Christian Becksvoort is featured in the Portland Press Herald today, in a Bob Keyes article in the Books section:
“Christian Becksvoort doesn’t want to be the ornery old guy who complains about how things are and wishes for the way they were.
“He’s generally pretty well disposed, balanced and grateful, and at age 69, shows hardly a hint of slowing down. But he can’t help himself when it comes to talking about how it used to be, back in the day when kids were taught in school how to make things out of wood with their hands. They had to know how to measure, cut and hammer and were supposed to be endowed with enough functional woodworking skills to navigate the basics of home ownership and life.”
While the article focuses on Christian’s latest book “Shaker Inspiration,” it’s also a glimpse into his history, life and woodworking aesthetic.
“He also makes reproductions of traditional Shaker pieces and enjoys taking furniture apart to see how it was made. He’s always learning by understanding how other people have solved problems before him. ‘You can tell two or three people worked on a piece. Some dovetails are real crisp. Parts of others might be real sloppy,’ he said. ‘You can learn a lot by taking it apart.’ There’s a humility to Shaker simplicity that Becksvoort treats with reverence. For him, it always comes back to the opposite of what he calls “maximalism, or how much crap can we put on a piece of furniture?”
A reminder that Christian will be at Lost Art Press (837 Willard Street, Covington, Ky., 41011) for a book release party on Jan. 12, from 7-10 p.m. (plus he’ll be in and out during the 10 a.m.-5 p.m. open house). Please shoot me an email (if you’ve not already) if you’re attending the evening shindig.
No matter how expensive or well-made your handplane is, there are times when you have to perform a “hard reset” on the tool when it starts to behave unpredictably.
I use my handplanes every day, so I have to do a hard reset almost every year. My smoothing plane and block plane are more sensitive tools and require more frequent maintenance – maybe every nine months or so.
When should you do a hard reset? I do it when problems occur that a simple sharpening won’t fix. Perhaps I get plane tracks in my work I can’t explain. Maybe the plane won’t hold a fine setting the way it should. Perhaps the tool just feels a little rough when I use it.
When I do a hard reset, I perform all the steps below. When I do all the steps, my planes always perform as better-than factory new. Skipping steps means success is not guaranteed (at least in my shop).
Grind, Reshape & Resharpen the Iron
Take the iron to the grinder and reshape the entire bevel. Remove all evidence of the previous edge. Create a burr with the grinder. If there’s a back bevel, remove it. Then reshape the edge appropriate for the type of plane (jack, jointer or smoother). When I do a hard reset I always dub the corners of the iron on a diamond stone to ensure the corners will not dig into the work.
Hone a fresh edge on the iron. If you use micro-bevels (I do), try to make the smallest micro-bevel possible.
Clean, Repair & Shape the Chipbreaker
Chipbreakers cause as many problems as they solve. They are made of soft steel so they are easily damaged when you plane a knot or hit something harder than a knot (such as your planing stop). Minor damage to a chipbreaker can ruin a plane’s performance. Here’s what I do to get it back to factory condition.
Clean the sap and gunk off the breaker with a rubberized abrasive (such as the Klingspor Hand Block). Hone (or grind) a new edge on the chipbreaker. The leading edge of the breaker takes a huge amount of abuse. A burr or teeny nick on it can destroy the plane’s ability to pass a shaving. Grinding or honing away the old edge will restore its function.
This grinding or honing will raise a burr on the underside of the breaker. Remove this burr with great care on a fine stone. Then attach the breaker to your iron and look for any light between the breaker and the back of the iron. If light can get in, so can a shaving. And that sneaky shaving will foul the plane.
To fix the problem you might have to file the underside of the breaker. You might have to bend the breaker a little in a vise so it clamps down harder on the iron. Hell, you might have to replace the breaker. They are cheap so don’t hesitate to get a new one.
Dress the Sole
Many times “plane tracks” are actually “sole tracks.” A knot or something else hard has scored the sole or the edges of the sole. And this damage has raised a burr that scratches your work.
The sole of plane should be as clean and smooth as possible. This is more important than it being dead flat (in my experience). To clean the sole, buy a piece of $5 granite tile at the home center and stick a piece of #220-grit sandpaper to it (I use a spray adhesive).
Disassemble the plane and rub the sole on the sandpaper until the sole is as smooth as a nun’s stomach. (Side note: You’ll read elsewhere that the sole has to be under working tension with the iron and cap iron in place to do this. I have not found this to be the case. I have found no sole deflection in a standard bench plane. Rabbeting planes and shoulder planes are another story.)
Note the rounded edges of the sole.
When the sole is clean and smooth, take some #220-grit sandpaper and strongly ease all the edges of the sole. This removes any damage on the sidewalls, toe and heel. And it helps prevent future damage. A sharp corner is more fragile than a rounded one.
Wipe the sole down with oil.
Clean the Interior
Remove the frog. If you do a lot of planing, the interior will be filled with crud. Clean all this out. At this point I always clean all the screw threads that hold and adjust the frog. You might think this is overkill, but crud builds up and there’s a tipping point where everything goes to pot.
So I remove all the screws and clean them to bright metal with a soft-bristled bronze brush. I clean the interior of the adjustment nut with a stiff-bristled nylon brush. Then I put some light machine oil on all the screws and reassemble everything.
Re-assemble
While everything is apart, tighten the screws on the tote and front knob. Sand off any burrs on the tote (these crop up when the wood gets knocked about). Clean up the lever cap if you like. The lever cap works fine if it’s filthy but it looks better if you clean it off with the rubberized abrasive.
And that’s it. The whole process takes less than an hour and the results are always worth it.
With my kids, I struggle when we talk about their futures. I want to tell them: Do what you love, work really hard and everything will be alright. It’s a great line, but it’s USDA prime horse crap.
My first business – The Kentucky Gazette – failed in the 1990s. And no amount of hard work could save it. I slept under my desk many nights, and I did a good deal of award-winning journalism. There is more to it than hard work, intelligence and talent.
The person who put it best, in my mind, is Doug Martsch, the founder of the band Built to Spill. He is one of my guitar heros and has an independent streak a mile long (which he somehow maintains while his band signed to Warner Bros. records).
I probably will forward this interview to my daughters someday. But it’s far too nice outside today, and they are both in good places with their lives and their work.
So perhaps I’ll disrupt your day instead. (I actually take great comfort from Doug’s words.)
— Christopher Schwarz
These excerpts are from SPIN magazine, an article written by Rachel Brodsky and posted April 14, 2015.
RB: Ira Glass has a quote where he essentially says that every creative person does terrible work in the beginning. Everybody who’s ever wanted to make art is terrible at first. But as long as you create a “volume of work” — even if it continues to be terrible — it will get better. That’s kind of reassuring.
DM: Well, I’m going to go one further and say that it doesn’t get better. You will not get to a point where you write good things. I’m saying that even now, 99 percent of what I write is really stupid, and it didn’t get any better.
What keeps you going with it then?
I can’t do anything else; there is nothing else I can do. I don’t know how to do anything else, and I still like it. Mostly what I’m talking about is the lyrics. The music part of it, it doesn’t come easy for me, but it’s more subjective, so you can get away with more. Whereas the lyrics, lyrics are subjective. But if they’re bad, they can really turn a person off to what’s happening in the whole. If the lyrics are bad, it’s impossible to listen.
Got any career advice for younger indie-rock bands?
I don’t at all. I can tell you about my circumstances, but they’re not going to apply. I just feel like people have something in them that they want to just do, and they’ll do it no matter what anyone says. Or if they need to be advised, maybe it’s not for them.
Yeah, the music industry is pretty much the antithesis of practical.
Yeah, exactly. So the thing I always say is that I’ve been really lucky. That’s my secret, that I got lucky. I’m not saying that there aren’t other things involved, but I wouldn’t be where I was if I hadn’t lived in Seattle at a certain time, met certain people. The people that I started a band with, I just happened to hook up with some people who were a little older than me who put out records themselves. That was a big deal back in those days. For me to work with them was amazing, and that made my whole life.
I wouldn’t say, like, put out your own record, because that might not do it. I wouldn’t say tour a bunch, because that might not do it either. The other thing I say is don’t have any expectations. If you want to do it, just do it. But if you want to make it big, you’re on your own. I have no idea how to make it big. No one knows the secret to that. I mean, I can tell you how to book time in a studio, but that’s neither here nor there.
Katherine has just finished making another big batch of soft wax, and it’s available in her etsy store.
If you haven’t been keeping up with the Soft Wax Saga this fall and winter, she’s made some changes to her production and bottling process – upgrading the packaging and refining the recipe. Details are here.
Counting all the jars she’s sold at our storefront (and to me), Katherine has made and sold more than 1,000 jars since she started mixing the stuff in the basement in April 2016. When we began making the stuff, I helped her bottle every batch. Now she takes care of everything herself, except ordering some supplies where she needs a credit card.
So thanks to everyone who has supported her these last three years and your patience when things occasionally went wrong. Katherine’s learned a lot about dealing with adults because of this business and, of course, I’m happy to see her get a taste of financial independence.
This is an excerpt from “Slöjd in Wood” by Jögge Sundqvist.
The snob stick is a long sallow (willow) stick with a knob on the end, on which the bark has been peeled off in a spiral shape. The snob holds the stick by the knob while he haughtily struts around in town. The idea comes from the woodworker Bengt Lidström in Kassjö. As a child, he would pretend he was a snob after he saw haberdashery ads in Västerbottens-Kuriren, the local newspaper. The snob stick makes a nice feature and a support for the flowers in your garden border, in the flower box or the flower pot. If you don’t have a need for snob stick, you can use it as a walking stick instead.
The curtain rod is made from a young, straight-grown birch. The knobs have holes in which are attached rod tenons. The curtain rod can be hung from brackets made from birch crooks.
Material: Dry birch blank for knobs. Dry, straight birch, 25mm to 35mm (1″ to 1-1/2″) for rods. Thin sapling or withy from birch, sallow or hazel about 15mm (9/16″) in diameter for the stick..
SNOB Start with the stick. Select the blank in the early summer, when the bark comes off the wood. Cut a spiral in the bark with the knife using your knee as a support. Hold the knife edge at an angle and rotate until you have scored the entire stick (see illustration below). Leave a space of around 25mm (1″) between the score lines for the next spiral cut. Score the stick again parallel to the first scoring line. Carefully peel off the bark between the cuts, leaving a spiral pattern of bark. After the withy has dried for a couple of days, carve a 20mm (13/16″) tenon on top with a smaller dimension than the stick. A diameter of 12mm (1/2″) is good.
Sawing and splitting of the blank for two knobs has begun.
Snob stick made of birch, detail on the knob.
KNOB Split out a square blank with the same diameter as the finished knob. Cut the blank so it is twice as long as the length of the knob. A total length of 15cm (5-15/16″) is about right. Now you have supporting material at one end that makes it easier to hold, either in your hand or clamped in the shaving horse. At this point, making two knobs is an option, matching the dimensions and design.
Shape the blank smooth and square in the shaving horse or with a small axe and knife. Lay out centerlines on all sides, checking that all angles are 90. including the end faces.
When making two knobs, drill a round mortise in each end with an auger bit with the same diameter as the tenon on the stick. The centerlines act as sightlines so you can align your eye with the drill as you are drilling. Lay out the form on all four sides:
Start by drawing lines that indicate depth, then saw kerfs on the four long sides. Plan the order of work to systematically split off excess material with a knife and hammer to facilitate the carving phase. For example, after the first rough split, you can saw more grooves and split closer to the final form.
Curtain rod finials made from birch. Snob sticks or flower sticks of birch and sallow. Curtain rod bracket of birch trunk with branch.
Bracket for the curtain rod. Choose a branch that has grown in a 90° angle before it turns upward.
When you have finished the initial square shaping, continue shaping into octagonal facets. Finally, carve the shape of the knob smooth with the knife. Go for octagonal or round shapes. For knife grips, see Knobs and Latches on pages 34 and 35.
CURTAIN ROD WITH BRACKET Make curtain rod finials the same way as the knob of the snob stick. Use straight-grained birch, rowan or hazel for the rod. Carve it octagonal or round. For strength, it is a good idea to make the middle part of the rod a little bit thicker. Look for nice bracket blanks when you are out in the woods. Carve the brackets for the curtain rod in the same way as the coat hook. Decorate and go all in with colors and patterns!
Christian Becksvoort is featured in the Portland Press Herald today, in a Bob Keyes article in the Books section:
