Today for our Open Wire session we have Joshua Klein, the founder of Mortise & Tenon Magazine, as our host. Joshua and his crew are as hardworking as they come. And so we were surprised when he volunteered to spend a Saturday answering reader questions.
Here’s how it works. Ask your question in the comments below. And Josh will post his response.
The comments will close for this post about 5 p.m. Eastern.
— Christopher Schwarz
The $50 introductory price of the “Video: Make a Gibson Chair with Christopher Schwarz” ends as of June 18; on Monday, June 19, the price will be $75.
Gibsons are quite unlike the other stick chairs Chris makes. And he has devised novel ways to use cheap lasers to make your life easier when building them (meaning you don’t have to build a lot of complicated jigs).
Chris and I spent a lot of May 2023 filming the process, condensing it into a video that:
This chair is a good first chair. Yes, it’s a bit angular. But you can do it. You just have to commit.
This 3-hour video includes all the videos and all the drawings and patterns. All free of DRM (Digital Rights Management) so you can put the video on your laptop, iPad, phone and desktop with no restrictions.
You can read more about it here and order it if you like. After June 18, the price will be $75 forever.
I am almost out of bog oak. If I’m lucky, I’ll get two more chairs after this one from the stock I purchased with my friend Andy Brownell.
This seven-stick-comb-back is set up as an armchair – perfect for relaxing by the fire.
Here are some statistics: The seat tilts back 4°, and the back tilts 12° back from the seat. The seat is 17” off the floor and is 16” deep. There is 19” between the arms. The chair’s overall height is 40”. My chairs are compact but strong. If you can fit between the arms, the chair will hold you just fine.
Like all my chairs, the joints are assembled with hide glue and oak wedges, so the joints are strong but can be easily repaired by future generations. The bog oak is finished with a home-cooked linseed oil/wax finish with a small amount of natural solvent. The finish offers low protection, but it is easy to repair by the owner with no special skills or tools.
The bog oak was harvested in Poland. We paid to have it dated by radio-carbon dating and it is more than 2,000 years old. The wood in this chair varies from a dark nutty brown to a coal black.
Purchasing the Chair
This chair is being sold by silent auction. (I’m sorry but the chair cannot be shipped outside the U.S.) If you wish to buy the chair, send an email to lapdrawing@lostartpress.com before 3 p.m. (Eastern) on Tuesday, June 20. In the email please use the subject line “Bog Oak Chair” and include your:
Shipping options: You are welcome to pick up the chair here in Covington, Ky., and also get a pencil. I am happy to deliver the chair personally for free within 100 miles of Cincinnati, Ohio. Or we can ship it to you via LTL. The cost varies (especially these days), but it is usually between $300 and $550.
— Christopher Schwarz
We use pencil gauges as much as marking gauges or cutting gauges. That’s because a pencil line is sometimes the better choice, especially when marking out bevels or curves.
When we construct our shop-made pencil gauges, we include a “face plate” or “curve attachment” to one face of the gauge’s head. The face plate – basically two bumps – allows the gauge to mark both inside and outside curves. You can also use the gauge against a straight, flat edge. The face plate is an incredibly handy feature that was patented by Stanley in 1886 (the patent has long expired).
For years, I’ve wanted to make a Crucible pencil gauge with a face plate, but we have never found a way to manufacture it economically. During the pandemic, however, I devised a way to make an inexpensive gauge by MacGyvering a British marking gauge made by Joseph Marples.
Marples agreed to sell us 200 basic gauges at wholesale for an experiment. When the gauges arrived, we pulled out the steel pin (it’s included in the package if you want it). Then we drilled a hole in the gauge’s beam that will hold most pencils with a tight compression fit (and we’re including a pencil). And we added a stainless steel face plate (a part that we sourced from the kennel-making industry).
The result is our Crucible Redneck Pencil Gauge that works like a charm and fits your hand beautifully, thanks to the half-round shape of the head. But it is a little rednecky (I can say that because I’m from the Ozarks). If I were going to design the gauge from scratch I would use a brass thumbscrew and machine the face plate from solid brass. It would look nicer, but it wouldn’t function any better and it would cost you three or four times more.
Now available in our store for $37 plus shipping.
Specifications:
Beam: 3/4” x 3/4” x 8-1/2”
Head: 1-1/16” x 2-3/16” x 2-5/8”
Weight: 4 ounces
Pencil: Made by Musgrave USA, included
Occasionally we have customers who are bewildered that we use Chicago screws to adjust our Crucible Type 2 Dividers and Sliding Bevel. Why don’t we use a thumbscrew or wing nut or some other device that doesn’t require a screwdriver?
The answer is simple, but not what they want to hear: Because nothing works as well as a slotted screw and a screwdriver.
During the development of these tools we tried a variety of thumbscrews and other devices to lock the tools in place. Nothing even came close to using a simple Chicago screw and a driver. With a small twist of the screw, you can lock the setting in so it is almost unmovable.
I say “almost” because I tried an experiment where I locked the screw and then threw the tool across the workshop like a baseball. About half the time the tool held its setting. The other half it moved a bit. So, I don’t recommend throwing tools across the shop.
This week I found a few more thumbscrews worth trying in the tools. I am always looking to improve things. The screw thread is a 10-32, and the threaded section needs to be about 3/8” long.
Here are three thumbscrews worth discussing (a few others were total fails).
The Knurled Head Tumbscrew (above), looked promising because it also offered a slot for a screwdriver. Unfortunately, the head has such a low profile that you cannot tighten it by hand enough to lock the blade. You have to use a screwdriver to get a good lock.
The Raised Knurled-head Thumbscrew was easier to grip, but it still didn’t lock the blade. Plus, there was no way to further tighten the thumbscrew with a screwdriver.
Finally, the Hex-head Thumbscrew looked cool. But you can’t grip it with your fingers. The only way to tighten it is with a box wrench (which worked really well).
If you resist our tools because they require a screwdriver, consider this: Many early bevels, marking gauges and mortise gauges were locked with a screwdriver. Plus, when I use these tools (and I use them every day), I get immense satisfaction locking them down all the way. It reduces any anxiety I have about the tool moving by accident.
This anxiety, I might add, was caused by other tools going out of adjustment and ruining a piece of work.
— Christopher Schwarz