John and I finished building the above rolling book display this afternoon. Pocket screws and Dragonply aren’t my favorite materials, but they do get the job done in a hurry.
If you are in the area tomorrow, please stop by and check out our new holdfasts, T-shirts and two new Roman workbenches. Also, the Main Strasse Oktoberfest celebration is running this weekend. Good news: good beer and sausages are two blocks away. Bad news: Parking won’t be as easy.
No matter who shows up, I’ll be there rasping my new vise nuts so they fit my hands just right. (Wow, after reading that sentence I doubt anyone will show up tomorrow.)
A few days ago I was working my way through a German website and in a footnote came across two verses of a 19th century Shaker song. I found the song in the Smithsonian Folkways collection and it turns out the two verses on the German site were the second and third verses. Here are the notes from the Smithsonian collection:
“They sang whenever there was an appropriate occasion…at work…at social gatherings…while marching from one place to another.
One of the songs they sang while at work expresses eloquently their passion for perfection in everything they did and in every item they made.”
So far I have not found the title of the song (if there is one), no sheet music and no recording. It is up to you to sing the song as you see fit.
Next week, Woodworking in America will command all our attention. We’ll be selling books and tools in the Marketplace, Raney Nelson and I will be teaching classes upstairs for registrants and we will officially launch Crucible Tool. Here are some details.
Crucible Tool We’re holding a launch party on Thursday night at our Covington storefront. We are booked up, so if you don’t have a ticket, please visit us in the Marketplace on Friday and Saturday where we will have tools for you to check out. During the launch event, we will demonstrate (and sell) our holdfasts and the second tool in our line.
I’ll be honest, we have been working like crazy to build up inventory, but I’m not sure how many units of our tools we will have on hand. Getting our production levels cranked up has been a challenge.
Lost Art Press Lost Art Press and Crucible Tool will share a booth at the Marketplace for Woodworking in America. We’ll be selling our full line of books and tools – plus special T-shirts and posters. You’ll be able to try the tools out, check out all our books and even try out the two Roman workbenches I’ve built this summer.
However, we won’t have our storefront on Willard Street open during Woodworking in America. Our companies are – in essence – three guys. And we will both be working hard at Woodworking in America with no time to keep the storefront open. Sorry. I wish we had a way to make everyone happy here.
Classes at Woodworking in America I’ll be teaching three classes at Woodworking in America and moderating a roundtable discussion amongst the leading planemakers of the day. Raney Nelson, who is one of the three principals at Crucible, will also be teaching classes. Check out his classes here. Here are the official descriptions of my classes:
Nails & the Decline of Western Civilization Class Times: Friday, 8:30 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. In the early 19th century, nails represented one-half of one percent of the country’s GNP. That percentage is equivalent to everything that everyone in the country today spends on computers and personal technology in a year (a lot). This country was built with nails. But about 1860, something horrible happened: Nails became terrible, and furniture makers rightly turned their backs on this once-critical fastener. What happened? And what can we do to restore the nail to its rightful place in the shop and as a historical hero? It’s easier than you think. Come learn everything you need to know about nails.
The Roman Workbench – How does it Work? Class Times: Sunday, 8:30 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. The Romans (or perhaps the Greeks) invented the woodworking bench, and this robust and simple design lasted more than 1,500 years. Then the form disappeared. Christopher Schwarz has spent years studying benches, and he’s built two of the most famous Roman-style workbenches: one from 79 AD that was shown at Herculaneum, and another from 1505 that was both the last Roman bench and the first modern one – a fascinating example. During this session, Chris takes you on a tour of how these two benches work and shares his thoughts on why they have survived in isolated pockets of civilization, such as Estonia and rural Maine. Participants will even get the opportunity to try the benches for themselves.
Build a Chair without Chairmaking Tools Class Times: Sunday, 11:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. Many woodworkers are put off by chairmaking because you typically need a lot of specialty tools, green wood and skills that are outside of the typical garage workshop. For the last 12 years, Christopher Schwarz has been developing a number of techniques and joints that allow the typical entertainment-center-building woodworker to make a traditional chair without investing in a lot of new tools, having to take a week-long class or having to chop down a tree. If you own a jack plane, a brace and a spokeshave you are almost there. Come see.
Planemaker’ Roundtable Class Times: Saturday, 1:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. The plane is one of the fundamental tools of woodworking – even if you use machines, you likely pull out a block plane from time to time. In this roundtable discussion, Christopher Schwarz moderates a discussion of handplanes in the modern shop. With Konrad Sauer, Raney Nelson, Caleb James, Terry Saunders of Lee Valley, Thomas Lie-Nielsen of Lie-Nielsen and more.
Somehow all of this will happen, and it will be as mind-blowingly awesome as it always has been for the last eight years. So if you are in Covington next week, please stop by the booth and say hello.
Fig. 4.1. Learn to chop mortises accurately and efficiently and you’ll be able to build most anything. Joint stools will give you lots of practice – there are 16 joints in each one.
Now we can return to the framing parts, starting with the stiles. The first step is to layout the mortises. We’ll outline these steps one at a time because it can get confusing. We will call the mortises for the front and rear rails “straight” mortises, those for the canted ends of the stool we will call “angled” mortises.
Stack the four stiles together, with their beveled inside corners touching, and with radial faces up.
These radial faces become the “front” and “back” faces of the stool. Take one stile, and work on its radial face.
Fig. 4.2. This story stick is another example of something for which we lack period evidence; but its effectiveness can’t be beat. In addition to serving as the principal layout reference, it functions as a wooden notebook of sorts. If you make a number of different stool patterns, mark them with the date.
To lay out the stiles’ square blocks and the straight mortises, it’s easier to use what a carpenter now calls a “story stick” that is marked with the stiles’ details, rather than working from paper drawings or patterns. This shop-made stick records the markings that are then transferred to the stile. We have made these sticks to record different stools. The locations and heights of the squared blocks, turning details and positions of mortises can all be taken from the stick to the stile. It is best to mark ONE stile from the stick, then the other three stiles from that first stile.
Make sure the foot of the stile is trimmed square. Line up the foot of the story stick and the feet of the stile. With an awl, mark the limits of the square blocks and scribe these marks across all four faces of the stile, with one exception – the top of the stile is marked only on the radial face and the corresponding inside tangential face (where the straight apron mortise is located).
Fig. 4.3. Prick the points with the awl, then scribe them with the square and awl. Sharpen the awl with a file from time to time. Careful, it can draw blood when it’s sharp.
Now line the stick up on the inside face and mark the locations of the mortises on this tangential face.
One thing to keep in mind is that the top of the apron mortise is not at the same height as the top of the stile. This mortise drops down about 3/4″ from the stile’s top end. Eyeball the top of the apron mortise and scribe it with the awl and square.
Fig. 4.4. This is a technique that if we heard it somewhere, we have forgotten where. It works very well. No ruler, no fiddling with the gauge up against the chisel’s sharp edge. Mark the timber with the chisel, then put the chisel down. Very safe, and simple.
Fig. 4.5. Now move the chisel over one chisel-width. And lean on it. Now your setting is marked on the timber, and you just need to set the mortise gauge according to the chisel marks.
The next step is to mark the mortises with the mortise gauge. To set the gauge, make a mark with your chisel’s edge perpendicular to, but right against the stile’s arris. Next, move over one chisel width and bear down hard enough to make a mark in the wood. Then set the pins of your mortise gauge according to the location of this second chisel mark. The result is a mortise that is set in from the face of the stock the thickness of the chisel. Our mortises are usually 5/16″, set in from the face 5/16″. This spacing is based on studies of period work; 5/16″ is almost a standard from what we have seen.
Fig. 4.6. Using both hands on a marking or mortise gauge might seem like overkill, but the oak is very fibrous, and when it’s green it can catch the gauge’s pins. The result can be irregular and it’s hard to re-mark a line once it goes astray. Extend the marking lines beyond the top and bottom of the mortise, this way you can check the spacing of the joint if you find you need to reset your gauge – if, for instance, it falls on the floor.Fig. 4.7. Here is an adjustable bevel, and the modified one Alexander turned into a fixed bevel. If you are using one flare angle regularly, this is the way to go. It’s easy enough to come up with an extra adjustable bevel.
The Angled Mortises To find the location for the angled side mortises, use an adjustable bevel set to the desired flare angle. A slope of 1:6 is what we have used on several stools. Our studies of 17th-century stools show flare angles right around that figure, some less, none more. To set the bevel, set a straightedge on a framing square, positioning it at 1″ on one leg, and 6″ on the other. Then adjust the bevel to this angle and lock its nut to secure the setting. You can then scribe this angle on a piece of wood, or even scribe it on the wall. Like the adjustable gauges, the bevel can lose its setting if bumped. Having the angle scribed somewhere makes it easy to reset it. Alexander turned an adjustable bevel into a fixed one by threading a bolt through its stock and blade.
To lay out the side mortises, you must carry the line that designates the top of the stool from the front radial face across the side tangential face. Set the bevel with its handle on the front face of the stile. Line it up with the marked top of the stool, with its angled blade pointing upwards on the other outside face of that stile. Scribe this line with the awl.
Then use a square to carry this line across the other inside face. So the sequence is square, bevel, square. Remember that it’s best to carry the lines across the outside faces; the inside faces are unreliable. This layout is both simple and complicated at the same time. Sometimes it helps to stand the stile up and tilt it as it will be in the finished stool. Then you can easily visualize where the angled mortises are and how they rise up higher than the straight mortises.
You can repeat this process for the top edge of the stretchers’ mortises. Or you can mark this from the story stick, this time lining up the top of the stool with the scribed line that designates the top of the side apron.
Now mark the mortises’ height and width on these faces of the stile. After you mark out two stiles, lay them side by side and check that they agree. A front or rear pair should have their radial faces matching, with the straight mortises aiming at each other, and the side, angled mortises rising up toward the top of the stool.
This morning at 11:48, I finished tuning the tail vise for the 1505 Holy Roman workbench and then John walked through the door of the storefront. His task: Help me build a rolling book display for Woodworking in America.
So after a month of being constructed using mostly traditional handwork, the first job for the 1505 workbench was to be a sanding station so we could process a ton of Dragonply for the shelves.
I don’t give this ironic situation a second thought. Once I complete a piece, I set it out into the wild without any emotional attachment about how it should be used. If I’ve done my job, the piece will survive the ordeal (i.e. children’s toy chests) and look better for the ordeal.
For me, furniture is like the Velveteen Rabbit:
“It doesn’t happen all at once. You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
— The Skin Horse in “The Velveteen Rabbit” by Margery Williams
