For the Crucible Dovetail Templates, I think we’ve finally figured out efficient fixtures for workholding, allowing us to cut more than one tool at a time on the CNC mill…and when I say “we” and “us” I mean our genius machinist, Craig Jackson. So, we finally got in a large-ish batch, and they are now available in our store.
The Crucible Dovetail Template marks out dovetail joints – both the tails and the pins – and allows you to easily and accurately lay out the angled and straight parts of the joint. This template marks out the two most common dovetail slopes, 1:6 and 1:8 (9.5° and 7.1° respectively).
This solid steel template is based on a discontinued version from Woodjoy Tools. We contacted the designer, Glenn Livingston, to obtain his blessing for our tool, and he receives a royalty on every one sold.
Unlike the original, the Crucible Dovetail Template is milled from one piece of steel, which ensures a perfect 90° at the corner. (While this might seem wasteful, all the excess is recycled.) The tool measures 5/8″ x 1-11/16″ x 3″. The angled sections of the tool are long enough to mark out tails in 1-3/8″ stock. The straight section of the tool is long enough to reach fully across two 3/4″-thick boards (for those who gang-cut dovetails). There’s also a handy hang hole, just like on the original.
The Crucible Dovetail Template is made in Kentucky.
Two of our new sliding bevels, plus a early design prototype that Josh Cook printed out.
As a chairmaker, a small sliding bevel is essential to my work. The tool guides most of the joinery. It also is a companion when I explore historical chairs to understand how they work.
When we completed work on the Crucible Type 2 Dividers, designer Josh Cook and I wondered if we could adapt that tool’s ingenious tension/locking mechanism for a sliding bevel. The answer is yes. And thanks to tool designer and machinist Craig Jackson, we have a bevel in the works that exceeds any expectations I had for the tool.
The Crucible Sliding Bevel is unlike any other sliding bevel I know of. It locks the blade position so tightly that you have to be quite strong to get the blade to move off your desired setting. And if that’s all it did, I’d be happy. But it does something else, too.
Thanks to Craig, the Crucible sliding bevel has dual controls that allow you to do some helpful things. The screw up by the blade controls the rotation of the blade. It works like the adjustment mechanism on any sliding bevel. You can use it to lock the blade, loosen the blade or set the tool’s tension so the blade rotates but with some effort.
The second screw near the back of the tool is used to adjust how the tool’s blade slides in its slot. You can use these two screws to control separately the rotation and the sliding of the blade. That means you can:
Lock the rotation of the blade and then slide the blade to a different position in the body of the tool.
Lock the blade so it won’t slide, but it will rotate.
I know this might sound complicated, but it’s not. Much like the dual controls on the Tite-Mark, my favorite marking gauge, these become second nature within a couple minutes. Also good to know: You don’t have to use the dual controls. You can simply use the control at the pivot point to work the tool – bringing in the second control only when necessary.
Some of the many tool bodies that we experimented with. The colors in the backgrounds of the engravings is marker or metal dye – just experiments. The No. 11 is because this tool is our 11th tool.
Some Specifications
We are making the bevel in alloy steel with a 4″ blade, which is my favorite size. The blade is 3/32″ thick, so it is impossible to mangle. The body of the bevel is 11/16″ x 3/4″ x 4-3/8″ and weighs a nice 10 ounces. The bevels are being made in Kentucky. The control screws are the same size as the screw on our dividers (so perhaps we’ll make a screwdriver soon).
One of the other nice things about this tool is that it is extremely easy to assemble and disassemble. So we will offer a 7″ blade that fits in this tool’s body in early 2022.
So when will these begin selling? We are waiting on a large steel order. The production fixtures have all been constructed and the programming is complete. Depending on when the steel arrives, there is a chance we will offer the first batch right before Christmas.
And the price? This is the most complex tool we’ve made so far at Crucible, and there is a lot of milling to make the custom parts. The retail will be $200, and I think the tool is worth every penny. (As always, if you’re feeling salty about the price, I encourage you to give small-scale domestic toolmaking a go. I love it, but sheesh – making stuff is hard.)
I don’t know if we have enough margin in these tools to offer them through our foreign and domestic retailers. But a few months of production will give us that answer.
In the coming weeks I’ll make a video that shows how the bevel operates.
— Christopher Schwarz
In the end, we went with an understated logo, which matches the look on our other tools.
If we had a company motto, it would be something like this: “If it were easy to do, then every idiot would do it.”
It’s something we say to ourselves when we’re fighting to find enough cotton cloth for a run of books, or a vendor for hinges for our dividers, or looking for damn Chicago screws without a burr on the underside of the head that has to be machined off and who does that and why am I not able to finish this sentence like a normal person?
And so we look to Craig Jackson for salvation.
Craig is the machinist we use for a lot of parts. He’s like if Matlock and Columbo had a baby. He’s easy to underestimate because of his Kentucky accent, and you do that at your own peril.
Anyway, for the last few weeks, we’ve been wrestling with the tips of our Crucible dividers. They have been getting bent in transit, and we’ve tried lots of strategies to stop the damage. All through the process, Craig kept saying: I can show customers how to heat-treat the tips at home.
But we ignored him. At our peril.
Finally, we came up with a solution with the CNC mill that would strengthen the tips. Craig said it would work, but he also sent this message:
“Heat treating the tips now.”
OK, because we live in a litigious society I have to say: Don’t do this, you fool. It’s a joke. You will hurt yourself badly (but please tell us if the tips increased in Rockwell hardness).
Today I reviewed a big batch of Crucible dividers for quality control problems and sent them on to our warehouse in Indiana. Barring some delivery stupidity (it happens), they should go on sale on Saturday.
These dividers are the most complex tool we make and are difficult to manufacture, especially considering the $110 price tag. If they were $300, we could lavish a couple hours of polishing and tuning on each tool and still come out in the black. But that’s not what we’re about.
Instead, these tools are manufactured – like our books. Yes, there is a lot of handwork, hand-assembly and tuning involved in these tools. But a lot of the skill to make them is in programming the robots and ensuring the processes are foolproof so that even I can assemble them – even though I’m not a skilled machinist. And so far, I’ve assembled quite a few of them.
Because I’m not a fan of hype, I’ve tried to downplay these dividers quite a bit (maybe too much). They aren’t like an infill plane or a blacksmith-made fretsaw. But when I pick up our dividers and use them – as I have every day for the last six months – I am tickled by their presence. Despite the fact that my personal dividers aren’t cosmetically perfect, I carry them around all day like a nice pen. I hold them when I’m thinking or on the stupid phone.
I open them and shut them over and over, and think about the mechanism inside. It looks so simple, but the angles and tolerances have almost broken my head a few times. But still they make me think. And now that we have the mechanism (almost) perfected, we’ve been designing other tools that use it.
(EDIT: When I say “almost” perfect, I mean that we are improving the hinge to make the assembly process easier. Right now we have to do a couple extra steps to get the hinge working perfectly. Nothing leaves our hands that isn’t 100 percent functional and meets our standards for fit and finish.)
Books have authors, but there is always a team of people behind them that makes the thing look good and read well. Tools are the same way. And so I will continue to call out the people who have made this tool really work: Craig Jackson at Machine Time and Josh Cook, a mechanical designer. Thanks guys.
So look for the dividers on Saturday. And if we sell out, know that we now are making hundreds more. Our goal is that everyone who wants one can get one.
The first batch of our new dividers are in the store and ready to ship. They are $110 plus domestic shipping.
These dividers are a top-to-bottom redesign of the tool. Lots has changed. They still work great, but they are built with a different aesthetic. Instead of being polished a near-perfect finish, these dividers are finished minimally off the mill. They are matte gray and there are small tool marks in evidence of how they were made. Our goal was to have the tool resemble what you would get from Stanley (or other top-line makers) in the early 20th century – not a custom tool.
But boy do they work well.
A special thanks here to mechanical designer Josh Cook and machinist/mad scientist Craig Jackson for figuring out how to make these just like we intended, and at an affordable price (for a small-batch U.S. manufacturer).
If we sell out, don’t despair, we’re making a lot more.
