We’ve just ordered our ninth (!!) printing of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” and will return to the black cloth cover. The red cover was a one-time thing for the fifth anniversary of the book’s release.
It might also please/vex you to know that I am working on the third installment of the “Anarchist” woodworking series. Some rejected titles: “The Anarchist’s Moist Lederhosen,” “Pluck Your Magic Twanger, Froggy” and “Fully Orbed Spheres of Creativity That will Bring Sanity and Wellbeing Back to Make Contented Those Living with the Sense of Lostness.”
The winning title will remain a secret for a while.
On May 5, 2013, I attended an event at the D’Elia Antique Tool Museum for the spring meeting of Antique Tools and Trades In Connecticut (ATTIC), a club dedicated to preserving the knowledge of the tools and trades of bygone times. This organization hosts two events per year at museums and historic sites related to CT industry.
The Museum is located in the town of Scotland Connecticut (population 1,726). The tool collection is housed in the Scotland Public Library, built in 2005 as a gift by collector Andrew D’Elia and his wife Anna Mae. The collection consists of approximately 1400 planes.
ATTIC members arrived at dawn to set up a small scale flea market. Somebody brought coffee and donuts. Most of the attendees have been active in the tool collecting community for decades. This event was special because the D’Elia Museum contains one of the largest public collections of patented American planes in the country.
There were several notable dealers in attendence. Martin J. Donnelly was there to promote his ‘Live Free or Die’ auctions in Nashua, NH. He had a table loaded with old auction catalogs and was handing them out to any takers. Jim Bode was there selling tools off the tailgate of his truck. The largest table belonged to Roger K. Smith of Athol Mass., renowned collector and author of Patented Transitional and Metallic Planes in America Vol 1 & 2.
I spent some time talking to Roger and examining his tools, including a pair of Cesar Chelor planes. I was given a free copy of his 2010 calendar ‘New Discoveries of American Patented Planes’.
Andrew D’Elia arrived later in the morning to unlock the building. ATTIC members held a small meeting in the library where they voted on which site to visit in the autumn and collected membership dues. They passed around mystery tools and announced recent discoveries. During this session each member was given a canvas gift bag containing informational packets about CT tool inventors, catalog reprints, brochures, a mug and some stationary. Then we all headed inside the museum to view the collection.
The planes are stored in custom built display cabinets with glass shelves, mirrored backs, and recessed lights. The stained glass windows of the museum were custom made to depict actual tools from the collection. The entire museum is a single 1000 sq. ft. room. You can read more about the details here. On several occasions Andy unlocked the display cabinets and brought tools out to his desk to be examined more closely by the visitors.
I did my best under the circumstances to take some photos of the cabinets. The extreme sun glare combined with all the glass and mirrors made things difficult to say the least. The gallery can be viewed here. The download link contains much higher resolution photos for those of you who would like to read the cards and see the fine details.
About 400 of the most important tools from the collection were professionally photographed for the book American Wood & Metal Planes. Copies of this book were for sale during the show. It is well worth the purchase.
At the time of the 2013 event the museum was open on weekend afternoons from June – September, and year round by appointment. Since that time the hours have been removed from the brochure. It is suggested that you contact the museum by email or telephone to arrange for a visit.
Because this museum is dedicated to rare patented planes, I thought I would offer a document from my own research on American plane patents. This is an unfinished piece that I compiled for reference. It has not been edited since 2012.
It contains hundreds of pages of plane related patents that are not available in sources like DATAMP or book lists. The document is 4557 pages in length and consists of image files only. Bookmarks are provided by year to help navigate the volume. It is 227 MB pdf so right click and “save as” to your device.
If you have a number of oak logs to choose from, then you can go through the checklist of factors that affect the work ahead. Once you find a straight grained log that’s nice and even with little or no taper, has a centered pith in a mostly round shape, and no twist in the bark – then you’re ready to work that log. But there’s one more thing. You can go even further and look at the rate of growth in the tree’s annular rings. Fast-growing oak has widely spaced annular rings; sometimes up to 1/4″ per year. This timber is exceedingly strong because it has fewer rings, which create a great concentration of the dense latewood that grows in the summer. But the resulting timber is visually distracting. Its radial face comes out looking heavily striped. It can also be difficult to work; it has an uneven texture resulting from the widely spaced transitions between the earlywood and latewood.
The most striking difference between the stripey-looking fast-grown oak and the even grain of the slow-grown example is the radial face. That this is also the principal “show” surface of joined furniture makes knowing the growth rate of your log helpful.
The slow-grown oak is more even textured, both visually and for working. While technically weaker than its fast-grown counterpart, slow-grown oak is still well-suited for joined work. This furniture is grossly overbuilt by stress standards, so the decrease in strength is not a factor. The benefit is the consistent texture, ease of working and a closer visual match to the timber used in 17th-century work done in New England. You can’t always get what you want, but if you are faced with two otherwise evenly matched logs, try the one that grew slower. The only thing better than riven radial oak is slow-grown riven radial oak.
The weather this past March was kind of wacky. It didn’t exactly come in like a lion, nor did it go out like a lamb. Instead, it alternated on a weekly basis between much colder than normal and much warmer than normal. The net result is that the plants got pretty confused; the daffodils were very unhappy, and it looks like we’re probably going to have a poor crop of peaches and apples this year.
Some people have asked exactly where I walk when I walk in the woods, so here’s a map of Ohio (“The Squarish State”) showing the location of Athens County:
For those of you who either flunked geography or are from outside the U.S., here’s a Google Earth view:
And here’s a closer look at my neighborhood (also via Google Earth):
As you can see, when I say I find things walking around my yard, I’m really in the middle of the forest.
Many of the trees have begun flowering in March. Usually, the first trees to complete the cycle and drop their seeds are elms, followed closely by red and silver maples:
This is an American elm (Ulnus americana), which is a tree of riverside habitats (or city streets, as this one is). The other common species is slippery elm (U. rubra), which is more of an upland species. Large elm trees are rare in the wild in the eastern U.S. and Canada these days, having been devastated by Dutch elm disease, but can still be found where they’re under a watchful eye.
Most forest trees have small, inconspicuous flowers. One tree whose flowers are small but certainly not inconspicuous is the eastern redbud (Cercis canadensis):
Redbuds begin to bloom right around the end of March here.
I mentioned Virginia pine last month. Here’s an eastern white pine (Pinus strobus). White pine is fairly easy to identify: The needles are long and very fine, in bunches of (usually) five. (Most pines have needles in bunches of two or three.) The foliage is slightly blue-green, and the fineness of the needles gives the tree an overall “soft” appearance.
Woodland wildflowers are starting to show themselves, although the non-native species are still outnumbering the natives. Here’s birdeye or field speedwell (Veronica persica), native to Eurasia:
If you saw these in the woods, you might pass them off as common dandelions, but they’re not:
These are coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara), also Eurasian in origin. Coltsfoot tea has been used in traditional medicine as a cough treatment, but it apparently can cause serious liver damage. Life is full of little tradeoffs….
Coltsfoot is distinguished from dandelion by growing in areas that are heavily shaded by trees in summer, blooming before any foliage is visible, and having reddish scales on the flower stalks (dandelion flower stalks are smooth). Here’s an actual dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) for comparison:
Some of the earliest blooming native wildflowers are eastern spring beauties (Claytonia virginica):
Also blooming towards the end of March are cutleaf toothwort (Cardamine concatenata):
and azure bluet (Houstonia caerulea):
You might find these odd-looking things sticking straight up out of the ground in wet spots in the woods; they’re the fruiting bodies of sensitive fern (Onoclea sensibilis):
The fern gets its name from being very sensitive to cold, dying back at the slightest touch of frost. The leaves will come up later in the spring, after any risk of frost is past.
It’s too early for most mushrooms and other fungi, but a few, such as this turkey tail (Trametes versicolor) are present year-round:
This fungus is one of the more common causes of spalting in wood.
Finally, the March entry in our sedge-of-the-month club is Pennsylvania sedge (Carex pensylvanica):
It looks like a small tuft of grass, although the flowers are distinctive:
These are a bit past their prime; you can find better images online. Pennsylvania sedge is common in woodland where the soil is relatively dry.
April is the month for wildflowers around here, so take a walk in the woods, see what you can find, and next month we can compare notes.
Several people have asked to purchase plans for the staked high stool design I’ve been refining for the expanded “The Anarchist’s Design Book.”
My answer: No, I won’t sell you the plans, but you can have them for nothing.
Here are the rules: You can download these. Build as many stools as you like. Feel free to sell the stools you build. Here’s what you cannot do with these plans: Sell them or represent them as your own. In other words, don’t be a deT and we’ll be cool.
The sheets were drawn up by reader Josh Cook, who also make this nice 3D render you can play with.
Here’s the cutting list:
1 Seat: 1-3/8” x 11” x 20”
3 Legs: 1-3/8” x 1-3/8” x 25”
1 Front stretcher: 1-3/8” x 1-3/8” x 20-1/2” (cut it long and trim to fit the front legs)
1 Mid stretcher: 1-3/8” x 1-3/8” x 14-3/4” (cut it long and trim to fit)
The resultant angle for the front legs is: 13°. The resultant for the rear leg is: 22°.
My stools are made using Southern yellow pine (a 2x12x8’ will make two stools). For the finish, I charred the parts before assembly using a MAP gas torch then brushed away the charred earlywood with a stiff acid brush. After assembly, I touched up the joints with the torch and applied two coats of a beeswax and linseed oil concoction (make your own using this recipe).
The techniques for building these stools are covered in detail in “The Anarchist’s Design Book.” So if you’re confused by talk of resultant angles, you might pick up that book or Peter Galbert’s “Chairmaker’s Notebook,” which also explains the geometry.
We’ve just ordered our ninth (!!) printing of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” and will return to the black cloth cover. The red cover was a one-time thing for the fifth anniversary of the book’s release.
