I left my little block of wood that sets my honing angles for chisels and plane irons in Australia, so the first order of business on Sunday was to build a new one.
After a decade of messing around, I pretty much sharpen all my edge tools with a 35° secondary bevel. This is a good all-purpose angle. It’s robust. It works with all my tools. And it keeps life simple.
In theory, I should use a lot of different honing angles to adjust the cutting characteristics of my tools, lower angles for paring tools, higher for chopping tools. I’ve been down those rabbet holes, and I’ve concluded that “sharp fixes everything.”
What’s important for me is that I get sharp fast and without fuss or error. Having one honing angle makes my life simple.
So this little block reflects that idea. One face of the block sets 35° in my side-clamp honing guide for chisels and plane irons. The other face sets 35° for wacky tools – shoulder planes – in my Kell honing guide.
I made the guide out of mahogany (leftovers from the campaign furniture book) and used waterproof glue and nails to assemble things. These are important details if you use waterstones. The water will rot the wood and loosen the glue. Promise.
Now I can get back to work on this campaign chest. Wait, I have to edit three books? Crap.
Getting through U.S. Customs Saturday was a harrowing experience. I was certain they would pull me aside and go through my luggage because my declaration card was filled with red flags I’d gathered during my three weeks in Melbourne, Australia.
I always err on the side of declaring everything – everything, even breath mints – when I pass through immigration. Honesty is so much easier than trying to hide a backsaw in a body cavity.
So my declaration card included:
• Old tools with wooden components.
• Random chunks of timber, some with bark.
• Lots of expensive and pointy bits of stuff.
• Bizarre Australian candy for the kids.
• Antique Japanese paring chisel with a rosewood handle.
When it came time to go through my luggage, the Customs officer didn’t give a second look at the tools, timber or other pointy bits. It was the candy that received the scrutiny. Some of the wacky sweets looked like bananas. Fruit and meat are a no-no. After the “bananas” were determined to be completely artificial, I was free to go.
After a big sigh of relief, I sprinted to catch my connecting flight.
Of all the stuff I brought back, the biggest treasure is five small sticks of King Billy Pine (Athrotaxis selaginoides) I picked up from toolmaker Chris Vesper. It’s a slow-growing and endangered species from Tasmania that has a long, fragrant and storied history in the history of the region. It’s a protected species and difficult to get here. These sticks were acquired entirely ethically.
I got just enough to build two Roubo try squares. One of them will be part of my payment to Wesley Tanner for redesigning our revision of Joseph Moxon’s “The Art of Joinery” with my commentary.
“The Art of Joinery” was the first Lost Art Press book and is now out of print. This year we’re reissuing the book, which will be expanded to include the following parts:
1. The text from Moxon’s writing on the art of joinery which has been lightly “translated” by me to make it easier for the modern reader to digest. Most of the “translation” consists of removing the long “s” from the words and breaking up some long sentences with semicolons.
2. The “translated” text will have some commentary from me and the engravings from Moxon’s book placed in situ – e.g. the image of the chisel will be next to the chisel.
3. The original text, untranslated and with all its 17th-century peculiarities. The text will be entirely reset in a font picked by Wesley. We’re adding this section to the book because several readers complained that they really really really wanted the source text without any commentary. There were also grumblings that my light “translation” was like rewriting the King James Bible in the voice of Austin Powers.
4. We’ll be offering the whole book in either cloth or leather bindings, plus in ePub and Kindle versions.
Work is proceeding on the book, and it should be out by the end of the year.
Since my first book on workbenches came out in 2007, I have been approached by several manufacturers about producing a “Schwarz Workbench,” where I’d be paid a royalty for every bench sold.
It would feature my illegible signature (my kids say my signature looks like “C-star Slimy”) and be built to my specifications. And that’s the point in the negotiations where I just start laughing.
My fondest hope is that you will design your own workbench that will make it easy for you to work on the faces, edges and ends of boards and assemblies. It will be the perfect size for your shop, your height and your tools. The vises will easily grip the sort of work you are fond of – big, small, curved, flat.
And it will cost you exactly what you are willing to pay: Almost nothing to several thousand dollars.
You can sign the bench as illegibly as you please, and then it will become your signature workbench.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. I am perfectly willing to enter into negotiations for Schwarz-signature suppositories or toilet-seat covers. I have a lot of particular ideas about those that will blow your mind.
Hey buddy, wanna see some edited proofs of the A.J. Roubo translation? Read on.
Lost Art Press will have a booth at the Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Event next weekend, and yes, we’ll have the first 126 pages of “To Make as Perfectly as Possible: Roubo on Marquetry” for you to look over. And if I can get it printed out in time, I’ll also have a nice color proof of “By Hand & By Eye” by George Walker and Jim Tolpin.
Details and directions to the Popular Woodworking Soviet-era bunker are here.
As always, the Society of American Period Furniture Makers will be there in force doing demonstrations. Even if you own every Lie-Nielsen tool made, these demonstrations are a great reason to go. The schedule of demonstrations is here.
Plus, lots of toolmakers to chat up and an opportunity to test-drive their tools.
We’ll have our full range of books and DVDs for sale at the show, including our newest book “With the Grain” by Christian Becksvoort. Plus my Dutch tool chest and the Milkman’s Workbench. And a partridge in a camphor laurel tree (Got to get Australia out of my head.)
This is always a great show. Free. Hope you can make it.
For those readers who are squeamish or easily offended, stop reading now.
For the rest of you, here is a little nugget of workbench history unearthed by Jeff Burks. It was published in the April 5, 1903, edition of the French illustrated newspaper Le Petit Parisien. Headlined: “Un étrange suicide,” it detailed the odd suicide of the joiner who ended his life with the help of his workbench.
Below is Jeff’s quick translation of the text. You can read it in the original French here.
A Strange Suicide
This is obviously a particular case of madness, that of the strange suicide of this joiner from Sainte-Ménehould, with whom all the press is occupied. Mr. Lemaître, the joiner in question, was sick for a long time; He was, in addition, suffering from paranoia; his rationale seemed very shaken.
Tired of suffering, he resolved to finish his own existence. But he did not use, like so many others, poison, the revolver or the rope; He wanted to be guillotined. He very patiently sharpened a spade, so it would be keen as a razor; he tied it to his joinery workbench, which had been loaded quite heavily with wood; then, using a piece of wood as a brace, he lifted his bench to 60 centimeters in height and spread himself on the ground so that, by removing the piece of wood, the spade would strike his neck.
These tragic preparations had taken a fairly long time. With a chisel, Mr. Lemaître knocked out the brace that was holding the workbench and the spade descended suddenly, working as a guillotine blade. Indeed, the carotid artery was severed and the head weakly attached to the body. The doctor who was called found him dead.
