The Best Beekeepers…
The best words of advice I’ve heard sound simple until you give them some thought. Here are three things to consider.
“Good beekeepers have to figure some things out for themselves.”
This was a simple statement made by a beekeeper and mother to her teenaged woodworker who was struggling with sharpening, setting up a handplane and producing a nice surface.
She didn’t know about woodworking, but she knew about farming and bees. And when her young son despaired that he could not get his plane to work, she spoke those 10 fantastic words:
“Good beekeepers have to figure some things out for themselves.”
A couple years ago I heard Mike Siemsen of “The Naked Woodworker” DVD fame discussing workbenches with a new woodworker.
Question: What about moisture content blah, blah, blah?
Siemsen: Don’t worry about it. It will work out fine.
Question: But the wood species yadda yadda annular rings shinka shinka gymnosperms?
Siemsen: It will all work out fine. I wouldn’t worry about it.
Question: So E-value, Janka rating and tangent grain? Roubo, Nicholson and Klausz?
Yoda: Fine it will all work out. Worry not.
…this conversation continued for another 30 minutes in the same format.
Third vignette. Matthew Sheldon Bickford, author of “Mouldings in Practice,” ends his book with the best single-word ending sentence in the history of woodworking writing. Stick with me here.
“Be willing to succeed by being willing to fail,” he writes on page 241. “Tie yourself to your actions. Stop reading. Err!”
— Christopher Schwarz
The Spaghetti Bowl
As I recall from years long past there is in Miami a notorious interchange known as “The Spaghetti Bowl,” no doubt the result of some distant urban planner making a dot on a map and saying, “This is where all the highways meet!” I have no doubt that similar complexes exist in many metropolitan areas, but the one in Miami is especially memorable due to the highway routes being stacked five high as they weave together, merging and departing with and from each other.
This absurd traffic construct serves as a nearly perfect metaphor for the current fortnight. It seems that the threads of LAP and other projects are stacked about five high.
Last night I sent off my final review of the page proofs for “Virtuoso: The Tool Cabinet and Workbench of Henry O. Studley,” which Chris sent me last week when I was in Florida on a speaking engagement talking about my favorite topic – historic wood finishing – and reveling in a reunion with my mom and all of my siblings. I spent what time I could on the review, but did not actually finish until midnight last night. I feel about 500 pounds lighter today.
I am not displeased with the product (that is Donspeak for “Holy cow, this is great!” If I wasn’t such a Calvinist I would be really proud). Narayan’s photos and Wesley’s design make the book a nearly decadent experience. The book goes to press very soon (Ed note: Next week), and I am very much anticipating the first of several boxes of books arriving on my doorstep. (I owe copies to about two score contributors to the effort.)
The preparations for the accompanying H.O. Studley exhibit are in red-hot mode, as my fabrication of the exhibit accouterments are well underway, the first slate of big checks have flowed out for the exhibit hall rental, platform and vitrine fabrication, insurance, graphics, lighting, secured shipping, etc.… Tickets are still available, so if you ever wanted to get up close and personal with Studley’s tool cabinet and workbench, this may be your one and only chance.
On Saturday past I presented “Making New Finishes Look Old” for the Society of American Period Furniture Makers’ Tidewater chapter, a test run for my demonstration at the SAPFM Mid-Year meeting in Knoxville, Tenn., in June. Increasingly I find my mind wandering and fingers noodling on the keyboard in crafting my magnum opus “Historic Finisher’s Handbook” (HFH), which will begin in earnest as soon as I complete the revisions for “Roubo on Furniture Making” this summer, and then take the following three years. If I go “dark” this autumn it is because I’m up in the barn having too much fun working through the dozens of recipes detailed in HFH.
And today I spent some time conserving a Roentgen desk; tonight I’m wrapping up the conservation of a c.1720 Italian tortoiseshell veneer mirror frame with another dozen conservation projects in wait.
Yeah, I think the “Spaghetti Bowl” description is just about right.
— Don Williams
Free Shipping ends Friday for ‘Chairmaker’s Notebook’
Free domestic shipping for Peter Galbert’s “Chairmaker’s Notebook” ends at midnight Friday. After that, standard domestic shipping for the book will be about $8 (depending on where you live).
The book will ship from the printing plant on March 25 and arrive in our warehouse a day after that. Our fulfillment service has pledged to set up a special assembly line to process all of the pre-publication orders immediately. All books will go out using FedEx’s “SmartPost” service with reliable tracking and delivery within 5-7 days.
We had to change how we offer free shipping in our store for this book. To receive free domestic shipping on this book, use the coupon code Chair at checkout.
If you’d like to preview a free chapter of this remarkable book, click here.
For a video of Peter explaining his work, click here.
To watch a video of some of our favorite drawings from the book, click here.
And to read more about the book and order a copy, visit the Lost Art Press store.
— Christopher Schwarz
German Wood-threading Tools
After struggling with the inexpensive wood-threading tools from China and Taiwan, I have been looking for a better way to tap and thread hardwoods.
I purchased the Big Threader by Beall Tool Co. a couple years ago to try it out. It works brilliantly, but you need a router to power it. And setting the cut is fussy to get the results you want. It’s a lot like a router-powered dovetail jig in that once you get it set up, it’s brilliant. But the setup is a pain when you want to make one or two threaded rods.
While interviewing Jennie Alexander last May, she showed me her German tap and wood threader, a tool she has had for many years and worked perfectly. I’d seen this threader on the Dieter Schmid web site many times before, but the price was too high for me to take a gamble on it.
But after talking to Jennie at length, I bucked up and put the 28mm (approximately 1-1/8”) kit in my shopping cart (see all the sizes here). My rationale? I’d already spent $300 on non-functioning wood-threading kits, perhaps I should have just bought this German one at the outset.
Dieter Schmid has a lot of customers in North America, so shipping was fast and easy. I had the tool in about two weeks.
The threader and tap are extremely well made. And after experimenting with it a lot this winter, I can recommend it for those who can afford it. It makes crisp threads with little effort. Here are some helpful details if you follow me down this path.
The tool is metric, and while you can get away with Imperial tooling, you’ll be better off switching your brain to metric for this operation.
The wooden dowel should be 28mm or slightly undersized for the male threads. I turned my dowels from straight-grain maple to 1.10”, which slipped right into the threader with no wobble. This makes for crisp threads.
The nice thing about the threader is it makes threads with a square tip – not triangular. These square, acme-like threads are more durable. The downside to the threader is that it leaves a 1-1/2” long area of a handle unthreaded, as you can see in the photo above. This is caused by the long collar of the threader. The long collar improves the accuracy of the tool, so it’s a trade-off.
The tap works with a 23mm-diameter hole. I recommend buying a 23mm Forstner instead of using 1-1/8”. You can buy these on eBay for less than $10. The tap cuts cleanly in both hardwoods and harder soft woods, such as yellow pine.
My only caveat to the tap is I recommend chamfering the entry hole or the leading cutter of the tap can, on occasion, splinter the work.
One last detail about the tools: Jennie recommends using tallow on the cutter and I second that recommendation. The tallow makes the job easier and prevents chips from jamming into the V-cutter, which will spoil the dowel.
So I’m happy to report that my search for a good wood-threading kit is over. It was an expensive journey, but I now have an excellent working tool that doesn’t require a router.
— Christopher Schwarz