At last I was able to visit the new “Made in Cincinnati” exhibit at the Cincinnati Museum Center and see the display on Henry Boyd, a black 19th century furniture maker who bought his way out of slavery in Kentucky and built an impressive furniture company in downtown Cincinnati.
We are working on a children’s book about Boyd that is in the final stages of illustration and – we hope – will be out before Christmas.
The new permanent exhibit on Boyd makes me happy. While his story is well-known in the black community and among furniture-makers, his achievements are the sort of thing that should get a public school named after you.
The display has one of his famous beds, which is cool to see without any mattress or bedding. Plus there is an interactive exhibit that shows you how his threaded bedstead rails worked (the display has metal screws whereas Boyd’s were wood).
There are also displays that document Boyd’s life and career, a selection of tools from the period and the workbench that we built with the help of readers for the exhibit.
All in all, it’s a great start to opening the eyes of the general community about Boyd. I hope our book will also help. And then maybe we should talk some more about naming a school after him.
At the mic in the audiobook/voiceover recording room at Primary Studios. The masks were off during recording in the booth but went back on again as soon as we were done each day.(Photo: Magda Hiller)
This week we hit a big milestone: the completion of recording and editing an audiobook version of “Shop Tails.” I’m so relieved. The project has been a joy to work on and has given me the juice to keep going for the past several weeks.
The recording alone was an experience. I don’t think I’ve previously recorded an entire book, but this book, in terms of length and content, seems to lend itself to an audio edition. For one thing, it’s informal. Second, having been introduced to one of my favorite authors, David Sedaris, through his recording for NPR of “Holidays on Ice,” I know how effective it can be to introduce readers to new titles and authors through this medium. It’s a great way to capture the author’s peculiar voice, which, in the case of me and Mr. Sedaris, can lead to a long-term relationship between author and reader (albeit remote; we haven’t met), and in this case evoke important details of the context in which we are doing the recording. While my voice has never been smooth or sexy, it now implicitly conveys the realities of six-plus months of chemo and a soupçon of the exhaustion that typically accompanies radiation and other cancer treatments. (This is not intended as a downer. To the contrary – though admittedly the subject of the book is not the happiest ever.)
And big thanks to my friend Bert Gilbert for the final push that moved me to look into what’s involved in making an audiobook.
“Shop” Tails contents in color. (Photo: Magda Hiller)
I could write reams more but will instead leave you to the the audio book itself.
Editor’s note: “Shop Tails,” the audio book, will be available next week.
— Nancy Hiller, author of “Kitchen Think,” “Making Things Work” and “Shop Tails.”
The Greenville Woodworkers Guild. An amazing place.
If you have ever visited the Greenville Woodworkers Guild in Upstate South Carolina, you probably marveled at… everything. The machines. The space. The lumber storage. The multimedia room and furniture display areas.
Me? I loved the sign over the slop sink.
Above that sink was a sign that explicitly stated what was and what was not allowed in the sink. After you read that sign, you would be a fool to pour acetone down its drain.
The slop sink is by the guild’s welcome desk. I excitedly told the woodworkers sitting there: “Wow! That is a perfect sign. Plus all the instructions on the machines are explicit and clear. It must make this place easier to run.”
“No one obeys the signs,” one of them replied. “The only way to get them to listen is to be ruthless.”
The shop floor at the Greenville guild.
Ruthless? I thought it was an odd word. But within a few months, I realized the guy was right.
When I returned to my shop, I decided to put a sign above our bathroom sink: “This sink is for soap and water only. Please use the slop sink for solvents.”
About a week later, someone poured some really caustic agents down the bathroom sink. The chemicals dissolved the plumbing seals and suddenly the bathroom floor was covered in acid and water.
That day, I became ruthless.
I have worked in group shops (or shops with fellow employees) for most of my adult life. Every one of them was a disorganized mess. Sometimes the boss was the worst offender. No matter what the shop rules were, every few months all of the router wrenches would disappear. Many of the machines would be clogged with dust or seriously out of alignment. And so we’d all take a grumpy couple days to get things back to where we could work.
And then the entropy would begin again.
I was part of the problem. When I became “the boss,” I decided to live by example. Keep my area clean. Clear off the machines after I used them. Empty the trash at the end of the day.
I figured that everyone would become embarrassed that they weren’t doing their part. And then they would pick up after themselves. Rainbows and kittens.
They didn’t notice or care. So the shop became messier and less functional than ever. And that was absolutely my failure as a leader.
After the solvent incident, however, I became ruthless. If someone left a mess, I confronted them. If people didn’t follow the cleaning protocols for the end of the week, they got a nasty text the next morning. I decided that I didn’t care if my shopmates thought I was a jerk.
After about six months of being a raging (but consistent) wanker, something happened.
The shop stayed clean. Really clean. And I never had to say another word about it. When students would visit, my shopmates would warn them to sweep up their messes. Otherwise, “You’ll trigger HIM.” (Which was me.)
Weirdly, I haven’t had to raise my voice or send a nasty text for years now. I’ve returned to being an easygoing person who keeps his personal area clean, does his share of maintenance and empties the trash whenever it’s full.
It’s all sparkly waterfalls and break-dancing Care Bears.
But so help me if you dump lacquer thinner down my bathroom sink, I will have you hogtied before breakfast. OK, sweetie?
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. I know that most readers work in their shops alone. So this post might seem… odd. If I have to be explicit, the message is: Be honest with others and yourself. Even when it’s against your nature.
I’ve had a few students show up for classes with brand-new full-length leather aprons. In August. Cool. But not cool. After about 5 minutes of handwork, the aprons came off.
Canvas shop aprons breathe better, but they are still too hot in the spring, summer and autumn, especially if you do a lot of handsawing and planing.
That’s why we decided to make a waist apron instead of a traditional shop apron. I stay much cooler while working in this apron, even in the crazy heat.
Our apron is made in the USA and is designed to take a serious beating. The pockets are reinforced so your tools don’t rip through the canvas (a common problem). And the apron is not so big that you feel like a contractor who has a mobile workshop around the waist.
I’ve been using our waist apron every day for months now and could not be more pleased. It’s so comfortable and lightweight I’ve forgotten that I’m wearing it and have gone to lunch with it on.
If this sounds like a shameless plug, forgive me. But thanks to designer Tom Bonamici and the crew that stitched these aprons, they have exceeded my every expectation.
If you’ve read this far, here is a morsel of news to reward you: We are working on a compact tool roll using the same canvas and design principles.
Two crochets. A.J. Roubo’s crochet from 18th-century France (below) offers little wedging action. It works fine, but is not as “grabby” as the one shown on my bench from 2005 (above).
The following two early workholding methods are excerpted from “Ingenious Mechanicks,” by Christopher Schwarz.
Workbenches with screw-driven vises are a fairly modern invention. For more than 2,000 years, woodworkers built complex and beautiful pieces of furniture using simpler benches that relied on pegs, wedges and the human body to grip the work. While it’s easy to dismiss these ancient benches as obsolete, they are – at most – misunderstood.
Schwarz has been building these ancient workbenches and putting them to work in his shop to build all manner of furniture. Absent any surviving ancient instruction manuals for these benches, Schwarz relied on hundreds of historical paintings of these benches for clues as to how they worked. Then he replicated the devices and techniques shown in the paintings to see how (or if) they worked. This book is about this journey into the past and takes the reader from Pompeii, which features the oldest image of a Western bench, to a Roman fort in Germany to inspect the oldest surviving workbench and finally to his shop in Kentucky, where he recreated three historical workbenches and dozens of early jigs.
The crochet (French for “hook”) could be described as a planing stop attached to the edge of the workbench, but that doesn’t quite capture its full utility. A good crochet is also good for securing work for dovetailing and tenoning.
There are a couple kinds of crochets out there. Some of them are like wedges. You press the work into the opening and its V-shape helps hold the work (though you will still need a holdfast to complete the job). Old French ones, as shown in “l’Art du menuisier,” work more like a planing stop as opposed to a wedge. Their opening is square instead of V-shaped. Both forms of crochet work, but I prefer the V-shaped ones on my benches.
Good enough for dovetailing. A crochet and holdfast (or bar clamp) do a fine job of keeping the work in place for dovetailing.
I make my crochets out of a tough and springy wood, such as oak or ash. I recommend you make the hook big enough so that it can handle 8/4 stock. So, the opening should be slightly larger than 2″. Many early crochets are shown attached with nails. I prefer 6″-long carriage bolts with washers.
Using the crochet for working on the edges of boards is straightforward. Typically, you secure the work to the front of the bench with one or two holdfasts (depending on the length of the work). Then you push the end of the board into the crochet to prevent the work from shifting as you plane it.
If I have a lot of boards of similar widths to work (say for a large tabletop) I take a different approach. I use holdfasts to secure a 2×4 to the front legs of the bench that will act as a platform for my boards. Then I press the end into the crochet. Gravity and the force of the plane immobilize the work.
Crochets can also be used to affix the work so you can cut dovetails or tenons. Put the edge of the work into the crochet and affix it to the front edge of the benchtop with a holdfast (or a bar clamp across the benchtop, if you are sadly holdfast-less).
Notches & Wedges In many old paintings and drawings you’ll see benches that have no vises but instead have a large rectangular notch cut into the edge or end of the benchtop. In many cases, these notches are used as face vises. You put the work in the notch then use a wedge to immobilize it. I’ve had great – actually, quite spectacular – success using these notches for cutting tenons and shaping the work with chisels, rasps and files.
Don’t dismiss it. We were all shocked at how much holding power a wedge and a notch could provide. Tenoning and even planing the end of this 12″-wide oak board (shown above) was easy. Photos by NN
It took a little experimentation, however, to get the wedges right. As it turned out, I was making things too complicated. At first, I used oak wedges in the shape of a right triangle that I planed clean so they had an angle at the tip of about 15°. They held the work, but not reliably. So, I tried isosceles-shaped wedges with a variety of angles, looking for the magic number.
After several hours of messing with the oak wedges, I thought I was headed down the wrong path. So, I went to my scrap pile and grabbed a white pine 2×4. I sawed it to 12″ long and tapered one edge with a jack plane (I later measured the angle at 2°). Then I drove it into a notch.
It cinched down as hard as any screw-driven vise I’ve used. It worked so well I laughed out loud. If you are interested in making these notches (what do you have to lose?), here are some details. In the old images, the notches have vertical walls. Some fellow woodworkers have suggested cutting them at an angle that is sympathetic to the wedge’s angle. I haven’t found that necessary.
Left: Figure Slow going. Chopping out a notch in the end grain is more difficult than performing the same operation in the edge of the benchtop. Saw the sides of the notch. Chop halfway through, then flip the bench and chop the remainder out. Right: Quick work. With the notch on the edge, you saw the walls and pry the waste out easily with a chisel. Then clean the long grain of the notch with paring cuts.
On some benches, the notches are in the end of the benchtop. In others, they are cut into the edges. I tried both. Functionally, I couldn’t tell any difference between them. They both held just fine. Making the two kinds of notches, however, is quite different. The end grain notches take about twice as long to make because the wood is fighting you the entire time. You have to rip saw the walls of the notch then chisel out the waste like cutting out a huge dovetail. There is a lot of chopping vertically then splitting out the waste. It’s not a horrible task, but it’s much more difficult than creating a notch in the edge of the benchtop.
There you crosscut the walls (crosscutting is always easier than ripping). Then you split the waste out with a few chisel chops. Splitting wood along the grain is always easier than chopping across it.
Ready to go. With only about 10 minutes of work, you can create a face vise for any work surface. Just make some softwood wedges and get to work.
Here are the measurements for my notches. Don’t feel compelled to copy me, however. The end-grain notch is 4-1/2″ wide and 2-1/2″ long. The edge notch is 4-1/4″ long and 2″ wide. I have a variety of softwood wedges scattered about that can handle work from 1″ wide to 3″ wide.
One more nice use for the notch comes when cutting curves with a bowsaw or coping saw. Place your work over the notch while sawing and it will vibrate less.
