Advertisement published in The Ladies’ Home Journal, 1919. Is it just me, or is there a suggestive twinkle in her eye as she removes that work apron?
Hoosier cabinet ads offered another attractive benefit: by helping their users stay “beautiful,” “youthful,” and “energetic,” the cabinets in effect promised to help save marriages. “Why be all fagged out and suffer from backache and headache?” asked one ad. “Why be a kitchen drudge, waste your strength and wear yourself out? A ‘Dutch Kitchenet’ will systematize your kitchen work—make it easy and give you leisure time for rest and recreation.” The Sellers cabinet promised to “conserve your strength to a remarkable degree.” The Hoosier Manufacturing Company agreed that “the greatest economies [women] can effect are those of Time and Strength,” allowing “more time for rest and recreation,” and for “porch breezes” in summer. “The Hoosier will help me to stay young,” declares a bride to her mother, presumably on her wedding day, judging by her attire. “Save nerves, Save health,” cries another Hoosier ad; yet another, “Think what this spare time would mean to you day after day, if you worked sitting down so you could feel rested enough to enjoy it.”
Based on these and other advertisements citing headaches (yes), exhaustion, and drudgery, it seems likely that Hoosier cabinets were not infrequently paid for by husbands anticipating improved performance in the bedroom as well as the kitchen.—Excerpted from The Hoosier Cabinet in Kitchen History by Nancy Hiller, author of Making Things Work
Read the other installments in the “Sharpen This” series via this link.
The burr – how to make it and how to remove it – confuses many beginners. Many underestimate its importance. Others disagree on how to remove it.
First, what the heck is it? The burr is a tiny curl of metal that appears on your edge when you birth a zero-radius intersection. It’s important because it’s the only practical way to ascertain that you have created a zero-radius intersection and that your edge is ready to polish.
Here is what is important (and not) about the burr:
The burr needs to exist along the entire edge of the tool. If you have a burr in a few places but not others, you need to rub the edge on your stones until you create a consistent burr.
If you cannot create a consistent burr, do not polish that edge with finer abrasives. Instead, switch to a coarser sharpening media. The coarser abrasive will quickly remove the dull areas of your edge and give you that consistent burr.
If you have a consistent burr, don’t worry too much about the scratch pattern on its edge. The scratch pattern becomes more important at the polishing stage (which is the topic of the next entry on this series).
Don’t try to break off the burr with your fingernail. I have damaged some edges this way, sending me back to the coarse stones to make a new burr.
Once you have a consistent burr, there are several schools of thought on what to do next.
Leave the burr alone until the very last. Polish the bevel as high as you want to go. Then remove the remnants of the burr using your finest sharpening stone by rubbing the back of your edge against your finest stone. This strategy works quite well.
Deal with the burr on every stone during your sharpening process. So after you create the burr on your first stone, rub the back of the tool on that first stone to remove the burr. Then move to the next polishing stone. Work the bevel and then work the back on that stone. And so on. Likely you won’t be able to feel a burr created by the finer stones. Work both the bevel and the back on every stone, all the way to your finest stone. This strategy also works quite well.
Sliding the edge through softwood will remove the remnants of a fine burr.
3. After polishing the bevel, remove the remnants of the burr on the back (you might not be able to feel it) with a non-sharpening media, such as a piece of wood or your palm. This strategy is old school. You rub the bevel and back against your palm. Or you slide the edge through a piece of softwood. No surprise: This strategy works quite well.
Removing the Burr The debate on how to remove the burr has caused a few small wars in the Balkan states. Don’t fall for the fundamentalist talk on the topic. The only “wrong” way to remove the burr is when you use a soft media, such as a waterstone. You can actually mash the burr into the soft surface of the stone, break it off and embed it in the stone.
This is bad because the next time you sharpen, the broken burr will act like a piece of glass sticking out of the asphalt – it will mangle your new edge. This has happened to me. It sucks. (To avoid this problem on soft stones, begin with the back of the tool cantilevered off the stone and then pull it onto the stone. The corner of the stone will remove the burr, preventing it from embedding in the stone.)
So you might remove the burr by putting the tool’s back flat on your polishing stone and moving the tool. That works fine.
Avert your eyes! It’s the tricksy ruler trick.
Or you might prop up the back of the blade on a thin ruler so you polish only the tip of the back to remove the burr (people call this David Charlesworth’s “Ruler Trick”). While some will tell you that using the Ruler Trick will make you sterile, reduce your IQ and make toe fungus grow on your face, that’s crap. The Ruler Trick is just another way to remove the burr. It works fine.
I apologize if these entries seem to have the same pattern (you need to do this; how you do it is unimportant). But that’s exactly the same with the burr. You have to create one to get a zero-radius intersection. Then you have to remove it. How you do this is fairly unimportant.
Next up: How to polish an edge and how your particular method is unimportant.
This week I had to spend two hours in the dentist’s chair. And if that wasn’t bad enough, I was “Clockwork Orange-d” into watching two hours of a TV program about creative storage solutions for the home.
Some of the examples I remember over the whirring of the dental Dremel:
Hinge your steps and create trap doors on the landings of your stairs to make small bins in the wasted space between your stringers.
Find stud walls that are used for utilities and turn them into built-in chests of drawers.
In attic spaces, create sliding racks on the interior of a high-pitched roof. You slide giant plastic bins into the racks – it’s a bit like a top-hanging drawer.
Through the entire program I wanted to throw up – but that was mostly because I have a sensitive gag reflex. But it was also because these “storage solution” programs neglect to mention the easiest way to control clutter: Get rid of it.
Take your excess clothes, books and nicknacks to a worthy charity so the items can plague the homes of others. Give your excess tools away to Habitat for Humanity’s Re-Store or a local tool-sharing co-op. Burn your scraps for heat. List your excess machinery on Craigslist. It can all be done in a day, which is easier and better than building some lame hidey-hole in your house that will require three trips to the home center, four screaming fits and five bad words to complete.
Possessions are like fingernails – they need to be constantly trimmed (or else this).
FIG. 1. THE TEETH SHOWN IN DETAIL AND HOW FILE IS HELD. A. Filing gullet of saw teeth. B. Sharpening long edge of teeth. C. Filing short edges. D. Amount of set required. E. Set extends halfway down teeth only
A reader has sent us a sketch of the teeth of a saw he wishes to sharpen. These are the farmer’s American or lightning type, and are intended for cross-cutting. He enquires the correct bevel and set to give the teeth. We give the reply here as it will probably interest other readers.
The sharpening is rather different from that of the ordinary cross-cut handsaw. In the latter the file is held at an angle varying from 45 to 60 degrees with the line of the blade and is kept perfectly horizontal. The back of one tooth and the front of the next are sharpened in one operation. In the lightning tooth one side of one tooth only is sharpened at a time. There are three distinct operations, of which the first is gulleting (A, Fig. 1), in which a special file with rounded edge is used. In this the file is held at right angles with the blade and perfectly horizontal. The filing of the long edge of the end teeth follows and for this the near end of the file is dropped so that it points upwards at an angle somewhere in the region of 45 degrees and at about 80 degrees with the line of the teeth. The exact angles cannot be given because it is largely a matter of individual handling. However, the bevel at which to aim is one in which the teeth are in alignment with an ordinary three-cornered file when rested horizontally across them at 60 degrees, as in Fig. 2.
FIG. 2. TESTING BEVEL OF TEETH This is a test only and does not represent the way the teeth are sharpened
The professional sharpener does not need to do this, but it is a handy test for the inexperienced man. Fig. 1 at B shows how the long edge is sharpened. The short edges of the end teeth and the middle teeth follow, and for these an exactly similar process is followed (see C). If, after several sharpenings, the teeth tend to get out of shape, they should be corrected by running the file straight across at right angles and horizontal. When true the sharpening as already described follows.
With regard to setting (this of course precedes sharpening), since lightning tooth saws are generally used for green wood which is liable to cling, a full set is desirable. If an impression of the points of the teeth is taken on paper it will generally be found that they will register about twice the thickness of the blade. D shows about the right amount of set. As in all other saws, the set should never extend more than halfway down the depth of the tooth (E).
The deluxe edition of “Roubo on Furniture” is currently at the bindery in New Mexico. There, in addition to binding the pages, employees are making the custom slipcases for the books.
The latest word we have from the bindery is that the job will be complete in early or middle August. When we get more exact information, including a shipping date, we will post it here.
We are as excited and anxious about this book as you are. While we love the standard edition of “Roubo on Furniture” (shipping now for $57) and enjoy the ability to search the pdf version, we want the deluxe version. We want its huge 11” x 17” pages (the same size as the original l’Art du menuisier”). We want the incredibly crisp printing. Heck, we just want a book that is worthy of all the years of labor that have gone into this project from everyone from the translators to the designer to the indexer.
The deluxe edition of “