Sorry our lump hammer isn’t $5 and won’t wash your truck or cream your spinach.
And if you think that $85 or $90 is crazy for something made by hand in the United States in small batches, then I wish you Godspeed to Walmart.
So after you’re done telling the kids to get off your lawn, get on eBay and buy a used engineer’s hammer with a head that weighs 2-1/2 lbs. (or 1,000 grams for the metricated woodworker). Cut the handle down so it’s about 9” or so long below the head. Clean up the thing and re-wedge the head.
Then put it on your bench.
A metal hammer of this size will save your skin the next time an assembly freezes up during glue-up or won’t come apart. My lump hammer has rescued many workbenches, chairs and dovetailed joints from disaster because it can go almost anywhere and it always outpunches a wooden mallet.
Use it to set your holdfasts (and ignore the people who say you can’t hit metal with metal. Perhaps they’ve never driven a nail or worked on an anvil). Speaking of anvils, use the side of the lump hammer as a small anvil to set rivets or clench nails.
Then one day, when you’re feeling randy, try using it for mortising. Don’t swing it. Just drop it on your chisel handle. Set wedges with it. Swage hinges.
And because this isn’t a Ronco commercial, you can now use your imagination for some other bulleted items.
You might be wondering: Why are we making a lump hammer if there are used ones (and cheesy new ones) available for less? For the same reason we make our own furniture when there are antiques and cheesy flat-pack furniture available for less.
This is an excerpt from “With the Grain” by Christian Becksvoort.
With a background in forestry, wood technology, furniture construction and restoration and many decades of joinery, I’ve developed a system of case construction that fully allows solid-wood panels to move throughout the seasons. None of it is entirely original, most is borrowed from antique builders, some is common sense and a minute portion (expansion washers, for example) is my solution to age-old problems. No case I’ve ever restored utilized all of the described techniques, so this is more or less a compilation of the best joinery I’ve had the privilege to restore and learn from.
Once the panels are glued, sanded and cut to size, construction can begin. Edges need to be cut parallel and ends perfectly square. The best sides should be oriented toward the outside and so marked. Then rabbets are cut on the inner back edges to accept the case back. The joints to attach the top to the sides can be a screwed butt joint, single or double rabbet joint, through- or half-blind dovetails, or even a splined miter. If the case is to sit on an applied bracket base, the same joinery can be used for the bottom.
Before gluing the top to the sides, a bit of planning is in order. This is the time to cut matching dados and grooves for any interior dividers, shelves, or web frames to support drawers. If the case side runs all the way to the floor, the bottom is usually dadoed or secured with sliding dovetails 4″-6″ (10-15 cm) from the floor. In either instance, glue or screw blocks (shown below) should be used underneath to strengthen the joint. Once all the interior joinery is cut, the four sides of the case can be glued and assembled.
A web frame (shown at top) consists of four or five narrow pieces dovetailed and mortised and tenoned together to support drawers. Although extra work, they do save both material and considerable weight. The preferred method of building web frames to give maximum support to the drawers, yet allow the cabinet sides to fully expand and contract, is as follows:
The horizontal side-to-side frame members have dovetails on both ends and mortises on the inside edges, right next to the dovetails. The front-to-back drawer runners are tenoned on both ends. The shoulder-to-shoulder dimension of the runners should be slightly less than the distance between the front and back frame members. On the case interior, there should be four short dovetail slots (two per side, to accept the side-to-side frame members), connected by a shallow dado, roughly 1/8″ deep (.32 cm).
To assemble: The front side–to-side piece is glued first. When the dovetails bottom out, the front of the case and the just-installed member should be flush. Next, glue is spread into the front mortises. Then the drawer runners are inserted into the side dados and the front tenon is slid into the front mortise, both left and right runners. Lastly, the back side-to-side frame member is glued into the dovetail slots. The back mortise and tenon are not glued. This allows the joint to telescope in and out, as the case sides expand and contract. The gap between the runners and the back frame member could be as much as 1/8″ to 1/4″ (.32 to .64 cm) if the panels are close to 14 percent MC, and will most likely shrink; smaller if the side panels are closer to 6 percent MC and expansion is anticipated.
A final word about case bottoms: If a solid wood bottom is used, glue blocks should be installed. If, however, a web frame is preferred to save weight, then a dust panel should be incorporated to seal the bottom. Grooves should be cut on the inner portion of the web frame, and a panel fitted during assembly to seal out dust and dirt. Generally speaking, dust panels are not required on other interior web frames.
At each step of construction the case should be checked for squareness. Small errors tend to accumulate if not rectified from the start. Before fitting the back, the case should be carefully checked to be sure it is square. Assuming that both sides are identical in length, and the top and bottom widths are the same, then simple diagonal measurements will point out any errors. Measure from the top left corner of the case to the bottom right, then from the top right to the bottom-left corner. If the two measurements do not match, a clamp between the two longer corners should pull it into position. Re-check the measurements before proceeding to build and install the back of the case.
My daughter Maddy says she has about 50 sets of stickers left. So this is the last call for this batch.
With Maddy moving to New England, she had to give up her Post Office box in Ohio (if you mail money to the old P.O. box it will be returned to you automatically by USPS). But she has kept up her etsy store. A set of stickers is $6 delivered. She also ships internationally.
After graduating from Ohio State University, Maddy is now in the working world and supporting a new kitten named Chickpea.
Also, for those of you who pay attention to stuff, Maddy made it through college without a penny of debt. That was thanks to her hard work, help from her parents and your help with her sticker business. You paid for many books, turkey sandwiches and (likely) a few beers.
The first batch of Crucible Lump Hammers will be up for sale in our store very soon this month. This week I visited the Crucible Lab, where Raney showed me how the production run was progressing, and we discussed some of the details of manufacturing.
As we were talking, I noticed one of the Lump Hammers on his bench that had a natural hickory handle – no “shou sugi ban” charred finish. The hickory was soiled from Raney’s hands. I picked it up and was immediately reminded of Alan Peters’s lump hammer, which I fell in love with years ago.
After some discussion, Raney, John and I decided to make the natural hickory handle the standard finish on our handles. For those of you who wish to make the handle black, we are going to offer detailed instructions on how to do it with inexpensive tools and a few minutes of work.
Why are we making this change? Several reasons.
The natural handle has crisper facets and a better feel in the hand. Charring the handles rounds over the facets and noticeably reduces its circumference. Leaving it natural makes for a Lump Hammer that fills your palm and offers better feedback in use.
The charring is functionally irreversible. If you want a charred handle, it is a simple thing to make a natural handle into a charred one. If we send you a charred handle, however, it is not possible to get back to the full-sized natural one.
It looks right. We love shou sugi ban, but we also love the look of traditional Western tools. The natural handle looks like a new one you might find in an English hardware store (in the 1960s), and it will only get dirtier and more glorious with age.
For those of you who were keen on the black handle, we offer the following solutions. In the next week or so we will publish a video tutorial on how to char your handle with simple home center tools. If you are local to us, we invite you to stop by the Lost Art Press storefront on one of our open days (the second Saturday of each month) and I will personally char your handle for you and finish it with beeswax.
The Lost Art Press storefront will be open this Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. with our usual mix of free woodworking instruction, discounted blemished books and tours of the building.
We also will host Nancy Hiller that same evening from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. for a free book-release party for her fantastic new tome: “English Arts & Crafts Furniture.” There are some spots available for the evening event; you can register here.
Nancy will be signing books and egging on attendees to beat the snot out of a special pinata she has made for the occasion. To enhance the beatings, we will be providing free alcohol and snacks (as well as plain-old water).
We’ve all been busy in the shop since last month. Brendan has a new three-legged backstool to show off (I think it resembles a cockfighting chair). Megan is building some fancy sawbenches for a customer. And I have finished a new Welsh stick chair design that you are welcome to try. I think it’s quite comfortable and really easy to build.
In other storefront news, Brendan and I have just finished building some new fixtures for the store. We have a stockpile of old No. 2 black cherry that we have transformed into a book rack to show off our new Lost Art Press titles. We have also built two “tool walls” that now cover the bookshelves above the bar.
These tool walls hold a lot of the communal tools for the workshop. Don’t worry, I haven’t given up on tool chests. We’ll remove the tool walls while the storefront is open, but we’ll have them there for you to see.
As always, Covington is growing by crazy leaps and bounds. We’re barely able to keep up. Just down the street we have a new pizza place, Alto, that we haven’t gotten to try yet. And across the street from Alto is Peppe Cucina, a great deli with very friendly service. The City Goat is just down the alley. And Flying Axes opened up around the corner. A bar where you throw axes (at targets). We went. It’s fun!
My daughter Maddy says she has about 
