By the start of the second day everyone’s trains were barreling down the tracks and all we had to do was keep on keeping on. Even as I entered the barn the sounds of sawing, filing, and sanding filled the air.
I had given each of the students one of these DARPA funded, MIT developed tools to work on the ogee tips at either end of the squares. One side was flat and the other was round, and when wrapped with sandpaper the tool was perfect for the task of finishing the shape. The uninitiated might think these were simply a 3/8″ dowel split in half on the bandsaw, but they would be properly ignorant of the national security dark technology pedigree of the tool.
Pretty soon the tips were more-or-less derived.
One procedure that was replicated perhaps a hundred times that day was returning to the abrasive covered granite blocks to bring the squares closer to “true,” a process that would be continued until after the torch work and the “square-ness” was perfected versus the Vesper final word square.
Len was the first to get the brilliant idea of creating a 30-60-90 triangle from the remaining scrap of rectangular brass plate left over from the four nested squares. Using my older version of the Knew Concepts Mark III saw he set to work and soon had the inside design cut out.
Meanwhile Dave, John and Pete got their tips shaped and polished.
Len finished the interior of the piercing of the triangle.
All the while the pile of brass filings and shavings built up at every work station. This continued until the very end and we compiled an impressive pile of scraps and waste filings, I’d estimate somewhere around five pounds worth.
All of this was prelude for the tasks presented after lunch as the shoes for the beams were brazed in place with silver containing solder. Once the mating surfaces were perfected it was time to move to the torch work stations.
The set-up was designed for efficient and safe torch work. I will blog about making a perfect set-up for bench top brazing in the next couple of weeks.
Fortunately I had all the things I needed on hand; fire bricks, kiln shelves to use as brazing platforms, and inexpensive lazy susan bearings so each place could turn. I placed three work stations on top of cement backer board from a home improvement center. For this project it was important to isolate the workpieces from the shelf and the bricks as much as possible to reduce the amount of heat loss from direct contact during the brazing. That is why the work pieces are raised up from the shelf by two small pieces of scrap brass.
After slathering on the flux to the contact edge of the square it was placed on the horizontally situated shoe, in the center. Then the torch was lit and the heat turned up. We were using both propane and MAPP torches, the first was fine and the second faster.
Once the assemblage was heated up and the brass began to get a coppery tone it was time to simply flow the coiled solder into the back side of the joint and let the heat draw it underneath the joint toward the flame.
Dave gave the quenched joint a fierce testing, and was impressed at the strength of it.
Then everyone set to brazing on the bases of their respective squares, then began the cleaning up process.
Last week I hosted a workshop that reflected my peculiarities as a craftsman, a woodworker who loves metal work. Four skilled craftsmen, Dave, John, Len, and Pete joined me for three terrific days of fellowship and making. In this case making a nested set of Roubo-esque solid brass squares a la Plate 308, Figure 2.
The starting point for the three days was a 9″x12″x1/8″ brass plate.
Using my puny table saw and sled with a waste block to reduce the shrapnel, everyone cut a series of descending size squares.
After the table saw cuts, stopped to avoid over-cutting at the intersection of the inner edges, the cuts were finished with deep-throat fret saws and #6 jeweler’s blades which I provided. Pete had his wondrous Knew Concepts coping saw that worked like a charm.
And then the filing began. To protect the inner corner of the squares we ground off one edge of the mill files that everyone brought, starting with the disc sander followed by a diamond stone. This allowed for pretty aggressive work in the corners.
The filing was done on both inside corners of the cut squares and the outside corners of the remaining rectangles in preparation for cutting out the next smaller square, followed by truing on sandpaper over a granite block. (You can see the sublime Vesper square that was our “final word” truing reference for the workshop.)
This scene pretty much sums up the whole day. I was working right alongside the students making another set of the squares. I find this approach works best for the students to see me working on the same exact project, several times they came to look over my shoulder at some point in the day.
Before long everyone had their four rough squares ready for the next step, which was to trace and cut the offset/stepped ogees on each end. The small rectangle of brass remaining from the first four squares could be used later for a petite pair of squares and a couple of 30-60-90 triangles.
These were roughed out on the bandsaw, ready for filing the rest of the way.
A few weeks ago my friend B came for a couple days to test drive the shoulder knife making workshop that will be at The Barn later this summer (August 23/24). We had a great time of visiting while he was working on a natural branch from a fallen tree, cleaning it up an fitting it to his torso for use as a marqueteur’s shoulder knife.
He made great progress and we are anxious for the real event in a couple months. If you would like to come and make a shoulder knife for yourself, just drop me a line.
As for my current activities I have been busying myself getting ready for the students arriving for the Make A Set of Roubo Squaresworkshop later this week.
After the blade-and-beam are prepped and trued with the reference square from Chris Vesper I cut and shaped the shoe being soldered to the outer edge of the beam.
Then I prepped the surfaces themselves by cleaning them with 400 grit abrasive paper, and placed them together with flux in the contact of the joint. The square was held in place simply by placing it between two fire bricks.
A propane torch and some wire solder finished the task.
A little clean-up and the square was ready to get to work. Now do that several more times and you have a nested set.
A couple weeks ago as we were driving up the road to the cabin, (our road cuts through a few pastures along its way, so there are literally times we have to wait for the cattle to move aside) Mrs. Barn remarked that there were clumps of Juncus effusus grass popping up in the fields. I asked around, and it turns out that it is considered a noxious invasive in these parts, spreading in many pastures but inedible by the cattle, or at least not preferred. So I am delighted that there will be dozens of Juncus bundles of new polissoir stock in a couple months, and our local cattleman will be pleased to have me cut it down.
For those who like me have been bitten by the polissoirs bug I will be harvesting then hand-making polissoirs for sale come this fall. They will be identically configured to the Model 296. My broom-maker is not set up to make these, he is set up only for working with the sorghum straw. Juncus is simply too different from sorghum, most especially in that sorghum compresses comparatively little when bound whereas Juncus compresses about 60-70% during the binding.
Some Juncus left over from my last harvest. I will use this to improve my manufacturing technique.
They will be labor intensive and thus pricey, but if you gotta have one, I’m your guy. They will be, quite literally, as close to what Roubo described as I can get without a Time Machine. These are not better nor worse than my other polissoirs, they are just different.
The upper piece is straight off the table saw, and the lower piece has been prepped with a file and abrasive paper.
Once the main body of the square is cut out and the ends shaped it is time to “true” the outside edges. There will be several opportunities to fine tune the squareness as we go along, but the first thing is to get those outer edges true. This provides a couple of functions. First it establishes the square-ness of the tool overall, and prepares the edge for the soldering of the shoe.
The main tools for this process are a clean, new-ish mill file and a granite block festooned with an abrasive belt. The objective is to both stablish one surface (the beam) amenable to soldering and one (the bade) that is perfectly square to the first one. Truing the inside edges comes later.
For this task my reference is one of Chris Vesper’s incomparable squares. I had let him know what I was needing and he prepared one for me with a run-out of only 0.0002″ over the length of the blade. If you need something more square than that, you are not a woodworker. You are a jet engine mechanic.
Every participant will begin with a slab of brass which we will cut on the table saw to yield the preferred number of graduated squares.
Once these have been cut and the corners cleaned up, they will be laid out for the graduated nesting sizes.
Ogees are cut and filed into the ends, and all the detailing is finished in preparation for the silver soldering of the shoe on the outside of the beam.
If this workshop interests you, drop me a line via the Comments or Contact functions of the site. It will be June 20-22, and the tuition + materials is $425. You will leave with a completed set of squares.
Recently I came across the pile of prints I have from a First Edition of Roubo’s L’Art du Menuisier. These were a lot I purchased at auction some time ago, primarily because it contained the core prints that started me down the Roubophile path decades ago. Though not a complete set of the volumes’ prints, they were and are spectacular even though we have access to them only because some barbarian cut up the original volumes just to have the individual prints.
These are hand-printed on hand-made linen paper, and Roubo almost certainly provided some level of direct supervision in their making (beyond doing all of the illustrations and engraving most of the plates himself). There is an almost tangible connection with him as you see the impressions from the engraved plate on the not-flawless paper from more than 250 years ago.
As soon as we can get the formatting complete they will go onto the Store page of this web site and be available for you to acquire for your own workshop wall or wherever you want them to hang.
Here is the inventory I will have for sale. Up through Plate 297 these are images of the actual prints I have, after that they are an image from Chris’ First Edition. I’ll make sure I have the genyoowine pics on the Store page.
224, Many Types of Folding Stools and Their Development
234, The Manner of Determining the Desired Centers for All Kinds of Seats
238, How to Draw a Full-scale Pattern of the Curve of a Seat
245, The Way to Draw Extended Curves Used on Bed Canopies
248, Illustrations of a Turkish-style Bed and its Developments
249, Plan and Elevations of a Campaign Bed with Its Developments
251, Diagrams of a table and a camp bed with their Developments
256, A Continuation of Description of a billiard table and the Instruments that are Necessary to this Game
259, Other Sorts of Game Tables with Their Illustrations
260, Diagrams and Elevations of a Desk With Its Developments
263, Further Developments of Roll-Top Desks and Other Writing Tables
271, Various Sorts of Shelves and the Profiles Appropriate for Armoires
273, Developments of the Buffet Represented in the Previous Plate
274, Plans and Elevations of a Common Commode
282, The Way of Preparing Frames To Receive Veneerwork
283, The Ways to Cut Veneers
297, Elements of Perspective Necessary for Cabinetmakers
298, Method of Creating Perspective Images With Wood Veneers
321, How to Add (Hardware) Fittings for Cabinetry
322, Portable Embroidery Frame with Its Developments
323, Continuing with the Movable Frame and Another Small Frame
The genesis and endpoint of these benches could hardly be more disconnected. The starting point was the 2017 Handworks toolapalooza, where I was to be one of the exhibitors in the giant Festhalle.
My recollection from the preceding iteration of Handworks was that the in-house tables were fairly lightweight folding units more suited for a wedding dinner than as working benches for demonstrations. With that memory in mind, and recognizing my own need for a sturdy foundation for demonstrating polissoirs and wax polishing, I decided to build a dismantle-able workbench that would serve my needs. Two additional data points influenced the proceedings profoundly. The first was my arranging to ride to Iowa with a friend in his SUV, the exact brand and model are lost to me now. Once I got the interior dimensions from him I knew the size of the bench I could build so that it fit inside the vehicle. It was basically 60 inches long by 20 inches wide. Since the legs would be removable the height was negotiable.
Then I learned that I had a prized center aisle location so that my “booth” would be fronting two aisles of foot traffic. Suddenly I needed two workbenches for the space. Oh well, they were certain to be useful after the fact as smallish work stations back in the Barn.
I set about making this pair of petite benches following the procedures I had adapted and incorporated into my own practices having learned the concept from David Barron’s video about his bench. Mine were not so elegant but every bit as functional.
One of the more pleasant aspects of creating the English-version of the Roubo books has been to integrate the images of tools and the descriptive text of their use in the atelier. Roubo had a particular take on a range of measuring devices to be used in the fabrication and assembly of furniture, and I was especially taken with his cabinetmaker’s squares. I have made a variety of them in wood, brass and ivory and find them a delight to use.
In the upcoming workshop on Making A Nested Set of Roubo Squares each student will make a series of stepped squares, in other words each one will be a step up or step down in size from the next. These will be fashioned from solid brass stock with the base/shoe silver soldered to the beam of the square as illustrated by Roubo (his squares were welded steel, I believe. The text is ambiguous if I recall correctly). We will use one of Chris Vesper’s sublime squares as the reference for all the tools made this week. Chris told me that the square I bought from him has an accuracy of no worse than least 0.0005″ per foot of blade length. If that is not good enough for you it is time to check into an asylum.
The class will be June 20-22, and the cost including materials is $425. You can contact me here to get more information.
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