Lost Art Press

Of the Reglet, or the Notchy Stick (Unfiltered)

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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When I appear in public (always against my will), one of the nice things that people have to say is this: Boy you have an interesting job.

Not really. For the most part, my life is a lot of dead ends and “rabbet holes” (thank you Geo. Walker and Jim Tolpin). Here is a look at what a single blog entry looks like, from start to finish. Warning: This is messy, boring stuff.

And so Chris repaired to his workshop to make a notchy stick.

I have a bench
it tilts a bit.
I’m making a stick
to whack a wench.
Oh, hey diddle day….

— Suzanne “Saucy Indexer” Ellison

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“When I first saw the Durer stick tonight, I thought – brilliant, they bored a hanging-hole at each end. I have 3’ steel ruler that hangs on the wall. More than half the time I go to hang it up, it’s the wrong way up. If there was a hole at each end, it would always be right. But maybe you’re right, and there’s some actual use, rather than just stupidity-prevention. The Rivius stick has only one hole – which shoots your nailing-it-as-a-fence theory. IF we can put all this stock in these engravings/woodcuts, etc. I think for arguments’ sake we accept what we see there. So one hole in the first, 2 in Durer. Hmm.”

— Peter Follansbee

Walter H. Rivius, Nuremberg, Germany, 1547

“Check out the photo on page 29 of ‘The Workbench Book’ by Scott Landis. It shows Rob Tarule at his Roubo bench using a batten & holfast to stabilize a board when planed against the stop. It is the same thing as the Maguire video, without the notch. I’m not sure why the Internet reacted to much to the Maguire video. I suspect many of them have not read the Landis book, or forgotten that photo exists. I agree that the technique is cool, and would love to find supporting evidence that the technique is as old as a holdfast, but not so sure those Melencolia sticks are the “smoking gun.

“I’ve always tried to play it safe with the mystery stick in the images you have referenced, and just consider them straight edges. Most of the wooden drafting tools from those old images have a hang hole & one or more decorative cuts. Perhaps the fancy cuts are just to help identify the tool in the pile of junk, and prevent it from being used as kindling to heat the glew…”

— Jeff Burks

reglet, n.  
Etymology: Middle French, French †reglet, †riglet small ruler (1370), carpenter’s rule (1530), (in printing) strip of wood used to create blank spaces between blocks of text (1635), (in architecture) narrow strip of moulding used to cover joins.

†b. A thin, flat piece or strip of wood used in carpentry or frame-making. Obs. rare.

1678   J. Moxon Mech. Exercises I. vi. Explan. Terms 112
Riglet, is a thin square peece of Wood: Thus the peeces that are intended to make the Frames for small Pictures, &c. before they are Molded are called Riglets.

1683   J. Moxon Mech. Exercises II. 25
On the..Fore-Rail..is nailed a small Riglet about half an Inch high, and a quarter and half quarter of an Inch thick.

1754   W. Emerson Princ. Mech. 307
Riglets, little flat thin, square pieces of wood.

1860   H. E. P. Spofford Sir Rohan’s Ghost xi. 223
It is not a small canvas, being about four feet in height,..and is set in a quaint frame of black, carved wood, with an inner reglet gilt to relieve the want of that color in the painting.

— OED

Officer’s Strong Trunk

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Trunks such as this – sometimes called “strong chests” or “barracks chests” – are a common form of campaign furniture. They were available in a variety of configurations, from plain deal boxes to elaborate affairs lined with zinc, camphorwood or baize.

Trunks typically have square ends – both the height and depth of the trunk can be roughly 15” to 25” typically. In general, they are somewhere between 25” to 40” wide. The chests are frequently dovetailed at the corners and bound with brass corners and other brass straps. Despite the dovetails, many of the lids and bottoms of trunks were merely nailed to the carcase. It is not unusual to find a trunk with a lid or bottom that has a split.

Less expensive models used butt joints at the corner and were bound in iron with the lids simply screwed on.

My example is based off of details from five trunks I’ve studied in person, including one from the East Indies that had the unusual corner joint shown.

The mahogany is gorgeous stuff from Midwest Woodworking (RIP David Frank). The hardware was custom-made by Horton Brasses (thanks Orion Henderson and everyone at Horton). The finish is two coats of garnet shellac (Tiger Flakes from Tools for Working Wood), then one coat of dull lacquer and black bison wax from Liberon (aka Creepy Janitor).

I now have only two more projects to build for the book “Campaign Furniture,” a final Roorkhee chair that incorporates everything I’ve learned about them during the last year and a deluxe folding bookcase.

— Christopher Schwarz

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A Direful Scarcity of Plank and Scantling

Posted on by fitz

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An addreſs to the public.

That the preſent era bids fair to finiſh the human character, in this our happy hemiſphere, muſt be evident from an enumeration of ſome late diſcoveries. In Maſſachuſetts, an unlettered mariner has hit upon the art of ſeparating freſh-water from ſalt water, without the inſtrumentality of heat! In Connecticut, a tallow chandler has laid open the ſecret of uniting water with tallow, a diſcovery of no ſmall importance to mankind; inaſmuch as it muſt render light cheap, by lowering the price of candles!

In Pennſylvania, a ſociety of ſages, aſſiſted by the legiſlature of the ſtate, have found out a method of improving philoſophy by means of digging of cellars, and keeping rooms to let. It is likewise notorious, that certain alchymiſts, in the pay of New-Hampſhire and South-Carolina, have inſtructed the people of thoſe republics in the myſtery of converting old houſhold furniture or barren land into bona fide gold or ſilver.

This alludes to the laws making property a tender in payment of debts.

Inſpired by ſuch examples, it is not to be preſumed that ſo reſpectable a ſtate as Maryland will doſe away the bright morning of peace, without a ſingle atempt at diſcovery, beyond a town-clock, which, perhaps, may never ſtrike, or a foundered corporation, which may never recover the uſe of its limbs. Surely it is time for an independent people to leave the path trodden by their ſhackled anceſtors, and aſtoniſh the world by ſome new and extraordinary effort of genius!

Now is the fortunate moment when habit is to give place to imitation: when stronger inducements have ariſen, to call upon every lover of his country to unite in providing againſt an evil, which philoſophy ſees approaching with rapid ſtrides.

—I mean, my fellow citizens, a direful ſcarcity of plank and ſcantling even in this timber-ſtate and its extensive territory.

If it ſhould be objected that Maryland is a limited ſtate, and does not, like Virginia, poſſeſs extenſive uncultivated territory, the objection offers one of the moſt cogent reaſons for making the moſt of what we have.

Heretofore, it is true that the political economiſts have widely differenced reſpecting the ſuperiority between deal boards and pine trees. In this point, however, they all agree, that there must have been pine trees, before they could be cut into deal boards.

Here it would ſeem as if the author had read every writer in political economy, as they quaintly ſtyled; his modeſty however, leads him to confeſs that he is not ſure that he has read any one of them. In this inſtance, he has followed the practice of great writers, who make a parade of their reading.

Taking this ſurprising diſcovery of the economiſts for a guiding maxim, it is humbly propoſed, that the carpenters, the joiners, the ſawyers, and all the workers in wood, do forthwith commune together, and form themſelves into a ſociety for inventing the easiest and cheapest method of melting down ſawduſt and chips, and caſting them into deal-boards, without cracks or knots.

The writer’s candor compels him to acknowledge that he has taken the hint of this ſociety from a London news-paper, printed in the year 1720.

I am aware that this undertaking is ſubject to be conſidered as expenſive without being profitble: and that it may alſo be ſaid of it, that the great labour required to make deal boards after this faſhion will prove an inſurmountable obſtacle to ſucceſs. I truſt, however, that ſuch objections can be eaſily obviated, and that a people ſufficiently liberal, will not condemn what is propoſed, merely because it is new!!!

Thomas Coliflower.
Baltimore, April 3, 1786.

The American Museum or Repository of Ancient and Modern Fugitive Pieces,
Prose and Poetical. Vol II – 1787

—Jeff Burks

On Furniture Design and Cooking

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The best thing I ever learned about furniture design came from my mom while we were driving the family Suburban somewhere in the Florida panhandle.

My mom is absolutely the best cook I have ever encountered. She can do anything with nothing. She makes it all look effortless and taste amazing. She, quite frankly, opened my eyes to the possibilities of food in the way my dad introduced me to wood.

So anyway, we’re driving back to our beach rental place one summer in the 1980s, and my mom and I are talking about food. And I describe some fruit smoothie. It’s stupid, really, but it’s a fruit smoothie with some weird combination of fruits and juices.

I say: I think that would taste good.

She says: You can visulaize that?

Me: Yeah, no problem.

Mom: That’s cooking. Right there.

That moment has stuck with me for almost 30 years now, both as a cook and a furniture designer. And after much thought, I’ve concluded there are two kinds of designers: cooks and bakers.

I have always been a cook. I am interested in combining different ingredients until I gradually achieve a perfect balance when making a sauce or casserole or carcase. I taste and taste. Modify and modify. And I’m never satisfied until the very last, when I place the food on the table.

My wife, Lucy, on the other hand, is a baker. She treats ingredients like a chemist. She measures. Measures again. And makes fantastic cookies and cakes that I cannot ever hope to make. But – and this is not a criticism – her cookies always taste the same. My shrimp and grits always tastes different, depending on what’s available and my mood.

What the heck does this have to do with woodworking? Everything.

When I design furniture, I am willing to alter the details at any stage. I refuse to use a cutting list. I simply feel my way through the project, step by step. I can do this because I have a vast library of furniture books and images in my head and in my house that I use to guide me. I start with a basic recipe that is based on the material I have, the photos of similar objects I’ve culled from my library and the desires of the person I’m building the piece for.

When I build this way, I am always happy with the result.

During my years at Popular Woodworking Magazine, I tried to build things according to more of a baking paradigm. I took the print, developed a cutting list and stuck to it. At times this process worked. The baking soda was right to the granule. Other times, I felt like I was simply reproducing someone else’s mistakes.

So, bottom line, I want my mistakes to be my own.

The problem with my approach is that it’s hard (no, impossible) to teach to others. I much prefer the approach of George Walker and Jim Tolpin in “By Hand & Eye,” who teach woodworkers to develop their designer’s eye through exercise and exploration.

My approach is more like Anthony Bourdain. Eat everything. Make yourself sick again and again until you you can find the balance between beauty and botulism. Yeah, sometimes you’ll throw up on the street, but sometimes you’ll find something that can silence a room.

— Christopher Schwarz