I am not shy about my love of my Blue Spruce chisel roll. Not only is it exactly what I want and need in a chisel roll, it’s also made by Dave Jeske’s daughter Hannah.
Last time Hannah broke out her sewing machine and made chisel rolls, it was to raise money for a school trip. This time, she’s more ambitious: She is helping fund her college costs. Hannah is a double major in communications and theater and “hopes to be on Broadway someday,” Jeske says.
So now is the time to order. The chisel and marking tool rolls are now live on the Blue Spruce web site here. There are four sizes of chisel rolls and three for marking tools. They are well-made, durable and lightweight. I carry mine everywhere I travel – it has seen more wacky hotels than my family members. And when the rolls are gone, they are gone (until Hannah comes back from school perhaps).
By the way, Jeske didn’t ask me to write this blog entry. He’s too low-key. When Jeske and I were hanging out at the Lie-Nielsen Open House last weekend the topic came up. I insisted on a public service announcement.
Joiners, green-woodworkers, chairmakers, et al: Your “where-can-I-get-a-good-froe” problems are solved.
Some people like old tools, some like new tools. Some use both. For years, I have used old blacksmith-made froes. It requires some good luck to find old examples that aren’t massive and heavy. The froe really is a finesse tool, not a brute-force tool. That’s a deceptive concept for something that you hit with a large wooden club.
Many years ago, Drew Langsner needed a number of froes for his students at his green woodworking school, Country Workshops. Getting frustrated trying to line up a bunch of antique froes that would all work about the same, Drew set about to make a new froe. Having split and rived stock for decades, Drew analyzed what really happens with the leverage forces when using a froe. He then designed a tool that looks a little funny at first, but it works like a charm. There is a reason for its appearance.
Drew has studied exactly what happens when you twist the froe blade in the split, and based on his research, he developed a froe with a smaller blade than many antique examples. And this is really a situation in which bigger is not really better. His froe has a blade that is even in thickness, (not wedge-shaped) has convex bevels and is narrower from top to bottom than many old froes. In addition, the eye is not tapered like most, but cylindrical. This allows a tight-fitting turned handle, now fastened in place with a washer and lag bolt. Jennie Alexander adopted this froe as soon as Drew began making them, and never used another.
After years of making these froes himself, Drew has teamed up with the folks at Lie-Nielsen Toolworks and now the Langsner froe is in production in Maine. What you get is a tool that is designed by a world-class master of riving, and produced by a company known for its attention to detail and high standards of production. The larger froe show in the video is $85. The small basketmakers’ froe is $75. The tools should be available on the lie-nielsen.com website soon. Or call them to order one.
I’ve been using one for 2-1/2 months now, and I am a convert. Because of its relatively thin blade, this froe enters the stock with a minimum of force. Thus you can begin levering sooner, before the tool has really split the stock way ahead of itself. The smaller blade also helps in this regard, putting you in control of the split more readily. It is also very lightweight, another plus. Don’t worry that it doesn’t look old-timey, this froe is ready to make halves of halves of halves… .
After years of publishing woodworking information, you often hear that there is nothing new in the craft. Everything has been done before, written before and fully figured out.
I used to believe that was true, until I read the manuscript that was to become “Mouldings in Practice” by Matthew Sheldon Bickford. This books explains how to make mouldings in a simple way that I have never ever encountered – either in print or from an instructor.
The book turns a set of complicated mouldings into a series of predictable rabbets and chamfers that guide your hollow and round planes to make anything – anything – that has been made in the past or that you can envision for your future projects.
During the last several months, we had many proofreaders edit this book and the universal reaction was much like this:
“Well crap. Now I want to buy some of these stupid planes.”
During the past 14 months, Matt and I have been working to make “Mouldings in Practice” into a book that is accessible for even the beginning hand-tool woodworker. It uses more than 200 color illustrations and dozens of photos to explain how to lay out, prepare for and cut any moulding you can draw.
The first half of the book is focused on how to make the tools function, including the tools that help the hollow and round planes – such as the plow and the rabbet. Matt also covers snipes bills and side rounds so you know their role in making mouldings. Once you understand how rabbets and chamfers guide the rounds and chamfers, Matt shows you how to execute the mouldings for eight very sweet Connecticut River Valley period projects using photos and step-by-step illustrations and instruction.
The book has a full index by Suzanne Ellison (the saucy indexer for “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest”), plus appendices on fixing up old moulding planes, building a sticking board and how to capture moulding profiles in the wild.
This book is, by far, the most complex thing we have published here at Lost Art Press, thanks to the hundreds of illustrations, photographs and geometry involved. Like all our books, “Mouldings in Practice” has been produced entirely in the United States. It has color illustrations with black-and-white photos, and it is printed on #60 white uncoated and acid-free paper. The pages are Smythe sewn to last a long time. And the book is hardbound and covered with cotton. Old school.
You can buy the book now for $37 with free domestic shipping from now until the book arrives from the Michigan printing plant in early August. After the book arrives in our warehouse (read, basement) the book will be $37 plus shipping.
As a bonus, everyone who orders this book through Lost Art Press will also receive an instant download of E.J. Warne’s book “Furniture Mouldings.” We acquired an excellent copy of this hard-to-find book and created a top-notch scan. The book is a collection of full-scale mouldings from historic furniture pieces. It is the perfect companion to “Mouldings in Practice.”
After you check out you’ll get a link to download Warne’s book.
If you subscribe to modern theories of wood movement, then most of the six-boards chests out there should have exploded into a pile of splinters, lace doilies and purple heart medals.
They are, after all, the platypus of the woodworking world. They shouldn’t exist with all their crazy cross-grain construction, nails, poisonous fangs and wide solid-wood panels. But yet, there they are – in almost every museum, attic and Americana collection.
For the last couple years I’ve been collecting data, photos and crazy ideas about pieces both antique and new that I call “The Furniture of Necessity.” And the six-board chest has been a particular source of fascination for me.
I’ve built several of these chests before, but always with the machinery mindset guiding my hand. All the panels had to be square. All the ends shot straight. All the joinery referenced off these machinist-like edges.
I can almost guarantee you that is not how these chests were built originally.
And when I write “decode,” I’m talking about the step-by-step procedures that were used to build them entirely by hand. It starts, like every good story (Kon-tiki!), with some ideas and some big trees.
Here are some basic ideas I’m exploring while building a few of these chests:
1. Did the design flow from the width of the boards available? If so, what would be the approach you would use to make a chest with, say, a 17”-wide board?
2. How were the boards cut to length and width in the shop to make the most of the material and use up the minimum amount of wood?
3. What were the steps to ensure that there was the absolute minimum ripping and fussy tweaking required to get all the pieces to the correct size?
4. How were these chests assembled with the minimum number of tools? How were they done without shooting boards?
5. How were the chests assembled to make it easy for one woodworker to do it alone?
6. Why would the maker choose certain features and joints exhibited on different kinds of chests? Some have rabbets. Some have dados. Some have notched ends.
I don’t expect to come up with definitive answers, but I do have some interesting theories to test as I build these chests with the minimum number of tools, operations and time at hand. And you’ll get to follow along. Next week I’m going to build one of these chests for a new forthcoming DVD from Lie-Nielsen Toolworks that will explore these ideas and – I hope – show how durable and beautiful furniture can be built with a handful of tools and a short amount of time.
