We have a large batch of our new Exeter furniture-maker’s hammers for sale in our store now. These hammers are perfectly sized for people who build casework and chairs. They are the ideal weight for driving in 4d and 6d nails, smacking wedges in place and adjusting bench planes.
We’ve spent about three years developing this hammer, which is based on an old British form. The cross-peen is used to start brads and headed nails – the peen slips through your fingers to set the tip of the nail. Then you flip the head around to finish the job.
The octagonal handle feels great in the hand and offers two gripping positions: one for power and one for finesse.
At 9.8 ounces, the Exeter hammer is less fatiguing to use than a 16-ounce carpenter’s hammer, but is heavy enough to sink furniture nails for assembling carcases or planting mouldings.
Like all our tools, the Crucible Exeter hammer is made entirely in the United States. The hickory handle is made in the Carolinas, the head is milled in Nicholasville, Ky., and the tool is hand-assembled in our factory in Covington, Ky.
You can read more about the Exeter hammer here. You can read all about our line of hammers here.
My stamp.
Fun Stuff
We take pride in the work we do here. So each employee now stamps the handle with a touchmark after assembling the hammer. My symbol is a bumblebee. Kale is an “X.” Mark is a shamrock. And Gabe is an arrow. (Megan has yet to choose her mark.)
So you can look at the butt of the handle and know who assembled it. Note that we just started doing this on Sunday (Oct. 13). So hammers shipped out before today don’t have the touchmarks.
My personal copy of the book and the cheat sheet I keep in it.
Our latest book, “Principles of Design” by William H. Varnum, offers a systematic method to design furniture, plus a series of rules that guide you in the process. Perhaps even more important, “Principles of Design” shows you how to interpret other people’s design. Or how to fix your own designs.
Instead of saying something looks “unbalanced” or “awkward,” Varnum’s rules allow you to voice what you like (or don’t like) about a piece of furniture. “The dominant mass of this piece is placed too high in the composition, so the piece is top-heavy.” Or “The brackets offer little life or variety to the piece because of their too-obvious curve.”
I find most design books to be too idiosyncratic or tied to a particular furniture style (Shaker, Bauhaus, Arts & Crafts etc.). “Principles of Design” (and the books of Jim Tolpin and George Walker) instead offer you systems that work with any style of furniture. Plus ways of understanding the built world.
After reading Varnum’s “Principles of Design” a few times, I wanted a cheat sheet that could quickly guide me to each of Varnum’s rules and the explanation he offers for them. So I made one. And you can download it here:
So if I’m working on designing a border around a panel, my cheat sheet reads:
Rule 6d. Bands and borders should have a consistent lateral, that is, onward movement. (page 105)
I can then quickly turn to page 105 to see both good and bad examples of borders. (One of the best parts of Varnum is that he offers you just as many examples of poor design as good design. It really helps you sharpen your eye.)
Books on design are a hard sell – it’s like pushing water uphill. And re-printing “Principles of Design” to the high level of the original 1916 volume was expensive. Plus we are strapped for space in our warehouse. As a result, we think we can do only one press run of this book (3,000 copies). We’ve sold about 750 so far.
This is just fair warning that this book probably won’t be offered permanently.
A profile view of the jaws (with stripped screw holes) in the original pine jaw of this “carver’s vise” (this one is from StewMac, where it’s called a “Guitar Repair Vise.”)
Every chair class Chris teaches seems to develop its own gravitational pull. It’s inevitable – if you orbit within 50 feet of a class taught by Chris Schwarz you will get sucked in.
Now getting sucked into a class can mean many different things: Perhaps it means assisting students taper chair legs by hand until your shirt starts sticking to you; or remaking an arm in record time due to a irreparable and untimely break; or sometimes becoming the designated lunch fetcher of the day (this task can quickly make you popular among the students).
I of course am speaking from experience. I’ve completed all of these tasks at least once and am in no way complaining about it. I openly love the infectious energy of a class week – it’s chaotic and exhausting at times and I live for it. I love walking into work unsure of what the day will hold.
While the palpable energy from last week’s class was no different, one of the tasks I was given was new to me.
With how often we use our tools here, on top of student usage, shop maintenance is a constant. Planes and chisels need sharpening, floors need sweeping and carver’s vises need new jaws.
This is nothing against our beloved carver’s vises; we use them daily here. There is, however, one fault we’ve found with most of them – the softwood jaws that come standard on the vises have a tendency to lose their heartiness over time. (The newly recast Grizzly vise comes with hardwood jaws.)
Either the constant use causes the screw holes of the jaws to strip (which is what happened in this case) or the soft pine cracks. Or both (which is what happened in this case). When these things happen, either oak or hickory are what we typically use for new jaws.
After Chris gave me a quick lesson on how to replace the old jaws, I got to work.
Below is a visual step-by-step of how I made this repair.
First things first: Unscrew the old jaws from the vise.
New adhesive-baked urethane is pricey. So I sawed off the old urethane, leaving about 1/8″ of pine backing.
A close-up of the cut.
The thin layer of pine must be planed flat for good adhesion to the new hardwood jaws. How to plane a piece less than 1/4″ thick? I used double-sided tape.
The double-sided tape held the pieces firm to the bench as I planed.
I traced new hickory jaws from the pine ones and cut them out on the band saw then planed them flat to prepare for glue-up. (Notice the crack in the old pine jaw on the lower left.)
After clamping the urethane to the hickory (which was a chore – it was slippery!), I used a toothbrush to clean up excess glue then let them clamped-up jaws dry for an hour.
After tracing the screw holes on the backs of the new jaws, I drilled pilot holes, which made screwing the new jaws in place a snap.
Note: If you’re planning on coming to town next month for our Chair Show and Open Day, here are some restaurants to try. There’s a reason Cincinnati is one of the fattest cities in the USA.
Megan and I often joke that next year we’re going to flip the script on our classes at the storefront. We’ll hold a week of great restaurant meals, and we’ll also build a little stool (just to say we did some woodworking).
We are obsessed with good food – if you’ve taken a class here you probably already know this. So *if* we ever did a food tour, here is what the itinerary might look like.
Monday
Breakfast: Sugar ‘n’ Spice in Over the Rhine. This is an old-school diner. Stick to the basics, and you’ll be thrilled: pancakes, biscuits, French toast, home fries and bacon.
Lunch: City Bird (any location). A local chicken chain, and the best. Get the chicken however you like it (ask for it spicy if you like spicy). Be sure to get fries. And the salad is outstanding.
Dinner: St. Francis Apizza in Hyde Park. On Mondays, St. Francis does Chicago tavern-style pizza. It’s a six-day process to make the thin and flavorful dough. Standouts: pepperoni and sausage, and the bacon pizza (with whole slices of bacon). Pick up your pizza and eat it at a table in the parking lot. Get some drinks at Dutch’s a few doors down.
Tuesday
Breakfast: Maplewood downtown. Everything here is tasty and fresh. I love the chilaquiles and the lemon ricotta pancakes. The juice is worth it. Hang out by the restaurant’s front windows and watch the world go to work.
Lunch: Eli’s Barbecue, Findlay Market. The pulled pork sandwich and the smoked turkey sandwich are mainstays. Get the jalapeno cheddar grits on the side, or the mashed potatoes (which get seared on the griddle). After lunch, tour the market and get a waffle at the Taste of Belgium stand. You can spend the whole day at the market and its surroundings.
Lunch (per Fitz): Eckerlin’s Meats, Findlay Market. The hot pastrami sandwich is the best I’ve had in Cincinnati in years.
Dinner: Northside Yacht Club. This is in Megan’s neighborhood, and damn is it good. Great burgers, wings, fries. And always check out the monthly special. It’s a dive bar with A+ food and drinks. It’s not fancy. The “yacht club” is a joke – the building is on an industrial creek. For dessert, go to Shake It records (also in Northside). One of the two best record stores in the city.
Wednesday
Breakfast: Brown Bear Bakery. Cincinnati is awash in amazing bakeries. Brown Bear is a family favorite. Everything I’ve ever had there (except one thing) was mind-blowing good. Great coffee. Great place to sit and watch the city.
Lunch: Olla. Just a couple blocks from our office, Olla is serious Mexican food. The birria (in all its forms) is mouthwatering. The best guacamole in the city. Fantastic tacos. And a great place to hang out with a margarita.
Dinner: Colette. A small French restaurant that continuously blows my mind. I have had everything on the menu. And I will have everything again. If I had to pick a few favorites… the brioche, the cod, the ravioli and the cote de boeuf. My favorite cup of coffee in the city, too.
Thursday
Breakfast: Young Buck Deli. Only two things on the menu. Both are great.
Lunch: Heyday. We talk about this place a lot. On any given day, I will say that Heyday has the best burger and the best fries. Friendly staff. Everything is fresh and perfect.
Dinner: Cafe Mochiko. My favorite Japanese place in town. Fantastic ramen, karaage and katsu sandwiches on milk bread (it’s a Japanese bakery by day). Even the damn burger will blow you away. And if you like Japanese pastries, this is the place.
Friday
Breakfast: Coppins. The restaurant in the Hotel Covington. This is where we take guests when they visit. Lots of good stuff to please everyone in the family. And a beautiful place to eat, too. If the weather is nice, sit outside in the courtyard.
Lunch: Sotto. Usually I recommend Sotto for dinner, but it’s difficult to get a reservation for dinner. So go for lunch. Everything – and I mean everything – on the menu is fantastic. Sotto is where we go to celebrate our victories or lick our wounds. The short rib cappellacci can change your life.
Dinner: Purple Poulet. A family-run restaurant with the best fried chicken I’ve ever had. Shrimp and grits. All the Southern specialties. And if you don’t get the bread pudding at the end, then you will have committed a crime against puddings.
The above itinerary wasn’t easy to put together. On any given day I’d instead insist that you go to the Eagle, Allez, Otto’s, the Baker’s Table, Nada, Boca, Taft Brewhouse, Decibel, Libby’s, Mita’s, Losanti, Senate, Nine Giant, Crown Republic or Taglio’s.
And Fitz would add El Camino, Teak, Kiki, the Pony, Gulow Street and Sacred Beast.
The following is excerpted from Derek Jones’ new book “Cricket Tables.”
Simplicity, necessity and ingenuity are the three key principles for making cricket tables. This traditional three-legged table exists in a variety of forms and woods – no two are the same. So making them follows an organic process – your tools and materials dictate your approach and your cricket table’s final form. Jones introduces the form, then teaches you the simple skills to create a variety of everyday furniture with a few basic hand tools and easily sourced materials.
Most people think Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb; he didn’t. He came up with a version that burned longer and brighter than anyone else had achieved, making it appealing to consumers and thus commercially viable. You could argue that he just piggybacked his way to glory but the fact is, the last few steps in perfecting anything generally requires the most effort. And for that we must give Edison credit where it’s due. Edison experimented with hundreds of different materials before settling on carbonized bamboo for his filament. He never viewed experiments in terms of success or failure. Knowing that something doesn’t perform the way you intended is just as valuable as knowing that it does. Over the course of his working life, he carried out more than 50,000 experiments to invent the alkaline storage battery and 9,000 to perfect the lightbulb. On paper those statistics look scary – you might even find them intimidating – but reframing the data as tens of thousands of things you now know the answer to is creative gold. For the record, among those “failures” was the groundwork for inventing the carbon microphone that went on to be used in telephone handsets for more than a century. The phonograph, originally thought of as just a tool for office dictation, became mainstream in every continent not long after. Its legacy is still burning bright albeit through the ether and into our ears. In his book “The Imagination Muscle” (Constable), Albert Read refers to this kind of behavior as “imaginative risk.” And if that concept doesn’t get you fired up and running toward the workshop then maybe stop reading, we’re probably done. In the same way Edison didn’t equate lack of success with failing I find it hard to see anything other than valuable lessons from my current tally of tables. Hand on heart, there isn’t a stinker among them if you truly value the process of design without fixating on the outcome.
Today we regard pared-down simplicity as a relatively modern concept. We know it as minimalism. As an expressive genre, the idea came about in the early 19th century as a somewhat idealistic view that enlightenment could be gained by adopting a less cluttered lifestyle both in possessions and thinking. In Western culture the idea already had traction before then through several religious ideals, the Shakers being the most well-known among woodworkers. In the Chinese religious philosophy Daoism, which incidentally has its roots somewhere back in the 4th Century B.C.E., there are three main virtues – non-action, naturalness and simplicity. These are obviously open to interpretation but the similarity between that train of thought and those practiced elsewhere throughout history suggest a natural desire among all life to eventually seek a simpler existence. Further guidance on upholding the virtues is offered by what is known as the Three Jewels: compassion, frugality and humility. Sound familiar? Arts & Crafts, Bauhaus, Zen and Feng shui all have similar influences because of a common thread. By asking us to turn away from the path we’re on in search of something different implies choice. Cricket tables, mostly, and vernacular furniture in general have different DNA. When necessity is in the driving seat, you end up with good, honest no-frills solutions.
Old or New? The first cricket table I made wasn’t so much a tour de force but a war of attrition. When I brought it into the house my partner approved, likening it to something that could have come from IKEA. And in a funny way she was right, that’s exactly what it looked like. Smooth lines, geometric form, pale “Scandi” color. After all isn’t that what IKEA does so well? I wonder what her reaction would have been to a period example, all wonky and encrusted with hundreds of years of grit and grime. There’s always something to be learned from an expert, but nobody speaks the truth like a complete novice. Factory-made furniture must appeal to the widest audience possible. It mustn’t offend. And like any good, backhanded compliment it should be taken in context. It’s important to understand that the relationship you have with the pieces you make will be very different to the one everyone else has. From that moment on I’ve not been able to look at cricket tables in any way other than contemporary and timeless. The few that I have made and attempted to create a period look through the finish feel slightly wrong.
The tables chosen for this section all have qualities from Daoism, Arts & Crafts, Bauhaus and minimalism either in form, process or intent. I appreciate that does sound a bit grandiose but it’s not that hard. Just picking up some tools and making something gets you 99 percent of the way there. They are good honest pieces, stepping stones toward making the perfect table. In case you’re wondering, I’m a long way off and hope I never will, but I do know the next one is a step closer.
