Woodworking Magazine Weblog

As of today, we have made two important changes at Woodworking Magazine: We are now going to publish four issues a year (instead of two), and we are now offering subscriptions by mail.

If you'd like to take a moment here and enter your subscription (four issues for $19.96 in the United States; $24.96 in Canada), you can click here.

Other than that, nothing else is changing about the magazine. And I do mean nothing. We will accept no outside advertising. We will publish the magazine on the same high-quality paper. We will continue to review the materials and equipment that no other magazine seems to discuss. And we will continue to investigate all the methods of working wood by hand and by power.

Even today, while we are frantically trying to answer customer calls and e-mails about the new subscriptions, Senior Editor Bob Lang and I have been working on the side on a technique for Issue 10 – Summer 2008 – that is going to change the way you think about finger joints.

So today, I have a statement, a request and a gift for you. First the statement: Thank you. All of you. If it weren't for the readers of this blog and the letters you have sent to me and my boss, we would not be offering subscriptions today.

Now the request: If you know any woodworking friends who might enjoy the magazine, would you mind dropping them a line? We have a Tell a Friend page that makes it easy – don't worry we won't sell or rent out anyone's e-mail address. Want to send a gift subscription to a fellow woodworker? Click here (Note: Right now this page works for U.S. gifts only. Sorry.)

And the gift: below is the editor's column I wrote for the Spring 2008 issue of Woodworking Magazine – the first issue that will mail to subscribers. I hope you like it.

— Christopher Schwarz

P.S. Several of you have asked about digital subscriptions for the magazine. We'll be experimenting with a pilot program later this year. Details, as always, will be posted here.

The Back Roads Are Better

“The significant problems we face
cannot be solved at the same level
of thinking we were at when
we created them.”
– Albert Einstein, (1879-1955)


The story of the magazine you’re holding begins with a car ride through the back roads of Ohio in 2002 and a small disagreement.

Publisher Steve Shanesy and I were driving to West Virginia to a woodworking show and we were at odds about the route to take. I’d mapped out a path on the interstate, but Steve had other ideas. His finger traced a twisty path on my atlas that relied on small towns and two-lane roads.

This, I thought, was going to be a long trip.

As we forged into the wilds of Ohio, the conversation turned to how frustrating it can be to teach yourself to build furniture. Without formal training, many of us tend to develop our skills to match the project at hand.

For example, if we want to build a dovetailed blanket chest, we decide it’s time to learn to cut dovetails, even if we’ve never picked up a dovetail saw or used a dovetail jig. And so we buy a bunch of tools, chew up a lot of good wood and end up with something that is OK, but took twice as long as it should have.

There are better ways to learn the craft.

First you need to learn how handsaws work, how to pick the right tool and how to hold it. Then you start by sawing a board in half, cutting some tenons and half-lap joints and learning exactly where the kerf of each of your saws will fall so you can split a knife line.

If all those tasks sound difficult, you’ve probably never done them. Cutting simple joints with a sharp saw is easy and satisfying work. You just have to know where to begin. And once you begin in the right place, the path is easy to follow.

It’s like being on an interstate instead of poking through the back woods, I reminded Steve (who smirked at my remark).

As we drove on, we tried to figure out what we could do to help beginning woodworkers learn the craft in an orderly way, and to help intermediate woodworkers fill in the astonishing gaps in their knowledge because they are self-taught. So Steve and I decided to start this magazine. And after more than a year of thinking and plotting, we published our first experimental issue in early 2004 with the help of the entire staff of Popular Woodworking, the magazine that is our day job, for a lack of better words. We published Woodworking Magazine without a dime of marketing money. Without fanfare. Without additional staff. We wanted to see if the woodworking community would support a magazine that had no advertisements, that focused on building important skills, and that featured projects that are highly refined yet simple in their construction.

This is not the way most companies launch a magazine. Usually you start with a bang. You try to grow your circulation to a ridiculous level to get the attention of advertisers. You lose money for a long time in the hopes of it paying off big in the end.

I’m proud to say that Woodworking Magazine started life in 2004 by making a modest amount of money thanks to a passionate group of supporters. And we have continued to make money and grow slowly during the last three years, even though we’ve only been publishing twice a year (another thing that’s never done in this industry).

But now, thanks to you, we are ready to move into the next phase. With this issue, we are now a quarterly magazine, and we are now happy to sell you a subscription (call 800-283-3542 in the United States and Canada or visit our subscription page).

It has been a bit of a twisty path for all of us these last few years, but we’ve ended up in the right place at the right time. It is a lot like that fateful trip I took with Steve in 2002. Despite all our trekking on the back roads, despite all the four-way stops in tiny towns, we made it to our destination in West Virginia and shaved nearly 45 minutes off the time it would have taken us on the interstate.

Steve had been down this road before.

— Christopher Schwarz

In my family we have a saying, "German humor is no laughing matter."

The things that I find hilarious often evoke much eye-rolling around the family dinner table from both the children and my spouse. (Like she should talk. The most hilarious thing in my wife's pantheon of humor is a dog behind the wheel of an automobile.)

So when I point you to Jeff Skiver's blog, I want to warn you first. While I almost soiled myself as I read about his alleged deeds heading up a Weebelo troop, you might just shake your head as you clear the cache and history of your Internet browser.

Skiver wrote a column for the back page of Popular Woodworking's December 2007 issue, and if I had my way, he would own that real estate in our magazine. He's a funny guy, especially for someone in the automotive business, which is generally not fertile ground for anything hilarious (save the AMC Pacer and the Gremlin).

So with that caveat, I encourage you to add the blog "Skiving Off" to your list of woodworking blogs. And do post some comments on his blog so that he feels suitably adored.

— Christopher Schwarz

Our warehouse in Wisconsin reported today that our shipment of Woodworking Magazine hardbound editions have arrived and will ship out immediately. So for all of you who have ordered the book already, you should be receiving it shortly in the mail.

And if you are still considering ordering the book, you should know that we sold out more than half of the press run already and don’t have plans for a second printing. There's no pressure, of course. We’ll sell them all, regardless. Also good to know: Our special offer of free shipping on this book ends on Sept. 21. Until that date, you can order it for $30 from our back issues store. After that, it's $34.95.

In case you missed our announcement about the book, check out the earlier blog entry I posted. I think you’ll find that the printing quality of this book is first-rate. The typography and photo reproduction looks even crisper than the original issues; plus the paper is brighter and the binding is quite secure.

Work has begun on issue nine of Woodworking Magazine. The theme of the issue? Sawing of all sorts (no surprises here). But what might be surprising are the conclusions we’re reaching and some of the tricks we’ve dug up. Not all sawing has to be done with saws….

— Christopher Schwarz

Get Free Shipping if You Order before Sept. 21

Every issue of Woodworking Magazine is designed without an "expiration date" – we strive to make the instructions and projects that we write to be just as good in 20 years as they are today. To ensure the magazine will endure, we've just published a hardbound book containing the first seven issues, including issues that have long been sold out and unavailable.

These are the complete issues, just as they appeared in the magazine, and they are printed on paper that is even heavier and brighter than the originals. The book's 252 pages are bound in red cloth, stamped with gold foil and covered with a nice glossy dust jacket that features the Roubo workbench on the cover.

If you're not familiar with Woodworking Magazine, you're probably wondering why we're making such a fuss about it. Here's the deal: Woodworking Magazine is different than other woodworking magazines. We seek to challenge the conventional wisdom of the craft to find the most accurate, fast and straightforward way to perform an operation, whether it's cutting dados or making cherry look 100 years old. Our staff tests dozens of techniques in our shop in Cincinnati to find the ones worth using in your shop.

We publish projects that are historical classics, from the 18th-century Roubo workbench to a Gustav Stickley Magazine Stand to a Shaker Tall Cabinet from the Enfield Community. These are pieces of furniture that have earned their status as classics.

And even the way we review tools is different. We don't review table saws (there are enough table saw reviews already). We review the tools and items that we consider critical to good work: 6" rulers, hinges, marking knives, moisture meters, combination squares and the like.

Plus, we accept no outside advertising. Our interior pages are black-and-white. And we're not afraid to blend the use of hand and power tools to get good results.

This book is about to arrive in our warehouse, and we are making a special offer for readers who order the book before midnight on Friday, Sept. 21. If you order before that date, the book is $30 and we'll pay the shipping and handling. Orders placed after that will be $30 plus $4.95 shipping and handling.

This book will not be available in stores. You can order on our secure web site or call toll-free 800-258-0929 and ask for item# WWCMP7A.

— Christopher Schwarz
editor, Woodworking Magazine and Popular Woodworking

Contemporary writing on woodworking, of which I am woefully guilty, always seeks to make the craft as simple as possible. We try to make the joints easy, quick and straightforward. We tend to promote furniture designs that have straight lines and wide appeal.

But if you’ve never studied any book on joinery that’s more than 50 years old, you’re in for a rude shock. Joinery and case construction was far more complex and demanding before World War II than it is today.

Nowhere is this more evident than in Charles H. Hayward’s seminal work: “Woodwork Joints.” First published in 1950, Hayward’s masterwork was a survey of the different kinds of joints and how they are used to produce casework. When I first encountered this book (thanks to Don McConnell of Clark & Williams fame), I was struck by how many variants there were of seemingly simple joints, such as the mortise-and-tenon.

And at the time I was bewildered by the complexity of some of these joints. Many of them seemed like they would be exceedingly difficult to produce, such as all the door joints that incorporated mitered stuck moulding into the rails and stiles.

But after a few years of working with this book by my side, I came to realize that a fair amount of the complexity was the result of me trying to graft a power-tool perspective onto a hand-tool operation. Once I started looking at the tasks from the perspective of the chisel or the plane, most of these joints were no more than cutting to a line.

(There is an exception – the fox-wedged tenon still scares the snot out of me. You only get one shot to assemble this blind wedged-tenon joint.)

Beginning woodworkers will be well-served by the first sections of Hayward’s book, which discuss how to design, lay out and cut basic edge joints, tenons and dovetails with remarkable clarity. Hayward’s line drawings of workshop practices have yet to be equaled.

Advanced woodworkers will revel in the same clarity that Hayward offers on some of wilder joints, such as three-way mitered tenon joints, mitered secret dovetails, proper rule joints, knuckle joints and joinery for bow-front frame-and-panel assemblies.

This book, my 1954 edition published by Evans Brothers Ltd., will be one of the things I scoop up (in addition to my daughters) if our house ever catches fire. I’ll leave the modern paperback versions of the book (including the edition from Sterling) to the flames. Though I’m glad that some modern publishers have kept the book in print, the reproduction quality of the photos and line drawings is poor indeed when compared to the early editions. It’s worth paying the extra money to find a bookseller in England, I’m sorry to say.

In addition to “Woodwork Joints,” Hayward has many other excellent books, some of which are in the “permanent collection,” but this book is my favorite of his. Look for it at all the usual places: addall.com, bookfinder.com, abebooks.com, powells.com, Amazon.com or through your local crusty and cranky used book seller.

— Christopher Schwarz

Our corporate web site experts encourage us to write as briefly as possible when speaking to an Internet audience. So with that in mind, here is my review of David Charlesworth’s new book, “A Guide to Hand Tools and Methods” (Guild of Master Craftsman).

It’s a fantastic book. Really worth buying. And it ties up all the loose ends from his first two books on furniture making.

So with that out of the way, here is the giant footnote to the above review.

I first met David Charlesworth during his first visit to the United States about four years ago. He touched down in the cornfields of central Indiana to teach a class at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking and then shoot his first video on sharpening with Lie-Nielsen Toolworks. It was a hot spring, and David was still tired from traveling but was happy to go to dinner with Tom Lie-Nielsen, Mario Rodriguez and me.

After some searching, we ended up at Texas Roadhouse, a Western-themed chain restaurant where they eat peanuts and throw the shells on the floor. I ordered a beer. Thomas ordered a gin and tonic, I believe. David asked for the wine list.

Somehow we didn’t get hassled that night, and David plunged into the menu with surprising gusto, ordering the “rattlesnake bites,” which are deep-fried jalapeno peppers and cheese with a Cajun horseradish sauce for dipping. That is not your typical Devon, England, fare.

David’s willingness to fearlessly try new things is one of the traits of his work as a woodworker, teacher and writer during the last 30 years. He mixes a deep drive for precision woodworking with a self-confessed laziness (which I think is a bit of a stretch). The most famous example of the result of this approach was “the ruler trick,” a way of preparing the unbeveled face of a plane iron with the help of a ruler. It removes hours of tedious labor and produces a spectacular edge.

I purchased David’s first two books (“David Charlesworth's Furniture-Making Techniques” volume one and two), before I met him. I’d pored over them because they were so different than every other book on hand work. He went into far more detail on preparing and using tools than any other source I could find. His techniques were simple, but they required great discipline and attention to detail. They didn’t rely on years of training your hand and eye, just a willingness to pay close attention.

David’s third book continues in this same vein. Like the first two books, “A Guide to Hand Tools and Methods” is a collection of his columns from Furniture and Cabinetmaking magazine. So the book hops around from topic to topic a bit. There are four chapters on tuning planes, three on spokeshaves but one on chisels. However, when read with the other three books, “A Guide to Hand Tools and Methods” feels much more like a cohesive whole.

It fills in many small details that are important to accurate work, such as the chapter on how to true waterstones. His chapters on marking and paring dovetails will help many woodworkers who have been bewildered by the varying approaches available. And there are chapters on little bits of cleverness that Charlesworth has developed, such as an ingenious adjuster for a spokeshave designed by Brian Boggs, and how to alter a marking gauge to use a pencil in place of a pin.

With all three books now in print, I wish that they could be combined and re-organized into one consistent volume so you could get all of the sharpening techniques in one place, all the plane tuning articles in one place, all the sawing advice in one place. Perhaps some day.

Until then, “A Guide to Hand Tools and Methods” is really worth buying. And it is a worthy successor to his first two books on furniture making.

And as I read the last chapter in the book last month, I started wondering where David would go next with his teaching and writing. Would he apply his same insight to  preparing other tools that vex woodworkers, such as profiles of moulding planes or carving tools. Would he delve more into the vast unexplored area of design? Or the equally vast forgotten realm of traditional casework?

I don’t know, but I would be willing to take him along to a square dance in a barn to chat with him and find out.

— Christopher Schwarz

Editor's note: Every few days I’m asked for a bibliography of the essential books for a woodworker who is interested in working with hand tools. I often dash off a list of books that are at the top of mind. Usually it’s five or six core titles with a few oddball ones thrown in that are probably the result of my diet.

So I’ve decided to codify this list and explain a bit of reasoning behind my choices. The first few books are home runs, things that shouldn’t be out of print ever (but sometimes are). One more thing: These aren’t books for a hand-tool purist. I blend machinery for the coarse operations with hand tools for the truing and finishing tasks. My reading list reflects this sensibility.

“The Essential Woodworker” by Robert Wearing

As Robert Wearing eases you into his book during the introduction, you will be both encouraged and alarmed. “The Essential Woodworker” is indeed a book on hand-tool basics and covers all the basic furniture-making tasks necessary to build tables, cabinets, doors and drawers. That’s the encouraging part.

What is alarming is that the stuff in “The Essential Woodworker” is material that is rarely covered in magazines, books or classes. In other words: This book is a good part of a nutritious diet in a world of Snickers bars.

“The Essential Woodworker” begins with a chapter on basic operations: sharpening, planing, sawing and boring. Wearing teaches his techniques mostly with hundreds of simple and clear line drawings, though there are a few black-and-white photos scattered throughout.

With the basic skills wrapped up, Wearing launches into a chapter on building tables and stools. Good choice. Tables are an excellent project for beginners. As Wearing introduces each essential skill, he shows you how to accomplish each task at the bench. This information is like a slice of fried gold. This book is the one that taught me how to clamp up a table base to my bench to work the aprons. It showed me how to size door parts without measuring. It taught me a better way to make hinge mortises that I still use today.

After mastering the table, Wearing moves onto basic carcase construction, with particular emphasis on dovetailing the carcase components and fabricating backs that are far more interesting than what you read about in most books. In other words, there is detail here that you just don’t find elsewhere.

Then Wearing finishes up with designing, building and fitting drawers. By the end of the book’s 160 pages I think I’d learned as much from this book as I’d learned from 10 other books purporting to “essential” for the hand-tool woodworker.

Are there any downsides to the book? Well, I think you can skip the parts about doweling carcases together, that’s a technique that I don’t cotton to (for all the effort required in doweling, I’d just dovetail it).

“The Essential Woodworker” is widely available. In addition to Amazon, check bookfinder.com, abebooks.com, powells.com and alibris.com to find a copy. I paid $8 for mine, you shouldn’t have to pay too much more.

— Christopher Schwarz

American furniture of the 18th century has always been something I’ve liked OK but I’ve never become a nut about, like Brussels sprouts, Cheney hammers and classical music. This week I’ve been consuming a couple books about 18th-century furniture that have long been on my list of things I’ve been meaning to read.

Until this point, my favorite books on the topic were Wallace Nutting’s "A Furniture Treasury" (Macmillian) and "American Furniture of the 18th Century" by Jeffrey Greene. Nutting’s book, though flawed, is fantastic for designing furniture because it offers hundreds of pages of photos of old pieces (for example, there are 77 pages devoted to low chests of drawers). Greene’s book is great because it marries woodworking technique, history, the tools and design.

The two books I’m reading now are similar. Albert Sack’s "Fine Points of Furniture" (Crown) is a visual lesson of what is ugly and beautiful in pieces of early American furniture and consists of nearly 300 pages of photos and commentary. "The Cabinetmaker’s Treasury" (Macmillan) by F.E. Hoard and A.W. Marlow is more like Greene’s book, though it was published in 1952. "The Cabinetmaker’s Treasury" consists of a discussion of techniques and offers plans for many pieces of early American furniture.

My copy of "The Cabinetmaker’s Treasury" was a gift from our art director, Linda Watts, who picked it up at a book sale in Dayton, Ohio. I think I was the first or second person to open it because it’s perfect in every way. And on first reading, I was delighted by the drawings and text.

But then I started really picking apart the construction details shown in the book. I think that misters Hoard and Marlow must have had some stock in the 3"-long screw market because that is the primary way they join everything (except the chairs). No dados. No sliding dovetails. Fewer mortise-and-tenon joints than I would prefer. The lowboys in the book are all screwed together. Screw the web frames together. Then screw the web frames to the sides. Don’t forget to screw the partitions!

So bottom line: It’s an OK book for a couple bucks.

"The Fine Points of Furniture" seems a bit of a gimmick at first. Sack shows photos of three different pieces of furniture. They’re all the same form (chest on chest, for example). But one is labeled a "good" design, one is labeled "better" and the other as "best." Then he offers some commentary under each photo explaining why.

Sack insults the piece labeled as "good" designs, and I was getting a complex at first because I kind of liked the "good" designs. They were usually simpler and less ornamented. Sack reserved "better" and "best" for pieces with elaborate carving, vigorous turnings and aggressive lines.

But after 300 pages of the stuff, I began to see things Sack’s way. The "good" designs started to look clunky and less refined. I was exercising my eye for 18th-century design. It’s still a bit sore, but going down to work on an Arts & Crafts sideboard should give it a chance to relax.

By the way, you can get "Fine Points of Furniture" for a song. The revised edition "The New Fine Points of Furniture" is ghastly expensive. If there's anyone out there who has both, I'd love to hear a comparision of the two versions.

— Christopher Schwarz

If you’re interested in reading detailed stories about modern toolmakers, their wares and how they fare in the shop, I have some good news. Clarence Blanchard, the owner of the Fine Tool Journal, has graciously allowed me to post articles I’ve written about modern hand tools for his publication during the last few years on the Internet. And Wiktor Kuc, the host of WKFineTools.com, has generously agreed to host the articles on his site.

Right now on WKFineTools.com you will find the complete text to four articles I’ve written for the Fine Tool Journal during the last few years, and there are eight more that will be posted in the coming year. These articles are unlike what I’ve written for Popular Woodworking magazine and Woodworking Magazine. These articles are sometimes quite lengthy, a bit geeky and are aimed at the hand-tool enthusiast.

Here’s what you’ll find on WKFineTools.com right now, and a taste of what is to come:

• Veritas Router Plane Review: I compare the new Veritas router plane to the vintage Stanley No. 71. The Veritas sure looks different, but is it any better? What’s with those canted knobs? And why is the depth adjustment on the Veritas so much more involved? And is the accessory fence worth buying?

• Chairmaking Tools: A look at some of the tools that are indispensable to my (meager) chairmaking efforts. Two mallets that can really drive a leg home (John Brown style!), plus a comparison of the Veritas an Lie-Nielsen spokeshaves.

• Ray Iles Mortisers: Everyone loves the new Ray Iles mortising chisels – me included. I had one of the first sets off the boat and take a look at the tool. How did it come to life? Why is it so dang effective in hardwoods? And what’s with the unusual sharpening angles?

• The Curious Scrub Plane: This is a controversial article in some quarters. I compare the Veritas and Lie-Nielsen scrub planes and posit a few crackpot theories about scrub planes in general. If you want to send me hate mail on this article, the line forms to your left.

• There are also shorter articles there from me on Blue Spruce Toolworks marking knife and drawboring.

Here are some of the articles I hope Wiktor Kuc will be posting in the coming months:

• Blue Spruce Toolworks: A detailed look at Dave Jeske’s operation. He’s bigger than you think. And he’s making tools for other custom toolmakers on the West Coast.

• Clifton Planes: I have years of experience with these English-made Bedrock bench planes and tell you what I’ve found out during the last five years – warts and all.

• Gauges & Squares: Find out which layout tools I find useful and which are expensive junk.

• Miter Planes: Joel Moskowitz and a dead Frenchman help us unravel some of the mysteries of the oddly-named miter plane.

And there’s more to come. With any luck, Wiktor will post these and the Fine Tool Journal Articles I’m writing for upcoming issues, including a feature on Philip Marcou’s S20A smoothing plane and the Bridge City Tools VP60 – a variable pitch bench plane.

If you don’t want to wait for Wiktor, I can wholeheartedly recommend you take out a subscription to the Fine Tool Journal. Not only will you get to read my brand of drivel, but also lots of other interesting pieces about old tools, their history and the stories behind the men who made them.

Plus then there’s the real bonus that comes with a Fine Tool Journal subscription: the publication offers a large quantity of old tools for sale at reasonable prices to readers in every issue. Please do check it out.

— Christopher Schwarz

Before I knew Bob, one of our senior editors here at Popular Woodworking, I knew him as Robert W. Lang, the author of two landmark books I owned that were chock full of shop drawings of Craftsman furniture. Those dog-eared books (and two more he's published on Craftsman interiors and inlay) were books that I gladly plunked down my own money on. They are books that I built three projects from. They were books that I referred to almost every week as I was teasing out a detail on a piece of Arts & Crafts furniture. I was a fan.

However, when Bob gave me a copy of his latest book, "Shop Drawings for Greene & Greene Furniture," which just hit the streets this week, I was a bit reluctant to write a review. I've watched Bob slave over these drawings. When we all went to Las Vegas for a woodworking show last year, Bob slogged off through the desert after the show to spend time in Southern California researching pieces for this book. He's been agonizing over the details in the drawings for the 23 pieces shown in the books. It has been a difficult project. I'm admittedly biased because I've watched the guy push himself hard to research, write and draw this book on his own time (It's being published by a competing publisher, not Popular Woodworking Books).

But when I cracked open his book and started reading it, my hesitation disappeared. This is a landmark book and deserves your attention. If you have even a passing interest in the work of Charles and Henry Greene (and their builders, John and Peter Hall), you will be thrilled with the projects in this book. The Greenes, architects working in California during the Arts & Crafts heyday, were two of the most talented designers in the 20th century, though their pens produced only about 400 pieces of furniture.

I've seen a fair number of the pieces that Lang has chosen for this book – either in photographs or in person – and I think he's accomplished what few other people in our profession can do: These shop drawings capture the true spirit of the Greenes without dumbing anything down. The furniture of the Greenes was subtle and full of detail, and Lang does the pieces justice.

These drawings are the missing link for the craftsman. There are countless books about the Ultimate Bungalows produced by the Greene brothers with sumptuous photos, sketchy dimensional details and highly romanticized copy. And there is great affection among woodworkers to produce these pieces, which are well-suited for the home woodworker in their construction details and joinery methods.

But until now, there was no easy way to go about building any of these works without a trip to California, looking both ways for the museum guards and ducking under the ropes with a tape measure.

The projects chosen for "Shop Drawings for Greene & Greene Furniture" are an excellent cross-section of the Greene's work and represent pieces of varying difficulty. Beginning woodworkers can cut their teeth on the Gamble Mirror, the Blacker Medicine Cabinet and the Thorsen Plant Stand. As you learn the vernacular of the style (the mortise-and-tenon joints are particularly unusual), you'll build confidence to tackle the stately Robinson Dining Table, the Gamble Kitchen Cabinets (I will build these someday) and the Blacker Hall Seat (ditto on this).

The Blacker Hall Seat, a masterpiece of design, detail and craftsmanship.


Then you can give the Gamble Chiffonier a shot before you leave this earth. It combines all of the details of the Greene Brothers – cloudlifts, proud-finger-jointed drawers, inlay – into an astonishing package.

This is not really a how-to book. Lang provides some important details on construction techniques he's used to reproduce some of the important details. And he gives a workman-like history of the work of the Greene and Hall brothers. And Lang explores some of the nagging work-method mysteries that remain about the work, such as why the Halls built their drawers the way they did. These details add to the corpus of knowledge about these four brothers, rather than just hyping it.

However, if the complete shop drawings aren't enough for you and you'd like enlarged shop drawings with full-size details, Lang sells those as well on his website.

The book will soon be available everywhere, but I urge you to buy it directly from Bob. He has it in stock right now, he gets a bigger cut when he sells the book directly, and I hear his son, Hunter, also gets $1 for every book he packs up and mails.

You can purchase "Shop Drawings for Greene & Greene Furniture" for $22.95 at craftsmanplans.com or by sending an e-mail to info@craftsmanplans.com or calling 513-531-2690 x 1327.

— Christopher Schwarz

For the last three years, I’ve been writing a column on modern hand tools for the Fine Tool Journal, an excellent quarterly publication out of Pownal, Maine. The Journal is a thick slice of hand tool heaven with articles about long-forgotten ways of working, vanished corporate tool-making empires, vintage power machinery and old tools for sale.

Editor Clarence Blanchard and his staff also run Brown Auction Services, and so the Fine Tool Journal includes listings of auction items and tools you can buy with just a phone call or e-mail. The prices are quite reasonable.

For my part, I write reviews of modern tools and profiles of their makers. And now, Clarence has graciously agreed to allow me to post the older articles on WKFineTools.com, an online hand-tool magazine run by the industrious Wiktor Kuc.

If you haven’t been a visitor to WKFineTools or the OldToolsShop.com site (its sister site), visit now and bookmark it. There is a wealth of writing there. People sharing their experiences with hand tools, old catalogs of tools you can download for free, some plans for projects, plus links to other valuable resources for the hand-tool user.

This week, Wiktor has posted my story about scrub planes. This article compares the two modern versions available: The Lie-Nielsen and the Veritas. But that part of the article isn’t what gets people’s blood boiling. It’s the theory of mine that scrub planes are more of a carpentry tool than they are for fine furniture-making. I’ve discussed that theory a bit here on the weblog, but this is the full-on crackpot theory.

Many thanks to Wiktor and Clarence for allowing us to republish these stories. We have about 10 more in the works right now for the coming weeks, including in-depth profiles of saw maker Mike Wenzloff and Konrad Sauer, the planemaker behind Sauer & Steiner. So check back.

— Christopher Schwarz

So I like my wagon vise quite a bit and have been giving it a nice workout during the last week or so. I think it's a keeper. (And good thing, considering the massive chasm in the benchtop.) So to finish off the vise, I bought a nice little European-style backplate for the vise's end cap from Whitechapel Ltd. Hardware – nice stuff, by the way.

I think I must be hanging around planemaker Wayne Anderson a bit too much. It's not like me to embellish my benches with unnecessary finery.

As I was nailing the plate in place, I couldn't help reflecting on an excellent piece I just read in The New Atlantis called "Shop Class as Soulcraft" by Matthew B. Crawford. It is one of the most thoughtful pieces of writing about the decline of craftsmanship and the rise of industrial capitalism I've ever read. Crawford is a woodworker, former motorcycle repairman, former electrical contractor and a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Material Culture at the University of Virginia.

It's a stunning article. Sit down with a cool drink this evening and take it in.

— Christopher Schwarz

Sometimes the best woodworking books don't have a single word of advice on how to cut a joint, build a cabinet or rub out a finish. Instead they are the kind of book that will pry your eyes open to see how our craft is connected to history, culture and the fabric of modern society.

"Oak: The Frame of Civilization" by William Bryant Logan is a sweeping and breathless series of vignettes that examine the relationship between oak trees and man, from a fen in Cambridgeshire to the tanner's stinking vat of hen dung to the defeat of the Spanish Armada. It is a narrative that ranges from deeply personal, such as Logan's experience tasting acorn jelly ("like touching a slug") to intensely historical, such as an examination of coppice woodworking in early Europe.

At first, woodworkers might not see how this historical examination of the oak's place in history is important to those of us who regularly saw, split and hew it to make chairs, cabinets and the like. But after a few chapters it becomes clear that we are part of this extensive root system that the oak has made through our daily lives. The oak is the ultimate provider, from the acorns that fed people in Europe and North America to the barrels that provide our wine, the tannins that preserve our leather, the ships that explored our world and the building blocks of the walls of our greatest structures, such as Westminster Hall. In fact, oak's role in civilization cannot be overstated.

And now oak provides one more gift to the home woodworker: joy in the work with our hands. Man almost destroyed the world of ships and charcoal and barrels that was built by oak and replaced it with metal, oil and plastic. But we and the survival of our craft are evidence that oak has not lost its grip on the world.

Highly recommended reading.

— Christopher Schwarz

Two more volumes of Roubo's masterwork on the woodworking trades have trickled into my hands. I'm still missing two volumes I really want, and I'm probably going to have to buck up and just order them straight from France (a couple helpful French-speaking readers have pointed me to a site that sells all the volumes).

Until those arrive, I've been poring over the Roubo volumes on carriage building and garden woodworking. Both are chock-full of engravings of tools, benches, projects, jigs and procedures. One interesting nugget of information has been the illustration of the bench for the carriage trade. The bench is almost exactly like the benches shown throughout the three volumes I now have, but the vise is interesting.

It looks like a twin-screw vise at first, but then when you look at it again, it's actually more like an inside-out leg vise turned on its side. I know of no modern equivalent. After studying the drawing a bit here's how I think it works: The screw on the right controls the pressure you apply like the screw on any vise. The assembly on the left acts like a pivot. You move the metal pin (I assume it's metal) in a hole in the metal bar (item A) that juts out the left side of the vise's jaw. You pick a hole that will position the left side of the jaw based on the thickness of the work being clamped. You place the jaw so it's just a bit closer to the benchtop than the thickness of the work. When you then turn the screw, the work will become wedged.

Assuming that we all work with pretty standard thicknesses of wood, the vise could be pretty effective. However, I'd hate to be the guy who walked up to the bench without keeping a sharp eye on that metal bar.

(Ah, and the odd headline on this entry? That's the Babelfish translation of the French bookstore's description of the Roubo books. I've been called a lot of things, but never a "woody one.")

— Christopher Schwarz

With all the woodworking books and magazines out there, it's a bit surprising that we need any more. But we do. Nearly every woodworking book and magazine that gets published eventually crosses my desk, and I'm always amazed at the vast amount of homogeneity within the covers. The techniques and tools used are similar. In some ways, it's like the authors all went to the same school – or maybe they're simply all reading the same books.

It's not that these authors are using the wrong techniques or tools or joints – quite the opposite. The advice in the books is generally sound; it's just narrow. You can learn a lot about woodworking by exploring books that were published before you were born.

A fantastic place to begin is George Ellis's "Modern Practical Joinery". For $15 (or less if you buy it used) you can explore the vast world of machine and hand-tool woodworking that existed just as shops were beginning to mechanize. Ellis extols the virtues of the labor-saving machines and an affection for the fine work possible with hand tools. But more importantly, Ellis's enormous book explores the vast and interesting world of joinery for cabinets and house fittings. There are joints in here you've probably never seen (really good and solid ones). Ellis explores aspects of joinery and construction that are rarely covered in today's texts – such as scaling the components of many joints. I cannot recommend this book enough. And we're lucky the sucker is still in print.

Which brings me to my next little adventure. For about a year I've been after a copy of Andre Roubo's "L'Art du Menuisier," the book that inspired me to build the workbench in Issue 4. Sure it's in French – and I probably won't be able to read it even with my translation dictionary. But the plates are illuminating.

But finding a copy hasn't been easy. Vintage copies cost thousands. There is a reprint, which I believe is published in France. I haven't been able to find a U.S. bookseller that carries it, but I did find one in Quebec at Archambault. So I ordered it months ago. It was out of stock. I waited. No luck.

Then yesterday I received an email in French. My MasterCard had been charged and the book was on its way, with a tracking number. As of today, it had departed Quebec and was headed toward Kentucky. It looks like my own copy of Roubo might finally arrive. They have the text in three volumes; and the price? Much less than thousands.

There are, of course, a lot of other books that should be available (such as many books by Charles Hayward), but we'll save that for another day.

— Christopher Schwarz

Securing large pieces of work to the front face of your workbench is always a challenge. A face vise can hold one corner of large work, but the other end is free to swing about. This can be unacceptable when sawing dovetails, cutting hinge mortises on the edge of a door or simply planing (or sanding) the edge on a long board.

Traditional benches have a sliding board jack (like the one on the Roubo-style bench we built), and other benches have a wide apron pierced with lots of holes. In both cases a wooden peg goes into the holes to support the work from below. This peg helps, but it doesn't hold the work tight against the bench. An F-style clamp is the usual solution – clamp the work to the jack or the apron.

In 1915, Stanley patented a bench bracket that combines the support of a wooden peg with the holding power of an F-style clamp. It was manufactured as the Stanley No. 203 (also the number used for a Stanley block plane, by the way). And this item turns up pretty regularly at flea markets and on eBay. I bought a couple of them recently to try them out on the Roubo bench jack to see if they were indeed useful.

The Stanley No. 203 works best in a 1"-diameter hole in an apron or bench jack that is 7/8" thick. Use thicker stock and the No. 203 won't grab. Use thinner and the bracket will not create a square ledge for your work. That was my first problem with the No. 203, my material ended up being a little under 7/8", so the clamp head came in at an angle to my boards. As a result, sometimes, the head would dent the work on one edge.

The promising hole in the bracket....

While staring at the bracket, I noticed a small hole at the bottom of the device. It looked like there could be some sleeve of metal inside it. Could this small hole be used in some way to square the bracket in its hole? With no answers coming to mind, I decided to ask the U.S. Government. Patented devices have nice drawings and sometimes instruction-like information on file at the U.S. Patent Office. However, the interface to search there isn't the friendliest.

However, there's help. The Directory of American Tool and Machinery Patents (DATAMP for short) makes looking up patented old tools easy. The DATAMP is run by volunteers from the OldWWMachines and OldTools mailing lists. You can search patents very easily here. Type the patent date (usually cast into the tool) into the search engine. If you know the patent number, that will work, too. There are other ways to search the 30,000 patents in the Advanced Search function.

I typed in the patent date (03-16-1915) and I immediately had beautiful drawings of the No. 203, plus drawings of a similar bracket that may not have been made commercially, and two pages of details on how the bracket works. The small hole at the bottom of the bracket is for a nail, according to the application, "to steady the lower end of the clamp…." Hmmm, that's not my problem. So I made a little shim and am going to epoxy that to the bracket tonight. That should fix it. And the material in the hole that I thought could be a sleeve? Just junk.

— Christopher Schwarz

This week I'm trying to pry my way inside the heads of the Shakers. After years of building the furniture, it's remarkable how little I know about the people themselves. So I've been plowing through "The Shaker World" by John T. Kirk. The book is a real eye-opener because it discusses the whole Shaker experience and ties the believers into the world at large – instead of isolating them like lab specimens.

The book has helped me reconcile something that's been nagging me for years. Have you ever seen the Shaker drying racks? They are almost ridiculously fragile and seem at total odds with the rugged dovetails and pinned mortise-and-tenon joints that mark many of their case pieces.

Kirk explains this fragility as part of the ying and yang of the Shaker life. Because they were isolated and had highly regulated behavior (they had rules about how many people could sleep to a bed), the Shakers could create objects of immense grace and fragility and ensure that the objects would be handled by the believers with care.

For example, they had rules about how to walk on the carpets: "When brethren or sisters go up or down stairs they should not slip their feet on the carpet, but take them up and set them down plumb, so as not to wear out the carpets unnecessarily." And then there are more rules about how to make a turn on the carpet. (My children would not have fared well in the Shaker communities.)

Yet the Shakers also prized rugged construction. Their farm implements and some of the furniture was decidedly overbuilt at times. Kirk explains this proclivity as necessary for the rural life of the believers.

In addition to reading "The Shaker World," I'm now experimenting with finishes for the next cover project for the magazine. The Shakers prized both paint and varnish, and I'm trying to come up with a finishing schedule for this first version of the cabinet (an adaptation of a cabinet from the Enfield, Connecticut, colony) that looks right and is true to the Shaker tradition. Last night I was applying a base coat of linseed oil to the latch for the cabinet (shown above). The latch turns on a dowel that pierces the entire latch and is wedged in place. There's nothing precious or fragile there – so perhaps I'm not quite all the way inside their heads just yet.

— Christopher Schwarz

An icon of the woodworking world discusses his life and work and displays his amazing cantankerous wit during an amazing and detailed 2004 interview.