Today I had to return to IKEA to buy some sheepskins to outfit the stick chairs I’m building, and I was stopped cold by one of the company’s displays.
It was a bunch of 36” plastic flexible tapes, offered for free like the ubiquitous IKEA pencils. These tapes were plastic, marked in both inches and centimeters and were dispensed like you remove a page from a desk calendar.
I grabbed two (by accident). They are exactly what you need for measuring along unusual curves in the workshop. When I make chairs, I’m constantly trying to determine the length of a curve without resorting to math. Bending a metal tape measure around a curve is a crap idea. And so I usually steal a flexible cloth tape from Lucy’s sewing kit to do the job.
Now I don’t have to.
These silly free tapes are an absolute boon if you work in curves. And the price (free) is beyond fantastic. To thank IKEA, be sure to buy one of its $1 cinnamon rolls (and feed it to the birds outside) or sample the free cookies (they are made from the same material as the furniture, I suspect).
After years of dovetailing, I noticed that two of my chisels were seeing almost all the action: the 1/4″-wide and a 3/4″-wide tools. I use the narrow one for removing waste between the tails and the larger one for removing waste between pins.
If you are like Thomas and have limited funds for high-quality tools, these two chisels would be my first purchases.
But what about the so-called dedicated dovetail chisels you see in catalogs? As a beginning dovetailer, I had a crappy set of plastic-handled chisels, a newspaperman’s salary and a copy of the Japan Woodworker catalog. All three things conspired to make me miserable.
I wanted to cut dovetails with bold angles, but my crappy chisels had side bevels that were as big as Cheddar Mountain at Bonanza. So every time I went to clean out the waste between my tails, the side bevels would wrench a bite out of my tails.
I wanted to buy a sweet dovetail chisel from Japan Woodworker that didn’t have side bevels. That would allow me to sneak into the corners with ease. But I had a newspaperman’s salary, which made me want to sell drugs to the local Junior Leaguers.
Luckily, I met some clever people in my travels. Dovetailing demon Rob Cosman showed me his hot-rodded chisel on which he ground the side bevels down to nothing (and he shaped the chisel with a fishtail sweep). Woodworker Lonnie Bird showed me how he lopped the end off a plastic-handled chisel and reshaped it so that it was easy to strike.
And what did I bring to the equation? I figured out chisel geometry (like most woodworkers eventually do), which allowed me to make the tool take a beating like a rented mule.
Here’s What You Do So let’s say you have a nice four-figure salary and can spring for one of the nice $1 chisels at the flea market. Here’s how you can make it into a sweet worker in about 30 minutes.
Step one: File the side bevels. The side flats below the side bevels on cheap chisels are too big for dovetail work. You need to file the bevels so that there is absolutely zero flat area on the long sides of your chisel’s blade. When you are done, the chisel’s blade should look like a decapitated pyramid in cross-section.
You can do this with a grinder, a stationery belt sander or a disk sander. Or you can take the cheap (and safer) route and use a Multicut file. This style of file, which is generally used for shaping metal, can dress the side bevels of a typical chisel in about 10 minutes.
Secure the chisel in a vise and work the side bevels with the file. Hold the file with two hands: one on the tang and one at the tip. Cut only on the push stroke. And stroke the file so your hand is never (ever) right over the cutting edge of the chisel. One slip and you are (blood-soaked) toast.
After filing the side bevels so they extend to the flat face of the chisel, clean up your work with light strokes of the Multicut file. Then clean up your work (if you like) with a fine file or sandpaper.
Hacksawing the handle makes the tool less top-heavy and easier to balance. It also makes striking it easier than hitting the rounded surface provided by the factory.
Step two: Adjust the handle. If the striking end of the handle is rounded and plastic, it is likely too top-heavy to wield comfortably. The chisel should feel like a pencil, and the rounded end is probably difficult to strike without your mallet glancing off the end oddly.
Take a hacksaw and cut off the top 3/4″ of the handle. Try the balance. Still feel top-heavy? Lop off a bit more. Make sure you leave enough handle so you can grasp the handle in your hand to strike it without striking yourself.
Once you get the balance right, file the top of the handle flat and dress the sharp corners to remove any odd burrs.
Step three: Sharpen the edge correctly. Grind the primary bevel of the tool at 25°. Then grind a 35° secondary bevel on the tip. It will be a tiny secondary bevel, which is a good thing. The advantage of this steep bevel is that your tool will be durable through a lot of chopping. A steeper honing angle increases edge life. And the steep angle isn’t a detriment to chopping out waste – it scarcely feels different than a 25° chisel.
Charles Brock and Stephen Price from “The Highland Woodworker” stopped by recently to film a segment on Lost Art Press and our storefront. That day, Brendan Gaffney was teaching a class on building a sector, and Megan Fitzpatrick was editing Christian Becksvoort’s new book, so it was quite a circus.
Personal note about my performance: I know that I am likely somewhere on the spectrum when it comes to autism. I have difficulty looking people in the eye (always have). Feel free to make fun of me on this (Megan does). Also, I attended a special school when I was 5 for some of these developmental problems, so I’m easily mocked for that as well (Brendan does).
Suffice to say, I’m not sensitive about it.
Aside from the fact that I look and act like a freak, the episode is excellent! We tour the Covington, Ky., neighborhood where the storefront is located and show Charles the bench room, the research library, the biergarten and the Electric Horse Garage (the machine room). And we chat about three of our newest titles: “Hands Employed Aright,” “Welsh Stick Chairs” and “The Intelligent Hand.”
Thanks to Charles, Steve and Highland Woodworking, which sponsors the show. I am now crawling back into my spider hole so I can build a couple more chairs in peace.
The Lost Art Press storefront will be open this Saturday (Nov. 10) from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. with our full array of books available to purchase, including our newest title “The Intelligent Hand.”
In addition to that, Brendan and I will show a wide variety of chairs. Many of them we made and will be for sale. But we’ll also show chairs from other makers that we have collected. If you have any interest in chairs (Windsor, Welsh, ladderback etc.) this show will be a great opportunity to try out a variety of them and talk about the construction process.
The two most interesting (and beautiful) chairs in the show are the chair Larry Barrett built for the forthcoming edition of “Make a Chair from a Tree” by Jennie Alexander, and Chris Williams’s four-stick Welsh stick chair in the show, which is about as wondrous a chair as you can imagine.
We’ll post a full list of chairs in the show later this week.
If you haven’t been to Covington, Ky., recently, the town continues to clean up its act. For some reason all of the prostitutes have left our area (we don’t know why; maybe it was something Brendan said). We’ve also gotten a few more interesting and independent restaurants.
One of our favorites is Peppe Cucina at 39 W. Pike St. It’s a great deli that makes its own bread. And it has a pizza oven – slices are $4 on homemade focaccia. It’s a nice spot to eat lunch. Or you can take your food across the street to Braxton Brewing and get a beer to go with your sandwich or pizza.
Of course, our favorite place in town is still Main Street Tavern. Brunch there is about as good as you can get (right now I am fixated on the breakfast biscuit sandwich with fried chicken, egg and cheese).