Not sure how, but I found one copy of “Mouldings in Practice” bound in leather. Depending on how the book sells and when we re-print we may do another batch in leather. It won’t be anytime soon, however.
The book is on the site, so if you would like to purchase it click here. The price is $185, which includes shipping. If you click the link and can’t see the book that means it has been sold.
Best
john
The following are fines paid by cabinetmakers in Irish shops in 1839. Typically, the fines were paid in drink for fellow shopmates.
1. Entering a shop as an apprentice: 1 pound, 1 shilling.
2. Failure to keep the glue warm: 6 pence.
3. Forgetting to extinguish the fire or candles at night: 2 shillings, 6 pence.
4. When an apprentice “takes the apron” to do man’s work: 1 shilling.
5. When an apprenticeship expires, called “washing him out:” 10 shilling, 6 pence.
6. Getting married: 10 shilling.
7. Having a child: a quart of whisky.
8. Being taught any new task: 1 shilling.
9. Tool not put away: 3 pence.
10. Long beard or dirty shirt: 6 pence.
11. Obtaining a favored workbench near a window: quart of whisky.
12. Gluing someone’s pockets shut: 2 pence.
13. Leaving the rubstone hollow: 1 pence.
“It is wonderful that there are any sober men in the mechanic class at all, when such perpetual drinking tyranny dominates over them… . Boys at first are shy of taking drink, and seem to dislike it, but before they are half out of their time they generally acquire the usual relish for stimulation, and are eager to subject new comers to the same exercise which was so disagreeable to themselves. Thus cruelty and drunkenness are perpetuated, and the foundation of all evil habits laid in the very social constitution.”
Excerpted from “The Philosophy of Artificial and Compulsory Drinking Usage in Great Britain and Ireland: Containing the Characteristic, and Exclusively National, Convivial Laws of British Society” by John Dunlop – 6th Edition 1839.
— Christopher Schwarz
Thanks to Jeff Burks for pointing me to this book. Or perhaps it was an intervention?
Deneb Puchalski of Lie-Nielsen Toolworks uses a toothing iron to deal with materials that are difficult to plane. He first tooths the surface and then removes the toothing with a fine-set plane, usually a low-angle jack plane.
A few years ago he asked me if there was anything in the literature that supported this method. And this entry is a long-overdue reply.
From “The Panorama of Science and Art” (Caxton Press) by James Smith, 1825.
Though the double iron is an excellent invention, and the use of it is, in fact, the best general remedy known against the curling or cross-grained stuff of ordinary quality; yet, without some other assistance, the planing of many of the finest specimens of mahogany, and many other woods, among which fustic may be particularly mentioned, would be to the last degree a difficult and perplexing operation to the workman.
Hence a plane, the stock of which is usually made of the shape and size of the smoothing-plane, is fitted up so as to act by scratching or scraping. The blade, or iron, on the steel side of it, is covered with rakes or small grooves close to each other, and all of them in the direction of its length: when therefore it is ground, and the basil formed, its edge presents a series of teeth like those of a fine saw; the bed of the stock intended to receive it is inclined only about six degrees, and consequently when the iron is fixed it is almost perpendicular. On account of these teeth in the iron, the plane obtains the name of the tooth-plane.
With this kind of a plane, however hard the stuff may be, or however cross and twisted its grain, the surface may be made every-where alike, and will not be rougher than if it had been rubbed with a piece of new fish-skin. This roughness may be effectually removed with the scraper, which is a thin plate of steel, like part of a common case-knife, the back of it being let into a piece of wood, as a handle.
So there you go. Thanks to Jeff Burks for turning me onto the Panorama book several years ago. Lots of good stuff in there on joinery that isn’t in Peter Nicholson’s book.
— Christopher Schwarz
Years ago I found it necessary to warn people of certain fallacies and misconceptions. There is less need of warnings to-day, yet there are dangers. Some people still think that manual labor is manual training, just as they probably think that the boy who fetches and carries books in a library is becoming a literary man.
Others think a manual training school should be a factory, and should put its goods on the market. Still others think that the chief product of manual training is found in bits of furniture and knick-nacks which pupils carry home. It is constantly necessary for us to explain that ordinary manual labor is not manual training at all. There is training in mastering the theory and the use of a tool or a machine under the guidance of an expert; but when the mastery is gained, and gained thoroughly, there is no training in its continued use, which is not for education but is for commercial ends.
My usual reply to people who betray such misconceptions is already gray with age, but it may be allowed a positively last appearance here—the more a school becomes a factory the less is it a school. The school should put one article upon the market and that is, boys; and if all the shop exercises of the year were at its close put into a furnace and burned, all the manual training would remain.
(more…)
I don’t know how many tool chests I’ve built or helped build since 2011 when “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” was published. But I can tell you this: Every class is both brutal and special.
I finished up teaching my latest tool chest class at the Port Townsend School of Woodworking in Washington state and just landed back in Kentucky. This class was particularly special because my assistant was Rob Campbell, who writes The Joiner’s Apprentice blog.
Though Rob and I have only crossed paths a couple times, we see the world similarly and have built our personal lives around the craft and trying to isolate ourselves from excessive consumption and corporate America.
So it was a huge pleasure to work with him all week, building a project we both knew intimately, and to get the opportunity to swap tips and ideas.
And on top of all that, the students in this class were off-the-hook wacko. And that’s a good thing. During some classes, I have to restrain my humor a bit because it is difficult for some to swallow. These 10 guys were as messed up as I.
If you want to read Rob’s account of the class, check out his entry.
— Christopher Schwarz
