While conducting a plane-tuning seminar on Wednesday with toolmaker extraordinaire Chris Vesper, I got the opportunity to pick through his tool collection. I had no idea he was a tool collector. He is. And he has devoted about one-third of his living space to his collection.
His collection of plane irons (and chipbreakers) is remarkable. I could have spent a week examining them. But the tool in his collection that blew my mind was a Lancashire rebate plane he had sharpened and tuned up.
This is a user-made plane. Words and photos really don’t do it justice.
In essence, it is a cast brass rebate plane with a skewed cutter (snecked!). Instead of having a fence below the cutter (like a moving fillister plane), this plane has a sole that extends above the cutter and cutting surface.
This remarkable feature allows you to do several things:
Cut rabbets of any width by dropping into a gauge line. The more you plane, the more stable the tool becomes. So you can really bear down and remove some meat once you get the tool started.
Easily alter the floor of a rabbet with a little wrist twist. This allows you to clean up rabbets with ease.
The tote encourages you to push the sole into the corner of the rabbet and to remain square.
The escapement/lever cap of the tool throws the shavings onto the bench and not into your hand.
The brass sole gives you a sharp arris that lets you start in a gauge line.
Vesper was kind enough to let me try the plane out on some King William Pine. I used one of his marking gauges to lay out the rabbet. And within a couple strokes I was a rabbeting fool.
I surmise that this is a tough tool to make. It has a skew cutter, an unusual sole and a wild (but very comfortable tote). So I wouldn’t hold my breath in hopes that someone would make it for the modern market.
But if you see one, drop your small children and watermelons and grab the tool. Buy it. You won’t regret it.
Today, Don Williams, John Hoffman and I wrapped up the third of what will probably be five or six photo shoots for Virtuoso: The Toolbox of Henry O. Studley. The difficulties in one of these shoots begin with scheduling – Chris, John and I all have demanding day jobs and kids at home, leaving us with few mutually available days or weekends. And unsurprisingly, “retirement” for Don actually means spending longer and busier days working on the dozens of exciting projects he has lined up for himself. So we have to schedule months ahead of time. Because Chris is in Australia, John stood in as photo assistant.
Whereas our first trip was a scouting survey of the chest and tools and our second a documentary session for specific tools and tool groupings, on this trip I was able to split time between documentary and “creative” photography. Don, Chris and I are preparing for the Studley talk at Handworks this May, where some of the work that is going into the book will be making its public debut. Chris will be speaking about the tools in the chest and their use. For this, thanks to our earlier trips, we already have more than enough photography. In addition to offering a project overview and a history of the chest, Don will be speaking at length about the vises on the Studley bench. So on this trip I spent the better part of a day shooting the bench, its vises, and all their details (there are many!) to make sure Don has what he needs for his portion of the talk.
I will be speaking at Handworks on the photographic process and aesthetic details of the Studly tool chest. And believe me – the hardest challenge of the shoot this weekend was figuring out how to capture in two dimensions just a small fraction of my favorite details. We already have many “documentary” shots, but the kind of strange camera angles and dramatic lighting I allow myself in this more artsy approach accentuates some surfaces and diminishes others, lending visual depth to some of Studley’s aesthetic flourishes which doesn’t necessarily come across in “straight” photography. Partway through this process I mentioned in passing that the Studley chest is a woodworking fractal – you can take any portion of it, look closer, and find even more detail.
Below are some shots from this trip. They are but a small number from our bucket-o-favorites; we’re saving more of our top picks for the talk in May and of course for the book. Last I heard, Handworks is already nearing “standing room only” capacity. This may actually be a good thing – when Handworks attendees become as short of breath as the Virtuoso team becomes every single time we see the Studley toolchest, it’ll help imensely to have someone to lean on. On the other hand, there will be more drool to clean up. Have fun with that, Jameel.
Though I use mostly Western tools in my work, I have a deep respect for the craftsmanship and design of Japanese tools. In fact, before good Western tools became widely available, I had lots of Japanese saws, chisels and knives in my tool chest.
So this weekend I was thrilled to spend hours poring over the vintage Japanese tools offered by Tetsuro Izumitani during a hand tool event at the Melbourne Guild of Fine Woodworking. Izumitani is a former furniture maker who now brings vintage Japanese tools to Australia to sell.
He offers items that I’ve only read about or seen in books – incredible saws and hundreds of Japanese chisels of all shapes. I picked his brain for almost an hour on chisels as he showed me what to look for in a quality Japanese tool, from the file marks to the forge-welded laminations.
But the best part was an item that wasn’t for sale.
Underneath the selling tables was an old Japanese tool chest that Izumitani had brought back from Japan. It was simple, of course, but striking in its form, utility and hardware. He graciously allowed me to measure it and take photographs. (Apologies for the crappy photos. The sun was high and the shadows were driving me nuts.)
After the show I went back to my hotel and made a SketchUp drawing of the chest, which you can download here.
The woodworkers who were with me said it was made from “Oregon pine,” which is most likely another name for Douglas fir. The joinery is all nails and finger joints. It’s beguiling enough that I definitely want to build a few – once I can find a good source for the dome-head nails.
I think that building the chest would be an excellent one- or two-day class that would introduce people to basic saw, plane and chisel skills.
Chris Vesper of Vesper Tools is setting up his booth for the woodworking show being held this weekend at the Melbourne Guild of Fine Woodworking in Australia. He cleans off his immaculate glass display case. He removes two massive shoulder planes he made years ago (no, they are not for sale). And he places three boxes and bottle on the table.
“We have some new products,” he says. “Here, take a look.”
I did. Wow.
Check out the Hoke’s Tool Co. here at the Institute of Backyard Studies.
Earlier this year, Linda Nathan of Australian Wood Review interviewed me for a short piece in the magazine. While she didn’t ask me what was my “drag queen name,” she did ask some interesting questions. Here they are.
What are the core principles you teach students?
I am a reluctant teacher to be sure. I study the craft every day. I work at the craft every day. And I write about it every day. I don’t think that qualifies me to teach it, however, but I am asked to do it, and so here is what I teach:
There are lots of new things to be discovered in woodworking. And the fastest way to learn them is to embrace all the work our ancestors have done for us. Read everything old that you can get your hands on. Try to understand the world they worked in. Understand their tools. Understand their mind-set. If you can do that, you will obtain skills a lot faster than if you tried to hack a path forward on your own.
So I spend a lot of time trying to explain that L. P. Hartley is right: “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”
Plus one more thing from my woodworking hero, John Brown: “By all means read what the experts have to say. Just don’t let it get in the way of your woodworking.”
So respect and understand the past. But be prepared to reject it.
What is more important, the making of a piece or the piece itself?
In my shop, they are equal. If the piece sucks, then the time was wasted. If building the piece destroyed your lungs, health, mental state or the world around you, then maybe you should have just shopped at Ikea.
What is sharp?
Sharp is easy. It’s the zero-radius intersection of two surfaces. Getting there is what makes woodworkers crazy. The truth is that every system works. What I hope woodworkers will do is practice sharpening “monogamy” – stick with a system for at least a couple years so that you can learn its ins and outs. It takes time to fully master oilstones, waterstones, sandpaper, whetstone grinders, the sidewalk outside their house or whatever.
By sticking with one system, you’ll find your edges improve over time. Jumping around from system to system is only going to make you confused and poor.
Who are/were the greatest woodworkers on earth?
I’m a writer, so I always frame that question in terms of people who were able to explain the craft through words and images. Without any doubt, Charles H. Hayward was the giant of the last 100 – perhaps 200 – years. His traditional (somewhat brutal) training, artistic talent and straightforward style make him an influence in woodworking that has yet to be matched.
Yet, I have no idea if his joints were tight and his surfaces fair.
From a purely technical perspective, I admire the Hall brothers, who produced the furniture and millwork for Charles and Henry Greene. Their accomplishments, which I have viewed first-hand – haven’t been equalled in the last 200 years, at least in North America.
Your desert island tool kit would be?
Hey, I wrote a book about that, “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest,” which details the 50-odd tools that allow you to build almost any piece of furniture. That is, if you need a highboy in your treehouse. However, after reading “Robinson Crusoe,” I think all I’d really want for a desert island is something that could crack coconuts and make a bow and arrow.
The best thing you ever made? Why?
That changes every week. Right now, I’m enamored with the campaign chests and Roorkhee chairs I’ve been building for a forthcoming book on campaign and colonial furniture. The stuff is so masculine – combining simple designs with mahogany and beautiful brasses. The stuff makes me want to smoke a cigar, even though I don’t own a pith helmet or a gun.
From an emotional perspective, I’m most proud of two reproduction Shaker pieces I built and donated to the Whitewater Shaker colony, which is in our back yard.
The worst thing?
Easy. It was my first project for the cabinetmaking course I took at the University of Kentucky in 1993. It was a blanket chest. My finger joints were so horrible that I had to screw them together to make them stay fixed. Then I used an awful water-base finish that made the chest look like albino beef jerky.
I hated the thing, but my wife and kids used it all the time. Finally, one day while she was away at work, I handed it over to the garbagemen. Catharsis.
The thing you like most about woodworking?
I love that you can never know it all. Heck, you’ll never even know 10 percent of it. You can study every day for the rest of your life and still be a piker when you die.
So it’s never boring. Every day is an opportunity to learn something new and make something beautiful – what’s not to like about that?
