We’re starting to pack up for the Handworks event in Amana, Iowa, this weekend. If you are attending, here are some of the things we’re bringing to sell at the event (in addition to a selection of our books).
1. H.O. Studley T-shirts. The screen printing is complete (whew) and they look great. They are a light grey, 100-percent-cotton American Apparel shirt – made in the USA, of course. The front features a stylized image of the engraved nameplate that Studley attached to his tool chest. The back features the title of the forthcoming book from Don Williams.
We will bring sizes medium to XXL. Price: $20. We will offer these for sale in our online store after we return home from Handworks.
2. H.O. Studley Register Calipers. Inspired by the calipers in the Studley chest, these are machined from brass. Studley’s were steel with some sort of plating. We had 50 of these made for us. Price $45. These will be one to a customer and will be offered first-come, first-serve starting when the show opens on Friday.
We’ve had many readers urge us to make more and sell them in our store, but I’m afraid that is not going to happen. We have no desire to get into the tool-making business. This is a special one-time event. We hope that another toolmaker will produce this tool for sale to the general public.
We take Visa, MasterCard and cash.
Hope to see you there. Our livers are trembling in fear.
Now you can read about all things Don by visiting donsbarn.com – the web site of Don Williams. For those of you who aren’t frequent visitors here, Don is the mastermind behind the A.J. Roubo translations and the author of the forthcoming book on H.O. Studley.
He’s a former conservator for the Smithsonian and expert on all things waxy and shellac-y.
His new site will feature lots of the public-domain articles he wrote while at the Smithsonian, plus a blog on the things that go on at his extremely huge barn and a store for buying some of the things he makes – like the polissoirs from Roubo.
So bookmark the site, add it to your reader and enjoy the articles that are already there. Don says more are forthcoming.
We finished up work today on a special H.O. Studley T-shirt design for the Handworks event on May 24-25, and we ordered enough to sell them here on the web site.
The shirts will be heather gray, 100-percent cotton and from American Apparel – just like all our shirts. On the front is a stylized image of H.O. Studley’s signature from the metal plate on his impressive tool chest. On the back is the name of the forthcoming book “Virtuoso: The Toolbox of Henry O. Studley” plus our logo. We’ve substituted Studley’s register calipers in the place of our corporate compass.
The shirts will be $20 each and will be available in sizes between medium and 2XL.
As with all products in our store, these shirts are made entirely in the United States.
Today, Don Williams, John Hoffman and I wrapped up the third of what will probably be five or six photo shoots for Virtuoso: The Toolbox of Henry O. Studley. The difficulties in one of these shoots begin with scheduling – Chris, John and I all have demanding day jobs and kids at home, leaving us with few mutually available days or weekends. And unsurprisingly, “retirement” for Don actually means spending longer and busier days working on the dozens of exciting projects he has lined up for himself. So we have to schedule months ahead of time. Because Chris is in Australia, John stood in as photo assistant.
Whereas our first trip was a scouting survey of the chest and tools and our second a documentary session for specific tools and tool groupings, on this trip I was able to split time between documentary and “creative” photography. Don, Chris and I are preparing for the Studley talk at Handworks this May, where some of the work that is going into the book will be making its public debut. Chris will be speaking about the tools in the chest and their use. For this, thanks to our earlier trips, we already have more than enough photography. In addition to offering a project overview and a history of the chest, Don will be speaking at length about the vises on the Studley bench. So on this trip I spent the better part of a day shooting the bench, its vises, and all their details (there are many!) to make sure Don has what he needs for his portion of the talk.
I will be speaking at Handworks on the photographic process and aesthetic details of the Studly tool chest. And believe me – the hardest challenge of the shoot this weekend was figuring out how to capture in two dimensions just a small fraction of my favorite details. We already have many “documentary” shots, but the kind of strange camera angles and dramatic lighting I allow myself in this more artsy approach accentuates some surfaces and diminishes others, lending visual depth to some of Studley’s aesthetic flourishes which doesn’t necessarily come across in “straight” photography. Partway through this process I mentioned in passing that the Studley chest is a woodworking fractal – you can take any portion of it, look closer, and find even more detail.
Below are some shots from this trip. They are but a small number from our bucket-o-favorites; we’re saving more of our top picks for the talk in May and of course for the book. Last I heard, Handworks is already nearing “standing room only” capacity. This may actually be a good thing – when Handworks attendees become as short of breath as the Virtuoso team becomes every single time we see the Studley toolchest, it’ll help imensely to have someone to lean on. On the other hand, there will be more drool to clean up. Have fun with that, Jameel.
For much of the past week I have been traipsing around New England doing research and photography for the late-2014 book “Virtuoso: The Tool Cabinet and Workbench of Henry O. Studley.” More precisely, I was tracking down the four known bench vises with similarity to the two exquisite examples on Studley’s bench. (To understand fully the import of this trip, consider that 1) I dislike travel, 2) I was skirting blizzards the whole trip, and 3) my perception as a native of Flyover Country is that anything north and east of the Schuykill River is noted on maps with the warning, “Danger! Thar Bee Dragons”).
My first stop in this trek was at the home of famed ironmonger Patrick Leach, whose Blood & Gore site emits his monthly e-mail dose of vintage tool addiction. Most of you have parted with lucre in Patrick’s direction, and spending a few hours with him was an unmitigated pleasure. The workbench in his office holds two vises similar on the outside but distinct on the inside compared to Studley’s vises. One fascinating modification of Studley’s vises is the (retrofitted?) inclusion of a moving, housed dog on the end vise. Still, the similarities lead to some intriguing speculations.
Next I met with Tim Cottle for breakfast in southern Maine after he drove a couple of hours from his lair upstate. Tim acquired his vise in a swap with a neighbor who received four shop light fixtures in return. I offered to double his investment, but he declined with very little deliberation. Cottle’s vise is especially important to my inquiries as it is the only one of the six that is currently not attached to a bench, and Tim’s passion about the project led him to loan it to me for detailed study. The mechanism of his vise appears to be identical to Studley’s, and it only has one jaw, the movable one. I need to triple check very closely to make sure Studley’s vises are the same on my next visit later this month.
Finally, I spent some time in the well-organized shop of Dan Santos out on Cape Cod. He has a bench vaguely similar to Leach’s, with only the face vise remaining and the end vise missing. While the overall form and function are identical to the vises on Studley’s bench, there are some idiosyncrasies. The largest difference is the dovetailed ways for the moving carriage with the single jaw, with the rear unmovable jaw being a metal plate affixed to the bench. Santos’s vise is so finely tuned that a simple twist of the massive wagonwheel causes the jaw to move several inches simply on the inertia of the wheel, clamping a workpiece firmly based solely on that.
The vises in the aggregate are tantalizing, both for their similarities and their differences. It is clear that the general form was known in the piano-making trade, yet these are four distinct interpretations of that form. Admittedly, a sample set of six is hardly statistically valid, but they are 100 percent of the known iterations. They are all roughly the same size, they all have massive ~9 pound wagonwheels, they all have ~1 Acme-thread screws. Yet, four of the six have sliding platen/carriage construction, while two have round ways to guide the moving jaw. And the jaw profiles are not the same and the dimensions of the jaws – especially in thickness – vary widely, from about 1/2” thick to well over 1”.
Leach told me that Leominster, Mass., was once a thriving piano case-building city, and he speculates that these vises may have been built in the piano factories themselves based on a well-established form. It makes sense especially given the character of the wheels and screws, but given the number of piano factories producing astonishing numbers of pianos (c. 1900 it seems like nearly every household in America aspired to have a keyboard instrument of some kind) why are there only six of these beauties around? You would think that there would be more, many more. He recalls that the scrap metal drives of the two world wars melted down a lot of historic iron.
I became so impressed with the beauty and effortless precision of the vises on Studley’s workbench that I revised the book outline to include a chapter on them. Further, I have been fabricating foundry patterns for them and hope to have at least the patterns at Handworks in Amana, Iowa, and if I get lucky with time, perhaps an aluminum prototype. I also expect we will have Cottle’s vise at Amana. Eventually I will have a pair cast for me in bronze (except for the thread screw) and if the planets align, turn the patterns over to Jameel Abraham of Benchcrafted for manufacturing.
Over the weekend I was lecturing and teaching for the Society of American Period Furniture Makers’ New England Chapter and the Connecticut Valley School of Woodworking, including updates on the half dozen books I have in progress. Afterward, three attendees approached me with information about similar vises they either owned or knew about, and I invited them to send me pictures and written description and accounts. I extend the same invitation to you via the comments below.
