You can now visit crucibletool.com, and read up on our holdfasts, our new dividers and why we started this company. I’ll be adding a lot more blog entries in the coming week, including:
How to retrofit a benchtop to use 1”-diameter holdfast holes.
How to carefully ream holdfast holes for a sweet fit with the tool’s shaft.
A tour of Chris Erhart Foundry, where our holdfasts are poured.
An update on the next batch of dividers.
Note that we are not taking backorders for the dividers. To prevent us from getting into a bad situation that plagues many young businesses, we have decided to sell only what we have in stock. No backorders. No waiting lists.
When we have stock, we will announce in advance when the dividers will go up on the site so everyone has a fair shot. And we think we’ll soon have enough to keep them in continuous stock.
Teaching and exhibiting at Woodworking in America – and launching a tool company – proved to be an around-the-clock yack-fest. As a result, we are just now putting the finishing touches on the Crucible Tool website and will almost certainly launch it this week.
The other news is that we announced our second tool: 6” dividers that are being made on our Haas CNC mill in Raney Nelson’s Indiana shop. We had a handful of dividers to sell at the opening event and sold out of them. Raney is cranking up production shortly so that we have stock on them in the next few weeks.
Thanks to the foundry, we have a fair number of holdfasts to sell on the site when it launches (priced at $130, which includes domestic shipping), plus T-shirts ($25, including domestic shipping).
We’ll have lots more details about the dividers on the Crucible site, but the short version is this:
They are based on early 20th-century blacksmith-made dividers and can be adjusted precisely with one hand. But instead of securing the divider’s hinge with a peened pin, we have designed a mechanism that can be adjusted with a No. 10 spanner drive bit (included) so you can adjust the hinge’s friction when it becomes loose through normal use.
The dividers are made using O1 steel and are machined and hand-finished in our Indiana workshop. The price is $120, which includes domestic shipping.
Happy Monday! (Editor’s note: She wrote this on Monday; I was lax in getting it posted.) Hopefully everyone has recovered from Woodworking in America (or has stopped scouring Instagram for the most recent updates like I was) and is ready for a regular week of reading the forum and working. Remember, if you have a question about our products, procedures in our books or anything related to Lost Art Press, the fastest way to get an answer is our forum. Check it out here.
Is it Abnormal for a Brace to be Out of True?
Saul has a brace where the angle of the chuck to the crank arm is less than 90°. When using it, it causes the brace to oscillate. He wants to know if this is something common and if it is something fixable. Have you had a similar issue? Was it worth fixing?
Sea Chest / Pirate Chest Plans Adam wants to build a 1700s -tyle wooden chest similar to those used to transport goods on ships. He is looking for a source for plans or instructions. If you have any insight on where he could find some, let him know here.
Planing End Grain?
Stephan is puzzled by his recent planing experience and is curious to see if it is normal. He has an 8/4 x 14″ x 72″ ash slab that he is making into a bench. When planing the end grain he found that his smoother left the best finish if he planed radially, not simply across the end. He wants to know if this is a technique that other people use or if he and his ash are just weird. Comment here before he starts to think it is just him.
Scandinavian Planes Anybody know of a source for vintage planes from Sweden or Norway? Michael is on the hunt. He knows they are difficult to find but would love some help if anybody has some to offer.
A Novice’s Campaign Over 200 hours and two years later Todd completed an incredible campaign secretary. (picture at top) His daughter is crazy lucky to be able to call it her own. This is a beautiful piece and well worth the time! Congrats!
Yet Another Workbench Newbie… Also a shout out to Mark for finishing his workbench. I love the excitement when people finish their first couple builds and this is a great example. It looks awesome. Here’s to years of new builds coming from this one.
Good morning! I hope you all had a good weekend and are ready for the week to get rolling. I know I’m not (I’m blaming it on allergies) but here’s hoping better things for you. It’s a big week with Woodworking in America taking place so take time to read the forum now before you start trying to keep up with all that is going on in Cincinnati. Remember, if you have a question about our products, procedures in our books or anything related to Lost Art Press, the fastest way to get an answer is our forum. Check it out here.
Plow Plane: Avoiding Tear-out Adrian is making frame-and-panel doors with quartersawn wood that has some wild grain on the edges. The question is, are there any tricks for avoiding tear-out on the edges of the groove? Weigh in here.
Barrister Book Shelf Russell has some antique and collectible books that he would like to protect and he is considering building a barrister book shelf to do so. He is wondering if anyone out there has built one before. Perhaps you have some pointers for him?
Shellac and Milk Paint Has anyone used shellac over milk paint? And if so, how did it turn out? A few readers have given there opinions and one caught my eye. George coated his milk paint with General Finishes Enduro and I loved the result (picture at top). What is your solution?
Roy’s Spring Pole Lathe Completed I have seen a lot of people excited to try building this project shown in Popular Woodworking Magazine. This is the first image I have seen of someone’s completed project. Congrats Markus, and it sounds like you are having a lot of fun with it!
It was a grueling week at the Appalachian Shangri-la as Michele and I spent more than 40 hours reviewing the page proofs of “Roubo on Furniture Making;” me reading aloud every jot and tittle (including punctuation and typography), while she followed along in my replica of the original French volume. It was a paradoxical sprint and marathon as we raced to review in minute detail each word, number and illustration of the new almost-450-page book. We stopped frequently to clarify the meaning or context of a word, phrase, or sometimes even a whole paragraph, leaving approximately a bazillion notations on the pages, mostly about capitalization and italics.
One thing is certain – it does reinforce the assertion that “l’Art du menuisier” was a work for the Ages and can serve as a vital part of any contemporary woodworker’s tutelage, now and for the conceivable future.
Consuming the entire manuscript in one stretch gave us, for the first time, the so-called “view from 40,000 feet.” And what a magnificent view it is! Not only did our appreciation grow through this high-altitude panorama, but we also began to notice subtle and not-so-subtle themes emerging, concepts and phrases we had not noticed before when we were focusing on much smaller units of the whole. This new appreciation was so affecting it provided us with the impetus to actually change the name of the book.
For our first volume, “Roubo on Marquetry,” I chose the lead portion of the title, “To Make As Perfectly As Possible,” from a phrase that Roubo used as exhortation throughout those sections of his original masterpiece. Never mind that it brought about perhaps the most unwieldy title of any woodworking book anywhere, ever. “To Make As Perfectly As Possible: Roubo on Marquetry” does not roll effortlessly off the tongue or the keyboard. Our expectation was that this lead phrase would serve equally well in the title for “Roubo on Furniture Making” and any subsequent volumes, which it would have done admirably, but after this week we are heading in a new rhetorical direction.
Throughout the often lengthy, detailed passages – and “Roubo on Furniture Making” is almost twice as long as “Roubo on Marquetry” – the Master invoked the sentiment and phrase, “with all the precision possible,” and we are eagerly purloining it as our own for this book.
So, I will be hand-delivering our marked-up copy of the proofs of “With All The Precision Possible: Roubo on Furniture Making” to Lost Art Press this coming Thursday at the Crucible Tool premier.
