Lost Art Press

Highland Woodworking Reviews ‘Cut and Dried’

Posted on by Kara Uhl

“Every now and then there comes a work of exceptional importance for a wide range of woodworkers,” writes J. Norman Reid in a review of “Cut & Dried: A Woodworker’s Guide to Timber Technology” by Richard Jones. “This volume, by British cabinetmaker Richard Jones, is such a book. In “Cut and Dried,” Jones examines a broad spectrum of issues concerning the character, qualities, and uses of wood, with particular emphasis on its application to cabinetmaking.”

After a thorough review of the book’s contents, Reid writes, “Cut & Dried” is one of the most complete and detailed works on wood and wood technology available to non-specialist cabinetmakers. For this reason, it merits a place on the reference shelves of all serious woodworkers. I highly recommend this important book.”

Thank you, Norman, for the kind review. You can read the entire review here. You can learn more about “Cut & Dried,” and purchase it, here.

— Kara Gebhart Uhl

The Perfect Canvas

Posted on by fitz

I wonder if Chris understood what he was unleashing when he first wrote about the Dutch Tool Chest. It’s the perfect blank canvas for woodworkers to exercise their ingenuity. Just a quick internet search will spill pages of configurations, colors, and creativity.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about DTC design and execution lately. This spring I’m co-teaching a class where students will build a version of the chest — but with a twist. My partner in crime is Thomas Latanè, one of the best blacksmiths working today, so the surprise spoiler is students will be both building the chest with me AND forging the hardware with Tom.

My influence for the project is easy to see but Tom’s comes from the tool chests that were attached to the sides of Conestoga wagons (a form curiously similar to the DTC). On many surviving pieces the strap hinge swings on a clenched staple as opposed to a standard barrel and pin. The example chest in the photo wears Tom’s vision for the hardware but there is opportunity for students to create something as complex or as simple as their skill set and time allows.

I’m really excited to be a part of this, it’s a wonderful handshake between two crafts that frankly ought to hang out together more often. The class will be divided into two, spending the morning with one instructor and trading to the other for the afternoon.

We’ve chosen to host the class at the picturesque Tunnel Mill Craft School just a few miles south of Rochester, Minn. Unlike many schools, they offer a dormitory bed and meals included in the price of tuition. After the official class time is over, it’s open campus where students can catch up in either area they feel they need to or just hang around the common room and enjoy the community.

Now the important stuff:

The class is May 2-5, and there are openings for only eight students this go around – so please don’t miss your chance. Dual skill classes are a rarity.

For pricing, booking, and questions email Carol Adams at jc-adams@msn.com or call 507-289-4189.

Derek Olson
Oldwolf Workshop Studio

See more of Tunnel Mill at http://www.tunnelmillcrafts.com/

See more of Thomas Latanè’s work at https://www.spaco.org/latane/TCLatane.htm

Spinning Chairs to Study

Posted on by Lost Art Press

Hampel-62120008Ausgestellte-Beine,-halbrunde-Sitzfläche,-die-Sprossen-gedrechselt.-H.-64-cm.-1846.-(621208)

To develop a good eye for chairmaking (or spoon carving or alligator wrestling), you need to study as many chairs as possible. Do it until your eyes glaze over.

Here’s a set of nice “Spinnstuhls” compiled by Rudy Everts in Bavaria. These so-called sewing chairs are from southern Germany and the Alps. These chairs are interesting to me in several ways. Some have a traditional undercarriage for chairs from this region – radical rake and splay, legs that taper to the floor, battens to thicken the seat – but some do not.

Check out the bent legs on a couple examples. A good guess is these came from a bent section of the tree, perhaps a branch or from the root section of a trunk.

Also, the variety of uppercarriages is fascinating. Some are joined, some look sawn from solid and some look bent.

Look through the gallery. Zoom in. Class dismissed.

— Christopher Schwarz

Let’s rake some hay

Posted on by fitz

Psst.

Hey, man. Wanna have some fun?

Hayrake 3

What kind of fun?

Hayraking.

[Radio silence.]

Building a hayrake table. Killer joinery (exposed tenons with trapped, scribed shoulders; bridle joints; cool geometry), carving lambs’ tongues, decorative gouging and inlaid butterfly keys—all at the Port Townsend School of Woodworking.

Hayrake 2
Laying out a lamb’s tongue

Hayrake 4
Cutting one exposed tenon with shoulders scribed to a curved stretcher is fun. Cutting a pair when the shoulders are trapped between stretchers at a fixed length is a challenge.

Hayrake 5
Preparing to trim a stretcher tenon

At the end of six days you’ll go home with a table–or, depending on your proficiency and other variables, you’ll at least go home with parts of the table ready for you to finish working on them, and you will be familiar with the techniques required to complete the build.

The class will run from July 8-13 (six days) and students are encouraged to build their table to their own dimensions. You can bring your own lumber or buy it before the start of class at Edensaw Woods.

Join me?

Make Your Own Curved Card Scraper

Posted on by Lost Art Press

curved_scraper_shape

If you didn’t get a chance to purchase one of the Crucible curved card scrapers, you can make your own with a dry grinder and an existing card scraper. It takes about 30 minutes.

Download and print out the following template. It’s a hand-drawn version of Chris Williams’s scraper, which is where our design started.

chriswilliams_scraper_shape

Cut it out and affix it to your card scraper with the help of spray adhesive. Or make a cardboard template and trace its shape on your scraper with a permanent marker.

At your grinder, set the tool rest to 0° – parallel to the floor. Dress the wheel of your grinder (we use an #80-grit wheel, but a #60 or #100 will also do) so it has a slight convex shape. This convexity in the wheel makes the scraper easier to shape.

Get a bucket of water and put it by the grinder.

(Hey wait, where are the step photos? I’m in a hotel room that’s 400 miles from my shop. You are going to have to use your imagination.)

Place the scraper on the tool rest and start grinding the excess metal away. Don’t work on one part of the scraper for more than a few seconds. Keep moving around the perimeter. After 10 or 15 seconds, try to pinch the scraper with a finger and thumb. If….

… you can pinch the scraper with no pain, continue to grind.

… your fingers reflexively jump away, cool the scraper in your water bucket.

… you smell bacon, also cool the scraper in the water bucket.

Once you have ground down to your line, you will have become pretty good at grinding flat shapes – congrats. Now you need to remove the grinder marks from the edges.

Use a block of wood to hold the scraper at 90° on a coarse diamond stone and stone the edges. Remove all the scratches from the grinder. Then move up to a #1,000-grit waterstone (or soft Arkansas) and then up to a polishing stone. Then you can proceed with normal scraper-sharpening procedures.

This is exactly how I made all of our prototypes. I promise that you will become emotionally involved with your scraper after putting all the work into it, and you might not ever want to buy one of ours.

So be it.

— Christopher Schwarz