I’ve been hanging with my pal MikeM for a couple decades, and at least one of his consuming passions is rubbing off on me — hammers. Many times a Christmas package would arrive from Mike, and on more than one occasion it was a hammer or mallet he had restored or made. One of them, a polished vintage ball peen hammer head with a sublime curly maple handle, is in my personal tool pantheon and gets used every day I am in the barn (pic above). Every day.
Well, as they say, “Bad company trumps good character,” and Mike’s “bad” influence on me over the years in the realm of hammers has taken hold. (Just kidding folks, Mike’s friendship is a life treasure.) I now find making hammers one of the many delightful undertakings in the studio. I’m probably not approaching Mike Territory, but in response to a comment by a recent visitor in the studio, “No, I do not have a ‘hammer problem.’ I have a lot of hammers. Big difference.”
Many years ago I picked up several steel pieces at a flea market. These cylinders, which I naturally thought would make great mallets, were of unknown origin and a peculiar morphology. The flat ends were easily drilled and tapped. My original thought was this would be great for affixing faces to the striking surfaces.
The problem emerged when I tried to drill a hole on the cylinder surface for a handle. It was hard. I mean really, really hard. Too hard for any drilling device I had, up to and including carbide and cobalt drill bits. The rounded surface was so hard I could not even make a dimple with a machine punch and in fact the tip of the punch broke off when I tried. I have never encountered something this hard, and scratch my head about the manner of hardening this surface. It was probably case hardened on a precision rolling mill, but what was its purpose? I have no idea, but for several years its purpose was mainly to hold down the sill of one of the studio windows. Occasionally it would be used as a dolly or backing anvil, but nothing more.
Recently, while in the tool-making “zone,” I decided to give up on the idea of creating a typical mallet configuration from the cylinder and exploit its differing hardness to create a joinery/carving mallet. This began with drilling a hole in the flat face.
To match this I turned a white oak handle from some of my scraps, and drilled that as well. The finish on the handle was Blend 31 wax melted into the surface while turning on the lathe, then burnished with a piece of coarse linen. I like both the look and the feel of the handle, beautifully smooth but with just a hint of tack for gripping.
Inserting a threaded rod dowel with epoxy to assemble the two pieces completed the assembly process. I didn’t clamp the assembly and let the hydraulic vacuum of the thick epoxy hold everything steady while it hardened.
It is now an intriguing addition to my inventory of homemade mallets. I note that of these mallets there is a huge range of shape and weight. The tapered cylinder mallet on the left, made thirty-five years ago, weighs in with a lignum vitae head of a half pound, plus the handle. The tulipwood mallet on the right, made 25+ years ago, weighs in with a head of 3/4 pound. This new one with the steel cylinder has a head weight of two pounds. It just might be a beast. Because of its comparative diminutive size I was thinking of keeping it in my traveling tool kit. With that weight I am reconsidering that decision as it is almost two full pounds more than the lignum vitae one
I will probably wrap the new steel cylinder with leather to diminish any strike damage inflicted onto anything I whack with it.
My pal Long Tom generally prefers woodworking in a stylistically primitive form, even though his craftsmanship is sophisticated and exacting. He just loves “woodland” woodworking, making rakes, walking sticks, stools, etc. He generally keeps a nice inventory of walking sticks in the corner of his shop, and around the time we moved to Shangri-la he gave me a shoulder-height stick he had been saving “for something special.” I am pretty sure it is some gnarly white oak he picked up during one of his walks through his woods.
For the first couple of years, it resided next to the cabin front door and received only occasional use as I traipsed through the woods or up the creek. Later as I recovered from my broken hip it became a constant companion on my treks up and down the hill to the barn. After I recovered fully from that injury the staff was used mostly during inclement weather, helping me to keep steady and upright on the steep driveway.
Then last summer after my knee surgery it became a constant companion once again, to the point where the tip was getting pretty beat up. I love that stick and refused to let go of it. So, I decided to make some modifications that will allow it to serve me until they scatter my ashes up on the mountain.
My initial thought was to fit the tip with a ferrule of brass or copper, but when scrounging through my scrap inventory I noticed some bronze bushings including sleeve bushings. I found one of the perfect size and set to work.
I filed the tip of the stick to fit the inside of the sleeve bushing using an Ariou rasp, working my way slowly around the circumference until it got to the point where I could drive the new bronze ferrule onto it.
Once that was done I chamfered the adjacent wood to make the fit a bit more elegant, and now I do indeed have a faithful walking companion to last me the rest of my days.
All thanks to Long Tom’s friendship and passion for “found wood” woodcraft.
Some woodworking projects are hidden from others, some are fancy or extravagant, but this one was a simple task to guarantee this friend will remain a treasured gift and companion working for me for many more decades.
Somewhere in the misty memories of the Mesozoic era I picked up a blacksmith-made petite curved adz head, probably at a PATINA tailgate tool swap. At the time I fashioned a handle from a broken shovel and sharpened the head to a keen edge.
I used it from time to time but not as much as I thought I would. Unfortunately, the tip was convex, rendering it almost useless for any task I might have. So, I decided to reshape the tip into one that would be more useful to be, one that is at least flat, maybe even a bit concave.
In few minutes on the bench grinder the shape was established, but the ~1/8″ cross section at the new edge was presenting me with the potential of several hours hand grinding and beveling on the inside curve with round slips or sandpaper wrapped around a dowel.
Instead, I had a flash of inspiration and took the top shield off the belt sander in order to access the roller. Miraculously the roller size was absolutely perfect for grinding the new in-cannel bevel. That one thing cut the work time from several hours to several minutes. I like innovations like that!
I reattached the handle to the head and gave it a test drive.
While watching a Bob Rozaieski video the other day my eye was drawn to the mallet he was using. So I sez to myself, “Self, you gotta make yourself something like that!”
Since this list is already getting too long and I still have a large number of items yet to go, I decided to consolidate a half-dozen of my “winter projects (and well beyond)” into one with the identical theme for all the elements — making tools. I have no doubt there will be other additions as time goes on, but these are the ones already on my “to do” list.
Copying (?) A Robert Towell (?) Infill Miter Plane
I do not own many truly “collectible” vintage tools, but this plane is one of them. Perhaps made by London planemaker Robert Towell in the early 1800s, I bought this very-little-used plane at Martin Donnelly’s several years ago from one of the tailgate vendors.
Though the characteristics of the plane are consistent with Towell’s work, he was apparently somewhat cavalier about stamping his planes and this one is unmarked. Had he stamped this one I would have certainly not been able to afford it. So, thanks to his oversight I was able to become the owner of this superb beauty at a 90% discount (!) off an identical plane with his stamp.
In addition to this full-sized Towell miter plane, I have one of Raney Nelson’s early planes, a miniature scale but similar form. I use it for trimming parquetry lozenges, one of a half-dozen planes I employ for that task (is that too many?). Maybe I need to purge that inventory a bit.
Nah, I’ll wait until I finish and fill my new standing tool cabinet. Check back with me then.
In the meantime, I’m thinking I need to make a third plane to complete this set, one halfway in between the sizes.
You (and I) might ask, “Don, do you really need it?”
And my reply would be, “Butt out of my bidnez.”
The project would give me a chance to invite over my new friend, an Amish blacksmith and newcomer to the county (heck, I’m a newcomer and we bought our cabin twenty years ago! I expect my soon-grandson will be a “newcomer” also, but his grandkids maybe not), who is very interested in this kind of tool making. It would also give me the opportunity to approach the local bladesmith/exotic dancer about fashioning a Damascus steel blade.
What, you think Austin TX is the only place with eccentric folks? We might not be San Fransicko but we do have a lot of competing drummers.
A couple years ago when I was making a set of Roubo-esque brass cabinetmakers’ squares I also wound up with a solid 30-60-90 triangle with a shoe on the short base that I have found exceedingly useful in the intervening period, especially for laying out Roubo bench dovetails and parquetry pinwheels.
As I am about to move even more into the work of parquetry I am thinking that I need a full set of 30-60-90 triangles; one with the shoe on the long base and one with the shoe on the hypotenuse.
In fact, I might need some additional ones as I move past my usual vocabulary of parquetry, including one dedicated to the 45-degree angle and another with a 22.5-degree feature, and perhaps even more. I guess I could use my EDC pocket Delve square for the 45, but a full dedicated brass set would really be nice.
This is definitely one series of exercises drawing on the use of a micrometer caliper integrated with those 10th grade trigonometry sine-cosine-tangent tables I figured would NEVER come in handy.
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Japanese Joinery Hammer
Two years ago as I was constructing my Japanese tool box I also made a small Japanese-style (sorta) hammer for doing delicate work like driving small nails and pins and adjusting planes. I recognized at the time the void in the kit of a beefier hammer for doing joinery. It will be nearly identical to the smaller one except for the scale, being made from 1″ square bar stock rather than the 1/2″ bar stock of the previous one.
I’ve always wanted a set of stamps/branding irons for marking my new work with my sign, the barn logo, and the date. I would need three separate items, one to create an embossed presentation of my stylized initials, one for the simpler barn logo, and one would be a set of the letters “M, L, X, V, I” for the year/number stamp. Hey, if you are going to live in the past, go way back.
I know there are companies out there who do that for a reasonable outlay, but I’d like to give it a try myself. Actually, I might need two complete sets — small ones, for small objects, and large ones for larger objects such as Gragg chairs. Since I keep plenty of raw metal bar stock on hand that would suit my needs for that undertaking, I’m going to give it a try.
I hope to start these sometime in the next couple weeks, so there may be some posts about that in a month or so.
Years ago, I bought an infill smoother and got part way through its restoration. This is the year to finish it with fitting a new iron (already in hand from Josh) and a new wedge. My only question at this point is, “How ‘over the top’ do I make the wedge?
Expanding My Selection of Tools from Roubo’s Veneering Tool Kit
During the creation of the English translation of Roubo’s L’Art du Menuisier I made a number of tools for completing some of the accompanying photo essays in the books. This did not satisfy my appetite for his tool kit but merely whetted my appetite. The tools I make from the oeuvre will not be for curiosity-only purposes, these will be tools I expect to use in the shop regularly. They worked in 1760, I expect they will work after the Zombie Apocalypse.
In some cases the tools will be even more of the iterations I already possess (bar clamps) and in other cases they will be new to my tool kit (veneerer’s hammer [as opposed to veneer hammer]), and some completely off the grid (oval cutter).
Now that I have the foundry set up on the first floor, I really have no excuse to not start metal casting. Well, except for the need to refabricate the large entryway, allowing me to roll out the smelting furnace from the interior space.
It might be just fine having a thousand degrees worth of hot indoors with a wooden floor above, but I would rather not test that hypothesis as a starting point. Perhaps if there is a streak of ultra-mild days upcoming (it’s been unseasonably warm thus far this winter) I can get that task done.
To be sure the first project on the slate for the foundry is to move forward with replicating the infill mallet from the Studley Tool Collection. Having that prototype in-hand would be a great excuse to revisit the collection itself, to compare my replica with the original. Obviously, Mister Stewart gets the first unit off the non-assembly line, should he want it.
Right behind the Studley mallet in the queue is my finger plane project, with its thus-far three models underway. I started working on these models 15 years ago if the date stamp on the images is correct. I do not need these tools from a utilitarian perspective, but I do need them from a creative one.
Once I get the foundry humming along as a routine activity there is no telling what I can imagine making.
One of the aspects of having a humungous Fortress of Solitude like the barn, four stories of 40′ x 36′ space, is that there are a multitude of nooks and crannies into which things can be tucked, stuffed, crammed, lost, and re-discovered. I call these instances my own “Clean Up Christmases,” when I come across treasures I had forgotten, or at least misremembered.
Such has been the case recently when prepping the classroom for this coming weekend workshop Historical Wood Finishing. As the first class there in over two years, the space had, shall we say, devolved. That pesky Second Law of Thermodynamics; they tried repealing it but it just didn’t take. It has taken me over two weeks to get it ready for the group on Saturday. The level of “rearrangeritis” (full credit to James “Stumpy Nubs” Hamilton for coining the phrase to describe an all-day travail when moving one thing in his crowded shop) has been monumental, and monumentally rewarding on several fronts. It has also given me time for contemplation about future projects, a topic I will address in numerous upcoming posts.
At the moment I am mostly reveling the rediscovery of two caches that were set aside for some future completion. The first is the two sets of brass Roubo-esque squares fabricated before and during that workshop more than two years ago; all it will take is a day or two with some files and Chris Vesper’s sublime reference square to get them up and running.
A second trove is the pile of French oak scraps from the multiple iterations of the FORP gatherings in southern Georgia. I brought them home in order to turn them into veneers, probably oyster shell style, to use on some as-yet-unknown project. That “unknown” identifier is becoming more “known” as the days go by. Then, much like my shop being the only one in the county with two c. 1680 parquetry flooring panels from the Palais Royale in Paris, my tool cabinet will be the only one with veneers from some c.1775 oak trees from the forests surrounding Versailles.
Who knows what other “Christmas” presents I might find during the never ending effort to impose order on my space? Stay tuned.
At first glance the patternmaker’s tool kit might seem nearly identical to that of the furniture maker. Scribes, squares, dog-leg paring chisels, marking gauges (of which this kit had more than a half-dozen) etc., are identical even though their uses may be a bit different. But the tools are the same.
Even their differences might be chalked up to meaningless peculiarities, but they are not. Here is a brief review of some if those items unique to patternmaking, or uses of typical tools for particular applications.
Shrink Rules/Scales
Especially at the industrial scale resides the inescapable fact that molten metals shrink when they cool and solidify, and the degree of shrinkage depends on the metal alloy in question. For this reason the patternmaker’s kit includes a variety of precision rules that take shrinkage into consideration, and when a new pattern is commissioned the drawings are transferred to a full-scale master made on a new piece of hardwood plywood with the dimensions established by the shrink scale. In other words if the item being designed is to be 12″ long, in true measurement it would be 12 inches plus some fraction, but all of the scale delineations are created proportionally. Thus when we were making pump shell patterns for dredging operations, our main business, sometimes those patterns would measure 6, 8, or 10-feet in diameter (or even bigger). When cast in grey iron the patterns for a 10-foot shell diameter were actually 10′ + 10/8ths inches in diameter (10′- 1-1/4″) since the shrink rate for iron is 1/8″ per foot of dimension. This issue is rarely a fundamental consideration for the scale at which I cast these days. For example when calculating the shrinkage on the Studley mallet bronze shell, with an overall dimension in the neighborhood of two inches given the shrink rate of bronze as 3/16″ per foot, the mallet shell casting would shrink 1/6th of 3/16″ or about 1/32″. Even though I will use a shrink rule to lay out the pattern, I could probably get by without it. Once I get done casting the mallet heads I will be moving on to patterns for the Studley piano maker’s vise, and that will be large enough to use the shrink rule for sure.
Dividers and Trammel Points
Dividers are critical for transferring the shrink-layout dimensions to the pattern itself. This speaks to the importance of the master layout, usually executed on a pristine piece of hardwood plywood, as patternmakers realize and generally live by the ethos that “measuring is the enemy.” If you get the master layout correct it is a regular routine to use dividers and trammel points to transfer and establish all dimensions for constructing the pattern from the layout. In fact once the master layout is completed the only thing I can recall using the shrink rule for was when planing the laminar sections for stack laminated construction that was the norm when I worked in the trade. I think it is pretty much a dead trade, nowadays everything is done with compewders and CNC/3D printing fabrication.
Beveling Gauges
Tapered angles are a huge part of a pattern, particularly in the tapers of edges that are more-or-less perpendicular to the parting line, This bevel is known and “the draft” and to my knowledge always resided around the neighborhood of 2-degrees. Thus a machinist’s combination square set with a protractor head was used almost every day, augmented with a bevel gauge for transferring the draft angle to the table saw and sanding machines (see below). I probably used my protractor head with a 24″ rule more in one week at the pattern shop than in the 40 years since.
Sculpting Tools – Inside (Gouges and Draw Spoons)
Whenever a pattern shape has to be derived by handwork rather than lathe work, the two tool types employed for working the inside curves were gouges, of which there were a dozen or more in the full kit, and draw spoons, usually numbering a half dozen in graduate sizes. The gouges are peculiar in that they have interchangeable handles, shanks, and heads, and usually made from high-chromium steel with very thin walls, and several are in-camber. These are pushing tools, not striking tools.
If you have followed my work on Gragg chairs you have seen frequent use of draw spoons for working the swale of the seat deck. They were used in a similar manner for working for the pattern shop as large, sweeping interior hollows were shaped delicately with the draw spoon.
Sculpting Tools – Outside (Spokeshaves)
Virtually all of the outside sculpting was accomplished with spokeshaves, seemingly undersized by furniture makers but capable of really hogging off material when necessary, or feathering a finished surface. Patternmakers usually owned and used at least a half dozen brass spokeshaves.
Fillet Irons
Another truth about metal casting and shrinkage is that whenever two surfaces meet at a right angle or anything near, the crisp inside corner needs to be filled with a cove molding to soften the transition from one plane to the other, otherwise the casting will crack at that line. In my experience this cove was established by shaped wax sticks, called fillets, which were purchased in bulk as literal cove moldings in wax. I recall many, many hours carefully heating both the polished steel ball serving as the anvil, and the long wax sticks, then pressing the warmed wax molding into the inside corner using the fillet iron of the correct size.
This set of fillet irons even came with a scribed pattern block for making scrapers for each iron.
If it went well there was very little scraping afterwards to achieve a perfect inside corner, other times required some shaping with home made scrapers, one for each size of fillet.
Fillet Cutters
In the days before my time in the foundry fillets were cut from the edges of very thick pieces of leather using fillet cutters to create the roughly triangular fillet. These tools would be pulled across the edge of the leather sheet, usually along a straightedge, resulting in a cove-ish strip of leather to use as the fillet. These leather fillets were applied using glue and brads, and the whole assembly was finished by heavy burnishing with the fillet iron. I never had to use this method but since I have a set of the cutters and live in cattle country, come the zombie apocalypse I will be ready.
Core Box Planes
In the Golden Age of Foundries there was probably no bigger component of the industry than that of making pipes. Think about the civic infrastructure whether on a single building scale or a national scale. It was all made from or connected with pipes or pipe-like elements. Making an outside sand mold to cast pipe-ish shapes is no big deal, all the expertise was applied to the problem of making a sand mold “core” to establish the cylindrical hollow insides. For that process a special “core box” had to be made for each unique casting. Often the shape of the box was achieved with core box planes, of which there were many varieties.
Some looked more akin to a set of hollows-and-rounds,
others were similar to the H&R set but instead of full body planes they had a single body with interchangeable soles and irons,
and undoubtedly the weirdest ones were metal frames with notched outriggers to ride on the outside of the core box and were equipped with ratcheting rotating cutting arms that advanced a few degrees around the compass to complete the half-core. Oh, and these mechanical core box planes looked suspiciously like a Klingon warship. There is yet a fourth version that is essentially a right-angle sole bisected by the iron, but I do not own one of those. NB – metal casting of almost any kind involves core box work regardless of the shape so long as the casting has a hollow configuration.
Power Tools and Accessories
Patternmaking since the mid-1800s has employed a variety of machines for fundamental work. Included were power planers (I just use my lunchbox planer but if I did lots of patterns I would get my Mini-Max 14″ combination machine up and running) that could quickly and precisely dimension stock to the peculiar measurements required especially for stack laminated patterns, tables saws, disc sanders and oscillating spindle sanders to allow working to the middle of a cut-scribed layout line at a precise bevel angle usually 2-degrees.
If you follow my trek down the metalcasting road you will see all of these tools demonstrated over time. Well, maybe not the core box planes as I have little intention of casting large pieces of iron pipe.
Stay tuned.
PS I was wondering if I should make a start-to-finish video on metal casting, but I gotta get the Gragg video done first.
With the decks finally cleared, well mostly cleared at least enough for me to get going down a path whose map has been known for several years, I gathered all the reference materials needed to make the casting patterns for the bronze heads of the HO Studley infill mallet. In addition to the detailed measurements I made when examining the original while assembling the book and the exhibit of the tool cabinet and workbench I had some additional resources. First, as I have mentioned previously, are the hundreds of photographs. Second are the set of silicon rubber molds I was allowed to take from the original. Third, I move forward with the encouragement of the owner of the tool collection itself; I contacted him when the idea for making replicas was first coming into focus. He was enthusiastic about the idea and I believe very appreciative of my consideration in asking his permission. He is indeed a very conscientious historical steward and as I have stated explicitly, he is exactly the right owner and caretaker for this treasure.
In many respects the first two items are combined as I have noted the detailed measurements on the detailed photographs.
But even detailed images and numbers are not the same thing as three-dimensional representations of the real thing. Taking the silicon molds I made several study castings in wax so that I could more faithfully represent the original in my own pattern modeling. Given the dimensional inertness of the molds and the wax castings made from them I can get truly precise measurements and relationships from exact representations of the mallet head itself.
Time to set up a dedicated space, get my tools and go to work.
Examining the original mallet in HO Studley’s tool ensemble and comparing it to the foundry practices I was taught 40+ years ago, several things came clearly(?) into focus. First and foremost, this might be the most exquisite sand casting I’ve ever seen. Certainly it was way better than anything our foundry produced, and I think we had a top-of-the-heap casting quality. On the iron/steel side of things the foundry could produce excellent castings up to a 10,000 pound heat size, and on the brass/bronze side the limit was about 600 pounds. The molders were first rate and experienced, the Pour Masters had been doing it since the Mezozoic Age, but even then our castings were nothing like that evident on Studley’s mallet.
Admittedly we were making industrial machinery where surface finish was generally of little importance, so we might have used a coarser sand than was used for the mallet head. I believe it came directly from the sand with minimal clean-up and it is glorious. (Alternately the surface was worked — cutting off sprues and gates, etc. — and then bead blasted, but the level of crisp detail remaining might argue against that. Since I was not allowed to disassemble the mallet head [this could not have been accomplished without completely destroying the object, a sorta Studleyesque version of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle] much of my thinking at this point is pure conjecture because I cannot make direct observations).
Of my hundreds of images of the mallet, the one shows the casting “seam” most clearly (my foundry’s term for this was “the flashing line”). My main question to myself is, “Do I want to make this exactly as did the original patternmaker and foundryman, or do I make the way most in keeping with my own experience?”
As a patternmaker, and I am currently working up the patterns for casting the infill mallet head myself, I was struck by the orientation of Studley’s mallet casting. My history and inclinations would lead me to make the casting as though the mallet was laying down flat, in other words splitting the pattern and the casting along a vertical plane dividing the casting roughly in half. The Studley mallet casting was turned 90 degrees from the way I would do it, and required the core (the block of sand that occupies the empty internal space) to be inserted into the floor and ceiling of the sand mold rather than laid in the dividing line of the mold.
As I move forward I will blog about all of this in great detail, probably more than you ever wanted to know.
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