Pro tip: Do not leave oil-covered scrapers (or any scrapers) sitting in the sun in 90° heat. Ouch.
If you’ve been waiting on a Crucible Dovetail Template, click the link to head on over to the store – as of 8 p.m., we have four score in stock.
And exciting (and long-awaited) news on the scraper front: They’re almost ready. Chris and I burned our hands today loading them into the back of his pickup truck…because we were so stupid as to leave the oil-bathed beauties sitting in the hot sun in the back of Catbus for a few hours, after they delivered from C.T.S. Waterjet. Oops. Tomorrow morning, I’m driving the scrapers down to Nicholasville, where Craig Jackson and the crew at Machine Time will machine and polish the edges, and engrave them with the Crucible logo. (Note: You can find out more about Craig in Sunday’s post.) So we hope to hve those back in stock soon!
Plus I got an update today from the foundry, where a run of holdfasts was poured the first week of June. The grinding is almost done, and those should be shipping next week.
Finally, we got notification this morning that our (long-awaited) hardcover edition of Joseph Moxon’s “Mechanick Exercises” was in line at the printing plant’s shrink-wrap machine – here’s hoping it got on the truck later in the day, as it was supposed to. It should be in the warehouse next week.
Misericord from Sint-Petruskerk, Oirschot, Netherlands. Photo from the Elaine C. Block Database of Misericords held by Princeton University.
While sorting through a file of misericords (originally amassed in 2016 for a three-part series on the woodworkers found in misericords), I rediscoverd this photo and decided to find out more about it.
The Message in the Misericord
Part of the study of misericords involves determining which parable, proverb or fable is depicted. With the mouse on the table we know this is a cat and not a fox, dog or bear. Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s “Nederlandse Spreekwoorden” (Netherlandish Proverbs) painted in 1559 is once source used to match a misericord to a proverb. The only proverb in the painting involving a cat is this one:
To “bell a cat” (even if one is armed to the teeth) is interpreted as carrying out a dangerous plan, or a plan doomed to failure. There is also the proverb “while the cat is away, the mice will play” or the alternative “when the cat is at home the mice are afraid.” None of these options apply to this misericord. One writer thought perhaps the cat was reading a Bible which would be an example of “the world turned around” with an animal performing human activities. The reading of this misericord may be to show the stark contrast between a well-fed cat studying in a comfortable setting compared to its normal “job” of being a mouser. This would be a reminder to a cleric or monk that the effort to study should be taken seriously, whereas a cat has no choice but to work continuously for its next meal. Not all scenes can be deciphered to have a particular meaning and this misericord may just show the typical cat trait of curiosity and their annoying habit of taking over their owner’s chair.
The History of This Misericord
The misericord was carved in oak by Jan Borchmans between 1508-1511. He worked in churches in Oirschot, Netherlands, and in Averbode and Aarschot, both in Belgium. The photograph was taken in 1941 by Martien Coppens. In 1943 Hans Sibbelee also photographed the church in Oirschot as part of a war-time effort to document important monuments and works of art. We are fortunate to have this photographic record. On October 2, 1944, Sint-Petruskerk was shelled during the Battle of the Scheldt, the World War II campaign to free Belgium and the Netherlands. The shelling caused a fire that destroyed all the choir carvings and misericords. Twenty-two days later and after tremendous losses, Oirschot was liberated on October 24, 1944.
Although the story of this misericord is poignant, we have a photograph that allows us to appreciate Jan Borchmans’ craftmanship and perhaps his sense of humor. He very kindly provided a footstool to accommodate this well-fed cat’s very large hind feet.
I don’t know about you, but this misericord has three elements that remind me of a workshop on Willard Street in Covington, Kentucky, where chairs are made, books are edited and cats roam free.
–Suzanne Ellison
P.S. If you would like to check out my 2016 series on misericords featuring woodworkers you can read about them here (the woodworkers), here (the carvers) and here (the workbenches). The Carvers post includes these misericord carvers:
Church of Notre-Dame des Grands-Andelys, France, dated 1413.
Christopher Schwarz also wrote something about workbenches and misericords and you can read about it here. Altogether that should take care of your weekend activities.
My first tattoo will be up my right arm and will say: No more posters, dummkopf.
Wall posters, no matter how nice, are not a good product for us. With the exception of the “With Hammer in Hand” letterpress poster, which we cannot reprint, posters lose money or (at best) break even. We have two posters in the store right now. They are taking up valuable space in the warehouse and are not selling.
So before I recycle them, here is your chance to buy them at the lowest price we can go without losing even more money.
Our “Family Tree of Chairs” letterpress poster is now $12. It is available in either black or green ink. We broke even with the first printing of the poster. And then when we did a second run, we ended up with way too many because of a mistake at the printer.
This is a gorgeous, gorgeous poster and graces the wall of my office. The drawing is from artist Lee John Phillips, based on my research. Please don’t make me recycle these. They are so pretty.
The second poster is our “Edwin Skull Chair Poster, Circa 1865,” which is now $5. This poster is a reproduction of a fantastic broadside by the Edwin Skull company that shows 141 chairs in remarkable detail. It’s a beautiful example of 19th-century advertising and chairmaking technology. A portion of the proceeds goes to the Wycombe Museum, which has the original in its collection.
I already paid the museum the proceeds we promised on the entire run based on the original retail price. So we have taken care of our financial obligation.
This week I’ve been reading a newly published set of six history books. And unfortunately, I should read them as quickly as possible because these books are designed from the get-go to fall apart in short order.
As a consumer this is maddening. The set cost me $550 (or $91.66 per volume). And after inspecting the books, I feel certain the publisher is likely greedy and thinks we are ignorant. Let’s take a look.
The new set of books are on the right. Some traditional books are on the left. If you look closely, you’ll see the difference. The books on the right are “perfect bound.” What does that mean? Basically, the printer took a bunch of single sheets and applied glue to one edge. It’s how cheap paperbacks and other impermanent publications, such as magazines, are made. And perfect binding – once unthinkable for expensive books – is now common.
Detail: Prefect binding. I wish they wouldn’t call it “perfect.”
The glue will get brittle. And if you stress the binding to, say, try to make the pages lie flat, then the pages will start to fall out, one by one.
On the left is how Lost Art Press and some other publishers make books. The book starts as large sheets of paper that are folded into “signatures” – basically self-contained booklets comprising eight, 16 or 32 pages. Then we stack these signatures in order and sew them together with thread (a process called Smyth sewing). Then we apply glue to the edges of the signatures plus a fiber-backed tape to add durability and flexibility to the book.
Detail: Smyth sewn signatures.
Books made this way are designed to last many decades and suffer abuse.
So I know there are some people out there who are saying: Perhaps the publisher of the perfect-bound books couldn’t afford to use an expensive binding. How can we know what the book cost to make?
Well after 32 years in this business and quoting hundreds and hundreds of jobs, I can guess.
Based on the paper weight and page count, I estimate these books cost about $7 apiece to manufacture – so $42 total for the set. If they had switched to a traditional sewn binding, my best guess is that the books would cost $10 to $14 each to make (the paper is quite thin). So $60 to $84 to manufacture the set, max (and I’m being generous).
So no matter what the publisher is paying the authors (likely 10 percent to 15 percent of gross), the publisher is basically printing money. For itself.
I know this might sound like a “holier than thou” blog entry. But – particularly when the content is worth preserving for future generations – I have no patience for cheap, fall-apart books. And I hope that perhaps this blog entry will help you spot these ornery critters in the wild.
— Christopher Schwarz
Make Your Own ‘Signatures’
Here’s a page of copy paper with numbers that represent the page numbers in the finished signature. I folded this one up then stapled it (I don’t have a needle and thread handy). Stapling a signature is called “saddle stitching.” It is a very cheap way of binding pages. Worse than perfect binding.
After folding and stapling, the signature is trimmed to remove the folds.
And here is the finished signature of eight pages.
When my mom died last year we tried to throw nothing in the garbage. We gave away everything to neighbors, friends and the local shelters. She would have wanted it that way. But no one wanted this white plastic shower caddy.
So I took it, even though I don’t like plastic.
I turned it into our Assembly Caddy™, and I’m surprised how much I like it (Megan doesn’t care for it, but oh well).
The caddy holds almost all the tools we need for typical and odd glue-ups. So whenever I or a student are ready to assemble, I grab the caddy and go to work without much thought. Here is what is in it (and why).
Glue (liquid hide, yellow and cyanoacrylate)
Glue brushes to apply glue
Toothbrushes to remove glue
Palette knife, syringe and dental floss to sneak glue into tight/odd spots
Small paper cups to hold glue during application
Galvanized bucket for water to clean excess glue
Wax paper to prevent glue squeeze-out from sticking to the bench.
Important Tip: Speed is Everything
One aspect of gluing up panels that many beginners don’t know is that you should glue up your panel immediately after dressing the edges. It doesn’t matter whether you use a handplane or an electric jointer.
How fast? I shoot for about 5 minutes. If it has been 30 minutes since I jointed the edges, I’ll rejoint them.
Wood moves after it is cut. There can be tension in the board or a wettish interior. As soon as you expose that fresh edge, it will start to react with the air in your shop.
In an edge joint, surface area is everything. Even tiny amounts of movement can reduce the strength of the joint. I have seen this problem first-hand with woodworkers who joint all their edges one day and come back the next day to assemble them. The joints are rarely perfect (or even decent).
