Mike Siemsen at the Mike Siemsen School of Woodworking in Minnesota has agreed to put on a low-cost hand-tool immersion course in June 2016 that is based directly on the two classes I ran in 2015 for new woodworkers who are 35 and younger.
The class will run June 13-17. Attendees will camp and cook on his farm property (just like the class at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking). Also good to know: Mike has bathrooms and showers. The cost is an amazingly low $450 for the week. That includes materials and the camping (bring your own tent). If you are 35 or younger, you cannot beat this week-long experience as a way to get started.
Attendees will be fixing up tools, learning about sharpening and building the same tool chest we built at the New English Workshop in Bridgwater, England, and at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking. I’ve given all my teaching materials to Mike, and it will essentially be the same class, only in a Minnesota accent.
Sign up quick. Here’s the link. Or send an e-mail directly to Mike to secure your place at mike@schoolofwood.com.
Mike is an outstanding woodworker, a great teacher, funny as hell and crazy generous to be doing this. He has an outstanding shop for this sort of thing and a beautiful farm for camping.
As with the other classes, we would love to have your help getting tools and/or cash donations to help outfit the students. Mike has already had offers of people volunteering to assist him during the class – and he could use a few more assistants. I’ll discuss the tools the students need in a future blog post.
Thanks to Mike for picking up the torch on this important way to give the next generation of woodworkers a fast start.
LUCKY WINNER
Boy… the lucky person who wins this tool chest is going to get a treat. Not only a great historic chest made by Chris Schwarz. This one of the very last chests he is making with students for the foreseeable future. Chis is now going into a period away from the classes, doing new work, writing and research, and I wish him good luck; we were very fortunate to get him to come to Rowden this summer.
Not only that, but she gets a whole chest FULL of tools chosen by us here at Rowden with Chris giving input on the side AND a signed hardbound copy of “The Anarchist Tool Chest.” You have heard of that book haven’t you ?? If you haven’t go get it NOW.
There are people out there that YOU know WORLDWIDE. They are 25 or under and busting a gut to become a great maker. It is your job to get them to win this chest of tools ENTER HERE They would need to be able to come to Rowden for a week if they reached the final. We will pay their expenses whilst they are here as our guests but air flights are down to them. Also shipping this baby home if you win.
Measuring Out Tools. Beware the Traitor in the Camp I have put a selection of rules in the tool box. They cannot be too long in the shop most of have three rules: one metre, either a 600mm or a 300 mm, and usually a 150mm. In Imperial measure that would be 3’ rule 12” and 6”. Boy, that was a brain ache. I haven’t thought in Imperial measure for 30 years. They can be almost any brand. The ones shown here are Axminster Power Tools own brand and Rabone.
I have been using Rabone measuring rules all my life, but they are no better that many others. What I tend to council is choose one brand that you like and get your set of three or four rules in the same brand. THEN CHECK THE SUCKERS. Make sure they ALL tell the same measure, check ‘em real carefully; we have binned or returned 10 percent of rules that have passed through Rowden.
Straightedges Top of the photo above is our straightedge. This is an essential piece of kit. A really good 600mm straight edge from Starrett costs an arm, leg and part of your wedding tackle. This is a cheap but not very straight straightedge from Axminster Power Tools. The blade of this edge is tapered to a thin profile SOOO… there is not a great deal of work to get it really straight. (Jon Greenwood, thank you.) Take a really flat surface, we have a granite slab, and wet and dry paper #1,280 grit and carefully, rub then check, rub then check.
Squares I did have a passion for engineers squares in the 1980s. This was when it was common to see very inaccurate wooden stocked squares in workshops. Now we are making our own wooden squares as teaching exercises!
This image below shows common squares in my tool box. It used it be possible to buy guaranteed squares to BS 939 ( for the Americans amongst you that is British Standard, not what you are thinking!) Now we cannot get these as easily so all kinds of inaccurate squares are coming into Rowden. My answer is Starrett. This great American engineering company has been making reliable squares and measuring tools for as long as i can remember. Which is a damn long time, dear boy! I have taken to the adjustable square. This is because it is that much more useful than the fixed square, and, being well made, is accurate enough. We keep one serious square that is not used, or dropped, that is “Workshop Standard.” All squares are checked against this now and again, Daren keeps it hidden.
The maker who wins this will be assembling a small collection of squares, the square I have bought to start this collection is the Starrett 12” below, which is a great tool and one I want myself.
Last but not least this is one of the squares that we will be seeing a lot more of at Rowden. It will be one of the first things a new student makes: two nice mahogany squares, one large one small, with hard-wearing maple work strips. I am taking more and more to light wooden tools as I get older. The benefit of these is they can be relatively easily trued square if they go out of whack.
David Savage delivered a fire-and-brimstone lecture to the students in his Rowden workshop on the business of the craft during tea one morning and then left the bench room with a flourish.
One of the students turned to me and asked: “Are all British craftsmen this eccentric?”
I didn’t know how to reply at first. Later that day, however, the answer came to me: Actually, all really good instructors are like that.
During my two weeks at Rowden in the deepest, darkest Devon, I got to interact with a type of woodworking student that is rare these days: the long-term pupil who wants to make a living at the craft and has invested his or her last cent to pay for the instruction.
You might expect them to be 100-percent joyful to get to work under such expert tutelage for six days a week over 12 months. But that’s not exactly what I encountered.
Instead I saw the same wariness, skepticism and frustration that I experienced while training as a newspaper journalist at Northwestern University. During my four years, I nearly despised my instructors and still call my torturers by name 25 years later. Roger Boye. David Nelson. Richard Schwarzlose. Leland “Buck” Ryan.
They seemed to delight in trashing my work, telling me I should drop out and never offering a word of praise during four hard years.
As it turns out, they were giving me an education that I couldn’t appreciate until I’d left the school and worked professionally. They knew something: The writing business chews people up, and the only way to survive is to be the best – both technically and ethically.
You can’t deliver those sorts of lessons to hobbyists during a one-week class. It’s a miracle that my students had the drive to work 50 hours straight on some mind-bending piece of woodwork. I couldn’t beat them up because I was just so grateful that they cared enough to attend.
So what about the hard lessons? Who will deliver them?
In my shop, it’s me. Nothing is good enough unless it’s better than what I’ve done before. I sharpen my eye for good work by visiting museums and furniture exhibitions. So I have to raise my own bar and jump over it.
Most days I wish David Nelson were in my shop telling me my work was like a puddle of dog urine. I could then seethe and fantasize about putting Nair in his jockstrap.
But those sorts of fantasies aren’t so healthy when you are both the torturer and the victim.
Can you help us Find a WINNER? Go here. I have just been fitting the handles to my own new tool chest. Near the end of the job, fitting components with screws is satisfying and tricky. One slip and the surface is scarred. Overtighten and the screw head is burred or worse it snaps off. Done well, it depends on preparation, good pilot holes, choice of screws and screwdriver.
There are dozens of screwdrivers in my box, gathered over the years they are used for a multitude of indelicate tasks. Opening tins of paint is a favourite. Yet a really good screwdriver should be very carefully fitted to the screw head. Do this well and it will sit in the head of the screw, gain purchase and drive the so and so home with no damage to the job or the screw head. Happy days.
This is the head of a well prepared screwdriver see how the worn end is reground to exactly fit the slot and see the two small chamfers on either side of the blade this is to suit the width of the screw head, stopping it projecting beyond the chamfered screw head and scuffing the countersink in the job
This is the set of screwdrivers we have picked to go in the cabinet that Chris Schwarz made and Jon Greenwood has prepared. They are cabinetmaker style handles in beech; boxwood would have been posher but it has no effect on the job.
There is another class of screwdriver that is maybe better than these. these are gunsmith screwdrivers. Here the blade is not tapered as in the blades above but parallel where they fit the screw. So, more contact with the screw but more expense. The blades above came off eBay and with a small amount of work from Jon Greenwood will be usable for years. Just remember all screwdrivers get worn out just now and again, so dress the end to fit the screw you are using.
These screwdrivers are for slotted screws. We found a nice set of Posi drivers from DeWalt that will be arriving soon for more general work. These cost us about £16 from one of the sheds.
A lot of trouble with Posi drivers is again that they get worn, and rather than pick a new one out of the box we bash on with the job, burring over screw heads. So this little set will enable our young Woody to help avoid that. Many of us at Rowden have taken to using a small cordless drill to do all the small screw driving around the shop.
I would like to put one of these drivers in the box as well but I don’t think we have one spare. Though this is a hand tool box I think we all use these now pretty well all the time.
Remember folks these tools are going into a tool box made by Chris and being GIVEN away in a competition. Closing date is end of November. You must be under 25, a Woody or would-be Woody. Write to me tell me why we should give it to you and send some images – that’s all it takes. Here are the details. PASS IT ON PLEASE
Can You Help us Find a Winner? Chris Schwarz came here this summer and made this wonderful tool chest. He sells these in America for $4,000 which is a pretty fair price. We are offering this chest a s prize to a young talented woodworker full of tools and with an all expenses paid trip to Rowden for a one week course (this will be for the finalists). Entries close Nov. 30, 2015. MORE DETAILS HERE and pass it on.
All they have to do is send me a short paragraph about themselves and why they make and a file of images of what they have made. Anyone 25 or under. I am not restricting this to UK, but finalists would need to get to Devon for the week course and would need to get the tools chest home if they won.
What Tools go in that Tool Chest? Today and over next few weeks we are going to look at the tools we are putting into this chest and why. The aim will be to fill the chest with either new or secondhand, quality tools. Many will come from my own tool collection or from Rowden toolboxes or, maybe, from donations. What I can’t find here I will ask other makers to help donate and what is left we will buy. Maybe one or two tool sellers and manufacturers are going to be asked to contribute a specific tool that we cannot supply ourselves.
Chisels This will be controversial. Well, this is an English tool chest and I wanted Sheffield steel chisels. I could have gone for Ashley Iles chisels, which are very popular in Rowden. But I didn’t. I could have gone for Lie-Nielsen carbon steel chisels, but they are American and I get the message from my students that one member of the staff is pushing the A2 chisels as being just as good as O1 steel.
Well, after 40 odd years doing this I would disagree. O1 carbon steel takes a sharper edge than A2. This modern A2 is great above 30°. It is also great for the amateur who does not sharpen every day as it holds the 30° edge for a long time. But a bench chisel is not just for battering with a mallet.
At Rowden we grind at 25° and hone at UP TO 30° (without the training wheels). The advice we give is that once 30° is reached, regrind to 25°. Then you can pare and chop with the same blade. Above 30° you can only chop. I have a mixture of pre-1960 Marples chisels and Japanese chisels in my own tool chest and I have bought the blades shown on eBay for my own students. The steel is hot forged, not cold fabricated. This makes it, I believe, a carbon steel better than O1, which is the modern high carbon steel.
So I have gathered a mixed set of Marples and Sorby blades plus a very nice thin-bladed paring chisel that I have had for 20 years. You can see from the existing Marples labels two or three of them are hardly run in, let alone used. Most have boxwood handles and the narrow neck that defines the period of Sheffield steel that I am talking about – pre-1960.
I use Japanese paring chisels, so this lovely paring chisel will go in the chest. It’s a really beautiful tool: thin bladed, forged steel, as hard as it comes and sweetly shaped by an expert. Jon Greenwood, bless him, is tasked with the problem of flattening the backs of these blades and grinding and honing a perfect edge. Ready for work.
Next screwdrivers, then marking and measuring, then maybe planes. We are really stuck with the saws!
