New Year, Old Project

It's been so quiet here at Chairnotes that you can hear the snowfalling. But it's not that I'm not writing, it's what I'm writing. I am in a push to get the drawings for my book done and am happy to say that I'm making good progress. As to the actual release date, it can't be pinned down just yet, but I will hopefully be handing everything to the book designer, and Chris Schwarz for the next phase. I thought that I'd share a couple of images to give a little preview of what I'm compiling.

 There are literally hundreds of illustrations and it's taken me a while to establish a style that is clear and fast to create.

I like communicating by drawing (as any former student will tell) because you can go straight to the concept without any confusion and you can show views and relationships that would be tough to show any other way.

Nice to Meet You

Since I moved to Sterling, Massachusetts, I've been swamped with projects and traveling and had little time to get to know my community or let them know me. That changed when I talked to Dave Gibbs at the Sterling Historical Society about combining our efforts and interests. The Society has a lovely collection of Windsors that were made here in town as well as a barn full of the old tools from its workshops. The first floor of the barn is relatively empty, and I thought it would be a great location to host some 6 person classes. So, next summer, I hope to schedule three classes there, but I'll post more on that once we work out the details.
To help introduce me to the community, the Sterling Historical Society hosted a demonstration at the local American Legion post and Ross Jones of Harvard Video Productions filmed it for us. Here is the video of the demonstration.
If it doesn't appear on your screen, click here to go to the original site.



As you can see, I am elated to be starting this project. I think 6 is a great number of students for a class. Plenty enough for a group energy and atmosphere but few enough for lots of personal attention.

And if I got you interested in my talk with Dudley Hershbach, here is a great interview with him that I found every bit as engaging as sitting next to him on the plane.



and once again, the link if you don't see the video here.

A New Site!

Last Spring, while building my maple syrup evaporator, I had an epiphany. While there were parts that I was happy to fabricate myself, when it came to the stainless steel pan, I knew that I was out of my depth and with my limited free time, I could easily justify buying one from a quality maker.

Then I realized that some folks might feel the same about the tools that I make and have featured on Chairnotes. With increasingly busy lives, perhaps grinding drill bits or making travishers isn't as captivating as getting a chair together. I get it, and when I offered some tools to my students at a recent class, the notion was confirmed.

This also dovetails with my desire to focus on writing projects for the upcoming year. I am still building for clients and designing new work, but small scale projects like toolmaking fit the bill for keeping my hands happy and my head free.

As you may know, my travishers are already available (I am almost caught  up on the backlog) and as the year proceeds, I am hoping to add some other tools to the list, such as reamers with a blade adjuster (and that don't clog!), long spur drill bits and drawknifes (tuned, refurbished and ready to go) and perhaps even an adze. 

I call the site Chairnotes Tools, and my plan is to use it as a list site where I will feature the tools as they come available. Keeping tabs on new stuff will be easy by subscribing.

I've chosen to create Chairnotes Tools as a separate site so that you can still come to Chairnotes knowing what to expect, a solid dose of my workshop ramblings with the occasional goat photo.

Perhaps it's naive of me to treat this with such delicacy, most folks are probably comfortable with the realities of commerce, but I take the trust of the visitors to Chairnotes seriously, and I'd much rather err in this direction. 

Thanks

Pete

Travishers Part 3, Sharpening

One of the most rewarding parts of making travishers is taking them out for a test run and seeing what they can do. Here is a shaving off of some angled endgrain.

It's especially rewarding, having processed the steel from a soft, malleable blank to a razor sharp edge. Here is a video that shows the process that I use to get that edge. I hope that it helps. If there is any part of it that needs more info, please let me know.

The Travisher Part 2

There is plenty about the travisher that is counter intuitive. In this video, I show some of the techniques that I've found helpful in getting the most from my travisher.

I am starting to look forward to fall, especially now that I have a new slate floor and woodstove in the shop.

 

It was strange not having wood heat in the shop last winter, but now I'm all set, except for the firewood of course.

Travishers in the works

Here is the propane powered fueled forge that I am using to heat treat the steel for the travishers. It took some figuring, but I finally settled on this method, using a pipe as a sort of double boiler, to keep the steel isolated from the gas and oxygen. Too much oxygen causes the steel to lose carbon on the surface as the oxygen bonds with carbon and steal it away, plus it can cause scaling. This process, suggested to me by a knife maker, only darkens the surface of the steel a bit, which buffs right off.
Once the pipe gets cherry hot, it only takes a minute or two to get the steel to temp and then it's ready to quench.

I'm very pleased with the results that I'm getting, ok, I'm being coy, I LOVE this thing. After tempering, the O-1 steel takes a razor edge very quickly.
I've enlisted my friend Claire Minihan to help me produce these tools (Andy is busy getting married!). She graduated from the North Bennet Street School and can build furniture that I could only dream of attempting. Here she is grinding the brass sole to shape.

And trimming the throat opening. Having such skilled folks working on my projects is a point of great pride for me.

We are making these tools one at a time, the way that I like to make everything. It keeps the focus on quality and makes a pleasant arc to the day. 

Here is a run ready to go out. If you have your name on the list and haven't heard from me, I should be contacting you soon. We have a solid process for making these and I am looking forward to catching up with all the orders.

Here is the first in a series of videos on the travisher. While I will be specifically addressing some of the attributes of my tools, I will also be talking about the travisher in general. Hopefully it will be of use to you regardless of whose tool you are using

The Travisher Refined

My love affair with the travisher began many years ago when I made my first one. Watching the shavings fly while the tool rides along the curves of a seat is pure pleasure. I've made many others since, but have always suspected that there was room for improvement. So recently, I set out to make a better travisher with the goal that it would be easier to use, more precise and more durable.
Here is the result.

The shavings that you see are from the endgrain of a pine board. I've added a brass sole plate to the tool after noting how quickly the sole, even out of rosewood wears. The rest of the tool is made from walnut.

I shaped and mated the brass to the blade, which I bent and heat treated to hold an edge appropriate to the use of the tool. Andy Jack and I have worked out the process to a point where the results are consistent and can hold a great edge.

Here is throat.

The radius of this travisher is a bit tighter than I used to make, about 3 1/2" and the blade is consistently set proud of the sole plate around the radius.

For a travisher to work properly, the sole must be slightly angled upward and curved so that the contact point allows the user to vary the depth of cut. It's very rewarding to put these details into the brass plate, knowing that they will last.

Andy and I are going to produce these, in limited numbers, for $200. I'm proud of the tool and as usual, it's all just a ploy to spend more time hanging out with Andy. Please email me (peter@petergalbertchairmaker.com) if you are interested in purchasing one and we will let you know the lead time.

You may have noticed my absence from posting for a while, and a few of you might have guessed, it's Maple Syrup season! Well, this year, I promised myself to go all out as a celebration of our new home and a hard and busy year. So, with the help of my brother Andrew, my pal Dan and the generosity of Ray Duffy, I built a new evaporator from a 275 gallon oil tank and bought some lovely pans to get a boil rate of about 12 gallons an hour. That means a gallon of syrup takes less than 4 hours to make, versus about 10 hours on my old rig!

Here is the tank, with a door from a barrel stove kit.

And here it is boiling away!

The pans are set up like a snaking trough where in fresh sap is introduced on one end which pushes the condensed sap through to the end where it is near finished syrup. It was a ball to watch and you can see how we drew the syrup off of the finishing pan up front. We tinkered with the rig a good bit, and on the last boil of the season, we got the whole surface boiling beautifully.

Here is the product.

You can see the different grades. The one jar is upside down to sterilize the lid. This is the best syrup I've made, with a distinct maple flavor and no sugary bite. I can't wait for next year.

But now, I'm off to Kelly Mehler's to teach with Greg Pennington for a couple of weeks, always a great time.

Guest Blogger Elia Bizzarri

Here is a description of using and maintaining the travishers that Elia Bizzarri makes. I recommend this tool as a great value, but more importantly, it's made by a chairmaker who understands how to make a tool that really performs. While I helped Elia design the tool but am not in any way financially invested.


These travishers, unlike most on the market, operate via a slightly curved sole which gives depth-of-cut control while the tool is in use. There is no fussing with the blade to get the depth set, leaving you with only one possible shaving thickness. Sharpening is also easier because the back of the blade is concave to make removing the burr faster, plus the blade has no tangs to get in the way when sharpening the bevel. The handles are designed for chairmkers and the curve of the blade closely matches the curves in a Windsor chair seat, leaving a smoother surface.

Use: In my shop, travishers are an intermediate tool in the seat carving process between initial shaping with an inshave and fine tuning the surface with a card scraper. Travishers remove the gross irregularities and they do it in a hurry; they are the jack plane of seat carving. That said, the body mechanics involved in using a travisher are somewhat counter-intuitive and can take some getting used to.

As with most edge tools, practicing NOT cutting is the best way to learn to use a travisher correctly. Hold the travisher in two hands, thumbs resting on the flat pads on either side of the throat, with the blade facing away from you (travishers are usually pushed). Put the travisher onto the work, then roll your wrists up and away from you until the blade is no longer in contact and the sole of the travisher is all that contacts the work (see photo). Now push the tool, trying to keep the blade from cutting.

As uncomfortable as this may seem, this is where you should start each and every cut. Once you get the feel of not cutting, straighten your wrists slightly and the blade will come in contact with the work. Straighten them more for a heavy cut, less for a light cut. End the cut by rolling your wrists away from you to bring blade out of the cut; it's awkward, but rolling your wrists down will make the tool cut deeper before exiting the cut.

Blade Adjustment: As I already mentioned, these travishers are meant to be used in a way that gives you control over the depth of cut as you are using the tool. However, if you need to increase the blade exposure, inserting pieces of paper between the blade and the body will raise the blade; evenly scraping the sole will have a similar and more permanent effect. Carefully filing the shoulders which the blade seats on will lower the blade. It doesn't take much; one thickness of paper will have a noticeable effect.

Sharpening: Sharpening most tools is the same basic process: you sharpen the bevel with a coarse enough stone to be expedient, work up the grits to polish the surface and make a longer lasting edge, then remove any burr you've created by working it back and forth with your finest stone until it breaks off, leaving a crisp edge. There are many ways to do this, most of which work. Here are some thoughts:

The Bevel: A deburring wheel called a Beartex wheel (from MSC or Highland Hardware), followed by a hard felt or leather buffing wheel, is a quick way to sharpen the bevel. The Beartex is like a very aggressive buffing wheel and the tool can overheat or the edge be rounded over in a hurry, so it takes a little getting used to. Putting your wheel on a homemade threaded-rod mandrel, chucking it in a variable speed lathe and reducing the speed could solve this problem.

A safer method would be to screw the blade bevel-up to a wooden form and use some kind of slip (diamond, Japanese waterstone...) An old Japanese bench stone, the face rounded with a rasp, gives plenty of room for the hands if you plan on a lot of sharpening. The bevel can then be polished on a felt or leather wheel by skewing the blade on the wheel to give maximum surface contact. Start with the heel of the bevel contacting the wheel (to give you a frame of reference), then move the blade across the wheel towards the edge until you see a very slight feathering of the polishing compound curling up off the edge. This indicates that you are right on the edge. A heavy curl indicates you have tipped the blade too far, changing the shape of the bevel and blunting the edge.

The Back: The back of the blade must be kept flat. If the back is rounded over or made convex, however slightly, the tool will not cut, so only sharpening stones should come in contact with the back. No strops and definitely no buffing wheels. The back comes flattened and polished, so, unless you run the tool into a nail, your finest grit stone should be enough to remove the burr after sharpening from the bevel.

If the Beartex wheel gets away from you and grinding the bevel is the only option, a small grinding burr chucked into an electric drill should do the trick.

--
Elia Bizzarri - Hand Tool Woodworking
101 Nicks Bend West
Pittsboro, NC 27312
919-967-3321
www.handtoolwoodworking.com

More Seat Carving

Here is Doug Roper working on his high back sack back (It's actually done now but this is the first chance I've had to write!)
We had a great week working on the finer points of chairmaking and designing a chair together, I look forward to seeing the chair painted!



I've had a number of questions lately about travishers and inshaves. Elia Bizzarri is making travishers based on the one that I made and use. The most frequent concern about these tools seems to be the curvature. When we look at a windsor seat, we see curves. The seat is scooped, the sides are curved and the underside is rounded. This gives us the impression that the seat is extremely shapely and dished. This turns out to be an illusion. Most windsor seats are merely a number of gently curved planes intersecting. The flatter seat allows more movement and therefore is more comfortable. Most important to the shape of the seat is that the deepest part is correctly located in relation to the back and that the front is properly relieved to prevent cutting off the circulation of the legs. I have found that a 5" or 6" radius on a travisher is fine for achieving both the tightest radius and the flattest areas of a seat.



The key to working the flats and curves with a single tool is the angle at which you hold it. Above is a photo showing the curve at the bottom of my travisher. I use it to carve the flatter areas by making a series of strokes in one direction and then going over the same area in a different direction, much as you would while using a scrub plane. As I approach the desired shape and depth of curvature, I lighten and overlap the strokes to get a finer surface. This is a fine time to mention that nearly every stroke that I take with the travisher is across grain and with the tool at least slightly skewed. While cutting cross grain, I make sure to skew the tool in the direction that will cut cleanest (normally towards the deepest part of the seat).

Below is the same travisher pictured while skewed. You can observe that the curvature of the bottom is tighter. It is in this position that I am able to cut the curved at the back of the seat. When cutting this area, I simply stop when the tool won't cut anymore. The problem that I most often see with students is that they are trying to cut the deepest part of the curve without cutting the areas around it. It is a good rule of thumb that if the tool won't cut the desire area, try cutting the surrounding material. Think of the way that a handplane cuts, always riding the high spots. A travisher works the same way, if all the surrounding areas are high, it stops cutting. This is when folks start reaching for tools with a tighter radius. I think that this is a mistake. The idea behind the shape of the travisher is similar to the handplane. With either, the idea is to "map" the shape of the tool onto the workpiece. With a handplane, the desired shape is flat, and when flattening a board, we reach for the largest practical tool because it will take in more information (high spots) and more easily do the job. The same goes for the travisher. The information taken in by the increased contact of the flatter curved tools will yield a more consistent result.
Working the tighter curved shaves is the equivalent of using a small block plane to flatten a plank. Yes is always cuts but it will be difficult to get the surface uniform.



There are other advantages of using the travisher in the skewed position. Below is an image of a chisel blade showing the direction that the shavings travel across the cutting edge when used straight and skewed. As you can see, the path of the straight cut shavings will go directly up and have to deflect the full angle of the bevel. This makes cutting more difficult and yields a coarser cut when cutting crossgrain. The path followed by the shaving when skewed is less extreme. The benefits are many. Less force is required to cut, the tool cuts cleanly cross grain (while pointing with the grain), the bevel angle is reduced (actually acting as a thinner, sharper blade) and the ease of slicing while cutting is increased. With the travisher, you also add being able to adjust the curvature of the bottom. Most of what I've touched on here also applies to the inshave, which is why I also advocate for the flatter ones. I would like to note that I have no financial involvement with Elia. I just want to see a good tool made by a good craftsman.