I forgot to include the following entry in my Anarchist’s Gift Guide at Popular Woodworking. So I’m posting here because you are all so sweet.
Global Art No. 08 Palette Knife This tool has been in my kit for 20 years know. When I use it a lot, I start to wonder about my level of craftsmanship. It’s the Global Art No. 08 palette knife, and I use it to sneak glue into tight spots for repairs. It’s also good for applying glue to dovetails and smearing glue on mortise walls.
The thin blade (.015” thick) can go places no popsicle stick (.08” thick) can manage. The knife is made from spring steel, so it is flexible and strong. The width (.625”) carries enough glue to smear on the affected area. And the tool is well-made – it even has a ferrule.
I bought mine at a Michael’s craft store, but you can find them online here or at your local art supply store. They are inexpensive – about $6 or so. (Avoid the plastic knives; they break.)
When the knife gets coated with glue or what not, use a scraper to remove it and you are back to new.
You can now order our new “blackout” T-shirt from our online store. This cotton T-shirt is available in sizes from small to 3X and is $25.
We call it a blackout shirt because the shirt is navy blue and the logo is black – there’s not a big contrast between the logo and the cotton when the shirt is newly printed. But every time you wash the shirt, the blue fades a little, and the black ink does the same. After about 10 washes, it looks pretty cool.
John and I have been testing these for several months and are pleased. Order yours here. These are printed on demand and usually ship in three days or so. (Order now for Christmas.…) Because the shirts are printed on demand, they will not be available in our storefront.
More Apparel News Work continues on the chore coats at Sew Valley. When they start cutting and stitching, we’ll do a factory visit and shoot some video so you can see all the handwork involved and the company’s vintage machinery in action.
We also have a new bandana in the works from the pen of Tom Bonamici. That should show up soon and will ship in time for the holidays.
And finally we now have access to Champion sweatshirts and hoodies, and we will be selling those shortly. Champion sweats are made in the USA and are dang durable. I still have my Champion sweatshirt that I bought my first day of college in 1986.
The armbow of this design has a radical curve – two bends that are more than 90°. The original chair used curved branches to create the armbow. I haven’t been able to find a suitable curvy branch for this design, so I was faced with using flat planks with curvy grain.
I sawed out the arm parts from some oak that curved around a knot. But it wasn’t curvy enough to make me happy. There was too much short grain in the assembly to give me the confidence to use the arm.
So I ordered some cold-bend hardwood (sometimes called “comp wood”). I’ve worked this stuff for more than a decade and know what it’s capable of. My rationale here was to use what I had in order to avoid short grain – that’s is what the Welsh chairmakers did. They used curved branches to avoid short grain. I have comp wood.
My box arrived today and I knew immediately something was wrong. The wood felt dry and warm – usually it feels cool because of the moisture in it the wood. There was a small hole in the bag, which might have occurred during transit and dried out the stick.
I decided to give it a try anyway. The wood wouldn’t bend around the form while it was cold, so I put it in the steambox for more than an hour. That made it more pliable, but then it split open along the grain as I pulled it around the form.
I was about to go for a walk in the woods to look for some curved branches. But Brendan Gaffney talked me into using a bent lamination. Working together, we sawed up some dry oak into strips about 0.10” thick and then glued them up using hide glue.
Brendan also showed me how to use multiple strips of Masonite as a flexible clamping caul along the outside of the bend. I’ve never done that before (my fly is still open at this point, by the way), I’ve always used a metal strap covered in duct tape as my caul. The Masonite cauls worked quite well.
We needed 24 laminations for one arm, and it went together without a fracture.
So tomorrow I’ll do the second armbow and try not to expose myself to everyone during the process.
Katherine the Wax Princess has finished a new batch of soft wax that is now for sale in her etsy store. For those of you who missed her last batch, there have been a lot of changes to the way Katherine makes, packages and ships her soft wax. Read this entry for details.
The short story is that she switched to glass jars with metal lids (which are coated on the inside to inhibit rust). We switched to a waterless production process. And you get more than twice the volume of wax in a jar. Oh, and we have special packaging for the glass jars.
The new glass jars are sweet. The screw-top lid keeps moisture out and feels more secure than the friction-fit tin lid we used before. And the waterless production process ensures every bit of the soft wax is usable.
This might be Katherine’s last batch for 2018. She’s deep into applying for colleges, working on her paintings and pottery and continuing to become a budding movie critic.
“Readers of my column will know that I never make two chairs alike. Numbers of sticks, their spacings and length, the size of the seat and its shape, angles of stretchers, type of arm either steamed ash or solid wood, colours etc… the combinations are endless. I have gone to great length never to let anyone make a measured drawing, I just pluck the shapes out of the sky as it were. This is a reaction to a lifetime spent making things to others’ designs. I do however keep detailed measurements and photographs.
“This leads me on to gripe about some of the woodworkers I come across. I hope you will forgive my opinion. When I talk to readers or get letters it often seems to be about the petty cash of woodwork (technical points about dovetails or getting joints to fit), but rarely about shape, proportion or colour. I don’t think joints are that important. I would prefer to see woodworkers look at the total picture, is the piece they have just made beautiful, will it hold together, will it do the job it was made for?
“Woodworkers don’t buy my chairs, but they spend ages looking at the details of construction and then frown disapprovingly. They want engineering perfection. People who buy my chairs do so for two main reasons. Firstly and by far the most important point, they buy because they like the look of them. Secondly they buy them because they like sitting in them. They rarely inspect the joints. They think they look good, they think they will do the job they are made to do and even though the parts don’t fit particularly well, they are strong enough!”
— John Brown, Good Woodworking, June 1994, Issue 20
