tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3074563327684490142024-03-12T19:51:14.195-07:00School of the Renaissance ArtisanEternal Apprenticehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17970817049875891713noreply@blogger.comBlogger86125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-307456332768449014.post-36791850238396428932018-07-06T15:41:00.001-07:002018-07-06T15:41:11.502-07:00<span style="font-size: x-large;">We have moved!</span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZYaqto_62X5y7WjOrsrlfZiYpWowhdEbhyphenhyphenFANSzENm0O3OYXstcWVdUCNlZXnvQWjQ3z15dL0Js5eQ-QMG1v1q8En8JJUI5-FBDG9U8QadCYK9miBk_ZN1ih_YN62n76xfJ0cMP9nLXY/s640/023.JPG" width="640" /></a><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span id="goog_782011079"></span>Please join us at our new location: <a href="https://renaissanceartisan.com/">https://renaissanceartisan.com/</a></span><br />
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<br />Eternal Apprenticehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17970817049875891713noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-307456332768449014.post-60113092584380591142016-02-07T12:57:00.003-08:002016-02-07T13:00:18.042-08:00Joy of Sectors II: Revisiting "The Arte & Misterie of Coopering"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
You may remember this picture of a persnickety Perkins working the angles on a coopering demonstration.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZBC0ikuv0ei5ieqQH8dlRBUF_jK2rD8vhpW2cD5XTxQBBAAHsvuXuSLzMD5D6xyhezJlCPB1uLbmwL0rpnF8COieMqRwtqA3oRg1QEfldiW0mprolYtmzFpJllLLxp-c_BDGBfbTsLB8/s1600/IMG_0655+%25281024x683%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZBC0ikuv0ei5ieqQH8dlRBUF_jK2rD8vhpW2cD5XTxQBBAAHsvuXuSLzMD5D6xyhezJlCPB1uLbmwL0rpnF8COieMqRwtqA3oRg1QEfldiW0mprolYtmzFpJllLLxp-c_BDGBfbTsLB8/s640/IMG_0655+%25281024x683%2529.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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With a bit of math and the able assistance of my consulting engineer, we determined that the eight perfectly-equal staves of my Mary Rose tankard needed to have 67.5 degree bevels so that they would align to form a perfect circle of watertight, oaky goodness.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggUaZLisIZ4xetYcty8yLKzsP1SSxvIOzxOGMmgwLWwXagc8tJeHHcpSoZOzrEbq6nx07ErmI5cGKgLQ7-1UiOAxt_ioWgANjxuwe0WrRmEUio3bqXZ0_Rl1bd8MpCqjP5slvBib87IEI/s1600/Math+Problems.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="237" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggUaZLisIZ4xetYcty8yLKzsP1SSxvIOzxOGMmgwLWwXagc8tJeHHcpSoZOzrEbq6nx07ErmI5cGKgLQ7-1UiOAxt_ioWgANjxuwe0WrRmEUio3bqXZ0_Rl1bd8MpCqjP5slvBib87IEI/s400/Math+Problems.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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This assumed if you didn't round off your tankard/bucket/barrel or whathaveyou that you'd have an equilateral polygon. All sides (eight sides in this case) were the same and would be worked with the typically-modern obsession with precision and symmetry.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiINFMI_nbWRQsBvVrsZr_htuQ7CGlh7F5H7gPrKmPqbk4gH6_5xIJRgu-mRbEk4Rzb0M0YZsXLUfUH27SYosPeZgfeItUQ_UToPefMhCetNjK7ZD5p08IfwMlokSgKbQBOFukQffRGItg/s1600/Coopered2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiINFMI_nbWRQsBvVrsZr_htuQ7CGlh7F5H7gPrKmPqbk4gH6_5xIJRgu-mRbEk4Rzb0M0YZsXLUfUH27SYosPeZgfeItUQ_UToPefMhCetNjK7ZD5p08IfwMlokSgKbQBOFukQffRGItg/s400/Coopered2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<b><a href="http://renaissanceartisan.blogspot.com/2016/02/thoughts-from-peeler-artisan-obsession.html" target="_blank">As we discussed yesterday</a></b>, that wasn't quite right. Coopers make their staves whatever width their wood allows and it's not always symmetrical and there aren't always an even number of staves. This is important since they were cutting wood straight from the log and doing a lot of their shaping with an axe. (Axes are awesome and speed up woodworking considerably, but they're not really precision instruments.)<br />
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All of which throws off my equation a bit. You could still figure it out, of course, but it just got a bit harder.<br />
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Part of the problem here is that I tend to think of barrels and tankards as segments of a ring rather than pieces of pie. I've been peeling all these apples, so let's make a pie.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVsuyhKAnq4h_Q1xsdGBV2L-IM97yG5E9OENvtP4-jD1IDPOgkGYktF3yv5s3GeQe6IrirwekaB7rIkyykOqBbGSVw4N09kjTCijRtMJJ4b0RnffTiUzoGVJYlxmh4PA25WEnDBxp0jmE/s1600/pork+pies+024+%25281024x528%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="206" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVsuyhKAnq4h_Q1xsdGBV2L-IM97yG5E9OENvtP4-jD1IDPOgkGYktF3yv5s3GeQe6IrirwekaB7rIkyykOqBbGSVw4N09kjTCijRtMJJ4b0RnffTiUzoGVJYlxmh4PA25WEnDBxp0jmE/s400/pork+pies+024+%25281024x528%2529.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Not a meat pie, you goofball, an apple pie.<br />
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Much better. (The ice cream's a nice touch, but we won't be needing it today so I'll just eat it and get it out of the way...)<br />
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Like a period tankard or bucket, the average pie slicing cook isn't going to make every slice exactly the same size. The piece for the baker is big and the piece for the kids are small. Also Aunt Agnes, who always says she's on a diet, but takes twice as much ice cream as everyone else.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBzAVPXBj8VgCkVgQ0bMWkGpF6CYxtuKLT0Z1-wi9uuZPX1ZtVN1rXcPNFk8ZOahgQaZiB0GtvB3ea5crghGPmfwde6QpFkHjoo0pJX6-1amDfNdqRJVVlRubU_xj9Ep_Uo6w-YOdWZF4/s1600/Pie.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="294" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBzAVPXBj8VgCkVgQ0bMWkGpF6CYxtuKLT0Z1-wi9uuZPX1ZtVN1rXcPNFk8ZOahgQaZiB0GtvB3ea5crghGPmfwde6QpFkHjoo0pJX6-1amDfNdqRJVVlRubU_xj9Ep_Uo6w-YOdWZF4/s320/Pie.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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The nice thing about this way of imagining a coopered vessel is that you could (if everyone can hold their forks for a minute) rearrange those pieces any way that you want and you'd still have a pie the same size as you started with. The pieces would all fit together no matter how you rearranged them in the pie plate.</div>
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But with coopering, you're starting with a pile of uncut sticks and an entirely imaginary pie that you're trying to craft out of thin air and oak. So how do you do this when you don't start with a pie?</div>
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Enter the Sector.<br />
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<b><a href="http://renaissanceartisan.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-joy-of-sectors-getting-our-galileo.html" target="_blank">If you remember</a></b>, at its simplest form, the sector is two straight pieces of wood hinged at one end. Pretty much exactly like a pair of dividers, except made of wood.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHetF5qKiKOFB3SGZwBao2hbY68vZc3D5sKy18thhyphenhyphenDEtF7H_8qdvC69sWmoRPRnSFda4vm7BxMfHbs6uznHIHx-dnmrgPWhrMpVz16TBYDla662ds3cT0vPQqmldCBlE4htmErFJwnOU/s1600/Sector.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="285" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHetF5qKiKOFB3SGZwBao2hbY68vZc3D5sKy18thhyphenhyphenDEtF7H_8qdvC69sWmoRPRnSFda4vm7BxMfHbs6uznHIHx-dnmrgPWhrMpVz16TBYDla662ds3cT0vPQqmldCBlE4htmErFJwnOU/s400/Sector.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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The geometry of the sector is devilishly simple: The two legs are equal, meaning that the legs will form an isosceles triangle. If you place it at the center of your imaginary bucket (or whatever you're making), it forms an imaginary piece of pie. If you want to make a ten-inch bucket (measured across the bottom) you just mark your sector five inches from the hinge.</div>
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That's the inside diameter of your bottom.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk8ZOzsnqrzc3ilbJw-1bH0zjb-5gWC4M3zYQgWFcVLraEyI_5w65s9h4hOtJdgjyTXwyHU9UArAD5SRCRFXWkxqa_lA-W64w8HIX5TIiJ0TBchNbGYgg2Cs78DLjh9qkzC_z7Fck8OqQ/s1600/20160206_140915.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk8ZOzsnqrzc3ilbJw-1bH0zjb-5gWC4M3zYQgWFcVLraEyI_5w65s9h4hOtJdgjyTXwyHU9UArAD5SRCRFXWkxqa_lA-W64w8HIX5TIiJ0TBchNbGYgg2Cs78DLjh9qkzC_z7Fck8OqQ/s640/20160206_140915.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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The second mark you see there indicates the desired thickness of the walls of my imaginary bucket.</div>
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Now, no matter where the sector crosses the the outer wall of your bucket, or how far apart the the legs of the divider have to be (to accommodate your rough-cut variations in stave width) the legs form the angle that you're shooting for. </div>
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You found your stave bevel without writing a single number on a single piece of paper.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4v5Wkts-wr3BytgYrJULgA43kRfP5f3nQ2W91-e4L0j25tHKfmhGShuweGLn1S_l5oOS1KLbNCT0T9VBfFNvZjz7zhyphenhyphenYNrr5hPB9AJjNaqDa9czAeTl-5zz8uj_j_EZsyWa6pqTuVzpk/s1600/20160206_140146.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4v5Wkts-wr3BytgYrJULgA43kRfP5f3nQ2W91-e4L0j25tHKfmhGShuweGLn1S_l5oOS1KLbNCT0T9VBfFNvZjz7zhyphenhyphenYNrr5hPB9AJjNaqDa9czAeTl-5zz8uj_j_EZsyWa6pqTuVzpk/s640/20160206_140146.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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As you can see, this is also helpful if you decide to repair or knock off an existing bucket.</div>
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<b><br /></b><b>But wait, there's more!</b></h3>
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It's not just a measuring device for finding the angle of your bevel either. It's also a jig you can use to monitor your progress as you create the bevel on your staves. Hold the bevel up to the stave as you work and align it to your marks as you go. </div>
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The angle of the sector will tell you how far you need to lean the stave over as you plane the bevel. When the stave sits snugly in the sector between the marks, you're golden.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggdiuL98KKMLBLefJNaNDetn1UunbjIqT1t2Il09nER5noiEkzJzjVc5cLyu0zZArNYadmiRT8ssSWMlBxNBt2vWAJIpIEQVTXY5ASUxP3FYcZBIB3TZwJevzTDOJTRh_RRr68mXPr8Lc/s1600/IMG_0649+%25281024x731%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="285" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggdiuL98KKMLBLefJNaNDetn1UunbjIqT1t2Il09nER5noiEkzJzjVc5cLyu0zZArNYadmiRT8ssSWMlBxNBt2vWAJIpIEQVTXY5ASUxP3FYcZBIB3TZwJevzTDOJTRh_RRr68mXPr8Lc/s400/IMG_0649+%25281024x731%2529.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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The importance of this cannot be exaggerated for the working cooper. And this is the part that I forgot when I was doing my demonstration.</div>
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I almost wish that <b><a href="http://renaissanceartisan.blogspot.com/2013/08/kill-it-with-fire-part-three-fifty.html" target="_blank">building that bakery at the Washington Midsummer Renaissance Faire</a></b> had been the first step in this project rather than happening in the middle. I suspect that I've fallen down on most of these projects simply because I'm thinking in terms of one-off bespoke items rather than the economies of production.</div>
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The practicing cooper isn't making one bucket at a time. This isn't bespoke bucketing on Bond Street, it's mass production because a cooper (and his apprentices) gotta eat. So if they're making as many buckets at a time as they can reasonably get away with, there's no room to be fiddling about with equations and making these exacting symmetries that we've become so accustomed to post industrial revolution.</div>
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A cooper's shop is making piles and piles of rough-cut staves and assembling them into a pile of ten-inch buckets and they all have to fit together no matter which bucket they're getting shoved into.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMNzOwI3wpCPOlHxt-FVezANmO1OwM_M_1DfayxpojCMDuWu52TWWl38sylvOqeN2Xqz2xW-xifYzsK5ikheHD9Yk1GhXZGVXe_AYZoDYTtYVADSGJhhDT_3tlgMvE-nJItBzJ5C98500/s1600/IMG_0653+%25281024x683%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMNzOwI3wpCPOlHxt-FVezANmO1OwM_M_1DfayxpojCMDuWu52TWWl38sylvOqeN2Xqz2xW-xifYzsK5ikheHD9Yk1GhXZGVXe_AYZoDYTtYVADSGJhhDT_3tlgMvE-nJItBzJ5C98500/s400/IMG_0653+%25281024x683%2529.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Yesterday I asked where I should stop. I don't know that I'm going to go back and repeat every experiment and demo that got us this far, but going forward I will certainly be taking a hard look at each of these trades and asking the question that should be obvious: How did they do this fast enough to make a living at it?</div>
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Because therein lies the real secret of most of these trades.</div>
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Now go eat some pie. You've earned it.</div>
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<b>-Scott </b></div>
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<b><br /></b><b>Postscript</b></h3>
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The "Aha!" moment for this didn't come from thin air. (They never do, no matter what anyone tells you.) I've been reading about sectors recently, mostly using <a href="http://www.jimtolpin.com/books" target="_blank"><b>Jim Tolpin's books and articles</b></a> so I was in the right mindset when I had the good fortune to catch an episode of Roy Underhill's "The Woodwright's Shop" featuring white cooper <a href="http://normpederson.tripod.com/" target="_blank">Norm Pederson</a> who actually demonstrated many of the things that past coopers on that show had previously waved away as "something you learned with experience."</div>
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The episode is not available online anywhere I can find it, but you can download it for $3.99 from Popular Woodworking here: <a href="https://videos.popularwoodworking.com/courses/the-woodwrights-shop-s24-ep04-norm-pederson-white-cooperage">https://videos.popularwoodworking.com/courses/the-woodwrights-shop-s24-ep04-norm-pederson-white-cooperage</a> </div>
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Or you can buy the whole season on DVD like I did. I highly recommend it if you have any interest in trying this out yourself with better results than I had on my first outing.</div>
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<b>Further watching...</b></div>
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This is not that video, but it's an excellent demonstration of white cooperage filmed at an outdood event, so the sound isn't always so great.</div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9PX8k6Qcr5Q" width="560"></iframe>Eternal Apprenticehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17970817049875891713noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-307456332768449014.post-27204364314410474232016-02-06T16:15:00.001-08:002016-02-06T16:15:12.030-08:00Thoughts from the peeler: The artisan obsession and where does it end?<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmHkrUN_zbHdKVkCxcIqkH37eC877ryL3nxiB-vxorrSGHy56kDLgpMF2QmxiVKcGA56RdA0k9ZR173EkqwQjknB-lUGULj98ttOhKsMIhnDivMP5XL47YqgumcRzMZOym3i6lJ3qbk0Y/s1600/peeler+-+Complete.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmHkrUN_zbHdKVkCxcIqkH37eC877ryL3nxiB-vxorrSGHy56kDLgpMF2QmxiVKcGA56RdA0k9ZR173EkqwQjknB-lUGULj98ttOhKsMIhnDivMP5XL47YqgumcRzMZOym3i6lJ3qbk0Y/s320/peeler+-+Complete.jpg" width="246" /></a>There is in just about every artisan, a touch of obsessive compulsion. Whether or not it's a disorder depends on how you feel about being both obsessive and compulsive at the same time with sharp implements in hand.<br />
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I don't want to make light of a genuine medical disorder. As someone who suffers the black periods of lost joy and time that is depression, far be it from me to make light of someone else's affliction.<br />
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Obsession and compulsion exist on a sliding scale, which is set by the same people who have <a href="http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/05/31/caffeine-withdrawal-is-now-a-mental-disorder/" target="_blank">categorized an affection for coffee as a mental disorder</a>.<br />
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So let's ignore those folks for a bit.<br />
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For all practical purposes, it boils down to whether your obsession/compulsion is positive or destructive influence on your life.<br />
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Be ye moderate in all things except moderation.<br />
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So it is with caffeine and beer and so too it is with handicrafts.<br />
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But where is that moderate line? When do I stop? How far do I take each of these explorations of a craft? When do I tie it off and call it good? Do I keep going until I've got it perfect? Is perfect the enemy of the good?<br />
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I discovered recently when <a href="http://renaissanceartisan.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-joy-of-sectors-getting-our-galileo.html" target="_blank">I began exploring the uses of the sector</a>, that I was wrong in a very important way when I discussed the many ways for finding the angle at which the staves of a bucket or tankard meet.<br />
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My methodology was modern. For one thing, we started with an equation. For another, it depended heavily upon looking at the tankard as an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equilateral_polygon" target="_blank">equilateral polygon</a> and we did some really sweet math based on that assumption.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiINFMI_nbWRQsBvVrsZr_htuQ7CGlh7F5H7gPrKmPqbk4gH6_5xIJRgu-mRbEk4Rzb0M0YZsXLUfUH27SYosPeZgfeItUQ_UToPefMhCetNjK7ZD5p08IfwMlokSgKbQBOFukQffRGItg/s1600/Coopered2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiINFMI_nbWRQsBvVrsZr_htuQ7CGlh7F5H7gPrKmPqbk4gH6_5xIJRgu-mRbEk4Rzb0M0YZsXLUfUH27SYosPeZgfeItUQ_UToPefMhCetNjK7ZD5p08IfwMlokSgKbQBOFukQffRGItg/s320/Coopered2.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
That was an inaccurate assumption.<br />
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Even though it worked.<br />
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As I examine more coopered buckets and tankards, it because clear to me that the old coopers didn't think that way. The staves of a bucket are rarely all the same size, and no two identically-sized buckets seemed to have the same number of staves.<br />
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My math was accurate, but my method was wrong.<br />
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The period method is really cool. It's easier. And it involves a sector and some different neat math having to do with isosceles triangles and dividers.<br />
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My assumptions were wrong and even my successful result was... I don't know. Was it a failure to achieve the goal by apparently modern means?<br />
<br />
A period item was created, but it was based on best guesses made with a modern mind. My methods of arriving at that item were modern even though I used my best period tools to achieve the result.<br />
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I know all of this because I didn't finish exploring coopering when I finished writing about it. I kept going. I kept talking to other coopers. I examined barrels and buckets in antique shops. I made a bucket. Then I made a butter churn. Then I repaired some damaged buckets and barrels and tankards back to working order.<br />
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I know I was wrong because I didn't stop.<br />
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I made an ale pail that would hold ale, but did I succeed or did I fail.<br />
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Sorry, that was Seussical. Sometimes I can't resist.<br />
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At some point do I stop going back and adding to these projects?<br />
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Or is this exploration of artisans a reflection of artisanship itself in that the learning never actually ends? And if that's so, is my quest really impossible after all? Will I ever have more than the most surface knowledge of any of these crafts if I cannot devote more than the duration of a few blog posts to each of them?<br />
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How do I know when to stop?<br />
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And if I'm honest with myself, can I stop even if I want to?<br />
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- Scott<br />
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Eternal Apprenticehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17970817049875891713noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-307456332768449014.post-49988794004169892542016-01-30T12:45:00.004-08:002016-01-30T17:21:19.013-08:00Breaking the shackles of time: Books, Writing, and Practical Paleography<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>"</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-style: italic; line-height: 21px;">What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are printed lots of funny squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.</span><i>" </i></span> </blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b> - Carl Sagan</b><i>, Cosmos </i>(1980)</span></blockquote>
You knew we'd get to this eventually, right? Before any other label I may affix to myself, I'm a novelist, a writer, <b><a href="http://www.pagestotype.com/2010/05/story-short.html" target="_blank">a <i>storyteller</i></a></b>. The world I see around me isn't a world of atoms and elements, it's a world of stories waiting to be told.<br />
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And we have unfortunately forgotten more stories than we remember. <b><a href="http://www.pagestotype.com/2010/07/write.html" target="_blank">Because we only remember what was recorded</a></b>.<br />
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The constant struggle with this project isn't tracking down the right tool or the correct material. The real struggle can be forced into the old Journalistic construction of the W's: "What do we know? Who recorded it? When did they record it? How did they know it? Why was this saved when all else was lost?"<br />
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This was almost a "Thoughts from the peeler" post, but then I remembered that there was an actual guild or two involved in the transmission of the Elizabethan Culture from pen to posterity. The "Who" in the above question is primarily focused through the Worshipful Company of Stationers and the Worshipful Company of Parish Clerks. These two groups are responsible for the lion's share of what we know about our period of study.<br />
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As Carl Sagan said at the top of the page, it all boils down to dark squiggles on dead trees (or dead animals in many cases).<br />
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Most of the information we have from the 16th century was recorded under the auspices of two groups: The Worshipful Company of Parish Clerks (who aren't really a livery company at this point), and the Worshipful Company of Stationers.<br />
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All records of births, deaths, and christenings were recorded by the local parish clerk. Books and broadsheets were printed on the presses of the Stationer's Company.<br />
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Yes, I'm working on a letterpress demonstration, but I'm not sure what form that will take. I've put some feelers out locally and will probably be working with someone who has already built up the necessary setup for printing with movable type. I'd wager though, that we're going to be extrapolating from a modern setup.<br />
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To keep things within the period constraints we've set for ourselves, I'll be binding a book in a manner that's correct for our period. There's an astonishing amount of gear involved in binding, though, so we'll be doing some preparatory projects in wood and metal just to get us to the starting point for that project.<br />
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In the meantime, I am at work preparing quills and teaching myself a new hand.<br />
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The preparation of a quill will be the focus for a near-term post, but I've demonstrated that craft many times at renaissance faires and events, so I'm not really learning anything <i>new</i> while doing it.<br />
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Yes, a new hand. This is where the "practical paleography" comes in. For our purposes, a <i>hand</i> is a method of rendering the alphabet in a culturally-specific way. I'll write more about this as I go along, but the method of writing used to record important documents in the 16th century was known as the Secretary Hand and it's damn near illegible to modern eyes.<br />
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Translating any manuscript documents from the period into is so time-consuming that the Folger Shakespeare Library and Oxford University have put out a call for help from the internet to translate more period documents faster than they can alone. Part of my goal with this specific project will be to help in that effort. Not only will this effort increase the number of available records from the time of Shakespeare, you can also contribute to the new edition of the Oxford English dictionary!<br />
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You too can help out and learn more about this project at <a href="http://www.shakespearesworld.org/#/about">shakespearesworld.org</a><br />
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Anyway, that's where I am at the moment and what I'm working on during the rainy season which is in full effect hereabouts. My old back injury flared up this week as the result of a minor mishap, so I think I'll be spending some time indoors anyway, cutting quills and reading about the chemistry of ink and the denaturation of collagen in parchment... nerd heaven.<br />
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- Scott<br />
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<b>Further Reading:<br /><br /><i>Advice for Reading Secretary Hand,</i> Folger Shakepeare Library </b>(PDF)<br />
<a href="http://folgerpedia.folger.edu/mediawiki/media/images_pedia_folgerpedia_mw/2/21/Alphabet_Abbreviations.pdf">http://folgerpedia.folger.edu/mediawiki/media/images_pedia_folgerpedia_mw/2/21/Alphabet_Abbreviations.pdf</a><br />
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<b>Bonus Video:</b><br />
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I thought this was especially appropriate since we kicked off this project with a quote from Anthony Bourdain. As part of a project he's working on with Balvenie Scotch Whiskey, he paid a visit to <a href="http://www.arionpress.com/" target="_blank">Arion Press</a> in San Francisco. They are one of the last of their breed, printing and binding fine books with movable lead type. Their methods are modern by our measure, but very old fashioned and very cool by modern metrics.<br />
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Eternal Apprenticehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17970817049875891713noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-307456332768449014.post-70560495717528053132016-01-11T17:12:00.000-08:002016-01-12T11:11:27.719-08:00The Joy of Sectors: Getting our Galileo on...<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-size: large;">"For the eye is always in search of beauty, and if we do not gratify its desire for pleasure by a proportionate enlargement in these measures, and thus make compensation for ocular deception, a clumsy and awkward appearance will be presented to the beholder." </span></i> </blockquote>
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<b><i><span style="font-size: large;">- Vitruvius, <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20239/20239-h/29239-h.htm" target="_blank">De Architectura</a></span></i> </b></blockquote>
Of course, a major part of the "rebirth" heralded by the renaissance was a revival of the mathematics and geometries of the Arabs and the ancients. By harkening back to the glories of their Hellenic ideal with their domes and pillars, the Renaissance brought with it a new and almost slavish devotion to finding the sacred in geometry and symmetry. Not just buildings, but furniture and textiles began to push painted, woven, and carved decorations to ostentatious heights.<br />
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I'm not particularly well known for being good at math and certainly didn't receive high enough marks in school to give one the feeling I would go on to write fluently about engineering and architecture. Thankfully, our typical renaissance artisan wasn't particularly well known as a mathematician either.<br />
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Please note that here<u> I am drawing a line between the theory and the application of maths.</u> Although the loftier theories may have passed him by, the practical maths of proportion and symmetry were alive and well in 16th century workshops. The average Elizabethan joiner may or may not have known who Euclid or Pythagoras was, but he could apply their theories well enough to please the eye and the customer.<br />
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We've discussed some basics of dividers before, <b><a href="http://renaissanceartisan.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-arte-misterie-of-coopering-method.html" target="_blank">when we were coopering</a></b>. Add a sector and by their powers combined, you can accomplish an amazing number of tasks with very little actual number-crunching.<br />
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I first learned the magic of the sector in the same math class where I learned about the Fibonacci and the various permutations of the Golden Mean. Then I didn't think about it much for several decades.<br />
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Like most woodworkers, I've always kept a set of dividers. Dividers are handy for drawing circles and arcs for those fantastically symmetrical carvings I mentioned, also transferring dimensions from a ruler or a drawing to the wood. I've used them for laying out dovetails and for finding center and a host of other simple tricks.<br />
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But when they're accompanied by a sector, they can do much, much more.<br />
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My geometry teacher knew that the wickedly-sharp compasses we were equipped with as part of our standard kit were capable of more than stabbing us through our canvas bookbags. When paired with a sector, they could be used to accomplish great feats of proportion and scale<br />
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And she had no less a personage than Galileo Galilei backing her up on that.<br />
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I didn't care, I was nine; I wanted to draw circles and stab ants with the damn thing. Education is wasted on the young. Sometimes, I think adults should be required to repeat primary school periodically to pick up all the sharing and math and social studies that we missed, never mind the history. We seem so determined to keep repeating our history anyway, it might as well be in a classroom.<br />
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"<i>I'm sorry, boss, I can't come in today, I have geometry class and then detention because I said I was thinking about voting for Donald Trump..."</i></blockquote>
<i>Anyway... </i>flash forward to a 2011 issue of Popular Woodworking magazine I picked up at the newsstand because of a cool cover article about Thomas Jefferson's stacking bookcases. Inside was an <a href="http://www.popularwoodworking.com/articleindex/secrets-of-the-sector" target="_blank">article by Jim Tolpin</a> on the use of the dividers combined with a sector (see the video below) to derive a host of useful proportions and measurements for cabinetry design.<br />
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Like my teacher before him, Jim attributed the invention of the the sector to Galileo.<a href="http://www.pagestotype.com/2009/08/celestial-navigation.html" target="_blank"> I'm a big Galileo fan, going way back</a>, and ere the end of things, we might even get into some of his experiments with optics because I enjoy that sort of thing.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Galileo%27s_geometrical_and_military_compass_in_Putnam_Gallery%2C_2009-11-24.jpg" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2XHjq6wth50RsFUeCo_2VojumMTGPsodO93uyTe1rQ8hQ6W9MNbOXp3siT8hcDk-l5-XGBF16zDrkRoaNewAW8Yt7qkybwHy92LpgMsuXIbYx1LKFC92Agsr-oCtXUp1twIKUKTEhU3Q/s640/galileos_geometrical_and_military_compass_in_putnam_gallery_2009-11-24.jpg" width="640" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Galileo%27s_geometrical_and_military_compass_in_Putnam_Gallery%2C_2009-11-24.jpg" target="_blank">Galileo's Sector displayed in the Putnam Gallery <i>-- Image</i> <i>via Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons CC-BY-SA 3.0</i></a></td></tr>
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They were both likely wrong about the inventor. The basic principles were first proposed by Euclid and put to various uses since. It seems more likely that he was the Bill Gates or Steve Jobs of the late Renaissance. He was a technological entrepreneur who envisioned new and popular uses by combining existing technologies and concepts in unique ways. That said, who initially turned a compass into a more complex instrument matters little, because ere the end of the 16th century, the concept broke out in a Big Way in the manner that technological leaps always seem to.<br />
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The sector as Galileo created it is partly well known because of who he was, and partly because it was enormously successful as a commercial product. The sales of the instruments made his fortune long before he started tweaking the beards of the Inquisition with his planetary models.<br />
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Galileo primarily sold his sector as a military tool, an instrument which in addition to its more basic Euclidean functions carried additional scales useful for the gunner in the trenches.<br />
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I have no use at the moment for determining powder loads and trajectories. There just aren't that many armies out there right now that need that sort of thing done the old fashioned way. I will be making a simpler, significantly less schmancy, workingman's sector along the same lines as Jim Tolpin's.<br />
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If nothing else, I have a lot of period carving and surface decoration on my project list, so we can look forward to seeing great granddad's dividers and sectors come out for that.<br />
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And for now -- since sectors weren't all that widely used until the 17th century anyway -- that will be the soft limits for our use for the things. I'll make a couple in different sizes and we shall see what use can be made of them without gunpowder getting involved.<br />
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That said, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honourable_Artillery_Company" target="_blank">Honorable Artillery Company</a> <i>was </i>knocking about, but they weren't really what you'd call a trade guild. Nevertheless, I picked up a copy of Galileo's instruction book that was sold alongside his sector because you never know when you might need to hit something a long way away with a ball of something fired out of a tube full of grey powder.<br />
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- Scott<br />
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Eternal Apprenticehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17970817049875891713noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-307456332768449014.post-82243425846208463932016-01-07T09:00:00.000-08:002016-01-07T09:18:09.333-08:00Sewing leather revisited - Making a sheath for my Frost Mora carving knife<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<b>Historical Note: </b>I'm not sure who made the knife sheathes. There's no 'Scabbard Company' on the livery rolls in the 16th century. Possibly the <a href="http://www.girdlers.co.uk/" target="_blank">Worshipful Company of Girdlers</a> or they were a sub-group of the <a href="http://www.leathersellers.co.uk/" target="_blank">Leathersellers</a>, who handled most of the miscellaneous leathergoods that made up Elizabethan life. It might even be the <a href="http://www.cutlerslondon.co.uk/" target="_blank">Cutlers</a>, who were responsible for all the other bits and bobs associated with knives. Any way you cut it, there were a lot of knives in Elizabethan England. Every knife needs a sheath and mine are no different.</blockquote>
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Looking at the projects that have been collecting dust, I think the shoes are probably the most annoying thing to have lingering overlong in the workshop. For one thing, the leather and lasts and tools take up a lot of room and for another, I just really need to get them done because I need a new pair of shoes. (Also, I hate leaving things half-finished.)</div>
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Unfortunately, while I haven't been completely idle since I parked this project in the driveway awhile back, I also haven't been doing any leatherworking. Cordwaining involves some pretty heavily-developed leatherworking skills, <i>especially </i>sewing, so I need to practice.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7uZyOAZblrLAV8zce0Q21DP9DX8p_pnGht6RjZuVHXJ0OV1ABjkEnXLDg2v0fyumDDdg9SFQJPJx2ghecp8kVLiYizrCHOZ2hcmNYMN29a1w85XkwDtrhUv027gVgFHey6FKLzUA7iJc/s1600/20160101_143812.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7uZyOAZblrLAV8zce0Q21DP9DX8p_pnGht6RjZuVHXJ0OV1ABjkEnXLDg2v0fyumDDdg9SFQJPJx2ghecp8kVLiYizrCHOZ2hcmNYMN29a1w85XkwDtrhUv027gVgFHey6FKLzUA7iJc/s320/20160101_143812.jpg" width="180" /></a>You might recall <a href="http://renaissanceartisan.blogspot.com/2014/05/continuing-on-with-costrels-cordwaining.html" target="_blank">the costrel project</a>, which is a study in heavy-construction sewing techniques. I also need a practice project that uses some of the more subtle stitches and techniques for closing the uppers of my new shoes.</div>
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As it happens, my preferred style of knife sheath uses the round stitch to close the seam up the back. And since that's a fiddly piece of business to learn and I'm in need of practice, methinks I hear a knife calling for a new leather home.<br />
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My favorite woodcarving knife has to be this Swedish blade made by <a href="http://www.moraofsweden.se/about-morakniv" target="_blank">Morakniv</a> simply called "<a href="http://www.moraofsweden.se/craft/slojdkniv-106" target="_blank">The Woodcarving 106</a>". They sell on Amazon for about $25.00, which is a pretty good price for a knife you won't want to put down.<br />
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It's a strong little workhorse and can hold an edge like nobody's business. You couldn't ask more from a knife.<br />
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<b>The problem:</b> they come with a crappy plastic sheath. And that just sucks on a deeply aesthetic level.<br />
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<b>The solution:</b> make a new one, of course.</div>
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<b>Parts List:</b></div>
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<ul>
<li>A knife</li>
<li>2 poplar scraps slightly larger than the knife blade</li>
<li>Shaping tools for wood (knives, spokeshaves, rasps, files, sandpaper... etc.)</li>
<li>A piece of vegetable tanned leather large enough to wrap around the knife</li>
<li><b>To make the pattern:</b> <b><a href="http://renaissanceartisan.blogspot.com/2016/01/drafting-patterns-for-leatherworking.html" target="_blank">See this post about patternmaking</a></b></li>
<li>Wood glue</li>
<li>Quality, long-staple linen thread</li>
<li>Two large-eye long darning needles (or boar bristles if you can get them)</li>
<li>beeswax</li>
<li>sticky wax (if you have boar bristles to use)</li>
<li>Stitch marking wheel or ruler</li>
<li>curved awl </li>
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A truly razor-sharp knife will eventually cut its way out of any all-leather sheath or die trying. If you make a standard sheath by sandwiching the blade between two pieces of leather as we used to do in Boy Scouts, the knife has an even easier time of it because it can just slice the stitches. Some leatherworkers use rivets instead of stitches and that's fine, but hardly traditional.</div>
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<br />First, some woodworking...</h3>
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I prefer wood cores (of course), so step one is to make a wooden house for the blade of the knife. I used a bit of poplar I had lying around, but any hardwood will do. We're going to use two pieces with a knife-shaped void between them to house the blade.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgov_2tGNa-jSlm_A4cdbFZFjme2TCueLTko3mAc9G43FOzhbLygUSOMCgrVAlN7CRwybhdvgXNvfPHoh_WCjns8HzErbwmSKlkrPaoP12dXokUgrJJujnA45fK7tjPUc2N3mFfBc-BaU0/s1600/20160101_141528.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgov_2tGNa-jSlm_A4cdbFZFjme2TCueLTko3mAc9G43FOzhbLygUSOMCgrVAlN7CRwybhdvgXNvfPHoh_WCjns8HzErbwmSKlkrPaoP12dXokUgrJJujnA45fK7tjPUc2N3mFfBc-BaU0/s640/20160101_141528.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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Cut two pieces of wood, slightly larger than your knife blade. Trace around the blade of the knife on one side of each piece of wood.<br />
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Use chisels and a router plane to remove the waste from one side (and one side only) leaving a void where your knife sits flush with the wood, like so.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi40w9M_ld7wg3Isz2yqdORWl4dV9WqsPFmnQpcWKXDRSk4eqkfzQhC9i1V8LW8eeE3yA0Tttd_2pLRUDEsx7njkSFDOXTkpluBWY32827wNcQWmMfu1wh2fNOlFKavX_NckxTaHUvtnUU/s1600/20160101_142744.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi40w9M_ld7wg3Isz2yqdORWl4dV9WqsPFmnQpcWKXDRSk4eqkfzQhC9i1V8LW8eeE3yA0Tttd_2pLRUDEsx7njkSFDOXTkpluBWY32827wNcQWmMfu1wh2fNOlFKavX_NckxTaHUvtnUU/s640/20160101_142744.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
It doesn't have to be beautiful, but it needs to fit.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGajrXjve3ThL0v03Av0LvkX6wqxe6ULA-9_RyTR-FFC-_y9Av_cSjxjQPIlaDt4mam1b_hcd8HBmqoAix1I9tPgVNFUF2oQH6THZjKpdN6bYpDzR5ZA0NcoemBfn4Mn3p5AY71zIn-tc/s1600/20160101_142810.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGajrXjve3ThL0v03Av0LvkX6wqxe6ULA-9_RyTR-FFC-_y9Av_cSjxjQPIlaDt4mam1b_hcd8HBmqoAix1I9tPgVNFUF2oQH6THZjKpdN6bYpDzR5ZA0NcoemBfn4Mn3p5AY71zIn-tc/s640/20160101_142810.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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Why did I carve only one side of the sandwich? Because in any joinery project, it's unwise to leave a wedge (like a knife blade) sitting against a seam. You're just asking to get that seam split apart.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHruXrhEnRYxIeZvkxL3BGXw0i6aJVhWppMZdixbqrH_zYXyo3HkzOsePcAD1KcsXk-rTn8R8AUmos8NzA4sopIXLz4VDuKaU8Z-v4Seq-OufcXmqv-w9SlQ8e8VpDQu2aWArdI4eC04o/s1600/20160101_143305.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHruXrhEnRYxIeZvkxL3BGXw0i6aJVhWppMZdixbqrH_zYXyo3HkzOsePcAD1KcsXk-rTn8R8AUmos8NzA4sopIXLz4VDuKaU8Z-v4Seq-OufcXmqv-w9SlQ8e8VpDQu2aWArdI4eC04o/s640/20160101_143305.jpg" width="360" /></a></div>
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Glue your sandwich together using the glue of your choice and clamp it gently while it dries (or use rubber bands as I have done). </div>
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You can use hide glue for the period touch. For knife sheaths, though, I prefer Tightbond III because it's waterproof and I'm more concerned about rust than turning out a period-perfect piece. This isn't really a reproduction of a period piece anyway, though the techniques are sound and were used during our time frame in this capacity.</div>
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Note that my pieces are rather thick. Partly that's because I'm using a scrap and partly it's because I wanted lots of room to maneuver when I got around to shaping the glued-up piece. </div>
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Let it sit overnight to cure.<br />
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Make sure the knife sits securely in the void you carved out and then use spokeshaves, chisels, rasps, and handplanes to cut it down to the bare minimum of wood. I left roughly 1/8 inch of wood on every side of the knife blade.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSBm08_nW223_4q83xYgHPJ8I-uMpGB7anEBoUhCUfSFrtJTFfg6lHtIvX2rPMxgnAIXEQEwRiCKeVhwpexHtO1RnuALnmxQXZ5GyFlfcJLtp6KOtNo_KrQXXKH2vVsXdcGzCN9XK4QxQ/s1600/20160103_134754.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSBm08_nW223_4q83xYgHPJ8I-uMpGB7anEBoUhCUfSFrtJTFfg6lHtIvX2rPMxgnAIXEQEwRiCKeVhwpexHtO1RnuALnmxQXZ5GyFlfcJLtp6KOtNo_KrQXXKH2vVsXdcGzCN9XK4QxQ/s640/20160103_134754.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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Seal the wood. You can use an oil finishes for a period-appropriate sheath, or you can cheat and use polyurethane like I did. The next part of the process will expose this wood core to the damp and my woodworking often takes place out of doors in less-than-ideal conditions. It's your choice. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHnUd3VNk_h6fA_LClgEqdb4nZyd6xVQP9G-q0uxLVzgn_yLgcaa3rhmzCx0kXFb1QjV6ir9OcWPpaH9kaf_Kh3WQY28tiuLyC1gdT82VEAYEaoKnUNjG2KvdtE5PdFnx0WDfdgqjZvlA/s1600/20160103_135707.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHnUd3VNk_h6fA_LClgEqdb4nZyd6xVQP9G-q0uxLVzgn_yLgcaa3rhmzCx0kXFb1QjV6ir9OcWPpaH9kaf_Kh3WQY28tiuLyC1gdT82VEAYEaoKnUNjG2KvdtE5PdFnx0WDfdgqjZvlA/s640/20160103_135707.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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Insert the knife into the wood sheath and wrap it in paper and masking tape as we did when making the pattern for the shoes last year. Note that the sheath goes about halfway up the hilt of the knife. That's on purpose. It helps protect the knife and will keep it from slipping out of the sheath quite so easily.</div>
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There's only one seam, up the back, and the edges should just meet. For more information on this style of patterning, see this post here: <b><a href="http://renaissanceartisan.blogspot.com/2014/01/wrapping-peasants-part-i-drafting.html" target="_blank">Wrapping Peasants - Pattern Drafting Part I</a></b> and this post here: <b><a href="http://renaissanceartisan.blogspot.com/2016/01/drafting-patterns-for-leatherworking.html" target="_blank">Drafting patterns for leatherworking</a></b>.</div>
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<b>Note #1: </b>Remember to decide how you're going to attach it to your belt before you get to the cutting leather stage.</div>
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<b>Note #2:</b> If you want to incise, tool, or otherwise decorate your leather, do so before you begin sewing. I admit that I have at least once forgotten to do that. For tools like this one, I like mine a bit plain.</div>
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This is where we begin practicing our cordwaining in the guise of sheathmaking...</h3>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVwSxyxCorWVANYj5JKLEpSTgmI2evRsAJX4ohyphenhyphenrex-lQ5W5U5T6F9jOp_38y_y8v7GeKJViO8vPRuzPzVOz4QKkuGF9D9P3sUajNIeEoQIQngh1DggUHmdcJp6S1ZQ-zj5ri2E0Ds2IU/s1600/Shoemaking+awls+%2528800x571%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="456" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVwSxyxCorWVANYj5JKLEpSTgmI2evRsAJX4ohyphenhyphenrex-lQ5W5U5T6F9jOp_38y_y8v7GeKJViO8vPRuzPzVOz4QKkuGF9D9P3sUajNIeEoQIQngh1DggUHmdcJp6S1ZQ-zj5ri2E0Ds2IU/s640/Shoemaking+awls+%2528800x571%2529.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Boar Bristles and Closing Awls</td></tr>
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Waxed Ends (skip if you don't have boar bristles/just want to use needles)</h4>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">I'm going to sew this up using boar bristles instead of needles. This is the period-appropriate method of work for shoemakers and bookbinders. The sharp, flexible bristles are attached to the end using sticky wax and cleverness. I'm rubbish at it and need lots of practice, but Francis Classe is great at it and </span><a href="http://aands.org/raisedheels/Techniques/bristle.php" target="_blank"><b>provided us with a great tutorial on how to go about it</b></a><span style="font-weight: normal;">. I do a lot of reinventing the wheel on this project, but I can't best Francis at something that he taught me, so if you want to go the bristle route, you should follow that link and learn to do it right.</span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span>Some modern shoemakers have good luck using heavy-test fishing line in lieu of the boar's bristle. If you don't have access to a boar or its bristles, there are those who swear by it. I've never tried it, though, so I trust your Google-fu to let you figure it out. I tried to find a link to a tutorial I could share but only found references to a dead site.</div>
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Your mileage may vary.</div>
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<b>Why boar bristles and fishing line?</b></h4>
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We're going to perform something called the "round stitch" which follows a curved path through the leather. In order to pull that off, you use a curved awl to create a tunnel through the leather from the top to the edge. Then, you need to be able to push your 'needle' through that tunnel. </div>
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You can do this with long, slightly flexible needles like long darners and I've had decent luck doing so in the past, but a piece of sharp, flexible, keratin like a boar bristle or a similarly flexy bit of fishing line are a godsend and speed things up.</div>
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I'll get more into the boar bristles and waxed ends when we tackle the actual shoes. This is really just a test run...</div>
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Curved awls</h4>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7-0o0nehmIiFVdx32YUUIPe-ujRRchQHJkAWOJ7FV93QBefvj9-dF6hhWkEx0kdkf4YohLnrRqtLSXU7REycUtpWDT90W2w_4pnGAWaCjo9uvNR1PM0WPX5H9k_5Wyi9-K2FccvUZZBM/s1600/IMG_5167+%25281024x731%2529+%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="456" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7-0o0nehmIiFVdx32YUUIPe-ujRRchQHJkAWOJ7FV93QBefvj9-dF6hhWkEx0kdkf4YohLnrRqtLSXU7REycUtpWDT90W2w_4pnGAWaCjo9uvNR1PM0WPX5H9k_5Wyi9-K2FccvUZZBM/s640/IMG_5167+%25281024x731%2529+%25282%2529.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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The two outside awls are the same as in the previous photo. They are made from antiques, which I bought from the extra stash of a cordwainer friend of mine. You don't have to haunt antique stores and bug your shoemaking buddies for their tools, though. These closing awls are still sold new by some specialty retailers, or you can get by with that middle awl with the knurled piece for changing the blades. It was purchased new from Tandy Leather, just last year. Just make sure the cross-section is oval rather than round to prevent tearout.</div>
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<br /><b>Closing: The Round Stitch</b></h4>
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Use your marking wheel (or a ruler, dividers, etcetera) to mark an even stitch distance all around the edge of your seam on both sides, 1/4 - 1/8 of an inch back from the edge. </div>
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<i>Make sure that the marks on each side a exactly parallel to one another</i>.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0OqkbEjfqeyyAD-mq0Gof3O1x8NdSzdQy3nwBlrvWFigwhdmNu4KHKxvSeqiKFRRgikeXjrX6S0KLpvPT_14acNKHsgdokH4DxcRhmS8mRwj7ero3rVt_52gpXHgcfuU0wHc6rAktsMg/s1600/20160103_164439.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0OqkbEjfqeyyAD-mq0Gof3O1x8NdSzdQy3nwBlrvWFigwhdmNu4KHKxvSeqiKFRRgikeXjrX6S0KLpvPT_14acNKHsgdokH4DxcRhmS8mRwj7ero3rVt_52gpXHgcfuU0wHc6rAktsMg/s640/20160103_164439.jpg" width="360" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My depth is wandering quite a bit here. You can see why I feel like I need the practice.</td></tr>
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Use your curved awl to create a hole that angles from the mark made by your stitch marker curving toward and out the edge of the leather. The depth should be just a bit deeper than half the leather's thickness. THIS TAKES A BIT OF PRACTICE. I'd advise using some scraps to practice.</div>
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Too deep and your seam will pucker. Too shallow and you'll tear out.</div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Al Muckart -- a reenactor and craftsman who writes the <i>Where Are the Elves?</i> shoemaking blog -- created a tutorial that illustrates quite well how to do this. I've linked to it in the footnotes at the bottom of the post.</blockquote>
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Wet the leather in warm water to make it a bit stretchy. You don't want to soak it too long or to use boiling water. This is not "<i><a href="http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/Articles/Perfect_Armor_Improved.htm" target="_blank">cuirboulli</a></i>", which would be too stiff for this particular purpose. Just hot tap water is fine and don't soak it for too long. (You just want it pliable and a bit stretchy, but don't want to leach all the collagen out of the leather.)<br />
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Roll the leather between towels to get the excess water out and then wrap it around your wooden core with the knife still in the sheath. Oil the blade and seal the wood and you should be fine for the amount of moisture we're talking about, but now you know why I sealed my wood. (Some sheath makers <a href="http://www.britishblades.com/forums/showthread.php?22249-Scandi-Sheaths-My-Way" target="_blank">wrap the knife in plastic wrap</a>, which isn't a bad idea.)<br />
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Either create your waxed ends or thread two flexible needles on either end of a piece of strong hemp or linen thread. I stipulated "long staple" which refers to the length of the fibers that were spun to create the thread. The longer the staple length, the stronger and more durable the resulting thread.<br />
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Working from both sides at once, sew back and forth across the gap. Note: people who make puppets and stuffed animals refer to as a "ladder stitch" while other leatherworkers may call it a "butt stitch". Shoemakers call it a round stitch, so we're going with that from now on.<br />
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The rest is stitching and letting the leather dry.<br />
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That open end is on purpose. It's traditional for to leave that little curled fishtail on Scandinavian knife sheathes. I'm not sure if there's a practical purpose to it other than making the sewing easier because you don't have to ease the pattern around the point. It will be cut back a bit when I'm finished.</div>
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A lot of Nordic fishermen settled along the coast in Washington state, and I've seen antique fileting knives that have sheathes like this where the tip was cut to a little fishtail shape. I'll just be slicing mine off at a pleasing (to me) angle.</div>
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Yes, that's blood on that bit of tissue you see above. Remember to respect sharp tools. And remember that the sharper the tool, the less damage it does when it does cut you. </div>
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Now we just have to let the leather dry, then dye it to our desired color and finish it with a bit of wax and polish.</div>
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Further Reading:</h3>
<br />
<ol>
<li><b><a href="http://renaissanceartisan.blogspot.com/2014/01/cordwhatnow-laymans-guide-to-shoemaking.html" target="_blank">Cordwhatnow? A layman's guide to shoemaking tools & terms</a> </b>School of the Renaissance Artisan, posted January, 2014</li>
<li><b><a href="http://aands.org/raisedheels/Techniques/techniques.php" target="_blank">Basic Techniques of Construction</a></b> (Including waxed ends and how to use them)<br />by Francis Classe at his <a href="http://aands.org/raisedheels/about.php" target="_blank"><i>Raised Heels</i></a> cordwaining blog</li>
<li><b><a href="http://wherearetheelves.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/roundclosing.pdf" target="_blank">The Round Closing Seam in Shoemaking </a></b>(PDF)<br />by Al Muckart of the <a href="http://wherearetheelves.net/" target="_blank"><i>Where Are the Elves</i></a> shoemaking blog</li>
</ol>
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<br />Eternal Apprenticehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17970817049875891713noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-307456332768449014.post-39951617477254402682016-01-06T17:00:00.002-08:002016-01-06T17:01:08.595-08:00Drafting patterns for leatherworkingNote: This post isn't really about 16th century methodologies.<br />
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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 <a href="http://renaissanceartisan.blogspot.com/2013/02/leatherworking-with-flowerpots.html" target="_blank"><b>flower pots to build mugs</b></a>, we've used <a href="http://garb4guys.blogspot.com/2011/08/maskmaker-maskmaker-part-iii-preparing.html" target="_blank"><b>butter knives for skiving</b></a>, and my favorite <a href="http://garb4guys.blogspot.com/2012/05/leather-jerkin-pinking-slashing.html" target="_blank"><b>cheap woodworking chisels for cutting</b></a>.<br />
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So let's talk about pattern making.<br />
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If you've ever followed <a href="http://garb4guys.blogspot.com/p/maskworks_27.html" target="_blank"><b>my maskmaking tutorial</b></a> 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 <b><a href="http://renaissanceartisan.blogspot.com/search?q=shoes" target="_blank">this shoemaking post</a></b>) and the leather you're going to use.<br />
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This can cause some real fit issues.<br /><br />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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEiCnZLG6pEh-86lL1JswcSlGyb2en7a8foa6IsS926vW7XWjZ16RPbJ1oFft29iTj8Qbu8M0v4YeYff9W_DyCXvv3zSwTfuE80IOtimfZCbxFSxxAJnLC9cQHVgg_yyIdpCwdfVfkckw/s1600/20160106_135239.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEiCnZLG6pEh-86lL1JswcSlGyb2en7a8foa6IsS926vW7XWjZ16RPbJ1oFft29iTj8Qbu8M0v4YeYff9W_DyCXvv3zSwTfuE80IOtimfZCbxFSxxAJnLC9cQHVgg_yyIdpCwdfVfkckw/s640/20160106_135239.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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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 <i>just</i> meet with no seam allowance, fit is so very crucial.<br />
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It's NERPy, sure, but it works a treat.<br />
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- ScottEternal Apprenticehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17970817049875891713noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-307456332768449014.post-70563258856013100512016-01-04T08:00:00.000-08:002016-01-04T08:42:26.882-08:00Thoughts from the peeler: What am I?<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmHkrUN_zbHdKVkCxcIqkH37eC877ryL3nxiB-vxorrSGHy56kDLgpMF2QmxiVKcGA56RdA0k9ZR173EkqwQjknB-lUGULj98ttOhKsMIhnDivMP5XL47YqgumcRzMZOym3i6lJ3qbk0Y/s1600/peeler+-+Complete.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmHkrUN_zbHdKVkCxcIqkH37eC877ryL3nxiB-vxorrSGHy56kDLgpMF2QmxiVKcGA56RdA0k9ZR173EkqwQjknB-lUGULj98ttOhKsMIhnDivMP5XL47YqgumcRzMZOym3i6lJ3qbk0Y/s200/peeler+-+Complete.jpg" width="153" /></a>Nothing happens in a vacuum. Not even this curious obsession of mine. The artisans of the 16th century were part of a larger society and so too am I one cog in a 21st century gear.<br />
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I'm not a big fan of most modern labels, but one that I rather like is "Maker". It's incredibly general and yet incredibly specific at the same time. It's a person and a movement. A maker is one who has joined with others in stepping back from the mass-produced and plastic, disposable world that says: "<i>Hands off! If it's broken, throw it away. Don't make things, we're here to do that for you. We can do it incredibly cheaply and out of sight in factories overseas, under conditions we don't like to cop to.</i>"<br />
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Makers stared at the tamper-resistant screws on the back of a device and wondered what's so special under that lid. Makers felt the inexorable pull of the workbench, or the kitchen, or the garage.<br />
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"The Maker Movement." It's not often you can encapsulate such a disparate group of artisans into one category like that and have almost all of them nod and say "<i>Yeah, that's cool, that's me.</i>"<br />
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It seems too general, on the face of it, but artisan is no less general, and no less co-opted by society at large. When you say 'artisanal' it draws images of tattooed foodies in Seattle or Portland, making weird beers, and odd sausages, and stinky cheeses that only a very few taste buds can tolerate. I feel a kinship with these oddballs and their obsessions, and I never lack something to talk about when I step into their atelier or welcome them to mine.<br />
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We're all similarly obsessed. As happy to learn as we are to teach, and eternal apprentices all. Even if I don't understand their particular Thing or they mine, we are kin. Because who cares? We're not doing it for each other, we're doing it for ourselves. We're sharing it with Those Who Understand.<br />
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As long as you are willing to do instead of being done for, and to teach as much as you learn, you are in the fraternity of makers.<br />
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Walk through any modern Maker Fair and you will see no fewer subcategories than you see in our project list here. There are certainly areas of the Maker Fairs where I would be very <i>very</i> lost. Despite the robots of my fictional worlds, I'm no friend to electricity. Microcontrollers and circuit boards rarely grace my bench except accidentally and often tragically.<br />
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If it's a question of taxonomy should we create our own taxonomic paradigm? Are you <i>Homo sapien maker cooper</i>? Or are you<i> homo sapien maker roboticist</i>? Maybe not. Maybe that would be too confining and imply walls where none exist and stifle cross-pollination.<br />
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And down the rabbit hole we go and I find myself back where I started, looking askance at modern labels. So in the greater framework of modern society, am I a maker or an artisan? Do I really need to choose?<br />
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Maybe I am happier unlabeled except as the Eternal Apprentice. Student to all, master to no one. Under that title, you will find me in every corner of the internet's Maker Fair from Tested.com to Modern Woodworking. Poking, reading, asking questions, watching, learning.<br />
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No matter what is happening in my life, no matter how fraught my circumstance, one thing always remains true: I will compulsively gravitate to the nearest pile of raw materials and begin turning them into something else.<br />
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If it's a pile of cloth, I will make clothing.</div>
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If it's lumber, I will make furniture.<br />
If it's leather, I will make shoes.<br />
If it's metal, I will probably fail in hilarious and epic fashion to make another thimble.<br />
If it's yarn... I will give it to my wife because I really don't like knitting.</div>
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And if left alone in a dark room, I will pull words from the aether and I will make stories.<br />
Because a writer is never without raw materials.<br />
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- Scott</div>
Eternal Apprenticehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17970817049875891713noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-307456332768449014.post-31405086989485031152016-01-02T16:50:00.004-08:002016-01-02T16:53:01.630-08:00What I've been up to and other recent projects...So... I haven't been completely idle this past year; I just haven't been doing anything in any sort of pre-planned and extensively- researched way. Mostly, I've been keeping myself busy when my hands were too idle and my brain too active.<br />
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Here are some of the recent projects to roll across my workbench.<br />
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Inspired by <a href="http://www.popularwoodworking.com/articleindex/6-board-chest" target="_blank">an article by Chris Schwarz in Popular Woodworking</a>, I built a modified 6-board chest for my wife out of offcuts and scraps of VG fir from the window and door manufacturer where she works. (They were fished out of a dumpster with permission. Always get permission before dumpster-diving.) It was assembled using copper boat nails (for no particular reason) and finish with red milk paint and a coat of varnish. </div>
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She uses it to store her video games and accessories.</div>
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Since I wasn't really doing this one for the blog, there weren't many in-progress shots. I did a few oddball things with it, though, mostly for practice, including this boarded bottom which I made using the next item on my list...<br />
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Last fall, a Craigslist post netted me this box of dusty and rusty planes. Most of them were Sandusky moulding planes, which made them a real find and worth the effort (in my opinion) to sharpen and lap the irons back to usable condition.<br />
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This box...<br />
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Begat this shelf of oiled, and ready planes. And I'm only short one iron after all is said and done, which is a bit of a miracle if you've ever bought a box of moulding planes. (I have irons for the two in the back that are sitting empty, they were in progress when I shot the photo.)<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiig55LzvWjMc3najyvGCPcBe1jbjeTG51xM9Q5XE2mDTatKMoNVdjvmWShFgUYsfnmxE2nmnA1rUwaF0eGJ-qOsVU9_TcWzT5p-O3uY60dI65FNRDQ400G6K7CKcm7FBzmhL_76vTOK2g/s1600/20151002_194951+%25281%2529.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiig55LzvWjMc3najyvGCPcBe1jbjeTG51xM9Q5XE2mDTatKMoNVdjvmWShFgUYsfnmxE2nmnA1rUwaF0eGJ-qOsVU9_TcWzT5p-O3uY60dI65FNRDQ400G6K7CKcm7FBzmhL_76vTOK2g/s640/20151002_194951+%25281%2529.jpg" /></a><br />
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I used them to tongue and groove the bottom of that chest.</div>
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I have continued to practice at the lathe, turning out piles of oddments like these threadreels, which I based loosely on some of the reels which were found on the shipwreck <a href="http://www.maryrose.org/" target="_blank">Mary Rose.</a> They're fun to make and an excellent small project to practice with the tools.</div>
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And because not everything I do generates sawdust, I've also been exploring puppetry.<br />
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Why puppets? Because I'm part of the Jim Henson generation. Also because when you've had a year like I just finished, you find yourself looking for other mouths to express yourself through, be they monster or monkey or felted frog...</div>
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This is the one facet of what I've been working on that has required a significant amount of research, which began the first time I saw Grover on Sesame Street, extending across the decades to this past year when I was sitting at a table where the nearest pile of raw materials were foam and faux fur.</div>
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This is what sketching looks like when you're making puppets.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilHWS4SOJYrQLtfL4PeRN78hmoNzCnFwKkRsnZehsx5qUFXxQJmQdKN0EX-wGkxVGffqqRouV2EzNi-hJV_juEw5K60euitgkUAlJUY54WiEO_zQTZEQ6AwHRTJHzjhwPwlXGYkaw4TCE/s1600/20151001_235215.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilHWS4SOJYrQLtfL4PeRN78hmoNzCnFwKkRsnZehsx5qUFXxQJmQdKN0EX-wGkxVGffqqRouV2EzNi-hJV_juEw5K60euitgkUAlJUY54WiEO_zQTZEQ6AwHRTJHzjhwPwlXGYkaw4TCE/s640/20151001_235215.jpg" width="360" /></a></div>
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Ever wonder how the puppets from your favorite television shows were built? This isn't the place to really discuss it, but I have documented these pretty thoroughly and might need to set up a static webpage or use them for a guest post on someone else's (more appropriately themed) blog.<br />
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Anyway, this is what's under all that fur and felt you see on TV.<br />
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The above was a commissioned piece, actually. I'll have to share the videos that his owner ultimately makes with him after he takes delivery.<br />
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In the meantime, I'm warming up the workbench (Literally. The shop was 24 degrees Fahrenheit when I was out there yesterday) and getting ready to begin the next project. In the meantime, here;s some puppet video my wife shot while I was testing the build on the big grey fellow. This is Mr Grumpigus, who is having issues.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bA6xftvDU78" width="560"></iframe></div>
Eternal Apprenticehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17970817049875891713noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-307456332768449014.post-6980300782969907572015-12-17T08:14:00.001-08:002015-12-17T08:14:24.601-08:00Peeling and pondering<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDOr2QalF6x6e3pndV8lyH4KVqk1gLKTZ3zGA1Ozg75NOlM5cTfkKYKpbWZP7xbXe7-p8iNnDZVLzMRHrX8HODeZjENkYFaNRc_c2tR8eectg1SEGEfBQDTF8E4_DhYPlegKaijwYeoWo/s1600/peeler+-+Complete.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDOr2QalF6x6e3pndV8lyH4KVqk1gLKTZ3zGA1Ozg75NOlM5cTfkKYKpbWZP7xbXe7-p8iNnDZVLzMRHrX8HODeZjENkYFaNRc_c2tR8eectg1SEGEfBQDTF8E4_DhYPlegKaijwYeoWo/s400/peeler+-+Complete.jpg" width="308" /></a>Sometimes, you have to grab a pile of fruit and a knife and make a pie. But really, you just... just... want to peel something.<br />
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More even than wood carving, taking knife to fruit is a supremely meditative act of creative destruction.<br />
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Care is needed lest you cut yourself, of course, but even if you mangle the fruit, who cares? It's going into a pie anyway, so make with the blade, kiddo, and let your mind wander.<br />
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I've been doing a lot of peeling recently, trying to decide how best to proceed with this project.<br />
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2015 has been a tumultuous year. My book was published and I was riding high. Then my mother died suddenly and I was left feeling high and low at the same time.<br />
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Knife to peel.<br />
Spiraling.<br />
Lengthening.<br />
Try to get it all in one.<br />
Meditate.<br />
Don't cut yourself.<br />
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So here I am at the close of the calendar, trying to decide whether I care much for calendars. It's tempting, oh-so-tempting, to think in these discreet blocks of days, months, years. It tempts you to take up the blade.<br />
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Peel away the questionable bits.<br />
Cut around the bruises.<br />
Save the good fruit, dispense with the bad.<br />
It's just a pie, it doesn't have to be pretty.<br />
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To think in calendars is seductive. It makes it easier to just pretend you can bin the entire year at will or pick or choose in phases of the moon or turning of the seasons. Hell, this entire project is and always has been dependent on calendars for its framework.<br />
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In January, can you really begin again? Boot the old man to the curb and pick up the baby in the tophat?<br />
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Time is seductive but false.<br />
You can't time a pie, it's done when it's done.<br />
Density, moisture, relative humidity, too many factors at play.<br />
Keep an eye on it and yank it before it burns.<br />
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I am about to pick this project back up again. For those of you who have waited patiently while I run off to be an author and have family tragedies, I thank you for your time. I hope you don't feel I've wasted it.<br />
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Going forward, we're going to take a more meditative approach and we're going to ignore the calendar. I was wrong about the artificial frameworks for this. I was wrong to think I could just peel it and pop it in the oven and set a timer and it would be done when it dings.<br />
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We're going to carve around the worst bits and bruises and try to use the best of the fruit. And we're going to watch the food and let the pie tell us when it's done and time to move on to another pile, another peeler.<br />
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Our knives will be sharp and our pies will sometimes be ugly.<br />
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I hope you'll join us.<br />
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In the meantime, have a happy Christmas or a happy whatever celebration brings you together with your kith and kin this winter's turn. Draw near to those you love and remember those who are missing. Share food and companionship and warmth and remember that they are the only real light that matters in the winter's darkness.<br />
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And volunteer in the kitchen when there's stuff to peel.<br />
It'll be good for you.<br />
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- Scott<br />
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<br />Eternal Apprenticehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17970817049875891713noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-307456332768449014.post-65596181746029763432015-04-13T15:40:00.002-07:002015-04-13T15:41:11.826-07:00Update: Release the Giant Robots!<span style="font-family: inherit; text-align: center;">Howdy! Since ya'll asked to be kept updated on that novelist thing that pulled me away from this project over the summer, here's the update...</span><br />
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<span style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><i>Howard Carter Saves the World </i>is now available to </span><span style="font-size: large;">order on Amazon Kindle!</span></b></span><br />
<span style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Howard-Carter-Saves-World-Perkins-ebook/dp/B00VN0SVDE/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1428130115&sr=1-1&keywords=scott+perkins" target="_blank">Click Here to Pre-Order Now! (US)</a></b></span></span><br />
<span style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><br /><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Howard-Carter-Saves-World-Perkins-ebook/dp/B00VN0SVDE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1428134882&sr=8-1&keywords=Howard+Carter+Saves+the+World" target="_blank">Click Here to Pre-Order Now! (UK)</a></b></span></span><br />
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<span style="text-align: center;">The official "Street Date" is tomorrow! If you don't have a Kindle and/or don't want to download the free Kindle app to read my book, don't worry! Other stores and formats will be coming along soon including Nook, Kobo, and the iStore. Stay tuned.</span><br />
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<span style="text-align: center;">If you're on Facebook and if you have some time on your hands tomorrow, my publisher will be holding an Online Launch Party, which actually begins in a little less than an hour from now due to the time differential between the Pacific Northwest and their home base in the UK.</span><br />
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<span style="text-align: center;">So stop by and say hello! If you send a picture of yourself holding the book up on your screen, something nice will happen. In the meantime, there's new original artwork and illustration, videos of me reading from the book and shenanigans and tomfoolery galore.</span><br />
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You can find us here: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/1396956627287554/">https://www.facebook.com/events/1396956627287554/</a><br />
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<span style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9PP6g41Az88yqCx9RVf0VNXdRtrYveWz9AMXNAcqV1189N274CDZl9WgIcKVP3XJS2u9URtqy5d1tr-1XwR6cXwZGbOjOD8Q3Nk4sqDYjGYjM6VpVVGplGnTghhER7hM9UiB9G8APWxJS/s1600/Launch+Party.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="font-size: x-large; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9PP6g41Az88yqCx9RVf0VNXdRtrYveWz9AMXNAcqV1189N274CDZl9WgIcKVP3XJS2u9URtqy5d1tr-1XwR6cXwZGbOjOD8Q3Nk4sqDYjGYjM6VpVVGplGnTghhER7hM9UiB9G8APWxJS/s1600/Launch+Party.jpg" height="332" width="640" /></a></span>Eternal Apprenticehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17970817049875891713noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-307456332768449014.post-6559550210572984552014-10-04T17:37:00.001-07:002014-10-04T17:37:43.566-07:00What I did on my summer vacation, or "How this project got stepped on by a giant robot"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
For the past little while, I've been distracted from this project by an overwhelming surge of The Other Things that make up my life. For this I apologize because I've been less than communicative. Sometimes I get so far into my own head that I'm out of cell range. My wife and I went on our first vacation in years and I saw parts of my own state that I've never had the privilege of exploring before.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Sometimes you just have to get in the car and go for a three-day drive.</i></td></tr>
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No leather was worked, no wood was carved, no sheep were sheared. I did clean out my shop before it started raining and we built another oven and baked some bread, but that was revisiting a guild that already had its checkmark.</div>
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For all intents and purposes, the Renaissance Artisan was 'out' for most of the summer.</div>
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Which isn't the same as saying that I've been idle...</div>
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As you probably know that before anything else that I do, I am a writer. I make sense of the world by telling stories about it. Whether it's history or fantasy, it's all words to me. When I'm lucky, I get to share those stories with others. Writing is my vocation and my first love. This means that at any given moment, I have more than one project on the docket and often when a deal is being considered, it is confidential until all the papers are signed.<div>
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Which is a long way to go toward saying that this week, I signed a contract with a small UK-based publisher called Crooked Cat Publishing to bring my humorous science fiction novel <i>Howard Carter Saves the World</i> to bookstores. The official announcement was made by my publisher yesterday <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=461180084021447&set=a.126898757449583.21837.100003883798449&type=1">via social media</a>.</div>
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<br />I've been bouncing off the walls ever since.<br /><br />Howard Carter is a novel that I just sat down and told the first story that occurred to me, taking it wherever my fancy led, no matter how bizarre. Aliens who learned about earth by watching Sesame Street? Done. Secretive government agencies? Mysterious universities? Mad scientists? Got it all. Giant robots? Oh, the giant robots... I wrote it all in public (rather like I've been doing here) posting chapter-by-woefully-unedited-chapter on a blog, writing live and in front of a studio audience. No laugh tracks allowed!<br /></div>
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If you want to read a bit of it, here's a <a href="http://www.pagestotype.com/2013/07/free-short-story-day-who-do-you-call.html"><b>free short story</b></a> that gives you a general sense of the storytelling and characters from the novel. </div>
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Which is a long way of going about telling you that I'm sorry I dropped this to run off and do that, but I will be back in the workshop in a week or so. I have a half-finished costrel and a shoemaking project in the wings. I've also been making connections to get a proper handle on the life of the Worshipful Company of Woolmen, plus the weavers, spinners, mercers, and tailors that lie at the end of that supply chain. </div>
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In the meantime, I have some up-front work to do on getting Howard Carter ready for print and I'll be ducking in and out as my editor and publisher need me. If you would like to join me on that part of the journey as well as this one, I'm inviting you to come with me on the next step of the journey as we prepare Howard for his debut at Amazon and other online booksellers.</div>
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Side note: Would it be cheating to use this as part of a study of the Worshipful Companies of Stationers and Clerks? Just a thought...</div>
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<br />However it goes, my goal in that project and this one is to put out a story that is good enough for you to read and enjoy, one that you love enough to not only read but to recommend to your friends. I've worked in publishing at enough different levels to know one thing for certain: positive word of mouth is how success happens.<br /><br />There will be much, much more later.<br /><br />- Scott</div>
Eternal Apprenticehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17970817049875891713noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-307456332768449014.post-20896116857901130382014-05-18T01:27:00.000-07:002014-05-18T01:27:00.153-07:00Continuing on with Costrels, Cordwaining, and 6th Grade Leatherworking Lessons...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
<span style="text-align: start;">Welcome back. Where was I? My workbench is such a mess right now...</span></div>
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Oh, yes... cordwaining. We were making shoes, weren't we? <div>
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When we left off, I was getting <a href="http://renaissanceartisan.blogspot.com/2014/01/wrapping-peasants-part-i-drafting.html">started on a pair of shoes</a> to cover those wooden lasts you can see on my bench in the photo above. Unfortunately, it took about ten seconds of testing my hand on the short list of necessary stitches provided to me by <a href="http://aands.org/raisedheels/" target="_blank">Francis </a>and the site of <a href="http://www.personal.utulsa.edu/~marc-carlson/shoe/SHOEHOME.HTM" target="_blank">Marc Carlson</a>, before I remembered how out of practice I am and just how long ago it was that I learned all this stuff.</div>
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When I was in sixth grade, back in Missouri, I was enrolled in a class called "Industrial Arts" where we learned to work with wood, plastic, and leather. It was fun and it taught me nothing that would be useful in any industry practiced anywhere in that postal code, even in the 1980's. But it did put me on the path that led straight to this project.<br /><br />Flash forward to a new century, and I started going into more three-dimensional leather sculpting, making <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCsQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FCommedia_dell%27arte&ei=c2h4U729AcGxoQS7noDgBQ&usg=AFQjCNHWEbkFviT1Fx_qskW2Q7VweEgP-A&sig2=aVXMwSZGiw2jTa51YQGtCg&bvm=bv.66917471,d.cGU"><i>Commedia dell'arte</i></a> masks. As I believe I've mentioned before, those masks <a href="http://garb4guys.blogspot.com/search/label/Masks" target="_blank">are complex and challenging and fun to make</a> , but I didn't fully appreciate how much they are just an entry-level project compared to proper shoemaking.<br /> <br />Cordwaining might well be the most advanced class of leatherworking I ever attempt. I was ready for shaping leather, but not for the sewing. There's not much sewing in the masking trade.</div>
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To prepare properly, I'm going to make two projects that are neither mask nor shoe, but which will allow me to practice key aspects (read: sewing) of the craft that are specifically relevant to the cordwainer.<br /><br />The first project will be a <a href="http://leatherworkingreverend.wordpress.com/2009/10/18/costrels/" target="_blank">costrel</a>, which is a water vessel and a step back into the guild of horners and leather bottellers. Last time, <a href="http://renaissanceartisan.blogspot.com/2013/02/leatherworking-with-flowerpots.html" target="_blank">we made a jack</a> with a flowerpot, but this time we're essentially going to make a leather barrel for holding water.<br />
<br />
When it's done, it will look something like this.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB_3ZBNBrFNA9Ws9tIulEiAAiDH5SAv4Y5IY_qD29eN38xeZBOh5euBeDA1HAvhHDuV-wRrnurT0lZCa9KV5pYI0onPTmuqR8thk6J8xryFdz-1wq-tTo2lgJReBR1lbuXzcbAmjvnpow/s1600/IMG_5310+%2528819x1024%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB_3ZBNBrFNA9Ws9tIulEiAAiDH5SAv4Y5IY_qD29eN38xeZBOh5euBeDA1HAvhHDuV-wRrnurT0lZCa9KV5pYI0onPTmuqR8thk6J8xryFdz-1wq-tTo2lgJReBR1lbuXzcbAmjvnpow/s1600/IMG_5310+%2528819x1024%2529.jpg" height="640" width="512" /></a></div>
<br />
But we have a few steps we have to take to get there, and at least one cool cordwaining tool to make in the interim.<br />
<br />
More tomorrow.<br />
<br />
~ Scott<br />
<br /></div>
</div>
Eternal Apprenticehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17970817049875891713noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-307456332768449014.post-24035044285862205082014-02-23T19:33:00.001-08:002014-02-23T19:33:29.970-08:00Status ReportSo, the reason we've been delayed this time is because our camera is screwed up. It doesn't recognize the SD card and none of the many suggestions from the online "What to do when your Canon DSLR loses its mind" fora have helped.<br />
<br />
I would just carry on anyway, but I screwed up my hand last week in my typical too-humorously-clumsy-to-be-real fashion.<br />
<br />
While out trolling for rusty tools in Port Orchard on a rainy day, The Engineer and I were walking back to the truck when I reached into my pocket to fish out my keys. My pinkie finger went through the key ring and I pulled the keys out and flipped them up into my palm in a jaunty manner to unlock the truck with the remote fob. After the truck chirruped in greeting, I let the keys dangle from my pinkie while I got into the cab.<br />
<br />
My wet boot sole then slipped on edge of the door sill and as I fell forward, the keys caught on the edge of the seat and my poor little finger was pointing the wrong direction.<br />
<br />
Which isn't a good look for anybody. It makes your gloves fit funny.<br />
<br />
If my youthful experiences as a drummer taught me anything it's that my left hand isn't really game for anything too intricate, so I'm on hold for the nonce.<br />
<br />
In the meantime, I've made a felt prototype of the shoe and discovered some fit issues that I'm glad weren't discovered after we went to full leather. I'll document those and the changes I'll be making to the shoe pattern once the camera has recovered. Also, my experiments in 16th century joinery are similarly impacted by not being able to hold a hammer or pretty much anything else heavier than a serving spoon in my right hand at the moment.<br />
<br />
It's amazing how such a seemingly inconsequential finger plays into everything you do with that hand.<br />
<br />
On the bright side, I have this <a href="http://pfollansbee.wordpress.com/book-dvds/" target="_blank">DVD of Peter Follansbee teaching 17th Century carving techniques</a> and you don't need your pinkie to hold a remote control. So there. Once I can again wrap my hand around a carving chisel or a sewing awl, I'll have a lot of pent-up and lovingly hand-crafted artisanal frustration.<br />
<br />
So we have that to look forward to, I guess.<br />
<br />
C'est la vie.<br />
<br />
~ Scott<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
Eternal Apprenticehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17970817049875891713noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-307456332768449014.post-21636326595587293932014-01-26T16:46:00.002-08:002014-01-26T16:46:46.250-08:00Occupational Hazards: My mother the shoemaker...<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRIQsrFAPNnufLQdr5pnKS0UNyMn9bY3ND3Keal4Em_AdLfczHfDpY-ya7Hl7rAxleaHJkKgdcFnr467Vl9051j1237hdeJ8pwszqzIeSq1POogjmcmx029geP26NLSsBfJlRPGkMn4QA/s1600/Shoemakers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRIQsrFAPNnufLQdr5pnKS0UNyMn9bY3ND3Keal4Em_AdLfczHfDpY-ya7Hl7rAxleaHJkKgdcFnr467Vl9051j1237hdeJ8pwszqzIeSq1POogjmcmx029geP26NLSsBfJlRPGkMn4QA/s1600/Shoemakers.jpg" height="400" width="302" /></a>My mother was a nurse for most of my life, until she retired. Except at one point when I was a kid, out of frustration with some aspect of the nursing trade, she went to work in a local shoe factory. More than anything, I remember the smell of the glue on her clothing when she came home.<br />
<br />
And you thought my grandfathers were my only link to the trades...<br />
<br />
It's probably just as well that I did not know at the time about <i><a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6249607" target="_blank">n-hexane polyneuropathy</a></i>, an occupational disease endemic to these shoe factories brought on by exposure to the very glue that I remember so well. Thankfully, factory life didn't agree with her and she went back to nursing in pretty short order.<br />
<br />
Nursing has its own hazards, just as sitting at a desk typing does, but occupational diseases are not a modern invention. Our repetitive strain disorders and bad backs and neuropathies born of the chemical age are nothing new. N-hexane polyneuropathy is just the modern equivalent of an 18th century disease known as 'shoemaker's colic'. Hatters were famously driven mad by the mercury they used, and so on and so forth...<br />
<br />
Something we should probably talk about more often is the occupational hazards of the artisan life.<br />
<br />
To get a bit nearer our period, let us <a href="http://www.jamestowne.org/Written_In_Bone.htm" target="_blank">wander off to Jamestown</a> and take a gander at some scary-looking femurs that bear the marks of a lifetime of cobblers <a href="http://leatherworkingreverend.wordpress.com/2011/05/11/this-is-why-you-dont-use-your-leg-as-an-anvil/" target="_blank">using their upper legs</a> to pound on. In the image at the right, you can get a glimpse inside a 16th century shoemaker's workshop from my old nemesis Jost Amman.<br />
<br />
Note the way the two men in the foreground are working with the shoe on their thigh. The strap you can see holding the shoe in place, running under the heel of the bloke on the left is the <a href="http://renaissanceartisan.blogspot.com/2014/01/cordwhatnow-laymans-guide-to-shoemaking.html" target="_blank">shoemaker's stirrup</a> I described last Sunday.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.jamestowne.org/Written_In_Bone.htm" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6_03J9ZcSUL4pyvGDXZApfvXyABLPa3zfCWhr_v5gjnq0MxTGtQzESZxK4Yo3MJm4WIACGAiYhNv27xC_7Jb5VNmN6Ppnbffa_KxYWo-NSPUrOMYEYPvpA_HWAo1A7HpngjbSUHgfhAQ/s1600/writteninbone19may08.jpg" height="320" width="140" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">
<i>Image from the Jamestown.org</i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>website's "<a href="http://www.jamestowne.org/Written_In_Bone.htm" target="_blank">Written in Bone: </a></i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i><a href="http://www.jamestowne.org/Written_In_Bone.htm" target="_blank">Forensic Files of the 17th </a></i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i><a href="http://www.jamestowne.org/Written_In_Bone.htm" target="_blank">Century Chesapeake</a>" exhibit. </i></div>
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Jost's guys are sewing, but hammers were also used to condense and work-harden leather, especially soles, and if you do that on your leg for a lifetime, your body is going to defend you from the damage. When you damage a bone, it repairs itself -- damage it enough repeatedly over a long enough period and your body will adapt, build up extra bone to protect itself from the next blow. Eventually, the layers of bone will build up and you end up with a sort of anvil attached to your femur.<br />
<br />
Do me and yourself a favor: learn from their mistake.<br />
<br />
It would make sense, in a way, for this to be more common for cobblers than cordwainers since sole repairs would've fallen to the cobbler. Though I should note that the Jamestown website doesn't draw a distinction between the two, and on the frontier there might not have been one. On the muddy reaches of the Virginia coast, I would think that pounding hobnails into soles was a more common task than not.<br />
<br />
A bone spur like that must've leant itself to one hell of a limp.<br />
<br />
It's a cobbler's life, I guess.<br />
<br />
Not all occupational markers are skeletal or so terribly painful. Bakers and blacksmiths have burns, which would theoretically heal and leave your skin all the more impervious to future burns. As I mentioned, the scars and bone spurs were the result of the body's attempts to protect itself.<br />
<br />
On a side note, when I'm watching TV shows like NCIS or Bones, when they confidently describe the working lives of the men and women whose skeletons they're examining, I often wonder how hobbyists throw wrenches into the works on such occasions. I may be a writer, but I have several that might confuse a forensics team if I ever ended up on the table in an episode of Bones. My left incisor has been worn down years of cutting thread with it and I have a shoulder thing that's the result of a stint as a stockman at WalMart* in my youth preceded by a couple years in the pressroom of a local publisher. Compound that by all the adventures this project have led me on and I have to wonder what the CSI folks would make of my body.<br />
<br />
That might seem a bit macabre, but ashes to ashes, dust to dust.<br />
<br />
Food for thought anyway.<br />
<br />
~ Scott<br />
<br />
------<br />
* You know that thing you hear about where Wally World comes to town and before you know it they're the only game in town? Yeah.<br />
<br />
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Eternal Apprenticehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17970817049875891713noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-307456332768449014.post-85006993058816033782014-01-25T14:10:00.000-08:002015-10-27T00:42:55.673-07:00A Joiner's Toolbox: The Axes of Evil?The TSA doesn't tend to like me very much. You see, I like to fly to the Midwest or South and bring back loads of rusty things that make metal detectors go "BEEP!" It's not my fault that all the good old tools, all the greatest houses of rust and dust really, are in the middle and southern reaches of our country.<br />
<br />
As The Engineer says: "All Scott's favorite souvenirs are all on the No-Fly list."<br />
<br />
<h3>
<b>The axes of evil?</b></h3>
If you look at the many, many, <i>many*</i> paintings of medieval and renaissance woodworkers and their tools, you will note four tools that are given particular prominence: <b><a href="http://renaissanceartisan.blogspot.com/2013/09/a-joiners-toolbox-hand-plane.html" target="_blank">Planes</a>, <a href="http://renaissanceartisan.blogspot.com/2013/08/doing-time-in-joint-introducing.html" target="_blank">chisels</a>,</b> a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4LohjmskEk" target="_blank"><b>frame saw</b></a>, and a nice big axe. We'll get to the frame saw soon, but in most of these images, the <i>axe </i>is front and center.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2NEbL9hlcJm-PHR9tGv2U2HhX2t1DnYvz9VdoSHGdnGGCMlBuJrFysRjeLQQp8XsbUF1BoB3e-xqSLCVXbi9ISGhpx4XTOrXOLS4fKuHUCHLWDX0a-BP0mxjK1iwkoK5ajKQ1QALigVY/s1600/image30.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2NEbL9hlcJm-PHR9tGv2U2HhX2t1DnYvz9VdoSHGdnGGCMlBuJrFysRjeLQQp8XsbUF1BoB3e-xqSLCVXbi9ISGhpx4XTOrXOLS4fKuHUCHLWDX0a-BP0mxjK1iwkoK5ajKQ1QALigVY/s1600/image30.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">
<i style="background-color: #fdf9fa; color: #323232; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 10.399999618530273px; line-height: 11.64799976348877px;">A Joiner's workshop from my old nemesis: Jost Amman's <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Das_St%C3%A4ndebuch_(1568)" target="_blank">"Das Standebuch" </a></i></div>
<i style="background-color: #fdf9fa; color: #323232; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 10.399999618530273px; line-height: 11.64799976348877px;"></i><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i style="background-color: #fdf9fa; color: #323232; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 10.399999618530273px; line-height: 11.64799976348877px;"><i style="font-size: 10.399999618530273px;"><a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Das_St%C3%A4ndebuch_(1568)" target="_blank">of 1568</a> (via Wikimedia Commons)</i></i></div>
<i style="background-color: #fdf9fa; color: #323232; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 10.399999618530273px; line-height: 11.64799976348877px;">
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<br />
Everyone who just said "<i>Aren't those for chopping down trees</i>?" gets three demerits and must report to the Forbidden Forest after class, where Professor Ash will teach you why chainsaws were invented.<br />
<br />
Have you ever chopped down a decent-sized tree with an axe?<br />
<br />
I have and I don't recommend it. Of course you can do it and once you get the hang of it, it's not the worst thing in the world. It certainly didn't seem to keep our ancestors from darn near clear cutting the Americas, but never forget how eagerly they took to an invention that was originally a surgical tool (yes, really) once it had been properly biggie-sized and offered up as a bane for trees and zombie hordes alike.<br />
<br />
But that's another tale. We're not chopping down a tree today, just cutting it to a manageable size for employing other tools and to do that, we will need a range of axes.<br />
<br />
The prominence of the axe in woodworking has fallen considerably since the saw mill became more prevalent and lumberyards grew neat stacks of sawn and pre-dimensioned lumber. While the chainsaw might have spelled the end of the big felling axes, it was the 2x4 that killed the carpenter's axe.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCkSi4vKtBvQBrVrCHfmyfBzAwxI5YmiOeUIL98LZ1Qg3ffwOR0llefvrJknKhhkxXJB653OIO6LBo9zp8RcdoccEO8KgPLN3-J6ek6BEYdnzoM3gid37PQ4-sEEYheix8ucxz62Ovebg/s1600/IMG_5182+(1024x683).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCkSi4vKtBvQBrVrCHfmyfBzAwxI5YmiOeUIL98LZ1Qg3ffwOR0llefvrJknKhhkxXJB653OIO6LBo9zp8RcdoccEO8KgPLN3-J6ek6BEYdnzoM3gid37PQ4-sEEYheix8ucxz62Ovebg/s1600/IMG_5182+(1024x683).jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">
(<i>Left to right) Carpenter's axe, large "Kent" style side hatchet, small "Kent" style side hatchet, and a head for a broad axe</i><i>.</i></div>
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Thankfully, great grandpa kept his and I picked up a couple more in my beloved web of rust emporia scattered across southern Missouri. The largish Kent hatchet in the picture above was an inheritance, the rest I rescued and brought home to Washington to the consternation of my wife and airport security.<br />
<br />
Use your axes for good, my friends. Never evil.<br />
<br />
<h3>
<b>Axe? Hatchet? Plumb? Side? Broad? </b> (Watch who you call a broad, pal...)</h3>
An axe, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9xmkhBwEC0" target="_blank"><b>Roy Underhill likes to say</b></a>, is essentially a piece of steel mounted on the end of a stick. One of the few things everyone can agree on is that. After that, the nomenclature gets a bit contentious. We can't even decide how to spell it with England and America using an axe or an ax, respectively. The main problem is that the axe has been around almost as long as humans have, and every culture has named it and the parts of it as suited their fancy.<br />
<br />
Thus, we're going to be a bit generic with our terminology. Also, a hatchet is a small axe. Alas, there are sizes of these tools where different people will refer to it as one or the other at whim, sometimes in the same sentence, but really it's about size more than anything else.<br />
<br />
As you already know, I tend not to get too caught up on taxonomical issues anyway. Honestly, as long as you can tell the handle from the sharp bit, you're going to be fine.<br />
<br />
Here are the absolute basics...<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSQevS-VwtzR51KKMmWosOaw6CzVyE0krW96v1lTW_ze2HuOy7Z_J8BZ7Se4xGFt0lXhFy_VA_rOl6j_eya1PfNKnx_Veh62TR8BacCoS7fklsP7PYSsofijHXTq8jXUPJum6BL29x6eo/s1600/axe+anatomy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="504" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSQevS-VwtzR51KKMmWosOaw6CzVyE0krW96v1lTW_ze2HuOy7Z_J8BZ7Se4xGFt0lXhFy_VA_rOl6j_eya1PfNKnx_Veh62TR8BacCoS7fklsP7PYSsofijHXTq8jXUPJum6BL29x6eo/s1600/axe+anatomy.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<b>Just remember this: shape dictates the use. </b></div>
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In the drawing above, you can see that I delineate a difference between a "wedge" axe and a "side" axe. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKUv9wjCZM4mUo3AIaWAQ8NxbH7_vM4J-rbmz-nKV199IgojcgEtEW7R6EyenyZwd-HtcOFha7TjBWVuAKJV7njtQzDerPbChV4HbCq36rAXtIrFMHsUuHGKUh6OgA_VD1uWJOQdcA3mM/s1600/side+by+side+ax.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKUv9wjCZM4mUo3AIaWAQ8NxbH7_vM4J-rbmz-nKV199IgojcgEtEW7R6EyenyZwd-HtcOFha7TjBWVuAKJV7njtQzDerPbChV4HbCq36rAXtIrFMHsUuHGKUh6OgA_VD1uWJOQdcA3mM/s1600/side+by+side+ax.jpg" width="304" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">
<i>A side hatchet and a "boy scout" style wedge hatchet shown</i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>side-by-side for comparison.</i></div>
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<i><b>The side axe</b> </i>is flat on one side and specific to a right or left handed user (actually many can be either, you just flip the head over and mount it the other way on the haft). A side axe is mostly used for hewing a round log into flat faces. The bevel forces the wood off to only one side and tends to take relatively small pieces, leaving a relatively flat surface behind to be dresses with other tools such as a plane. Logs are turned into timbers by hewing away the rounds with enormous broad axes which are 'sided' like the hatchet you see in the photo at right.<br />
<br />
<b><i>The wedge style</i></b> is for cleaving or splitting. You can dress logs with a wedge axe if you want to, but it's more work because the double bevel pushes the wood in both directions and tends to break fibers and knock out a <u>chunk</u> of wood rather than taking a slice. I'm tempted to say that there's not as much finesse in a double-beveled axe, but you can use it to do most the things you can with a side axe if you're willing to put in the work.<br />
<br />
Mostly though, a wedge is a splitting tool and boy can it split kindling.<br />
<br />
Speaking of splitting kindling, there's one other type of axe that we need to talk about: <b><i>The Froe.</i></b> A froe is an axe in the same sense that <a href="http://renaissanceartisan.blogspot.com/2013/06/learning-curves-and-state-of-project-i.html" target="_blank"><b>an adze</b></a> is -- they are technically axes, but their blades are turned at angles to the handle that we're not used to seeing so that they can do some very specific jobs.<br />
<br />
The froe is all about <u>riving</u> wood. Riven wood is split, but not in a haphazard manner like firewood, but very accurately and in careful consideration of grain direction so that you have boards you can work with when you're done. <br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1GilzBbOddWX2aksFU-PqVWGMPpwxFIeSuiQD_5O_Ls01Oa03NOciEs6cSnQjCea5_c5o8XNDCFRIcE5QSh8G-OM2cZXxC2zS2GUVomfvBtnp9PJcAJBufgyZd_KQT2ezoNNhdlCPkQM/s1600/IMG_5189+(1024x683).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1GilzBbOddWX2aksFU-PqVWGMPpwxFIeSuiQD_5O_Ls01Oa03NOciEs6cSnQjCea5_c5o8XNDCFRIcE5QSh8G-OM2cZXxC2zS2GUVomfvBtnp9PJcAJBufgyZd_KQT2ezoNNhdlCPkQM/s1600/IMG_5189+(1024x683).jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>My froe making short work of a fresh bit of a plum tree.</i></td></tr>
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Almost all the wood used by an Elizabethan joiner was riven rather than sawn to dimension. Sawing was reserved mostly for shaping or doing any sort of cutting <i>across </i>the grain (which a froe or axe are ill-suited for).<br />
<br />
All of this is preparatory for doing what's nowadays generally known as "Green" woodworking. In this case, "green" isn't used in the Al Gore sense, but rather in the sense that no one is baking the tree in a kiln before it gets to your workbench. Many of these tools and techniques we're going to talk about are sort of useless on kiln-dried fir from Home Depot. The bit of plum tree I'm splitting in the picture above was cut the day before from an old tree growing in my garden.<br />
<br />
The nice thing about greenwood is wet and springy and above all, easy to work. Unfortunately, it will also rust your tools, so you have to take care.<br />
<br />
More on that later when we start making things with all these tools out of all this wet wood. For now, I'm going to refer you once again to Peter Follansbee and Jenny Alexander's excellent "<a href="http://www.lostartpress.com/Make_a_Joint_Stool_from_a_Tree_p/bk-majsfat.htm" target="_blank">Make a Joint Stool from a Tree: An Introduction to 17th Century Joinery</a>" (Lost Art Press, 2012) or to any of Peter's excellent appearances on <a href="http://www.pbs.org/woodwrightsshop/home/" target="_blank">The WoodWright's Shop</a> on PBS.<br />
<br />
If you don't have access to a trove of old tools, can you make do with a double-beveled axe or modify one to make it work? Of course you can. But I'll let an expert deal with that. For expansion of this topic, this is a video that woodworking gurus Christopher Schwarz and Peter Follansbee filmed on this same subject. Enjoy.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/qyT87p16m1g?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<br />
~ Scott<br />
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*<i>It helps that Jesus was a carpenter, or at least his dad was. Depictions of the Holy Family are almost inevitably filled to the rafters with tools. In many ways, the artifacts of the <a href="http://www.maryrose.org/resources/lcity/woodwork/the-carpenter.htm" target="_blank">Mary Rose ship's carpenter</a> and the <a href="http://www.vasamuseet.se/en/The-Ship/Life-on-board1/" target="_blank">Vasa ship's carpenter</a> are just confirming things we already knew from period depictions of Joseph. </i>Eternal Apprenticehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17970817049875891713noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-307456332768449014.post-53509374770667641832014-01-19T15:28:00.000-08:002014-01-26T15:32:00.197-08:00Cordwhatnow? A layman's guide to shoemaking tools and termsMuch to The Engineer's chagrin, my shoemaking project has quite overtaken the library. Thankfully, I've recently obtained a toolbox capable of organizing it all, so at least it's contained.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>My leatherworking kit has been taken over by shoemaking. (Giant robot panda bear is optional equipment. Coffee is not.)</i></td></tr>
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For whatever reason, shoemaking more than any other craft I've yet assayed has a language all its own. You don't have to speak the language in order to do this thing -- you never really do to be honest -- but you should know at least the basics if you want to communicate with other shoemakers out in the world or on the interwebs.<br />
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In the course of my research, I have assembled a short (and woefully incomplete) glossary in my notebooks of just the terms that pertain to what I plan to do. For an exhaustive list of shoemaking terms, I recommend this excellent one compiled by Marc Carlson: <b><a href="http://www.personal.utulsa.edu/~marc-carlson/shoe/RESEARCH/GLOSSARY/bdef.htm" target="_blank">Glossary of Footwear Terminology</a>.</b><br />
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For us, the following shall suffice:<br />
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<b>Awl</b>: For shoemakers, this is a dedicated metal bodkin with a handle, designed to poke holes in leather. They are very fine and very sharp and shaped specific to a task. <u><b>Not </b></u>to be confused with woodworking "scratch" awls or bookbinding awls, which are not suitable for most shoemaking tasks.<br />
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<i><b>The wrong tools:</b> From the top, A large scratch awl, a small scratch awl, and a </i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>bookbinding awl.</i><i> These are not appropriate tools for sewing leather and will </i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>do more harm than good.</i></div>
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<i><b>The correct tools</b>: (from the top), an 1800's inseaming awl, a modern sewing awl with </i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>interchangeable blades, and another 1800's fine closing awl. Note their shape and how </i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>fine/sharp they are. These will not mangle your leather. Find them and use them.</i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<b>Boot</b>: A shoe with a cuff that extends up the leg as low as the ankle or as high as the upper thigh. The most common argument about footwear is how common were boots, how high, and under what circumstances were they worn and by whom.<br />
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<b>Channel</b>: A groove cut in the leather to protect a row of stitches that are laid at the bottom of the groove.<br />
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<b>Clicking</b>: Cutting out a pattern.<br />
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<i><b>Clogs: </b>Not just for Dutchmen any more. They never were, really; wooden shoes </i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>showed up anywhere there was </i><i>mud or the potential for stuff falling on your toes.</i></div>
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<b>Clog</b>: A wooden-soled shoe with a leather upper, commonly worn as work boots are now, also worn over a lighter shoe as a type of patten. In particularly muddy or dangerous places, they could be made entirely out of wood with a carved-out inside for the foot.<br />
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<b>Closing</b>: A general term for sewing the leather pieces of the shoe together, usually edge-to-edge (a butted seam)<br />
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<b>Closing Block: </b>A half-round piece of wood used as a sort of sewing anvil, used to maintain the tension of leather that will be sewn on a curve. Usually held strapped to the showmaker's knee with a leather strap while sewing.<br />
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<b>Cobbler</b>: A shoe <i>repairer</i>, forbidden by English law from working with new leather, enforced by the guilds. (Do not call a shoemaker a cobbler.)<br />
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<b>Cordwainer</b>: A shoemaker, derived from 'Cordovan/Cordoban' leather, a specific durable leather named after a city in Spain from whence it was exported. Commonly a deep reddish color and used today to describe that color.<br />
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<b>Counter</b>: A reinforcing layer of leather sewn inside the shoe as a stiffener to prevent additional stretching or wear in a zone that would prone to that, such as the heel or instep.<br />
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<b>Cowmouth</b>: A broad-toed shoe that was common in the early-Tudor period (peaked during the reign of Henry VIII) commonly thought to have been brought to England, as so many early fashions were, from Germany.<br />
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<b>Flesh-side:</b> the side of the leather that was facing the animal.<br />
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<b>Foot</b>: A place to keep your shoes. A thing that usually hurts at the end of the day, often an indicator that your shoemaker doesn't know what he's doing.<br />
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<b>Gouge/Plow:</b> A tool used to cut away a broad channel of leather, sort of a combination of a skivving knife, a chisel, and a shovel.<br />
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<b>Grain-side:</b> The side of the leather that was facing the world when it was still attached to the critter that made it.<br />
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<i><b>Tools for dealing with tacks:</b> (from the back, left) Two english style shoemaker's </i></div>
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<i>hammers, a French shoemaker's hammer, a tack hammer made by a local </i></div>
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<i>blacksmith, pincers, and a tack-puller.</i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<b>Hammer:</b> Shoemaker's hammers are broadly split into English and French styles. They are used for a variety of purposes from forming/compressing leather to driving tacks (though I don't advise using one hammer for both)<br />
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<b>Heel:</b> Made of wood or stacked leather, shoe heels did not commonly appear until the very end of the Tudor era. It's believed that the advent of heeled designs was the complcating factor that lead to the abandonment of right/left (see: Crooked lasts) designs.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.571428298950195px;"><div style="text-align: left;">
<i><b>Sewing: </b>From the top, anti-clockwise: Sticky wax for binding thread to bristle, <br />beeswax, </i><i>long-fiber hemp thread.</i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<b>Hemp</b>: Alongside linen, hemp was probably the most common plant fiber in all of history. Spun from strands of the <i>cannabis sativa</i> plant it is strong and rot-resistant and historically widely used to sew all manner of leather goods as well as weaving durable cloth and spinning rope. These days a fiber most commonly used to make beaded jewelry by and for those who want to 'stick it to the man' in defiance of laws designed to curtail the plant's use as a psychotropic drug. Cultivars used for fiber production are absent or extremely low on the tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) that makes carbon-based life forms crave Twinkies when ingested.<br />
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<b>Last</b>: The foot-surrogate over which the shoe is formed.<br />
<br />
<b>Lasting</b>: Stretching the leather over the wooden (usually) last and nailing it in place. Commonly divided (at least for our purposes) into crooked or straight lasts. Crooked lasts have a defined instep, dictating the right/life nature of the final shoe. A straight lasted shoe can be worn on either foot, but requires months of tortuous breaking in.<br />
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<b>Latchet</b>: A strap that holds the shoe in place, commonly with a button or tie. Latchets are the defining characteristic of a shoe by the same name, that became more common in the later Tudor period.<br />
<br />
<b>Mule</b>: A backless slip-on shoe, worn in our period by all genders, but still common today in the women's section of the shoe store.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>From the top: a gouge, a paring knife, an edger, a plow/plough, another paring knife. <br />Not Shown: Sharpening stones. All tools used in leatherworking should be razor-sharp</i></td></tr>
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<b>Paring knife</b>: Before it was a common kitchen implement, the paring knife was used to clean up the edges by trimming away excess leather away from the shoe after the sole and upper were joined.<br />
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<b>Patten:</b> A protective wooden platform strapped to the foot to raise a walker out of the mud or at least to provide traction.<br />
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<b>Peg</b>: A wooden stake driven into a heel to bind and stabilize the stacked/laminated leather.<br />
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<b>Pinking</b>: Decorative cuts and holes sometimes cut into shoes and clothing in the Tudor period. It survives today as broguing.<br />
<br />
<b>Pump</b>: A light turnshoe with a thin sole meant for wearing mostly indoors. Worn by all genders, but survives today in the women's section of the shoe store.<br />
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<b>Quarter</b>: The sides of the shoe extending around the back.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.571428298950195px;"><div style="text-align: left;">
<i>My favorite skivving knife was made by sharpening a butter knife I picked up at a </i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i><i>thrift shop. Probably the sharpest knife in the drawer.</i></i></div>
<i>
</i>
<br />
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<i><i><br /></i></i></div>
<i>
</i></td></tr>
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<b>Skivving</b>: Using a sharp blade on the flesh-side of the leather to thin the leather, especially in areas you want to sew through.<br />
<br />
<b>Sock</b>: Not a sweatsock you wear on your foot, but a cloth liner sometimes sewn into a shoe which serves a similar purpose.<br />
<br />
<b>Sole</b>: The bottom layers of the shoe, usually broken down by layer: insole, midsole, outsole, etcetera.<br />
<br />
<b>Stirrup</b>: A leather strap that goes under the shoemaker's foot and up over the knee to hold secure a shoe and/or closing block while working with it.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.571428298950195px;"><div style="text-align: left;">
<i><b>Many skivving tools of modern design:</b> From the back: A round knife, a 'potato </i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>peeler' skivving </i><i style="text-align: center;">'knife', and a modern razor skivving tool. The benefit of the<br />top two is you can change blades if they get dull. </i><br />
<i style="text-align: center;">
</i></div>
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<i style="text-align: center;"></i><br />
<div style="display: inline !important; text-align: left;">
<i style="text-align: center;"><br /></i></div>
<i style="text-align: center;">
</i></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b>Trenchet</b>: A multi-use shoemaker's knife and the symbol of the cordwainer's trade. They were often given elaborate blades and pokey bits until it seems like something stolen from a Klingon in the Star Trek universe, but quite real and very difficult to find these days. Survives today as the round knife, which is little better than half a trenchet.<br />
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<b>Turning</b>: When a shoe is sewn inside out so that the seaming is all on the inside and thus protected from wear.<br />
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<b>Vamp</b>: The part of the shoe that covers the toe, upper foot, and extends around the instep to meet the quarters on either side.<br />
<br />
<b>Welt</b>: A strip of leather used to join the upper to the sole of the shoe.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
If you're lucky, your shoemaking will also include one or both of the following:<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigncqlZigOSus0pgqm0GvCuUqPf1jaku1dqdyzQ1KsjVNsillEwiZ9POeJyJGp5OIYTUKg3-3zVeIdaktNuQxKQpD32qPCkBwmVQe61a2LU0UtDMsrQvP9LZ1aUfiyGf7BjmGibnH8EIc/s1600/IMG_5179+(683x1024)+(2).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigncqlZigOSus0pgqm0GvCuUqPf1jaku1dqdyzQ1KsjVNsillEwiZ9POeJyJGp5OIYTUKg3-3zVeIdaktNuQxKQpD32qPCkBwmVQe61a2LU0UtDMsrQvP9LZ1aUfiyGf7BjmGibnH8EIc/s1600/IMG_5179+(683x1024)+(2).jpg" height="400" width="266" /></a></td></tr>
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<i>Read whatever you want, but did I mention that </i><i>coffee is not optional?</i></div>
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<b>Coffee</b>: In order to make shoes, the shoemaker must be awake and preferably alert. The Elizabethan tradesman was woefully deficient in caffeine, but he had pretty much all the beer he cared to drink, so alertness while working might be my biggest anachronism.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5wz_WP1SfU4FMIY9dIkiMW9-D55QdzbQshIzXe4B3OaNYmswbQp9kqIJ9BY2CqZ0J_katJ3vlYtLZ6QHDTjBQ821OzMWPtq8eGAGo2dauvsf3KmIXF4j0qwwfS1wURyNjPqLkg-BXPFH2/s1600/2Fools+in+Love.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5wz_WP1SfU4FMIY9dIkiMW9-D55QdzbQshIzXe4B3OaNYmswbQp9kqIJ9BY2CqZ0J_katJ3vlYtLZ6QHDTjBQ821OzMWPtq8eGAGo2dauvsf3KmIXF4j0qwwfS1wURyNjPqLkg-BXPFH2/s1600/2Fools+in+Love.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Why do fools fall in love?</i></td></tr>
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<br />
<b>An Engineer</b>: Actually, a mate who finds your tomfoolery charming rather than annoying, who is willing to put up with odd tools and odd looks from TSA agents. They don't have to be an engineer, but it helps. It's high time I acknowledge that this silliness would not be possibly without my lovely, talented, and above all patient mate, Kristin.<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Eternal Apprenticehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17970817049875891713noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-307456332768449014.post-20573647250013752762014-01-18T13:49:00.000-08:002014-01-18T14:45:59.023-08:00Living Elizabethan: All Work and No Play...The local news and gossip is awash with stories of our local team's quest to move a small leathern object of possession by hand or foot from one end to the other of a gridded field of dispute against the fervent wishes of their opposite numbers in counter-coloured uniforms who rise up to stop them. It is given me by local lore and custom that Our local sportsmen are better at achieving this endeavor successfully than any other group of combatants similarly accoutered.<br />
<br />
Certainly this seems to be the current obsession of townsfolk in every restaurant, bar, party, and workplace that I enter.<br />
<br />
(Go Seahawks.)<br />
<br />
Of course I'm being a bit silly, but since I'm not a football fan it all seems a bit silly anyway. (Unless we're talking about the Stanley Cup, in which case an overwhelming obsession Makes Perfect Sense!) One of the things I feel like I did wrong in putting this project together was overlooking how the Life Elizabethan really worked.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw7YsF5f8JnF_JtVjYIQtq8J6YCBHQ_ivlTOIy1DxWoD6ukYAOFlVqMfRuBwn5hs0QpunA95X5REK0U3I03D4LouOxcTp2NnD6dkM1NTCSeVaFFpXV7tJRzkdwZbG8TfcDmrOiu_IsReo/s1600/Franz-130823-IMG_7846-XL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw7YsF5f8JnF_JtVjYIQtq8J6YCBHQ_ivlTOIy1DxWoD6ukYAOFlVqMfRuBwn5hs0QpunA95X5REK0U3I03D4LouOxcTp2NnD6dkM1NTCSeVaFFpXV7tJRzkdwZbG8TfcDmrOiu_IsReo/s1600/Franz-130823-IMG_7846-XL.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a>And believe it or not, that includes football... well, sort of.<br />
<br />
So today, let's talk about other things on an Elizabethan's mind. The things of passing import beyond the immediate pleasure of watching or participating... which is to say games.<br />
<br />
Henry VIII was a huge football fan and enjoyed playing, though his game would be as unfamiliar to European football (soccer) fans as it would be to American fans of the gridiron. Though rugby fans would feel right at home.<br />
<br />
We've talked about Archery, the practice of which was instituted as a matter of law in the centuries preceding Elizabeth's accession in order to train men for war rather than allow them to be distracted by games like football.<br />
<br />
Not that Archery wasn't considered a sport or didn't lead to competitions. Around here somewhere, I have a partial court record of a man accused of witchcraft for being too greatly improved at archery, which to me just reeks of a competitor's jealousy. It led to many games meant to sharpen the instinct and aim of the archer from the benign (swinging targets) to the cruel (shooting at a cat in a bag**).<br />
<br />
Thanks to Shakespeare*, we know more about what our Elizabethan townsfolk were up to on a day-to-day basis. Our Elizabethan forebears weren't necessarily so wrapped up in work they had no time to play. The rise of the artisan class meant upward mobility and with upward mobility came free time. Beyond archery and football, there were also card games and dice, tables (better known these days as backgammon), baseball-like games such as rounders and stool ball, hurling (for our Irish cousins), tennis (another of Henry VIII's favorites), bowls, badminton... Also, anywhere there are competitive spirits and things that can be pushed, ridden, or rolled (horses, carts, wheelbarrows, rounds of cheddar...) there will be racing.<br />
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They didn't have a Superbowl or Lord Stanley's Cup to vie for, but our modern affection for sport is nothing new and it would not be all that surprising to our forebears.<br />
<br />
~ Scott<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Rounders: Your humble author at the bat...</i></td></tr>
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---<br />
*<i> Let's face it, without The Bard drawing our attention to it, the Elizabethan period would be just another period dimly remembered from history class. Type "Life in Chaucer's England" into the Amazon search screen. 88 hits on that Amazon search and most of them different editions of the same book or irrelevant to the subject. There were 552 hits on a similar search for Shakespeare's England almost all of them actually about the life and times of the Glover of Avon.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
**<i>"If I do, hang me in a bottle like a cat and shoot </i><br />
<i>at me; and he that hits me, let him be clapped on </i><br />
<i>the shoulder, and called Adam.</i>" <br />
-Benedick, Much Ado About Nothing,Eternal Apprenticehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17970817049875891713noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-307456332768449014.post-41957612311761982032014-01-11T23:00:00.000-08:002014-01-18T14:38:57.804-08:00Wrapping Peasants, Part I: Drafting a pattern for shoes...Where was I before my holiday travels got sucked into that polar vortex thingy we're all tired of hearing about? Oh! Right. We were making shoes. For this, we will have to backtrack a bit to October, when I was devoting time primarily to research while recovering from my mystery ailment and various ensuing nonsense...<br />
<br />
<h3>
<b>Part One: In Which I Run Afoul of Congress</b></h3>
With<a href="http://renaissanceartisan.blogspot.com/2013/09/worshipful-company-of-cordwainers-part.html" target="_blank"> a finished pair of lasts</a> in hand, my next step in my shoemaking journey was to contact Francis Classe for advice. Our conversation ranged across the spectrum of tools and patterns. This inevitably led to a tussle with the US Postal Service, who waylaid my attempt to pay him for some tools, including some surprising ones: Boar bristles, which he offered to sell to me at a very reasonable price. If only I could get the check to him (Yes, a check; if you don't know by now I'm a bit of a Luddite, you haven't been paying attention.) which I finally sidestepped by at long last succumbing to the embrace of Paypal. . . God help me.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8qLgJw9DYZ_Iw_tPRt-1_NBKPVpbgCPEvb0vMx_a566NaRgSWlIh1oLp7YZIIdI0azZQRfCg0cXpA1HeCFBncC2EI4QNpfLMcUUrqfcD7B6gA3OChPpsJQqdf2NLhjvwx1yQrGfvZy0k/s1600/Shoemaking+awls+%2528800x571%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8qLgJw9DYZ_Iw_tPRt-1_NBKPVpbgCPEvb0vMx_a566NaRgSWlIh1oLp7YZIIdI0azZQRfCg0cXpA1HeCFBncC2EI4QNpfLMcUUrqfcD7B6gA3OChPpsJQqdf2NLhjvwx1yQrGfvZy0k/s1600/Shoemaking+awls+%2528800x571%2529.jpg" height="285" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
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<i>Two closing awls and a bundle of boar's bristles. I'm semi-convinced that</i></div>
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<i>Francis raises wild boar in his back yard because he seems to have an </i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>inexhaustible supply of these bristles... </i></div>
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While I was waiting for the USPS to get their appointed rounds out of their dark of night (ahem), I headed to the library to seek out a copy of "<i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Stepping-Through-Time-Archaeological-Prehistoric/dp/9089320024" target="_blank">Stepping Through Time: Archaeological Footwear from Prehistoric Times until 1800</a>" </i>by <a href="http://www.librarything.com/author/goubitzolaf" target="_blank">Olaf Goubitz</a>. It is essentially <i>the</i> book on the subject. Goubitz, who died in 2007, was a Dutch archaeologist who dedicated his life to the conservation and study of historical leather artifacts, which led to books and articles like <i>Stepping Through Time...</i> and <i>Purses in Pieces</i>. His books are full of tireless scholarship and hand-drawn patterns and replications of shoes from shipwrecks archaeological digs throughout Europe. <br />
<br />
Thanks to his tireless efforts, I am able to approach this part of my project with more confidence that I'm approaching the subject in an historically-sound manner than I have at any other time in the past 13 months. <br />
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I'll do my best not to screw it up.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJD5Qlmw4hlgH4xn0AWJciI9hPtzdszDrCBvu3dGex9-8I4ILzBMTleSTclFlC_8t-Sx4Whaz90fu-o3kaljeFuYRy5cIWfFPwvw5hrSP_GDEf44URtB9RY8WYUZ5pF8ic4YlCTvlUokQ/s1600/Shoe.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJD5Qlmw4hlgH4xn0AWJciI9hPtzdszDrCBvu3dGex9-8I4ILzBMTleSTclFlC_8t-Sx4Whaz90fu-o3kaljeFuYRy5cIWfFPwvw5hrSP_GDEf44URtB9RY8WYUZ5pF8ic4YlCTvlUokQ/s1600/Shoe.jpg" height="290" width="400" /></a>Thanks to the magic of Inter-Library Loan, in short order, I found myself in possession the People's Copy of this seminal work. By which I mean that The Library of Congress was apparently the only copy available, which led to me being the guardian of this important book, as the United States government <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_government_shutdown_of_2013" target="_blank">went on hiatus</a> almost immediately after I picked it up. <br />
<br />
Needless to say while I was the Keeper of Congress's Preeminent Pre-modern Shoemaking Text, I took copious notes and chatted a bit more with Francis before settling on a pattern and a plan.<br />
<br />
We'll gloss over the fact that when I returned the book after my 2-week guardianship, the librarian finally opened the envelope taped to it and discovered an admonition that I was Not To Take This Book Out of the Reading Room. She and I agreed that our legislators were far too busy arguing to care about my minor flouting of congressional mandate.<br />
<br />
Either that or I've doomed my soul to Congressional Library Hell...<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyMrhBXzLD1P1haHPhX_OW5ucHoc9IWwZo43ralSrAAdfAWvpPZV0tijs1DmOrkC-n5zwaZqCWGhC8mdOu8Oqg_MgPED-k1yvZKcA5u3z_wCFdsyYJPm-z1PoyOzUo_baPfNWwWVY7rfA/s1600/enhanced-buzz-wide-1782-1374872169-42.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyMrhBXzLD1P1haHPhX_OW5ucHoc9IWwZo43ralSrAAdfAWvpPZV0tijs1DmOrkC-n5zwaZqCWGhC8mdOu8Oqg_MgPED-k1yvZKcA5u3z_wCFdsyYJPm-z1PoyOzUo_baPfNWwWVY7rfA/s1600/enhanced-buzz-wide-1782-1374872169-42.jpg" height="393" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
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<i>Normally this would be my idea of heaven... unless the shelves were unalphabetized.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>And I had to re-shelve the books... (shudder)<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span></i><br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>image source: "</i><span style="text-align: center;"><i><a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/briangalindo/15-gorgeous-photos-of-the-old-cincinnati-library" target="_blank">15 Gorgeous Photos Of </a></i></span><i style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/briangalindo/15-gorgeous-photos-of-the-old-cincinnati-library" target="_blank">the Old Cincinnati Library</a>" via Buzzfeed</i></span></div>
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<h3>
<b>Part II: On the Drafting of Patterns</b></h3>
As a painter, I've always been fond of the curious and somewhat controversial pastoral paintings of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Peasant_Wedding" target="_blank">Pieter Bruegel the Elder</a>. Especially the detail on the costumes, customs, and clodhoppers. These are the feet of two bagpipe playing peasants in the painting 'Peasant Wedding' clad in some charmingly simple-looking shoes.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrLRp8SNSXkSfM5og1l1w824RyTFAW0iKdAZXGanxMLDxWnOVp-n-O_Dl2S75atcf8oqMVpkfA_cK638fkTBzViJCSjzP8Dj7Dje0mjoOWG_KyUWKjxEyt8fvL6KCxTGKKMvXI1Wpgsc0/s1600/Breugel+Peasant+feet.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrLRp8SNSXkSfM5og1l1w824RyTFAW0iKdAZXGanxMLDxWnOVp-n-O_Dl2S75atcf8oqMVpkfA_cK638fkTBzViJCSjzP8Dj7Dje0mjoOWG_KyUWKjxEyt8fvL6KCxTGKKMvXI1Wpgsc0/s1600/Breugel+Peasant+feet.png" height="301" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Detail from <i>The Peasant Wedding</i> c. 1566 by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Image source: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder_-_Peasant_Wedding_-_Google_Art_Project_2.jpg" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a></span></td></tr>
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As I mentioned, Bruegel's bucolic depictions of peasant life are somewhat controversial in many circles, so I try not to trust them if I cannot back them up from more conventionally reliable sources. Which is where our old friend Goubitz comes in.<br />
<br />
Among the shoes he documented from digs in the Netherlands were these, which I re-drew from his book. Handily, he provided a schematic of the pattern pieces as well, as you can see below.<br />
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This is where we get to the pattern drafting part of our program.<br />
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Note: I am basing my drafting methods here on years of experience drafting patterns for clothing, further informed by an article contained in the book <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Handmade-Shoes-Men-Lazlo-Vass/dp/3833160454" target="_blank">Handmade Shoes for Men</a></i> by Laszlo Vass & Magda Molnar.</div>
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This is something we'll re-visit at least twice more after we're finished with the shoes, and it's an important aspect of everything we do as we clothe our renaissance working man (or woman) from toe to head. At each level of dress, we will find ourselves wrapping parts of a body in paper and imagining flat drawings from 450 years ago into three dimensions.</div>
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Which entails a lot of paper and a helper. When drafting patterns (or as I like to think of it: "Wrapping peasants") it is best to work with a friend. Which makes it especially appropriate since it was the week of Christmas when I started laying paper over my shoe lasts and making with the Scotch Tape and sharpies.</div>
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Once I had the shoes wrapped in paper, I approximated the seam lines from Goubitz's drawing on my new three-dimensional model, guessing in places where and how I would compensate for the contours of the wooden foot, marking out how the vamp and sides come together.</div>
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Then I used a shop knife to cut along the seam lines, cutting the paper away from the last and laying them out flat to check that they approximate the pieces that Goubitz drew for his book. </div>
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From paper to leather to shoes... simple enough, right? We can only hope.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY0AyBSKQo0CtKo5v5WofVi1_aWQrxzzUr5PcixiKovuYt0_kPv6UqdUuaCqr2USVoBvnlDMKMJvqVcSYRT_ytVGzx0wJY0CezfBF0-x6nGMaVom6wdfokvHRVBkckGufCTb02GcCo7F0/s1600/IMG_5118+(1024x733).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY0AyBSKQo0CtKo5v5WofVi1_aWQrxzzUr5PcixiKovuYt0_kPv6UqdUuaCqr2USVoBvnlDMKMJvqVcSYRT_ytVGzx0wJY0CezfBF0-x6nGMaVom6wdfokvHRVBkckGufCTb02GcCo7F0/s1600/IMG_5118+(1024x733).jpg" height="286" width="400" /></a></div>
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More later,</div>
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- Scott</div>
Eternal Apprenticehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17970817049875891713noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-307456332768449014.post-52574285106765472122013-12-01T14:37:00.002-08:002013-12-07T19:40:28.328-08:00Now What? The evolution of the project...<span style="font-family: inherit;">Today is December 1st. The state of the project? It is to laugh...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I've been very sick since the end of September. I have this stupid... <i>thing</i> that <a href="http://www.pagestotype.com/2011/05/talking-to-chalk-drawings-is-bad-sign.html" target="_blank">happens to me periodically</a>. Around here, we call it<i> <a href="http://www.pagestotype.com/2011/01/lego-head-or-where-ive-been.html" target="_blank">Sporadic Lego Head Holiday Syndrome</a></i>. We call it that because it's apparently un-diagnosable by modern science. Perhaps the dumbest assumption I made at the beginning of this year was that I'd be able to stay healthy for the entire year so that I could complete the rather daunting task list I'd written for myself.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">All that is somewhat beside the point.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD4-JgBpYX560I-4YMAi08BVbPIkGtuRbHTMZ5WSQoHXGbnlOjcNribRNt-7csHbNV35snpUwchXyU35WTXkrLq29mpVLqvC_1K-1iH24ovn0d75yPDMXdybjIsbswWk46a7k8kfWM9tA/s1600/kitchen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD4-JgBpYX560I-4YMAi08BVbPIkGtuRbHTMZ5WSQoHXGbnlOjcNribRNt-7csHbNV35snpUwchXyU35WTXkrLq29mpVLqvC_1K-1iH24ovn0d75yPDMXdybjIsbswWk46a7k8kfWM9tA/s1600/kitchen.jpg" height="400" width="253" /></a><span style="font-family: inherit;">The brief interstice moments the past couple of months, I've spent working on our kitchen. Because family comes first and I keep my promises to others before I keep the ones I made to myself. So I have a functioning kitchen and a non-functioning artisan project...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I'm proud of the work I've managed to finish on the kitchen, but the "<i>One Year Mission...</i>" part of this blog has not fared nearly as well.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Have I failed? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">It would be difficult to argue otherwise. I certainly can't knock out two dozen trades in the one month I have between now and January 1st. </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">So it would be pretty stupid for me to say I haven't failed at my original mission.</span><br />
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If you feel the urge to say I told you so, please feel free to swallow that urge. Seriously. Don't be that person.<br />
<br />
The truth is, this project was beginning to morph into something more long-term long before my head swelled to cartoonish proportions. If I'm honest with you and with myself I began to second-guess the format I chose for this back in August <a href="http://renaissanceartisan.blogspot.com/2013/08/kill-it-with-fire-part-five-cleaning.html" target="_blank">when I experienced the true difference between learning an aspect of a trade and truly practicing it</a>.<br />
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Of course, it's impossible to practice 111 trades from 54 guilds at once. There are valid reasons why tradesmen specialized and it wasn't only because the guilds required them to. The requirements for specialization forced them to focus on a single trade and operate at the top of their game.<br />
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So now what?<br />
<br />
Yes, I am a craftsman, but I am first and foremost, a storyteller. So I will finish the story.<br />
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This story has grown in the telling, as stories are wont to do. With every blister, splinter, burnt loaf, and failed thimble, it has become about more than the making of the stuff and less about the making of the artisan. For the past year, I expended too much effort on the tasks and not enough on the tradesmen.<br />
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A story like this deserves all the space it needs to tell it properly. It deserves more than scene setting, it deserves character development. I don't rightly know how that will look, but that's what I plan to do. So my continuing mission is a purer, more thorough version of the original one, but without the artificial time constraint.<br />
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I said at the outset that I had a problem with how history is taught, with the People Magazine approach that is a pointless litany of glittering celebrities carrying on, mostly behaving badly. It's no wonder that students view history as a list of dates to be memorized and the names of kings and generals to regurgitate. I found myself doing the same thing on a different level, ticking off a list of items to make and move on to the next.<br />
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Material culture is only interesting in how those materials reflect the culture. The tools are only interesting in the way that they reflect their user and their maker. I lost sight of that as I focused on the sprint.<br />
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Spending three weeks in the smoke and flour dust of our ersatz renaissance bakery showed me how thin my understanding of these trades was. How superficial the project had become, mostly because I had set an artificial deadline that made it look more exciting from the outside and forced it to become less in-depth on the inside.<br />
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By failing, I've set myself free from my own constraints. There's probably a deeper metaphor there for those who have an urge to mine for such things.<br />
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In the meantime, I've a story to tell. I invite you to stick around and help me tell it. If you don't, I certainly understand.<br />
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~ Scott<br />
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<br />Eternal Apprenticehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17970817049875891713noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-307456332768449014.post-83277609964709856022013-09-22T14:43:00.000-07:002013-09-22T19:47:57.564-07:00A Joiner's Toolbox: The Hand Plane<div class="" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
If this sometimes feels like a woodworking blog, I apologize. It's not intended that way; it's just that so much of the technology of the 16th century revolved around items made from wood or iron. Often both. </div>
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Despite the fact that modern woodworking has largely become a matter of "He/She who dies with the most tools wins" it hasn't always been that way. In no small part, this is owed to the fact that there wasn't as much unnecessary variety in tools. The tool box if the 16th century joiner was relatively simple. Even today, there's not much you can't make if you have a couple of measuring implements, a sharp knife, a few decent chisels, a saw or two, a hand drill, a nice heavy mallet, a hammer, and a few simple hand planes. (Your apprentice will also need an axe, a mallet, and a froe for splitting lumber as well since you can't go down to ye olde Home Depot to buy it.)</div>
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Some details can be found in period sources:</div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #29303b; line-height: 18px;"><i>"A Rule a compass a hatchet a hansawe a fore plane a joynter a smothen plane two moulden planes a groven plane a paren chysell a mortisse chesell a wymble a Rabbet plane and six graven Tooles and a Strykinge plane..." </i></span></span> </blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #29303b; line-height: 18px;">- <b>From a 1594 apprenticeship contract of John Sparke and Humfrey Bryne, outlining the tools of the joiner's trade.</b> (As quoted in </span></span><span style="color: #29303b;"><span style="line-height: 17.99479103088379px;">"<a href="http://pfollansbee.wordpress.com/2009/09/08/seventeenth-century-tool-kit/" target="_blank">Seventeenth Century tool kit</a>." Peter Follansbee, joiner's notes (blog). September 8, 2009.)</span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #29303b; font-family: inherit; line-height: 18px;"> </span></blockquote>
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If you're engaged in a specific trade, of course, there would be a couple of additional items such as lathe tools or spoke shaves, but there's really not really much variance from that central list.</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwAZGPEC5MgD_jlo2ZR_H4NjHHGmj_nWNN5c43mVwSpqsDCftu-xZvVPs-PjCtRNnmwsrhWcTXO5T-EnseCr4N4VQUhtxNCXMDOD1Tx88RjrFKsLvUr3O9u2TDCIkpejwNVlDN-hNpObY/s1600/IMG_4302+(1024x683).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="430" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwAZGPEC5MgD_jlo2ZR_H4NjHHGmj_nWNN5c43mVwSpqsDCftu-xZvVPs-PjCtRNnmwsrhWcTXO5T-EnseCr4N4VQUhtxNCXMDOD1Tx88RjrFKsLvUr3O9u2TDCIkpejwNVlDN-hNpObY/s640/IMG_4302+(1024x683).jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A small selection from my toolbox...</td></tr>
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The primary tool in the joiner's toolbox is the hand plane. Roy Underhill has even said that the difference between a carpenter and a joiner is the joiner's plane. He's right in a very specific way: guild laws actually forbade the use of certain key tools by other craftsmen in order to discourage generalists. For the joiner, the hand plane -- especially the <a href="http://www.garrettwade.com/antique-english-plough-plane/p/02D12.06/" target="_blank"><b>plough plane</b></a> -- was his identity as much as the lathe identified the turner.</div>
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The hand plane is essentially a chisel held in a frame and secured in place with a wedge. Sometimes, there's a handle at the front or back, depending on where and how it's used. They've been around <a href="http://www.handplane.com/906/the-ancient-roman-plane-of-yorkshire-wolds/" target="_blank"><b>since pre-Roman times</b></a> and arose independently in cultures cut off from one another as the obvious next step to save labor from smoothing large surfaces with hand chisels and adzes.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhZQjI9wK8iCzq-c-YhAvrgNQYufl7mO5xzdCI_78Fj-3mkbK_QZAwC4CNBBwSvQEB7GKj1FbxNxxZyO_0HvQpERpRMXDZbTX7Y4JJG7y1LTVLSZH5zqjnldgR8uo1rJxbT2ZiUtj4wgA/s1600/Handplane.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="308" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhZQjI9wK8iCzq-c-YhAvrgNQYufl7mO5xzdCI_78Fj-3mkbK_QZAwC4CNBBwSvQEB7GKj1FbxNxxZyO_0HvQpERpRMXDZbTX7Y4JJG7y1LTVLSZH5zqjnldgR8uo1rJxbT2ZiUtj4wgA/s400/Handplane.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The parts of a hand plane (I realized I haven't done a custom illustration in awhile)</i></td></tr>
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The amount of change between the Roman hand plane linked to above to the hand planes that were found in the wreck of Mary Rose (below) and the ones in my wood shop today is very slight. The drawing above could cover any one of them. Most of the changes were matters of metallurgy as the blades got better and better and the <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/chip%20breaker" target="_blank">chip-breaker</a> was introduced to help alleviate the clogging problems endemic to the old beasts.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKKonhimlJIxBSsxhIN9Z_vQSCLP-8KRJPrAAh8G4kTv_C4GB7Jjnf_-pXn-TBoVVAqjq0wWLJi840vZcHdVfWv86e0MWIlvcuvJsBNagbO3eF-QDT5Gtl4SBfThx9zoZaJ1ZyQNX_kfs/s1600/800px-MaryRose-planes2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKKonhimlJIxBSsxhIN9Z_vQSCLP-8KRJPrAAh8G4kTv_C4GB7Jjnf_-pXn-TBoVVAqjq0wWLJi840vZcHdVfWv86e0MWIlvcuvJsBNagbO3eF-QDT5Gtl4SBfThx9zoZaJ1ZyQNX_kfs/s640/800px-MaryRose-planes2.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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It wasn't really until the industrial revolution that any great change in plane technology was introduced and took root. In 1865, <a href="http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/bailey.html" target="_blank">Leonard Bailey</a>'s patent hand plane changed the plane from the wooden carcass we see in the archaeological record (and my tool chest) to the iron-bodied planes that we see today.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6vTHVy8Hnya_AsnTpaagZFwoNNDX2ldl6emsV7uZdUEAje1hEwaGUPeT-hNpV1n2AXtJwdxNpqPJ6gwrlQaR9dp21MaHor8djpeit_q3JaavQcs7pEZeWCcd2TN6ph3Ifm9uzTcMRCF4/s1600/IMG_1494+(1024x683).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="430" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6vTHVy8Hnya_AsnTpaagZFwoNNDX2ldl6emsV7uZdUEAje1hEwaGUPeT-hNpV1n2AXtJwdxNpqPJ6gwrlQaR9dp21MaHor8djpeit_q3JaavQcs7pEZeWCcd2TN6ph3Ifm9uzTcMRCF4/s640/IMG_1494+(1024x683).jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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If you've been following along, you've seen this tool before in a far more decrepit shape. It's my recently refurbished Bailey Number 6 with my custom over-sized walnut tote (I have large hands). This is the most common form of hand plane seen in workshops today. My friends might mock me as a Luddite, but even in my focus on hand tools, I'm a mostly modern worker of wood. Iron body planes have it all over the wooden ones in durability and adjustability. They're easier to use, easier to set up, and less finicky by far than their old wooden counterparts. Want to adjust the iron on a wood plane? Grab a mallet. Whack the tail to retract the blade, the front to extend it, the sides to adjust the pitch, and hit the wedge to set the blade... then do it all over again if you get too much or too little. Yet wooden planes <b><a href="http://www.leevalley.com/US/Wood/page.aspx?p=46334&cat=1,41182" target="_blank">are still made today</a></b> and used religiously by many.<br />
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Why?<br />
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I wondered that myself until I bought a couple of them from my local antique dealer and put them back into service. First off, they're fun. I can't find a better way to describe it. Also, the weight of the thing does some of the work for you. I've noticed as well that once you've worked out the zen of setting the iron, they don't chatter as much.<br />
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Another thing worth noting is that proper joinery of the period was all done with green wood. None of this kiln-dried nonsense that we get today: Cut down the tree, split it up, and make some furniture! If you try working green wood with iron-bodied planes you're going to have rust problems in pretty short order.<br />
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<a href="http://www.pinterest.com/pin/246923992042069836/" target="_blank">Incidentally, they can also be quite beautiful</a>.<br />
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My favorite planes aren't as pretty as the one Robin Wood made (pictured in the link above) but they are elegant in their simplicity.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiapOJ0TqOdaDzLkl834EU0FkrtEzD6KCq680A5afxewK5J8cPTnpntXx8bj8n36TCv3VBEvii2RwBx6mra_pcwV0Hg6XmlY8qkOdcNQDF33X5fxquS2ifYqf4ksAbGQFw5V5xkRi43XFA/s1600/IMG_4562+(1024x667).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="420" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiapOJ0TqOdaDzLkl834EU0FkrtEzD6KCq680A5afxewK5J8cPTnpntXx8bj8n36TCv3VBEvii2RwBx6mra_pcwV0Hg6XmlY8qkOdcNQDF33X5fxquS2ifYqf4ksAbGQFw5V5xkRi43XFA/s640/IMG_4562+(1024x667).jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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The fact that these tools changed so little from their inception to now is a blessing of a different sort: We can set up our (mostly) period-correct toolbox without making them. The differences, in fact, are so slight that in his book "<i>Make A Joint Stool from a Tree: An Introduction to Seventeenth-Century Joinery,</i>" Peter Follansbee advises buying them and getting on with it. This is because -- other than the addition of a chip-breaker and handle placement -- the wood-body planes I can buy today in any antique store are virtually identical to the tools depicted in paintings, engravings, and other depictions of early modern joiners, as well as the first English-language treatise dealing with the joiner's art: <a href="http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015028306002;view=1up;seq=7" target="_blank">Joseph Moxon's<i> Mechanick Exercises</i></a> (available via that link as a free download), published in 1694.<br />
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We'll be referring to Moxon again, so get used to hearing his name...<br />
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~ Scott<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4GwuP-TJvbfjILnKmQ3HabHqbwjE75FohkTif92fsDq0qNAOZsfWdynrr-ZPWwKMzqxjD-5Z2CbPkZJPRVEsj0vCBnnjXDeSM4psCLerhSiAPriKRDrJvu-LOuwpohmY9Pjh-epkaLSg/s1600/saws.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4GwuP-TJvbfjILnKmQ3HabHqbwjE75FohkTif92fsDq0qNAOZsfWdynrr-ZPWwKMzqxjD-5Z2CbPkZJPRVEsj0vCBnnjXDeSM4psCLerhSiAPriKRDrJvu-LOuwpohmY9Pjh-epkaLSg/s640/saws.jpg" width="440" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image from Moxon found via <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/27238/27238-h/27238-h.htm" target="_blank">Project Gutenberg's scan of Woodworking Tools 1600-1900</a></td></tr>
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Eternal Apprenticehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17970817049875891713noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-307456332768449014.post-48494475302081601582013-09-10T06:00:00.000-07:002013-09-10T11:04:05.911-07:00Waiting for the other shoe to drop... Some things I learned today:<br />
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<ol>
<li>Wooden shoes are really quite difficult to walk in, </li>
<li>The Dutch call them 'Klompen' from which we apparently derive the onomatopoeiac word my dad used to describe how I walked across a room. (ClompClompClompClomp...)</li>
<li>Splinters. Ouch!</li>
<li>I have no idea how anyone dances in these silly things. </li>
<li>"Onomato<i>poetic</i>" is a real word but sadly doesn't refer to extremely noisy poetry, which is just terrible and wrong in my opinion.</li>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh5IxEdG2rZyVbdWCFjrmsbm58W4tvPbmItTk7odOpSfPmm71R3-cdE4TZ9QiTVLlqFV-yL0LaHDL9M8qp-u0HL9vUZbbWsQ04EssaeSucmf0Jjxcy78qSoVn2263AmEu3xW3Qy5U6zRw/s1600/1234839_628477660516611_152294817_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh5IxEdG2rZyVbdWCFjrmsbm58W4tvPbmItTk7odOpSfPmm71R3-cdE4TZ9QiTVLlqFV-yL0LaHDL9M8qp-u0HL9vUZbbWsQ04EssaeSucmf0Jjxcy78qSoVn2263AmEu3xW3Qy5U6zRw/s640/1234839_628477660516611_152294817_n.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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While we're making lasts and getting our joinery act together, let's chat a bit about workplace safety. My new shoes will be many things, but steel toed is not one of them. For safety's sake, let us consider other options in the foot-protection department. <i>Clogs</i>. Or you might call them <i>klompen, sabot, </i>or those whimsical tripod <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantabrian_albarcas" target="_blank">albarcas </a></i>of Spain. Whatever you call them, wooden shoes are everywhere. (And not just in Europe, but the world. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geta_(footwear)" target="_blank">Japan</a>, <a href="http://shihyenshoes.wordpress.com/2012/01/20/chinese-clogs-%E6%9C%A8%E5%B1%90/" target="_blank">China</a>, and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VytnSL5a24" target="_blank">Korea</a> all have wooden shoe traditions.) All across the the planet, people have spent a large part of the last few millenia using wood to protect their feet.<br />
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The fens of Europe were much worse in the early modern period before landowners spent a few centuries draining the wetlands and building dikes and whatnot. So mostly, the wearers of all these clogs were trying to stay out of the mud. However, it's worth noting that I am not exagerrating, apparently the European Union has granted 'safety shoe' status to the traditional clogs.<br />
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I wouldn't want to drop an anvil on my foot even if I am wearing a nice wooden clog, but then I wouldn't want to drop an anvil on my foot when I'm wearing steel toed boots either, so... yeah.<br />
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Anyway, clogs like the ones I'm wearing above (made, incidentally, in Holland, Michigan) are most often identified with the dutch, but wherever there was mud and offal in the offing, there was wood on someone's feet.<br />
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Remarkably, even if these were strictly Dutch shoes (file the point toes off and they'd be right at home anywhere in Europe), it wouldn't matter to us. Why? Well, remember when we were brewing beer? The influx of immigrants and refugees to England made London a bustling and cosmopolitan city. The peoples of the Low Countries (modern day Belgium and the Netherlands) fled religious persecution and Spanish rule in their homeland and brought with them their beer and their pottery and set up shop wherever they could find a bit of space. So even if they hadn't found people wearing clogs and pattens, they'd have introduced them when they got there.<br />
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worshipful_Company_of_Pattenmakers" target="_blank">The Worshipful Company of Pattenmakers</a> won't be incorporated until the mid 17th century, so they technically fall outside my project. Which is why we are not going to make a pair. (That and I still haven't found one of those pesky stock knives I was talking about...) Nevertheless, they were around and they were indeed making pattens and overshoes to navigate the muddy streets of 16th century London.<br />
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Pattens we <i>will </i>make once we have shoes to strap them to. It gets pretty muddy here in Washington so if I hope to wear these shoes and have them last for more than a season, I'll need to get myself up out of the mud. To do this, I will strap some wood and leather overshoes to my shoes using the traditional (and blessedly easy-to-come-by) wood of the alder tree.<br />
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Honestly, I'd like to see more clogs and pattens worn at reenactment events anyway. Maybe we can start a trend!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Walraversijde49.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Walraversijde49.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dutch (again) pattens found in an archeological site.<br />
Creative Commons licensed <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Walraversijde49.jpg" target="_blank">via Wikimedia Commons</a></td></tr>
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We'll talk more specifics about the making and design of pattens when I'm making them. In the mean time, let's take a closer look at my wooden shoes, just for fun...<br />
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The Dutch-style clogs on my feet are visibly almost identical to the shoes worn in the muddy byways of the Low Countries since the 14th century. Mine, however, were carved from poplar by an ingenious combination of lathes and very clever industrial tools that have been around virtually unchanged since the 1920's. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUDHPiJXkyU" target="_blank">You can see them in action here </a>if you are curious.<br />
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Our pattenmakers and cloggers of the 16th century had no such access to mechanized luxury. They turned them out on at a time from an alder log using a stock knife and a spoon-bit drill almost exactly as you'll see in this video.<br />
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Neat stuff!<br />
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More later, as always...<br />
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~ ScottEternal Apprenticehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17970817049875891713noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-307456332768449014.post-41530986882239374082013-09-04T21:10:00.000-07:002013-09-04T21:10:01.113-07:00The Last Last PostFor the record: I'm won't spend quite this many posts for the second last. However, on advice from Francis, I did go back out to the workbench and spent some more time zeroing in on the correct form of my last. He advised that I raise the sole about a 1/4 inch, sloping from the ball of the foot to the heel. This isn't to accommodate a heel so much as to accommodate the shape of the human foot.<br />
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This was done mostly with hand tools this time: the pattern maker's rasp and as I neared my final desired measurements, a spokeshave. I will sand it to remove most of the toolmakrs before putting a finish on it and moving on to the next one.<br />
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In the meantime, we're going to shift over and visit the Joiner's shop. Stay tuned!<br />
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~ Scott<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOxAPT2lDhL9exANvaOvORte4waya1dNBg93hkXsTwgBBP9dmBn2mh9iML8eVGYJvUdhEq_JcDn6tnwcq7Xt2fz4B07wfz_51tPfOznfpGQADUvK7Bap-HuNiIRSQ6P0fQzKbZKrOxZDQ/s1600/IMG_4423+(1024x681).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOxAPT2lDhL9exANvaOvORte4waya1dNBg93hkXsTwgBBP9dmBn2mh9iML8eVGYJvUdhEq_JcDn6tnwcq7Xt2fz4B07wfz_51tPfOznfpGQADUvK7Bap-HuNiIRSQ6P0fQzKbZKrOxZDQ/s640/IMG_4423+(1024x681).jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption">A bit of heel lift demonstrated by putting the heel on a handy speed square.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The less-flattened sole of the shoe.</td></tr>
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<br />Eternal Apprenticehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17970817049875891713noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-307456332768449014.post-47796289909096926212013-09-03T19:42:00.000-07:002013-09-03T20:59:35.721-07:00...and Lasts, and Lasts, and LastsSo apparently when Francis Class told me that the problem with modern/vintage lasts is that they're not 'flat' he meant 'didn't have a heel' rather than 'as a board'. (So to speak.)<br />
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You see, it didn't quite sink in that, unlike maskmaking, when you take the last out of the shoe, you don't cut it out. So there needs to be a bit of wiggle room in the form of a toe and heel rise to allow you to slip the last out of the shoe without stretching and distorting it in the effort.<br />
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That makes perfect sense.<br />
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Thankfully, in the conversation I had with Francis last night, it turned out I'm not the first aspiring shoemaker to grab a piece of scrap pine and try to turn it into a last. He shared this link to the shoemaking blog <b><u><a href="http://wherearetheelves.net/late-16thc-last-start/" target="_blank">Where Are the Elves? Adventures in Historical Shoemaking</a></u></b>. This guy turned up an historical last to copy. It's a 'straight last' and I'm making a 'crooked last' but more on that another time.<br />
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Also, the sole is generally a bit smaller than the shadow of the shoe. So my last needed to look even less like a shoe and even more like a foot.<br />
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I can do that.<br />
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Tonight after work I grabbed my patternmaker's rasp (Hand tools FTW!) and spent some time with my last in a vise, re-shaping the sole and putting more of a narrow waist on the new last.<br />
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I might have to shape it a bit more but I didn't want to overdo it. It's easier to take off too little than to put too much back. . . or something like that.<br />
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<br />Eternal Apprenticehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17970817049875891713noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-307456332768449014.post-61445336569468943882013-09-02T20:53:00.002-07:002013-09-02T20:53:37.652-07:00Worshipful Company of Cordwainers Part I: Something that lasts...Don't call them 'Cobblers'. A cordwainer is a shoemaker, a cobbler was actually forbidden by statute from working with new leather. His purview was restricted to repairing a cordwainer's work after it failed. The Worshipful Company of Cordwainers controlled all aspects of the manufacture of new shoes.<br /><br />Whence came the name? For that, we go straight to the horse's mouth, as usual...<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Those who worked with the finest leather were called Cordwainers because their material came from Cordoba in Spain. They developed a soft, durable goatskin leather known as Cordwain – the very finest leather available – importation of which contributed to the growing prosperity of London. Over a period of time, those who processed the leather formed their own guilds. The shoemakers, however, retained the name of 'Cordwainer'." - From their site: <a href="http://www.cordwainers.org/">http://www.cordwainers.org</a></blockquote>
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Yesterday I said I knew nothing about shoemaking going in. This is true, though I've done an extensive amount of leatherworking so "nothing" might be a bit of a stretch. My favorite form of leatherworking, in fact, is making leather Commedia Del Arte masks like the one you see below. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiIF58zVWG59Ag1DWt5o3v9MMly4Jj21LkO2dF1TyNsaR2v1YgqKba9cKlKFJ7xcyM0j35Pm6vF7MGR-G5MEf5CdlzFJBVBeB8zQGuGxOh3R6D5PQijZbV-T1q6gv2aPmIF85_mT3LTBQ1/s1600/IMG_4794.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiIF58zVWG59Ag1DWt5o3v9MMly4Jj21LkO2dF1TyNsaR2v1YgqKba9cKlKFJ7xcyM0j35Pm6vF7MGR-G5MEf5CdlzFJBVBeB8zQGuGxOh3R6D5PQijZbV-T1q6gv2aPmIF85_mT3LTBQ1/s400/IMG_4794.JPG" /></a>Much like shoe making, masks are made with the leather worked wet and formed over a carved wooden matrix. (If you are interested in maskmaking, <a href="http://garb4guys.blogspot.com/2012/05/busy-busy-busy.html">click here</a> for a full tutorial I wrote last year). So the first step in making either mask or shoes isn't leather, it is carving wood.<br /><br />And carving wood is something I understand completely.<br />
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First things first, I had a chat via email with <u><b><a href="http://aands.org/raisedheels/" target="_blank">Francis Classe,</a></b></u> historical cordwainer extraordinaire and all around nice guy. He's been very helpful and supportive all along, providing not only advice, but photos and links to things he'd written as well as books of historical shoe making. Francis works with modern wooden lasts that he modifies for a period shape.<br />
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I like woodworking and I have some carving tools that haven't been taken for a spin in far too long, so we're going to make our own. (This is not to be confused with the fact that I have a size twelve foot and couldn't easily find a modern last to modify. Nope! Not at all.)<br /><br />Seriously though, I shake my fist as these hobbit feet on a regular basis.<br />
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Seriously, I had to get out the big sketchbook to even trace around them. I know people with larger feet than mine and I tell you now I don't want to make shoes for any of them.<br />
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The lastmakers weren't a proper guild in their own right, so I'll be going through this pretty fast and hopefully we'll get it in one. Essentially I'll be using a lifetime of carving experience to sculpt something approximating my foot. Then I'll do it again with the other foot.<br />
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<b>Deviation(s) from Period Techniques: </b>Near as I can tell, the standard practice for last makers in the period is much the same as now. Hardwoods (preferably beech) are cut to a rough shape using something called a 'stock knife' which aren't easily obtained in the United States. A stock knife is a large blade with a handle on one end and a hook on the other. I'll append a video at the bottom of this post of an experienced clogmaker using one.</blockquote>
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The hook is secured to an eyebolt in the table as a fulcrum to form a 2nd class lever. I couldn't find one and don't have the werewithal to make one, also I'll be using scraps of pine since this doesn't have to survive the ages, just the one project. If I like doing this and want to do it again, I'll make another out of a hardwood. In the meantime: pine.</blockquote>
Because my feet are deep and wide, I glued up a some chunks of 2 x 6 I had lying around and transferred my traced outline of my foot to the wood, trying to avoid knots and grain funkiness. Or at least use the grain funkiness to my advantage.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_-UvyB1va6PScCZMbedbKX71GSre0PsWTBqE72cL3Xpf26aGe2w3cqcTudoUuNoluxJGN3zN1nQZLI3okDRspp_tjUcdMFXT0j_Oiqqilz2XllG_ZfAa_dNgd7lBCux3ke8QcOh0kysY/s1600/IMG_4370+(1024x683).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="430" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_-UvyB1va6PScCZMbedbKX71GSre0PsWTBqE72cL3Xpf26aGe2w3cqcTudoUuNoluxJGN3zN1nQZLI3okDRspp_tjUcdMFXT0j_Oiqqilz2XllG_ZfAa_dNgd7lBCux3ke8QcOh0kysY/s640/IMG_4370+(1024x683).jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
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Step two of any carving project is to remove as much waste material as possible. The fastest and cleanest way to do this would be to cut it away with a band saw, but I don't own one. So the second best chance is to cut to the line and chop away the waste with a combination of chisels and coping saws.</div>
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It's hard to do this and take pictures at the same time and The Engineer was grouting the kitchen tiles, so forgive me if these look a bit staged. It's only because my hands aren't in the shot.</div>
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Having pared away as much of the waste as possible, only resorting to the chopsaw for the bit that crosses the knot at the little toe. Chisels tend to glance off of knots or chunk them out completely to the detriment of carving as a whole. A real last maker would choose a clear piece of hardwood, as I said, but we're working with what we have.</div>
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Now, more cuts to make the waste as small as possible before removing it with a smaller chisel...</div>
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Working in all three dimensions means more cuts and switching through a series of chisels and working top and bottom. According to Francis, unlike modern lasts, period lasts tended to be flat-bottomed since heels hadn't really become a Thing yet.<br />
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At this point, it's time to switch to a gouge because it's easier to create and follow curves with a gouge than it is with a bench chisel...<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4v8NKyNXBKzUx078t8QxH9XuLNeo0aZpC7I_7FLlMXMyTSoCx1FMlXLuiGmdFaI0K9KmTgXUCZbHbbFR-Ehyphenhyphenu9xX2LNFbokoQf89LickIlCRgEhFTdWqZP5ol8GGYxRn4G7Vu1awHR0Q/s1600/IMG_4377+(1024x683).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="430" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4v8NKyNXBKzUx078t8QxH9XuLNeo0aZpC7I_7FLlMXMyTSoCx1FMlXLuiGmdFaI0K9KmTgXUCZbHbbFR-Ehyphenhyphenu9xX2LNFbokoQf89LickIlCRgEhFTdWqZP5ol8GGYxRn4G7Vu1awHR0Q/s640/IMG_4377+(1024x683).jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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Most of the waste is removed, time to get to the final shaping.<br />
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This is where I encountered a very modern conundrum. Because lastmaking is ancillary to the actual project and just this one had already eaten the heart out of a day, I was faced with another few hours of paring away at the last with a succession of knives and rasps, or I could use a machine.</div>
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My conscience got the better of me. In the end, I rasped away most of it until I's achieved something close the final shape and was starting to lose the light. Then I took it into the garage and chucked a drum sander into the drill press and finished the final shaping and sanding in one.</div>
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So... speed may kill, but it does save you from wasting more time than you have to.</div>
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<b>Next:</b> Do you know your left from your right? Did the Elizabethans?</div>
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~ Scott</div>
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<b>Resources</b>:</div>
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"<a href="http://www.personal.utulsa.edu/~marc-carlson/shoe/SHOEHOME.HTM" target="_blank"><b>Footwear of the Middle Ages</b></a>" by Marc Carlson (Website) How historical shoes were made from the middle ages through the Tudors, working from primary sources and personal experience. Great site, lots of information.</div>
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"<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Handmade-Shoes-Men-Lazlo-Vass/dp/3833160454" target="_blank"><b>Handmade Shoes for Men</b></a>" by Laszlo Vass and Magda Molnar (Book) Modern shoe making and some inaccurate history, but valuable information on measuring feet and fitting shoes.</div>
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"<b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Stepping-through-time-Archaeological-prehistoric/dp/9080104469" target="_blank">Stepping Through Time: Archeological Footwear from Prehistoric Times Until 1800</a></b>" by Olaf Goubitz (Book) Just what it says on the tin. Francis swears by this book. I haven't acquired a copy yet, but I'm working on it.</div>
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"<a href="http://aands.org/raisedheels/" target="_blank"><b>Chopine, Zoccolo, and Other Raised and High Heel Construction</b></a>" by Francis Classe (Website) I hesitate to risk the pun, but Francis is a class act and a generous scholar of historical footwear and how it was made. Visit his site and his blog to see this done right, thoroughly, and well.</div>
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Eternal Apprenticehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17970817049875891713noreply@blogger.com2