We again have the voices of first rate masters at our sides. - Roy Underhill, from his Introduction 08/26/2010   There are a lot of good books on woodworking out there. Some old some new. After the success last year of The Joiner and Cabinet Maker I realized that it would be fun to reprint other books in my collection that deserve a wider audience and are not generally available. Paul Hasluck's "Carpentry and Joinery Illustrated" is the finest book ever written on architectural woodworking. Written in 1907, the height of fancy house building, it contains 1800 drawings and detailed instructions on everything house related. From step by step instructions on laying out a simple sash window on a story stick to making single, double, and triple hung windows, wainscoting, doors of all complexity. This is a book designed to teach a turn of the century joiner how to master the nuances of the craft. I cannot imagine anyone who is serious about traditional home building, either as a restorer, architectural woodworker, or architect not having this book. We are very proud to bring it back in a soft cover edition. As a real bonus my friend Roy Underhill graciously volunteered to write a new introduction for the book. The book has over 1800 engraving and the original had a dozen colored plates which sadly we could not afford to reproduce in color without making the book prohibitively expensive. However thanks to the miracle of the Internet we are posting a PDF of the color plates HERE. This will also give you a flavor of some of the complexity and general wonderfulness of the detailed illustrations that are all over the book. For a snippet of the contents click here. We should have copies in a couple of weeks - you can pre-order the book here. About the cover. Some folks think that a facsimile should also reproduce the original cover. I have no objection to this but think it depends on the context. The original cover for this book was brown, not fancy, and embossed. The design just doesn't work in the glossy context of a modern cover. The other thing is that this book is relevant and important now and it's not supposed to be an historic relic. Note: This book will be the first publication of our new library imprint "Brooklyn Tool And Craft Books" this year we will also have other titles out including Bernard Jones's "The Complete Woodworker" - which is one of the best books on learning hand tool usage ever and is no longer in print. Tags: Product News, Sales, and Promotions, Woodworking Tools and Techniques, Historical Subjects Comments: 5 A History of Norris Plane Quality 08/24/2010   Mention "Norris Plane" to anyone who reads about woodworking these days and you get one of two reactions. One: Mist appears in their eyes or two: you get a comment that they are no better than a good Lie-Nielsen plane. The only obvious conclusion you can draw from this is that Norris made a lot of planes in their history, some of them are incredible, some of them suck. Norris stopped making dovetailed planes in the mid 1940's, they sort of survived WW2 only to finally stop making planes sometime in the late 40's or 50's depending on who you ask. For modern woodworkers starting in the 1950's a used Norris was the Rolls Royce of planes and dovetailed samples of these planes fetched more money than their main competitors, Spiers or Mathieson. The main reason for the superiority of Norris is two fold: In 1913 Norris introduced an adjuster which moved them from a humdrum planemaker to the only infill planemaker making a fair number of planes in the 20th century. In general their planes are a generation newer than Spiers or Mathieson and have seen less wear and are simply not worn out. In addition, with the adjuster, Norris realized that there was no business trying to compete with Stanley type planes (or wooden planes) as Spiers tried too, and Norris's efforts were spent going higher and higher end. In the 1970's a nice rosewood dovetailed Norris smooth plane went for about 200-300 dollars. Then in the 1980's Fine Woodworking magazine wrote about the "Rolls Royce" of planes and prices sky-rocked. With the arrival of the Internet and Ebay anything with a Norris name on it sold for more money than anyone thought possible. Here's the point. Not all Norris planes are created equal. Illustrated from left to right are four Norris smooth planes. From the left is the oldest of the lot, a no. 114 - in beat up shape. The 114 pre-dates the known Norris catalogs of the early 20th century, is from a casting, with poorly done infill, and was clearly a low end price conscious model. It is no better than a poorly made sample from any late 19th century infill maker. Next up is a World War one vintage A51 plane from a casting. It's not really even an infill - the iron rests on a cast bed, not wood. I wrote about this plane previously. It dates from the transition time, just before Norris went up-market. Then comes a 50G. This is a later plane. From the 1920's Norris's golden ago. It get confused with the Norris 17A which is also a cast gun-metal body - but the latter has a rosewood infill. The 50G is basically a bronze version of the A51 except in a coffin shaped version, with the same weakness, and it works well and collectors have made the price go fairly high up. But they don't work nearly as well as a similar vintage coffin shaped dovetail smoother with a Rosewood infill. This brings us to the last plane in this line-up. The Norris A5 in good or better condition is an awesome tool and a main source of the Norris reputation. In general their adjusters are worn and have a lot of play in them. This isn't a problem in use. According to an interview with a man who apprenticed at Norris in the 1940's, making A5's was the biggest part of the production. The most common size has a 2 1/4" iron. The infill is Brazilian Rosewood, and the plane body is dovetailed steel. After WWII Norris stopped dovetailing the bodies, stopped using rosewood, and the post war A5 can work well, but nowhere near as well, as the pre-war version (there are exceptions, my post-war 17 1/2" panel plan is awesome in use). Postwar Norris planes are much less desired by collectors, much less in demand, and sell for far less than the prewar versions. In the 1970's they were very, very inexpensive on the used tool market. Anyway if you are in the market for an infill plane don't just buy something because the dealer days it's a Norris. Make sure you are getting a model that is known for performance and you aren't just paying for the name. Note: Before you email saying that your post war Norris is amazing or that your LN out performs a pre-war A5 remember I am discussing general trends and your mileage may vary. Most of my data comes from a big trial I did many many years ago where Maurice Fraser, myself, and a few other people rounded up every model of every Norris we could find, sharpened them up, and carefully compared their performance. Finally if you are just testing newly sharpened planes just about any plane will work well. The real test of infills and why they are treasured by a lot of craftsman is what happens to performance as the blade dulls (test it out and see). For a reprint of several Norris catalogs and short history, and a gallery of color photographs of various Norris's in my collection click here. Tags: Historical Subjects Comments: 0 Festool Introduces Two New Vacs (replacing the CT 22 and 33) 08/19/2010   In the old days all a shop vac had to do was suck. And we were grateful for that. However times have changed and we expect more from a shop vacuum. While a stationary dust collection system is very useful in a large shop, for portable machines, for a smaller shop, and for working on-site a good vacuum is essential. The core of the Festool system are the vacuums. There are 4 of them ( click here for details. Finally, after years of the great service Festool has replaced the fabulous CT-22 and CT -33 models with two new models available starting October first. The new CT 36 is shown above and is identical to the new smaller CT 26 except for bag size. As before we expect most people to get the smaller, less expensive 26, although for a Kapex or Router the larger machine might be more appropriate. (You can pre-order anytime and there is a chance that the release date will be moved up). The CT 22 and CT 33 were the best, quietest, HEPA filtered, easy to use vacuums on the market and the new vacs just build on their success. New features to look out for: Bigger bags; more capacity; bags that can be filled further without clogging or reducing efficiency; a built in hose garage; better wheels; more power; bag change is easier. The list goes on. Of course supplies such as bags for the old vacuums are still available, and the two smaller vacs, the Mini and Midi are still going strong. All the package discounts that you got when you buy a tool with a 22 or 33 have been switched to the new vacuums. Just because we have newer models that do more, it doesn't take away from how great the old vacs were. The 33 is a little less expensive than the 36, and if you already have a 33 and you want another, you may not want to stock two kinds of bags. So please consider the CT 33, we have a couple left in stock (the CT 22's are all gone). Please call me at 800-426-4613 x 118 or me if you have any questions. Click here for more details on the new vacuums and to pre-order. Tags: Product News, Sales, and Promotions Comments: 0 WIA I Need To Borrow A Bench 08/18/2010   As in the past 2 years Tools For Working Wood / Gramercy Tools will be at Woodworking in American on September 30th - Oct 2 2010. However previously we drove from New York laden with my four and a half foot folding workbench. This year we are flying in and we can't bring that bench. Unfortunately the bench is just a little too long to fit on a four foot pallet. So I need a favor!!! Is anyone local to Cincinnati in a position to loan us a bench for a couple of days during the show? Our needs are simple: Shorter is better. Anything longer than six or seven feet will be hard to transport and be a little big in the booth. We need one face vice to allow testing of saws for mortising and maybe dovetailing. It needs a couple of 3/4" hole for holdfasts (we are happy to supply the holdfasts if you don't have any). Please drop me an email if you can help, it will be extremely appreciated. thanks, joel Tags: Product News, Sales, and Promotions Comments: 1 Workbench Madness 08/12/2010   Between Peter Follansbee and Chris Schwarz and comments from all over there has been a plethora of posts on early workbench design. Specifically Chris wants everyone to know about the Bench screw which Moxon shows on his workbench, and Peter wants everyone to know that while the bench screw is a good idea the double screw Moxon shows on the right hand side isn't necessarily the cat's pajamas. It would go against my basic tendency to have an opinion on everything to not comment. So here goes: 1 - The bench screw, drawn in on the left of the bench as part of the crochet is clearly an afterthought. It is engraved OVER the shading of the workbench legs. 2 - The double screw Moxon shows on the right hand side, is clearly not an add- on - it was impractical to erase the original legs on the details on the left but there is no trace of erasure on the right - (which is hard but not impossible in copperplate to do). So it is pretty clear to me that the double screw was part of the original drawing. But it doesn't work mechanically. There is no visible way to attach it as drawn to the workbench, and if it was permanently in place the bench screw and crochet would be totally blocked. So you must reach the conclusion that the actual arrangement of the double screw is more of a creature of illustration than a copy of an existing bench. 3 - Other earlier illustrations sources exist which show a double screw detached and hanging from a hook in the shop. My conclusions from all of this: If you look at the engraving in Siddons (1837 or earlier) which I posted in a blog about hats a large double screw vise is used to clamp wood for jointing. I can't tell you that it's the best way of doing this sort of thing - but there it is. In the earliest workbench illustrations that I know of that are on the web, (German 14th century) the woodworking workbenches look more like a saw bench with splayed legs with only a bunch of stops to keep the wood from moving in any direction during planing. I don't know if this is typical for Europe or just Germany or even just the town which the illustrations originate. And I am not sure of when the change over to a Moxon type bench occurred. The crochet, for all that it's pretty handy as a quick clamp for planing dies out from illustrations as the centuries wear on. In the drawings from Diderot (mid 18th century) the crochet is less hook-like and more of a vertical stop to prevent work being held by holdfasts from slidng around. I have no factual idea why the change occurred but my guess is that as work changed, styles of work changed, and what was considered the best tool changed also. Another thought is that workbench illustrations from before the mid-19th century are few and far between and really we don't have much of an idea if the crochet or the detachable double screw vise really were ubiquitous, just common to certain areas of the trade, or an attempt by Moxon and others to show all possible combinations of work-holding and not just a single sample. This is what historic research is all about. We need more primary sources, more sharp observations, and maybe one day we will have a definitive answer. Another thing to consider is the traditional tail vise which you don't see on these benches, although Roubo illustrates them as a cabinetmaker's bench, but tail vises were popular in Europe in at least starting in the 19th century. We also can't count out the effect of iron vises of the mid 19th century onward. For a patternmaker - one of the most technically demanding woodworking jobs there is, a cast patternamker's vise was a pretty ubiquitous bench fixture from the late nineteen hundreds onward. So while all these wooden vises might be kind of cool don't count out heavy cast iron for high performance. Note: in a shameless product plug I proudly mention that Moxon, Feilivien, Roubo, and most other early workbench illustrations all show holdfasts in use. Tags: Woodworking Tools and Techniques, Historical Subjects Comments: 4 Some Tips On Using Braces Pt. 2: The Quick Brace. 08/10/2010   In part one of brace tips - click here, I explained how to make your brace work for big holes. Now we look at the other extreme. Unfortunately the solution for small bits isn't as easy to do. For holes from 1/4" through 2" in diameter a brace was the hand tool of choice (although Jennings augur bits were made as small as 3/16"). For smaller sizes under a 1/4" egg beater style hand drills were usually used. With a small brace bits - say 1/4" - 1/2" you don't really need a lot of power but running the handle round and round in the 10" diameter circle of a typical brace is slow. Our ancestors wanted to speed things up - especially since drilling 1/4 - 1/2" holes in furniture is a very common operation. The solution was a "Quick" brace, which is simply a smaller sweep version of a regular brace, ratchet and all. The Stanley brace shown above at left has only a 3" throw for a total of a 6" sweep, and with it you can drill a lot faster. Interestingly enough, while an English Ultimatum brace is underpowered for drilling large holes, it has a pretty fast stroke for drilling average sized holes found in traditional joinery. If you recall in part one I mentioned that the American braces drove the English off the market - by 1900 houses had plumbing, and early electrical wiring, all which needed pretty big holes drilled, and not too many drawbore joints where you just needed a small 1/4" hole. I wonder if there is a connection? In the picture above the braces are ordered by sweep. Starting from the left is a 6" Stanley quick brace. Then comes an English Ultimatum brace with a 7" sweep, and a very lovely Scotch brace with a 9" sweep. Finally, the standard 10" American braces, which were mostly bought for house building not furniture. If you come across a 6" quick brace, grab it!!! Tags: Woodworking Tools and Techniques Comments: 3 Some Tips On Using Braces Pt 1: Ratcheting for more leverage 08/05/2010   In the picture I am boring a pretty big hole. Pulling the handle of the brace towards or against me is pretty easy, but rotating the handle from left to right when the handle is far way from me is a different story. With my arm outstretched, moving from left to right, I have no leverage, and very little strength. On a small hole this isn't a big deal, but I struggle with larger diameters. The solution, with a common American ratcheting brace, is to use the ratchet. Instead of trying to move the handle in complete circles and have no power for the left to right parts of the stroke, I just ratchet the brace forward and back, on the part of the stroke where I have the most arm strength. Drilling a big wide hole becomes pretty darn easy and quick. I think this is one reason why American style ratcheting braces became, in the late 19th century, so popular worldwide and drove the English ultimatum brace out of production before World War One. In the picture the green lines show the back and forth part of the powerful part of the stroke where I am ratcheting away, and the red line shows where you have very, very little arm strength by comparison. Tags: Woodworking Tools and Techniques Comments: 2 My Summer Vacation 08/02/2010 A Trip to New Jersey To Learn About Tools Chris Schwarz went off to England and France this summer and saw some tools. I went to New Jersey. Rare books rooms are different than regular libraries' reading rooms. They are the holy of holies of the printed word where the most valuable and fragile possessions of a library collection are studied. At Princeton University, the rare book room is segregated from the rest of the library, It's fairly small, but the room is windowed, airy, and comfortable. A librarian on constant duty sits at a desk in the front of the room. The librarians are deeply concerned with making sure the collection stays put, is treated well, and isn't damaged. Before I was allowed in, I needed to sign in, get a badge, request what I want to see, and then put all my stuff I brought, including my notebook, in the closet. After all that, I had to wash my hands. Only then could I go into the rare book reading room. I was ushered to an oak desk with a green table light, and most important for scholarship, a comfy chair. To prevent ink spills, smudges, and absent-minded scholars indelibly scrawling "So true! So true!" in the margins of a four hundred year old book, pens of any kind are forbidden. The reading room does supply paper and pencils, though - presumably because pencil can be erased. The seats were full of people sitting and reading, occasionally writing notes on the supplied paper or typing something on laptop computers. This is where scholarship finds its roots - original sources. I had traveled to see a tool catalog from 1869. The curator thought Princeton had one of perhaps two surviving copies; the other one, if it exists, is in a collection in Europe. The catalog consists of two items and after a short wait, the book with the plate descriptions was brought to me and set up on wedges so that it could lie open enough to read without straining the binding. The plate of the catalog are separate and are about 18" x 24" and so big they were just laid flat on the table. Most of the time, when I see a rare book for work I am doing, the experience is anticlimactic. Even when it's fascinating, informative, and new to me, it's still a book and doesn't appreciate the 3 hours I spent coming to visit it. This catalog was different. I was stunned. I have never seen a catalog so beautiful and impressive. The Handbook of the Tools of Arts and Industry: For the Use of Technical Schools, Railroad Companies, and Navigation was published in 1869. The company that published the catalog, Franz Freiherr von Wertheim, was based in Vienna, but the catalog is in French. This is because it isn't a typical catalog for local hardware stores. The plates were printed big, and the paper is heavy and high quality, for display originally at Paris Exposition of 1867. There about 45 plates, of which about half are in delicious, detailed, lithographed color. The display of tools shown above is the only double sized plate and it is incredible in it's level of detail. The company won early awards in steel manufacture which is probably reflected by the large number of blades in the center of the display. Aside from those blades, many pages of the catalog are given over to various edge tools, including turning tools of a very specialist nature which the company presumably made. However, overall the tools shown throughout the catalog seem solidly mid-tier, neither top-of-the-line nor cheap, and in a wide range, including some English and American tools with the majority Continental. All of these factors suggest that while Wertheim did manufacturer edge tools, it was a large company and the catalog represents a division that mostly functioned as a distributor of tools, rather than a manufacturer. Nineteenth century color tool catalogs are rare. I only know of two others (and one off those was hand colored). This Wertheim catalog is in wonderful shape, and its color and level of detail are just awesome. However, what I really took away with me is information about the tools themselves. There were a couple of tools in the catalog that stumped me - I am not sure of what they are. I need to do some more translating of the book of descriptions. And there were several tools that have completely disappeared and are not even listed in Salaman's Dictionary of Woodworking Tools. I found a new style of a kind of lock mortise chisel that might be easier use for leveling the bottom of mortises, a couple of very interesting lathe tools, and a few gadgets that all bear further research. I think you will be seeing new tools informed by the catalog in the coming years. In addition there were tons of plane profiles that I haven't seen in other catalogs and I think really just reflect the fancier furniture styles of the continent. While the catalog does contain a foot powered hand mortising machine and a treadle table saw, there is a stress on hand tools, many highly specific for production work that by this time have disappeared from American and English catalogs. A contemporary American tool catalog would have been filled mostly with stationary, cast iron machines that this catalog doesn't contain. It could be that there was no demand for their target audience, as specified by the title of the catalog, but in general the catalog seems twenty or thirty years behind what the American were selling. There is a lot to be studied and learned here. I was allowed to photograph the catalog, which I did, but as a condition of the permission I am not allowed to publish the pictures, which is why I haven't included any here. I did ask about getting the catalog reprinted, or getting it scanned for an electronic version. This would be absolutely wonderful and I am hoping it happens soon. I would also like to thank Julie Mellby, the librarian of the Graphic Arts Library, who was responsible for acquiring the catalog, for being so helpful and welcoming to me. I learned about the catalog from my friend Jeff Peachy, who pointed me in the direction of the Graphic Arts Blog at Princeton. For more information you can read the entry on the tools here, and it is where the plates shown in this blog entry come from. My next step in all of this is to digest the information and look up some stuff, especially on early turning tools. Then comes the fun part, making some prototype tools and seeing if they work, or if they vanished because they didn't really work, or maybe because the work they were used for stopped being commercially important. Tags: Woodworking Tools and Techniques, Historical Subjects Comments: 5 Brooklyn Tool & Craft Shellac 07/27/2010   After the fiasco last year with shellac that would not dissolve we changed our packaging and things are much better. However we are still tossing some bags of shellac over the summer - because we don't have cold storage. We do test what we have, and I haven't heard any complaints lately but we are out of stock on Blond and Super Blond and we won't get more of that until the fall when it's cooler. The best place to get flake shellac right now might be at along with a few other dealers. We have introduced a new brand Brooklyn Tool & Craft for all our products we regularly wholesale and Woodcraft is our largest shellac retailer. As we run out of shellac we will be restocking with BT&C Tiger flakes, which, along with the rest of the BT&C shellac have our latest innovations on preserving shelf life of the flakes. We are using better bags and dessicants to help with longevity. Also, most importantly, our shellac is shipped from either Germany or India is refrigerated containers. It seems to work, but experiments and improvements will continue. Woodcraft's main warehouse is storing the shellac in an air conditioned room. Incidentally, waxed shellac seems to last forever in the bag. Dewaxed shellac, which is what we sell, is far more sensitive to moisture. A little clumping doesn't seem to be a problem but at some point your shellac won't dissolve. To aid dissolving the flakes always break them up to smaller bits. Right now I can't tell you any meaningful way to distinguish between a clump of shellac that when broken up won't dissolve versus a clump of shellac that when broken up will dissolve. We are running experiments to understand this better. Which brings me to our alcohol. The only reason we added alcohol to the BT&C lineup is to complete the line of products. All we really wanted to do was offer an anhydrous denatured alcohol. Anhydrous - or water free alcohol dissolves the shellac marginally faster, leaves a harder finish, and dries faster. However when we started doing tests we also realized that other alcohols for shellac on the market are a mixture of (mostly)Ethanol, Methanol, Isopropal alcohol, along with a denaturant. The latter is a trace chemical so that if you drink the stuff you get sick and that lowers the tax rate on the stuff. However if your alcohol contains anything other than Ethanol the denaturant is the least of your problems. Drinking any methanol can be deadly and breathing the fumes isn't a great idea. Remember however for all alcohol products to wear gloves, avoid breathing the vapor, and work in a well ventilated area. (see the MSDS label for more information) In the literature we could find on alcohol for shellac, pure denatured ethanol of at least 190 proof was recommended. When we discussed this with our alcohol supplier they gave us a sample of what they call 200 proof denatured, anhydrous ethanol. Actually it has a 1/2 percent of denaturant in it so technically it's 199 proof but it's called 200 proof. Anyway, I figured it would be a wash in performance but worth selling just to get rid of the 5 or 10 percent of methanol that most denatured alcohols contain. BUT on tests we were shocked to discover that the literature is right!!!! Speed of dissolve was about the same but the finish dried harder, dried faster, had a better sheen, and seemed "less fussy". So it was a no-brainer to offer it. I know a lot of you will say that since our quarts of alcohol are too expensive compared to a gallon from the store - which seems to work fine - there is no point in using pure ethanol. All I suggest is that if you get a chance you should try it. Click here. In other news another great new product line for BT&C will be reprinting some very valuable classic texts on woodworking. More on that next time.... Tags: Product News, Sales, and Promotions Comments: 4

Subscribe via RSS 08/26/2010 We again have the voices of first rate masters at our sides. - Roy Underhill, from his Introduction 08/24/2010 A History of Norris Plane Quality 08/19/2010 Festool Introduces Two New Vacs (replacing the CT 22 and 33) 08/18/2010 WIA I Need To Borrow A Bench 08/12/2010 Workbench Madness 08/10/2010 Some Tips On Using Braces Pt. 2: The Quick Brace. 08/05/2010 Some Tips On Using Braces Pt 1: Ratcheting for more leverage 08/02/2010 My Summer Vacation 07/27/2010 Brooklyn Tool & Craft Shellac 07/22/2010 News from Brooklyn 06/29/2010 Feel The Burr 06/17/2010 Thomas Lie-Nielsen - When I Grow Up 06/15/2010 Christopher Schwarz - When I Grow Up 06/10/2010 Jameel Abraham - When I Grow Up 06/08/2010 Asa Christiana - When I Grow Up 06/04/2010 Peter Follansbee - When I Grow Up 06/02/2010 Ron Hock - When I Grow Up 05/30/2010 Workbench Contest - Answers - And The Winner is.... 05/27/2010 November or March In New York - maybe 05/24/2010 Match That Workbench Contest Older Entries... Some Interesting Woodworking Blogs Adam Cherubini Cornish Workshop Tom Fidgen Full Chisel Blog Heartwood Hock Tools - The Sharpening Blog Norse Woodsmith Jeff Peachy (book conservation) Konrad Sauer Another Chris Schwarz Blog Robin Wood Woodcraft Toolemera Blog UnpluggedShop.com - Hand Tool News The Village Carpenter Mike Wenzloff's Blog The Woodshop Bug Chris Schwarz Some Woodworking Forums Family Woodworking Knots Saw Mill Creek Wood Central WoodNet Woodwork Forums (Australia) UK Workshop

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