Googly Eyes

Why on Earth have I wasted money on cosmetics all these years when all I needed was a set of jeweler's magnifying glasses to make my eyes look bigger and my nose look smaller?

I started working on the little cooper carving and decided to invest in a pair of these* in the hopes that I could achieve a higher level of precision than my current capabilities. (That's the roundabout way of saying that my 46-year old-eyes don't see as well as they used to.)

The carving isn't much to look at yet, but the progressive shots in the group photo give you an idea of the magnifying capabilities of the four lenses that are included in the box.

Powers of magnification include 1.2x, 1.8x, 2.5x, and 3.5x—more than enough for my use. A tiny light that runs on batteries will probably stay in the "off" position (unless I take up coal mining) because I keep a task light attached to my bench.

The headband is adjustable and comfortable, and the instructions are lots of fun: "Under sunshine, please do not put it at window or at the focus of combustibles."**

So far, I'm well-pleased with my purchase.

And, while I don't want to get so wrapped up in details that I never complete the project, I am hoping that the lenses will help me become a little more accurate.



Oh, and the other cool thing about these glasses? They add a bit of pizazz to my Steampunk ensemble.

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*Note: I am not advertising for this company and I do not benefit in any way from sales of this or any of their products.
**I do not mean to offend non-English-speaking individuals. I think the turn of phrases within the instructions is charming.

There are other visors/magnifiers on the market, but these are the only ones I've tried. If anyone has had good luck with another brand, feel free to let everyone know in the comments.

Jerusalem Mill

Jersalem Mill, a Quaker village established in 1772, is located in Maryland's Harford County.

Business partners Isaiah Linton and David Lee set up several grist mills along the Little Gunpowder River in the second half of the 18th-century. Buildings sprang up over subsequent years to create a village surrounding Jerusalem Mill.

A gun shop, located behind the mill, is believed to have produced muskets for the Maryland militia during the Revolutionary War. In later years, the building was used for coopering, housing, and rental space.

The blacksmith shop is across the street from the mill, a general store is just a short walk away, a springhouse is tucked away in a nearby field, and Jericho Covered Bridge is an easy quarter mile walk down the road.

A few other buildings in the restored village are privately owned and are not open to the public.

The mill ceased operations in 1961 when the property was purchased by the state of Maryland. It then became part of Gunpowder Falls State Park. Extensive renovations to the mill, gunshop, and blacksmith shop, all of which had fallen into disrepair, brought them back to life.

We visited the village on Colonial Craftsmen Weekend, where reenactors pitched tents, demonstrated traditional crafts, and sold handmade products.

I learned that walnut hulls cooked in water create a natural stain. Yellow is the easiest color to achieve with natural ingredients and green is the most difficult.

When making lye soap, the consistency is correct when an egg will float with just a quarter size section of its shell showing above the liquid.

And I learned that wax must be cooked at just the right temperature—not too hot and not too cool—in order for it to adhere to the string that's dipped into it to form a candle.

The two men who were working in the woodshop were very friendly and were happy to talk with another woodworker.
If you plan to visit, you can find Art Benser, the master woodworker, in the shop every Sunday, unless Christmas falls on that day.

Well, Shoot

Just when you think you know everything there is to know about shooting boards, along comes Ron Herman to show you just how tricky these jigs can be.

Ron owns Antiquity Builders of Ohio, a company that specializes in authentic restorations.

How authentic?

In his shop, tools are grouped according to the periods in which they were manufactured.

So, if your 1820 home needs some repair, Ron and company grab all their tools that were made prior to 1820 and then get to work.

According to Ron, because wood is not an exact material—it moves, shrinks, and expands (unlike metal, for instance)—the machines that cut the wood cannot produce a completely accurate piece. Wood needs to be tweaked in order for it to fit a joint, a corner, a mortise.

This is where shooting boards come in. If you need to make an adjustment in 1/4 degrees, you can do it with a shooting board.

Ron and his team mark their boards with the word "SAVE" because they are made from whatever scrap material they have on hand, which means they can easily be mistaken for trash. And when one wears out, it is trashed, and they make another.

To match an angle, Ron uses a bevel gauge to transfer the mark onto a shooting board, and then slides a nickel between the fence and workpiece to act as a shim. Most of his shooting boards have a nickel-sized hole drilled into the top fence which holds the "shim" for future use.

Ron prefers to use a miter box and shooting board to cut angles rather than a miter saw. "Cells are crushed with a power saw" he says, and crushed fibers don't hold glue well. Conversely, wood fibers are sheered with a handplane—pores are open, which allows for better glue absorption.

"You can shoot with any plane" he claims, as long as the side and sole are 90º to one another. Ron uses a straight-mouth (not skewed) handplane for shooting and builds an upward-sloping ramp on some of his shooting boards to enhance the sheering action of the blade.

Many of his boards have dedicated angles (see first group photo). Others are adjustable.

One board (bottom three photos) is used to tweak tapered legs. Both the top and bottom of the guide are movable to accommodate a variety of shapes.

Shooting boards are made on-site for particular jobs—fitting a door, for example. Notes are written directly on the board for speedy reference. And scraps are tacked to shooting boards at various angles for quick "joint checks."

Do you need to undercut a piece of moulding by one degree? Take a look at the shooting board in last photo group. One chute (the bed on which the plane rides) is canted away from the workpiece and the other is canted toward the piece.

This is the overarching message I gathered from Ron's class: if you're interested in taking woodworking to a whole new level of precision, here's what you need—a sheet of plywood with a couple of nailed-on scraps, a well-tuned handplane, and your imagination.

I also heard the message "Sandpaper sucks." But that's another blog post.

Step Right Up and Feast Your Eyes

I want John Sindelar to come decorate my house.

I love this guy's style.

It's "19th-century gypsy" according to John, who has remarkable talent for creating Old World atmosphere.



As you step inside his trailer, it's like walking onto a theatrical set, or a turn-of-the-century carnival tent, or a Dungeons and Dragons game.

Visions of knights and castles, and medieval chambers transport you out of the real world and into John Sindelar's fantastic tool collection, only 1/10th of which was brought to the conference.

As you duck beneath the ornate and fringed tapestry to enter the museum, everything is cast in an amber and reddish glow.

Gilded frames house saws and braces. The 12'-long, floor-to-ceiling display cabinet (which he built in only 14 hours), is reminiscent of a Victorian train station.

Planes, axes (one, an enormous beheading axe), dividers—all ornately carved—are everywhere you look. Tools are suspended from the scrollwork pattern painted on the ceiling. An elaborate chair and tool chest, decorated with detailed marquetry, become display platforms for one-of-a-kind plumb bobs, trammels points, and measuring devices.

The lighting casts heavy shadows so that the wooden tools, with their rich, warm patina emerge from dark corners, like objects in a Caravaggio painting.

John is not only a high-end furniture maker, he's a carver, engraver, and painter. See the outside of his trailer? He and another man painted that.

Not only is his collection impressive, the man himself is worthy of praise.

What's New

I've only been home a short while from the WIA Conference and my thoughts are still in the marketplace.



As per usual, I spent a lot of time chatting with tool makers and other woodworkers.

Here are some of the new products that were on display and some of the people that I met for the first time.



I don't need to tell you that all of these toolmakers are top notch. Every single tool that was offered by them was finely-crafted and works exceptionally well.

When making a decision between which toolmaker to choose for chisels, planes, saws, etc., it often comes down to personal preference.

That's where having the opportunity to try the tools in person makes all the difference in your decision-making.

These are marvelous toolmakers. You simply cannot go wrong with any of them.

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List of Companies
(in no particular order):

Tools For Working Wood
Greener Lumber LLC
Bad Axe Toolworks
Brese Planes
Garbardi & Son
Vogt Toolworks
Noden Inlay Razor
Daed Toolworks
Knew Concepts
Blue Spruce Toolworks
Elkhead Tools
M.S. Bickford

Artistic License

My friend, Dyami Plotke, sent a book to me entitled "The Artistic Crafts Series of Technical Handbooks—Wood Carving: Design and Workmanship."

It was printed in 1903 and focuses on relief carving—from choosing and sharpening tools to the do's and don'ts of the craft.

The author is very opinionated (alluding at one point to his distaste for a new trend in artwork which he finds to be without merit—presumably Art Nouveau) and points continually to older artforms created in previous decades as objects worthy of study.

I love this book. The man who wrote it, George Jack, and I would never have gotten along. His "this is the correct and only way to do this" approach would drive me nuts. However, the language he uses and his instruction are excellent.

It's motivated me to try relief carving again, so I spent time searching for a centuries-old print to use as a model. I found one on Peter Follansbee's blog which depicts a cooper in 1485, tightening the hoops on an inverted bucket.

The artist had a wonderful eye for balance, negative and positive space, and format. Your eye is first attracted to the face and the central spot in the drawing—his workpiece—then your gaze moves down the cooper's body to the axe on the stump, then circles to the left to view the bucket, and sweeps back up to the hammer. This circular shape is underscored by the arch in the doorway.

Upon closer scrutiny, the seemingly crude sketch (in ink, I'm guessing) shows someone who, with use of minimal line, is able to suggest heavy, thick folds in cloth, and who had an eye for detail of a craft which he did not thoroughly know. Check out the shaving horse. It has a dumbhead and footrest, but no bridge, and a gaping space in front of the dumbhead. Unless there was some insert (i.e., ramp or raised bed) that fit into the empty space, this shaving horse appears to be unusable. Plus, as Peter Follansbee pointed out, there is no front leg or pair of legs.

However, the artist does illustrate details like iron hoops hanging from the wall and a few of the tools a cooper would use. I was not able to determine two of the items on the rear table, to the left of his swinging hammer. One might be a cup because there is a pitcher nearby. The other looks like a pastry bag. Or corn cob. I opted to change those two objects to a drawknife and head shave.

Another thing I changed in my version are the parallel and horizontal lines. I used a plastic T-square and plywood triangle to square up the image. Those things can be fudged in sketches, but, to me, they would look sloppy in a carving.

What makes this a nice piece to use for relief carving is the perspective. As Mr. Jack explains, the rules of perspective that apply to painting are not the same as those used in carving: "...all such features [in the artwork] must be treated in a way entirely different to that adopted by the painter—that is to say, in detached groups, each having some due relation to the original surface of the wood, and only very little to their perspective positions."

He goes on to say that objects that point directly toward the viewer, in severe perspective, simply will not work in relief carving.

The artwork that I have chosen to carve reflects this concept. The elements in the workshop seem to be stacked on top of one another, rather than drawn in realistic perspective, and are in lateral and 3/4 view.

Now, let's see if I can do this wonderful little painting justice.

Andrew Lunn and Gary Blum

As the Woodworking In America Conference is quickly approaching, I'd like to turn the spotlight on two more toolmakers I spoke with at last year's conference: Andrew Lunn of Eccentric Toolworks and Gary Blum of Blum Tool Company. Both men will be at this year's conference, so if you're visiting the Marketplace, be sure to stop by their booths.

Because I did not have enough time to speak with them in-depth at last year's conference, I wrote and asked them to tell me about their tools and what makes them special.

Andrew Lunn wrote this about his handsaws:
I suppose the way I would characterize my saws is that they are each made with extreme care, by hand, and have a very considerable amount of attention paid to detail. I am very picky about how the saws function and about how they look. They are not actual copies of existing saws, but are my own designs that are based upon a lot of thought, experimentation, and the study of old saws.

I like giving my saws a unique visual identity, with the carved scrolls, unusual lamb's tongues, and the filework done to the toes of the hand saws and panel saws.

My saws are very detailed functionally, as well. Sawing well is a skill, and I carefully design my saws to respond to, and to complement a skilled hand. The capacity for finesse and touch are built into the saws themselves. So even though the saws are visually unique, there is also a lot to them that is rather subtle and that you can't necessarily see by just looking at them. You have to use them before you see it.


Gary Blum wrote this about his planes:
My planes are different in many ways from the standard metal or wood planes. The bottom line, though, is that they take shavings and smooth wood just like any other plane.

The biggest thing which sets my planes apart from others is the reverse angle frog. By mounting a frog at this reverse angle, it allows for some very unique advantages for my planes. Depth adjustments are in a direct line with no connections, so there is no backlash in the screws. By having 2 screws for adjustments, lateral adjustments are done at the same time. The front of the frog becomes the chipbreaker, so no separate one is required. The frog itself can be cambered and the small blade simply bent to it by the back up iron, so you can always grind a straight blade and have a perfect camber. The mouth opening is parallel at the front and back so there is no mouth opening up as the sole is trued. The frog will pivot foreward or back to open or close the mouth and this can be done with no tools.

However, my main motivation for developing this plane was to eliminate the grinding step required for the plane iron. In talking with other woodworkers over the years, the main reason they didn't use their planes ( and therefore didn't know what they were capable of ), was the sharpening issue. The average woodworker does not have a good way to grind a 2 3/8" plane iron to a specific angle, keep it square, and straight, and not burn the edge. My thin irons only require honing, which can be done on a fixed angle jig, so it is a much simpler procedure.

I really enjoy the woodworking aspect of making my planes. Mesquite wood is my most popular choice, and it's a real pleasure to work with. I also use maple, walnut, cherry, rosewood, and jatoba. I have also done custom woods that the customer supplies. Since my planes are all handmade, I can change various things like handles, finish, length, etc.

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As I've said before, we're incredibly fortunate to have so many people who devote their careers to making superbly-crafted hand tools. If you can try them out in person, that's always the best way to tell if the tool is right for you. But, if you're not able to attend the WIA Conference, perhaps Andrew's and Gary's write-ups will help in your decision-making as you consider which tools should be employed in your workshop.

The Market at Washingtonburg

This was the first year we attended The Market at Washingtonburg, located in Carlisle, PA.

The setting was 18th-century and living history sutlers selling their crafts lined the grassy fields of the U.S. Army Heritage & Education Center.

Military units marched in formation and shot their reproduction muskets for event-goers.

This was the setting for one of the supply stations that was built along a military road around 1759, during the French and Indian War, where troops could restock their food and munitions.

Reproduction Civil War cabins are permanent structures on the grounds and represent quarters for enlisted men, cooks, and officers. Some reenactors were actually staying in the buildings during the event—their period-correct belongings and bedding (albeit, 18th-century, not 19th) outfitting the rooms—which made it all the more realistic.

Even without the encampment and reenactors, the facility is worth visiting. Replica World War I trenches and a World War II concrete bunker are open to explore, military aircraft are on display, and the Education Center houses collections of military officers.