Lost Art Press

My Supreme Suckage: Hand Mortising

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Other bloggers are wary of pulling down their pants. Not me.

I suck at a lot of things, but I really and truly suck at mortising by hand. The problem isn’t really my results – I can get a clean, straight hole. The problem is I’m so dang slow. I have tried every method out there. I practice during lulls in my schedule. I have a good sharp chisel and a strong mallet.

Honest, I have been at this for years and years – since I cut my first mortise by hand in 1993. You can’t help me. Don’t try. I am the mouth-breather of hand-mortising.

This week I’m quite stressed about it. You see, slowness doesn’t hurt anything when you can simply work until 1 a.m. in your own dang shop. But this weekend I’m taping a couple episodes of “The Woodwright’s Shop” with Roy Underhill, and I’m going to have to mortise for the camera. And we only have 23 minutes and 41.5 seconds for the whole show. That should be enough for me to cut one or two mortises (and it’s not even a show about mortising).

So this week I’ve been trying to speed up my mortising act while building a bunch of try squares that each have a through-mortise and a bridle joint.

So far, I have shaved at least half a second off my time per mortise. (Victory lap!)

If you stink at mortising, check out Jeff Gorman’s excellent site here. He surveys the pros and cons of many methods. In fact, it was from Gorman that I learned the “central-vee” method of mortising, which is my favorite.

Anyway, back to the basement to bash some wood.

— Christopher Schwarz

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A Whining, Peevish, Venomous Virago

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cot_mosquito_screenSummer twilight brings the mosquito. In fact, when we go far north or far south, we have him with us both day and night. Rather I should say that we have her; for the male mosquito is a gentleman, who sips daintily of nectar and minds his own business, while madame his spouse is a whining, peevish, venomous virago, that goes about seeking whose nerves she may unstring and whose blood she may devour. … Stranger still, the mosquito is not only a bloodsucker but an incorrigible winebibber as well – she will get helplessly fuddled on any sweet wine, such as port, or on sugared spirits, while of gin she is inordinately fond.

— “The Book of Camping and Woodcraft” by Horace Kephart (The Outing Publishing Co.) 1908

Wetzler Clamps, a Cry for Help

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While the wood being sold at Midwest Woodworking last weekend was enough to make me salivate, I really got excited when I learned the company was selling off its clamps.

Including, wait for it, a large collection of Wetzler F-style clamps.

I first encountered Wetzlers when Popular Woodworking Magazine gave away a bunch of them as part of a contest. Wetzler shipped the clamps to us; we had to ship them to the winner.

The box of clamps weighed about 300 pounds. After we opened it up, I knew I wanted a set for my shop. The clamps had heavy castings, yet the heads moved smoothly on the bars. And the screws were exquisitely made.

When I finally got my (expletive deleted) together to buy a set of Wetzlers, the company’s web site acted weird. Some links were dead. I tried e-mailing and calling the company. No luck. Eventually, the web site disappeared.

I used my newspaper reporter skills to trace the ownership chain to a Florida holding company. I called and e-mailed them. No response.

Does anyone know what happened to Wetzler? What about the patterns and molds? I know I could find someone who would make these clamps again.

Know anything? Send me an e-mail at chris@lostartpress.com.

— Christopher Schwarz

P.S. I snagged only four Wetzlers at $15 each at Midwest.

Ye Olde Unisaw

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The lumber trade began with a small shipment of hand-sawn clapboards sent from the James River settlement to England in 1607. The water-powered sawmill was introduced – in the autumn of 1611 – near the site of Richmond. The expertise was Dutch or German and was reinforced before 1624 by additional groups of sawyers from those countries, as well as a few Poles. William Byrd of Westover imported saws and sawmill parts from Europe and boasted that his mills could rip two thousand board feet in five hours.

— “This Well-Wooded Land” by Thomas R. Cox, Robert S. Maxwell, Phillip Drennon Thomas and Joseph J. Malone (University of Nebraska Press) 1985.

On Name-stamping Your Tools

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When Ty Black started as a shop assistant last summer, he was bemused and amused that all my hand tools were stamped with my shop mark.

“I’ll bet your kids are stamped with this, too,” he joked.

Ty’s reaction is common. Many home woodworkers and tool collectors I’ve met take a dim view of marking your tools. It is “hubris,” according to some, because you are putting yourself on the same level as the maker of the tool. I’ve been told that I should only mark tools that I’ve made. Stamping lowers the value of the tool to collectors (though that attitude seems to be changing).

stamp2_IMG_7099I have to laugh at these attitudes. When you work in a shop with other people, marking your tools in some way is essential so you can keep track of your tool kit. Lots of people own a Starrett 12” combination square, and when yours grows legs, the stamp is the only way to ensure it’s coming back home without a fight.

I’m not worried about theft, per se (though that was a concern in early shops). But before I marked every marking gauge, chisel and hammer, my tools would end up going home with my students. It was always accidental, but is was always annoying and stressful.

Of course, one can go overboard with a name stamp. See Joel Moskowitz’s blog today at Tools for Working Wood for a great example of this.

If you are going to take a woodworking class and still think a stamp is silly, mark your tools in some manner. Add a dot with some nail polish. Add a temporary stripe of brightly colored tape. Something. I’ve seen too much confusion at the end of a class when people are trying to decide whose chisel belongs to whom.

And if you want a fantastic stamp, contact Infinity Stamps. The company’s employees will design a stamp for you based off a sketch or whatever else you have. They are fast and great to deal with.

Gotta go. I have make a crapload of try squares today. And I hope to stamp them all before dinner. That’s another thing I like about my stamp. It announces happy hour for the day.

— Christopher Schwarz

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