Last week I finished writing my latest article for Popular Woodworking, titled, I think, “Decorative Wire Inlay.” Tomorrow morning I will finish the photography for it, then move on to the next projects in the shop, the list of which is formidable.
I demonstrated the techniques of decorative wire inlay in my presentation to the Washington Woodworker’s Guild last autumn.
This was the final opportunity I had to examine the H.O. Studley ensemble prior to submitting the manuscript. The next time I encounter Studley in person will be after the book is out, and I show up to pack it for shipment to the exhibit. With that in mind I showed up for a full week of final exams, complete with many pages of notes and hints of things to check out. Armed with my measuring tools, lights, camera, notebooks, microscopes, and laptop I set to work.
I had three days to myself with the chest before Chris and Narayan showed up on Wednesday night for the final “formal” photography and video sessions. Highest on my “Things To Do” list was to examine as closely as possible the tools I believed were the product of Studley himself. Sure, I already had thousands of photos in my camera and dozens of pages of notes, but are these ever really enough? Did I overlook anything?
Sure enough, even at this late date after two dozen days of examination prior to this episode, I discovered some jaw dropping stuff.
For example, the head of the mallet is a single piece of sand cast brass. A. Single. Piece. Folks, that is just showing off.
The moldings on the faces and around the collars are integral to the casting, not pieces brazed on. Being from the patternmaking/metalcasting trades myself I know how he did it, and that makes it all the more spectacular.
One of my goals for this final trip and this coming winter was to document tools enough that I could replicate them and have those replicas in the exhibit “The Tool Cabinet and Workbench of Henry O. Studley.” I had already mapped out the strategy, workspace, materials, and a series of blogs on the subject of cutting, brazing, finishing, and assembling this magnificent tool.
I still have that plan, although now all I have to do is change my strategy, workspace, materials, and the concept of the blog.
Henry, Henry, Henry, what am I going to do with you?
Among my recollections and acknowledgements from the recent MJD auction is to thank again Martin Donnelly himself for encouraging me to spread the Studley Exhibit gospel among the attendees. From the auctioneer’s podium at the initiation of activities, he announced the exhibit, pointed me out by name, and encouraged attendees to speak with me about it.
Martin also welcomed the stack of announcement post cards I’d brought with me, and they were right next to the sign-in station the whole weekend. (If you would like some to share and help promote the exhibit, just drop me a line via this web site’s “Contact” function and I will try to get you what you need.)
Like I said in a previous post, there are an awful lot of great folks in the tool world, and Martin Donnelly is certainly royalty in that world.
After having been shut out for the first 4/5ths of the auction I managed to snatch two lots late on Saturday morning. I’ve already mentioned the Lamson machinist’s lathe I got but I also garnered this nice lot of Japanese planes and a really neat bamboo divider. The largest plane had never been used, but the others were well polished, both wood and cutting edge, by multitudes of handlings. I can’t wait to get them all up and running and integrated into my activities in The Barn.
As always you leave events like this with a mixture of aggravation at not getting what you wanted and exhilaration at getting some things you didn’t expect.
A recent visitor to the shop noticed a stack of bricks next to the door.
“What’s with them?” he asked.
Actually I find nice clean bricks to be useful in a multitude of ways in the shop, but perhaps none is more valuable than acting simply as a clean, dense, dead weight when I need to glue something but don’t need any more clamping power than to simply hold something in place while the adhesive dried.
Here is a small irregularly shaped piece of broken iron that I am epoxying back together. There is no real way to clamp it even if I wanted to, so simply aligning it on a sand bag and letting the brick hold it steady and all is well.
Or, when assembling a large-ish panel, they do the trick wonderfully; just hold everything steady for a while.
Bricks also are a source of nearly identical spacers and I use a brick or several at least one time a week. An old friend actually glued felt on the sides of bricks and used them as weights ween on finished surfaces.
A final use that warms me, literally, is to sit a pair of bricks on top of the kerosene heater in the winter. They get hot and radiate heat wonderfully into the space, increasing the output efficiency of the system.
I’m partial to firebricks myself and am still using the pile I bought twenty years ago.
Recently my friend Bill wrote me to ask if I had any thoughts about portable workstations, as he was about to embark on a project requiring him to work in the gallery of a museum.
photo courtesy of Joshua Klein
I was able to help him, and in fact together we built a new bench for him to serve his purposes. I enjoyed it so much I built myself yet another one and am documenting it in great detail here.
Note: Like the “Parquetry Tutorial” this entire series of blog posts will be edited and packaged for download as a complete PDF once I have finished it. WordPress is being obstreperous about the spacing of this post, but it will be corrected in the PDF.
Working as a furniture conservator requires me to frequently work “on-site”, that is, I go to the furniture rather than bring it to my studio. There are many reasons for this; the legal liability of transporting very valuable objects, the cost of renting a truck and hiring someone to help out (I usually work alone), the ability to call it quits at the end of the workday, etc. Regardless of the reason, I often found myself working in unfamiliar, and usually unequipped, surroundings.
Thus, several times a year I would move lock, stock and workbench to a new location. Loading and carting big sawhorses, plywood sheets and cardboard boxes full of supplies to the new site is a truly odious activity. Over the years of scraped knuckles and bashed shins carrying sawhorses and plywood up or down three flights of tight, winding stairs, I vowed to find a better way of setting up a temporary work station. Obtaining the perfect portable workbench was my original goal, but by the time I finished it turned out to be just one of several aspects to my quest.
In the end, that process of finding a “better way” resulted in the design and fabrication of a new workbench to make the task of working in a portable studio more manageable and productive. Through several generations of prototypes over twenty years I have it now refined to the point where I am not sure what more there is to improve.
What did I want?
The only thing I was sure of was that my sawhorse and plywood routine had to go. But what arrangement was to take its place? My first step was to acquire a suitable workbench. Being a lazy fellow, my first actions were to look around at the market to see if any of the available “portable” workbenches were suitable. I discovered only two real options; a small version of the European-style butcher-block-top bench, or a Workmate. I looked at a couple of the former, and own one of the latter.
I found the portable Eurobenches to be too small and unsteady for my use (and quite frankly, too “cheezy”). In addition, they still weighed-in at over 100 lbs., simply too heavy.
I tried my Workmate on a couple of projects, but it wasn’t exactly what I really wanted because it was too top-heavy and the work surface was too small. My search for a manufactured bench to suit my needs wasn’t exhaustive, but nevertheless, in the end I decided to design and build my own portable workbench.
The process of attempting to procure a new portable workbench began with the question of exactly what I wanted out of the bench, regardless of its source. When I decided to make my own, I had only to review those requirements and build to fit them. But back to the original question; what were my specifications for the bench? The answer was simple; 1) the top had to be perfectly flat and at least 2’x4′ (any smaller and I might as well stick to my Workmate), 2) it had to have an integral large capacity vise sturdy enough to take a modest beating, 3) the bench had to be very light, compact, and easy to set up and take down because I didn’t want to have to assemble a kit each time I moved, and 4) it couldn’t cost a fortune in time or money to acquire. It was also important to remember that the bench wouldn’t have to stand up to immense weight or stress, since the pounding necessary during general joinery is rarely required in a conservation project. Any heavy work dictated by a particular treatment would still have to be done at home.
The bench I ended up with was not an example of exquisite handworked joinery, but it did require precise machine woodworking .
In the next episode I will begin to walk you though the step-by-step process of making one for yourself.
One of the highlights of the galoot’s annual calendar is the warehouse-clearing summer sale by Martin Donnelly at his place in Avoca NY. If you have never been, you should go for the experience if nothing else. This auction of 3200 lots containing perhaps 75,000 tools is a place where tubs of tools exchange hands.
This year three lots drew me there. First was an Emmert die-maker’s bench vi$e which I have $ought to purchase for many year$, thi$ one wa$ I believe the large$t of the line (it wa$ approximately the $ize of a bu$hel ba$ket). Next was a Veritas MkII sharpening unit, essentially new in the box, and third was a craftsman-built patternmaker’s chest with tools. More about them tomorrow.
The tools weren’t the most important things, though, that would be the fellowship with tool comrades including my long time pal Mike who dropped out at the last minute because of an inflamed sciatic nerve that was so bad he could not sit in a car to drive it there.
Instead I had the good fortune to sit next to Josh Clark, purveyor of the vintage tools through his wonderful site. There are many people in the tool world, most of them a pleasure to deal with, and certainly Josh fits this description. He is simply aces.
I was also joined by another long time friend Jersey Jon who was making his first foray to this auction. He was nearly overcome with the shock of seeing tent after tent filled with fully loaded tables and hundreds, no, thousands, of tools to rifle through and gawk at.
If you were in the market for anvils and swage blocks, this was the auction for you. I almost wish I was in the market, as the prices turned out to be dirt cheap.
The tale continues tomorrow.
One of the beauties of parquetry, aside from its, well, beauty, is that it is a decidedly simple process requiring only a few tools to get started.
When we gather for the workshop at The Barn in less than a fortnight each student will need only a few tools, none of them exotic or impossible to find or purchase or even make.
These are not presented in any order of importance.
1. Small back saw
The first tool needed is a small dovetail-type saw, used to cut the already fashioned veneer strips into equilateral parallelograms. Almost any kind of small back saw that cuts cleanly will do.
2. 30-60-90 triangle
Since this type of parquetry is based on the 60-120 degree equilateral parallelogram, a 30-60-90 triangle is required. A decent quality plastic one from the big box store works just fine. Or you could do what I do and just pick them up at yards sales for a quarter apiece. That does sorta explain why I have a whole drawer full of them…
3. Bevel Gauge
To both prepare the sawing jig and the layout of the veneer panel, a bevel gauge is needed. In the preparation of the sawing guide it is the fence against which you ride the back saw for establishing the initial kerf. As long as the blade of the gauge is straight and the locking nut locks, you are good to go.
4. Straightedge/ruler
In order to assemble the parquetry pattern properly you have to establish the greater and lesser axes so you know how to assemble the pieces on the kraft paper backing. The straight edge makes this an easy task, especially if it is a ruled bar used in concert with the aforementioned triangle.
5. Utility knife
Many times in the course of a project you need to cut or trim something, so some sort of utility knife is called for. Equally applicable would be a straight ship carving knife.
6. Cutting gauge
If you are including banded inlay into your composition, a cutting gauge (pictured next to the blue utility knife) is useful for establishing the edges of the channels into which the banding will be glued.
7. Veneer saw
For finishing the edges edges of the marquetry panel, or establishing the channels for the banded inlay, and marquetry saw is a godsend. I show three different iterations; on the left is an “English” style, the center one is I believe of German heritage — both of these saws cut on both the push and pull stroke — and the one on the right is Japanese, hence cuts only on the pull stroke. I have tried but do not yet own the new design from Gramercy Tools, but it is superb. Since much of my future work will be parquetry, I will order one.
8. Small bench chisel
To clean out the channels for the banded inlay.
9. Toothing plane or analogue
When the parquetry panel is assembled and applied to the substrate, it will be neither flat nor smooth. A toothing plane will accomplish the former. I have about ten, but if you don’t have one you can make either a low-tech block toother or a squeegee-style toother, both of which employ hack saw blades.
10. Block plane or similar
Often the parallelogram lozenges need just a touch along an edge to make it fit perfectly, and the sharp block plane is just the tool. Later on, you will need the block plane to follow the toother in the finishing.
11. Scraper
The final step of smoothing is done with a scraper. Whether you use a card scraper or a block scraper is immaterial, all that counts is that it be cutting nicely and leaves a perfect surface.
12. Miscellaneous tools
I always like to have a pair of tweezers laying in the vicinity, and a bunch of metal-headed thumb pins, to tack down the banding while the glue set.
That’s pretty much all you need tool-wise to get started. Next time I’ll talk about making and using the sawing and planing jigs.
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If spending a weekend in Virginia’s Little Switzerland making a parquetry panel sounds like fun, drop me a line and sign up for the class. It is a week from Friday-Sunday.
When I began the reconstruction of the Barn I bought a 10-inch contractor’s table saw on Craigslist to use on site, as I did not want then to haul my Jet Unisaw out to work in a pretty wide-open environment. The contractor’s saw was never anything better than a pile of pelosi, but it got me through the worst of the project.
Now that the outfitting of the interior is drawing to a close, and the Unisaw is ensconced in the basement (admittedly sans 220v electrical circuit and outlet right now, but I could wire it up in an hour or so) it was time to put the pile o’junk saw out to pasture and reconsider what saw I wanted upstairs in my main working area. Since I mostly use it for making templates and jigs and other light work, something a lot smaller would suffice.
My friend Tony gave me a motor-less Rockwell combination platform with a 4-inch jointer and a 9-inch table saw on the same base, with a brand new thin kerf blade. I did not need the jointer at this time, so I took it off and remounted the table saw. It had the makings of a fine little machine, everything seemed smooth and tight. It needed a motor and a motor yoke, so I dug out the former (3/4 horse) from my stash of motors and fabricated the latter from a southern yellow pine board and a long bolt.
All hooked up it worked well. My final dilemma had to do with the mobility of the machine. I am not one of these guys who wants the table saw plopped in the middle of the work space. I want to roll it out to use, then put it back when done. The problem is that casters make the thing unsteady and frankly dangerous unless they are high quality -and pretty expensive – double locking locking casters that lock both the wheel rotation and swivel.
While at the hardware store I found the perfect solution for less than 10 dollars. These plastic sliders for underneath sofas are fabulous. In addition to allowing the saw to be pulled out and put away easily on the SYP floor, they are not so slick as to let the saw to slide across the floor as I am using it.
One unexpected benefit is that the sliders have padded tops, so in fact this reduces any vibration and makes the whole setup steady as a rock.
I am not convinced that this is the ultimate resolution, especially with the ridiculous 24″ outrigger bars for the fence. I might just cut those off at 16″ or 14″ and see how I like them.
I have two more options at my disposal. Down in the basement of the barn is a sweet 8-inch Craftsman bench-top table saw almost identical to the one I grew up with, also smooth and tight, and back in my Maryland shed I still have my wonderful 9-inch tilting top Rockwell saw that I absolutely love.
For now I will try this set-up for a good while to see if it fits my needs. It saws effortlessly and true, needing only an outfeed crossbar which I will add soon. If not, I will swap it out for the next option.
Stay tuned
It was more than a week into Spring, and being this Spring the sun rose to reveal an inch of icy snow coating everything the morning we were to visit the incomparable Conner Prairie historic complex, one of the nation’s premier enterprises of historic reenacting and interpretation. Once the slop was scraped from my truck we were on our way; one advantage was that the bitter cold kept the crowd small and we had the place nearly to ourselves.
One of the highlights was the timber frame barn in the Conner homestead. The main cross-beam is a gargantuan oak timber more than 12” x 24” x 40 feet long (the historic carpenters there figure the tree trunk was more than eight feet in girth) and the longitudinal mid-rafter beam was an 8×8 perhaps 70 feet long.
I especially enjoyed our time in the carpenter’s shop, where my wife and I were the only visitors. This allowed for a lengthy conversation with the proprietor about tools, wood, and their lathe. He showed it to me and allowed me a turn.
It is a magnificent shop-built machine with a 300-pound flywheel that can get away from you fast! Since I am a head taller than “Mr. McLure” it was very awkward for me, but I could see one of these fitting into the fabric of The Barn.
In the center of the one end was the impressive work bench, which had been built in the shop in years past. A copy of no specific documented model, it is instead a combination from a historically accurate vocabulary.
It seems to be about two parts Roubo with one part of Moxon and a dash of Nicholson. The six-inch-square oak legs are capped by a four-inch slab top, and the fixed deadman is stout as well. There is no real woodworker in America who would not be delighted to have this beast in their workspace. I know I would.
If you are going near the Indianapolis area, take a peek.
I have never suffered much from the pangs of “buyer’s remorse.” Perhaps it is a result of me being such a studious financial choice-maker, but the truth is that my spending interests are fairly narrow, relieving me from a lot of this risk. There are simply a lot of areas of contemporary life where I make no outlay. No tobacco. Virtually no alcohol. I do not tend towards gastronomic excesses (other than bitter chocolate). Fashion? Right; since I have a lumberjack’s store and a shoe store bookmarked, I spend almost sixty seconds a year buying my wardrobe, and then get only what I want. Luxury goods? Pshaw. Indulgent vacations to exotic places? To me this sounds like something akin to Dante’s Seventh Circle of Hell.
The two areas where I do often purchase extravagantly are books and tools. Addiction therein is too strong a word, probably. Since books always contain useful information, even if they do not possess the snippet I was searching for I recognize their ability to contribute to my breadth and depth of knowledge. Tools? Since they have the inherent character to increase my skills and capacity for production, I have never regretted buying a tool, even if it is surpassed by a tool more capable than the previous one.
Which brings me to the item of this post – a beautiful ebony and boxwood scrub plane I did NOT buy recently. You see, I am more inclined towards “Didn’t Buy It” remorse.
That miniature set of playing cards made from engraved ivory, housed in a carved tortoiseshell box.
The 5 1/2 acres next door.
That ’64 Chevelle SS, all original with 30,000 honest-to-goodness little-old-lady miles.
This ebony plane might be close to that camp. On our way from Kansas City en route to, eventually, Cincinnati recently we stopped at an isolated antique mall, and there it was. A classic horned scrub plane, identical in form to my beech model resting on the shelf. Only this one had a body of a SOLID BLOCK OF GABOON EBONY, with the horn of carved boxwood. At $120 the price was more than fair. But the fact is I did not NEED it, so I passed it by. (But I did buy a NOS Stevie Ray Vaughan-style felt Stetson for $35 in the original box, which I gave back to the antique mall as space was too tight in the truck.)
Over time this ebony plane may take its place alongside the ivory and tortoiseshell playing card ensemble, the ’64 Chevelle, the acreage next door. But in the end I decided that the one I had was perfectly serviceable, and got back into the truck and hit the road.
No, I will not tell you where it was just in case I change my mind.
© 2024 Don Williams
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