Another thought on the Shavehorse

I was in need of another shavehorse recently for a class, so I grabbed a dumbhead swing arm that I had laying around and cobbled together a horse. This part was an experiment that I had tried when looking into making an adjustable shavehorse. I rejected it because it had some short grain issues that I thought wouldn't stand up. But after using it in the class, I realized that the shortgrain issues that came with sawing the parts from a board could be sidestepped by using hickory dowels for the "teeth". It took me all of 15 minutes to retrofit with dowels and I have been using it with great results. The video is clearly a quick shot, but I think it gets the idea across.



The one drawback to this design that the "smarthead" solves is that the foot treadle rises when you adjust it, but so far, that hasn't been annoying enough to overcome the simplicity and the strength of the concept. Ideas aren't always linear, this one sat for a couple of years, but I thought it worth sharing for those looking for simple solutions. The dowels are set at a 23 degree angle (probably variable) and are 5/8".

Hot Stuff

I recently rebuilt my larger steambox that I use for classes. I had such good results using the two steamers and insulated boxes in Atlanta and North Carolina, that I wanted to see what I could do.

Here is the box that I made. I used a tongue and groove that ran the length of the box to seal the sides and Gorilla glue to seal the joint. Since this photo, I've added a proper hasp.

The insulation is 1 inch thick foil faced and is just draped over the box. Without the foil face, the insulation will swell and warp. With this set up, and insulation on both ends, I was able to get the box up to 210.5 degrees f. With 212 degrees being the absolute highest that the temp can get without being pressurized, I call this a success.

When we opened and closed the door to retrieve the bends, the temp only dropped about 6 degrees and recouped the heat within minutes. One thing that I noticed was that one of the two steamer units went through water much faster than the other, and so I checked the wattage. Sure enough, my older one was 1250 and the new one that I bought at Highland was 1500. While the bends came off beautifully, I can only imagine that two 1500 watt units would be the ideal. Keep in mind that this box is 9 by 11 inches so that it can hold a whole class worth of parts and must keep the heat up with lots of door openings. On a smaller box, one unit is fine, especially if it's insulated.

A little sample

The Lost Art Press blog featured a sample of the book yesterday. If you didn't see it already, check it out!

We are almost ready for filming Rough Cut tomorrow. Perhaps the best thing to come of it is that we had a great excuse to clean out the shop! I haven't seen it this clear in years.

I am finishing the prototype for the set of chairs that I'm reproducing. It came out darn close to what I wanted, but I've made changes for the final design after seeing it in person. It's usually the case that a drawing of a chair looks different than the actual results, so the prototype is usually a necessary step before making the chairs for the client.

The Original

If you ever visit, you'll see that I always end up with the prototypes. This chair is a simple form, but as I've made my way through all the aesthetic choices, I've found it to be a finely tuned design. I'll show more about this soon. I'll have plenty of chances while finishing 6 more of them.