Here are some short updates on projects in the works at Lost Art Press.
1. “Grandpa’s Workshop” is in its final stages at the printer and should be on its way to us in the next week. Free shipping for this title will end at midnight, Friday, Sept. 28. After Friday, shipping will $7.
2. Leather editions of “Mouldings in Practice” are still at the bindery. They should be ready any day now. When they are released, copies will be $185 (which includes domestic shipping). They will be first-come, first serve.
3. Lie-Nielsen is putting the final touches on a DVD opus I filmed there last year. The four-hour (you read it right) DVD will cover how to build a Shaker side table entirely by hand. This is the Shaker side table from Issue No. 2 of Woodworking Magazine God Rest its Soul. The design is based on a table from Thomas Moser’s book on Shaker furniture.
4. This morning I head up to F+W Media to film a DVD on restoring and tuning handplanes to a very high level. I bought a Stanley No. 4 Type 11 to fix up. It should be a good DVD for those woodworkers who struggle with their planes.
As a beginner woodworker, I’m always gathering knowledge about the craft. While books have been insightful, and the Internet has been decent, nothing has taught me more than the couple of hours I spent with an old master this week.
Frank Tashiro, an American of Japanese descent, runs a small retail web site and showroom from his home in Seattle. Tashiro Hardware is a place where one can find a good selection of Japanese-style kataba and dozuki saws. This 90-year-old retired blacksmith made chisels, plane blades, knives and chains, among other things. When it comes to steel, you could say he’s got a handle on things.
With its door surrounded by bamboo, you could almost walk by his home/office without noticing the little doorstep, with “Frank Tashiro” lettered on the mailbox. He greeted me at the door and brought me in to see his wares. The front room is his showroom; the back room, his office. His full line of his saws and handles are on display boards, with merchandise organized in racks. He directed me to sit in a chair, and we small-talked for a moment. I told him I was looking for a dovetail saw. He was quick to locate a suitable specimen, then he asked me how much time I had. Because I was a stranger in town with nowhere to go that evening, my night was free.
He posed me a question, “How do you sharpen?” I responded that I used a pair of ceramic stones and free-handed things. He followed up with a, “But do you know how to sharpen things?” Indeed, I thought I knew how to sharpen, but had a feeling he would soon show me the error of my ways. Inside I was giggling like a little girl. “Sit here, in front of the workbench,” he beckoned, as he stooped to grab an old pail filled with tools. “Would you like to see how I sharpen?”
“What does it mean when we cut something?” I did my best to fumble through what I thought was correct, as he grabbed a small chalkboard to illustrate. He drew a row of dime-sized circles, and asked me to think on a molecular level about this.
“Does not the edge of the tool enter and divide the material?” He pushed a wooden wedge through his row of chalk molecules. A light came on in my mind. “Even if it is water or oil, at the moment the tool enters, it has divided the material, no?”
He explained tool edges this way: They all can be illustrated by drawing a mountain with its top lopped off, which is the tip of the tool. He drew this on his little chalkboard on the bench. Some have longer, shallow sloping sides. They are tough and last long before sharpening, but they may not cut the material as easily. (Enter and divide….) Other edges are steep and can cut well, but they may roll over or crumble at the edge.
He then demonstrated how to hold a tool at the correct angle to sharpen using simple handmade jigs. I would illustrate, but will simply say that none of his jigs have moving parts. “The most accurate method is to have no moving parts,” he emphasized. “Nobody can sharpen this better because it is based on a principle.” Another light came on for me.
On sharpening stones: He said it didn’t matter what one used. As long as you can get an edge that is too narrow to reflect light, you are sharp. His stone looked to be an ordinary oilstone. He said a great edge comes together at maybe three-ten-thousandths of an inch (.0003”), if we could measure that.
I also learned how to find square to a surface, using nothing more than a mirror. “You can even set your table saw blade or drill press square this way.” Light bulb.
He challenged me every step of the way, asking questions to make me think. I spent almost two hours mesmerized, feasting on his knowledge. What originally began as a trip to look at dovetail saws turned into a life-building experience. I was able to feel, maybe for a couple of short hours, like an apprentice learning from a dedicated master.
I asked if it would be OK if I made a recording of some of his teachings so I could refer to them later. He said that was unnecessary.
“Once you have been taught, you will know this forever.”
Whenever I teach at Roy Underhill’s The Woodwright’s School, I always spend a few hours at Ed Lebetkin’s tool store upstairs. (It’s even more tempting now because there is also a store selling wine and craft beer at the top of the stairs. Get drunk! Buy tools!)
Anyway, most of the time I’m in the store I’m helping students pick what they need from the thousands of tools Ed has in stock.
And without fail, I always buy something myself. Usually it’s just a piece to study and resell, such as an all-iron marking gauge I bought last time.
But this time, I picked up something for keeps for my tool chest – a set of four clamps that look blacksmith-made. These will replace the small, ugly and modern little clamps I’ve had for many years. We used these little antique guys all last week in the class while knocking stock down for the tool chest we were building. They are sweet.
Perhaps my kids will get F-style clamps in their stockings this Christmas….
At long last I’ve found my favorite pieces of hardware for the Schoolbox in “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker.” It only took me about 10 tries.
The hardware shown in the photos is from Horton Brasses. (Yes, I paid full retail. As always.) It consists of some heart-shaped iron chest lifts (CL-5S) and a pair of iron butt hinges (HF-30).
Both pieces of hardware are worth the price. The hinges have thin leaves and give you a tight seal at the back without any swaging. And they have nice facets on the barrels and some file work on the edges of the leaves.
The lifts have a lot of the same details.
I added both to a walnut version of the Schoobox I built earlier this month at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking while teaching a class on traditional joinery. This week, I hope to finish up the project.
While I have a Benchcrafted end vise on my workbench, I still have a soft spot in my heart for homebrew wagon vises.
I started with a lame homemade wagon vise I made from a veneer press screw. Then I made a better one using a tail vise screw on my Nicholson workbench. Then I “perfected” that one by reworking it a bit – a story I still need to write up for the blog some day.
But last week I saw Will Myers’ homemade wagon vise. His is better.
He put the wagon vise on a near copy of a portable Moravian workbench in the collection at Old Salem in Winston-Salem, N.C. I wrote about this bench here. The original Moravian bench didn’t have a tail vise, so Myers concocted his own using a left-hand-thread Acme rod, some nuts, pipe and other assorted bits he welded together. It’s remarkably simple and works remarkably well.
He brought his bench by The Woodwright’s School last Thursday for the students to examine and use for the afternoon while he settled up some business with Ed Lebetkin in the tool store upstairs.
The bench itself is fantastic, built using common or reclaimed materials, yet with a furniture-maker’s eye and hand. The wood selection and joinery were superb.
I’m not going to yammer much about the bench because Will has done this for me by publishing an extensive article on its construction – including the making of the wagon vise – at WKFineTools.com. Check out the entire article here.
