Registration is now open for 2018 classes with Megan Fitzpatrick and Brendan Gaffney. The classes will be held in our storefront and are limited to six participants.
To register for Megan’s April 7-8 class on building a Dovetailed Silverware tray, click here. The class is $250 plus a small materials fee.
To register for Brendan’s April 21-22 class on making a Cabinetmaker’s Sector, click here. The class is $300, which includes all materials.
Full details on the classes can be found here.
“Utility furniture is now on the market, and everyone is able to see in what respects it differs from the uncontrolled product, and to form conclusions as to what extent we may expect it to influence furniture design of the future. The story of mankind with all its perverse, twists and turns, its chivalries, its discoveries, its unconquerable vanities, and its tragedies, stamps itself even on our furniture, so that the very line of a chair-leg or the rake of a chair-back may be a dumb witness to the end of an epoch or the herald of a new age. But there is more than mere history in the shapes of things: there is the sum total of human experience.
“When a craftsman of to-day sets to work to make a chair, the knowledge which he takes so much for granted is the stored-up inheritance of generations of craftsmen who had preceded him. He is profiting by their discoveries, their failures, and adding whatever of its own particular worth in new processes the present age has to offer. Only in our own age the ratio of skilled craftsmen is diminishing, and with so much that is good and civilised in process of being destroyed, one wonders how much will survive.
“Not that it is difficult to see that war will leave behind it advancement in some branches of knowledge, not only in weapons of destruction. We may, for instance, look for considerable advance in surgery, learned on the living bodies of shattered men, a considerable advance in chemical discovery, in aviation, but these are not the things on which our civilisation can be rebuilt. We are finding to our cost that men may have these and still be barbarous. Civilisation is founded on a sense of order, measure, proportion, self-control both of the mind and of the body, exactly the qualities which the acquisition of any true skill tends to develop. In fact, we may say that it is upon the world’s craftsmen in wood, stone, clay, who have made it possible for the living thought of one generation to be handed on to the next, to be a living witness of what man can do, and a living challenge, a standard to live up to and, if possible, surpass. To transmute the soaring vision of man’s destiny into a cathedral needed the work of stonemasons, carpenters, glassmakers, just as it took a craftsman to conceive of the letters in wood from which modern bookcraft had its beginning. Always the craftsman has been the conserver, the guardian, who passed on what was imperishable from one age to another, not failing to set his own seal upon it in the doing. Because no man’s work is exactly like anothers. There are always the little individual characteristics that stamp it as his own, giving it just that living touch which the machine will always lack.
“But now that the machine is with us, what are we to do about it? We cannot go back, even if we would. It has brought leisure and amenities which we value, and which could, if we would, be turned to good account. For leisure and amenities provide just that opportunity of developing those creative qualities of which modern life tends to rob us and which will be badly needed in the world after the war. It is only by doing creative work of some sort that a man learns both to know himself and to train himself for more and better work, and it is essentially the mark of the civilised man. To be indifferent, careless of one’s time, to want only to be amused, is to invite personal disintegration, a loss of personality which is not only a loss to oneself but to the community at large. For after the war we shall want men of personality, men of creative ability, men with patience, shrewdness and sound judgment to deal with the problems of peace. The new world cannot be a good world unless we conserve for it all that we have inherited of lasting value from the old. Only the barbarian blindly destroys. It takes civilised man—the man with the craftsman spirit—who is careful to see that beauty does not perish, to pass it on.”
— Charles Hayward, The Woodworker magazine, 1943
This is an excerpt from “The Woodworker: The Charles H. Hayward Years: Volume III” published by Lost Art Press.
“We’ll glue those wedges and tenons!” How often is this explanation heard when gluing up framed work. A usual response being to dip the wedges into the glue and drive them hard home, unless the wedges break off or bottom badly.
If we analyse the reason for wedging a joint we find that the wedges are provided to ensure a compression in the fibres of the tenons to equalise the inevitable movement due to age and conditions. At the same time it is necessary to provide a mortise with parallel sides for the tenon, so allowing for movement.
Take as an example a through mortised and tenoned wedged joint, the shoulders being tightly fitting to ensure rigidity in the work. In framing up we glue the shoulders and a small adjacent area only of the tenon, to allow the movement along the tenon (see Fig. 3 B). It will be obvious that to solidly glue the whole joint is defeating the essential object of that particular joint.
The logical method would be to glue the shoulders as usual, place the long grain edge of the wedge to the tenon, but do not glue (it may in fact be slightly greased), but gluing the remaining parts of the wedge into the mortise of the stile, making a parallel path for the tenon, but under compression. A joint made in this manner will not open at the shoulders.
In the case of double tenons, drive the outside wedges first to set the compression, the inner ones then being driven to equalise the compression on the tenons.
Good quality work of the old days had the tenons and wedges cut back in the stiles to allow for shrinkage clearance, and a pocket piece let in and flushed off in the stiles, making a workmanlike job (Fig. 1 A).
A Bad Fault. An odious method becoming prevalent to-day is tenon splitting and wedging the tenon out into a fantail in the mortise; it is apparent that the least shrinkage will pull the shoulders right open, when all rigidity in the work vanishes (see Figs. 1B and 3A).
Such a method is only permissible when diagonal wedging in thin material such as carcase construction, shelves to ends (Fig. 2), or in fox-wedging in the appropriate joints.
Selecting suitable joints and framing them up is a complicated matter at times, but consideration on the foregoing lines will amply repay the craftsman in the quality of the work he produces.
— MB
We had our first inspection from the Covington fire department this week and were told to fix something I’ve been meaning to get around to for 18 months: an exit sign.
We had a lighted exit sign when I purchased “The Blaze” more than two years ago. But the sign was super nasty, painted in glitter and covered (somehow) with hair. Hair? What the…? I ripped down the sign when I removed the odd ventilation fan (also covered in hair) and about three metric miles of sub-code electrical wiring.
Today we installed a hairless exit sign that was 100 percent to code, and we’re adding an “anti-blowjob” light to the front door to boot. I feel this light needs explanation.
Our shop is on a busy street corner that is used by everyone from elementary school students to prostitutes. When the sun goes down, some of the prostitutes have decided to use our shop’s stoop for their customer service duties. When this happens, the neighbors call the cops, and I get a nastygram from the police about the illegal activity on my property.
If I receive a couple more of those police reports I’m told I might be declared a nuisance by the city.
And so I debated today as to whether I should install a light above our door or monetize the whole thing with a webcam.
We’re going with the light.
— Christopher Schwarz
Note: This is crossposted from Crucible Tool.
Dividers work better if the tips match the job you’re doing. For layout chores, such as scribing arcs or setting out your joinery, the dividers’ tips need to match the wood you are using. Sharper tips will prevent the tips from skating on hard woods. And dull tips are needed in soft woods to prevent from marking the work too deeply.
In this video, Raney demonstrates how to make the tips sharper or duller using fine sandpaper stuck to a flat surface (a granite block in this instance). Changing the tips from dull to sharp takes only about two minutes (I timed him). And the results are worth the extra effort.
These techniques work on almost all dividers, not just our Improved Pattern Dividers.
— Christopher Schwarz