Woodworking Magazine Weblog

There must be something in the water. During the last week I've gotten five messages from people asking me where I got the try square that is sometimes shown in step photos for Woodworking Magazine.

And so here's the story: Planemaker Wayne Anderson sent it to me several years ago after I spied it and lusted after it openly. How much does it cost? I don’t know. It was part of a complex trade.

The square is a one-pound package of laminated brass and rosewood that has been riveted together. The tongue is 5-1/2" long. The total length of the stock is 5-1/4". While I really like the heft of this square, it's the ogee pattern on the ends of the tongue and the stock that make me grab this tool over and over.

Several people have asked me if these patterns on the ends serve a purpose. Adam Cherubini wrote in his column that he suspected that different craftsmen might have used different patterns to differentiate their squares from one another in a busy shop.

I'll buy that. No one has yet dared to borrow this tool from me in our shop.  

— Christopher Schwarz

The new Stanley No. 4 smoothing plane.

Stanley Works will release five premium-grade handplane models this year that are designed to compete with planes from Veritas and Lie-Nielsen Toolworks, officials said.

The line includes new designs for a No. 4 smoothing plane, a low-angle jack plane, a shoulder plane and two block planes. All of the Stanley planes will have features that users have come to expect from high-end tools, including irons made from thicker A2 steel, bodies made from ductile iron and handles made from highly polished rosewood.

The new Stanley No. 62 low-angle jack plane.

Additionally, the sole castings will be heavier, all the knobs will be made of brass, the soles will be flat to .003" and many of the planes will incorporate a "patented lateral adjustment locking lever," according to company officials and literature.

The planes, which should be available by November, will have the following manufacturer's suggested retail price: The No. 4 and the low-angle jack will list for $179. The block planes and the shoulder plane will list for $99. The planes will be available through woodworking specialty stores, not home centers. Company officials said the tools’ A2 irons will be made in England and the plane bodies will be made in Mexico.

Stanley officials said they designed these planes after working with the company's "discovery teams." These teams went into specialty stores and furniture-making shops and conducted two-hour interviews with woodworkers about what they wanted in a handplane.

Stanley then designed prototypes and solicited feedback from these users, which they then incorporated into the tools' final designs.

The end results were very interesting. For example, the new Stanley No. 4 is a bevel-down plane. What's different is that the frog and base are cast as one piece. This reduces the opportunity for blade chatter to occur. Also interesting: The plane has an adjustable mouth like a block plane. You unscrew the front knob and slide a throat plate forward and back for different mouth apertures.

The No. 62 Low-Angle Jack Plane also has many of these refinements, including the patented lateral-adjustment mechanism.

The new Stanley No. 92 shoulder/chisel plane.

The No. 92 Shoulder/Chisel Plane also features brass adjustment knobs and a wooden grip at the rear. Though Stanley officials didn't have the finished width of the tool available, the No. 92 was historically a 3/4"-wide tool.

The new Stanley No. 60-1/2 block plane.

The two block planes – the No. 9-1/2 standard-angle plane and the No. 60-1/2 low-angle block plane – have less radical changes compared to their historic brethren. However, they have been redesigned to look like the rest of the new family of planes, and all the planes will use the famous Stanley "Sweetheart" logo from the early part of the 20th century.

When asked if other plane designs were in the works, a Stanley official said there was nothing they could discuss at this time.

As soon as functional production models become available, we’ll be testing these new planes and will report the results in an upcoming issue of Popular Woodworking and Woodworking Magazine.

— Christopher Schwarz

For the next issue of Woodworking Magazine, we’re investigating the best way to make through-tenons – a hallmark of early American furniture, Arts & Crafts pieces and people who like to show off.

I’ve spent a good deal of energy investigating the joint personally. When I started collecting Arts & Crafts furniture in 1990, I quickly became attuned to spotting the joint in pieces for my collection.

Even better, I had a mentor with an incredible collection. Owen Riley was a photographer at the newspaper where I worked, and he had been collecting Arts & Crafts furniture for many years. His entire apartment was stuffed to the gills with the stuff. And he took great pains to teach me the difference between the makers – I can spot an L & J.G. tusk tenon over a Gustav Stickley tusk tenon from across a room.

And so I’ve always had a realistic view of how this joint appears in real-deal furniture that now costs five or six figures.

Here’s the real truth: The craftsmanship is all over the place. Take a look at the photo above. That’s a through-tenon on a signed Gustav Stickley slipper rocker from my collection. All the through-tenons on the piece look exactly like this. Clearly, they were made with some sort of boring tool, perhaps a drill press or perhaps some form of spindle machine. Heck you can still see some torn grain on the surface of the joint that indicates the rotation of the cutter.

No effort was made to square up the ends of the joint. No effort was made to round over the tenon to match the radiused mortise. There’s just a gap that’s plainly visible on the outside surfaces of the leg.

I always like to compare that joint to the through-tenons on my Charles Stickley arm chair. Charles was one of the “lesser” Stickley brothers, and the craftsmanship and style of his work is often derided by modern writers. The through-tenons on his chair are perfect, as good as any high-class modern work in a gallery.

There’s no consistency by maker. Roycroft through-tenons? Raggy. Limbert through-tenons? Not bad except for a couple overcuts – probably from a saw.

So what’s the pattern? Visibility. The more visible the joint, the more likely that the maker went to great lengths to make it tidy. That seems like it should be obvious, but that has not been my experience with modern work (especially my own).

My inclination is to make the suckers perfect. Why? Because I often have other woodworkers snooping around my house, pulling out my drawers, turning over my tables and the like.

So how do you make these joints spot-on? I’ve used several methods, which we’ll be exploring in the issue. For long and skinny joints, it’s hard to beat a highly-tuned hollow-chisel mortiser (though I’m going to try). For squarish joints, it’s hard to beat a template and a router.

And, in the end, it’s hard to beat wedging, which can expand a tenon into a loosely fit joint. Or, if you’ve had a bad day, putty and a dark dark stain…..

— Christopher Schwarz

Lie-Nielsen Toolworks continues to turn back the clock (a good thing in the world of hand-tool woodworking). The Warren, Maine, manufacturer plans to offer a version of the 18th-century French-style workbench made popular in Andre Roubo's "L'Art du Menuisier."

The company has just completed work on its first Roubo bench (shown above) for a customer. The bench is quite similar to the version I built for Woodworking Magazine, with a few exceptions. The two ends of the base are a bit different – there's extra stretchers in there to attach the top, plus cross-bolts that allow the bench to be knocked down. Also, there is a twin-screw vise in the end-vise position at the request of the customer.

All the important functional details are spot-on. There's a wooden planing stop mortised into the top. There's a crochet and a leg vise – you don't have to have both bench accessories to plane things on edge, but they are both convenient and useful. Also, Lie-Nielsen has added a sliding deadman. This is an accessory not shown in Roubo, but is very handy for securing wide panels and doors.

The bench is maple, and Thomas Lie-Nielsen reports that it weighs 400 pounds. The top is 4" thick, 24" wide and 8' long. When the bench is put into regular production, the legs will be 4" x 4".

The bench will be more expensive than the two styles now offered by Lie-Nielsen, a European bench starting at $2,000, and a David Charlesworth-style bench for $1,500. Thomas says that building the Roubo involves additional labor and material.

If you're interested in ordering one, you'll need to wait a bit. The company has temporarily suspended taking orders for benches until it can reduce the waiting list, which Thomas says is now at about nine months.

But if you've seen these benches at shows or in other shops, you know that the quality justifies the wait.

— Christopher Schwarz

Whenever John Economaki of Bridge City Tools teaches classes about furniture design, he always asks his students a question that seems to have no good answer.

The question goes something like this: Would you rather have a piece of furniture with great lines but so-so craftsmanship, or a somewhat dumpy-looking project with perfect and crisp joinery throughout?

You'll have to read to the bottom of this entry to find out how John's students answer the question. Me? I've been struggling with the question all week.

I'm just now applying the first coat of color to a Gustav Stickley plant stand for the next issue of Woodworking Magazine, and I've been beating myself up all week over this piece and my workmanship on it.

The project itself is straightforward and is all familiar ground for me. Whenever I work on a project like this, I try to stretch myself by focusing on some detail to see if I can make it more refined and crisp than before.

For this project, I focused on the curves, and I went to great lengths to get the swoops just right on the aprons and stretchers. And for the most part, I was pleased with how they came out.

And that's when the tenons for the top rails came and bit me on the hinder.

During the final assembly I clamped everything up, drove in the tusk tenons at the bottom of the plant stand and walked away for about eight hours. When I removed the clamps, everything looked good for about a half an hour. Then two of the tenons at the top of the plant stand began to separate at their shoulders. Each one opened up about .006". I think the tusk tenons are pulling them apart. Something was a little bit off in the assembly and there wasn't any good way to turn back.

So I spent an hour on Tuesday morning feeding white oak shavings from my jointer plane into these gaps in an effort to obscure them. After forcing the glue-covered shavings into the gaps with tweezers, things looked better. But they sure as heck weren't "according to Hoyle."

I have to have this project done by Monday, and I have an involved finishing schedule ahead, so I grabbed the stain today and went to work. As the color went on, two things happened: One, I could see my mistakes just as well. You can't fill gaps with stain. Well, I sure can't.

And second, I became smitten with the genius of Gustav Stickley, who designed this plant stand. As the color went on I began to see how the overall piece would begin to look. I stopped seeing the individual components.

So to answer John Economaki's question, I think I prefer a project with beautiful lines to a project with perfect craftsmanship. I want both. Maybe next time.

— Christopher Schwarz

P.S. Here's how John's students answer the question: He told me that virtually everyone he's taught says they would prefer the perfectly joined clunky one.

Type up your best shop trick, tip or shortcut this week and you could win a restored Millers Falls 2A hand drill (which sells for more than $100) and get published in our "Shortcuts" column.

"Shortcuts" in Woodworking Magazine features the small little tricks, tool modifications or shop practices that make your work a little easier. We generally don't publish full-scale plans for miter-saw stations or shop-made jigs for routing dovetails.

To give you an idea of some good Shortcuts, you can download a page of them from our Fall 2008 issue. I particularly like the one from Marc Adams for making square holes for pegs – I've used this Shortcut myself quite a bit.

Shortcuts.pdf (407.67 KB)

So here are the rules: Send your Shortcut to me via e-mail at chris.schwarz@fwpubs.com and include the word "Shortcut" in your subject line so I know it's a contest entry. All entries are due by midnight Friday, Aug. 22.

The best Shortcut – as determined by the editors – will win the restored Millers Falls 2A drill from Wiktor Kuc at WKTools.com. (Yes, it's the one I recently wrote about here.) These restored drills are something to behold. No detail is left undone as Kuc restores them. We'll announce the winner on or before Aug. 27 here on the blog.

Any runners-up will also get their Shortcuts published in a coming issue and receive a one-year subscription (or renewal) to Woodworking Magazine.

Sound good? I think so. Let's see what you come up with.

— Christopher Schwarz

This weekend we went to a little street fair in downtown Cincinnati to see some art, eat some Belgian waffles and – unbeknownst to us – consider the question of raw material selection in building furniture.

As we made our way through the vendors on Main Street, we heard that the Contemporary Art Center had a booth where kids could build “little furniture.” Katy, my 7-year-old shop helper, tugged at my arm and said she wanted to check it out.

So we strolled to the other end of the fair and found the tent in question. And indeed, there were about 10 kids there making miniature chairs, beds and shelving units using 2” x 2-3/4” Formica samples and masking tape.

There were a lot of boxy Bauhaus chairs made from “Porcelain Grafix” samples and a dollhouse-sized rug made up of Formica samples of “Natural Figured Maple.”

As soon as Katy saw the Formica samples she stopped dead in her tracks. I put my hand on her shoulder and asked if she wanted to give it a try.

“I don’t want to do this anymore,” she said, turning back toward the bandstand.

“Why not, honey?” I asked.

“I thought they would be using real wood,” Katy said.

So we skipped the Formica and fabricated some people and dogs from pipe cleaners instead. Looks like I’ve been raising a wood snob without knowing it.

— Christopher Schwarz

For those of us who buy old tools, one of the fantasies involves time travel. Wouldn't it be cool to walk into a hardware store in the late 19th century and buy a new Stanley Bed Rock plane off the shelf? Or how about an entire set of chisels from James Swan?

Until we build a time machine, we're just going to have to be satisfied with the work of Wiktor Kuc, who rebuilds hand drills to better-than-new glory.

Back in April I wrote a blog entry about a Millers Falls No. 5 that Kuc restored. Last week he loaned me a Millers Falls 2A for evaluation. I was so blown away by the tool, I had to show off some photos here on the blog. And I also decided to break the color barrier to do it.

And I wasn't the only one who was impressed. This drill was sitting on my desk a few days ago when Publisher Steve Shanesy stopped by. He picked up the hand drill and had a confused look on his face.

"Did Millers Falls start making these again?" he asked. "This is incredible."

Then Steve did what I did when I got the drill: He looked at the knurling on the chuck. I have a beloved 2A that I use all the time in my work and I thought my drill was minty. Apparently I don't know minty. The chuck on Wiktor's drill looks like it should still be covered in lubricant from the factory floor. It's just that perfect.

The entire frame has been repainted and baked. Not a flake or worn spot can be found. The wooden parts have been replaced with new turned parts – plus new ferrules. The only evidence I can find on this drill that it is not 5 minutes old (instead of 40+ years old) is that the drive gear has the slightest evidence that it was once pockmarked by rust. The rust is gone, but the tiny pits remain, if you look close enough.

In use, the thing is as good as it looks. All the gears mesh tightly and the crank handle spins with very little effort thanks to the thorough de-gunking from Kuc.

Of course, there is an ethical issue here to be debated. When I posted my last blog entry I received a fair number of private e-mails from people who were worried that restoration work like this could easily get out of hand. That anything other than a gentle cleaning ruins a tool's status with collectors. And even if it were a user tool in question, one should only do what it takes to get the tool running again. Removing the patina of use erases the tool's beauty and the evidence of the craftsmen who used it before.

These are good points that should be debated. Here's my take: I see these drills at every tools sale and flea market I haunt. They show up on eBay like clockwork. As far as I know there are enough of these drills for 100 museums dedicated to the great hand drills of Millers Falls.

Even someone with Kuc's work ethic shouldn't be able to deplete our supply of Millers Falls drills.

And Kuc is providing a service that might not be obvious. I love old tools and their patina, but there are lots of customers who will buy only new tools. I once spent a half hour begging a guy to buy an old brace instead of a new one. No matter how excellent (and inexpensive) the old ones were, he had to buy new. And this guy isn't alone.

So if you like old tools and want a vintage hand drill, here's what you should do: Visit OldToolHeaven.com – the best site for researching Millers Falls products. Pick out a few of the drills you like and start haunting the flea markets and online auction sites. I guarantee you'll find a decent drill for about $25 that will work with little or no restoration work on your part.

Or, if you like new and shiny, then visit WKTools.com and browse through his selection. Kuc has excellent taste in drills; I didn't see any of the low-rent hand drills that were intended for light-duty on his site. Just the premium iron.

— Christopher Schwarz

Veritas has just released its much-awaited Side Rabbet Plane (at a special introductory price) and Veritas was generous enough to permit me to test-drive it here in our workshop.

Though I still am getting comfortable with the tool, below are my initial impressions after trimming out about a dozen grooves and rabbets this week.

About Side Rabbet Planes
Side-rabbet planes are specialty tools that belong in the family of joinery planes. They are used to clean up and widen the difficult-to-trim walls of rabbets, grooves and dados. To be honest, some craftsmen don't use these planes at all. Instead of trimming a dado wider, they will trim the mating panel instead. Both perspectives work.
 
There are two kinds of metal-bodied side-rabbet planes (and there are wooden ones as well). The Stanley Nos. 98 and 99 have a right-hand version and a left-hand version so you can work with the grain in grooves in rabbets. The other format is to combine both cutters into one tool. Stanley did that in its No. 79 (with mixed results in my book). And the English Preston version (and later Record version) got it right.

Lie-Nielsen makes versions similar to the Stanley, but in bronze. I've used them and they work quite well.

Veritas Specifications
The Veritas Side Rabbet Plane is similar to the Preston plane: One cutter is on top. One is below. A handle is in the middle. Veritas, as always, has made improvements to the design that are beyond the "socks on a squirrel" variety.

The sleek handle – which reminds me of a beetle's back – pivots up and down depending on which cutter you are using. The handle is spring-loaded and doesn't slip during use – which is saying something because you have to apply significant hand pressure to these tools in use.

The handle is comfortable. It burrows into your palm without poking you.

The other major advancement for the user is the irons. Veritas has lapped the flat faces of these O1 (high-carbon) steel irons so sharpening them up takes only minutes. And when it comes to skew-cutting planes this is critical. A small sharpening error with a skew plane and the tool won't function correctly.

The other thing to note about the tool is its depth stop, which locks quickly and squarely (thanks to some clever machining) in either direction. You also can remove the toe piece of the tool with a screwdriver so you can work into the corners of stopped rabbets, grooves and dados.

In putting the tool to use, I was impressed (as always) with the irons and how easy they took an edge. Sharpening them without a jig is fairly simple work because the bevels are quite large and register firmly on a sharpening stone.

The only modification I'd recommend to the irons is to relieve the acute corner of each iron as it will dig in a little deeply in use (and will get worn away anyway). Veritas recommends this in the manual, and it is a two-minute job with a file. Be careful not to go too far – the point needs to extend beyond the sole a tad.

The real skill to learn with this plane is starting the tool. All the varieties of this tool have a small nose that you have to register against the sidewall of the joint you are going to trim. So it takes a steady hand to start a clean cut. Once you begin, the tool is easy to manage in the cut. The Veritas works in cuts up to 1/2" deep.

Trimming the long grain of grooves and rabbets is easier than trimming the end grain in dados, so start with the easy stuff first. This style of tool isn't hard to use, but I wouldn't practice on a live project piece.

The Veritas Side Rabbet plane costs $139, but it will be offered at a special introductory price of $119. You can order one through this link.

— Christopher Schwarz

Good news: One of the best books on making chairs is now back in print and available at a reasonable price.

"The Chairmaker's Workshop" by Drew Langsner has been selling for ghastly prices ($200 or more) on the secondary market ever since the original publisher allowed this book to lapse out of print.

"The Chairmaker's Workshop" is a must-have 304-page book for anyone who wants to build Windsor or post-and-rung style chairs. Langsner, who runs The Country Workshops school in Marshall, N.C., has done an outstanding job of collecting his decades of chair-building experience into one book.

My personal copy is dog-eared and coffee stained. Some of the chapters I read more than 10 times as I made my first forays into building stick Windsor chairs. Without this book (and a couple classes), I'm not sure I would have had the confidence to build a chair on my own.

There are great chapters on setting up your tools (or making your own), setting up shop, processing wood and shaping it using traditional methods. For me, the heart of the book is the plans and instructions Langser offers for the 11 chairs featured in the book.

So once you pick out a form that you are interested in, you can fully explore how that form is built and learn all the skills particular to a Windsor chair or a post-and-rung chair (they're very different forms).

This book is clearly a labor of love. Every single page is packed with detail, the kind that comes from personal experience. There are hundreds of line drawings and photographs of every step in the process.

Unlike the original edition, this one is made using a "print on demand" process. The paper is not as glossy, and all the photos are in black and white (the original had both color and black-and-white photos). Langsner also noted that he updated some of the photos and drawings and made some necessary corrections.

To help promote the book, Langsner is also giving away a package of enlarged plans for all 11 chairs (which normally sells for $16.95) to everyone who buys "The Chairmaker's Workshop." This offer is only while supplies last.

Langsner sells "The Chairmaker's Workshop" directly for $50 plus shipping and handling. You can get more information on the book through the school's web site countryworkshops.org or you can order it by calling 828-656-2280.

Be warned: Chairmaking books are tricky. They go in and out of print worse than any other kind of woodworking book out there (just try to find a copy of Michael Dunbar's book on Windsor chairs). If you think you'll ever want to get into chairbuilding, secure your copy now for that day.

— Christopher Schwarz