I have worked at coopering in all its different branches off and on for about thirty years; have seen it in its prosperity and felt its adversity. I have known the cooper who worked journey work to have a kit of tools weighing 100 to 150 pounds, and many curious-shaped tools they were, among which the only machine in use was a boring machine. Twenty staves from the rough were called a set and made a load to carry into the shop— rough heading four or six pieces—often causing the cooper to go back and make a second load to get a complete set for a barrel.
Old-time coopers will remember how a new man was broken into the traces; then, when his staves were equalized, shaved and jointed by hand, and heading made into a head, all of which required a mechanic to do the work, and our journeyman had his first barrel raised, there would go up from every cooper about the place a yell, “blockwash, blockwash!” that, only for the difference in the way it was done and the word itself, you would think there was fire in the next yard. The new cooper understood the rules, and if he hadn’t the money he got the boss to help him out, and the nearest saloon got the benefit of his first earnings by furnishing the ingredient (blockwash). (more…)
The folding bookstand in A.-J. Roubo’s “l’Art du menuisier” is nice, but not nearly as fancy as the one I unearthed today while reorganizing my office.
This bookstand is shown in “L’Enseignement Professionnel du Menuisier” (book 1) by Léon Jamin. Jamin is listed at an “ancien collaborateur au Roubo,” but I don’t know enough about Jamin to say what that really means.
I purchased an original copy of the plates from this 19th-century book for professional woodworkers, and it is a delight to page through. One of the owners of the book performed all the recommended exercises on the backs of the plates, which are almost as fascinating as the plates themselves.
In this plate, No. 32, the author is illustrating how to draw the bookstand in perspective. The three images here are joined to one another at the edges, making for a complete exploration of all the details of the bookstand.
I don’t own a copystand (yet) for my camera, so I have included three high-resolution scans here for you to play with. Feel free to stitch the images together.
Woodworker Mike Siemsen devised a clever way to make a three-way bolt for a folding stool using some off-the-rack hardware. He’s making 100 of these hardware sets for Lost Art Press, which we will sell for $12/each plus domestic first-class shipping, as soon as they are available.
When we sell out, Mike will sell them himself.
He sent me a sample hardware set and I installed it on a stool. The hardware works great. It is much less sloppy than the eye-bolt solution outlined in earlier posts. If you have a drill press, some lettered drill bits and a metal tap, you can easily make this hardware yourself using the instructions from Mike below. Note that this hardware is designed for legs that are 1-3/16” in diameter – a good diameter for modern Americans.
If you don’t have the tools or time, we’ll sell the hardware to you. Details to come. Below is how to make your own.
— Christopher Schwarz
Here is a shot of the tri-bolt set up. The parts required are:
• A 1/2-13 heavy hex nut. (Regular nuts will not work well; get low carbon, not hardened)
• Three 5/16-18 x 2-1/4” bolts (machine screws, get low carbon, not hardened)
• One 5/16-18 nut (for cutting off the bolts to length)
• Three 5/16″ washers.
You will also need a 5/16-18 tap, a drill for the pilot hole (F-size bit which is .257”; 1/4″ will probably work) and a drill press.
Center punch the center of every other face on the 1/2″ heavy hex nut, put it in a drill press vise and bore the pilot holes for the tap. You can then either run the tap by hand or put the tap in the drill press and turn it by hand, no power! Keep things square to the face being drilled.
Next take the three 5/16 bolts, screw the nut on them all the way up to the unthreaded portion and saw off the excess end. Remove the nut and file or grind the burr off. It is important that the unthreaded portion be around 1-1/4″ long. You can buy shorter or longer bolts to vary the length of the unthreaded portion. I typically blacken shiny hardware.
When your wife can control her urge to even slightly roll her eyes when you talk about the East India Company, and your hemorrhoids are as big as baseballs, it is time to cease work on your book.
I do not like sitting on my butt for hours, days and weeks. In fact, that was the reason I never fully enjoyed being a newspaper reporter. I adore a good millworks fire (who doesn’t?), but there were weeks when I would sit on my rump, handset smashed to my ear, saying, “And how did you get that candle dislodged from your insides?”
I’ve spent every waking hour of the last month on boring minutiae that isn’t worth writing about. I have executed more than 75 hand drawings. Processed hundreds of photos, and scanned more than 200 pages of material for the appendices to “Campaign Furniture.”
It sounds like I’m whining. I’m not. I enjoy the complete control over every pixel of a book, but I also know that you don’t want to read about the Pantone swatch I chose for the duotones in a book. This is a blog about woodworking. And killing Raney Nelson.
So here is a quick update on things you might be interested in.
1. I’m on schedule. “Campaign Furniture” will be designed and to the printer by the end of January, which means it will be released in early March 2014. I am trying like heck to bring in the book at less than $32 retail, but it is a challenge. We need to use matte-finish coated paper to reproduce the color and duotone photographs, and we won’t skimp on the binding or cover.
2. We are working on a special promotional piece of hardware. We plan to offer 100 U.S.-made tri-bolts for making campaign stools at a really nice price – $12. I have installed one of these on a camp stool, and I like it more than the eye-bolt solutions I’ve been using in the past. Stay tuned.
3. Other books are moving along. Peter Galbert is finishing up the writing on his book on chairbuilding. Andrew Lunn is wrapping up his tome on saws. Don Williams is (today) entering his last edits on “Roubo on Furniture-making” before submitting it to peer review. Lots of other projects are stirring, but I don’t have updates on them to share with you.
4. We are building a new Lost Art Press web site. With the help of woodworker/codemonkey Ben Lowery, we will be launching a new web site that is simpler to use. This is a major step forward for Lost Art Press, which is taking a leap from being a tiny company to a significant one. We will still be only two guys with laptops, but we are on the verge of outsourcing a lot of things that have been filling our garages, basements and waking hours with grunt work. Customers will still deal only with us – John and Chris – but we think shipments will be delivered faster and in better boxes – with no additional charges to you. Lest you think we are turning our back on our core principles, we will be using a local and independent company founded by two guys to do our fulfillment. When John called them last, one of the owners had his mouth full of bacon.
5. I need to thank you, our customers. I know it is old hat for a business to thank its customers, but I have a more personal appeal. Thirty months ago I walked out on the best job I’ve ever had – the editor of Popular Woodworking Magazine. I didn’t leave because I was unhappy. I left because I wanted to stretch things further than any sane/solvent corporation would let me. The only thing that has made Lost Art Press possible has been you. If you have bought a book from us in the last five years, your money has gone to support the crafts of woodworking, printing and publishing in the United States. Your support is also funding some incredible research that will become public in the years ahead.
So I need to get back to processing digital photos and find the unexpired tube of witch hazel cream to smear in my nether regions. You paid for that, too. Sorry to bring it up.
We know of no reason whatever that should prevent a good joiner from working hardwood as skillfully and as speedily as a trained cabinetmaker. As a rule, a good joiner can make superior cabinet work—Work that will stand more wear and tear than that usually turned out by furniture men; but the trouble lies in the fact that good joiners are very scarce.
The cabinetmaker must possess a certain amount of skill in the use of tools and finishing, or he will prove very unprofitable to his employer, a state of things not permissible nowadays; this skill may not be much; but much or little, it must be there.
On the other hand, there is certain rough work that can be done, about a building by any one having brains enough to dig a post-hole, and the rougher the work and coarser the operative, the more profitable to the employer.
Again, the wages paid the more skillful joiner is so little above the amount paid the coarser workman that it is scarcely worth striving for, more particularly so, when we take into consideration the fact that the higher the class of work the more expensive are the tools required to do it. (more…)
