Lost Art Press

First Chisel. First Lesson

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My city editor put down the phone, pursed her lips and looked at me, a scrawny and green 20-year-old newspaper intern.

“That was the Klan,” she said. “They are pissed at you.”

That summer I was an intern at my hometown paper, the Southwest Times Record, a small daily in Fort Smith, Ark. Most of that summer I wrote hard-hitting pieces about mutant chicken trading societies, Chamber of Commerce luncheons and the hot weather.

But all summer long I also worked on a series of articles about how the local public schools were still as segregated as they were in 1954. Still as segregated as they were when I went through the system. And so segregated that the local NAACP was considering a lawsuit.

After my stories ran, the Klan called the newsroom to ask about the New York Jew-boy reporter sent down by the ACLU to stir up the black population. And to tell me that I should watch my back.

I was terrified. And then I was furious. Those people didn’t know me. I’d lived in that town since I was 5. I went to public elementary, junior high and high school there. I was a member of First Presbyterian Church. And I doubt the ACLU even knew my hometown existed.

This week I stumbled on the first woodworking chisel I ever bought. It’s a Popular Mechanics 1/2″ bevel-edge chisel I bought from Wal-Mart about four presidents ago. It was my only chisel for about eight years. But I took good care of it until I bought my first set of Marples.

I’ve forgotten how much I actually like that little chisel. Sure, the steel is as soft as the Pillsbury Dough Boy, and the handle is a lovely clear plastic. But that was the chisel I used to chop out my first dovetails. My first mortise. My first half-lap.

As I looked it over I noticed it was getting some rust on it. So I decided to bring it back to its former blue-light special glory. As I worked on the tool, my mind began to wander to the e-mail beatings I’ve been taking lately for some tool reviews I’ve written – reviews both positive and negative.

These whuppings come with the territory, but sometimes they do get to me. (Just like I’m sure my reviews occasionally annoy other people.)

As I honed the secondary bevel of the chisel this morning I held it up to the light and thought, “This is who I am.”

I’m taking this chisel home tonight to give to my youngest daughter, Katy. It’s not the best tool in the world, but it is a good place to start. And it does come with a lesson, one that I learned that summer day at the Southwest Times Record.

Despite my city editor’s warnings that day, I walked out the front door of the paper to my car every day that summer instead of ducking out the door by the pressroom.

— Christopher Schwarz

Faithful Reproductions for the Faithful

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This summer I’m building a few reproductions of pieces from the White Water Shaker Village that I will donate to the village’s caretakers. I want these reproductions to be as faithful as possible, but I’m wondering just how far I can go on faith.

Take, for example, this 13′-long bench. It’s all in walnut and nailed together with cut nails. The curves in the base are clearly cut with some sort of turning saw with a little rasp work behind. The notches for the aprons were sawn out.

So far, so good.

I think the top piece was milled on some sort of reciprocating saw. The marks on the underside are too regular to be pitsaw marks. They’re not planer marks (like I’ve ever seen). And they are certainly not circular saw marks.

Is somehow reproducing these marks on the underside important? Or should I treat it like I would treat any non-show surface – fore plane it and call it done?

In other words, I want to use fairly authentic methods. I’m just not sure how far I should (or even can) take this.

We’ll be publishing plans for four of these White Water pieces in Popular Woodworking and Woodworking Magazine in the coming year. This bench is the simplest project. The other three projects should get your heart thumping pretty hard.

— Christopher Schwarz

The ‘Texas tea’ Solution for Knots

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Sometimes you read old accounts of workshop practice where there’s a pot of raw linseed oil by the bench. Andre Roubo’s bench had a little swing-out pot of oil underneath the bench. Likely it was used to oil the soles of the planes or the plates of the saws to make them slide more easily.

Today I found another good use for an oil pot on the bench.

I just finished raising three panels by hand that will be dust panels between the drawers of a chest. Each panel is a single board of 17”-wide Eastern white pine. Raising the first two panels was a piece of cake. But the third one had a nasty knot on the corner.

The knot was denser than any maple I’ve worked and so raising that corner was slow going, and the results looked pretty raggy, too.

To make it easier to push my plane I lubricated the sole a few times with camellia oil. It helped, but it was like spitting on a forest fire, it wasn’t nearly enough.

So without really thinking I squirted the knot a few times with the oil. That made quite a difference, and I finished up the panel with a few more squirts and a few more strokes. Not only was the knot easier to cut, but the result looked much better, too.

I better buy another bottle of the oil.

— Christopher Schwarz

The Perfect Hand-tool Wood

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A couple years ago there was a kid in Iowa who was trying to learn to use hand tools. He had no teachers, just a few books and limited access to the Internet.

But he had a phone. So he’d call me and ask me questions for 30 minutes at a time. (Note to self: Get a 900-line for this. “Hey, I’m wearing a shop apron – and nothing else.”)

This kid’s first major crisis: Planing the top of a dresser. His iron was sharp. His plane was set correctly. His work was held firmly. Yet he couldn’t even get the tool to cut.

Diagnosis: Maple.

He was using rock maple as the wood for his first hand-tool project. I like maple and can get along with it fine. But it wouldn’t be my first pick for a wood to learn hand tools on.

I used to recommend walnut and poplar as good choices for beginning planers and sawyers. Both of those woods cut fairly easily with hand tools and aren’t stringy or hard or ring-porous or infused with silicates. (Ask me some time about the mouth-breather who insisted on using purpleheart on her first project, a birdhouse.)

This year, however, I have become smitten with Eastern white pine. It’s not common in the Midwest, but we came into a stash of it and I have been using it for everything possible. Unlike the yellow and white pine we get here, Eastern white cuts beautifully, planes easily and doesn’t seem as easy to mangle as the local stuff. Plus, the Eastern white moves less in service and (I think) it looks better.

On the downside, it’s quite lightweight and not nearly as strong as yellow pine or even the weirdo Swedish pine the local Borg is pushing.

But that, I figure, is just an engineering equation.

So this morning I’m building a complex frame-and-panel back for a five-drawer dresser. The back has six through-tenons, two blind ones and four floating panels.

I did a dry assembly of the stiles and rails right after lunch and everything looked nice and tight. So I took it apart to start fitting the panels when I snapped one of the tenons off like a Butterfinger bar.

I was too stunned to even curse. I don’t think I’ve ever snapped a tenon (by accident). The good news was that it was quick work to fetch a new piece and cut new tenons and mortises to replace the broken stick.

Note to self: Eastern white prefers 5/16”-thick tenons. But other than that, I think it’s the most hand-tool-friendly wood I’ve used.

— Christopher Schwarz

Little Teeth Filed for… Who Cares?

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Recently, a woodworking colleague suggested to me that saw teeth designed for crosscutting are an invention of modern marketing.

Early saws, he suggested, we’re probably filed for basically a rip cut. But because the teeth were hand filed, they probably had a little fleam, which made them cut more smoothly than a pure rip tooth with no fleam.

It’s an interesting argument that has no real answer – until we find the DNA of an 18th-century saw filer encased in some amber and decide to open a theme park on a deserted tropical island (sign me up).

Other woodworking authorities I trust have suggested that saw filing patterns were actually more complex in the 18th century than they are today. In other words, we are the primitives.

All I know is that they can take away my Zona Razor Saw from my cold, dead hands. Or they can take it when it’s kinked – whichever comes first.

The Zona Razor Saw is a marvel of modern manufacturing. Made in the USA for the price of 2.5 chai lattes, it’s a 24 tpi backsaw with a .01”-thick sawplate that cuts on the pull stroke. I use this $11 saw for almost everything. Rips. Crosscuts. Miters. Whatever.

The magic of the saw is not in the fact that it’s filed for a rip cut, but that it has 24 tpi. Once you get to teeth that small, it really doesn’t matter so much how they are filed. This saw leaves glass-smooth surfaces when it rips and crosscuts. It tracks beautifully. It is comfortable and balanced.

But before you think it also is going to mow your lawn, paint your house and raise your kids to be truthful and wise, it know that it has a fatal flaw. The sawplate is easily kinked. I’ve had one since 2006, and I have been using it on every project. The cherry-red-dyed handle has faded to pink, and the sawplate has a subtle wave to it.

It still tracks fairly straight – straight enough for most joinery. But this weekend I decided to try to fix the plate. I bent it this way and that with my fingers. I tapped it with a hammer on an anvil. I tweaked it with pliers. And eventually I buckled under and ordered another one from Lee Valley Tools.

If you haven’t tried the Zona Razor Saw, I highly recommend you get one for your tool kit.

By the way, the vast and insidious Zona model-making consortium did not pay for this blog entry. Just so you know.

— Christopher Schwarz