Woodwright Workout

Seeing as I am an overambitious, yet obessively compulsive, woodworker I recently found myself in an uphill battle with a massive slab of oak. The bench in the shop at work has been used and abused for as long as I have been alive. Word on the street is that it hasn't even been flattened since it was first built...so I took the liberty of flattening it myself.

20+ years of grime, sweat, and I am pretty sure some blood.

I started going transversely with the grain with a flat iron and things were going well, that was until I reached the far left hand side of the bench, which has been used as the sharpening station for quite a while. All that oil, metal particles, sandpaper grit, rust, and god knows what else really sunk into the wood because after five strokes my iron was dull as a doorknob.

Windows open with a nice cooling breeze, I can think of a lot worse things to be doing.

Switching to a heavily chambered iron sped things up considerably, and even when the iron dulled, the heavy chamber helped to muscle through with the initial planing. After one pass I switched to 45 degrees with the grain, pushing the plane body at a skewed angle helped slice through some of the rough grain and knots.

Getting a bit closer, you can see the scalloped track marks from the last flattening.

I finished up going with the grain (as best I could) and planing the front of the bench to be square with the top. Overall it was an exhausting project...most people aren't stupid enough to flatten a knotty, old, 16 FOOT!!! workbench their first time around the block, but I am just the right kind of stupid.

There is still plenty of character in this bench, but now you can use it reliably to try boards!

So if you are ever looking for a new workout routine, I would recommend going into the massive workbench flattening business.

My workhorse plane, I might follow up with a longer jointer in the future, but I am not sure it is necessary.

PS. I am just being melodramatic...it really only took about two hours and one sweaty t-shirt, and that included re-honing my iron twice.

Biddle?

Leave it to the 17th century to vernacularize (new word?) thatching tools. During my research of what we needed to thatch one of the houses in the village I first found that a biddle was a thatching ladder that hooks into the roof. This was all well and good...that was until I found that certain groups of people also called the paddle used for beating the thatch a biddle. Most of you will know this tool as a Legget, if you know it at all. Further still I have seen one source referring to this paddle as a Dutchman, referring to the Netherlandic (another new word?) pattern used.

This is half the problem doing research on work-ways in the period. Everyone calls similar items by different names, and even worse, different items by similar names. If that isn't enough, even when you know the name for something you might not spell it the same as they did back in the day.

For instance, I have seen these thatching paddles called: paddles, battles, liggets, dressers, baddles, biddles, leggets, beetles, bats, and...yes...even Dutchman. On a side note, beetles are also large wooden mallets used for splitting pale and persuading timbers, leading to an even more convoluted set of tool terms.

This is all academic minutiae of coarse and the only thing that matters is that leggets are very real things, even if they do exist in two places at one time. On to the build!

To start off, I found a white oak crook with just the right proportions and angles. Five minutes at the shaving mare and I had a very respectable looking handle. I also took a nice clear pine log (possibly Eastern White, but I can't be sure) and split it up to make a rough bolt. Five more minutes with a hatchet and I had a reasonably flat and square hewn board. Good enough for me!

The blank pieces before any joinery. Saw, hatchet, and draw knife.

The geometry of a legget is pretty simple, step off the board into equal segments, scribe parallel lines, and then mark the end grain with 45 degree angles. Next it was as simple as letting in the lines with a rip saw and paring the waste using a sharp chisel. I used a flat sided firmer chisel just to see if I could use the tools a farmer-carpenter might have available, but a bevel edged paring chisel would have made the whole thing a breeze.

Half way done, using my new carpenters bench...but that is a different story

After establishing the ribs on the front, I flipped the board over and scribed the handle onto the back to make a socket. This is real rough work...but also real precise work. It needs to fit as snug as possible so it stays tight after lots of abuse, but it is a tricky irregular notch, so there is room for some wiggle, I just used my judgement and a small 3/4" chisel.

The X was scribed on the back to find the center. The handle was placed by eye.

Finally was clenching the paddle onto the handle. I have the distinct advantage of working with two great blacksmiths, so I had hand made wrought iron nails to use. If you wanted to do something like this, or have another project in mind, the museum's blacksmith Mattheo does some great commission work, so check out his shop!

The handle and paddle joined.

I used four long nails that I clenched in alternating directions which will hopefully lend strength to the connection. The fifth nail was driven at a slight angle into the handle. Don't ask me why I did this...it just seemed like a good idea at the time.

Some selective carving was done to allow for flat faces for the nail heads.

We only have two sizes of wimble and bits at the museum, nail and spike. Turns out the nail bit is slightly larger than the nails, as it should be when installing pale and clapboards, but it was a little looser than I would have liked on this project. Luckily I alternated the holes, and these wrought iron nails are great for clenching, so I feel like I got a nice strong connection.

This tool has a simplistic beauty that is unmistakable.

By May this legget should have one thatched roof and several cap repairs under its belt, so I will have to give a status report then. Overall I am really happy with the result, it feels super stable, has a great sweep to the handle, and is probably the most work-manly thing I have made to date. Total build time was about 4 hours from log to legget.

Did the settlers care about ergonomics, because this legget has it in spades!

A Silk Hat

A very talented carpenter that I worked with at my previous job had a saying that he liked to use on not-so-high end projects:

"If you put a silk hat on a pig, it's still a pig."

I always enjoyed this statement, and was reminded of it when I was working on my hook knife recently. As I have touched upon previously I have become addicted to spoon carving. It is a maddeningly complex skill set that at first glance appears to be stupid simple. I bought the most inexpensive set of knives I could find because I am cheap (or poor). The straight knife I got works like a champ but the hook knife cuts like, for the sake of my anecdote, a pig.

Original profile with hard, blunt bevels.

Seeing as I am an obsessively compulsive nut bag I took it upon myself to see if I could make a silk hat, and turn this $17 knife cut like an $80 knife. First I took a file to the blade...this was a bad idea and ruined a perfectly good 8" mill file (I guess these knives are hardened fairly well). So my second attempt took me to the sandstone grinding wheel I have at work. This was really slow, but very effective.

Next was sanding, sanding, and more sanding. I started at 120 grit, and then progressed up through 220, 320, 400, 600, and 1000 (did I mention how compulsive I am?). I used a block of wood on the back of the knife, and then wrapped the sandpaper around a dowel for the inside surface. Finally, I stroped with a little bit of rouge polish and leather mounted on a block of wood to normalize and polish the edge.

Polishing the blade really makes the maker's mark pop.

I should have sanded more, if you can believe it, but the edge is fantastic. I might do some work to make the whole surface polished like the really nice hook knives I have seen from makers like Pinewood Forge, Hans Karlsson, and Svante Djarv. It was a lot of work, about a weeks worth of lunch breaks, but it did greatly improve the overall smoothness of cut and sharpness of the knife. 

More polishing on the outside might cause less friction in the cut.

You can see that I ground into the ferrul by accident while re profiling on the sandstone...my OCD is getting the better of me and I might re-helve this knife with some apple, or beech, oooo or boxwood, or...calm down Jason, you have a problem.

Rouded profile makes for cleaner cuts

If you have time, or have already purchased this knife and are unhappy with its performance, I would recommend re-profiling, but if you have money just buy a high end knife. I have tried several of the knife makers I mentioned above thanks to Peter Follansbee, and I can say without a doubt my re-profiled knife is still a pig

Remember, you can't polish a piece of sh...or maybe you can.

Biddle

We are ramping up to thatch the new frame in the village, and to prepare I have been diligently researching the period tools necessary for traditional thatching. We will be thatching in the public eye, so authenticity is an absolute must. So first on the docket is the precursor (at least in my humble opinion) to the modern hook ladder used for slate roofing, the biddle.

Basically, a biddle is a short ladder with some iron hooks that pierce through the thatch and hook onto the lath on the roof. This gives a nice versatile working platform that you can move around at your leisure. I started with a bow of Sassafrass and hewed it on four sides. Working such a small piece of wood was a nice change of pace. I didn't even score to my line, just started hewing with a hatchet, and within the hour I had a relatively squarish timber.

I love the sweet smell of Sassafras while it is being worked

Next, I bored holes through the piece. I think I did every 12", but it is more important to be consistent than to hit an exact number. These holes will accommodate the rungs of the biddle, and are about 7/8" diameter. It is best to auger the holes before ripping the stiles apart, that way you don't have to bother with that shop math that always seems to go wrong to line up all the holes.

Two squares keep me boring plumb

Before the comments start flowing in, I know a screw auger is not 17th century accurate, but unlike the Brewster Chair, no one will know I used it because these are through holes. Sometimes efficiency trumps authenticity, especially when no one is the wiser (I think I just blew my cover).

Next was ripping the small timber into stiles. Luckily I learned the Tao of Saw Sharpening from the always helpful Saw Wright, Matt Cianci, so I had a newly sharpened rip saw waiting in the wings.

Using a wedge keeps the piece from pinching

This biddle will be used on roofs up to 30 ft in the air, so I wanted it to be as robust as possible. This lead me to put mortised rails on the top and bottom to hold the whole thing together. I chiseled the mortises with a 3/4" chisel, and cut the tenons to fit.

It is easier to fit the tenon to the chisel, than fit the chisel to the tenon

Keeping with the "I don't want to fall off the roof and die" mentality I also draw bored the mortise and tenons for a nice tight assembly. For the pegs I used bone dry riven white oak and noisily banged it through a dowel plate.

Dog holes in the bench are perfect places for the pins to be blasted through the plate

Remember my note on screw augers above? Yeah...refer to that in regards to dowel plates.

In addition to the draw bores, I also made all of the rungs with stopped shoulders and tiny little wedges to secure them into the stiles. Note to self, there is a reason they didn't wedge ladder rungs...it makes construction about twice as long. Now all I needed was a mallet and earplugs to knock this bad boy together.

Tap, Tap, Tap

I got a little carried away knocking the whole assembly together and it fell right off the bench, but it didn't self destruct, so that is reason to be happy.

It is easy to get giddy when approaching the end of a new, exciting project

The last piece to be dealt with was making the tiniest stupidest through tenons I will probably cut in my life. These were for the iron hooks that our blacksmith made for me. The mortises were 3/16" x 3/4" and went through the whole 3-1/2" piece of Sassafrass, and they had a stepped shoulder to boot.

A tight fit now ensures a tight fit later

Clenching the biddle hooks is pretty much the same as clenching nails...except you use a sledge hammer and swing as hard as you can.

There is a fine line between clenching and splitting with these bad Larrys

Finally, I step back and admire my hard work, not bad if I do say so myself. Total hand tool construction, all the way from felling the tree with an axe. Next on the list of thatching tools is a biddle (that is not a typo...but it IS a story for another time).

I need to get The Boss to take better pictures for me...

17th Century Hatchets

Being that at least half of my carpentry work is done in front of the public in a 17th century context, it is essential that my tools are as historically accurate as possible. The big problem with this ideology is that historical tools from this era are a little bit hard (aka damn near impossible) to come by, and when we do find them, we try to preserve and study them rather than smash them against pieces of wood.

As a work around, the blacksmiths at the museum reprofile modern axes to better impersonate these actual historical artifacts. My new hatchet started its life as a Wetterlings broad axe (that's right, us badass pilgrims use broad axes as hatchets, but I digress).

Stock Wetterlings Short Handled Broad Axe #190

The pattern that my new hatchet is based on is from Martin's Hundred and dated to around 1621. It was found in the ground along with various other tools, most likely buried there to prevent the native populations from repurposing the metal into tools and weapons.

Archeologist's sketches of a Martin's Hundred hatchet

The Wetterlings head is hack sawn away to the same profile as the Martin's hatchet, removing a lot of the weight from behind the eye and reducing the bit length by several inches.

The hacked up head...luckily this was not my job

Next I reground the bit into a nice fair curve, filed it for a convex bevel, sharpened it with whetstones, and stroped with a piece of leather charged with rouge polish. Finally I helved the hatchet with a white oak handle (remember these are English settlers in 1627, they probably don't know the wonderful qualities of Hickory as handle stock).

The finished hatchet. I like a nice healthy fauns foot for power! 

Overall this is a beefy hatchet with one hell of a bite. You can see how thin the historic hatchet is right in front of the eye, but the Wetterlings is quite thick, giving it much more mass. After four hours of trimming lath, I appropriately nicknamed this hatchet "Wrist Breaker."

Check out all that iron in front of the eye.

In order to protect the edge, and lessen the amount of sharpening I need to do, I made a nice wooden blade guard (note that this is not historically based on anything).

An ash blade guard with some hemp rope to hold it on.

Coarse, Medium, and Fine

While hewing some perlins, I noticed the (or at least my) three stages of hewing; coarse, medium, and fine. Pretty cool.

On second thought, maybe I'll move to Finland

In a previous post I said that if my current job didn't work out I was going to move to Germany and become a Bavarian logger. But after perusing the internet I came up with another great video. (Link for phone and tablet users)

I want to join this crew of Finnish carpenters so bad it hurts.I could go on and on about the things I found fantastic about this video, but I will stick to the high notes.

1. Hewing an entire gable end wall before I die MUST happen.
2. I need to start cutting joints with nothing but a hatchet.
3. How cool are pegged floating floors?
4. I am going to Finland to get me one of those sweet axes!

P.S. Seeing as I have crazy O.C.D., I couldn't stop thinking about those great Finnish axes. So I did some research and found that there are pretty much two ways to get your hands on one. The first way - find a friend in Finland and have them go to any flea market and pick up a great vintage Billnas for almost nothing...and then pay a fortune in shipping costs to send it over state-side. The second way is to figure out a way to buy one from John Neeman Tools (see blog post here). It might be easier finding a friend in Finland, and I have a feeling that it would be a lot cheaper too.

P.P.S. I think it is poor blogging etiquette to have the P.S. longer than the blog.

P.P.P.S. Or having three post scripts.

P.P.P.P.S The End

The Sweet Smell of Success

After many broken spoons, and plenty of...explicit words, I finally finished my first spoon. The proportions are a little off, the whole thing twisted like a corkscrew when it dried, and the bowl is a tad bit lop sided, but I feel like the proud parent of an ugly baby.

I chickened out from adding chip carving to the handle.

This spoon is made from a piece of apple wood that was gifted to me from a visitor to the museum. Apple is wonderful to work with as long as it is wet. I treated the spoon with some Walnut Oil which really made the heartwood pop.

I left the knife marks on, I think it gives more character.

I learned a few key things in my quest for a wooden spoon:

1. These little buggers are WAY more complex than they first appear.

2. Don't try for perfection, that is what factories are for.

3. Wood selection is paramount. Fruit and Nut woods are preferred, any sort of ring porous wood is abismal.

4. Consider me addicted.

I really like the side profile.

Onwards and Upwards!

My new mistress, Mary Rose

In the words of Buddy the Elf.

"I'm in love, I'm in love, and I don't care who knows it!!!"

That's right inter-world I have found a new mistress, and her name is Mary Rose. She is from the UK, loves the water, and looks pretty darn good for her age. We met at the museum and it was love at first sight. Before The Boss gets too nervous over my new affair I should mention that Mary is a 500 year old, 700 ton warship that sank over 400 years ago, 1545 to be exact.

Thankfully someone had the good sense to spend an inordinate amount of money excavating the remains of the ship from the bottom of the sea and documented every artifact that was found aboard. As far as I can tell, the Mary Rose is the single best collection of Tudor Era....stuff...that has been discovered in one place.

A second fantastic idea by The Mary Rose Trust was to publish a book covering in detail most of the artifacts found aboard the ship. Before the Mast; Life and Death Aboard the Mary Rose is by far at the top of my recommended reading list...in fact most of my coworkers are probably sick of me with my nose stuck in this book stopping only to show off a new picture, tidbit, or tool that I come across.

This book is far larger than any of my Engineering textbooks....but WAAAAAY better

Of particular interest to me (being a 17th century carpenter philosopher) is the amazing catalog of 16th century tools that were found in and around the ship carpenter's cabin. Rules, planes, chisels, chalk reels, mallets, grinding wheels, braces...I could go on and on. The archaeologist's descriptions and assumptions for some of the artifacts are suspect at best...but their drawings and documentation are top notch.

So if you love historical tool reproductions then stay tuned because I am currently working my way through this book in whatever tickles my fancy. However, if you cant stand historical hand tools and work ways, you should probably find a different blog, because this is totally my jam.

My Fallback Plan

Just in case my life as a 17th century carpenter philosopher doesn't work out, I will definitely try out being a Bavarian woodsman. I found these two short videos during some inter-web wanderings. The first one is just the most ridiculous logging operation I have ever seen, I was slack jawed watching these crazy Germans tossing around their giant logs with nothing more than some elbow grease. Also, the man taking down the log's dimensions wins the best dressed award. (Link for tablet and phone users)

The second video is equally as interesting (same group of woodsman?). There are so many awesome things going on in such a short stretch of time. Flitching with wedges, long mortising axes used for....well everything, the hewing trestles that you can roll logs right onto from the hill, a sweet chalk line/plunger/chalk cup combo, the strange yet awesome scrub plane for the inside of the water trough, and finally the sweet Hersey kiss-esque finial on top of the fountain. (Link for tablet and phone users)

Nature Does it Best

I could have found definitive proof from a 1620s English woodcut of a pitchfork.

I could have designed small yet strong joints that could withstand years of bad weather.

I could have spent the afternoon dressing my stock and fussing to make sure everything fit tight.

Or...I could let nature do its thing, and take care of all the tough stuff for me.

My Mallet is Still Cooler than Yours

Still fightin' words, but once again I am confident that this statement is true...plus I now have two cool mallets that could absolutely beat up yours in a fight. On top of other ridiculous goings on at the museum, I am able to make my own tools in traditional manners. As I was making some gluts out of really nice straight grained hickory I noticed that this was some really choice wood...and I could really use a carpenters mallet.

I did some quick research and found some great wood cuts and engravings, as well as Moxon's description of a carpenters mallet. So based on these overall proportions and shapes I made myself as traditional a mallet as I could (of course beech would have been the ideal choice of wood). I limited myself to only hand tools, and even used a wooden plane to smooth the faces and fair the top curve (a lot tricker than metal planes, but really satisfying). The mortise is not as tapered as I would have liked, so I added a couple pegs to keep things nice and snug.

Heart wood and sap wood are just as useful in Hickory.

So when do we Sharpen?

Today at the museum some of the wood-loving folks (aka wood butchers) and the blacksmiths had The Saw Wright, Matt Cianci, come over and do an all day saw sharpening intensive class. He really knows his stuff and enlightened us all on the basics of taking our old beat down reproduction saws and sharpening them to be...well...better.

Matt has a real great method for teaching novice saw sharpeners and breaking down all the steps into bite sized pieces. He first starts by explaining all the theory and saw tooth geometry. We even made a makeshift easel out of our riving break, "The most sturdy easel I have ever seen" according to Matt.

After the theory, we jumped over to the bench and Matt started on some demonstrations.

No detail is too small when sharpening saws, Matt explains everything.

We set up some "beater plates" and Matt runs through jointing, shaping, and setting. These are steps that are needed to rehab an abused uneven saw plate into a nice usable sharp saw.

"The best six bucks I ever spent" Matt says, as he explains making a rake angle guide.

Peter Follansbee even stopped by for a lesson, he was sick of "buggering up" his saws.

Jointing establishes a nice uniform straight tooth-line, or a bellied tooth-line in some large green crosscut saws. This is almost the most important part of sharpening a saw, without it you will slowly wear the teeth into a wavy, usually convex, mess that can be seen on so many vintage handsaws.

Jointing with "training wheels," we soon ditched the jig and went free hand.

Next comes shaping, where we even out the teeth and establish the basic geometry of the saws. We started on Rip saw teeth, because they are much easier to file...working tooth by tooth, and focusing only on slope and rake.

Doing some practice shaping on the "beater" saw plate. By the way, the Gramercy Saw Vice is incredible.

Matt then explains the many ways that have been used to put set into the teeth. Hammer with setting block, saw wrest, and pliers type saw sets. He shows us his really nice pistol grip saw sets (Stanley 42x) and takes a look over and approves the ones we have for our use at the museum (APEX pattern generics). He shows us the proper use of the pliers sets...which is much easier and faster than I had imagined.

The Stanley 42x is a sweet tool, it clamps the saw plate, and then engages the anvil plunger to induce the set.

We also played around with a saw wrest that Matt spotted hanging over our workbench. He pointed out that most people use this tool incorrectly. The correct use is to place the slot above the gullets, spanning two teeth, and then twisting the wrest so that one tooth is set in one direction while the other tooth is set in the opposite direction. Using this method for set is a lot more uncontrollable than the pliers type sets...but it is an older method...so more research needs to be done to see if this is what we should be using. For the time being we are sticking with pliers sets, just for the ease of use and consistency while refining our sharpening skills.

I had no idea that this tool was a saw wrest, but it is a pretty interesting solution to putting set into a saw.

Time to joint again!...who would have thought that sharpening a saw consisted of so little actual sharpening. At 2:00pm, after properly shaping the teeth, introducing set, and re-jointing the tooth-line, it is finally time to SHARPEN the teeth. Basically you file each gullet until the flats on the top of each tooth (introduced by jointing) disappears.

The teeth aren't perfectly shaped, but you can clearly see the sharpened versus non-sharpened teeth.

The last step is to stone the tooth-line, essentially running a medium grit stone along the side of the teeth, removing any small burs introduced by filing. This step just sweetens up the teeth and makes the saw cut a little bit smoother. And the true test...Matt grabs the first saw finished (courtesy of Ryan) and takes it for a test rip.

This freshly sharpened saw cuts fast and easy into this half dried white oak.

The class was very informative, and I would recommend any class that Matt is teaching. He really knows his stuff, never minds digressing...which is a quite common problem with my type...and has a contagious enthusiasm not just for saws, but for all tools and woodworking.

PS. I put these pictures on my computer and wrote this post as soon as I got home...but somehow Peter Follansbee already beat me to the punch. Well done Mr. Follansbee, well done.

The Schwarz-Follansbee Complex

A few months back Chris Schwarz posted a string of blogs (here, here, and here) about "Roman Style" workbenches. I initially passed them off as a novel form of workbench, and figured it would be interesting to see what he did with his ideas of reviving these early workbench vernacular forms (that's right, I bought a thesaurus).

Pompeii Workbench, circa 50AD

Flash forward to last week and Peter Follansbee tells me that he is making some benches out of the oak flitches we had left over from some band sawing we had done for the "Big Fence" Project. I again thought nothing of what Peter had said...that was until I saw what the benches looked like.

A very familiar looking form

Instantly I thought back to the spindly legged workbenches that Chris had written about with slab tops and holes for holdfasts and planing stops. The two forms, deriving from two seemingly opposite origins, shared a shockingly similar appearance, in fact, they were so similar that I almost grabbed a brace and bit, bored a couple of holes in Peters bench, and took it for a test spin.

Needless to say I did not actually go through with this plan, for starters Peter would not be too happy to have me putting holes in his benches, and secondly I need to do some hardcore research into 17th century work holding and whether or not the "Roman" form was still in use by agricultural societies...like English planters in New England...say around 1627. Off to the archives!

Research will probably look something like this...

PS. I am pretty sure Chris and Peter are in cahoots. Kind of the ebb and flow of the hand tool world. They pretend as though they butt heads, but really they are masterminding the greatest renaissance since....well the renaissance. St. Roy probably has something to do with this as well.