‘Carpenter’s Workshop’ (1884), charcoal on paper, private collection.
Léon Augustin Lhermitte (1844-1925) was a painter of working people. He was known as a realist and specialized in depicting people working in their homes, in workshops and the fields. As far as I have found, he completed three pieces featuring woodworkers: carpenters (above, featured previously on this blog), a wheelwright and a turner.
Looking at the ‘Carpenter’s Workshop’ one gets the sense that if you could walk into the scene you would find yourself back in 1884. You would smell fresh wood shavings and wood smoke, hear the conversation between the men and perhaps have a quick greeting tossed your way.
‘The Wheelwright’ or ‘The Old Cartwright and His Wife’ (1897), pastel on paper, private collection.
The wheelwright’s wife sits close to her husband as he works and it is in her figure we see a sign of age, a reminder that there was no retirement. He will work until he no longer able.
‘The Lathe’ (1868), charcoal on paper, Collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
The turner, like the wheelwright, has been at his craft for many years. He works in a confined space with his tools just behind him. In concert with the other craftsman he has his chopping block and ax at the ready.
Today I caught up on a few saved entries on the ‘Spitalfields Life’ blog by the Gentle Author. The blog documents daily life in the East End of London. A few days ago there was an anouncement of the death of the turner, Maurice Franklin, age 98. Mr. Franklin was interviewed for the blog in August 2011 when he was still doing part-time work. You can read his story here.
Mr. Franklin was apprenticed at age 13. When he was interviewed in 2011 he was quoted as saying, “I wake up every day and I stretch out my arms and if I don’t feel any wood on either side, then I know I can get up.” Wise words from a nonagenarian.
I do not have the gene of a hoarder or a collector. The fewer things I own, the happier I am. So for the last eight years, a pile of wood has made me miserable.
The following is a cautionary tale for beginning woodworkers about getting stuck with the world’s largest horde of mostly useless scraps. Or, as I called it, my big pile of No. 2.
It started with a phone call from a close friend and colleague. An elderly friend of his with Alzheimer’s was selling his tool collection and all his lumber. Both the husband (who was the tool collector) and his wife were afraid they would get taken advantage of when selling the wood. It was many hundreds of board feet of wide cherry and walnut.
Would I take a look?
It was a three-hour drive, but I agreed to go. I called the elderly man before I went, and he got it in his head that I was going to buy all his wood. I honestly didn’t need a splinter of it, but I rented a truck and made the trip.
The wood filled his entire basement. And, as advertised, it was loads of wide cherry and walnut. The problem was that it had been planed to 3/4” and had warped during the last couple decades. As I sifted through the stacks I realized that most of it was No. 2 common (at best). Lots of sap, knots, unusable grain. About 20 percent of the stack was FAS (firsts and seconds).
The deal was all or nothing for the wood. I wanted to walk away, but I felt sorry for this old couple that was struggling with Alzheimer’s (which my grandmother had), and they really just needed this wood gone. So I made a kind offer.
The wife was insulted. She thought the wood was worth several multiples of what I offered.
They agreed to my price. But it was a miserable day because they thought they were getting screwed. And I knew I was getting screwed.
For the last eight years my friends and I have all picked at this pile of walnut and cherry. If you’ve taken a class at Lost Art Press, you probably have worked with some of my No. 2. I’ve given away lots of it to beginning woodworkers who wanted to make mistakes in inexpensive wood. It’s been used as backboards and interior bits in my case pieces.
Today, I loaded up the last 100 board feet of the stuff into a dumpster. Lucy and I are moving out of our house and above our storefront, and there’s no room for this garbage wood.
For better or worse, my chairs tend to flirt with stretchers. Should the chair have them or not?
While common sense might dictate that all chairs should have stretchers between their legs for added strength, the historical record disagrees. Early chairs were just as likely to skip the stretchers.
Why? It’s anyone’s guess. Chairs with stretchers are almost certainly more durable. The legs are less likely to come loose when someone kicks them inadvertently or drunkenly. But chairs without stretchers are far easier to repair if a leg does become loose.
Chairs with stretchers are certainly more complex and require additional time to build. But they offer another opportunity for the maker to embellish the chair with turnings, balls and tapers.
Stretchers are a good place to put your feet. But they take a beating from feet and can look like dog crap in short order.
For me, however, stretchers can grant me a good night’s sleep.
This week I’m building a couple of Welsh stick chairs in some crazy curly white oak. This particular design, one I’ve developed through 15 years of flailing, doesn’t use stretchers and looks just fine to my eye. That is, until it doesn’t.
The front legs of this design use a 16° resultant angle to set the legs’ rake and splay. The back legs use a 22° resultant angle. While reaming the front legs I grabbed the wrong bevel gauge. As a result, the front legs are splayed out more than expected. And the legs rake forward more than expected.
When I finished the job, I knew it was wrong. But when I assembled the chairs and put them on the ground, I was happy with the additional rake and splay. It made the chair look rakish and splayish.
I sat on the chairs to see if they were solid. They felt fine, but I asked some friends to sit in the chairs and I watched the legs. They moved too much for my taste. I lost confidence in the chairs as-is.
So I started making stretchers for both of the chairs. This added two hours of work to the job, but it set my mind at ease. It made me wonder: Is this how stretchers were first invented? Perhaps an ancient chair without stretchers flexed just a little too much and the builder thought: I have to put some sticks in there to fix that.
If the corners of a handplane’s cutter are not supposed to cut wood, then I remove them.
OK, let me put that a different way. Some handplanes are supposed to cut into corners: rabbet planes, shoulder planes, moulding planes and router planes (to name a few). So these planes need cutters with sharp corners so they will cut sharp corners in the wood.
Other planes are supposed to cut surfaces and not leave any sharp corners: bench planes, block planes and scraper planes (to name a few). So these planes need cutters that don’t create sharp corners in the wood – what some call “plane tracks.”
One way to avoid plane tracks is to make the cutting edge curved, such as in a scrub plane or jack plane. Another method is to round over the corners of the iron. My preferred method is to do both. I round over the corners of the plane iron and then sharpen a slight camber in its cutting edge.
The combination of these methods greatly improves the way the wood looks after I plane it.
So how to you round over the corners? After I grind an iron, I remove the corners on a diamond stone. You can use any stone (or sandpaper). The diamond stone is simply more durable than a waterstone or sandpaper.
After rounding the corners, I hone the iron and put considerable pressure on the corners to curve the cutting edge and blend my edge into the newly rounded corners.
There are other ways of accomplishing the same goal. And I’m sure your method works better than mine. But this is what I do.
1912 ad for the Pike Manufacturing Co., Haverhill, New Hampshire.
That’s a pretty good incentive don’t you think? Sharpen your tools and stop swearing.
EverybodyDoesIt – A Sharpening World Tour
“The Polisher”
Neolithic polissoirs, characterized by straight grooves and a shallow basin, were used to sharpen axes, arrows and blades. If you encounter one you will see, and feel, that the grooves and basin remain smooth compared to the rough surface of the rest of the boulder. The Polisher in the photo above is on the Malborough Downs, Wiltshire, England. Polissoirs are also found in France.
Whakarewa.
Whakarewa is a grindstone used by generations of Maori. It sat in Mimiha stream until it was moved in the 1920s to make room for roads and other development.
The Romans mined whetstones in North Gaul (present day Northern France and Belgium), Crete and in other areas they conquered. The whetstones from North Gaul have been found in settlements dating to the 1st century C.E.
Some of the whetstones from North Gaul, such as the one above, have been found buried beneath the main support posts of buildings. It is not known what symbolic meaning the stones had for the builders or occupants of the buildings. Did a stone taken from the earth then used to sharpen tools or weapons become a powerful protector once placed back in the earth?
Louis-Charles Bombled, late 19th/early 20th century, Musee Jurassien des Art Moutier, Switzerland.
Roubo mentions sharpening stones as one of the necessary tools to be provided in a workshop. In Blombled’s crowded workshop, a sharpening station is right where it should be – close to the benches.
Top: collotype with hand coloring, MFA, Boston. Bottom: unattributed photo. Both are late 19th/early 20th century.
The Japanese workshops/work areas may be different from the European model, however, an area for sharpening was set up. At top, a chisel is being sharpened; in the bottom photo, (left foreground) sharpening stones and a water basin are at the ready.
A convenient placement for a sharpening stone, 1920s from “China at Work” by Rudolf Hommel.
A sharpening stone was placed near an entrance. Whether you are coming or going, it’s a good reminder to sharpen your tools.
There is some evidence of pillars or other stone supports that were designated “sharpening spots” on large construction sites, especially when the constructions lasted decades or longer. The Cathedral of Valencia has such a spot near an entrance that is marked with deep vertical grooves.
Detail from Plate 12, “To Make as Perfectly as Possible.”
In Plate 12, Roubo illustrates the tools needed to sharpen saws. He includes a saw set, triangular file and a saw-holding vise to be secured on the workbench.
Top: detail from “Preparatory Drawing in the Style of Hokusai,” 1811, British Museum. Bottom: “Totomi Sanchu,” 1830-31, by Hokusai, MFA, Boston.
Positioned close to sawyers cutting massive pieces of lumber we find the saw sharpeners. One uses a vise made of blocks, while another has adapted a tree stump to serve as a vise. (The full-size images of the drawing and woodblock print are in the gallery at the end of this post.)
In this shop setting we see another saw vise option and it includes a stabilizing foot.
One more set-up for sharpening saws in the field (or forest). Using a low staked bench and shaped wooden “grippers” (and maybe some wedges) the pit saw is secured for sharpening. Side note: the photo is unattributed but is possibly Russian as the lower word in the logo (bottom right) is Russian for joiner or carpenter.
Women’s Land Army/Women’s Forestry Corps, Britain, WWI, Imperial War Museum.
Is that a woman sharpening a two-woman saw in a lumber camp? Why yes, yes it is.
Left: Ichikawa Danjuro in the Role of Soga Goro from the play “Yanone,” ca. 1790, MFA, Boston. Top right: unattributed photo, late 19th/early 20th century. Bottom right: detail from “A Book Mirror of Various Occupations,” 1685, MFA, Boston.
This composite is a reminder of how little has changed in using sharpening stones on metal edges. A domed stone in a water basin (or a nearby basin) is used by sword makers 200 or more years apart. In a kabuki play, Yanone (Arrowhead) Goro sharpens a double-headed arrow as he prepares to avenge his father’s murder.
Whetstones
From a 1650 version of “Cries of London.”
One of the great values of whetstones is their portability. Take them into the field or forest. Pack them in your tool box for the trip to the next job site. Whetstone quarries abound with some in operation for centuries.
Eidsborg Whetstone Quarry, Norway.
The Eidsborg quarry in Tokke, Telemark, Norway, was in operation from at least the 8th century until 1970.
Initial trimming of a whetstone. Watercolor from the diaries of Peter Orlando Hutchinson, 1854.
In the Blackdown Hills near the Somerset-Devon border in southwest England whetstones were mined from the 17th century to the early 20th century. Miners had small individual stakes on the side of a hill. The men of the family (father and older boys) dug the mine shaft, hewed out the stone and did the initial shaping with a basing axe. The wife and small children of the family did the final shaping. It was a hard way to make a living and exposure to fine stone particles and dust affected the health of the entire family.
Blackdown Hills whetstone “batts.”
Whetstone batts from the Blackdown Hills were used to sharpen scythes and other farm implements and tools.
Roy Underhill at a played-out whetstone quarry.
One of the many explorations undertaken by Roy Underhill was to locate an old whetstone quarry near Chapel Hill, North Carolina. His trip, and what he found, is in a chapter of his book “The Woodwright’s Companion.”
RotatingGrindstones
Psalm 63, “Utrecht Psalter,” Universiteitsbibliotheek, Utrecht. Digital image from the Warburg Institute Iconographic Database.
The earliest (so far) illustration of a rotary grindstone is from the 9th century “Utrecht Psalter.” It is supposedly a metaphor for “They sharpen their tongues like swords…” The grinder (grinding master?) sits high above the grindstone and to the side his minion turns a crank. Later manuscripts give us a better idea of the arrangement of this type of grindstone.
Top: “Luttrell Psalter,” 1340, British Museum. Bottom: fresco, 1425-40, Palazzo della Ragione, Padua, photo by Renzo Dionigi.
The top image provides a variation on a bird’s-eye view of this stationary grinder. The fresco below provides a much better view of how the grinder sat above the rotating stone. The lower half of the stone sits in a well of water and the minion turns the crank. This type of set-up could be found where large amounts of metal might be wrought, such as a large farming estate and shops making armor and weapons. The hand crank gave control over the speed of the grinding wheel.
Top left: “Cris de Paris,” 1500, BnF, Arsenal. Bottom left: “Cries of London” (source unknown), 1655. Right: “Cries of London” (source unknown), 1688.
If you lived in a city and had knives and scissors (or sciffars, or cifers) that needed sharpening a street vendor with a grinding wheel was readily available. The grinding wheel was propelled by a foot pedal and the vendor could use both hands. The vendor on the right has a cup (behind the larger wheel) to hold water or oil and on the frame there is a rag to wipe the blade clean (Chris has christened these rags, woobies).
Mr. Bert Smith, Bethnal Green in East London, c. 1949-1956, photo by Nigel Henderson, collection of the Tate.
The bicycle, both to turn the grindstone and to propel the cart, was another iteration of the portable grinder. Street vendors using foot or bicycle power can still be found in some large cities, but it is more common to visit a small shop or farmers’ market to have knives or scissors sharpened. That is why having a woodworker as a friend is a bonus.
Smaller versions of the stationary grinder became an asset to both large and small woodworking shops.
From “Lewis Miller: Sketches and Chronicles; Reflections of a Nineteenth Century Pennsylvania German Folk Artist,” 1810.
In 1810, Lewis Miller, carpenter and chronicler of York, Pennsylvania, has a small hand-cranked grinder in his shop.
Women’s Land Army/Women’s Forestry Corps, Britain, WWI, Imperial War Museum.
And just over 100 years later hand-cranked grinders were still in use. Electric bench grinders are most often in use today and remain an important tool in a woodworker’s shop.
There is one more pre-electric “bench” grinder to examine and that requires a short trip to Switzerland in 1367.
The “Spiezer Chronik” was commissioned to document the history of Bern, from its founding to the mid-15th century. It was written by Diebold Schilling, the Elder of Bern. The chronicle includes a lot of action from the very-long Burgundian Wars and wonderful color illustrations.
On page 367 there is a scene at a river. On one side stands an army and on the other a forest. The explanation of the scene is: “The Bishop of Basel wants to cut down the Bremgarten forest, for which the Berners provide him with the grindstone, 1367.”
The accommodating people of Bern provided benches with hand-cranked grindstones, water buckets and whetstones. Extra grindstones are arranged on the trees. The Bishop brought the axes. Sit astride a low bench and hand-crank the grindstone, what an idea.
PickOne
If you listen to most of the experienced woodworkers out there they will tell you it doesn’t matter what system of sharpening you use.
The Arrotino (with woobie over his shoulder), 1st century B.C.E, Roman copy of an Hellenistic original, Uffizi, Florence.
Use sharpening stones, water or oil. Don’t forget the woobie.
“Axe Sharpener” by Chicago-area artist and rock musician Jay Ryan. From Sebastian Foster online.
Use a file to get those burrs. And yes, bears do sharpen in the woods.
From delcampe.net.
Go old school and use the classic “head-over-grindstone”method. If need be, your dog can be a counterweight.
The point is: chose a method, learn it and use it to sharpen your tools.
Resources
On this blog go to the Categories drop down menu (on the right) and look for “Sharpen This.” There you will find Chris Schwarz’s full series on sharpening.
Many books published by Lost Art Press include discussions on sharpening. One place to start is Chapter 10 “Essential Sharpening Kit” in “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest.”
You can read about the woobie, ahem, “The SuperWoobie” here.
