Lost Art Press

French Oak Roubo Project: Day 3

Posted on July 17, 2013 by Lost Art Press

If you have ever been in spitting distance of a tornado then you are familiar with the sound and then the silence.

Today we finished up most of the machine work for the benches and turned our attention to the handwork needed to get the joints together. But first, there was to be a smoke show.

While ripping a last piece of oak on a 14” Martin table saw, the oak clamped down on the back of the blade. The operator, one of the skilled assistants, held his ground at the arbor. If he’d let go, the 60-pound piece of oak would have flown back at him. He couldn’t turn off the saw because the old-style switch was out of reach of his leg.

I saw it happen all from behind. First there was a noise. When I looked up the smoke from the blade was drifting into the shop fan – shooting it out like a jet across the room.

As the noise began to bend, the operator’s strong arms began to jiggle like Jell-O. I started to run for the switch, but Jeff Miller was faster. He dove under the saw and switched it off. No harm came to anything except the wood, which was burned.

No one said much of anything for about an hour. The machines in the room were turned off. The rest of the day was mostly quiet. A few people switched on the band saw for a cut or two. But most of the day was all hand cutting, hand planing and hand paring.

Despite the adrenaline, I tried to keep moving all day long. Thursday is my last day here in Barnesville, Ga. On Friday morning I have to head out to Berea, Ky., to teach a two-day class on making wooden layout tools at the Kelly Mehler School of Woodworking.

So I had to get all the joints fitted for the base of the bench so I could cut the joints in the top. The strength in these French workbenches is in the joint between the tops and the legs. The stretcher joints are not as critical.

So when it comes to fitting those joints, I usually take a page from the playbook of Peter Follansbee. He says that mortise-and-tenon joints such as these should be seated when you hit them with your hat.

So about 5 p.m., Jeff Miller walked up to me as I was bashing one of my joints with a dead-blow mallet.

“Looks like we have the same kind of hats,” he said.

I grabbed my shoulder plane and finished the job in 10 minutes.

I wiped down my tools and put them away. Ate barbecue. We went back to our sleeping quarters and the power went out in a thunderstorm (it was a 30-percent chance of rain).

So now I need to sign off so Raney Nelson, Don Williams and I can tell ghost stories.

— Christopher Schwarz

An English Joiner Goes to Paris

Posted on July 17, 2013 by fitz

Our advices from Paris ſay, that a journeyman joiner, an Engliſhman, who had worked ſometime in that city, had been forming a ſcheme to raiſe the wages of all the journeymen joiners there. For this end he had occaſioned a general meeting, at which he repreſented to them, that their wages being too ſmall, it was neceſſary for them to demand an augmentation, and if that ſhould be denied, that they ſhould all refuſe to work.

At the ſame time a collection was made of three livres apiece, to be applied to the ſupport of thoſe who could not ſupport themſelves without employment; and he further propoſed, that all ſuch as ſhould refuſe to come into theſe meaſures, ſhould be ill treated by the reſt, which was generally agreed to, and one then preſent refuſing was ſeverely drubbed.

But the lieutenant-general of Police having been preſently informed of this combination, he took proper meaſures to defeat it, by ſending the projector, and ſeveral of his accomplices, to priſon, and threatning every journeyman joiner with the ſame fate, who refuſed to work at his uſual wages.

The London Magazine, Or, Gentleman’s Monthly Intelligencer – Dec. 1749

–Jeff Burks

French Oak Roubo Project: Day 2

Posted on July 16, 2013July 17, 2013 by Lost Art Press

Raney ”Miller” Nelson slides his bench leg into the cradle on the Tannewitz 36” band saw. The task: Push it forward to cut one of the dovetails on the top of a leg for his workbench.

He pushes forward. He gets to the finish line and pulls the leg backward. But instead of pulling the jig back, only the leg comes back. The leg drops out of the jig and jams the blade in the joint.

The 36” band saw begins screaming like an owl trapped in a revolving door.

Before anyone can turn off the saw, there is a sound like a gunshot. Several students soil their pants (or use the sharp sound as an excuse for soiling their pants… again). And then sparks begin to fly out of the band saw as it makes its screaming death braking procedure.

After five minutes, Raney and I exhale. We wait for band saw to spin down before we open the wheel covers.

Five minutes more pass. The saw is still spinning.

I go off to cut the joints on my legs.

Five minutes pass. The saw is still spinning. Raney walks away to work on his legs. Somewhere an entire episode of “Hee-Haw” is aired. The saw is still spinning.

I forget entirely that we broke the blade, and Don Williams comes up to ask if anyone is going to change the dang blade. Raney checks it. Still spinning.

Tuesday was joinery day in Barnesville, Ga. We cut mortises in all the legs – I got the distinct pleasure of this job and became intimate with the pneumatic controls on the mortiser. At one point, Justin Leib (one of the bench builders) asked if he should leave me alone with the beast for some pneumatic consummation.

Other highlights:

• We cut the tenons on the tops of the legs.
• We surfaced all the stock for the stretchers.
• We flattened most of the benchtops with a planer.
• Most of the students did a crapload of handwork on their components.
• Raney broke a band saw blade.
• We ate fried chicken.

On Wednesday we should finish a lot more joinery. Jameel “Jamal Alabama” Abraham and I hope to experiment with a timber-framing band saw to cut the dovetail slots in the top.

And, with hope, that Tannewitz band saw will finally spin down so Raney can change the blade.

— Christopher Schwarz

Bad Translations of French Poetry

Posted on July 16, 2013 by fitz

In light of the French Oak Roubo Project happening this week in Atlanta, I thought it would be appropriate to post some French poetry to help celebrate the occasion. The piece I have chosen comes from the booklet titled Bluettes – Poésies par V. D. published in France, 1866. The poem depicts an old joiner speaking to his favorite plane, the subtext being death. If you speak French, then you are welcome to read the original rhyming couplets here.

Below is my ham-fisted English translation. I have no intention of re-writing the poem to make it rhyme in English. Hopefully I have captured the essence of the poem without making any egregious errors. Please feel free to make corrections in the comments.

–Jeff Burks

An Old Joiner to his Try Plane

For half a century, oh my dear try plane,
Thy wood hard and shiny, thy sharp iron gallops,
Pushed by my hands on my old workbench.
By thy constant assistance, ah! how I polished
Planks of pine, poplar, oak!
Quickly when thee take my arms for a stroll,
The coarsest and most resistant wood
Are now transformed into elegant furniture,
Into objects of every kind and any appearance.
From morning to evening we are present;
Together we walk an area bounded,
Four paces at most. At work confined,
For principal tool, you know, I chose you:
You were my livelihood, and I thank you.
But I am old, and I feel my strength failing.
My hand, which once led you without faltering,
Now I soon weary from thy weight.
Thyself, here you are very old and well worn.
Our long lease ends, and we will, shortly be
Discarded, one in the earth, and the other in the fire.

French Oak Roubo Project: Day 1

Posted on July 15, 2013 by Lost Art Press

This morning Don Williams, Raney “my little spoon” Nelson and I awoke to a gentle Georgia rain. After pulling on some clothes and convening in the kitchen, the talk turned immediately to money.

A reader had asked me via e-mail if we were going to sell offcuts of the ancient French-grown oak we were using to build these benches. I suggested perhaps bottling some sweat (I am making 750ml a day here in the Georgia heat). Then Don came up with the best idea: Unwashed game-day jerseys from the build.

However, after smelling the thing that I peeled off my body this evening, I doubt that the USPS would allow it into the mailstream. Raney and I got into the car at the end of the day and he said: “I smell man.”

(I hope it was me.)

The first day of the bench-building project was brutal. It’s my favorite day when building workbenches.

We split the participants into two teams. One team focused on getting the benchtop slabs through the Straitoplaner – an awesome machine. The other team, which I was on, was responsible for dimensioning the leg stock. We had to cut it down to rough length, then joint, plane and crosscut the oak to size.

This stuff is heavy. And each leg blank was 4” x 7” x 36” to start. And we’re making 16 workbenches.

About 3 p.m., both teams finished dimensioning the tops and the legs and we turned our attention to the tops. Of the 16 tops, 11 were one single slab and the builders focused on truing up their edges. The rest of us had to glue up our tops from two slabs (we had to rip out the pith from some of the slabs).

Jointing the edges were the hardest part of the day. It took six people to push each stick over the jointer – sometimes five or six passes for each edge. We glued the tops up with PVA – we needed the clamps for the next glue-up. By 6 p.m. we had four of the five tops glued up.

For dinner, the instructors went to the house of Ron Brese, the planemaker who has been helping with the bench-building project. We got a tour of his shop, we played with his planes (and dovetail saw collection) and then we set out to find Cheerios for Don.

Don needs his Cheerios.

I need sleep.

Tomorrow: Joints. And more sweat.

— Christopher Schwarz