Tools For Working Wood

In my last blog entry I mentioned that a plane I was sharpening up had a cracked iron (see above) but I didn't think it would matter. Well it does :(.
The plane (below) is a late 18th very early 19th century mitre plane with a replaced iron, a replaced (incorrect) wedge and a replaced strike button. There is a maker stamp inside on the throat (where it should be in a plane this early) but it is totally obscured, over-stamped, and so far unreadable. It might be Gabriel as the plane kind of looks like a Gabriel but that might be just wishful thinking on my part. The un-laminated iron is unmarked, shows signs of heavy rust that was removed, and as I said has a bad crack on one side that goes from the front to the back of the blade (see above).

I brought it in to the shop so I can do a comparison between bevel up and bevel down planes using average condition tools - not something special but now I have a problem. This iron was never properly sharpened - my guess is a dealer just took an unused iron he bought somewhere, ground a bevel (burned one corner of the iron too) and stuck it in. From a collector point of view - it doesn't matter as once the iron is replaced - it's replaced.

But on flattening the back I discovered that 1 - the steel is really really hard, much harder than it should be, and the iron is warped way past what I am willing to lap out by hand. I mean really warped - twisting the night away warped. Which of course explains the crack. What happened was that the iron was improperly heat treated, it warped and cracked on quenching and the maker just put it aside and never finished it.

I'm not actually annoyed at the dealer but it does put my project back a little while I poke around for another iron. Also as a wedged plane it need a tapered iron - and this replacement is parallel - so I want to fix that too while I am at it. If I really get up a head of steam I will replace the wedge too - but I'm not optimistic that I will get up the necessary steam as the current wedge does work - (but will need to be fitted for the new iron in any case).

I am at this weird point where so much stuff is happening at once that I am just exhausted and having trouble stringing sentences together. Also we belong to a program run by Verizon that helps trains small businesses like us to be alert and work extra hard. Therefore for most of the day (Monday - our busiest) we didn't have any phone service or Internet access. Things are better now - and hopefully I will clear all the unanswered emails tomorrow.

Now I have written drafts of blog entries on woodworking technique - comparing bevel up and bevel down planes, woodworking history, etc. but all of them require actual calmness to finish research, look up dates, photograph the important stuff and - of course sharpen stuff. Found out today that the iron of the mitre plane I am planning to use in a demo has a cracked iron. Not sure if it matters.

Onto a round-up of product news.

The Leather Bound Joiner and Cabinet Maker - the first edition sold out very quickly and due to customer demand Lost Art Press is binding another 26 copies (about half gone to the folks who missed out on the first run) at the same price (165+8.50 delivery)

This run will be different than the first. The book will be bound by hand by the craftsmen at Ohio Books in Cincinnati, but the leather will be a finely grained black cow skin. The title on the cover and spine will be debossed and foiled with a matte silver (Chris experimented with several sheens and colors). And the marbled end sheets are a matching black and gray. If you'd like details of the shop that does the binding, click here.

Each book will be signed by me and Chris Schwarz and lettered A through Z. There aren't enough books to justify a product entry so email or call me at 800-426-4613 or 718-499-5877. (note: the picture is the same one on the lost arts press blog)

Please note that half of this run of black leather books is already reserved.

As always, it's first-come, first serve.

There might be a third run of 26 copies later in the year using a different leather (green or deep red, perhaps). However, there are no guarantees it depends on demand.

Gramercy Brushes - the 2" brush will be back in stock early next week. And look for an announcement on some new brushes.

Sash Saw - The first batch is made and we have shipped a few. In general I have just been too busy to write a store description and that project has been stupidly delayed. Boxes are here and the entire workshop is focusing on getting sash saws and more dovetail and carcass saws out the door.

Saw Vise - The first batch of saw vises had a lot of hand finishing work and for the next run we decided to redo some tooling and things - it's taking a lot longer than we thought but we won't ship until everything is right. Hopefully the first week of April. A first article using the new tooling is due here this week. Fingers crossed.


Look for some really interesting sale announcements next week or so and some more interesting new products in the next few weeks.

thanks,
joel

In part one of this article I wrote about the difficulty of predicting the final color of wood without taking into consideration lots of things including the underlying species, the topcoat, and the lighting.

Figuring out the stain for a project, and in fact the entire finishing process, is something you should be doing before you cut the first piece of wood. It's as an important a part of the blueprint as is how long a stile is.

The basic questions of determining a finishing sequence are: Are you matching some actual existing sample or some theoretical idea in your head or in the head of a client ( a family member, or a paying customer). And if by the time you get all done and deliver the piece, will it match expectation?

Of course, there is a question of if the material, stain, and finish sequence will look the way anyone thought it would when installed in the final location under final lighting.

Wood doesn't just have color - it has grain and texture. If the stained wood is high up, in a dark spot in the room, you might get lucky and it won't be obvious - but it's really hard to get two pieces of wood standing right next to each other to "read" like the same species if they aren't similar in color AND in grain. For example supposing you are making a poplar dresser that has to look right in a room filled with nice oak furniture. There are three ways around this: Don't use poplar, use a wood with a similar grain pattern. Don't just stain the piece, also paint in some grain. Use a stain that conceals the lack of grain in the poplar and looks like some sort of very dark, dirty oak.

The matching problem is important to consider early on in the project. The question to consider is: "Given the final location of this piece, and what I/my family/ my customer want - given my choice of materials and my finishing sequence - will the piece look right when I am all done?". Because - getting back to the oak example - it may make a lot of sense to realize early on that maybe you need to use veneer instead of trying to match some oak with color alone.

Believe nothing you hear. Just because someone swears they want "a nice English walnut look" that doesn't mean you can show up at the end of a job with the piece dyed English walnut. Even if it looks like English walnut. I wonder how many cabinetmakers have proudly delivered something that's perfect except that when the client asked for "English walnut" they really didn't mean English walnut like the kind that grows in England, they meant the really dark brown wood that they remember from an antique store a bunch of years ago. What's also true and can't be blamed on anyone except the finisher is that when you carry that nice stained English Oak finish from your florescence lit workshop upstairs into a sun-lit dining room it will look totally different (probably too red).

These reasons are why the client has to see samples of what you are actually going to produce not just a photo of something similar. Even if you are the client, you need to make that sample, just so you can see for yourself how it will look outside the workshop.

Another situation is when the customer gives you a color swatch. "Match this". Same problem. A small swatch of material will probably look different than a big panel and your idea of a match might be different - You catch my drift - Test your finish. Makes sure the client (you, your family, paying customer, Uncle Fred) signs off on it.

Understand you have no clue. People who do this for a living usually have a pretty good idea what going to happen when finishing but the ones that are successful still do tests, produce samples, and in general don't try to guess at the result.

So here is what you do. If you are ordering stain from us - get a few samples and some mixing dyes so that you can experiment. You don't need to mix up entire packets of dyes, just keep track of the results. Read this article on how to tweak and apply dye stains. Test everything. Write down your entire finishing sequence from final sanding and grain raising to dyeing, to top coats, sanding between coats and etc. This way you can exactly duplicate or precisely make changes to the sequence later on. Then run a test. Use a bit of wood from the project that is representative of the piece, (not some sapwood destined for the fireplace). A piece that's big enough so you can tell what you have. Finish it exactly like you should (it's work) and then stick it on the wall at the location where it will be. If you are doing this for a living let the customer live with the sample for a little while and then sign off on it. "YES this is what I want!!!" This is doubly important if you work in a shop with typical fluorescent lighting. where the color you see in the shop has very little to do with how the piece will look in situ.

Good luck, more people run into our shop in a blind panic because they need to turn something from one color to another at the last minute than people who just ran out of Dominoes.

Note: I forgot in part one to mention that wood usually darkens with time. Cherry is a perfect example - just finished it is kind of pale and flat. A year later it's nice and warm. Lots of cabinet shops dye their cherry darker because even if it will go "cherry color" in a year or so you get tired of customers telling you that the piece is nice but the color is all wrong and not wanting to wait a year.

Now that the new Festool lithion ion drills are out the door Festool is clearing out the C12 Drills in preparation for the L-I version of the C12.It's a great chance to pick up a Festool drill with its offset, right angle, Centrotec and regular key chucks at 15% off!! ($301.75 for the basic kit and 399.50 for the full kit!) As far as we know the only difference between new and old will be the lithium ion batteries and unless you use a drill daily IMHO the longer battery life of the L-I drills isn't really important. We have used our C12 for years with no decline in battery life - we of course don't use it as much as a pro-carpenter but I certainly don't have an incentive to upgrade. The C12 batteries recharge in about a 1/2 hour, last a long time, and the closed handle drill is compact and protects the hand in use. Supplies are Limited!!!

In another clearance sale Festool has introduced the new "Multi-Jetstream" for all their 150mm/6" sanders which improves air-flow and dust-collection by the addition of another set of holes. This just applies to the 6" models. The new and old pads, sanders, and sanding discs are both backwards and forwards compatible. Over the past months we have now switched to the new parts but we still have a lot of the old sandpaper in stock. All the old stuff is now available at 10% off. If you own the older style sander this is a great time to pick up paper, and if you have the new sander or pads - the old paper will work just fine. With the old sanders when your pad wears out you can replace it with a new pad and get the full benefit of even better dust collection. Why Festool needed to improve their already great dust collection I don't know but they did and as a dealer we just go with the (air) flow.

The English mitre plane has been with us since the latter quarter of the 18th century. Older surviving mitre planes do exist but I only know of one English model, all the others are from the Continent. It is generally thought that before C. 1780 or so the extant metal planes were essentially one off designs or very expensive limited production. This all makes a lot of sense in the larger context of the industrial revolution and the English economy. We have hard evidence in the account books of Christopher Gabriel that in 1791 Gabriel was manufacturing mitre planes as part of his regular inventory. When the Gabriel mitre planes do arrive, the planes along with mitre planes by other makers, appear fully formed. You don't see the gestation period that you do with panel planes or smooth planes, both which took a 20 year period or so to mature in the 1830's and onward. However, and this is what I find puzzling - why was it called a mitre plane in the first place?

The purpose of these blog entries is to put forth a theory that tries to put all these questions in perspective and pose answers. What is missing is the smoking gun. I am hopeful that on reading this someone can provide that.


Several things bother me:
Shooting mitres and crosscuts in general are one of the most common operations in woodworking - yet mitre planes are pretty rare and the late 18th century and early to mid 19th century literature makes almost no reference to them. In Moxon's Mechanick Exercises (1683) Moxon carefully and completely describes the use of a strike block plane to shoot mitres. A strike block plane is a high angle wooden plane. Moxon's instructions for using a strike block plane to shoot mitres bothers me a lot. First of all it is the first reference of the word "mitre" in the context of woodworking, secondly if the mitre plane was an important tool for shooting mitres he would have mentioned it. The reason he would have mentioned it is that he knew all there was to know about metal planes. The illustrations for Mechanick Exercises were copied directly from a slightly earlier book Andre Felibien's Des Principles de l'Architecture and if metal planes were used in joinery Moxon would have mentioned it. We can make this assumption because Felibien mentions and illustrated a "mitre plane" - only he doesn't call it that. This is the first contemporary illustration (shown above) of a mitre plane only it's in the section on marquetry and is described as "a plane covered in iron". While it does look that the metal base might be screwed or riveted to a wood core in essence here we have all the elements of the mitre plane intact and ready for work.

There is no mention of metal planes in Felibien's joinery section but both he and Moxon would have known that a high angle bench plane works wonderfully for end grain. For normal work a heavy metal mitre plane isn't nearly as handy or as effective as a regular bench plane. However to level the surface of the exotic woods and materials used in marquetry in preparation for gluing or for final finishing you cannot beat a metal plane. What other type of plane would consistently be able to plane hard brittle materials with crazy grain such as fancy burls and ivory that are used in marquetry? The soles of regular wooden planes would be torn up very quickly by these materials. The fine mouth of a mitre plane would also do wonders on exotic woods to prevent tearout.

The next mention of a mitre plane is in the Diderot Encyclopedia (1751 - 1772). The encyclopedia is a compendium of all the knowledge the authors could find at the time and the metal mitre plane is illustrated and described here too. Again the description is in the marquetry section of the encyclopedia and omitted from the cabinetmaking and joinery sections. The description as a plane covered in iron is similar to Felibien.

Shortly after the Diderot encylcopida was published Andre Roubo wrote L'Art du Menuisier ( The Art of the Carpenter) (1769 - 1774 ) which is 5 volume opus on all sorts of woodwork. Here for the first time we have an actual cabinetmaker writing and metal soled mitre planes are given a page of illustrations. But again this is in the marquetry section. (Please click on the illustration to see the entire page).

I am not aware of any surviving mitre planes that match the descriptions in these books. Metal planes of the period that have survived include mitre planes but they typically are more decorative than are illustrated in the books.

Finally a mere 20 years after Roubo metal planes show up in the inventory of Christopher Gabriel, a London planemaker. Lots of things can happen in 20 years.
In part two we will look at the early English metal plane makers and see how the marquetry plane became a mitre plane.

(note - due to a computer error I erased the original published draft of this article and have had to reconstruct it. Hopefully I haven't left anything out.)

In general I don't like apologizing for bad tools. Since we pay return postage on everything if there is a problem with a tool that's not an anomaly we either get the manufacturer to fix it or we discontinue the tools.

So long Nicholson 49 and 50 Rasps!!!! you had a great run, we loved selling you, but since you moved production to Brazil I have had to apologize too many times.

In the background of the pictures is the edge of my own personal Nicholson 49 pattern-maker's rasp that I used for years. Since I learned about hand cut rasps such as the Aurious and introduced out own Gramercy Rasps I haven't liked the 49 and 50 as much but at half the price they reflected a really great value and they work great on their own terms. I used them for 20 years before knowing of any better.

With the move to Brazil quality dropped and we started getting them back. Look at the new Brazilian production in the foreground: The teeth are off center in the body, which means that teeth are partially punched unevenly on the edge of the rasp - which will scratch unpredictably, the teeth are crowded together and they will clog more easily, and the toothing on the edge is much larger than before and forms an unwelcome ridge.

As of now we are discontinuing these rasps until Nicholson, actually the Cooper Tools which owns them fixes the problem. This leaves us with a gap in the mid-priced rasp area which we will try to fill but for now I would rather not sell them then have the hassle of defects and returns.

PS - this isn't a single anomaly - we are returning boxes of these rasps.
PPS - A few years ago we used to sell Nicholson saw files - when quality on that dropped we switched to what we now stock - Grobet.

In my day if you want to impress a client you give them a pen, or a mug, or if they are really special a hat or t-shirt. In 1900 the t-shirt hadn't been invented so freebie gifts I guess were a little harder to come by. Now I don't know much about promotional tools but a few years ago I acquired a 12" 4 fold ivory rule. The rule was made by Rabone (the great English rule making company) - it's a no. 2435 and pretty expensive at 26/0 per dozen (wholesale) but it also has "C. W. S. Cabinet Works" "Pelaw" on it which was the shop that gave them out.


What I don't get is what kind of customer merited a rule this nice. It's cute, it's ivory, it folds down to 3". And the markings are all hand scribed on the ivory.



I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest it was given to some decorator or architect. It's too good to be used regularly in a shop but perfect for an architect to carry in their pocket all the time for occasional use like checking if the molding was the same width as specified in a plan.


The other two advertising rules in the picture were much less expensive, a lot more common and also pretty useful. I don't know the actual maker but the elegant wooden one was a rope maker's giveaway and reads in Inches only on the front and metric on the reverse. On the back of the smaller brass caliper (which reads in both inches and metric) is the name "Small & Parkes Ltd" of Manchester. This latter one is real handy even today.

One of my favorite books growing up was "Tom Brown's Schooldays" written by Thomas Hughes in 1857 it is a fictional account of a boy going to Rugby, a boarding school in England, in the 1830's. It's a great entertaining read and has been in print since publication. I mention it primarily because it takes place when Thomas Arnold was the headmaster at the school and introduced a revolution in teaching that we feel today. Before Arnold elite schools taught mostly reading, Latin, rhetoric, and other lofty subjects of practical use to nobody. An academic education was a finishing cultural touch and had little to do with a profession or anything practical except the clergy. Arnold introduced practical subjects like modern history, math, and science and his influence began the shift to formal education in all subjects including teaching crafts and woodworking in schools.

Having children, especially boys, study woodworking in school - even if they were not planning to become joiners or cabinetmakers began in the 1860's, reached it's peak around 1900, and slowly disappeared from schools in the last 30 years or so. Probably the best implementation of this type of practical, craft teaching came with the Sloyd system of teaching which started in Finland in 1865 and spread worldwide to this day.

What is important from a woodworking standpoint is how learning woodworking switches from a few basic techniques that you could learn on the job to a myriad of complicated formula that needed to be emulated in a class. The goal of an apprenticeship as described in the Joiner and Cabinet Maker was to take a kid who demonstrated some aptitude or interest in working with his hands and make him a pro over the period of a few years. The goal of the academic approach was (and is) make it possible to train any kid (or adult) in the class no matter how ham-handed and at the end of a fairly short period of time have some benchmark for measuring progress. The benchmark might be a simple project or a test in various techniques.

I've been reading "Our Workshop: being a Practical Guide To The Amateur in The Art of Carpentry and Joinery." by Temple Thorold. Published in 1866 it's one of the first books about teaching woodworking using a typical classroom approach. I kind of stopped reading it by page 32 when he gave really erroneous information on how to use a marking gauge. "The point should not project more than one thirty-second part of an inch , or it will make a deep unsightly mark." (If you can't control the pressure on the gauge no matter how long a pin the gauge has you really don't know what you are doing and you shouldn't be writing about it - click here for the normal way of using a gauge. )

In any case what struck me about this book, and just about every succeeding book for schools or amateurs on the subject of woodworking is how removed the instruction is from actual shop practice.

"The Joiner and Cabinet Maker" (1839) tries to teach by describing what went on in a real joinery shop. While some have taken issues with some of the details here and there in the book it's pretty obvious that one skill builds on another, and there is no attempt to teach theory. There are no lessons in the book per-se, just joinery jobs of increasing complexity. Practice makes perfect. Tools are purchased carefully and only as needed. In "Our Workshop" we first get a huge list of tools one must have, followed by detailed examinations of operations from a theoretic standpoint. Dovetailing is described near the end of the book, and it's implied that instead of being a standard quick joint of the professional apprentice, it's something tricky and needs careful attention. In the J & C Thomas does his dovetailing pretty easily after learning to saw straight and lay out things accurately. Here we get a very modern approach that might be great for teaching a class, but pretty useless if you need to earn your living at a bench.

I hinted earlier on the reason for this change in attitude. Books written for amateurs or as teaching guides need to impress people with the breath of subjects covered - Giving exhaustive detail on a technique is a way of showing the writer's or instructors depth of knowledge. A teacher isn't supposed to just say - "it's easy, you just need to practice". The technique needs to be dissected. The second reason for the change is that unlike a joiner who needed to show they could earn a living the goal in the classroom was instruction that guaranteed success at the expense of fluency. The student went away happy if he could sharpen a chisel or cut a joint. It didn't really matter how long it took or even the cost of the tools, since there was no economic balance. I do think that now we get carried away with the minutiae of a process, not the practice that builds dexterity and memory into our muscles. There is an argument that older people don't have the time to spend learning by repetition, and modern techniques make it easier to achieve success. That is certainly true, but I also think we sell ourselves short. It may take years to be a master craftsman but most basic skills can be learn pretty fluently with just a modicum of practice.

Our Workshop: being a Practical Guide To The Amateur in The Art of Carpentry and Joinery." is currently being reprinted by the Toolemera Press. I cannot recommend it as a good course in woodworking but I can recommend it as an important window into how woodworking was taught to amateurs in the 19th century. The author was a well known woodworking writer. Of course if the style of writing appeals you can still learn from it and if I didn't already own a copy I would be ordering one now.

Months after we first showed our new 14" sash saw at Woodworking in America last October I can finally say we have the first batch of saws done. Above is a bunch being laid out for final testing and inspection. Testing these saws is pretty involved because these saws are filed so that you can use them either for ripping or crosscutting. So we have to test them in both configurations. It takes time.

The reason for this fairly complicated filing (5° negative rake, 7° fleam) is because we learned for several historical sources including the Joiner and Cabinet Maker that a single sash saw was the general go-to all-purpose joinery saw of the early 19th century. You might think that this type of filing would be pretty harsh in use but like most hand filed saws (and the saw is of course hammer set and hand filed) the action is pretty sweet, especially as the saw breaks in.

I'll have more details and more background information and some sample pictures of the quality of the cut when we officially announce the saw - probably next week (I need to take a decent picture of the saw first). At the same time we will add it to the website for ordering. I can tell you that the introductory price will be $219.95 for the first month with the regular price after that being $239.95.

For those of you who placed an order at Woodworking in America we will of course charge you the introductory price.

ps - the coding on the brown paper in the picture is the way we keep track of which tests have been on each blade.

Before I was an iron monger I did a lot of things including fine art photography. I had a few exhibits but I never sold enough to make a living at it. It was an important creative outlet for me. Most of the photography I do for TFWW is commercial and directed to show a specific product or technique. So please indulge me for a few seconds. Here is a picture I took purely because I liked the image.
If you like this image please let me know and I will post some more.

After a mention in Chris Schwarz's blog we had a big rush on 18tpi coping saw blades. So we ran out. We buy them in bulk and repackage them in dozens. It's a lot of mundane work. With just about everyone working flat out on other equally important stuff I realized that if I didn't repackage the blades myself they would not get done for days. So whenever I feel I don't have the patience or will to start a new task I pack a bunch of blades. It's easy work but the blades are entangled in the bulk packages and your hands get scratched up. After a few hundred dozen you get pretty good at counting to twelve.

The best part of doing this is that it gives me a chance to think and I realized this is what our ancestors meant about idle hands. Not every job we do is hard, skilled, or even interesting. But lots of little jobs need patience and reliability. The time to do them is when you need a break. Once I am in the flow it's pretty relaxing to do it. Apparently there is even some scientific research that suggests that repetitive mundane tasks like this lower you levels of stress. There is also a great sense of accomplishment because it's a task that nobody really has the time for or really loves to do. But it must be done if we are going to fill orders. And it's certainly more useful than pretending I am working by surfing the Internet.

How does this pertain to woodworking? Take a look at the annoying tasks you do. Like putting things away in the shop. Cleaning. Try to look at them not as a chore at the end of the day, but a useful, relaxing diversion while you collect your thoughts for the next good job. And what's really key is that as long as you don't seethe at the annoyance of doing the task while you do it, it really will be a "useful, relaxing diversion while you collect your thoughts for the next good job".

Up until a couple of weeks ago, when Chris got his copy, I was possibly the only person on the planet with a leather bound version of The Joiner and Cabinet Maker. My copy is from 1845 or so and has seen better days. The original book was cost a shilling in a cheap paper binding, and Charles Knight, the publisher, really believed in inexpensive books that were affordable to anyone. While that's an admirable goal - which I certainly agree with, you can't beat a leather binding for "hand feel" and a sense of history.

We took some extra copies that were not bound at the printer and had a custom binder bind 26 copies, one for each letter of the alphabet, in leather, signed by both Chris Schwarz and myself, with a sleeve glued in the back for the included DVD. I should mention that after signing all 26 copies I got a chance to compare my signature to Chris's. As you can see in the photo Chris signs his name with sure, angular lines, as befitting an accomplished writer and editor. My signature is rounder, more juvenile, you can sort of picture me signing carefully with intense focus and my tongue handing out - which is not far from the truth. And of course while Chris's handwriting demonstrates fluency, my handwriting telegraphs surprise that I seem to know ALL the letters. But fortunately Chris assigned the letter sequence to the books so my fluency isn't being tested.

You can read a lot more about the edition here on the Lost Arts Press website, and about the bindery here.

As it happens when Chris first announced that these books would be available we got enough inquiries so we are largely sold out of this edition. I regret I didn't post this blog entry earlier but with the holidays I have been both swamped and exhausted, and have neglected the blog for a few weeks. Also I didn't have the books until yesterday. We probably should have used a language with a larger alphabet but as of now we are basically sold out. Send me an email if you are interested and I will look around. Regular, cloth bound editions are of course available here and as always I am happy to inscribe your copy if you wish.


-joel

I don't know. Really, I don't. I get asked this question at least three times a week and for someone like me who pretends to know everything it's really frustrating to tell people that I don't have a clue. I don't. Here's why: How the color of the dye is perceived works is a function of the color of the dye, the strength (dilution) of the dye, the underlying color of the wood underneath it, the texture of the wood and how the sheen of the wood reflects light, the color of the topcoat over the dye, the lighting on the piece, and the color of the piece next to the dyed piece. I might have left out a few criteria but that's the gist of it. Look at the following examples:

All the examples use the same walnut dye at the same strength. Of course you can vary the strength of the dye and the intensity of the color just by diluting the dye.

Same dye, same strength, on two different types of bare wood (poplar and pine)

Same dye, Same strength, on poplar. Top coated with blond shellac on the left, no topcoat on the right.

The previous samples were photographed under natural sunlight near a window. This picture is of the same wood but under regular fluorescent lighting.

Here is a walnut stain sample surrounded by a dark or light border.

Do you see what I mean.

In part two (which may or may not be the next blog entry) I'll talk about things I discuss when in spite of my ignorance I try to help people get the color dye they want. Note: Due to the way I like to photograph things the pictures are redder than they are in real life.

I found out today that Roy Arnold passed away. I never met the gentleman - the only conversation I ever had with him was about credit card information for a book I ordered from him - and yet I feel his loss.
Roy Arnold was one of the most important pioneers in tool collecting and an early important dealer in tools. But the most important thing he did was encourage scholarship in the world of tools. He published a huge number of very important, seminal works on tool collecting. He published the works of Bill Goodman - ("British Planemakers From 1700," to name one title) He published the works of Mark and Jane Rees ("Tools: a Guide for Collectors" - such an important book, and one of many ). He reprinted numerous catalogs that today in our shop we refer to constantly in our quest to reintroduce tools from the early 19th century.

Above is the cover of Catalog #1 from 1974. Roy Arnold and his partner Phillip Walker didn't just want to sell tools, they also wanted to educate people as to why the tools they sold were interesting and historically important. Their focus wasn't buying used tools on the cheap to help mend the shed, but rather tools as historical markers of our industrial societies and as masterpieces of art and craft. Below is a scan of a page of the catalog (click on the image to enlarge it). You can see how much effort has gone into explaining the significance of each tool. When I was starting out, I learned tons from reading these pages. Since then, prices have gone up a lot, but I think Roy would be very proud that his encouragement of more research has made many of his descriptions obsolete, as new findings have taught us lots more.

Our condolences go out to Roy Arnold's family, and I hope that they gain comfort in the knowledge that the work that he started - learning and educating others about tools - continues forward.

There is a big market in marking tools and no consensus what they should look like. Pointy, straight, single beveled, double beveled. thin, thick, it's a jungle out there. However, except for one not so common case the geometry of the layout tool really isn't important as long as you use the tool correctly. The correct way to do it is to bring the straightedge or square to the layout tool not the other way around. In this example I am using an awl. It has a thick body that comes to a point. Look how I am doing this. First I am putting the awl on the spot I want my line. Then I am sliding the square until it contacts the awl.

Then I scribe the line I need.

The point is that by sliding the square to meet the awl it doesn't really matter how thick or thin the layout tool is. As long the square touches the awl I will get a perfect line in the correct place. If I did the reverse, which is a common mistake, and placed the square where my mark was and THEN put down my awl, I would have to worry how much space I needed for the thickness of the awl. And if instead I used a single bevel layout knife with the flat bearing on the square I would easily, very easily, cut into and damage my square. Even tilting an awl so its point is right next to the square is a good way do damage a square and isn't as reliable a method as just moving the square to the awl. Like any technique or habit it just takes paying attention a few times to it and then the skill will become automatic. The special case is tracing the pins or tales of a dovetail to the opposing piece or some other tracing operation. In that case you need to tilt the tool so that it really scribes an outline, not a little bigger. For most dovetails, this isn't a problem but for really thin pins you just don't have clearance to tilt an awl. In that case a very thin, single bevel layout knife is your best bet. Even if you do accidentally cut into the piece you are scribing from, it's a one shot and not like permanently damaging a square which you use all the time.

With the holiday rush over and done I want to thank everyone for their support and wish all of you a happy and healthy holiday season and new year. It's been a tough year for lots and lots of people and I hope next year is better all around.

Last Tuesday FedEx didn't pick up on time and Chrystil went downstairs to babysit our shipments because the elevator closes at 5:00. At 5:40 I took over and spent the next 40 minutes on the phone wondering where the truck was in a standing in a dark freezing lobby. It was very boring and very cold. A nice young lady who works in the neighborhood stopped by and offered me a French polish, which I declined, and I amused myself instead by taking the picture you see above. It's the scene in front of our building, looking towards the harbor, a lonely desolate night. The scene does offer hope, for deep in the distance, on this icy but clear evening, you can see the Statue of Liberty lit up, with her torch held high, welcoming all to America and its promises of the future. I took the photo with my phone so it's kind of lo-res but here is a blow up the of part were you can see the statue in the distance. .

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and a Happy and Healthy New Year To All.
Thanks again,
Joel and everyone at Tools for Working Wood.

ps - I'll be back to real woodworking topics on my next blog post!

First of all I got some interesting comments from Peter Follansbee on early mentions of shellac which suggest I'm all wrong. I got my dates screwed up. Here's the gist of what he says:

"Have you seen John Stalker & George Parker, A Treatise of Japanning and Varnishing (London & Oxford, 1688)

I don't have a copy, but have read excerpts; the best treatment is in Adam Bowett, English Furniture 1660-1714 From Charles II to Queen Anne (Antique Collectors Club, 2002).

I think it's the earliest descriptions of the use of various lac-based finishes, seed, shell and sandarac. Evelyn's Sylva (1664?) might mention shellac; but no description of its use...

I don't use these finishes; they haven't been identified in any studies/analysis of the more pedestrian furniture of early New England. This stuff is really high-brow in English work...

Bowett's book is excellent, great treatment of the style & construction of the period, but not the simple oak stuff..."

In other shellac news we have had tremendous problems first with shellac flakes caking up and then in some cases not dissolving. So we took all our shellac out of inventory until we could figure out what is wrong. Many phone calls and some practical testing later here is what we came up with:

When you heat up shellac and add humidity it starts polymerizing. What that means practically is that it won't dissolve.

Our shellac is shipped from overseas (India and Germany) in refrigerated containers. We repackage the shellac into plastic canisters which should have been air tight but turned out not to be. Then we store it in our largely unheated and uncooled warehouse.

During the fall, winter, and spring everything is fine. The screw top canisters while not air tight are fairly tight, and the temperature is ok. Then came last summer. It was really hot and the shellac fused in the bottles.

We tested the fused stuff and it dissolves no problem. But I think the longer it sits there the worse it can get. So we started getting complaints. Some from people who just didn't like the fused shellac and others who could not make it dissolve. At the time we didn't know why but since we do now we are taking the following steps:
Tossing all the shellac we have that is old / fused - unless we can test the canister and see that it's ok.
Starting again from fresh stuff.
Go back to sealed plastic bags until we can find a canister that's really air tight.
Get a refrigerator or something for summer shellac storage.

The garnet shellac we have is very very fresh. We have fresh amber that needs packing and we will get new blond and super blond in early January.

We are also tweaking our packing process to lower costs and to keep the increased storage costs from causing us to have to raise pricing - which we don't foresee now.

By the way the German shellac we stock has such large flakes that breaking up the flakes before adding alcohol speeds the dissolving process.

Click here for inventory information and to order.

This blog entry has some hopefully interesting information on early finishes but after that an apology for some shellac issues we have been having.
First the interesting stuff:
The first mention of shellac as a finish in English is from 1805 (it was used earlier but just not written about in English). Shellac is mostly a late 18th and later finish. Before that furniture was finished with either an oil finish, colored paint, Beeswax and turpentine, or a resin based spirit (alcohol) finish. When shellac was introduced it replaced the resin based finishes quickly and they fade from usage.
What this practically means is that if you are making 18th century furniture reproductions a shellac based or French polish isn't necessarily historically accurate. I'm not an expert in finishes so my dates might be a little suspect but I'm in the ballpark.
Anyway, the retailer in me thought about introducing a line of pre-shellac resin based finishes. Some of the early finishes are a mix of resins, some have oil in them. there are lots of formula. But I figured that a resin based finish you could mix yourself would be of real interest to anyone doing period furniture.

In the book: "The First American Furniture Finisher's Manual - a Reprint of "The Cabinet-Maker's Guide" of 1827 (based on an earlier edition of 1809) a whole bunch of these pre-shellac finishes (along with some shellac finishes) are mentioned along with the idea of using a fine pumice block for rubbing wood smoother. So I got myself a fine pumice block (not the coarse kind used for cleaning) and tried it out. Worked great. Then I went to Kremer Pigments and got the ingredients for some resin based spirit finishes. I just copied a formula from the book and did a spreadsheet of conversions. The original formula is for a couple of gallons of varnish but I reduced the quantities to something manageable for a test. So there is the formula for making "the best hard white varnish":

Alcohol	0.2 qt.
Gum Sandrach	2.5 oz.
Gum Mastic	0.5 oz.
Gum Anime	0.1 oz.

The finish dissolved nicely, we put in on, rubbed it out, let it dry, added a few more coats, rubbed some more and got a really nice finish.

EXCEPT it sucked big time compared to shellac!!! If you try this you will instantly see why the resin finishes became obsolete. The resin never gets really hard. The finish looks great but can easily take a fingernail mark of worse. Unlike shellac which give a great hard coat, resin is just too darn fragile and even if it is historically accurate, it's just not a great finish. It's like a soft plastic film. Also the ingredients - even wholesale are expensive and I just didn't see a product in it.
Now the same book that this finish is listed in also has a few dozen other finishes with various other ingredients. The book is late enough so that some formula use shellac, but a common addition is oil. Oil was also a common finish and in many respects it's a better finish than resin but it takes ages to harden. And the formula are balances between shine, ease of application, durability, dry time, etc. In the Joiner and Cabinet Maker the finish used on the dresser was a transitional finish which included shellac and turpentine. Stephen Shepherd is starting to post a lot of entries in his blog on finishes as he researches his next book.

The finish project was a flop but the additional research we did at the time gave us both the gramercy brushes that are so popular and our German Shellac.

Unfortunately we have been having a real problem with the German Shellac which is why only the Garnet (and maybe Amber if we get a chance to pack it this week) is shown in stock. More on that in a couple of days in part 2.

A quick update on supply and availability of some of the popular items for this holiday season.
Ron Hock's new book The Perfect Edge is here - we love it - you can find out more and order it here: Ron's Book.
The second round of saw vises is expected by the end of the week and we will be shipping them out right away. Most of the initial production run is spoken for and we will be starting another run in January. Dovetail saw kits are in stock now and being shipped. (we have not been recently out of stock on the finished dovetail saws or bowsaws. Xcut carcase saw kits are in process as are finished carcase saws and should be available in a few days. We have Rip Carcase saws in stock now. The Sash saw should be out before the end of the year but it might be pushed back so we can keep up with the demand for the other products.

PS - Sorry about all the product and product status related posts. It's the holiday season and I want people to know about what we can and cannot deliver. The next blog entry (tuesday?) will be about early finishes.

Just an update to my blog entry of last week. The first load of saw vises have arrived and they are being tested and shipped. The second round - which is a lot more units should arrive next week.
Garnet shellac is here and is packed. Amber shellac is here but not packed yet.
Dovetail saw kits are underway and should ship in a day or so. Back blanks for Carcase saws should arrive any day.