Sweet jiminy I don’t need any more mail, tasks or obligations. If you have a woodworking question, you can usually find answers by using the search box on the right-hand sidebar. If you have a question about your order or a product, you can always send a note to help@lostartpress.com.
But occasionally I do get a question or two through the mail or friends that bears answering. Here are two good questions – and one that I cannot answer.
Benchtop Thickness
Robert in Vista, Calif., asks about an apparent contradiction in my writing. At one point I wrote that 4” is the maximum thickness for a benchtop that works with holdfasts. Later, I recommend 4” to 6”. What gives?
When I wrote my first articles on workbenches about 20 years ago (which led to my first book), the world of holdfasts looked like this: tons of crappy cast ones and a few custom blacksmith holdfasts. So I bought every holdfast I could. I helped Don Weber make me one. And when I tested them, I couldn’t get any of them to work in a benchtop that was thicker than 4”.
And so I reported my findings.
As interest in holdfasts grew, better ones became available. We started making one with a 1” shaft. These better holdfasts worked in thick benchtops. I can get ours to seat in a block that is 10” thick. But 10” is silly for a benchtop. I think 6” is the maximum I’d use.
Trestle Table Flex
James in Twentynine Palms, Calif., asks about the trestle table I built for Woodworking Magazine exactly one coon’s age ago. When his kids sit on the table, he sees the supports below the top flexing under their weight. Is this a known problem?
The trestle table is flexible; that’s one of the nice things about it. As long as nothing is groaning under the weight of the kids, you’re probably fine. The table is like an I-beam with a wooden skin on top. It’s quite strong and remains one of my favorite designs.
However, I cannot vouch for your joinery or the mass of your children. I can report that my table has survived many strange evenings.
James also writes to ask if I have any tips for sourcing wood on the West Coast (he’s new there). Species, places to buy etc.
As a Kentuckian, I have zero experience with West Coast lumberyards, except for buying alder and fir. Perhaps the readers could offer some ideas about good local woods for furniture.
This week, we are finishing the layout of our latest book, “Honest Labour,” which is a collection of essays from The Woodworker magazine while Charles H. Hayward was editor (1939-1967). This book will be the fifth and final volume in our series from The Woodworker.
When we started on The Woodworker project more than a decade ago we didn’t intend to publish “Honest Labour.” The series was going to have four books that covered handwork: tools, techniques, joinery, the workshop and furniture plans. But as we paged through every article from The Woodworker during the 29-year period, we kept getting stuck on the “Chips From the Chisel” column at the beginning of every issue.
These columns during the Hayward years are like nothing I’ve ever read in a woodworking magazine. They are filled with poetry, historical characters and observations on nature. And yet they all speak to our work at the bench, providing us a place and a reason to exist in modern society.
For years I heard rumors that the unsigned column was written by a clerk or assistant at the magazine, but I don’t believe that for a second. After reading Hayward’s writing on woodworking most of my career, I know his prose like I know my own.
For the last few years, we’ve been working on “Honest Labour” in the background. John Hoffman secured the rights to the material, which was no small effort or expense. Kara Gebhart worked through all of the “Chips From the Chisel” columns, selecting the best ones. We decided to organize the essays year by year, and so Kara has written a short column for every chapter that lists the major news events of that year. These short essays provide important context – even woodworking writing is different in wartime.
During the last couple months, Megan Fitzpatrick and I have been laying out the book, with Megan doing most of the heavy lifting. The structure of the book is more like a book of favorite poems you can pick up while you are waiting for your family to get ready for dinner. Or when you sit down in front of the fire after a long day of work.
Every page spread in the book consists of one column only, illustrated with line drawings from the magazine that were published during the same year the column was written. The illustrations were also made by Hayward.
Here’s a small sample of one of the columns from the 1960s. Like a lot of good writing, it’s difficult to divorce a piece from the whole without diminishing it.
How easy for anyone having sufficient professional skill to get away with a semblance of truth. There are some craftsmen who simply take it for granted. The lack of precision in marking up, the careless cut, the small faults which declare themselves when a piece is assembled. Such a craftsman knows all the answers. “Oh I can soon put that right,” he says easily. And he can, filing, adjusting, smoothing, gluing here, screwing there, using as much casual skill in faking as in making. The furniture he produces may deceive the untrained eye but by any true standard it falls short. Without perhaps even being aware of it, the casual craftsman lets himself down more than anyone: the real damage is to himself.
It is all too easy, demanding no particular effort, no particular sense of responsibility, either to himself or to anyone else. But anyone who wishes to lift himself out of the rut, as a person as well as a craftsman, needs to feel responsibility and to be committed to a standard. Only in this way can he keep the sense of effort alive, and to cease from effort is to die before our time.
“Honest Labour” is going to be a sizable book – 488 pages – the largest book in The Woodworker series, and will have the same manufacturing specs as the other books in the series so they look good on your shelf. We hope to deliver it to the printer by the end of the month for a release in April or May 2020.
We know this is an odd woodworking book and that a lot of people will be skeptical, so we are doing everything we can to keep the price as reasonable as possible. And we are prepared for it to be a commercial flop. That’s OK, as we consider it an honest labor of love.
We use acid brushes to apply glue in our shop, but we tune up the brushes before using them.
Straight from the store, the bristles are too long and wide. When they get wet with glue, they act like a floppy mop and make it difficult to apply glue where you want it and in the right amounts.
To tune up your brush, grab a sharp pair of scissors. First trim the bristles so they are 3/8” long. Then trim the width of the bristles. Basically, you want to make the bristles 3/8” long and 3/8” wide – square, some call it. If the bristles are too wide, you’ll have trouble getting into mortises without splashing some glue on the rim.
After glue-up, clean the brush (some of our have lasted five years or more). Check for any loose bristles and trim them back.
A proper glue brush is just one of the rituals in our shop. A few others:
When assembling joinery, we rarely use glue straight from the bottle. We pour what we need into a paper cup (or coffee mug). The cup allows us to brush on glue or, in some cases, pour it onto a large surface if necessary.
When we clean up squeeze-out, we use a toothbrush wetted with clean, warm water. The toothbrush gets into corners no rag can manage.
We let things dry overnight if possible. You might be able to take the clamps off in 30 minutes. But if you don’t have to, why not leave the assembly in clamps overnight?
Katherine has made a big batch of soft wax during her break from art school. The wax is $24 for an 8-ounce jar. Soft wax is great for finishing the interior of woodwork, as a coat over milk paint or a way to add some luster to an aged finish.
Katherine cooks up the wax in the machine room using a waterless process. It’s packaged in glass jars to eliminate any chance of rust. And has a coated metal lid (also to reduce rust).
We also use it on tools and (thanks to a tip from a reader) leather shoes.
You can purchase the wax here through Katherine’s etsy store.
Editor’s note: Thanks again to everyone who entered our True Tales of Woodworking Contest, in celebration of the release of Nancy Hiller’s new edition of “Making Things Work: Tales of a Cabinetmaker’s Life.” We enjoyed reading every one of the entries – so much so that we’re sharing some of them here and some of them on Nancy’s blog at Making Things Work – so be sure to tune in there, too! And congrats again to our winner, Bruce Chaffin. — Fitz
p.s. Jim is a professional furniture maker who lives in England, hence the British spellings.
It’s fair to say that it would not have been my first job of choice as a full-time woodworker. For the past 25 years I had run my own architectural business designing and supervising the refurbishment of whatever jobs came through the door – houses, pubs, hotels.
Over the next few years I became despondent with the standard of work contractors, particularly finishing contractors, were presenting me with. I felt I could do better. I was a keen amateur woodworker and had a lifelong desire to work with my hands. As a result, I took part time classes over several years ending up with a City and Guilds in Furniture and Cabinet Making. The property crash of 2009 forced me to rethink my working life and I became a full-time cabinet maker.
Some years before in my previous life I had designed and supervised the refurbishment of a large Victorian house. The work was carried out and all went well enough for my clients and I to become and remain friends.
They had recently approached me to design a large set of shelving units. They wanted an irregular design, each space to house various pictures, books, and artefacts, painted rather like a ‘Mondrian ‘ painting, with the front lipping picked out in a different colour.
They wanted to know if I knew anyone who could make such a unit. I hesitated but told them that I would be that person – as I already knew the house and we shared an aesthetic. I went to see them and looked at the large living room with very high ceilings and two imposing alcoves either side of a marble fireplace and I felt I could give then what they wanted.
Measurements were taken, sketch designs and costings provided and the approval to go ahead was given.
I did not have the luxury of a workshop at this time but fortunately the ‘site’, the living room where the units were required, was empty with bare floor boards. I measured and drew out the units very accurately and had all of the timber cut to size.
This was my first job for a paying client. It not only had to look good but had to work. The units were over two meters wide each and had been designed to appear random but were in fact strategically sized to provide each shelf with adequate support.
I had worked out that working alone I would have to build the units and then get them into position. There was sufficient room on the floor to build the main outer frame and cross brace it for lifting.
The units were to sit on top of the existing high Victorian skirting boards. I had devised a system of timber rails which were fixed to the existing skirting boards but extended out from the alcoves into the room either side of the fireplace on supports.
The rails were lined up with the top of the skirting boards and were in fact in two pieces – one of which would remain as a permanent support beneath the shelving, the extension being removable once the unit was in place. The extended rails into the room would allow me to work on the units and then slide them back into the alcove without having to lift the finished unit which would be too heavy. I was alone in the house most of the time and it occurred to me for the first time that I could be at risk.
I installed the rails to one alcove to allow sufficient floor space to build the first unit. I laid the pieces out which I had previously spent a whole day sorting. It was like a giant jigsaw. I worked out the minimum pieces I would have to put in place to allow me to lift it without distorting.
Once these were fixed together, I attempted a lift. It was heavier than I could have imagined. I had also made it upside down. It had to not only be lifted, but rotated.
Whilst looking for inspiration and resting my arms there was a knock at the front door. I opened it and nearly fainted. There before me stood a ghost from 25 years ago. A teacher whom I had feared most of my life at school. He had aged, like one of those e- fit police photographs but was still recognisable to me. He obviously had no idea who I was. I was just one of the many children he had no doubt caused untold misery to in a bygone age of stricter schooling.
He had ‘just popped in with the decorator to see how things were going’. Apparently and unknown to me he was my client’s father. “Are you alright ?” he asked as I must have looked pale with shock. At that precise moment I didn’t know whether to tell him about my dilemma with the shelves or punch him. I decided on the former.
At this point two young decorators appeared behind him. Getting over the shock of seeing this now old man I had once feared, I asked them if they would mind giving me a lift as he did not appear fit enough for such activity. The three of us lifted the unit, rotated it and put it on the rails. They stood back. I hadn’t expected an audience as I edged the unit into place. Hoping it would fit and I would not look a total idiot I eased it inch by inch into position. I had that same sick feeling as if I was back in school. I envisaged it not fitting and was waiting for the bellow of how useless I was. As the unit eased in position, I heard the old teacher say “Wow, just look at that. Perfect. That’s how you do it lads, you’re watching a craftsman!”
