Drafting patterns for leatherworking

Note: This post isn't really about 16th century methodologies.

I've shared a few of my favorite "hacks" (as the kids say) for making leather items with a bit of improvisation in the tools department. We've used flower pots to build mugs, we've used butter knives for skiving, and my favorite cheap woodworking chisels for cutting.

So let's talk about pattern making.

If you've ever followed my maskmaking tutorial or done any other leatherworking without a pre-printed pattern, you've noticed that there's often a size discrepancy between any paper pattern you've created by wrapping the item in paper and marking seams (as we did with this shoemaking post) and the leather you're going to use.

This can cause some real fit issues.

The problem stems from the difference in thickness between paper and leather, combined with the fact that paper doesn't stretch around a form and leather does. You could use some math to account for the thickness, but the stretch is a bit more difficult to guess at, which can result in some wasted materials.

Here's my Not Even Remotely Period (NERP) approach to leather patterning that saves me a lot of time and leather when I'm winging it with a pattern: craft foam.

In the image below, I am preparing a knife sheath for one of my carving knives. I've wrapped the knife in paper and marked the seam, but to get a better handle on the actual shape of the final piece of leather, I made the pattern in the back on thin white foam which I purchased from a local Michael's craft store.

It's not quite as thick as the final leather, but it's close. More importantly, it stretches a bit in a manner that is very reminiscent of damp leather. And since this is a pattern where the fit is precise and the seams have to just meet with no seam allowance, fit is so very crucial.

It's NERPy, sure, but it works a treat.

- Scott

Simple Simon met a pieman, going to the fair...

As previously noted, this past weekend an old back injury flared up (cough-anvil-cough) and I was a bit stuck. I couldn't sit down and got tired of laying down, so I decided to do some food-borne experiments standing at the counter.  An excellent opportunity to explore the cuisine prepared for the high and the low by the Worshipful Company of the Cooks of London. After poking around the internet (the cookbooks were on a shelf too low to reach, something I'll need to address soon) I settled on making a classic pork pie.

Except that no one on the web could seem to decide what that meant.  Which is perfect territory for me because I never know what anything means until I get there.

Thankfully, enough of the kitchen is done to give me some space for my lab equipment, but which I mean a notebook and a laptop.

What I like most about this is that it gives you a sort of mid-race look at how things work in behind the scenes. First I look to see if anyone else has done this before. If so, what did they do? Do I like what they did? Can I do it differently, or better, or in some way contribute to the discussion in my own way? Has it been done to death? Is there a better project?

Then I begin to experiment, carefully recording my results and noting where I deviated from the standard profile. Note taking is of paramount importance. I lost my notebook with all my notes on the history of brewing and it quite literally set me back a month on that project.

To quote Adam Savage from the Mythbusters: "Remember kids, the only difference between doing science and screwing around is writing it down."

So... pies.

I know going in that pies were often used as simple ways to create fare for the working stiff. Which is right up my alley. A pie wrapped in cloth will stay hot for quite awhile after the working stiff gets to his workshop, a portable hug from his family kitchen. Pies were served to all walks of life, differentiated mainly by the expense of their ingredient list.

My cupboard holds enough spices that to the 16th century cook it would seem that I'd purloined a king's ransom, so I must be careful. I want an upper-middling sort of pie, perhaps around a festival time when purse strings were loosened by gaiety or in hopes of impressing an important client. The clove and cinnamon especially come to us from the far Orient by way of many middle-men, each taking a cut of the high price I paid to show off the wealth of my kitchen... all six square feet of it that are finished enough to be in the photos.

Yes, pain and painkillers do make my imagination run a bit wild, but as long as I don't hurt anyone, who does it hurt?

After a bit of trial and error, I cobbled together the following working recipe for a spiced pork pie in a standing coffin, complete with photos of carefully-staged food (which was weird for me, because I'm not the Instagram breed of foodie).  Though I use some spices that would cost our Elizabethan cook a pretty penny, the nicest thing about a pie is that it's a scalable application and could easily be made for more money or less depending on what you put in it.

Hang on... you put what in a coffin?

A coffin is a period term for a pie crust and in general they were edible but not necessarily meant to be eaten. It's a curious bit of nomenclature and it illustrates handily the gallows humor of a people who lived much closer to the line between life and death than moderns like myself are accustomed to. When I can reach my Oxford English Dictionary (too heavy, too low of a shelf... now I know why dictionary stands were invented) I'll try to figure out whether the box for dead people or the crust for a pie was named that first.

I sort of like the idea that it was the pie first.

Please note: Bad back means no chopping wood, so this one's done in the modern oven inside, but would easily translate to the wood-fired oven or to baking in a cauldron placed next to carefully-tended coals. I really should find myself a couple of apprentices...

Let's get cooking!

To make a simple pork pie in a standing coffin

Serves: 4 (Makes four pies)



Coffins...
3 cups of flour
2 tsp creme of tartar
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp of salt
1 cup of water
8 tbs lard
2 tbs unsalted butter


filling...
1 lbs ground pork (plus reserved liquid)
1/4 cup chopped onion
1/4 cup bread crumbs
1 tbs spice mixture
     cloves
     allspice
     cinnamon
     black peppercorns  
6 cloves of garlic
pinch of salt
1/4 tsp flour

Additional...
One egg, beaten

Making the coffins...

Combine dry ingredients in a work bowl using a sieve or whisk. Make a well in the middle of the mound of dry ingredients.

Meanwhile, heat the lard and butter with 1/2 cup of water to a boil. Remove from heat and wait for it to stop bubbling, then pour slowly into well in the dry ingredients. Begin to combine the hot wet mixture into the dry using a wooden spoon, working outward from the center, being careful because the wet ingredients are just off the boil. Sieve additional flour as needed until your paste takes on the consistency of Play-do.

Turn out onto a floured board and divide into six equal parts. Use a rolling pin to flatten into disks about a half inch thick and stack the disks with waxed paper between them in an open bag.  Counter for at least four hours or move to the refrigerator and chill for at least two hours. (If you decide to chill, bring to room temperature before you start to work the dough again.)

Making the filling...

Your spice pack is basically mulling spices minus the star anise. (The licorice flavor of anise overwhelms the pork in my opinion.) Candied ginger or orange peel is a delightful addition if you get a whim. Combine the spices in a mortar and pound into powder. If you must use an electric spice grinder, I won't judge you.

Well... maybe a little.


Combine spice pack, onions, garlic, salt, and ground pork in a pan and cook on medium heat until it starts to come together.

DO NOT DRAIN.

Once the pork is brown, mix in bread crumbs and a 1/4 teaspoon of flour to thicken the drippings.  Set aside to cool and congeal. Yes, congealing is a Good Thing.

Deviation from the norm: This gets pretty thick, but it makes a rather loose filling by meatpie standards. In traditional pork pies, you would often make a gelatin by boiling down trotters (read: pig feet) and then combine that to make a filling that could stand up on its own. For a modern approach, you can substitute unflavored gelatin, which you use according to the package instructions.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
If you are baking these in a wood-fired beehive style bread oven like mine, these are introduced in the baking sequence after the bread is finished cooking.

Raise the coffins...

When your crust dough has aged, allowing the fats and the proteins to form a strong melange (and it's back to room temperature if you chose to refrigerate) roll out the first disc on a floured board. Place a pie mold in the center of the dough disc and begin to smoosh the dough up the sides, forming a little bowl.

On the subject of pie molds: Pie molds are not often seen these days in even the best stocked kitchen store. Anything cylindrical will do. I've seen everyone including some very serious reenactors do this with an ice tea glass. I use a 4-inch cut from the middle of a thrift store rolling pin. This is the cheapest source I could find, short of turning one on a lathe and even then the raw materials would cost more than Goodwill's old rolling pins. Just remember to grease the mold so you can get it out.

Whatever you choose to use, raise four coffins in this way, making what amounts to four tall, doughy ramekins, leaving two rounds of dough on the board. The bottoms of your coffins should be at least a 1/3 inch thick and the walls should be sturdy at the bottom and taper at the tops.

Divide each of the remaining disks in half and flatten into thin rounds with your rolling pin to make lids. Scoop a bit of the filling into each, mounding the middle, but leaving the lip clear. Smear a bit of beaten egg around the inside lip and lid them up, pinching the edges decoratively if you so choose.  Be sure to cut vents for escaping steam or the coffins will get gooey instead of staying sturdy.

Add a bit of water to your beaten egg to make an egg wash and slather the tops liberally with the egg mixture.

Bake for 30 minutes or until the tops are golden brown and flaky.

Serve hot or cold, alone or with a nice salat (that's a "salad" to you and me) and a complementary beverage. For my part, I like any nice amber ale that I had nothing to do with brewing.

Tools of the Trades: If you can't inherit them, buy them

Without a doubt, the best way to get tools is to inherit them. Not because it means you lost a loved one, but because inherited tools usually (hopefully?) come to you after years of tutelage in how to use and take care of them. Which is also to say that tools inherited tend to be in better shape than antique tools tend to be when you find them for sale somewhere.

A sad old Bailey No 5 awaiting rebirth as a usable tool. Rescued yesterday
for $12.00 from the shelf of an antique store.

I really feel you should mourn and doff your cap when you find a pile of old tools in a state of disrepair at a thrift store or in a flea market. It is the sign of a craftsman who failed to pass on his craft to the next generation. Rusted tools given away are the spoor of a dead craft lineage.

Then put your cap back on and buy them.

Apply some elbow grease to rejuvenating these treasures and apply them to keeping the craft alive in new hands that will appreciate them.

For me, this has been especially true with hammers and hand planes.

As you'll know if you've been following along for awhile (or will find out shortly if you're new here) I am something of a tool addict. From the antique stores, thrift shops, and flea markets, I have added to the hoard of 19th century tools I inherited. Or as I see it, I have given new life to tools that were destined for premature retirement on the walls of some kitschy restaurant or the shelves of some "Flea Market Chic" home.

Nothing annoys me more than to see tools used as bric-a-brac except maybe books abused in the same way and for the same reasons. I think tools are beautiful too, but as functional art, not inert sculpture to molder on your shelves. Use them or by God, give them to someone who will.

If you are a crafter, I hope you feel the same way when you see elements of your craft on the shelves at the local Goodwill. My wife supplements her inherited sewing implements with the same fervor I apply to woodworking and leather tools.

As always, the fall of one noble line gives room for new houses to rise and replace them. A quick tour of woodworking blogs will tell you beyond the shadow of doubt that the pursuit of handcraft is alive and thriving. While an increasingly mechanized world has undoubtedly managed to drive many to set aside the love of good tools meant to last generations in favor of ease and speed, the rise of the internet has also brought together communities of those who are fighting to keep their handcraft alive.

I mentioned Ravelry the other day as a gathering place for knitters both historical and modern. For the carpenter and joiner, there is LumberJocks and Sawmill Creek, for leathercrafters there is Leatherworker.net and for other crafts there are many more besides that I've forgotten or just haven't found yet. One of the great elements of these places is the sharing of resources and advice on rejuvenating these thrift store finds.

The wood body hand plane you see to the left is one of many that I've rescued from oblivion. The seller didn't know what they had. They'd duct taped the throat of the thing for some reason (without actually covering the protruding blade, so I've no idea what it was supposed to accomplish) and jamed the blade in backwards with enough force that it took some doing for me to remove it.

Because I do my research before heading out to go looking, I identified by its maker's marks right away as an English-made mid-nineteenth century Varvill & Sons plane. The plane iron (that's the blade) was original and in decent shape with plenty of good steel under all the rust. The tote (that's the handle) is solid with no cracks, a common flaw with antique planes, and just needs to be tightened a bit. It's a bit rough, but where weren't any cracks or splits that went deeper than a quarter inch, which meant I could fill them during the restoration and have a perfectly sound tool to leave to my heirs and they to theirs.

All of which ends with me buying it for $14.00.

If you look hard enough, these things are out there. Even though I really do live out in the middle of nowhere, I can drive less than thirty minutes and find a trove of antique tools. In fact, the closer to the middle of nowhere you get, it seems, the more likely you are to find these things. I've done this all over the United States, and I can tell you that these tools are to be found everywhere if you're looking for them.

I think it's definitely worth noting that if you don't want to restore antiques you can buy new ones that are being lovingly handmade by modern toolmakers. Specialty retailers like Lee Valley and Woodcraft are filled to the rafters with historically-inspired tools. If you want to talk to people making their own, there's St Thomas Guild, and if you want to buy them, there's even a group in England called Daegrad Tools that has begun reproducing museum-quality tools for the reenactor market, based on archaeological finds. I don't have any of their tools yet, but I'm hearing great things about them.

The toolmakers are really the unsung heroes of the craft guilds and the modern crafts movement.

One of the "projects in the background" for this blog has been to procure and restore almost all of the tools I haven't built myself.  At some point I'll do a full series of posts on 'how to evaluate antique tools you intend to use' but I haven't the time to devote to really doing it right at the moment. So you have that to look forward to.

Two important notes, however, that I do want to mention:

1. Antique blacksmith hammers are best avoided. While I do use antique hammers in wood and leatherworking, a hammer intended to use metal-against-metal can be over-hardened by years of use, and thus prone to chip or crack and throw the broken bits in your direction. You'll note as we go forward that all of the metal and forge work I do will be using new hammers.
2. I tend to avoid buying planes that don't have blades unless I'm ready to add $40-$50 (or more) to the purchase price to get a decent replacement that will fit.  When we get to the Worshipful Company of Joiners, we'll discuss what goes into making our own plane blades, and you'll get a better idea of why they're so expensive.

In the meantime, the sun is out and my workshop is calling. I've a tankard that needs hooping and some horns that need to be cut and shaped into useful items. Not to mention a workshop in dreadful need of clearing-out before I can hope to do any joinery worthy of the tools I inherited.

~ Scott

A Beginner's Guide to Girdles: Basic Leatherworking

Yale Center for British Art,
Paul Mellon Collection

I've been to many renaissance faires and acted in quite a few, so I don't walk around with a clipboard, taking note of the inaccuracies. That would be boring and boorish. Nonetheless, I think the one I find the most vexing for me (because it would be the easiest one to fix) has to be the Big Errol Flynn Pirate Belts I see walking around with people attached to them.

Belts in the 16th century just were not that wide. And the buckles are almost always all wrong to boot. I look at a lot of old artwork, delving into the sketchbooks of the artists when they're available, and nowhere do I see those big belts. And the metal-detector finds back me up on this one. The buckles we find just simply aren't that big. On average, buckles of the period seem made to fit a 1/2 - 3/4 inch strap.

I can't help noticing these things. It's a curse.

It's important to note that in this time period, belts weren't for holding your pants up. That's a relatively recent development, actually. Belts were there to hold your knife, sword, and/or purse and not much else.  (The "I have everything I own tied to my belt" thing at renaissance faires also bugs the crap out of me, but I digress.) In the 16th century, your pants were tied either to the waistcoat or doublet with cords, called "points". In order to take your pants down, you had to take off your doublet or untie your points. 

And before you ask: Yes, methods for disrobing and going to the bathroom are a common topic of conversation for male reenactors.

A properly-sized belt worn above a row of bows where the man's lower garments are joined to his upper garments.

Take a good look at Robert Dudley at the top of this post. He was Queen Elizabeth's favorite throughout most of his life. The very image of mid-reign manliness at the height of Elizabethan fashion. See his sword belt? It's maybe 3/4 inch wide at best. Probably less.

I only bring this up because it's a pet peeve (and you thought I only had pet cats) and because when we do these projects, it's important that we're replicating items as they actually were, not as Hollywood (and your local renaissance faire) depicts them.

Of Buckles & Leather

The straps I use are generally 5/8 inch. Even this might be a bit wide. These original Tudor buckles from metal detector finds that are being made available for sale from UK website Crossman Crafts are affixed to 12 mm (1/2 inch) straps: http://www.crossmancrafts.co.uk/salvage/  

Yes those are real Tudor artifacts. Buckles are so abundant in the finds and so often made of base metals that they're rarely rated as "treasure" in the legal sense, so they can be and often are sold and exported. Aside from the obvious auction sites you can buy original pieces several places online. I like Crossman mostly because the site owner is a craftsman after my own heart and quite generous with his advice to other craftspeople. There's also Gaukler Medieval, which offers a small and ever-changing trove of original items, including artifacts of various periods: http://medievalwares.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=65&zenid=2mo9kdrnt8333hk2una5ghv6p1

Of course you can't ever really own a piece of history, but you sure can rent one for awhile.

Note that the real buckles don't look like most of the ones you see at the stores or in movies. The most prevalent in our period are what's known as a 'spectacle' buckle. Meaning they look like a wee pair of glasses. They were made by casting in bronze and brass and/or various precious metals as suited the man or woman that ordered it.

At some point, we have to do some casting. The Goldsmiths, Pewterers and Founders companies lie ahead, of course, and that's what the soapstone in this picture is destined for. Casting projects will likely include buckles because they're an item that one always seems to need, as well as buttons and maybe some silly oddments like pilgrim's badges.

All that lies ahead of us, though, because the Girdler would have probably bought them or had them made special to his specifications by someone from one of those other specialties, then assembled them in his shop. If nothing else, the simple brass ones we're working with here wouldn't have been made much fuss over because they were for the more common folk such as your this humble craftsman whose hands you see here.

I think that I have a burr about belts because they're a very simple project. My first ever leather working project was a belt. I think I was ten. Even before that, my exposure to leatherworking was mostly limited to my dad or grandpa punching extra holes in my belt to keep my blue jeans from slipping over my scrawny hips.

The Girdler's company did more than make average leather belts like these. They made fine girdles for ladies and sword belts for gentlemen. This sort of thing would be relegated to an apprentice, I should think. All the same, it's an important piece of kit.

For a simple, leather belt, there's only two pieces: A belt and a buckle.

It goes like this: 

1. Order your buckle and cut an appropriately-sized strap or buy one at a leather working supplier like I usually do. Unless you buy your leather wholesale, the savings of cutting your own straps just doesn't pan out like you'd think it should.
2. Cut a slot near one end of your strap to accommodate the tongue of the buckle. Leave an inch or two of leather at the end to wrap back and sew.
3. The buckle slips on, with the tongue passing through the slot and given enough room to travel by adjusting the length of your slot. You might have to fiddle with it a bit. 
4. Sew the buckle in place. I like sewing a little triangle as you can see, but there are plenty of other methods.

NOTE: Don't use pop rivets. They're convenient and I confess to having used them a lot before I learned better. Pop rivets are never really necessary and never look quite right. If you want rivets, go to your local hardware store and buy some proper ones and learn how to peen them properly.  

Honestly, sewing is much easier. Just punch the holes ahead of time and wax your thread like we did with the leather jack we made the other day.

Now, you might be saying "This article is incomplete" and you would be correct. The simple leather belt was the least of the Girdler's wares. Sword belts and fancy adornments for Milady's waist were the heights of their trade, but we're working on the lives of the commonfolk here at the School of the Renaissance Artisan.

Not that I wouldn't like to see input from some of the great craftspeople I know who specialize in those other areas.

Much like the pins we began this journey contemplating, what this simple leather belt gives us is a jumping off point for further explorations into the craft of those who cast the bronze and brass buckles, the craftspeople who tanned and sold the hides, and so on. This humble belt, assembled by a Girdler's apprentice, sits at the end of a long chain of suppliers, all of whom stand between us and the culmination of this project come December.

For the moment, though, revel in your perfectly period Elizabethan leather belt to gird you against a chaotic world.

~ Scott

Sick Day: Elizabethan Knitting, Part Three.

When I started posting about knitting in the renaissance, my Facebook walls lit up with people sharing resources and images. I love knitters even if I'm not especially loving knitting... yet.

The most prevalent period images of knitting actually come in the form of the "Knitting Madonnas". In Catholic countries, it seems to have been a meme to paint the Virgin Mary (or one of her thematic surrogates) knitting or holding implements of knitting/spinning. Some of my favorites show her apparently trying to take her knitting tools back from a Christ child that's acting like a very human baby and playing with the spinning wand or whathaveyou.

I can't imagine why I feel a link to the Madonna trying to knit/spin with a fussy baby on her lap trying to "help"...

This house is overrun with yarn gremlins.

Here's a "Knitting Madonna" care of the Wikimedia Commons that pushes my start date for knitting 'in the round' from mid-1500's back into the dawn of the previous century as some of you were kind enough to point out.

I most certainly stand corrected on that point. (Click image to embiggen.)

And here are some "Spinning Madonnas" for you to ponder over on the Spinning Fishwife blog. (Hat tip to Kat Porter for that link!)

The Purl Stitch

In order to make the tidy, clothlike 'stockinette' stitch that seems to dominate period knitting, you have to know how to make rows of knit and alternating purl stitches. Which means learning to purl.

This is how we begin the knit stitch. Note that the needles are going through the loop of yarn in the same direction. The active needle (the right if you are right-handed, left if you're a southpaw) is behind the carrying needle (the needle carrying the previous row when you begin).

These are my terms. I don't know how everyone else thinks of these things, but they fit how I see this process, so I'm going with it.

For the purl stitch, the needle begins by going through the loop in the opposite direction, as shown below. Your active needle is in front instead of behind the carrying needle.



The "throw" is once again between the two crossed points, only this time passing in front of the carrying needle.

Once again, you use the point of your active needle to pick up the thrown yarn and pull it through to create a loop... 

When you ease the loop off the carrying needle onto the active needle, you've created your first purl stitch! 

Excellent! Now, keep going. I learned that stitch this morning and at this point, I've done a sum total of about eighty of them. Which isn't very many. Much more practice will be needed to create the kinds of beautiful knitted garments my beloved Engineer is capable of.

When you work alternating rows of knit and purl, the "right side" of your fabric creates that nice, flat, woven aspect that you see in so many sweaters, stocking caps, socks, and knitted whatnot.

Note: Purl stitches are almost inevitably looser than knit stitches. It has to do with working in front of the needle rather than behind it or something. I'm not sure I understand it completely at this point. However, I have learned that the farther I go, the more important tension becomes to the finished product.

Keep that trailing thread wrapped around your pinky or something, because loosy-goosy knitting isn't worth much in terms of warmth or aesthetics.

These are the two key stitches we're going to use to make our first knitted item. Straight out of Shakespeare: it's a Monmouth Cap!

Sick Day: Elizabethan Knitting, Part Two.

Step Two: The knit stitch

There are two types of stitches that are prevalent in the knitted garments that have survived from the 16th century. The knit stitch and the purl stitch.  It's worth noting that unlike modern methods of using alternating knit and purl stitches to create elasticity, in the 16th century, the purl stitch was apparently used mostly for decorative purposes. The earliest example I can come up with of knit/purl ribbing used to add elasticity to stockings is this pair in the Victoria & Albert Museum dating from 1640. Though that child's vest I posted earlier today seems to me to have ribbing around the neck.

I'll let others argue the point.

Of course, now that I know how to do it, it seems a no-brainer. Of course that's the problem with working backward in time, trying to replicate items that predate modern methodology. What seems obvious to us took centuries of trial and error to accomplish.

For instance, three-dimensional knitting also seems to have been a long time coming. That's when you knit a garment rather than knitting a bunch of cloth that you then sew into a garment. Of course some sewing after the fact is inevitable when you're making something like a sweater (or so I'm told) but at times it seems like the early modern knitter saw him or herself as a weaver, making whole cloth to then sew into garments.  By mid century at least, they unlocked knitting 'in the round' which is to say knitting a tube, but things like the foot of a stocking were still knitted flat and then sewn together to form thier final 3-dimensional shape.

of course, all that is just academic if you don't know how to knit.

The Knit Stitch

Today, we're going to knit. Working from our row of cast-on stitches I made yesterday, we're going to insert the empty needle into the loop closest to the point so that they're going in the same direction, one behind the other.

Note in the image below that you can just tell that I have the trailing yarn looped around my little finger. This applies friction rather akin to a belay break in climbing, slowing the yarn as it unspools and maintaining an even tension for the loops we're going to be making.

The empty needle goes behind the needle holding the stitched.

This is sometimes called the "Thrown" method of knitting because you're going to 'throw' a loop of your yarn around the needle in back.

Then, use the point of your needle to pull the thrown loop through the existing loop...

And let the earlier loop slip off the end of the needle.

That's knit one.  Repeat that until you've moved all your cast on stitches to the other needle and you've completed your first row.

Keep going, moving the stitches from one needle to the other with knit stitches. 

The Engineer advised me that at the beginning it's important to work on keeping your tension consistent and try not to skip or drop stitches. This is more important at first than trying to actually make something, unless you want to make a scarf, which can be row after row of knit stitches. 

As you go along, you will begin to recognize the pattern of interlocking loops and you'll know you have it down. That's the basic stitch of historical knitting. At that point, it's time to work on a new stitch, the purl... which we'll do tomorrow.

Obstacles: Knittin' Kitten

One of the best things about knitting is that when you're doing it, everyone wants to help. One of the worst things about knitting, is that when you're doing it, everyone wants to help.

"Everyone" includes the local kitten.

A common obstacle my wife encounters when she's knitting her airy confections is feline assistance. I'm faring no better than she does. Unfortunately, cats make better scissors than they do knitters, but all is not lost thanks to the fact that we're both working with wool.

Wool has the blessed quality of felting when in the presence of moisture and agitation. To rejoin a kitty-clipped section of yarn, simply wet the cut ends (saliva actually works better than water, but water will do if you're squeamish).

Lay the wet ends aside one another in your hands and then rub them vigorously between you hands to bind the threads back together. 

The Arte & Misterie of Coopering: Making a Mary Rose tankard, Part Two

This being the part where we turn math into a drinking vessel...

You may remember this bit of algebra from last week. Contrary to what I've been seeing on an alarming number of YouTube videos and woodworking forums, it's the way to find the correct angle to cut your bevels on the staves of your bucket/tankard/butter churn, or whathaveyou.

n = the number of staves you want in your vessel.

And it doesn't change no matter how big or small your vessel gets.

There seems to be a lot of confusion about that out in the Interwebs. The angle is the same whether you have a diameter of ten feet or ten inches or two inches. For an octogon (or an eight-piece circle) the angle for the cut is 67.5 degrees.

Geometry is awesome like that.

The mystery of the bevel solved, it only falls to us to decide how to cut that angle accurately. As I said in the lead-in to this project, every source I have just says "the cooper eyeballed it." And the tool they used for that eyeballed angle was a big jointer plane mounted upside down on the floor of their shop.

You can see one being used in this engraving from my muse and tormentor Jost Amman. That's one seriously large piece of equipment. I checked around and those things are expensive even if you make your own (mostly the cost of getting the blade made).

Image source: Wikimedia Commons
Cleaned-up digitally by yours truly.

You can see it in use in this video I posted the other day of Ramona Vogel, journeyman cooper at the Colonial Williamsburg living history village: http://vimeo.com/11313428 I think that beyond some basic geometry, the real "art and mystery" here is how to finagle the right tools to make it all work.

Thankfully, the woodworking blog I got that video from (The Village Carpenter) came to my rescue once again with this post about a friend of hers who makes buckets.

He doesn't use a huge floor-mounted jointer; he uses a hand plane mounted upside down and it seems to work just fine. He also uses a jig, but I wanted to try my hand at this "eyeballing" thing that everyone seems so impressed by, so I grabbed my largest bench plane and a handful of clamps and my eyeballs this is what I ended up with...

I've already leveled the sole of the plane, now I'm making some fussy adjustments on the blade.

Taking the first few swipes across the blade.

Note that I'm wearing a glove on my pushing hand and keeping my fingers well back. I want to keep my fingertips on my hand and not on the ground where they'd get dirty and I'd have to hire someone to sew them back on...

Thankfully, the upside down plane worked a treat and I didn't so much as trim a fingernail on that razor-sharp blade that made such short work of that dense oak stave.

Take another look at the Mary Rose tankard we're imitating here and you'll note that the top is narrower than the bottom. Sort of an inverted pint glass shape. So I have to not only trim a bevel on either side of each stave, I needed to make each stave slightly smaller at the top than at the bottom. 

Forgot to mention that I also made it thinner when I was shaping them on the shaving horse. The intent being to give a more substantial foot to this thing since it's going to be quite tall and on the rolling deck of a ship no one wants to spill their beer.

The tool I'm using to check the angle in the photos below is called a sliding bevel.  I pre-set it to the correct angle and locked it off. I've only to hold the piece up to the light and slide the blade of the tool along the wood, watching for gaps.

  

I tried to find out how they did this in the 16th century. A lot of tools like dividers and the like predate the period, but I can't find anything concrete on the topic of the sliding bevel. If anyone has anything on this, I'd love to hear it.

The results are eight staves, evenly shaped to form a circle which will, under compression from its hoops, swell to become water-tight.

It's almost but not really discouraging to note that if you have a sliding compound miter saw, a couple of router bits, and a table saw, this project really would take you an afternoon. But it wouldn't be nearly as cool as this one.

Or so I keep telling myself...

Still a lot of work to do with the scrapers on the inside and quite a lot of fiddly work aligning the staves and making everything work out just right.

Then I can make a handle and a lid.

Note: Don't worry, it only looks like I'm behind. I'm also learning to knit, making a leather bottel, and getting started on hornwork.  More updates on all that stuff later this week... I hope. 

~ Scott

The Arte & Misterie of Coopering: Making a Mary Rose tankard, Part One

Imagine that you possess a monopoly on the secret for creating the only fit container available to move almost all the world's goods.

The Worshipful Company of Coopers had that monopoly. 36th in the great order of precedence for livery companies, the Coopers were nonetheless one of the few solvent enough to rebuild after their guildhall was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666.

There's money in packaging.

Barrels, of course, were the only fit container for moving wine, spirits, ale, and beer. But barrels kept moisture out as well as it kept it in, and they were also used to move goods that needed to be protected from moisture (or rodents) especially at sea. As shipping between England and points far across the sea picked up, barrels were in much in demand to move wheat, barley, tobacco, anything that could be crammed into a nice, dry, barrel-shaped container.

But the "Arte & Misterie" of coopering wasn't limited to barrels. You have to start somewhere. Apprentice and journeymen coopers cut their teeth making buckets and washtubs and tankards like the one I'm demonstrating here. If it was made from pieced-together staves and meant to be water-tight, odds are, a cooper made it.

And though the internet tells you that coopering has fallen by the wayside, in sooth it has merely been decentralized and mechanized like everything else.  The examples of the cooper's art shown above took me about five minutes to gather from around the house. And while I wager my wife and I have more buckets and barrels around than the average American household, if you looked around, you could probably find a few examples yourself. Even if only in one of those half-barrels they sell by the gross at the garden stores to use as planters.

It seems like everyone has one. Just follow the scent of petunias.

Outside of the occaisional barrel, modern coopering tends to rely on glue and/or tongue and groove jointing to hold the staves water tight. The bucket for my ice cream maker shown at right is a prime example of this method of joinery.

And truth be told, if I were to use the tablesaw and router, I could have this project done in an afternoon. There's probably a special place in heaven reserved for craftsmen who are wise enough to use best of the tools given them in their time and place. I can't help but imagine how frustrated my long-dead ancestors are as they watch me muddle through on half-remembers hand-joinery lessons from my grandpa when there's a metric ton of unused automation sitting just offstage.

I won't be allow into that room today. I'll be outside with Follansbee and Underhill and all the rest, making sawdust under a tree as my grandfather and great grandfather did before me...

Tankard-crafting: Part the First

When last we left our aspiring cooper, we were talking about math. Specifically the angles necessary to turn this drawing into a real-life stave for a Mary Rose tankard.

(Note that we're using the term "Tankard" loosely here since the Mary Rose piece holds an estimated nine pints. Which makes it a mug-shaped pail in my book, but no one asked me.)

I think that there are as many ways to do this as there authors writing about it. This is how I did it.

I started by hollowing the inside of each stave with a type of specialized drawknife called an inshave. The actual depth of the concavity is deeper than my inshave can easily accomplish, but with several shallow passes, I was able to pull it off.

After several passes, I had reached close to the desired depth for my staves. I left it a bit shallow, intending that there would be a good deal more fiddling about as I bring it all together, using scrapers and scorps to carve them back into a more or less perfect circle.

The next step was curving the outside, which involved a spokeshave and an array of drawknives. The draw knife and the inshave are potentially the two most expensive tools I've used on this project, so it's worth a moment to contemplate how or whether to bother trying to do this on the cheap.

Below are three types of draw knife I own, counting from top down. 

1. The top one is the cheapest draw knife I could find anywhere that could actually cut wood when I brought it home. I bought it at a home store in Missouri called Menards. It cost about twelve bucks and it'll do in a pinch.
2. The blue one is properly known as a spokeshave, but that's being a mite too charitable. It came from Harbor Freight and cost about eight bucks, which was eight bucks too much. I believe they've stopped trying to convince anyone it was worth even that much, and dropped it entirely. If you find one and have some time on your hands, here's a guy that lays out how to rehab the thing into a usable tool. Too much effort for too little return in my view.
3. This is a proper drawknife, or what a cooper would call a "backing knife". It belonged to my great grandfather and that handle's been missing longer than I've been alive. You can buy these new for $55.00 and sky's the limit for a decent one, but I see these turn up in antique stores for around $20.00 all the time, wanting only some TLC and a sharpening stone.

I bought the prewar Stanley spokeshave you see below yesterday at an antique store for all of twelve dollars. I don't know where people get these things to sell at their antique stores because no one I know who has one would let you have it for love or money. The blade is sharp as the day it was made.

Anyway, the end result is a big pile of shavings and eight curved staves that are ready to be turned into a tankard, bucket, butter churn, or whatever suits your fancy.

I like the look of piles of wood shavings so much that I'm going to show you another picture of them. Just because I can.

You would not believe how much of this stuff I have to fish out of my trouser cuffs and the pockets of my leather apron.

More to come tomorrow.

~ Scott