Editor’s note: The following blog entry was penned by John Hoffman, my business partner here at Lost Art Press. He wrote this after assisting me during my sawing class up in Sterling Heights, Mich.
— Christopher Schwarz
I am in the process of sawing out large notches for the Trestle Table from Woodworking Magazine. I have been experimenting making first-class saw cuts. I have used the chisel with the bevel toward the waste and away from the waste as suggested by Chris. The key for me is to not tap the chisel to hard. I am using Southern Yellow Pine, (an exotic wood to Canadians) so it is not hard, however, I have been able to cross the baseline with either bevel approach if I hit the chisel too hard. The other experiment I have been doing is to see how much of a notch I need to make with the chisel for the saw to ride in.
In this pic you can see a deeper notch and a shallow notch. I have tried to keep the shallow notch deep enough to cover the saw set. Noctice the somewhat crocked lines made from my dull marking knife.
The next pic is the result. Again the lines seemed to work out well and it seems that the smaller notch worked fine. Notice the notch in each corner to guide the saw. It was a bit tricky because the work is only 1-1/4″ inches thick which put the sawing close to the bench top.
Yes I did run the toe of the saw into the top of the bench, but only once. Really! I then continued to practice sawing to the line to waste out the rest of the material. This is the result.
If you look closely some of the saw cuts are definitely better than others. I tend to wander off line at the far end of the cut. I have been focusing on watching the reflection of the work on the saw plate to help me stay true. Another trick from Chris, who told me the best thing to do is keep on sawing.
Aside from eBay descriptions, photographs might be the biggest fibbers in the world of tools.
I’ve just finished judging a toolmaking contest sponsored by WoodCentral and Lee Valley Tools. During two days, I and two other judges examined, used and quarreled about more than 70 amateur-made tools. Our task was to award three prizes: the best-looking tool, the one that displayed the highest craftsmanship and the tool that worked the best.
As the entries came in, Ellis Wallentine of Wood Central posted pictures of the tools that were snapped by the makers (you can see those pictures here). I checked back every week or so to take a look at the entries and get a head start on judging.
Judging this contest, I thought, was going to be a cakewalk. We’d wrap it up in a couple hours and hit the Irish pub near the Lee Valley headquarters and spend the afternoon yucking it up.
It didn’t work out that way. In fact, the Lee Valley folks had to gently push us out the door after the first day of judging.
Here’s what happened: Photos are sometimes deceiving. Though some tools looked as good as they worked, other tools that looked like a million bucks in photos couldn’t cut a soggy toothpick in half. Tools that looked like they came over on the Mary Rose were so sweet they would almost do the job themselves when you went for a bathroom break.
And then there were the “ugly” tools. The tools that looked like they were made in a style that you had to wear either a black beret or Big Smith overalls (and no shirt) to truly appreciate. These tools managed to bore their way into your heart like a tapeworm in an Arkansas rice paddy.
So we argued about the tools. We almost abandoned any hope of awarding a prize for aesthetics. We were just too far apart. The craftsmanship award, however, was a little easier. There were lots of well-made tools, but some required more varied skills to make than others.
And function? That was the easy prize. When the steel hit the wood, it was quick to see which tools cut the mustard and which should be used only for resawing the mustard. In the end, using these tools radically changed my view of them. I didn’t care if the photos looked like junk or they had been professionally shot. When I looked at the pictures I saw only a tool that worked or didn’t work. As a result of all this, I was really pleased that we judged this contest in person and not via the photos. I think we got it right.
I cannot say yet which tools I personally liked or which tools I didn’t, but I’m including a few photos I snapped during the judging to break up the awful grey page generated by my typing prowess. When you take a gander, just make sure that you remember that pixels can be a crock of poo.
The Union Village Shaker community is about an hour north of my home in Fort Mitchell, Ky., but it doesn’t figure large in the world of Shaker furniture like the eastern Shaker communities do.
Union Village was the first and largest Shaker community west of the Allegheny Mountains, and it was the parent community for the western Shaker communities in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana and Georgia.
Founded in 1805, more than 4,000 Shakers lived at Union Village during its peak and they were known for selling herbal medicines, seeds and brooms. The community declined until it was sold in 1912. The site is now a retirement community in Warren County, Ohio.
One of the artifacts remaining from the village is a walnut blanket box with fine lines and tight dovetails. The box is similar in form to many Shaker chests that are extant, but this one has always been a favorite.
I chose to adapt this design because it highlights the advantages of my preferred chest-building method. The fine bit of transition moulding around the plinth is easy to accomplish with this traditional construction technique.
While I retained the proportions and lines of the Union Village original, I used finger joints instead of dovetails. And I used figured maple instead of walnut. These two alterations give the box a contemporary feel.
Statistics: Dimensions: 21-3/8” high x 38-1/2” long x 18-1/4” deep Materials: Tiger maple exterior; poplar interior parts Finish: Custom blend of oil, varnish and linseed oil. Construction Details: All surfaces are handplaned using traditional techniques. Plinth and box are joined using entirely traditional joinery methods. All the hardware is iron with traditional pyramid-head screws.
I almost never get a phone call from the public relations people at the Stanley Works. Perhaps they are too busy selling garage door openers or thinking up double-entendre and obesity jokes to accompany the company’s line of Fat Max tools.
But in 2002, the phone rang, and it was Stanley.
The friendly public relations person had heard that I’d just reviewed jack planes in Popular Woodworking magazine and that Stanley had won the “Best Value” award. Could he get a copy of the review right away? And could they use it in their marketing materials?
At that moment I knew this was going to have a storyline that ended me with telling him that the tooth fairy didn’t exist.
Yes, I reply, Stanley won the award. Yes, I’d be happy to send him a copy of the review. Yes, they could use the test in their marketing materials.
“However,” I say, pausing for a moment, “I don’t think you’re going to want to use the review.”
And so I explained: When I set up our review of metal-bodied jack planes, I included all the major brands on the market at the time: Lie-Nielsen, Clifton, Record, Shop Fox, Anant and Stanley. And then, as a lark, I put a few vintage Stanley Type 11s into the test.
The vintage Stanleys in the test were about 100 years old and were bought at flea markets and on eBay for anywhere between $12 and $35. As you can probably guess, the vintage Stanley planes blew the doors off most of the new planes (except the Lie-Nielsen and, to some degree, the Clifton).
It was a fair fight. These vintage planes needed work. The soles were a bit wonky. The irons and chipbreakers needed work. The frogs weren’t perfectly tuned. But even though these vintage Stanleys should be retired to the old-folks home for cast iron, they were easier to set up than the new planes. The controls were finer. Heck the 100-year-old fit and finish was better than those on the Record, Shop Fox and Anant.
The guy from Stanley Works was perplexed by my explanation. But he still wanted the review for his files, so I sent it to him that very afternoon.
And now bear with me for a second story that begins with my phone ringing.
It is from a reader who wants help choosing a tool – the kind of call I get about five times a week. This guy wants some help buying a bit brace. No problem. I rattle off my standard favorites: The North Bros. 2101A brace and a couple from Peck, Stow & Wilcox. And I throw in a plug for Sanford Moss’s web site as a great place to research and buy the brace of his dreams.
“Um, thanks,” the guy says, “but I wanted to buy a new brace.”
Huh? Why would anyone want to buy a new brace? The best braces ever made are still littering the planet and can be had for less than the price of a tab of Oxycontin (not that I know anything about the price of illegal prescriptives).
“I don’t like used equipment,” he explains. “I want to be the first person who uses it. When I take it out of the box, I want it to be perfect.”
The reader then asked me about three brands of new braces he’d seen in catalogs. We went over the details of each one: junk, tremendous junk and crap-tacular junk. He settled on purchasing the brace that I had the fewest bad things to say. We both hung up the phone bewildered.
Sometimes I forget that there is a certain consumer that won’t buy anything that has been used. With all of the sturdy old houses on the market, they would prefer to buy something new in the suburbs that doesn’t have the same level of craftsmanship or detailing.
I used to get fairly worked up about this fact, but in the last few years, I’ve come to embrace it as a good thing. Here’s why: These people are helping expand the marketplace for high-quality new tools. They are the consumers who help ensure that Veritas, Clifton, Lie-Nielsen and other manufacturers will have a customer base.
Their buying habits have encouraged competition among makers and have exposed more of their fellow woodworkers to the wonders of high-quality modern tool manufacturing. I myself started into the craft with vintage planes and balked at the price of Lie-Nielsen (and later Clifton and Veritas) planes when I first encountered them about 12 years ago. But after using the tools, I think they’re a tremendously good value.
The whole thing is a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation. Does the availability of quality new tools grow the interest in traditional tools? Or does an interest in traditional tools fuel the availability of new quality tools?
I’m not smart enough to answer a chicken-and-egg paradox. But I am smart enough to recognize that the world works in cycles. You see, last week I got an e-mail from a public relations person at Stanley Works….
If you own enough books, it’s easy to believe almost anything and yet be certain about almost nothing.
Take dovetails. I’ve seen this joint cut with a wide variety of slopes during the last 15 years. And every person who cuts this joint has a personal or historical preference about the slope they use.
For some craftsmen, the slope varies simply because they eyeball the layout. Frank Klausz, one of the two living dovetail savants I know, says he cuts his dovetails anywhere between 10° to 15° off the vertical. Tage Frid preferred slopes of “about 10°.”
Other well-known dovetailers use marking jigs to lay out the joint, which locks them into particular angles. Rob Cosman, the other living dovetail savant, uses 10° for softwoods and 8.5° for hardwoods.
For the last 15 years I’ve been cutting dovetails, I’ve used the angles used by my first instructor: 10° for softwoods and 8.5° for hardwoods, just like Cosman. But for some reason, I’ve become dissatisfied with the way the joints look when they are visible on a piece of casework.
So I hit the library a few weeks ago, and now my head hurts from the bludgeoning. Dovetails might take their name from a bird, but reading about them is a trip down the rabbit hole.
What the Dead Guys Say
To understand how little there is to understand about dovetails, let’s take an abbreviated journey through the literature. I promise to be quick like a bunny.
Charles H. Hayward, the mid-20th century pope of hand-cut joinery, suggests three slopes: Use 12° for coarse work. Use 10° or 7° for decorative dovetails. There is no advice on hardwoods vs. softwoods.
F.E. Hoard and A.W. Marlow, the authors of the 1952 tome “The Cabinetmaker’s Treasury,” say you should use 15°. Period.
“Audel’s Carpenter’s Guide,” an early 20th century technical manual, says that 7.5° is for an exposed joint and 10° is right for “heavier work.” No advice on hardwoods vs. softwoods.
“Modern Practical Joinery” the 1902 book by George Ellis recommends 10° for all joints, as does Paul Hasluck in his 1903 “The Handyman’s Book.”
So at least among our dearly departed dovetailers, the advice is to use shallow angles for joints that show and steeper angles if your work is coarse, heavy or hidden. Or just to use one angle and be done with it.
At least in my library, the advice on softwoods and hardwoods seems to become more common with modern writing. Percy Blandford, who has been writing about woodworking for a long time, writes in his new book, “The Woodworker’s Bible,” that any angle between 7.5° and 10° is acceptable. The ideal, he says, is 8.5° for softwoods and 7.5° when joining hardwoods.
My Own Eye
One Wednesday morning I laid out and cut a bunch of these dovetails. I ignored the really shallow angles (6.5° to 8.5°) because I wanted to adopt something more angular. The 10° dovetails looked OK. The 12° dovetails looked better. The 14° tails looked better still. And the 15° looked really good as well. (The photo at the top of this entry shows a 15° dovetail with a bunch of alternatives marked on it.)
But I’ve some defect in my personality that keeps me from choosing the most extreme position, so I settled on 14°. And it’s a good thing, too, because a few days after that, the mindreaders at Lee Valley Tools released a 14° dovetail marker (I really should start wearing my tinfoil hat more). I ordered one – it seemed to be a sign.
Whatever angle you use for your joint, you can rest easy knowing that someone out there (living or dead) thinks you are doing the right thing – unless you cut something more than 15°, then you’re just nuts (or use a dovetail jig with your router).
