Lost Art Press

A Cool Way to Make Winding Sticks

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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While teaching at Roy Underhill’s The Woodwright’s School this week, one of the students brought in some unusual antique winding sticks and laid them on my workbench.

I laughed a bit at first. Then I said, “Hmmm.” Then I said, “Dang!”

The winding sticks came from Mark Firley, the lead staff blogger of the international The Furniture Record blog. See also the German site, Die Möbel Rekord.

What is fascinating about these winding sticks, which were found in an antiques store in Mount Pleasant, S.C., is how incredibly well they work.

Many winding sticks feature some small bit of inlay on one of the sticks. This inlaid stick, when placed behind the other stick, makes it easier to see how twisted a board is. I like the inlay.

These unusual sticks, however, had instead two half-moon holes on one of the sticks. At the top of each hole there was a little strip of wood that was beveled.

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At first, the whole thing looked like it was roughed in from Roughsville. Then I started using them. When the user has a backlight behind him or her, the small bevels appear as darker than the rest of the stick. They are in shadow and act like inlay (without the inlay).

When something is waaaaay twisted or you have light in front of you, then the half-moons take over. You can see the amount of light admitted by each half-moon. If there is more light in the right half-moon, then that corner is low.

Pure fricking genius.

The sticks were made from mahogany and were workmanlike but not fancy at all.

When I get home on Monday, the first order of business (after kissing my wife) is to make some of these. Stay tuned.

— Christopher Schwarz

Sawyer’s Logic

Posted on by fitz

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Sir,—I request the insertion of the following statement in your valuable little work. My object is to bring to public notice a most unjust practice among a certain class of men (which, by-the-bye, I am told is law). I withhold names, because it is not persons, but things, which I wish to expose.

I lately bought a piece of squared oak timber of a most respectable merchant, and had it sawed at his yard. The charge for so doing was one pound eight shillings and eleven pence, which appeared to me, at the time I was settling the bill, to be far too much; but being told, in the counting-house, that it was correct, I paid it.
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Hosking on Pit Sawyers

Posted on by fitz

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The labour of the sawyer is applied to the division of large pieces of timber or logs into forms and sizes to suit the purposes of the carpenter and joiner. His working place is called a saw-pit, and his almost only important tool a pit-saw. A cross-cut saw, axes, dogs, files, compasses, lines, lamp-black, black-lead, chalk, and a rule, are all accessories which may be considered necessary to him.

Unlike most other artificers, the sawyer can do absolutely nothing alone: sawyers are therefore always in pairs; one of the two stands on the work, and the other in the pit under it. The log or piece of timber being carefully and firmly fixed on the pit, and lined for the cuts which are to be made in it, the top-man standing on it, and the pit-man below or off from its end, a cut is commenced, the former holding the saw with his two hands by the handle above, and the other in the same manner by the box handle below.

The attention of the top-man is directed to keeping the saw in the direction of and out of winding with the line to be cut upon, and that of the pit-man to cut down in a truly vertical line. The saw being correctly entered, very little more is required than steadiness of hand and eye in keeping it correctly on throughout the whole length.
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What Were Melencolia Squares Made From?

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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It’s quite difficult to determine a species of wood from a 16th-century engraving of it.

So we don’t know for certain what sort of wood would be used to make early squares, rules and levels. One clue comes from W.L. Goodman, who wrote a two-part history of marking and measuring tools for The Woodworker magazine in 1964.

Here’s what he wrote:

“Mediaeval building accounts often refer to the purchase of old wine casks, usually made of Baltic oak or wainscot, for the carpenters to make their straight-edges, rules, and squares from this well-seasoned hardwood.”

Goodman also briefly discusses the Melencolia-type squares in the article and said they were for “setting out.”

So if you want to build some old squares, drink up!

— Christopher Schwarz