Lost Art Press

Roman End Vise Installed (with a Frankenstein Assist)

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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The Holy Roman end vise is installed and functioning quite well, though at one point I thought I was going to curl under the bench and shed some Holy Roman tears.

After bashing out the slot and mortises for the end vise gear and then paring them true, I fit the two maple blocks that support the screw. One block is a vise nut. The other, at the end of the bench, acts like a bushing to support the screw. Both support the moving dog from below.

These had to be planed so everything was in the same plane, allowing the wooden screw to move without binding. The threaded vise nut is merely friction fit into its mortise. It needs to be easily adjustable so you can lower all the components after several flattenings of the benchtop.

The end block is lag bolted to the bench with two 5/16” x 5” Spax lags (I recommend you always pay the upcharge for Spax). When I need to lower the position of this block I’ll drill new holes for the Spax lags or make a new bushing.

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Then came the fun part (I use the word “fun” ironically): Installing the metal screw that mates the wooden screw to the movable dog. This had to be screwed into the end of the vise screw with a lot of fuss. It had to be centered, and the hole needed to be dang vertical.

So I spent about an hour fussily boring a perfect pilot hole. Then chasing a clearance hole for the unthreaded section of the screw that was going to be buried in the screw. I cut threads in the pilot hole with a regular old steel screw. Then I lubricated the vise screw with some paraffin and drove the screw in.

And snap. Literally. Not like the kids say “snap.” The screw snapped about 1” below the rim of the hole.

After weighing about 100 options, I decided to use a 5/16” x 1” lag and washer to do the job temporarily until I could devise a solution that didn’t look so Mary Shelley.

Tomorrow I’ll drill the dog holes, make some nicer nuts for the face vise and do the “make pretty” so it’s presentable for Woodworking in America. If I’m lucky I’ll get to replace the wooden tommy bar for the end vise with a crank that Peter Ross made me. But time is running out.

— Christopher Schwarz

A Big’un Showed Up

Posted on by fitz

I absolutely love to use wide boards in my projects. Wide stuff shows up quiet often in old  pieces of furniture, and I try to use the same whenever possible. It seems most folks these days think there is no way to get these wide boards anymore. They think there are simply no trees this big. And if they do find them, they are cost-prohibitive.

That’s not true; they are out there.

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Most really large trees are not in the forest; they come from people’s yards most of the time. The great majority are big shade trees that eventually get too big and have to be removed, or they finally come down in a storm. Most of the big commercial mills do not want timber like this because it is often too big for their equipment and there is the chance of iron, such as old nails in the wood.

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My advice is to find a small sawmill. Even if they do not have anything when you visit, leave your contact info for when something does show up. Smaller operations can and will deal with these kinds of logs. The biggest negative to lumber from sources such as this is that the lumber is usually fresh cut and green. Depending on the species and thickness, it can take months or years to air-dry. On the positive side, the lumber can be had a much lower cost than a lumber-supply house.

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A few days back, Lesley Caudle of Lesley’s Sawmill called me and said he had a big cherry log come in. I have done business with Lesley for several years and he knows the kind of stuff I am looking for. In my part of the world, cherry is a pretty common tree, but large ones are rare. This one had been growing on a property line between two tracts of land. Apparently it did not get cut because neither owner knew whose tree it was. We had some pretty rough storms pass through a few weeks back, and the big cherry blew down.

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The log that this tree yielded was 44′ long, 30″ in diameter on the butt end and 22″ on the small end. The tree was not perfectly straight, and the heart was out of center in a couple  places. Cherry is an easy wood to air-dry and not usually temperamental; the lumber should work out fine. Leslie made me a deal, and I bought the whole tree. The big logs yielded dozens of wide clear boards from 24″ wide down to 20″.

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This is one of three loads of wide boards from the big cherry.

If you are not looking, you won’t find anything. Get out and beat the bush. The big stuff will turn up.

— Will Myers

 

The Holy Roman Tail Vise

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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Tail vises are funny things. I’ve installed many of them during the last 20 years, and I have a formula to calculate the time to do it right. Here it is:

Time to install a tail vise with precision = time to build the rest of the bench.

I’m not joking. With the exception of bolting a quick-release vise on the end of the bench, a good tail-vise-installation job takes time, concentration and effort. For this circa 1505 bench, it took me about 10 hours to build the basic bench and install the face vise.

So far, it has taken me seven hours of painstaking work (which I greatly enjoy by the way) to get the 10 critical surfaces of the bench in the same plane to install the vise’s bushing, vise nut and screw. Tomorrow I’ll install the screw, bushing and vise nut. If I’m lucky, it will take only three hours.

If I’m wrong, then my formula is off.

— Christopher Schwarz

Letting Wood Have Its Say

Posted on by saucyindexer
Breast augers, Swedish, 1770-1850 (from Robert Young Antiques).
Breast augers, Swedish, dated 1770-1850, from Robert Young Antiques.

In his introduction to “Woodworking in Estonia” Mr. Peter Follansbee captured the spirit of this book when he wrote, “The products featured in the book are everyday items found in country households, combining utility and beauty in ways that speak volumes. This book shows us a culture that remained connected to its environment and its traditions long after some others had lost their way.”

An example of the Estonian craftsman’s knowledge of and relationship to wood is the use of naturally occuring shapes to make tools. Mr. Follansbee used the example of forked draw knives (hollowing knives): “A handle made this way follows the fibers of the tree, and it therefore stronger than one made by bending or joining straight sections of timber.” On the cover of the book is a gimlet made from a bough.

From the section on Boring Tools in "Woodworking in Estonia."
From the section on Boring Tools in “Woodworking in Estonia.”

As Ants Viires describes it, “The gimlet, like other similar borers, was a tool which had to be applied with force, and it was equipped with an appropriate head that could be braced against the chest. Boring was hard work: “When you bored for some time, your chest bones gave out fire” (Pärnu-Jaagup)…When the work became too tiring, a small boy was placed astride the implement for weight…”

Some of the breast augers (or gimlets) in the top photo are made from branches and like the Estonian example several are carved with dates and initials. The Swedish augers range in size from 31 inches high by 19.5 inches wide to 18 inches high by 13.75 inches wide.

Other objects made from branches and roots that can be found in the book are boat ribs, wheel fellies and sled runners.

I recently showed my mother some of the sketches of Estonian tools made from branches and she reminded me of the slingshots my father used to make for her. When we lived in Fayetteville and Fort Bragg in North Carolina we had to be careful of the wild animals that might come into our backyards. Basking snakes and roaming snapping turtles were the most dangerous. My father used a forked branch to make the slingshot; the sling was cut from the inner tube of a tire. After some obligatory target practice (a tree was the target) my mother was a pretty good shot.

Once a particularly pugnacious (and big) snapping turtle arrived on the patio and was not intimidated by mother’s efforts with her slingshot. With me stranded on our picnic table my mother had to call my father to come home from the airfield and save me!

–Suzanne Ellison

Note: To clarify the use of auger and gimlet in this post here are excerpts from the section on boring tools in “Woodworking in Estonia.”

From Gimlets: ” Like all drills, the gimlet also consists of two parts: the iron and the head. The iron part is usually referred to simply as “auger,” while the head is known as “auger’s head.” On the islands it is called “auger’s handles.”

The gimlets made by early country smiths were of the bowl type (spoon borer). The characteristic veature of this implement was the bit, known as “kaha” (“kahv”) that is shaped like the spoon bowl and made possible boring in both directions.”

From Augers: “Under this term we refer to various borers differing in shape and size, the only common feature being a handlebar placed perpendicular to the top of the shaft. As such the borers are the simplest turning device, which was probably the starting point for the creation of a more complicated gimlet.”

And from Ants Viires’ summary of boring tools: “At the beginning of the millennium, certain borers were already in use in the country. The most primitive was the awl, which was often used after heating. The spoon-shaped borers of the gimlet or auger type were also fairly widespread.”

The Soft Bit Preservation Society and Ignorant Slots

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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Good news. The threaded screws for the face vise on the Holy Roman Workbench are a couple inches below the danger zone. I’ve been working on the bench these last couple days and have found that my boyhood is well out of danger.

So today I started making the giant slot for the end vise. I began by sawing two shallow kerfs with my circular saw to help guide my ripsaw. A sharp ripsaw can destroy 4”-thick oak with little effort. This is why it’s a good idea to learn to sharpen your own saws.

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After sawing out the two kerfs for the end vise, I used an auger to waste away as much wood as possible at the end of the slot. Three holes with a 1-1/8” auger did the trick. The waste block came out with only finger pressure.

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Then I cleaned up things with a mortise chisel. Just like with any mortise, it’s best to clean it up from both faces to avoid splintering out the backside badly. Of course, flipping over a 300-pound bench to get to the backside is always fun (but not too difficult if you know about a little thing called leverage).

With the slot cleaned up, I called it a day. This weekend I hope to get the threaded nuts installed in the slot.

— Christopher Schwarz