What’s wrong with this picture?
I have found a number of ways to crack the stuff I am working on. Namely half-blind tail sockets in the drawer fronts. I have been chopping them out and been cracking the board. The first way I achieved this was chopping over a dog hole. So to fix that I decided to use a scrap piece of sugar pine placed under the board. The next crack came from the scrap board being out of flat, thereby causing a lack of support at certain places. The third way I cracked the board was from hammering the chisel too far into the socket. (Please see the picture above.)
This is the angle that the chisel went to. As we all know the bevel of the chisel causes it to drift in the direction of the flat part of the chisel. Knowing this I held the chisel firmly to avoid its back from crossing the nice baseline I had. Because I was over-eager in applying force to the chisel via Dave Jeske’s awesome mallets, the chisel canted to the angle shown, and I cracked the board again. Three drawers fronts done and three cracks.
To fix one crack I used dental floss to spread the glue. I learned this trick from David (Guitar Dave) Fleming the world-class chair maker in scenic Cobden, Ontario. Chris and I spent a week building Welsh Stick Chairs with him and on the flight back I dropped the arm bow for my chair. During the next leg of the flight, the crack opened up a lot. It may have had something to do with the cabin pressure, but when I got home I called Dave for a fix. He calmly instructed me to put some glue on the crack and use dental floss to work the glue into the crack. Brilliant!
This brings up Chris’s statement a while back that good woodworkers aren’t good because they know how to fix mistakes, they are good because they avoid mistakes. We know which category I am in but now I know three things to avoid when using my chisel.
Best,
— John Hoffman
The late Frank David at Midwest Woodworking in Norwood, Ohio, was quite particular about who could use the machines in his shop. It took several visits before Frank would let me operate his massive radial-arm saw, jointer and planer.
To say he was deeply concerned about my safety isn’t quite right. It was more accurate to say that he didn’t want to get my blood on his machinery.
“Once a machine gets a taste of blood, it’s useless,” he’d say. “I have to get rid of it.”
During Frank’s long life as a woodworker and employer, he observed that certain machines were cursed. Once they were involved in an accident, more accidents would follow on that machine.
A scientific mind could formulate several theories as to why this might be true:
1. The machine was inherently unsafe. Accidents were bound to happen over and over on a machine with an ill-fitted guard or a poor design for a cutterhead.
2. After an accident, workers would be psychologically affected when using a machine that had been involved in an accident. Their lack of confidence would lead to another accident.
3. Machines that were involved in an accident might become neglected. And that neglect could lead to a machine that was “bitey.”
4. Hemoglobin-loving fairies start growing in the dust-collection chute and offgas a neurotoxin that makes you think about giving a foot massage to Uma Thurman when you should be watching the cutterhead and fence.
To be honest, I think a little superstition and ritualistic behavior is a good thing in a woodworking shop. Think of baseball players who perform odd luck-inducing activities before going to bat (wearing a special piece of underwear, picking their noses in a special way). They repeat an activity exactly as they did once before (licking that lightswitch six times) so the result (home run!) is the same.
In the shop, I have many activities that I perform as ritual. The way I sharpen, chisel, fit dovetails and rip on a table saw are practically scripture. They might look odd – I always grip my honing guide with my left hand. My left thumb presses the plane iron in place as my right hand uses a screwdriver to tighten the guide’s screw. But the rituals remove as many variables as possible from an equation that has one incredible wild card: the wood itself.
Now if you will please excuse me, I have to do six jumping jacks while humming Prince’s “Batdance.” I have tenons to cut.
— Christopher Schwarz
This week I will install a leg vise on my Holtzapffel workbench in our sunroom, which is my shop on the first floor. I’ve had a twin-screw vise on Holtzapffel since I built it six years ago; when I’m done with this leg vise, I’ll be able to switch between leg vise and twin-screw with ease.
I’ve wanted to add a leg vise to the Holtzapffel for a long time, but I waited for one single reason: I wanted to use a Benchcrafted Classic metal screw on the bench. Jameel and Father John Abraham have been developing this vise for a long time, and I finally received my hardware while I was away in either Alaska or Maryland.
I’m going to install the Classic screw in tandem with Benchcrafted’s Crisscross Retro, a piece of hardware I’ve been sitting on impatiently for many months now.
My hope is this will be the most highly evolved form of metallic leg vise yet.
This morning I pulled out all the bits and pieces of the vise so I could plan out the maple vise chop. Handling Benchcrafted hardware is like holding jewelry, and the Classic is equal parts “space age” and “bad-ass.” The screw has a double-lead acme thread, which moves smoothly and quickly (1/2” per rotation). That’s very fast (check out the video on the Benchcrafted site). The machining on the screw and nut are fantastically smooth.
On the other hand, the hub, Tommy bar and flange are “Parkerized” like a firearm, which protects the surface from rust and is way cooler than paint.
The Tommy bar is also thoughtfully designed. The metal ends unscrew. And the way the Tommy bar interacts with the hub is quite cool. There is a detent in the Tommy bar that intersects with a spring-loaded plunger in the hub. This allows you to lock the Tommy bar in the middle of its length for coarse adjustments. Or you can let it swing free for maximum leverage.
It’s almost like magic.
I haven’t been this excited about vise hardware in a long time. If you are considering adding a leg vise or are building a new bench this year, I recommend you take a hard look at the Benchcrafted Classic and Crisscross combination.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. I know commenters are going to ask me to compare this to a wooden screw. Save your breath. It’s an aesthetic choice more than a functional one in my opinion. Wooden screws like those from Lake Erie are on par with the quality of the Benchcrafted stuff. So it’s like handplane bodies. Which do you prefer: metallic or wooden? They both work great.
Never in any country in the world has the worship of mere talent been carried to such an extent as in France. And the word “talent” is not here intended to imply capacity, but rather a kind of aptitude enabling its owner to shine. It is the kind of superiority in which is involved so much address and readiness of wit that it quickly degenerates into savoir faire, whereas genuine “capacity” leads its possessor to varied excellence, whence force of character and steadfastness of will can never be quite absent, or the capacity is an inferior one. But among the curiosities of French civilisation too superficially studied by foreigners is the habit of identifying every sort of superiority with the superiorities recognised by “society” and the “Court”—those of birth, position, and fashion.
A very remarkable proof of this lies in the attribution of honesty itself only to a certain class. The word “les honnêtes gens” was distinctive of those only who had the necessary qualifications for moving in the highest spheres—anything lower than that was not in the magic circle; and, besides the assumption of “honesty,” and of certain qualities constituting the British notion of a “gentleman,” talent was also instinctively ranked as belonging properly to those of a distinguished social standing.
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