This is the only opening in a tool chest class until 2014 I believe.
If you can ditch work that week, contact the school’s director, Bob Van Dyke, via e-mail or phone: bobvandyke@sbcglobal.net or 860-729-3186. During this class we’ll be building the chest out of some outstanding Eastern white pine – Bob is a wiz at finding beautiful stock.
And we will be eating at Frank Pepe’s pizza. A lot. Perhaps until I am sick.
The ability to measure accurately, and thus obtain a definite and positive knowledge, instead of a general and indefinite knowledge of form, relation, distance, and the other phenomena of the existing condition of things in which we are placed, constitutes the difference between scientific knowledge and ordinary knowledge. By some philologists our term man is traced to a derivation from the Aryan root-word ma, to measure. Whether this derivation is true or not, certain it is that the most accurate and comprehensive definition of man, as classified at the head of the organic evolution of intelligence upon this planet, is that of a measurer, and, as symbols of his true domination of the world, a rule and a pair of scales would be much fitter and more expressive of his glory than a crown and a sceptre.
The use of the rule is so absolutely necessary in almost every mechanical or artistic pursuit, that the consumption is, of course, very great, and the manufacture is consequently a very important one. Rules are generally made of boxwood or of ivory, and are mounted and tipped with brass or silver. Boxwood is most extensively used, both on account of its being more plentiful than ivory, and also because it is less liable to expand and contract by variations of the temperature. This last consideration is the most important, since the accuracy of the rule depends upon the constancy with which it marks the fixed standard for lineal measurement. (more…)
I am a nosy teacher. During classes, I always like to poke through my students’ tool collections (with their blessing, of course) to see how they have modified their tools.
This weekend, I stumbled on a honey of a bird-cage awl.
One of the students in a class at Kelly Mehler’s School of Woodworking was an accomplished turner who was new to the world of “flat work.” He had some nice tool handles.
By far the best was the handle he turned for a bird-cage awl kit he’d bought from Czeck Edge. (The kit is $20 and is available here.) He’d turned the handle from she-oak, an Australian timber, and used what he termed “an English profile.”
The awl was perfect. The little peak near the ferrule allowed you to use your fingers to push the tool into the work instead of your palm.
If you are considering making one of these tools for yourself, I highly recommend the above handle pattern.
Veneers used to be cut by the hand-saw; at present, the circular saw is, I believe, universally employed in England for this purpose, with the advantage, not only of cheapness and expedition, but of a smaller waste of wood in sawdust, and for greater accuracy and precision in the thickness of the veneer — a quality essentially requisite to produce good work in the finished article.
In a large veneer-mill which I had an opportunity, through the kindness of one of our members, of visiting, there are five circular saws. Each consists of a strong, stiff, circular frame-work, of the shape of a plano-convex lens, or rather a low hollow cone, tapering gradually to the edge, from which projects a ring of soft steel a few inches broad, pierced with many holes. The saw is a plate, or rather a flat ring, of well-tempered steel, about twelve inches broad, pierced with as many holes as the former ring, and firmly secured to it by means of screws: a band over the axis of the saw communicates motion to it, by connecting it with the first mover, which is a steam engine. (more…)
Oil on canvas by the American painter Francis William Edmonds. This painting, owned by the Chrysler Museum, was first exhibited at the National Academy of Design, New York in 1845.
The scene depicts a joiner leaning back in his chair as he contemplates a decanter of spirits near the window. On the wall is a handbill advertising a Temperance Reform Meeting.
Edmonds was concerned that artisans were especially susceptible to alcoholism. His painting was engraved by Thomas Doney in 1847 to illustrate a sermonizing circular by the Temperance Society.
