Advertisement published in The Ladies’ Home Journal, 1919. Is it just me, or is there a suggestive twinkle in her eye as she removes that work apron?
Hoosier cabinet ads offered another attractive benefit: by helping their users stay “beautiful,” “youthful,” and “energetic,” the cabinets in effect promised to help save marriages. “Why be all fagged out and suffer from backache and headache?” asked one ad. “Why be a kitchen drudge, waste your strength and wear yourself out? A ‘Dutch Kitchenet’ will systematize your kitchen work—make it easy and give you leisure time for rest and recreation.” The Sellers cabinet promised to “conserve your strength to a remarkable degree.” The Hoosier Manufacturing Company agreed that “the greatest economies [women] can effect are those of Time and Strength,” allowing “more time for rest and recreation,” and for “porch breezes” in summer. “The Hoosier will help me to stay young,” declares a bride to her mother, presumably on her wedding day, judging by her attire. “Save nerves, Save health,” cries another Hoosier ad; yet another, “Think what this spare time would mean to you day after day, if you worked sitting down so you could feel rested enough to enjoy it.”
Based on these and other advertisements citing headaches (yes), exhaustion, and drudgery, it seems likely that Hoosier cabinets were not infrequently paid for by husbands anticipating improved performance in the bedroom as well as the kitchen.—Excerpted from The Hoosier Cabinet in Kitchen History by Nancy Hiller, author of Making Things Work
Read the other installments in the “Sharpen This” series via this link.
The burr – how to make it and how to remove it – confuses many beginners. Many underestimate its importance. Others disagree on how to remove it.
First, what the heck is it? The burr is a tiny curl of metal that appears on your edge when you birth a zero-radius intersection. It’s important because it’s the only practical way to ascertain that you have created a zero-radius intersection and that your edge is ready to polish.
Here is what is important (and not) about the burr:
The burr needs to exist along the entire edge of the tool. If you have a burr in a few places but not others, you need to rub the edge on your stones until you create a consistent burr.
If you cannot create a consistent burr, do not polish that edge with finer abrasives. Instead, switch to a coarser sharpening media. The coarser abrasive will quickly remove the dull areas of your edge and give you that consistent burr.
If you have a consistent burr, don’t worry too much about the scratch pattern on its edge. The scratch pattern becomes more important at the polishing stage (which is the topic of the next entry on this series).
Don’t try to break off the burr with your fingernail. I have damaged some edges this way, sending me back to the coarse stones to make a new burr.
Once you have a consistent burr, there are several schools of thought on what to do next.
Leave the burr alone until the very last. Polish the bevel as high as you want to go. Then remove the remnants of the burr using your finest sharpening stone by rubbing the back of your edge against your finest stone. This strategy works quite well.
Deal with the burr on every stone during your sharpening process. So after you create the burr on your first stone, rub the back of the tool on that first stone to remove the burr. Then move to the next polishing stone. Work the bevel and then work the back on that stone. And so on. Likely you won’t be able to feel a burr created by the finer stones. Work both the bevel and the back on every stone, all the way to your finest stone. This strategy also works quite well.
Sliding the edge through softwood will remove the remnants of a fine burr.
3. After polishing the bevel, remove the remnants of the burr on the back (you might not be able to feel it) with a non-sharpening media, such as a piece of wood or your palm. This strategy is old school. You rub the bevel and back against your palm. Or you slide the edge through a piece of softwood. No surprise: This strategy works quite well.
Removing the Burr The debate on how to remove the burr has caused a few small wars in the Balkan states. Don’t fall for the fundamentalist talk on the topic. The only “wrong” way to remove the burr is when you use a soft media, such as a waterstone. You can actually mash the burr into the soft surface of the stone, break it off and embed it in the stone.
This is bad because the next time you sharpen, the broken burr will act like a piece of glass sticking out of the asphalt – it will mangle your new edge. This has happened to me. It sucks. (To avoid this problem on soft stones, begin with the back of the tool cantilevered off the stone and then pull it onto the stone. The corner of the stone will remove the burr, preventing it from embedding in the stone.)
So you might remove the burr by putting the tool’s back flat on your polishing stone and moving the tool. That works fine.
Avert your eyes! It’s the tricksy ruler trick.
Or you might prop up the back of the blade on a thin ruler so you polish only the tip of the back to remove the burr (people call this David Charlesworth’s “Ruler Trick”). While some will tell you that using the Ruler Trick will make you sterile, reduce your IQ and make toe fungus grow on your face, that’s crap. The Ruler Trick is just another way to remove the burr. It works fine.
I apologize if these entries seem to have the same pattern (you need to do this; how you do it is unimportant). But that’s exactly the same with the burr. You have to create one to get a zero-radius intersection. Then you have to remove it. How you do this is fairly unimportant.
Next up: How to polish an edge and how your particular method is unimportant.
My last attempt to escape my apparent fate as a cabinetmaker involved going back to school in the early 1990s. After graduating with a master’s degree in religious studies, I imagined it would be easier to find work that would bring me into contact with people instead of mute material, which I’d consistently found depressing in my woodworking career up to that time. Over a period of four months I sent out employment applications while taking any odd jobs I could get. It was a trying year for the would-be employed in south-central Indiana; listings in the “Help Wanted” section of the local paper included such enticements as “LOOKING FOR A CAREER WITH CHALLENGE? Parkland Pork Enterprises is seeking a Production Manager to oversee all aspects of pork production!” and “TRAIN TO BE A CHILDREN’S ETIQUETTE CONSULTANT: You will join over 600 consultants who are providing the highest quality programs in the United States and abroad.”*
I wasn’t kidding about those job ads, though I changed the names, as I did with most names throughout the book.I had a couple of interviews for office work but still had not been hired when I was called to interview for a clerical position in one of the university’s academic departments. The pay was low, but the university offered some of the best working conditions in town. I would spend my days in one of the historic campus buildings, a limestone Tudor originally constructed as a dorm. I could already see myself walking the mile and a half to work each morning, the perfect distance for a pedestrian commute, and eating my lunch of leftovers on the lawn at the center of the quadrangle. I was certainly qualified for the position. All I had to do was show my interest and enthusiasm, which were sincere. I dressed in a nice skirt and blouse and walked to campus feeling confident that this job might well be mine.
When I arrived at the office, the administrative secretary took me into a meeting room and introduced me to the chair, Professor Jameson, who was seated at the head of the table. Standing up, he shook my hand and smiled warmly. “I just had to meet you after reading your résumé,” he began. Things were looking good.
“We’re not going to hire you,” he continued. “You’re seriously overqualified. But I called you here so that I could ask you in person: Why would such a talented and accomplished personal apply for a clerical job?”–Nancy Hiller, author of Making Things Work
Hamming for my boyfriend the summer when I was desperately seeking a job.
*OK, so the real ad, shown above, said 500. This does nothing to minimize the surreal experience of finding such a gem among the job listings. And for those of you who have already read Making Things Work, I agree with you that Nancy Hiller could have learned a lot by attending that school.
With June comes summer, and the forest pretty much goes on cruise control. Everything that was happening keeps happening, and not much new happens.
American basswood (Tilia americana) is a late bloomer, literally. It blooms in the early part of June:
I had a hard time getting a photo; this is about the best I could get. (The light kept changing, and the breeze kept moving things in and out of the shadows and in and out of focus.) You can see a tongue-like bract above each cluster of flowers. These bracts are much paler than the leaves, so they stand out, even from a distance.
Here’s another June-blooming tree, this one with wild-and-crazy flowers:
It’s a chestnut, probably a Chinese chestnut (Castanea mollissima). While Chinese chestnuts (imported after the demise of the American chestnut due to chestnut blight) are common near houses, this one is growing in a semi-wild location. It’s also possible that it is a hybrid. American chestnuts (C. dentata) do still occur in Ohio, but they only grow for a couple of years before they succumb to the blight. The largest one I’ve ever seen was about five feet tall.
Here is one of the tree’s leaves:
The fact that it is very broad and almost square across at the base is what suggests that it is a Chinese chestnut; the other possibility, Japanese chestnut (C. crenata) is more rounded. American chestnut leaves are paler green, and they taper to a point at both ends.
The other trees are all done flowering, and the ones that haven’t already dropped their seeds are busy growing this season’s crop. The fruit of the American beech (Fagus grandifolia) is, of course, the beech nut (just like the baby food):
They are supposedly tasty, but I’ve never managed to find one in that period of a few microseconds between when they turn ripe and when the squirrels take all of them.
The leaves of the American beech are somewhat elm-like (see last month), but are symmetric at the base (despite the fact that this one looks asymmetric, because I couldn’t get it to lay flat):
There are many species of hickory, and they are rather confusing. There are two species that I see here in my yard. First up is shagbark hickory (Carya ovata):
Shagbark has five leaflets, and the three distal ones are teardrop-shaped and much larger than the other two. At high magnification, the margins of the leaves have little tufts of hair.
The other one in my yard is mockernut hickory (C. tomentosa), which usually has seven or nine leaflets (occasional leaves will have five or eleven):
Its leaflets are not quite as teardrop-shaped, and the size difference from one end to the other is not as dramatic. The leaf margins have a few hairs, but nothing like shagbark.
Here’s an interesting one; I took it from one of my neighbor’s trees (don’t tell her):
There are five leaflets, tapered and elliptical rather than teardrop-shaped, and there are no hairs on the leaf margins. I’m pretty sure that it’s pignut hickory (C. glabra), but it’s all but impossible to distinguish from red hickory (C. ovalis), so much so that some authorities think the two should be treated as a single species. According to one source, “It is said that the two cannot be separated ‘except with completely mature fruit collected in November.’” Well, this one has quite a few nuts on it, so maybe I’ll be able to key it out then (again, if the squirrels don’t get them all first).
In the same family as the hickories (and pecan) are the walnuts. Around here, black walnut (Juglans nigra) is common. The trees are easy to spot, with their long, pinnate leaves having between 11 and 23 leaflets, and usually an overall “droopy” appearance to the foliage:
The bark is not quite as “braided” looking as hickory, but more so than ash or tuliptree:
Butternut (J. cinerea) supposedly occurs around here, but I haven’t seen it. Butternut is in serious decline due to butternut canker, which is probably why I haven’t been able to find any. Its leaves are similar, but generally fuzzier.
There are a couple of lookalike trees (or tall shrubs) to look out for as well. Smooth sumac (Rhus glabra) is a tall, gangly shrub that’s most often seen at the very edge of the forest:
It is easily distinguished in spring by its conical clusters of cream-colored flowers, which give way by the end of June to clusters of berries:
The berries start out green, but quickly turn a deep red and persist through the winter. Staghorn sumac (R. typhina) is very similar, but less common. As you might guess, its stems are hairy and not smooth.
The tree that most resembles black walnut is a somewhat invasive alien species, tree of heaven (Ailanthus altissima)—most people just call it “ailanthus”:
It’s less droopy and usually a bit deeper green than black walnut.
Did you notice something not quite right in that last photo? The leaves at the center right are actually those of a black walnut growing next to the ailanthus:
The fruit of the ailanthus is a winged samara; it turns bright orange or red when ripe.
Of course, if you see walnuts, that’s kind of a giveaway:
Butternut fruit are more elongated, with smooth rather than pebbly skin covered in fine fuzz.
Incidentally, the name of the walnut genus, Juglans, means “Jupiter’s testicles.” I trust that I don’t need to explain how that name came about.
A close-up view of the leaves is also useful to distinguish these species. Black walnut leaflets have short petioles and finely serrated edges:
Sumac leaflets have no petioles, and somewhat more coarsely-toothed edges (sumac also exudes a very sticky, milky sap when cut):
Ailanthus leaflets have short petioles and just a few blunt teeth near the base:
You can also see on each tooth a gland that looks like a small pimple. From the underside, this is more obvious:
American hornbeam (Carpinus americana) is a tree prized for its hard, dense wood that resists splitting, perfect for tool handles. It is widespread as an understory tree in the forests around here, but for some reason I rarely see any with a trunk more than an inch or so in diameter. Its leaves are small and finely serrated:
Its fruit clusters hang down near the ends of the branches:
The related hophornbeam (Ostrya virginiana) also occurs here, but is less common, and I wasn’t able to find one with fruit. The leaves are all but identical, but the fruit looks a bit like those of hops (as in beer); hence, the name.
I’ve always thought that if a committee of circus clowns that tie balloon animals were tasked with designing a leaf, they’d come up with something like sassafras (Sassafras albidum):
Freshly-emerged leaves give off a pleasant, spicy scent when crushed. The wood gives off the same scent when cut, but the odor unfortunately fades pretty quickly. I have a few small pieces that came from a pallet (holding up a shipment of lumber from Horizon Wood Products in Pennsylvania).
Not all of the leaves have three lobes; some only have one side lobe, and others have none:
As was the case last month, wildflowers are few and far between. I found some American bellflower (Campanulastrum americanum):
This is one that I haven’t seen before. I’m pretty sure that it’s fringed loosestrife (Lysimachia ciliata), but it has some characters that look a bit more like some related species:
It didn’t help that I was out photographing these the day after the flowers were battered by very heavy rains.
Unlike the previous two, which like the edge of the woods, the smooth oxeye (Heliopsis helianthoides) can be found deep in the forest:
Read the other installments in the “Sharpen This” series viathis link.
People say that “sharp” is like pornography – you know it when you see it.
The problem with that statement is that you cannot see sharpness. When a tool is sharp, its edge becomes practically invisible to light. You can, however, see an edge when it’s dull. If you are confused by the above statements, don’t worry. By the end of this blog entry you will truly understand the difference between sharp and dull.
Let’s begin by discussing the definition of a sharp edge because it is incredibly important. Here it is: A sharp edge is two surfaces that intersect and create a zero-radius intersection.
Like many definitions, this one needs some definition. What does this mean?
Think of a chisel. Its bevel is one surface. The tool’s back is the second one. The surfaces don’t have to be flat; nor do they have to be curved. They just have to meet. Where they intersect is the edge. And when they meet at a “zero-radius intersection” you have a sharp edge.
What’s a zero-radius intersection? This is when the intersection of the two surfaces is not a radius or a rounded-over bit. Instead, in a best-case and theoretical scenario, the bevel and the back intersect and share a single line of iron atoms in a crystalline matrix with carbon. That line of particles is what wedges between the wood fibers and separates them cleanly.
That is sharp – as sharp as it gets. So what is dull?
Dull is where you have two surfaces that intersect, but their intersection is a radius or a rounded-over section. A million things could cause this radius to exist. Perhaps the maker of the tool failed to grind the two surfaces so they meet. Perhaps the two surfaces once met at a zero-radius intersection, but then the owner used the tool to do some woodworking. When you push a steel edge into the wood many times, tiny steel particles at the tip wear off, creating a rounded-over radius.
The goal of sharpening is to re-establish the zero-radius intersection.
You do this by abrading one (or both) of the surfaces until they meet again with a zero-radius. Note that this task can be done with any abrasive. A coarse abrasive will do this quickly but leave deep scratches in the edge that make it fragile. Fine abrasives will do the work slowly and you will want to take up golf.
And I repeat: Any abrasive can make an edge sharp. Fine abrasives don’t really make the edge sharper, they just make the edge more durable. But more on that topic in a future blog post.
Meet the Burr So the first goal of sharpening is to ensure you have two surfaces that meet at a zero-radius intersection. But how do you know when you have achieved it? Easy. When you create a zero-radius intersection, a magical thing happens: You create a small metal burr on the surface that isn’t being abraded.
This burr is the heart of sharpening. It is the only thing (other than an electron microscope) that will tell you that you have created a sharp edge. Once you have the burr, the edge is sharp. Polishing will refine it.
So what did I mean at the beginning of this entry when I said “you cannot see sharpness?” Easy. A radius reflects light. When you look at your chisel and see a bright line where the bevel and back meet, that’s the radius smiling back at you. It’s time to sharpen.
But when you are done sharpening, have achieved a zero-radius intersection and have removed the burr (more on that later), there is nothing that can reflect light back to your eyeball. Sharpness is invisible.
That fact is one of the great curiosities of sharpening: It is a great labor to create nothingness (cue the sitar solo, dude).
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