If you weren’t at my “60-minute Sawbench Class” yesterday at Woodworking in America, this download might not make total sense to you.
But as promised, below are the illustrated directions for cutting the compound angles on the legs of the sawbench. Plus there’s a tool list and a materials list for the sawbench I built during the class.
Two things I forgot to mention during the presentation:
1. Hammer the points of your nails to blunt them before driving them in. This will reduce the fir’s tendency to split.
2. If you have some woodworking machines handy, Take a few extra minutes to dress the dimensional stock to remove the ugly rounded corners. The sawbench will look much nicer.
Blacksmith Phil Koontz has decided to get out of the business of making holdfasts.
In my book, it’s a sad decision. Phil was one of the very few people who made holdfasts for anyone anywhere on the globe and was 100-percent reliable all of the time.
While unnamed ironmongers were making “holdfasts” that didn’t cinch down or broke under mild hammer pressure, Phil made holdfasts that bit your work like a ticked-off cobra. They were the first holdfasts I owned that really worked.
Why is he leaving the business? I’ll let Phil speak:
“I have decided to stop selling (holdfasts). I wanted you to be one of the first to know. Last winter I had a big rush on orders around Christmas, partly as a result of your very kind video evaluation of Megan Fitzpatrick’s holdfasts. Christmas seems to be the busy season for holdfasts anyway, and I have just decided that I’m not up to a lot of blacksmithing this winter.
“It’s a bit awkward that I really stocked up on steel last summer during barge season, so I don’t know quite what I’m going to do with 500 feet of 11/16″ bar stock, but I’m sure something will turn up.”
If you are one of the hundreds of people who dealt with Phil during the last decade, I know you will wish him well in his future Alaskan endeavors. And if you are one of those people who put off buying a pair of his fantastic holdfasts, sorry about your luck.
Here in Cincinnati, we are the source of the problem. But we might also be part of the solution.
With Woodworking in America looming next month here in greater Cincinnati, I’ve been thinking a lot about this city’s long and mixed history in the woodworking trade. It’s a history that is ignored or unknown to many of its citizens, and yet what happened here in Queen City had repercussions (good and bad) all over the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries.
If you are coming to Cincinnati in November for Woodworking in America, you’ll likely drive over or see many of these important places and not even know it. There are no plaques or walking tours for these places. And yet, I’ll sometimes stand on 4th Street downtown a bit impressed when I think about what happened there.
During the next few weeks leading up to Woodworking in America, I’ll be providing snapshots of a few of these important places. But first, a list of the sins and virtues (as I see them) of the greater Cincinnati area.
Sins The China of the 19th Century: Cincinnati was one of the first Midwest cities to fully embrace steam-powered machinery in about 1844. As a result, according to Donald C. Peirce’s history, the city was a huge exporter of furniture all over the country. So cheap were the goods from Cincinnati that local cabinetmakers all up and down the Mississippi could not compete.
Among the leading factories was Mitchell and Rammelsberg. Never heard of them? Not surprising. Most people haven’t. But the company employed 600 people in 1870 and was so large it had a dormitory for 250 workers and a 15,000-square-foot showroom for wares (the factory was even bigger). The furniture would not please many woodworkers. Some might even call it the stuff that killed an appreciation of quality.
We Helped Kill the Cut Nail: In 1875, Father Goebel, a Catholic priest, settled in Covington, Ky., and set up the American Wire and Screw Nail Co., according to “Audel’s Carpenter’s Guide.” Though wire nails had been made in this country since about 1851, this factory drove the wire nails into the coffin of the cut nail.
Virtues The Greene Brothers: Charles and Henry Greene were born here. Technically, it was in a town (Brighton, on the west side) that no longer exists but was absorbed by Cincinnati. I’ve looked for the house using land records and can’t find it. The maps are a bit messed up. And if it weren’t for the Gambles (of Procter and Gamble fame here) we wouldn’t have the Gamble House in Pasadena, Calif.
Machinery and Tools: Cincinnati was a major center for manufacturing woodworking machinery and supplies. J.A. Fay and Egan were here (they were huge). Parks Machinery. Cincinnati Tool Co. – a worldwide supplier of high-quality clamps. Woodrow & McParlin (makers of the Panther saw). And on and on. I’ve seen a list of about 150 machinery manufacturers that have operated here.
Shop of the Crafters: During the Arts & Crafts movement, Cincinnati contributed Rookwood Pottery and the Shop of the Crafters. Everyone has heard of Rookwood, but Shop of the Crafters produced a line of highly original designs that had European flair and weren’t just knock-offs of Stickley stuff. I have an original Shop of the Crafters Morris chair in my living room.
Art Carving: During the late 19th century the city became a center for teaching carving – particularly to women – who would come here for classes from famous English carvers. There’s an entire book about this phenomenon, but if you want most of the story, this Chipstone article will fill you in.
There’s more, of course. You have to learn about Henry Boyd, a former slave who patented his cool “swelled rail” bedsteads. And Gorilla Glue is here. As is Millers Falls….
People gripe about my plans for sawbenches. They require too many tools, skills or shop time to complete. These are not baseless complaints: The first sawbench I built incorporated drawbored and wedged through-tenons. It’s an awesome beast that will never die, but it is a tad difficult to build if you don’t own a shop or a workbench.
So during the last five years I’ve simplified their construction, shortened the must-have tool list and made them quick to build. And I’ve done this without sacrificing their functional characteristics.
This weekend at Woodworking in America in Pasadena, Calif., I’ll be building a couple of these sawbenches and giving them away. The parlor trick is that I’ll be building them in 60 minutes or less. I hope.
During the last week I’ve built four of these sawbenches to refine their construction details. These sawbenches have legs with a compound splay, but all the layout is done with a steel square. If you can identify the numbers 5 and 21, then you can do the geometry.
The hardest part of building these sawbenches was making my tools work with the construction-grade lumber. My handsaw is tuned for dry hardwoods. How do you then cut wet softwoods without jamming your saw? (I found the trick. It’s cutting geometry, of course). Plus, I had to figure out how to do everything with one saw, one plane and no real workbench. This sawbench can be built on a kitchen countertop with the help of two 5-gallon buckets. (Thanks to Mike Siemsen for a tip on that.)
I’ll share more details of this project after I survive Woodworking in America. I still have to get all my presentations for the conference complete before I get on a plane Thursday.
We’re starting to stitch and ship out the latest run of Roorkhee chairs to customers. This one – bound for Virginia – is in “Crazy Horse” leather with stitched seams and copper rivets at the ends of the seams.
For the record, no horses were injured in the making of this chair. Cows – not so much.
In addition to stitching this chair and using copper rivets, we made another alteration – we doubled up the leather on the arm straps. I’ve seen it both ways on historical chairs – one-ply and two-ply. I like the doubled-up stuff. So if you are making one for yourself, you might make a sample arm strap to see which you prefer.
The Crazy Horse leather is from Brettuns Village in Maine. It is excellent stuff. Tough. And it comes already dyed and finished. The biggest bonus is it is grippier than the smooth vegetable-tanned leather we use. So if you happen to pass out in the chair (with or without alcohol) you are less likely to slide to the floor in a pool of awkward drool.
