Popular Woodworking 2006-12 № 159, страница 5
Out on a Limb Luddites! Normites! It's Time to Unite Many woodworkers talk about the craft as if there are rifts between two camps of builders - the hand-tool people v. the power-tool people. The quick-and-easy joinery cabal v. the dovetail-everything-or-else crowd. I don't see things that way. Those perspectives are just different ways of doing the same thing: Making two pieces of wood stick together into something useful, beautiful or (if you're lucky) both. Instead, the biggest battle in woodworking today is much harder to see, though it touches each of us every time we turn on the fluorescents in our shops. Here it is: Every moment is a struggle to discover new and better ways to do things in the shop, and it is also a struggle to retain the immense body of woodworking knowledge that has preceded us. Let me give you an example. I just returned from the International Woodworking Fair in Atlanta, the most gluttonous overdose of tools you can get. While there, an official from Hitachi Power Tools handed me a new pneumatic 15-gauge nailer that had an odd brightly colored button by its exhaust port. When you pressed that button, the nailer redirected the air from the compressor to shoot out of the top of the nail gun. In other words, you could use the nailer to blow sawdust off your work so you could see your layout lines. Maybe some other company somewhere has done this before, but it was new to me. I was in awe at the cleverness of the thing. Why isn't this feature on every pneumatic nailer? Fast-forward to this morning in the shop. I'm testing a set of floats that are being manufactured by Lie-Nielsen Toolworks. What are floats ? They're an old-fashioned tool that is a bit like a cross between a file and a handsaw. The tool's teeth act like little scrapers. The tools cut fast, are easy to navigate and leave a beautiful surface. I refined the shape of a cabriole leg with one float. I straightened out a through-mortise with another. I was again in awe. Why have these tools been forgotten? People who make wooden handplanes and gunstocks haven't forgotten about floats, but most cabinetmakers have. To me, it seems we are forever racing forward to discover new things and discarding old things that are useful. So what is to be done? It's simple. Don't keep your knowledge to yourself. In old Europe, much of the woodworking intelligence was tightly controlled by the guilds, and when they began to fade away, so did many of their secrets. There are precious few (and mostly confusing) early books on woodworking that recorded their ways and workings. So if you have an "a-ha" moment in the shop with your plunge router, or if you finally unlock the secrets of a vintage tool, send it to us and we'll find a way to use it. It could be a Trick of the Trade, a letter or even an article. Whatever happens, don't ever be the last person on earth who knows a trick. PW Christopher Schwarz Editor P.S. Not sick of me yet? I'm teaching a class in hand-tool fundamentals May 21 -25 at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking. For information, drop me a line or contact the school at 317-535-4013 or marcadams.com. CONTRIBUTORS GEOFFREY AMES Geoff Ames holds several patents for Plastic Shipping Drums, was a scratch golfer for 25 years and started his woodworking business more than three decades ago. His early work was produced exclusively with hand tools, but he was forced to start using machinery for stock preparation. However, he still uses hand tools for most details. Geoff is a Period Furniture Master specializing in 18th-century New England-style furniture. He teaches at The Homestead Woodworking School in Newmarket, N.H. Four of his pieces were featured in "Fine Furniture: A Resource for Handcrafted and Custom Furniture," by Kerry Pierce. In this issue, he shares a slick trick for making housed dovetails (page 57). CLARENCE BLANCHARD If you collect old tools, you probably have run into Clarence Blanchard, either at one of his auctions or at a tool show somewhere in the country. Clarence runs Brown Auction Services and the Fine Tool Journal (finetoolj.com), a quarterly about old tools. Though he studied to become a chemical engineer, Clarence entered the construction trade instead, where a natural intere st in tools followed. One day he decided to collect all the Stanley tools from the No. 1 (which he writes about on page 72) to the No. 100; his collection blossomed and he later acquired the auction company and the Fine Tool Journal. He runs both (with the help of his staff) in Pownal, Maine. Our Privacy Promise to You We make portions of our customer list available to carefully screened companies that offer products and services we believe you may enjoy. If you do not want to receive offers and/or information, please let us know by contacting us at: List Manager, F+W Publications 4700 E. Galbraith Road, Cincinnati, OH 45236 10 Popular Woodworking December 2006 |
