The image is from 1634 and needs a caption. ‘Nusquam tuta fides’ translates as ‘no trust is ever sure’ but don’t let that get in your way.
–Suzanne Ellison
The City Workshop
After 21 years of working in shops in the suburbs or (worse) sprawling edge cities, I was thrilled to move to a storefront on Willard Street in Covington, Ky. It has exceeded every expectation, and I have forged a lot of great relationships with nearby woodworkers, metalworkers, carpenters and glass artists.
On top of that, the architecture is an endless source of inspiration, offering pattern, shadow, ornament and form. And my store’s plate-glass windows are like a high-definition television tuned to the human dramas on the sidewalks. Here are my three favorite tales from the last two years.
Sprinting in the City
While my daughter Katy and I were walking back to the store from lunch, I challenged her to a foot race down Ninth Street. She declined. But as we turned onto Ninth, she changed her mind and took off running. I pursued her – sprinting at top speed.
It was a spring day, and all the cars lined up at the stoplight on Ninth Street had their windows open. And the drivers and passengers started yelling at us.
“Hey! You leave her alone!” one driver yelled.
“Stop chasing her!” another screamed. “I’ll call the cops!”
I started laughing so hard I lost the race.
Money Doesn’t Buy Good Taste
It’s pretty common for local residents to stop by the shop to see what I’m building. They also like to look at the completed pieces of furniture waiting to go to customers.
One day a woman stopped by who was looking for work cleaning bathrooms (sorry, I clean my own toilets). After walking in she rushed to the back of the room, dropped to her knees and started examining the fretwork on the staked dining table we use as a desk. She spent a few minutes examining that table, then moved to the aumbry to examine the carving. Then one of my chairs.
She went on a rant about store-bought furniture that any woodworker would recognize. This woman, who you might think is homeless, had really good taste in furniture. (Better taste than my suburban neighbors on the whole.)
If it Looks Like a Crime Scene…
Last winter when I was building the 1505 Loffelholz workbench I was having a heck of a time getting the tail vise working properly. After a frustrating day of adjusting it and failing, I gave up and decided to go home.
I locked the shop’s door and walked to my truck. I had a sudden idea on adjusting the vise that stopped me dead in my tracks. I turned around, unlocked the shop door and immediately slid under the bench, lying on my back. I was so excited I forgot to close the shop’s door.
After 10 minutes of working on my back, I heard someone running toward me.
“I’m calling 911! Are you OK? Are you hurt? Did they rob you?”
A guy was standing in the open doorway, out of breath, with a cellphone.
Again, I started laughing. Except for a pool of blood it looked like a crime scene. I was flat on my back, staring straight up. The door was wide open.
I know a lot of woodworkers fantasize about a cozy workshop out in the woods somewhere where they can be surrounded by nature. And be free from distractions of human society. But for me, a city workshop is best shop I’ve ever had.
— Christopher Schwarz, editor, Lost Art Press
Personal site: christophermschwarz.com
Evolution of the Crucible Dividers
I’ve just posted a blog entry that shows the evolution of the Crucible Improved Pattern Dividers (and explained why they have that name. Check it out here.
— Christopher Schwarz
Some of our Defences
“ … For the comfort and seemliness of our furniture will decide the background of our home; whether it is to be a place we can truly rejoice in and be proud of, or whether it is to be a shoddy sort of place, a mean, vulgar sort of place. And these things do not depend upon whether a man is rich or poor. A rich man’s house can be innately vulgar, and a poor man’s house have real charm. It all depends upon what we are trying to do and how we set about doing it.
It is all part of the last defence, which is honesty of workmanship and purpose, qualities that were by no means the hallmark of the mass-produced furniture that flooded the market before the war, much of which had for its only purpose to tempt people to buy meretricious stuff which they did not really need and to push good, honest workmanship into the background. The man who has sufficient skill to make his own furniture need never succumb to this kind of temptation. For he at least knows how things ought to be done, he understands good construction and should have a keen eye for all the paltry makeshifts by which weaknesses and defects are hidden in the shoddy article. It is one of the evils of our time that so many men do not know how things are done. The nature of their work has been divorced from making; and it is from making, something, anything, soundly and well, that we get our main training of eye as well as hand.
Allied with this last defence comes beauty a shy quality in which good taste must combine with good workmanship and which even then refuses to be exactly defined. So many things in the home contribute to it; comfort, order, colour, charm, all reflecting something of the personality of the man and woman about whom the home centres, so that in thinking of “home” we think of a unity into which all are gathered—father, mother, children, background. And beauty becomes the first defence of the home as well as the last when it helps to keep boys or girls poised and steady when they are away from it, seeing it with new eyes just because they are away and are no longer blinded by familiarity, and giving them a standard by which to judge the outer world. The man who is honest with himself, honest with his work, and anxious to make good, honest things, is laying the foundation of such a standard. And beauty will not be far behind, indeed must follow, if he will put the best of his mind and will to it:
‘ … look where our dizziest spires are saying
What the hands of a man did up in the sky;
Drenched before you have heard the thunder,
White before you have felt the snow;
For the giants lift up their hands to wonder
How high the hands of a man could go.’ ”
—Charles Hayward, The Woodworker magazine, 1942; the poem Hayward references at the end is by G. K. Chesterton, titled “For Four Guilds: III. The Stone-Masons,” from the book “The Ballad of St. Barbara: And Other Verses”
Tools Appropriate for Finishing Mouldings
This is an excerpt from “With all the Precision Possible: Roubo on Furniture” by André-Jacob Roubo; translation by Donald C. Williams, Michele Pietryka-Pagán & Philippe Lafargue.
Once the mouldings are cut, you finish them, that is to say, you shape them on edge and you round off the talons/fillets and the beads. (In workman’s terms, it is called relieving the mouldings.) The tools appropriate for this use are the moulding planes for cutting beads, the moulding planes to make V-shaped grooves, moulding planes for beads of all sizes, duck beak [bec-de-cane is a plane whose blade is the shape of the top of a walking stick or door handle rather than a reference to an animal (duck)] and gorge fouille [a plane similar to the bec-de-cane with the extremity of its iron curved and rounded with a fillet or tip at its end so this plane makes round cuts and fillets], or furrowed gouges.
The moulding planes for cutting beads do not differ from other moulding planes, except that they have a cheek [guiding ledge/ridge/shoulder] just like the other moulding planes that I already spoke of. The other moulding planes, as well as the round planes [as in hollows-and-rounds], do not have one.
The duck beaks [see comment above] are tools which serve to dig out the bottom of the hollow/ ogees or beads where the moulding planes [ for cutting beads] cannot get in, as in the case of a ravalement [this refers to an area where one lowers the surface of the wood in an area to accentuate adjacent areas, or to accomplish the same effect through undercutting] or a groove. They differ from other planes in that they cut horizontally [on their sides] instead of the others that cut straight [down]. Their iron [blade] is placed upright in its throat or at least with very little angle (there are even many which are not angled at all). The angle of this iron [skew] is only on its width, that is to say, on the thickness of the tool, behind which it is empty. That is why this slope [skew angle] is made inside, not only to make the shavings eject, but also to make itself open to the iron [give a cutting angle or pitch to the blade/iron].
Since the point of the duck beak [see other description above] is very thin, the wood of their body [of the blade tip] can hardly survive very long. That is why it is highly advisable to make soles of copper or iron, which is even better, just as I said elsewhere. Look at Figs. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 & 7, which represent a duck beak viewed in all directions, as well as its iron and its wedge.
The gorge fouille [literally furrowed gouges] are types of duck beaks which do not differ from the former except their end is rounded in the form of a gouge, and it is squared up [the blade edge is configured more like a scraper than an edge tool]. The iron of these tools is not found ready-made at the Merchants, at least not normally. That is why woodworkers make them themselves.
Their use is to dig [out] bottoms [hollows] of ogee shapes, [and] to enlarge and finish the bottom of grooves, see Figs. 8, 9, 10 & 11. When it is [used on] frames with bevels or chamfers rounded with a fillet or tip at [the] end, one makes use of an ordinary grooving plane that is used on the edge of the frame, noting only to make it void on the inside.
There is still another tool where the iron is placed upright and which cuts horizontally which is called a side rabbet plane. Its use is to enlarge the grooves and to re-cut those that were badly made, see Figs. 12, 13, 14 & 15.
When the panels are dry, that is to say, the glue has set well, you set their length and width as needed, which in workman’s terms, is called squaring up the panels. You then produce the raised panel, which is made with a tool called a fielding or raising plane, which is similar to other rabbet planes, with the exception that they have a fence [and] that the slant of the mouth is skewed within the inside over the width of the iron, to make it more appropriate for cutting the end [grain] wood and [working] cross-grain. There are two irons on this tool, one that is in the form that we call flatbanded [making a bevel or chamfer], and the other in the shape of a square called a nicker. The two together are about 14–16 lines wide. On top of this plane and toward the front is a notch similar to that of the bench fillister, which serves to support the hand of whoever is pushing it, see Fig. 16.
— MB