
For the record, Popular Woodworking blog posts do not fall into the legal category “public domain” any more than do those published here at Lost Art Press or on other blog sites that post explicit copyright notices. Even when something does fall into this category, it is illegal to put your name on it as the author when you did not create the content. It doesn’t matter whether you are selling the content or using it to generate any kind of gain (other than traffic to your site). You are breaking the law.
— Nancy Hiller, author of “Making Things Work“
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Thank you.