Here is what I wrote about the subject in 1981 and it is even more important today.  It is a followup to a previous post ‘An Open Letter to the President…’.

The above text is from Shepherds’ Compleat Early Nineteenth Century Woodworker, 1981, 2012, as is the following cartoon.

Stephen

We here at The Riven Word love music. It’s healthy to take a time out and engage in music now and then. As such, we look for any opportunity to sneak a little into some of our posts. Any genre will do, as long as it’s good!

What follows is a sublime composition by Richard Wagner, Vorspiel from Das Rheingold. It was featured in the 2005 Terrence Malick film, The New World :  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFkyAD9gS6g

Regardless of your overall opinion of the movie, one must admit that the opening scenes–accompanied by this music were powerful statements of first contact in the Americas.

Here is The Riven Word’s take on both that piece and our own slice of the New World in the 17th century. If you find it derivative, amateurish, or even unintentionally hilarious, we certainly understand. Close your eyes, though, and let the music do its thing.

It’s been a while since we’ve plugged Mr. Follansbee’s superlative Joiner’s Notes blog. One of his recent posts has a link to a Roy Underhill stage presentation which is very much worth your time: http://pfollansbee.wordpress.com/

Also, for blogs posted by other kindred minds on woodworking and the allied arts, this site will keep you on the cutting edge: http://unpluggedshop.com/

Keeping co-worker Eva Lipton in our thoughts and prayers: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Team-EVA/223963567711425

The crypt is the oldest part of Winchester cathedral, dating from the 11th century. In a pleasing contrast, it contains something entirely modern – a mysterious life-size statue of a man standing upright, looking down at a pool of water held in his cupped hands and contemplating the reflections he sees there. The sculptor, Antony Gormley, created it from a plaster cast of his own body. After the cast had hardened, it was strengthened with glass fibre and covered in sheet lead. He talks about the technique here.

I’m grateful to Winchester-based photographer Joe Low (www.joelow.com), for letting me use the image below. He took this spectacular photograph of the statue in the winter when the crypt was flooded.

My friend Gill Robinson, a professional artist (and enthusiastic amateur guitarist) who also lives and works in Winchester, incorporated a witty allusion to Gormley’s statue when she designed a guitar label for me at the end of last year.

And for clients who might prefer something more traditional, she produced a scraperboard drawing of the west front of the cathedral.

Here’s one of Gill’s luminous landscapes – a watercolour of Welsh mountains. More of her work, including portraits of guitarists Mark Eden and Christopher Stell can be seen here.

Click below to take a look at the second episode of The Highland Woodworker! Charles Brock takes you to visit woodworking shops of well-known woodworkers including chairmaker Brian Boggs and planemaker Ron Brese as well as Popular Woodworking editor Matthew Teague.

And keep your eye out for Episode 3 of The Highland Woodworker – coming early September 2012!

I’m traveling for the next 10 days to a wide variety of Southern destinations to do research for a couple books, interview some woodworkers for articles in Popular Woodworking Magazine, record an audio book and eat my entire weight in grits.

So if you send me an e-mail, it’s unlikely that I’m going to get it immediately and even less likely that that I’ll be able to answer it until I return on May 28 (or so). So if you have a workbench emergency, you’ll have to contact Scott Landis. For handplane emergencies, contact Garrett Hack. Toolbox emergencies, Jim Tolpin.

If you miss me, then click on over to Rob Campbell’s blog “The Joiner’s Apprentice,” where he just posted an interview with me. The direct link is… here.

— Christopher Schwarz

I had a brilliant weekend teaching spooncarving to students on the Coppice Association’s ‘Weekend in the Woods’. Six courses all taking place over the same weekend makes a fantastic atmosphere with lots of folk busily making and sharing ideas.

When I teach spoon carving, I want people to go home with more than just a spoon; my aim is that they learn techniques so they can continue carving after the course and have a better understanding of safe and effective use of the axe and knives. To this end we spent a lot of time practising different knife grips on lengths of hazel rod and building up muscle memory into the hands. I’m really careful to make sure everyone’s hands are in just the right position when they practise, sometimes just a slight change can make a big difference. I’ve learnt that a good guiding principle is ‘when you change to a new grip, check before you start cutting to see where everything is in relation to the knife’ which helps avoid accidents.

All this work is pretty intensive on the hands so I included a session on hand stretches and we joined Mike Carswell’s group for a warm up session with exercises specifically for the arms and hands.

As the weekend progresses we build up skills and make tent pegs and butter spreaders to learn the techniques of using the axe and straight knife first. By Sunday everyone is keen to start a spoon and with the skills they’ve built up, the work goes much easier. There were lots of questions about designing, using different woods and the order in which to work which I’ve learned my own answers to over the years of carving and by talking with other makers; it’s great to pass it on to a new set of students and hopefully I’ll see some of them at Spoonfest in August.

The NW Coppice Association are a lively bunch so with so many of us all gathered together on saturday night, there had to be some games after the day’s work. Events in the ‘Coppice Olympics’ including Egg & Wooden Spoon Hurdle race, Tape Measure Extension and Leaf Putting – something for the Bodger’s Ball in the future perhaps?

Q&A with Some of My Woodworking Mentors

It was Eric Sloane who sold me on the idea of preserving traditional craft, and it was Roy Underhill who showed me that this is actually possible. It was, however, Christopher Schwarz who put things so clearly into perspective that I could not resist any longer. He needs no introduction for most hand-tool enthusiasts, but for those of you who do not subscribe to the Lost Art Press blog, I will summarize.

After several years as editor of Popular Woodworking magazine, Christopher took a bold step and formed his own publishing company, Lost Art Press. One of his first projects was to re-publish the 1839 book The Joiner and Cabinet Maker, which, if it is not already clear, is the inspiration for this blog. Just as I had finished reading it and deciding that I was going to work through it, The Anarchist's Tool Chest was announced. I immediately ordered it and have never looked back. A rather unique book, TATC is part how-to, part encyclopedia, and part philosophy. It explains why hand tools are important, why woodworking is important (and as relevant as ever), and why you should start a rabbet plane at the left end of a board instead of the right. It also explains how to plan and create the titular tool chest.

Don't be turned off by the book title. This is the kind of man our nation needs more of.

Christopher's methodical research and experimentation have rescued countless tools and techniques from near-extinction. He's pretty much responsible for the hundreds (if not thousands) of Roubo workbenches popping up in shops all over the world. When he praises a specific tool, those tools will suddenly become difficult to find and their used prices will skyrocket. This is common enough to have a name, The Schwarz Effect.

He's bold, radical, and isn't all that bothered by offending the easily-offended. This is softened by the fact that he is genuinely a deeply nice guy. When I first contacted Christopher to let him know that I wanted to dedicate myself to testing his claim that The Joiner and Cabinet Maker could serve as a modern wood working curriculum, he was most encouraging and even asked if I needed any particular tools to get started. He answers all of his email. He's talked me through a number of issues which could easily cause eye-rolling, but he patiently replies every single time. I try not to abuse this, and you should, too.

It is difficult to top being a skilled woodworker, historian, author, publisher, teacher, and father, but what most impresses me about Christopher is his attitude and philosophy. If you have read TAC, you will know what I mean but if not, he makes a strong case for woodworking as a political activity and I could not agree more. This is complex topic and not really the focus of this blog (although it is a focus of my life), but he believes that hand tools empower a person to furnish their own lives, and remove the need to depend upon international companies who decimate forests, create flimsy products with toxic glues, and ship these unsatisfying things around the world where they see a couple years use and then go to the landfill. He explains that it was not always this way, and it no longer needs to be this way. He also explains how tools themselves have been compromised and are now often "tool-shaped objects". I have experienced this myself, when purchasing hand tools from hardware stores. It is almost always an exercise in frustration, and is a huge reason why hand tools are not more popular. Christopher's approach is not limited to wood working, of course. It is part of a larger neo-agrarian movement where we are finally realizing that giant organizations motivated only by money and unsustainable growth are not doing a very good job keeping us fed, fit, informed, and healthy. It may not sound like a radical act to create an end table or stool, but when you contextualize it as Christopher does, it most certainly is. He puts out a call to action of sorts, imploring us to re-learn how to outfit our homes using regionally-appropriate materials and to shun the purveyors of tool-and-furniture-shaped-objects. My response: Sign me up!

I could go on, and likely will in the future, but for now, I am The Joiner's Apprentice (TJA) asking a few questions of Christopher Schwarz (CS):

TJA: How long have you been woodworking, and what changes have you seen in the field since you started?

CS: I built my first workbench when I was 11, which is where I built stuff with wood and also model airplanes. It's also where I assembled books that I wrote and illustrated. I tried to sell them to friends and family with no luck. Thank goodness for the Internet. It's hard to make a living selling books on the vehicles of World War II to your sisters. Once I started driving and got a girlfriend, my interest in woodworking went on hold. As soon as I graduated from college in 1990 it came back full bore and has only gotten worse.

The biggest change I've seen since 1990 is, duh, the Internet. When I started woodworking I thought I was one of the few people who liked using hand tools. It was a lonely slog. The Internet has made it incredibly easy for all nutjobs to find like-minded nutjobs and recruit new ones.

TJA: What is your favorite style to work in? What styles do you just not understand or have no interest in?

CS: I find all furniture really interesting -- even the junk. I'm fascinated how Ikea stuff is designed and made. I marvel at the craftsmanship of the period stuff. Southern furniture is a big interest to me. But I don't really like high-style furniture. I appreciate it. But I have no desire to build it. It is, apologies for the politics, the furniture of the 1 percent. I've always been interested in the furniture of the 99 percent, which doesn't get written about.

In fact, the style I like doesn't really have a name, outside of "country" or vernacular." What "style" is a workbench, a tool chest, a packing box, the schoolbox or the chest of drawers from "The Joiner and Cabinet Maker." The answer is, I think, going to be my life's work.

TJA: What tools do you always look forward to using and/or what operations do you most look forward to, time after time?

CS: I love my block plane because it can do almost anything. It is also, by far, the tool of mine that shows the most wear.

As to operations, I love assembly. It is the most thrilling part of an entire project. It's where all the patience and persistence pay off. Or don't.

TJA: How much time do you actually get in your shop in a typical week?

CS: At least 20 hours. But that time is not always building stuff. That's everything from maintenance to sharpening. If I miss a day in the shop, I get grumpy.

TJA: Have you had any memorable masters or mentors help you gain the skills you currently possess? How did you meet them?

CS: All the good stuff I know is from other people. Troy Sexton, a power-tool woodworker in Sunbury, Ohio, opened my eyes to how to work efficiently and blazingly fast. His principles of work applied directly to my handwork. My grandparents taught me an appreciation for furniture – a huge gift — and my grandfather was a lifetime woodworker who taught me lots of stuff when I was young.

John Brown inspired a deep love of Welsh stick chairs in me.

Robert Wearing's "Essential Woodworker" book is the one that put together all the pieces I knew into a coherent system.

But most of my mentors are already gone. Charles H. Hayward's writings and illustrations have inspired me as a builder, editor and writer. I think own everything the man wrote from 1936 until his death. His work cannot be underestimated.

TJA: You've almost single-handedly launched a Roubo workbench craze. How do you feel about this bench after years of work on it (and seeing hundreds of others), and how do you feel about its rise to ubiquity among hand tool enthusiasts?

CS: It's the best bench I've ever worked on. When I built my first Roubo in 2005 I had never seen a bench like it in person. I had never used a leg vise. I didn't even really know if it would be suitable for modern work. But it has exceeded my expectations at every turn. I still have my first Roubo bench under my window in my shop and don't think I'll ever part with it.

As to its popularity, I guess I'm glad that people can see what I saw. When my first book came out the reaction was not immediate. It took a while for a few brave souls to build one and also become advocates for it. So it really has been the work of lots of people who were crazy enough to build a bench that looks like its was made out of Legos.

TJA: In The Anarchist's Tool Chest, you made a very strong case for supporting the resurrection of domestic furniture making, truly decent tools, and a less-is-more approach to building one's tool library (as well as life in general). Have you seen any evidence of these ideals taking root, and are you optimistic about the future of domestic production, re-appreciation of hand tools, and a shift in preference to quality over cheapness in the American economy? If not, do you have any ideas on furthering these ideals?

CS: I harbor no illusions about our society. There would have to be major changes in our economy for us all to consume less and to appreciate quality in all things.

But, like anarchism, there can be a tendency among some of us to consume less and think as small as possible. To make instead of buy. And if enough people exhibit this tendency, real change can occur. The rise of micro-brewing, for example, has been neither sudden nor without its bumps. And it still represents a small fraction of the brewing in our culture. But there is enough micro-brewing that it supports 100,000 employees now (more than work at woodworking professionally, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics). And it has begun to seep into the mainstream culture – big brewers are improving their beer. So that's the kind of slow change I hope to see. I'd rather it grow like an oak than a weed.

TJA: I know you have a Karmann Ghia that you have enjoyed restoring; what else you enjoy outside of woodworking and time with your family?

CS: I cook for my family almost every night (Wednesday we go out for pizza). I'm obsessed with good food and where it comes from. We have an incredible and old market here, Findlay Market, that I frequent for everything. We've been going to the same butcher and green grocer for 15 years. And every Tuesday I force my kids (and wife) to try something new. We call it New Food Night. My kids hate it, but they are much more adventurous eaters as a result.

I also am a voracious collector of music. It is always on in the shop and my office. I used to play guitar in a band in college (boy did we suck) but music and me are inseparable.

TJA: What is happening in the hand tool world (toolmakers, blogs, books, projects) that you think need more press?

CS: I wish we (me included) were doing a better way of documenting techniques. If we spent half as much time discussing technique as we do discussing tool minutiae, I think we'd all be better builders (me included).

TJA: I've heard it said that you make your own sausage. Is there truth to the rumor that there may be a Schwarz-designed line of meat grinders from [company name redacted] in the future? Is bronze safe to use on food?

CS: Writing books is a lot like making sausage. It is not pretty. So that's half-true.

TJA: Thank you, Christopher!

An old video has resurfaced and now it has been subtitled.  The magnificent Wilbur Pan, rides again!

This video has an odd enough history of impact.  I have even heard it argued, in absence of the actual video, that it proved that chip breakers did not work.

There has been such a current of downplay on chip breakers, that when I originally wrote this article, I decided that I was not yet ready to publish it.  There are some very talented and skilled woodworkers, some of them with a great deal of historical background, that would strongly disagree with me.  A lot of these craftsmen are of such skill that I doubt I will or even could come close to the mastery of woodworking tools that they command.

But with this video link available, I feel a bit more confident.

When power tools came, the way things were made changed.   New materials, dimensional lumber and methods that did not have as steep a learning curve transformed the woodworking industry.

Things could have been, but were not made terribly better.  They were made faster, and less training was needed.   As power tools took over, many skills were forgotten.   Apprenticeship died and so did a lot of traditions.   A lot of skills survived, but the reasons for doing things they way they they are often got lost in the tumble.  There are mysteries still.

One odd ‘mystery’ is the appearance of the chip breaker.   In a field where change was typically slow, this innovation swept in quickly.   While many of us respect the wisdom and skill of these craftsmen,  the sudden adoption of the chip breaker perplexes quite a few students of classic hand tools.    On the web it is not been rare to hear and capable, respectable craftsmen debate with certainty as to the value of a chip breaker.

I started out with no opinion.  Then I fell in love with high angle and low angle planes.   Since high angle planes don’t have much use for chip breakers, and bevel up planes have no use for chip breakers, I became strongly in the camp that felt that chip breakers are an added complexity and hardly worth the time. They increase your adjustment complexity, tune up complexity and they can promote jamming.  I had also read advice from some fairly brilliant sharpeners who advised you to put a bevel on the back of the blade.   Chip breakers do not work well with back bevels.

So I fell into the ‘Chip Breakers are Useless Camp.’  Keep in mind that I had made several very nice planes and my best ones did not have chip breakers.  I did not argue the point much, since many of the folk arguing on either side, were way more advanced woodworkers than I will probably ever be.  But if you had asked me, during the three month that I was a member of this camp,  I would have told you that chip breakers were at best good top irons.  The combination of a softer iron top and a harder iron for cutting reduced vibration.  The top iron also allowed a thinner iron to be sold and used.  I figured that it was scarcity of steel that made a top iron desirable.  Odd thought that, when you consider that folk were beginning to move to iron planes, and the top iron combined with the bottom iron was definitely more machining and just as much iron.

While doing way too much planing, I came to the conclusion that back bevels were not the easy way to maintain blade sharpness or life over time.   Back bevels are a great way to appear to be a brilliant sharpener while doing a demonstration, but for day to day work, it make sharpening the actual edge more complex and eats blades.  Stropping early and often turns out to be a much better method.   By giving up on the back bevel, I eliminated the most critical bit of resistance to using a chip breaker.

Then when reading a heated argument about chip breakers where one brave and brilliant woodworker was defending them against all comers, I realized that I had strong bias, but those biases were developed before I became good at tuning and adjusting planes.  My anti-chip breaker position fit in well with those biases, but I could not actually support my beliefs.

I had recently obtained a few relatively inexpensive Japanese planes with chip breakers. These planes will work just fine without the chip breaker. The thick tapered blades wedge to the wood and need no stabilization from a top iron.

So while I was experimenting with these  Japanese Planes, I decided to do a nice solid test so that I was not just repeating the chip data that research, photos, and brilliant arguments that all agreed that chip breakers were barely useful and a big pain. So I tuned up a blade and chip breaker to absolute precision.   I adjusted chip breakers the way that people who use them say you should.   I really did not expect to find any amazing improvements.  I had sharp blades and tight mouths, I did not expect any serious improvement.   Well I was wrong.  By actually testing chip breakers, I found that they made a very big difference in the surface left behind.

My bias, learned back when I had no feel for grain, and thought oak was really hard wood, had made me vulnerable to the group consensus.  Here is what I found out.

If you are able to make a flat surface, then you can match a chip breaker and blade so that splinters never wedge between them. This solves the first issue I had with them. If the surfaces are smooth and you match them up and clean them up properly, jams are not caused by them either. So if you can tune a plane, a chip breaker does not cause a lot of problems.   With a well tuned plane, there is not a real reason to fear or hate a chip breaker.

A top iron is not hard to line up exactly with a bottom iron. On a Western Plane, you loosen the screw that holds them together, rest them edge down on some wood, and tighten the screw. To get the bottom iron a touch forward of the bottom iron, you just lean then a bit and then tighten the screw. Seriously how hard is that? On a Japanese Plane you have to tap it into place, but once you develop the knack, it is much more convenient than doing adjustments on a Western Plane. I can do all this with ease, and I am not in the same league with a lot of the folk out there using planes. So fine adjustment, once you are reasonably skilled, is not a problem either.

So the problems that chip breakers create are close to negligible for a skilled craftsman. While they are not horrible, what good are they?

They reduce back wear on the blade. Wear on the back of the blade, is what eats blades fastest. By lifting the shaving off the bottom iron, wear is reduced. Oddly enough, by having the right clearance angle over the blade, in some cases the edge will start the cut and then only occasionally actually touch wood. So in some cases, the edge life of a blade can make a leap off the chart while still making a glass smooth cut. So first and foremost, a chip breaker can reduce your time sharpening and increase your blade life.  With just that, suddenly a chip breaker is a pretty nice thing.

The ‘chip breaker’ advantage of a chip breaker requires fine adjustment. As the blade edge on the top iron is moved closer to the blade edge on the bottom iron, the plane begins to act more and more like a high angle plane. If they are quite close to even the plane becomes a high angle plane. This means that with very fine adjustment, you can in fact choose the behavior of your plane. A lot of folk talk about keeping the top irons edge within a thirty-second of an inch from the edge of the bottom iron or it does nothing. That is not entirely true, but for the sake of argument, that’s close to three hundredths of an inch. If you can’t make settings that are a lot finer than that, then you can’t adjust a smoother.  A thirty-second of an inch is a very fat chip.

Anyone with a chip in this argument can tune up and adjust a plane to cut a shaving that is a thousandth of an inch thick.   Adjusting a chip breaker this close should not really be a terrible challenge.   A thirty-second of an inch might be fine tuning for a table saw, but on a smoother a thirty-second of an inch is a very fat chip.

If you have a sharp even chip breaker, you can tap the chip breaker almost right up to the edge of the blade, and take a folded type chip out. This allows you to plane harder rougher wood with the same plane that does well on soft. with the chip breaker just a half a hairs width back from the edge, the blade will handle odd wood grain quite well.

With the chip breaker back to the normal hairs width from the edge it can take a nice, full blade width, shaving out with ease.  You can also pull back the chip breaker if you are trying to hog out lots of softwood quickly.

This gives you at least four planes in one.  Four quality planes in one.  No wonder the old time experts converted to chip breakers .  Yes there are a lot of odd opinions on top irons used as chip breakers, and I find that I am in disagreement with some craftsmen that are far beyond me in skill. I love chip breakers and I know from observation and experience that they work great.

For an occasional craftsman who dreads taking a blade out or adjusting a plane, a top iron is horrid. For a craftsman who has a hundred planes on the wall, a top iron may be just another thing to fiddle with while trying to do work. For a craftsman with less than a dozen planes, or a craftsman who carries his tools, I believe that it is well worth his time to learn how to use a double iron.

Bob

We do some things just because they’re fun … or maybe a challenge.

I have this brand new book. It needs a stand.

Ah-ha! Roy made a really interesting stand that’s originally attributed to Roubo. I call it a parlor trick because it is made from a single piece of wood. Roy made his from Walnut, probably near an inch thick. For fun, and challenge, I made mine from a scrap of boat lumber left over from Eva Won. It is cedar and rough resawed to about 1/2 inch thick. Can it be resawed thinner and tortured into becoming one of these bookstands?

The trick is making a barrel hinge and resawing right up to the edge of the hinge. Roy shows you how in this episode of The Woodwright Shop. Other than lumber and scale, mine isn’t much different … other than using a utility saw for resawing (hah!). Go watch Roy. I’ll let a few pictures tell the rest of the story.

This is the dressing room next to the bedroom in the previous post. I like spending time in here when I can. The atmosphere is most pleasing and I like the way the light filters in through the shuttered windows.

This fitted wardrobe is filled with drawers and shelves used for clothing and bed linen storage. The carvings are mixed geometric simpleness with complex freeform areas.  Moustached faces are repeated throughout each section, adding a sort of wood-spirit impression. This is a fairly large piece at 12’ long and 7’6” tall.

The large dress mirror continues some of the castle column theme, repeat arching and so on.

This Hopper desk seems out of place here and of course with the arched kneehole being so low, it was obviously not used in the common way. But there are aspects to the desk that I really like in that it’s a masculine desk and has a 1” thick slate work surface. The wallpaper in the background is by William Morris.

The chapel

The arched ceiling in the chapel is vaulted with segmented arching supported on typical columns that continue into graceful proportions that then culminate in central rosettes. Arched windows and doorways and recesses further define the arching.

This balustrade unites the entrance with the main chapel body via a small set of stairways and each column is independently carved in its own unique characteristic carving.

Stained glasswork forms the window panels, but just look at the vivid blues and yellows and purples.