Elia Bizzari - Hand Tool Woodworking

I sold my first reamer in 2004 or 2005 for about $40. Compared to the reamers we make now, it was a pretty rough affair; I ground the blade from a Stanley compass-saw blade and made the body from a maple blank for a Windsor chair leg. Since then, the price of our reamers has skyrocketed, and for good reason. We’ve been improving them for twenty years, and this has only increased the time it takes to make them, and the expense of the materials. But I wouldn’t be able to afford one of my reamers if I was a 17-year-old kid getting into woodworking now.

Because of this, I’ve decided to try selling a new product: Reamers in the Raw. They are the same as our finished reamers, but they still need a finial fitting to make them cut evenly. They also need the ends trimmed and a handle made (the blade comes sharpened and ready to use). They can then be finished to your specifications (or left unfinished). Included with the reamer is access to the second half of my online reamer-making video which details the steps needed to finish these reamers.

This is not a money-making venture. Rather it is an attempt to make our tools more accessible to people who will use them. So I am selling these reamers for half the price of a finished reamer: $70. If there’s interest in them, we’ll keep offering them (and maybe offer Travishers in the Raw as well).

These tenon cutters were donated by a former student who has retired from his chairmaking hobby. We’d like them to go to someone who would have trouble affording them and would use them a lot.  If you know someone like that, please nominate them (or yourself) in the comments section.  I’ll pick a winner and mail the set of three tenon cutters to them. (Our tenon cutters have progressed a long way since these were made, but I’ve tested all three of them and they seem to be working quite well. It’s our usual set of three cutters: one 11/16 one for legs, one 1/2″ one for arm stumps or posts, and one 1/2″ cylindrical one for spindles.)

I’ve been gone for what seems like forever.  In the beginning of June, my wife and I went on vacation for a week with the ultimate goal of Eric Cannizzaro’s shop in Vermont. There I taught a green woodworking class with Eric for a week.

It’s a pretty idyllic spot.  We made spoons and fan birds, brooms and pitch forks.  The pitch forks were my favorite, and a lot of the student’s favorite too.  I had new information from Peter Follansbee about setting the bends, which was a lot of fun:

From Eric’s, I visited George Sawyer and his sister Annie:

Annie was around when I worked with their father Dave fifteen or twenty years ago,  but George was off in school or somewhere so I’m just now getting to know him.  Nice guy.  Then I went to Old Sturbridge Village for my third viewing of the Samuel Wing collection to answer a few leftover questions for my book.  The most interesting thing I found was these three unused spindles that have funny convex facets on them.  Could have been done with a convex spokeshave, but I’ve never seen a wooden-bodied version of that tool.  Maybe it was done with a hollow pane?  I’ll have to try it:

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From there I went to eastern Mass to spend a week with Peter Follansbee:

We built a “Samuel Wing” chair together and talked about old woodworkers we knew:

And I found four boxes of additional Samuel Wing Documents at the Sandwich Historical Society and Glass Museum:

Then I went to the Jersey shore and looked at a mid-19th century collection of chairmaking tools in the storage facilityof the Monmouth County Historical Association, including this rare chairmaker’s low bench:

And a box of unused spoon bits:

From there I went home. It’s really nice to sleep in my own bed again.

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P.S. I have decided to offer my first-ever sale of online classes. From now through Sunday, all the classes I did with Curtis Buchanan are 50% off.

Velda’s Chair: We make a rocker and and an arm chair in this ten-part series. Nearly 20 hours of content. $82.50 through July 7th.

Democratic Chair: Seven episodes on making Curtis’s Democratic side chair. $50.00 through July 7th

Spoon Carving: We make one of Curtis’s steam-bent spoons in this 2-hour video. $10 through July 7th