Tools For Working Wood

Making a tap guide for my lathe turret.
Of all the tools we manufacture the drafting rules are my favorite. I have one that I use everyday. It's the rule I use when I'm measuring something because of a customer query, if I'm trying to find the right stock to make a part, or if I have to part something off on a lathe to make sure it's the right length. Now the difference between a drafting rule and a regular rule is that the drafting rule has thin edge, which gets it close to the thing you are measuing or layout and and there is less parralax error. Ours version also has end grads, which is really handy for measuring short things when you simply don't have space for the entire length of the ruler. This is very handy when I am working on the lathe.

Starrett used to make a drafting rule, and I have one and that's where we got the idea that maybe we should reintroduce it. The Starrett drafting rule only had a bevel on one edge, ours has a cove which looks and feels nicer but more importantly it means if you press down on the one side of the ruler the other side lifts up and it's easier to pick it up.
So a few years ago we started making them. We discovered we had no idea what we were doing. When you mill the cove on one side the brass wants to buckle and the scrap rate was horrendous. So when we ran out of initial batch we stopped making them. About 2 years ago, we ordered material to make more of them, thinking we would do it better. But we gave up pretty quickly.
We still have the stock, and I have another idea about fixturing, but hustling to produces Gramercy Tools Treadle Lathes, I just haven't had the time to figure out if we have a good path. Maybe next year if I have time. However, we found a very small number of English rulers (8) buried in the warehouse that we didn't know we had, along with two English / metric (2) rules. We just put them up for sale now. If you've been jonesing for one now is your chance. Click here.

In other news this past weekend I once again visited the Poster House Museum to see there awesome exhibit "The Future Was Then: The Changing Face of Fascist Italy". This was eyeopening to me as I never really understood much about Fascist Italy before WW2.




PS

If you follow us (@toolsforworkingwood) on Instagram (and please do), you know that we were recently featured in a video made by The Locavore, a NYC company that celebrates local makers and products. We know how hard it is to make a good video, so we are thrilled to have appeared in such a skillful and engaging one.

The Locavore sells a physical guide - you know, a book! - in which we appear. (And not just us. Our friends at W. D. Lockwood Dye have a fabric dye counterpart, Aljo Manufacturing, which also gets the nod.) The Locavore also has a bricks-and-mortar store in Manhattan, located at 434 6th Avenue (W. 10th Street), a few blocks from my old apartment at 6th Ave and W. 12th Street. The store sells products that are grown / baked / fabricated /assembled /crafted /concocted / sewn / stuffed / pickled within 100 miles of NYC.

I visited the store over the weekend. As you could imagine, the vibe is that of a friendly general store, with a range of goods to eat, wear, use to care for your home, or just serve as a cool NYC souvenir. Theres even a bulletin board to keep it really local.



If you live in NYC, are planning to visit NYC, or want to go down that rabbit hole and emerge an hour later, eyes bleary and blinking, check out their website with an interactive map. It makes our large city seem like a series of small towns.

In other news:

We have an opening for a part-time salesperson at our Brooklyn showroom. This time its just for one day/week - Tuesdays.

Sales at Tools for Working Wood is an interesting job. You get a range of customers and that's what makes it interesting. We have people who come in who've been doing this for 40 years and will tell you everything you've ever wanted to know about 80 grit sandpaper. After they leave, you experiment yourself to see if you agree. And then a week later somebody, a newbie, maybe just a newbie in that particular area, will come in and you will get a chance to repeat back everything you've ever wanted to know about 80 grit sandpaper. And frankly this is how we learn. You keep your ears open, you keep your brain functioning, and all interactions are really interesting. Some people come in knowing what they want and some need help. Our goal is to point people in the right direction - and as many customers can attest, even if that direction is to a different store or product we don't sell or to the bad news that no such tool or process exists (yet). And you meet some interesting people too. We're looking for people who are interested in woodworking even if they're not experts because while we can teach people woodworking we can't teach you enthusiasm. I suppose I should mention the employee discount, which if you're outfitting a shop is not a bad thing to have. The most important thing we are looking for in the candidate gets along with people and a desire to learn.

We haven't posted this job elsewhere yet. We're hoping someone who reads this blog is looking to work in the craft and woodworking industries. So if you are interested in a great opportunity we'd like to talk to you. Send us an email to jobs@toolsforworkingwood.com.

In other, other news:

It's time again for Festool Fest! Our Festool rep and his tent of demo tools will be here on Friday, September 12th and Saturday, September 13th, noon - 3 pm both days. It's a great way to try out the cordless table saw, compare sander options or just see all the different tools in action.And of course we will have snacks!

I am thrilled to finally be writing this blog post! 15 years after having an idea; almost 3 years after starting intensive development of that idea; and many trials and tribulations later, we are pleased to announce that we are finally taking pre-order deposits for the Gramercy Tools Treadle Lathe.

Last Sunday night we sent out an email to our mailing list of people who signed up to be notified of the lathe's progress and almost immediately sold out the first batch. So we added a second batch at the same pre-sale price so that more people could lock in their place in line.

We are still not quite at the point of shipping actual lathes, but being comfortable with offering a pre-sale is a huge milestone for us.

I must admit that I originally envisioned this projects milestones as more reasonable and attainable. The lathe has turned out to be the most complicated project of my career and possibly the most complicated hand tool manufactured in the United States since WWII (or WWI).

Our saga begins with the notion that a treadle lathe would be fun to use - and the unfortunate realization that I didnt have space for a lathe, so the lathe would need to be folded up. The other realization was an acknowledgement that if setting the lathe up and putting it back were too much work, I would not use it. I may be lazy but at least Im honest!

I ended up being willing to work hard to circumvent the downsides of my laziness. (Paradoxical, I know.) Good thing I wasn't alone in this. I want to acknowledge and thank everyone at Tools for Working Wood who contributed to the project. Kris Pastuszka was the engineer who designed the folding mechanism and a multitude of other details. Naomi Baxter, who is the shop supervisor, and Joel Sena (yes, we are a multi-Joel enterprise), run production in our shop and are responsible for making all the parts of the lathe that we directly produce. Which is a lot of parts! Our friend and woodturning wizard Alan Dorsey has been a source of invaluable inspiration and advice throughout the project. You can see Alan using the lathe here. Thank you as well to the numerous well-wishers at the Amana Hand Works show who gave us feedback and encouragement after trying out a prototype of the lathe, and more recently, visitors to our Brooklyn showroom who have seen the real deal.

We have a lot of advantages over the 19th century, including ball bearings and aluminum. I'm looking forward to spending time on the treadle for exercise and actually producing something at the same time. The most exciting thing is I feel like I can finally help people who live or work in tight quarters, who have the desire to make something but don't have space for a standing shop.

We expect to be delivering lathes by the end of 2025 with a second batch in early 2026, although I wouldnt be shocked if it would be a little later depending upon when all our parts arrive. There are over 100 parts in this lathe and the logistics involved with sourcing, identifying and keeping track of them has been mind-boggling. The final cost of the lathe will be $3,600, though we are offering the pre-order opportunity to pay $3,400 for the lathe, secured by a refundable $500 deposit. If you opt for the pre-order cost, when your lathe is ready to ship we will contact you for the balance of $2,900, which you can either pay or request your deposit back. This offer will be available until we either sell out this current batch, or start delivery. (This cost does not include the shipping charge.)

We encourage you to come by the shop if at all possible and play with the lathe prototype in person. And once the lathe is available to take home, we encourage you to do that in person as well. Your gratification has been delayed long enough!

Thanks to everyone for their support and encouragement on this long and winding journey.

Frontispiece from the book Woodwork (The English Sloyd) by S. Barter ND C.1890

I studied woodworking for a little bit at the New School and then for years at the now defunct Craft Students League. Not only did I learn essential woodworking skills, I met lifelong friends. My interests eventually led to my founding Tools for Working Wood as well.

So I can be sincere in recommending woodworking classes (or indeed classes focusing on any craft that interests you). Trial and error is by definition mostly repeated error, so having a teacher whose methods and results excite you can make learning much more efficient (and fun).

Where can you learn woodworking in the NYC area? Here are some great options for instruction. Many of these schools also offer opportunities for shop rentals, one-on-one instruction and club meet-ups.

Note: We are not guaranteeing that this list is comprehensive. We are very familiar with some of these schools, others less so. Some have comprehensive offerings; others specialize. We arent endorsing any specific school or methodology. We do think not everyone teaches or learns the same way and it is hard to judge the effectiveness of a program.

When folks ask us when we will be offering the Rietveld chair class again (never, sorry to say) or other classes we have offered in the past, we give them the list below. If we left your school, or class off of this list please let us know and we will add you in.

By the way, just because we have put the kibosh on offering formal classes does not mean that we are no longer offering instruction. We will continue to host instructional events such as our Festool demo event, Festool Fest - and in fact we are hosting this two- day extravaganza again next month: Friday, September 12th and Saturday, September 13th, from 12 -3 pm both days. For more information, please click here.

(In no particular order)

Makeville Studio 125 8th St Brooklyn NY 11215 917-873-5542
https://makeville.com/

Bien Hecho Academy
Brooklyn Navy Yard, 63 Flushing Ave, Bldg 3, Suite 1103, Brooklyn, NY 11205 646-875-8075
https://www.bienhechoacademy.com/

Makerspace NYC - Brooklyn
Brooklyn Army Terminal, 140 58th St Bldg B Unit 1C, Brooklyn, NY 11220 718-273-3951
https://www.makerspace.nyc/

Makerspace NYC - Staten Island - contact Makerspace Brooklyn above

Fashion Institute of Technology - Continuing Education
Furniture Making Classes, FIT CCPS, 227 West 27th Street, New York, NY 10001
https://continuinged.fitnyc.edu

Nihonsan Tools
300 7th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11215 929-724-4027
https://www.nihonsantools.com/classes

Make Good Traditional Handcrafts
https://www.makegoodwood.com/classes/

Astoria Woodworkers Collective
1210 Astoria Blvd, Astoria, NY 11102 971-373-5248
https://www.astoriawoodworkers.org/classes

Craftsman Ave
117 11th Street Brooklyn, NY 11215 929-266-3494
https://craftsmanave.com

Sawkill Lumber
1 Troy Ave Brooklyn, NY 11213 917-862-7910
https://www.sawkill.nyc/woodworking-classes-brooklyn/

Training programs:

Brooklyn Woods 621 Degraw Street, Brooklyn, NY 11217 718-237-2017
https://bwiny.org/brooklyn-woods/overview/

Local classes, provided you have an expansive idea of what constitutes the local area:

CT woodwork (East Patchogue, NY)
https://www.ct-woodwork.com

HUDSON RIVER MARITIME MUSEUM (Kingston. MY)
https://www.hrmm.org/adult-classes.html

Philadelphia Furniture Workshop (Philadelphia)
https://www.philadelphiafurnitureworkshop.com/

New Jersey School of Woodwork (Washington NJ)
https://www.njsow.org/

Peter's Valley School of Craft(Layton, NJ)
https://petersvalley.org/

The Wood Joint (Long Branch, NJ)
https://thewoodjointnj.com/

Connecticut Valley School of Woodworking (Manchester, CT)
https://schoolofwoodworking.com/

Make Haven (New Haven, CT)
https://www.makehaven.org/about-us

The Nautical Arts Workshop (Deep River, CT)
https://www.thenauticalartsworkshop.com

Brookfield Craft Center (Brookfield, CT)
https://www.brookfieldcraft.org/

Plumier Foundation (Saltsburg, PA)
https://plumier.org/shop-talk/

We are about to start offering pre-sale opportunities for the Gramercy Tools Treadle Lathe. It has been a three year long haul, but we are finally ready. Our shop is manufacturing parts and our aluminum fabricator is getting ready to make the frames.

This means we will be formally establishing the process for taking $500 refundable deposits to reserve a lathe at a pre-sale price. The pre-sale purchase price will be $3,400. We expect to be able to deliver the lathes by the end of the year. The $3,400 is a little below the retail list price, which will go to $3,600 when the lathe is in production. What the deposit does it get you in the queue. When we are ready to ship the lathe, we will contact you for the balance. If at that time you decide to delay or not proceed with your purchase, we will refund your $500. If we dont deliver the lathe by the end of 2025, you are welcome to cancel your pre-order and get a refund.

In the next few days we will be updating the website with more information and details on the pre-sale please see the website. This is a complicated machine and as is standard for big machines, shipping will be extra.

The real point of this blog post is to share this video of Alan Dorsey using the lathe. Alan, a professional turner and wood turning teacher whom many of you met at Hand Works in Amana, has extensive experience with our lathe prototypes. Here is also has interesting insights on the difference between power and treadle turning. Both good, but different.

In other news:
After 38 years together, my friends Ken and Mike of the company Jorgensen Carr, cabinet makers extraordinaire, are retiring and closing up shop. First of all a hearty congratulations to them because 38 years in a small business, especially a woodworking business, is quite an achievement. The fact that they are still talking to each other is amazing.

I've known Ken since he was the teaching assistant when I studied woodworking with Maurice Fraser back in the 80s. When I first needed shop space for my own woodworking, the fledgling Jorgensen Carr company rented me some bench space. One of the big lessons I learned from them was that you should be able to trust your equipment. So when you set a miter fence to 45 and made a cut it was 45. When you set your table saw to 2-3/8, it was 2-3/8. Ken also impressed upon me the need to make sure your equipment is maintained so you're not fighting your environment.

Typically when a big shop closes, you hire an auctioneer to sell off the stuff - machines big and small. Hand tools of all types. Wood. It's always a little sad when a great shop closes, but auctions are the way the next generation gets started. Jorgensen Carr is no different. Their auction is in a week or so and you can see the details here. Auctions can be a great way to get big equipment and/or round out equipment needs. You may note that the Festool tools include some items that are now discontinued, like the CT 22 vacuum, but we still sell bags for this vac because there are plenty of them still doing their jobs in shops across the country, even though they haven't been offered by Festool for many years. A shout-out to our customer Austin who is always looking for a chance to buy an ETSEC sander used, but "no one ever sells an ETSEC, even when shops close," because no one likes to part with this tool.

We were thrilled to be included in Mortise & Tenon magazines Issue X, their 10th Anniversary special (and almost double-sized) issue. As we told M&T, 10 years in publishing is an impressive feat, especially in a field whose obituary had been written many, many times, challenged by increasingly short attention spans and the supposed yearning of all content to be free. M&Ts answer to the challenges of contemporary publishing has been the exact opposite of the conventional response - the magazine article as a hot take or a series of captions. Instead of summaries designed to entice the mainstream reader with attention span issues, M&T has offered erudite research on admittedly narrower topics related to woodworking.

In doing so, the magazine also created a sense of community among woodworkers who want to understand the best practices of woodworkings past and their own place in this realm. At the same time, the magazines beautiful physical presentation also conveyed a certain timelessness, durable enough for return reflection and discussion.

We were asked to explore the topic of The State of Woodworking in 2025, and provide some photographs to accompany the article. So along with the text, our article features some pictures of the new Gramercy Tools lathe and some catnip for fans of vintage shop tools.

We now have the magazine for sale in our showroom and online, and while these photos have gotten some attention, probably the biggest conversation starter is the photo of the miniature tools I made as a young lad. These tools were inspired by Eric Sloanes Museum of Early American Tools and are made of steel with boxwood handles. I used an X-ACTO saw, Dremel, a drill, files, and a tiny torch all obtained from local hobby and hardware stores. And yes, the tools all function!

Some of our customers have responded by sharing their miniature craftwork with us. Our friend Tony showed us the tiny ornaments he made, including one of his dog and another of himself. Merry Christmas!

If you are intrigued by the miniatures, it's worth seeking out Barbie's Woodshop instagram account - a truly wonderful site!.
Barbie was profiled for the in the Lost Art Press Blog by the great Nancy Hiller.

An article about Barbie is included in Quercus Issue 12.

A picture of my tools made it into M&T Issue X
My mini - doll house scale panel saw nested under a mid-19th century short 12" panel saw.

PS. Festool expects to apply an import fee on August 1, 2025. Buy before Festool applies an import fee.