recent projects

 

 

I have a number of projects underway, as usual. I have just test-fitted these two joined stools, in preparation for the demonstrations I have next week at Winterthur Museum in Delaware. I plan on assembling them there, but haven’t got a chunk of oak big enough for seats right now…

 

For that demo, I am mainly concentrating on furniture from Plymouth Colony, where this sort of “lipped” tenon was standard practice for joined chests and cupboards. In this configuration, the molding is integral, not applied.

 

detail, Plymouth Colony joined chest w integral molding

 

 

 

 

It makes for some complicated work cutting the tenons. The cheeks are sawn, and the joint is not draw-bored. One or two square pins secure the tenon in place. I haven’t done one in almost 15 years, so I will make a new demo piece to replace this grubby-looking example.

 

PF sample repro of “lipped” tenon

 

 

 

unassembled view of "lipped" tenon

 But what I have been really excited about is the new London carved pattern I wrote about last week. I knew I would try to squeeze it in, so I carved this sample of it the other day. It took some tinkering to figure out the layout and sequence of cuts. A test version is essential for me when I’m doing something this complex. I got it along pretty well, but knew this one is a sample at best. So I didn’t bother finishing it, but now have a good idea of how to tackle it for next time.

test-carving of London pattern

 

 

 

 

 

 

mortise & tenon work

driving the pins

The post about making the pins for drawbored mortise & tenon joints brought a couple of comments, and a couple of questions. First & foremost, the moisture content of the pins – bone dry…gotta be. I shave mine dry. I split excess straight-grained oak into pin blanks and then store it around the shop. They are small-cross-sections, so dry quickly…but in any event, I always have several piles of them around – from green to dry.

They do have to fit the holes, but the taper in their length makes this easy enough to acheive. It doesn’t hurt to have a piece of scrap stock with a test-hole bored in it, and check your first dozen or so pins in that hole…typically beginners make the pins too stout.

Alexander points out that using a shaving horse & drawknife to make them makes the taper easier to achieve.  But JA is working from stock that is easily 3 times the length I use. It’s a trade-off.  As far as my method requiring experience and skill, well…I am reminded of a quote I once heard the folksinger Claudia Schmidt repeat:

“Good judgement is the result of experience. Experience is the result of poor judgement.”

(I figured it’s from Yip Harburg [If I Only had a Brain] but on the web I’ve seen it attributed to Twain. Don’t think it’s him…but maybe need to look at Puddn’head Wilson again)

Hmm. I adopted this method of shaving pins when I saw it in a sixteenth-century woodcut. I find it really works, and splitting the stock is very easy in such short lengths. You can often split it down to nearly the size you need.  I say make your pins that way, and you’ll get good at ‘em. Shaving them from long stock with a drawknife will get you good at shaving them from long stock with a drawknife…either way, make them dry, make them tapered.

It is not a wet/dry joint like in Alexander’s post & rung chairs. The action of the drawboring is what makes the joint work, not a moisture content differential. for more on the drawboring, see http://pfollansbee.wordpress.com/?s=drawboring

(on the right-hand side of this blog is a search button, way down towards the bottom. Let’s see if the above link works to get readers to the previous entries on the subject.)

drawbore pins

 

I do use drawbore pins to pull the joint together first, this allows me to check the joints and make sure everthing is as it should be, before I put any wooden pins in. Some folks think these steel pins will wreck the drawbore, but I’ve never had a problem with them. Alexander found these pins at Sears many years ago, and handled them for me. Cheap & effective.

 

joint ID

I also often use a numbering system for making certain that the correct tenon is in the mortise. Here just the mortise chisel chops Roman numerals to ID the joint.

 

Here’s the inside of a recent stool showing the trimmed pins, the fore plane surface on the inside face of the rail; and the inner shoulder of the rail not quite hitting the stile. Also these pins are staggered in height, so as to not interfere with each other.

interior of stool frame

 

pins for drawbored mortise & tenon joints

This is my wooden bench hook – I have been thinking of replacing it for a couple of years now, but just haven’t bothered yet. Maybe soon…

 

wooden bench hook

 

How it got this way is simple, I use it when I make the pins that secure the mortise & tenon joints in my furniture.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First I split the stock from scraps of dead-straight dry oak. Any crook & they get discarded. It is critical that the stock be near-perfect because I want it to be strong enough to snake through the off-set holes in the joint.

 

 

splitting pin stock

 

After splitting out a bunch of pieces, I shave them with the largest chisel I have – a 2” framing chisel. I find this to be the simplest tool for this job. The weight of it helps; when I have done this work with lighter weight chisels, I find I was pushing too hard…of course, it’s important to grab the pin stock up higher than the cutting edge.

shaving pins

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

shaving pins detail

 

 

 

My pins start out about 5” long. Shave them square, and then taper them. Finally, shave them into an octagonal cross-section.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

finished pins, red oak

 

 

 

Sometimes, as in this period stool, the tips are pointed. Sometimes not, as in a wainscot chair I saw recently.

 

17th-century joined stool; pins

17th c wainscot chair; pins

 

 

 

 

one more miter square, & inventories

Felebien detail

In my previous post about miter squares the other day, I forgot Andres Felebien (1676). There is a lot of talk about Joseph Moxon on the web these days, with Chris Schwarz’ interpretive publication of Moxon’s chapter on joinery. Alexander & I have tried to remember to consult Randle Holme and Andres Felebien in addition to Moxon. I’d say Holme is our favorite; his drawings are quite enticing. Searching all three of these 17th-century authors can sometimes make things more clear; at other times,  more confounding.

The miter square is quite the same as Moxon’s; which leaves only Randle Holme who illustrated the multi-angle miter square. The modern one I have in my shop is set up to mark angles of 90, 30, 60 & 45 degrees.

Finding miter squares in period inventories is rare; here is one from Essex, England. The numbers are not values in this case, but quantities. This inventory comes from the Essex Record Office (D/DP E2/23)

Thorndon Hall inventory: tools in the joiner’s workhouse, 1592)

 An Inventarye of all suche tooles as remayned in ye Joyners Workehowse at Westhordon after ye deathe of Cornelius Everssen, there taken by John Bentley and Water Madison the xvth daye of September, 1592

 

 

Inprimis Joyners playnes of divers bignes                                  15

Item ioynters                                                                             2

Foreplaynes                                                                               2

Smothing playnes                                                                       1

Squiers                                                                                      4

Myter squiers                                                                             1

Addes                                                                                        1

Hatchettes                                                                                  1

Handsawes                                                                                 1  

Frame sawes                                                                               1

Hammers                                                                                    1                 

Holdfastes                                                                                   1

Jages                                                                                           2

One percers stock and v Wilkyns for ye same

Thre fyles

Two brode paring chizelles

Thre mortise chiselles

Three small Flemish chizelles

One gouge

Thre ripping chizelles

one lyne rowle with ye lyne upon it

Two staples or banke hookes

Two rules of ij foote ye pece

Thre malletts

Two spare plainyng yrons

 

 

This next one has just “squares” so nothing regarding miter; BUT as often is the case, you look for one thing & find another – this one has “patterns” something it’s very gratifying to see. Lincolnshire, very late 17th century. I found it in L.B. and M. W. Barley, “Lincolnshire Craftsmen in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries” in Lincolnshire Historian, II (1959)

 

 

Inventory of John Dring of Lincoln dated 1696:

 

The Yard

 

The Bed Post, bed rales, bed sides & all other pieces, a turning wheel & bords £2-15-0

 

The Wood House

 

The Oake quarters, elme bords, wall nuttree plancks & other pieces £5-0-0

 

The Shop in ye Street

 

The coffins the wenscote bords, the base bords & pieces of bords £2-9-4

 

The Stools & cheese feet & rales 2 gun stocks with other pieces 17s

The molds & patterns squares & leavell frame of table screws & boxes 16s6d

The chist & all tools in it & in the Shop; Hatchets, hansawes, hammer, hold fast, long plain, for plaines, ogees, hollow and round plaines, plowe groving plaines, spring plaines, files and rasps & turning tooles, screws & screw plates, Wimbles & passer stocks & small bits, mortis chissel & all sorts of chissells & formers and gouges, the bench & all things in it  [PF: no value listed]

 

The Old house where they come from

 

The Oake planck, the wall nuttree planck, the partree planck, the grindle stone and other waist wood in all £4-7-1

 

The Timber

 

The Oake timber by Saint Sweethings Church the Sawpitt The faur trees coming in

all £6-13-4

 

Elme Wood

 

The elme wood att stamp end 20 pieces coming to in all  £3-0-0

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

miter squares then & now

In the post about turning stiles for my joined stools, I mentioned and illustrated using a miter square for marking the centers of the stock. Miter squares are as simple as a try square, only instead of marking lines at 90-degrees to an edge, they usually are designed to mark a line at 45-degrees to an edge.

I know of two descriptions from the seventeenth century for this tool, the first is from Joseph Moxon’s Mechanick Exercises (1678-83) :

 

Joseph Moxon layout tools, including the mitre square

“18 of the Miter Square.  And  its Use.

 

The Miter Square marked E, [PF: it's really marked "R"]  hath (as the Square ) an Handle marked a, one Inch thick  and three Inches broad and a Tongue marked b, of about the same breadth: The Handle and the Tongue (as the Square) have both their Sides parallel to their own Sides. The Han­dle (as the Square) hath in the middle of its narrowest Side a Mortess in it, of an equal depth, the whole length of the Handle: Into this Mortess is fitted one end of the Tongue, but the end of the Handle is first Beveld off to make an An­gle of 45 Degrees with its inside.  This Tongue is (as the Square) Pin’d and Glewed into the Mortess of the Handle.

 

It is used for striking a Miter-line, as the Square is to strike a Square-line, by applying the inside of the Handle to the outside of the Quarter, or Batten, you are to work upon; and then by strik­ing a Line by the side of the Tongue: For that Line shall be a Miter-line. And if upon two Bat­tens you strike two such Lines, and Saw and Pare them just off in the Lines, when the flats of those two sawn ends are applied to one another, the out and inside of the Battens, will form them­selves into the Figure of a Square. Thus Picture Frames, and Looking Glass-Frames are commonly made…”

 

 The other source that Alexander & I have relied upon a great deal is Randle Holme’s Adademy of Armory & Blazon (1688). Holme illustrates two versions of the miter square, one like Moxon’s;

 

Holme miter square #138

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

a Miter square, of a contrary form to the following, mentioned chap. 9 numb. 17  It hath an Handle (or top part) an Inch thick, and three broad, with a Tongue of the same breadth, and for length 5, 6, or more inches, according to the breadth of the Work: it is to be Glewed into the Handle by a Mortess and Pinned.

 

 

 

 His second illustration is a different version of the miter square, but his description still follows Moxon’s quite closely:

 

Randle Holme, miter square, 1688

 Book III, Chapter 9, Section 1b, #17:

“a Miter square. This Square hath also an Handle and a Tongue, as that mentioned numb.15. whose use is to strike either Square or Miter Lines according as you apply the ends of it to the out-sides of the Quarter or Batten you are to work upon; By the help of this, Miter or Bevil Lines are Cut or Sawed so exact, that two being joined together it will make an Angle; thus square Frames for Pictures, Looking Glasses, and such like are comonly made. “

I have a few in my shop. the one I use most is the shop-made one, slightly smaller than Moxon’s or Holme’s.

shop-made miter square

 

I have a modern version like one of Randle Holme’s, that scribes four different angles, but I have hardly used it.

miter square w/ 4 angles

Another place where these tools are applicable, in addition to marking the centers of square turning stock, is the mitered bridle joint, sometimes seen on seventeenth-century cupboard doors from England. Here’s a few views of a sample joint:

mitered bridle joint apart

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

mitered bridle joint open

mitered bridle joint assembled

Two more things. I saw a post about these tools yesterday,  - the site/post is: http://dans-woodshop.blogspot.com/2009/03/old-shop-made-bevel-gauge.html . He calls it a bevel gauge, I know it as a miter gauge. The one he illustrates is a nice tool. I found it through www.unpluggedshop.com/ - When I have time, I look at a bunch of sites through there…but most of the readers here probably already know it.

JA shaved chair

If you have read my blog more than once or twice, you’ve noticed a presence from Jennie (John) Alexander. Well, JA has updated the website www.greenwoodworking.com and anyone with an inkling might go see what’s what over there. There are a great many green woodworkers today who got their start either directly or indirectly because of what Alexander did over 30 years ago with the book Make a Chair from a Tree. Now, based on JA’s website, I better get to work…

 

turning joined stool parts

marking the centers

The next step in the joined stools I am making is turning the stiles’ decoration. Here I am using a miter gauge to mark the centers on the stock. Once I locate the centers, I define them with a center punch and apply a bit of beeswax. Then they go on the pole lathe for turning.

 I wrap the cord twice around the midst of the stock, then line the stile up with the centers, & tighten the wedge that secures the tailstock.

 

wrap the cord

Once I’m satisfied that the turning is mounted properly, then I check the toolrest, adjust it so it is as close to the turning as possible, and made tight. That can require some fumbling around with wedges & such, but only takes a minute.

Then I get the largest gouge I have, and begin to very lightly remove the corners off the stock. I have marked out the ends of the turned portion before it goes on the lathe – and at first the gouge is cutting well inside these marks. The idea is to get the stock roughed-out as quickly as possible. Once it’s round enough, it spins faster & easier on the lathe. My left hand moves the gouge laterally, my right hand rolls the gouge left & right, using the whole cutting edge in turn. Create the cylinder right up to the scribed lines, making a bevel up to these lines.

roughing cylinder with gouge

Now comes the hard part; cutting the transition from the square mortised blocks to the turned cylinder. Use a very sharp skew chisel, and with some practice it will come. First, I cut into the turned portion right up to the line of transition with the skew. Then I define the corners. I use the “long” point of the skew, and aim the tool just about directly in line with the mark I want to cut. My right hand is low, and the tool is aimed high at the stock. As it enters the wood, my right hand comes up, bringing the point of the tool down into the wood. Light cuts are key.

starting the skew cut

right hand comes up, tool begins cut in square

In general making this cut is a difficult one, but with practice it is manageable. There are a few movements that make it more predictable, and effective. Angling the handle left & right changes the relationship between the bevel and the wood, and this is useful as well.

After defining these transitions, I cut the rest of the pattern with a gouge and the skew.

shaping some of the details

The best thing to do is to turn the whole set in one session. That way you develop some consistency within the stool. I burnish the finished turning with a fistful of shavings when I am done.

turning stiles

 

Joined stool stiles; planing

Picking up where I left off the other day, I will detail some of what I do to plane the 2″x2″ stiles for joined stools. After splitting and hewing them to shape, I set one on the bench with one of its radial faces upwards. I check this face with winding sticks and a straight edge, then work with a “fore” plane as it’s called in the seventeenth century. This plane has a curved iron; good for quick roughing-out work…I adapted this one by converting a modern German smooth plane. I put quite a curve on the iron, and the mouth is very wide…big, thick shavings can fly out of this plane easily.

PF fore plane

beginning of fore plane stroke

With this short length stuff, the planing is really from one stance. I begin with my weight on the rear foot, lean into the toe of the plane, and shift my weight onto the front foot as I plane. The finish has the pressure on the plane shifted to the rear…as I come down onto my front foot, arms extended.

finish planing stroke

I finish the surface with a jointer plane. Here I hold it slightly askew to the stock, this is mostly helpful with wider stock, but habit has me using this method on almost all surfaces. The iron does cut a little easier at an angle; but the body of the plane is in better contact with the stock this way too.

jointer plane

after doing the first two faces square to each other, I hew away any excess wood, then plane the final two faces.

In the stool, these faces are not critical. All that really matters is that they are 90 degrees, or less, to the first two faces. OR LESS is the key element. 

See the photo below, of exposed joinery on a table made in Plymouth Colony, c. 1650-1700. It looks pretty beat, but it isn’t. This is the foot of the table, worn down to the stretchers. It looks like the rails’ faces are not flush with the faces of the stiles, but there is a rabbet at the lower edge of the stretchers, that is just sh0wing up dark. The slide is here because of the shape of the stile, the inner faces are clearly less than 90 degrees to the outer faces. Works fine.

Plymouth Colony table M&T

Lastly, I plane a chamfer on the inner corner of the stile. I sit the rear end of the stile in a V-block, which both Moxon & Holme call a “joiners’ saddle” and shove the other end against the bench hook. Then just plane a chamfer…

This orients the stile without question, especially helpful when you’re building several stools at once. While you are first planing the stile, you are aware of which face is which, but if you don’t mark them somehow, when later on you get to mortising, you need to re-examine the stile again to determine where the mortises go. With the inner chamfer, you can quickly grab this piece and see/feel which way is in or out. Thus layout of the mortises is simple to begin…

planing chamfer on inner corner of stile

 

Stiles for joined stools

splitting stiles

I split some stock today to make the stiles for some joined stools I am building lately. These finish out at 2″ square, so I started with stuff a bit larger than that. This blank I am splitting is 2 feet long, and will yield about 6-8 stiles. In the photo, I used a wedge to knock off the juvenile wood at the heart of the tree. This wood is usually too twisted and fibrous to be useful. Once that’s split off, the following splits go easier and cleaner. The next step is to use a froe and club to further split out the stock. In most cases, I split the stock evenly in halves, this time I cheated it over a bit, because there were five stiles spread across the outermost section of the bolt. With  a short piece of straight-grained timber like this, sometimes it works to split an odd number of pieces. It’s a gamble. Today I won. Sometimes the log wins.  

riving stiles with a froe

hewing

 The hewing is quick work, aimed at removing the bulk of excess stock. I use a broad stance, with my right foot well behind me, and holding the stock in the middle or even the foreward portion of the chopping block. This way, any errant blow of the hatchet has a chance at hitting the stump, or at worst, missing my leg.  Notice that I have choked up on the handle as well. I’m not removing too much stock, so very heavy blows are not called for.

I first plane two adjacent faces straight and true, and square to each other. I use two planes, a “fore” plane, by some called a scrub plane – and a jointer to finish the surface.

planing with jointer

After the first two faces are planed, then I mark the thickness and width of the stock, and hew away the excess before planing the next two faces. Here are some details of the hewing process; the first step is called “scoring” the stock. I have made a mark, in this case with a marking gauge, sometimes with a chalkline. The stock is held at an angle, and beginning towards the bottom, I chop into the stock to a depth just above the marked line. These are light cuts, intended to break the fibers of the oak. The next step is to hew them away, preparing the stock for planing. For this step, the stock is shifted a bit, making it more vertical than before. The hatchet is swung and/or dropped to chop away the scored segments of oak.

scoring

 

finish hewing

 

So there is a good deal of back & forth; the sequence is splitting, hewing, planing, then marking the finished size, more hewing & more planing. It takes longer to describe than to do it, thankfully. I position the hewing stump, or “hacking stock” as one seventeenth-century record calls it, right beside my bench, and the hatchet hangs on the wall right beside that. So I can shift easily between planing at the bench and hewing at the stump…after photographing making one stile, I timed one without pictures and it was a little over 10 minutes from the riven stock to the finished planed stile. Not too bad…

 

tenons: 17th-century joinery

sawing tenon shoulder

Yesterday I was cutting some tenons for a joined stool I have started…and I find this is one of the hardest steps to photograph. What I am after is a tenon front shoulder which is slightly angled; and a rear shoulder that is cut behind the line, thus not involved in the joint really. Here’s two period examples:

tenon shoulder detail

 

the next  one is a “barefaced” tenon, i.e. it has no rear shoulder at all. This one is a side rail of a chest, the notch in the stile is for a drawer runner.

barefaced tenon

Typically, I layout the joinery first, using an awl, square and mortise gauge. After the tenons are marked, I cut any moldings that decorate the rails, then saw the shoulders. (see photo at top of this post, using a mid-20th c. Disston backsaw, sorry Mike) I hold the rails in a modern bench hook, the wooden jig for securing stock on the benchtop for sawing. We have no period reference for this workbench aid, but it’s one that I keep in the arsenal just the same.

After sawing all the shoulders, then it’s time for the fun. I split the waste off the tenons, it’s quick and easy, & it works.

Here the rail is held in the “double bench screw” as Moxon and Holme call it. Think of it as the precursor to the modern handscrew.

splitting tenon's waste

 

There’s slightly more to it than that, but not much. With straight-grained stock it’s a great technique. Here’s the roughed-out tenons, which just require paring with a chisel to finish them off to the proper thickness.

roughed-out tenons

 

box-making class Country Workshops

When I was 18 years old, I was an art-school dropout, and had inherited a basement shop full of modern (c. 1960s) power tools. I had started to learn a bit about using them, and quickly found that I was a bit intimidated by them. Fortunately for me, by the time I was 20, in the fall of 1978 an issue of Fine Woodworking dropped an alternative into my lap. It featured 2 articles, one an excerpt of the book Make a Chair from a Tree, by John Alexander, the other an article on riving by Drew Langsner. I ordered Alexander’s book, and while I waited for it to arrive, read the 2 articles til they were worn.

 In 1980, I saw an advertisement for a week-long class in chairmaking, being held at Drew & Louise Langsner’s craft school Country Workshops, to be taught by John Alexander. I didn’t drive at the time, had practically never been out of New England, wasn’t much of a woodworker, and was terminally shy. I wrote to the address, signed up for the class and made plans to get down to western North Carolina. I was not the star student in the class, to say the least.  

Alexander teaching chairmaking at Country Workshops, undated

 The class really inspired my interest in this craft, and I stumbled along on my own for a few years. Then I returned to Country Workshops by the mid-1980s, and was for the next five years or more a regular attendee at a number of classes – timber framing, white oak basketry, spoon carving, coopering, as well as ladderback chairs with Alexander and American style Windsor chairs. A woodworker from eastern Pennsylvania named Daniel O’Hagan was one of the teachers I met there, and it was his example of using exclusively hand tools that got me to give away all my machines and power tools. I have never missed them.

 

woodenware class, Country Workshops, early 1990s

 

The late 1970s/early 1980s were an excellent time for green woodworking, a term that I think was coined in print by Alexander. He used to tell us that it was “in the air.” Lots of books, workshops, and activity in this field then…and central to it was Country Workshops. Drew & Louise have worked for 30 years making the workshops happen, bringing in teachers of the highest caliber, finding and eventually selling the best tools designed for the work, and keeping it going year after year, always improving on the facility and the format. (See their website for details of the types of classes they offer www.countryworkshops.org ) Everyone I have ever talked to has had nothing but great praise for the experience of taking a class there. The students come from all over, national & international, and it always is interesting to me that a disparate group can come together over a common appreciation/interest in traditional “green” woodworking and spend a very full week totally immersed in the given subject.

 

 Drew & Louise are still plugging away, and a couple of years ago my wife & our then nearly 2-yr old twins chugged all the way down there so I could teach a class in making a carved box. I am delighted to be returning this summer to repeat that class. Drew tells me there’s a couple of slots left, so if you are inclined, drop him an email at langsner@countryworkshops.org  There’s classes year-round and the details are listed on the website.

www.countryworkshops.org

Country Workshops students, carved box class 2007

  

PF carving demo at Country Workshops