Don Williams, the primary force of nature behind “To Make as Perfectly as Possible,” is a man of few vices but many vises.
He doesn’t drink, smoke, curse or even drink coffee. But the man will travel to the ends of the earth to examine pianomakers’ vises. This peculiar, beautiful and woefully undocumented form is featured prominently on H.O. Studley’s workbench. And so Don has spent weeks researching, restoring and examining original pianomaker’s vises.
He has been documenting his findings on his blog. Have you bookmarked it yet? You should.
A 17th-century map of the world drawn by Joseph Moxon.
With our second edition of Joseph Moxon’s “The Art of Joinery” at the printer, I’ve had several e-mails from readers wondering why they should buy a 17th-century woodworking book written by a printer, globe-maker and hydrographer to the king.
Note that “woodworker” is not on Moxon’s CV.
Moxon is probably best known for his treatise on printing, but he also made Bibles, globes, mathematical instruments and theorized that the Arctic was free of ice – encouraging explorers to sail further north to find an open sea and the Northwest Passage. Even Capt. James Cook adopted Moxon’s wrong-headed theory.
In the woodworking world, Moxon is known for publishing the first English-language book on woodworking titled “The Art of Joinery,” which began in 1677 or 1678. His 14 small books on joinery, bricklaying, carpentry, turning and blacksmithing were combined into the now-famous “Mechanick Exercises.”
The book was not intended for joiners. They would have seen the book as superficial – an outsider’s view of the craft told with little detail and subtlety. Yet, “The Art of Joinery” is important – very important – because it is a snapshot of the tools and techniques among English joiners in the 17th century. And we have very few other sources as detailed as Moxon.
In this book, you get an introduction to all the tools in a typical joiner’s kit, from the chisels to the hatchet. You get basic – and actually quite good – explanations of how to flatten a board from the rough, how to cut mortise-and-tenon joints and how to lay out and cut miters of all angles.
For me, it it always important to return to Moxon to understand what was important to the 17th-century joiner. Moxon spills tons of ink on the fore plane but says only a few lines about the smoothing plane. Moxon explains how joiners (and blacksmiths) would use coarse tools for as long as possible. He outlines a tool kit that is small and simple.
In other words, Moxon is the closest thing we have to a direct link to the joiners of the 17th century, where everything was made by hand.
For these reasons, we have chosen to republish “The Art of Joinery” in a format that makes it easy for you to digest, easy for you to understand and helps illustrate why what you are reading is important.
Our book is hardly a hagiography of Moxon. We challenge his observations and assumptions at every point. But we do acknowledge that Moxon is the real deal. His was a serious look at the handcrafts of Great Britain in the 17th century.
You can read all about our version of “The Art of Joinery” here in our store.
And to get a taste of what it is like to read, we’ve prepared a short excerpt that you can download. We are proud of every aspect of the book, from its manufacture to even the font we used for Moxon’s text.
You can order “The Art of Joinery” for $21 with free domestic shipping by visiting our store here. Note that this free-shipping offer expires on Nov. 4.
Yesterday morning I turned leg after leg, experimenting with different diameters and shapes to produce a folding stool that would easily hold a 225-pound person but not look like it was made with Tuscan-order columns.
About 2 p.m. I had my answer. Here are the specs on this stool:
Legs: 1-3/16”-diameter x 24” long. The ankle is 7/8” diameter with the taper starting 6” from the floor.
Hardware: 5/16” x 3” hex bolt, 5/16” x 2-1/2” eye bolt. Three washers. Two acorn nuts.
The stool is stout. Sitting in it inspires confidence. And it looks only marginally heavier. The one shown is in teak (yes, more teak offcuts. Will I ever be rid of them?). The design also worked fine in mahogany.
One other note: This stool starts out with a seat about 18” from the floor. After the leather stretches, it ends up about 16” from the floor. Now I can write the chapter for “Campaign Furniture” on these stools.
As a woodworker who loves to make chairs, I always try to use components that are as light and strong as possible. Thin spindles look better and can help a chair conform to the body of the sitter.
But wood has its limits.
Today I started assembling some folding campaign stools that were based off an original that had 1”-diameter legs. The original had a thin 5/8”-diameter ankle and 7/8”-diameter foot. They looked fantastic, so I decided to build the project as-is.
Unfortunately, we moderns are lard-butts.
In comparing the new stools to my old ones (which had a 1-1/8”-diameter legs and chunkier ankles), I definitely preferred the feel of the chunkier stools.
I weigh 185 pounds, and the stool with the thin legs was just too flexible to be comfortable. Every time I shifted my weight, the stool would give a little bounce. That’s not good feedback in the buttocks region.
So if you are building this stool before the book comes out, I recommend you beef up the legs. Use 1-1/8”- or 1-1/4”-diameter legs. Tomorrow I’m going to turn some more legs and try to get the look of the skinny leg on a thicker component.
Today I was riveting the heck out of the seats for these folding campaign stools I’m building. And after the 25th rivet, I realized something bad was going to happen. I was going to run out of “burrs.”
Burrs are the copper washers that get compressed against the leather and hold the rivet tight. You need one burr for every rivet. And I was five burrs short of finishing the seat.
This is generally not my way. I always buy too much hardware – I have boxes full of knobs, screws and doovlackys galore. But today I was five burrs short.
So I abandoned the project until I could buy some more copper rivets and burrs. I made dinner. My mind wandered.
Growing up in Arkansas, our garage was home to three things: my dad’s workshop, kids’ toys and my father’s private collection of canned tuna fish, Tostitos and toilet paper.
We belonged to one of those early warehouse-style food store where you buy food stacked on pallets and box it yourself. My dad, keen on the idea, bought boxes and boxes of tuna, Tostitos and TP. I often wondered if he tried to keep the tuna in balance with the TP. As in: Do I have enough TP to accommodate this amount of tuna?
But our family’s humor has always leaned toward the scatalogical.
When my friends saw the stack of tuna, TP and Tositios, they’d mock me and ask to see the fallout shelter and so forth. I just shrugged my shoulders. I’ve always liked Tostitos and a clean bum.
Somehow today this image (of the Tostitos, not the clean bum) wandered through my head, and I scolded myself for not buying more burrs the last time I was buying buckles.
But wait, I thought. I did buy some more burrs. They were with the buckles. In the bag with the buckles.
I rushed to the shop. Sure enough, the bag was full of buckles and burrs.
