Tools of the Trade

[headelf]

This is a rug making tool. Yarn is fed through the tubular parts and walked along a loosely woven jute backround secured on a frame. The pointy part forces the yarn through the backing, leaving loops of yarn that become the pile of the carpet. Not sure what they did in olden days but in modern times liquid latex was then painted on the wrong side of the rug, securing the loops and adding a non skid coating. Extra margins of the unpunched backing were then folded over to the wrong side as a hem neatly finishing off the edges.
Regards,
Georgene

[tjburr]

Thanks Georgene,

I feel a little better that I did not know what this "Antique Cobbler Leather Tool Shoemaker" was used for

I think I will save rug making for my retirement years.

Terry
HCC Member

[amuckart]

I thought I'd replied about the last making knives a while ago. I have Jeremy Atkinson's book on clogmaking, which I acquired after I emailed him asking about knives. It's a small book, but well worth reading.

That type of knife is called a "stock" or "block" knife (google will provide more pictures). It is one of three used in clogmaking but is also used in last making and I'm told little ones are great for the roughing out stages of spoon carving.

Nobody makes them any more but there is a blacksmith local to me who can make me a set and Jeremy was kind enough to send me pictures of his ones with details of the edges and blade geometry to show to the smith. I haven't gotten that far yet so I don't know what they are going to cost me, but I doubt they'll be cheap.

I want them for carving medieval pattens, but I'll have a go at clog making too one of these days and if I start making late 16th & 18th century shoes I'm going to need to make lasts too.

[amuckart]

My lovely wife bought me a copy of Al's book for Christmas and among the things that struck me while I was reading it were mentions of rasping things smooth, particularly heels.

This may be old news to everyone else, but it is a recent learning of mine, so I thought I'd share it just in case.

Almost all modern rasps (including all the four-in-hand rasps I've ever seen) are machine cut with the teeth in rows which means they don't leave a very smooth surface, instead they leave a roughly grooved surface but as I found out browsing woodworking tool sites looking for lastmaking tools, this isn't how it used to be.

Hand-cut rasps have random tooth pattern that makes a very smooth cut. You can still get hand-cut rasps -- if you're willing to pay serious quantities of money for them -- but the Nicholson company has a machine that cuts near-random tooth patterns and they make #49 and #50 patternmakers rasps which are fairly affordable and cut quite smoothly in wood and firm leather.

toolsforworkingwood.com has this page on hand cut rasps and this page that mentions the nicholson ones like I have. I got mine from Lee Valley though.

[das]

Alasdair,

I think Janne M. had a line on some very affordable hand-cut shoe rasps made in Poland many years back. Very sharp and fast cutters...I should have bought several.

"Smooth" is/was a relative term. I have handled unworn 1790s men's shoes with rasp-mark grooves still in the heels, so the 18th hand-cut rasps could leave grooves too, don't despair. The wooden heels described by Garsault were covered, so not a furniture-grade smooth finish, just the faceted knife-whittled surface was smoothed down with a rasp. And give your dear wife a hug from me for buying the book too

SD-28 manual goes to my office today to p-copy and airmail.

[lancepryor]

There is a French company named Auriou which still makes hand-cut rasps in a variety of grades of fineness/roughness -- all the way up to what they call a 15, which is, apparently, very fine. I understand that woodworkers/cabinetmakers swear by them. The company closed down a while back over employer/employee disputes but is now operating again, though at a lower level output. I think they are now selling direct, though various dealers may again be carrying them. Certainly not inexpensive, however. Also, the website 'The Best Things' is selling a hand-cut series of rasps made by some former employees of Auriou.

I have the Nicholson rasps and like them, though I have no real points of comparison so far. The cheapest place to buy them is often Jamestown Supply (online store), which sells both the 49 and the 50 and often puts them on sale at attractive prices.

Lance

[lancepryor]

duplicate message

(Message edited by lancepryor on January 06, 2010)

[lancepryor]

Alasdair:

Here is something I just picked up yesterday on e-bay -- looks pretty rough, but what the heck, worth a flyer.

10782.jpg

T. Moore still uses last knives, and I believe he would be happy to supply measurements, etc of his knives if you need them. Here is a pic of his knife:

10783.jpg

I just sent an e-mail to a guy who makes drawknives, which seems to me to be the closest thing these days to a lastknife, to see if he could forge a last knife. If you're interested in the results of that inquiry, let me know. Likewise, I'd be interested in anything else you learn about these.

Lance

[erickgeer]

Lance,

Can you share the search terms that landed you that knife?

I found a guy a couple of years ago, here in Illinois, that was willing to make me a block knife. I never followed through with it since I was having trouble locating a reliable source of wood for lasts.

Erick

[lancepryor]

Erick:

I just search for things like "shoemaker,shoe maker,shoemaking,cobbler,cobblers,cobbling" etc.

This one was listed as a cobbler/shoe makers draw shave, so it popped up. As I said earlier, it looks really rough and actually has a few cracks in the metal, so I don't even know if it will be usable, but I figured it was worth taking a chance on it.

here's the listing: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=360221619635&ssPageName=STRK: MEWAX:IT

On googling 'stock knife', I found a mention of this fellow who apparently makes (or made?) them:
http://www.fraughtwrought.co.uk/?page_id=5

Edwin Hale has also been researching having some made, but whether that comes to pass remains to be seen. His would be top of the line and hence quite expensive, I should imagine, but if you've got any interest perhaps you could contact him and see where things stand.

If you want to send me your contact's name or e-mail in Illinois, perhaps I'll see what he has to say.

I would probably use the knife just to work on turns, rather than shoe blocks, since the latter do seem unavailable in this country. Perhaps someone here will someday cut and age some blanks.

Thanks,
Lance

[erickgeer]

Lance,

Sounds like you just got lucky with the usual search terms [img]http://www.thehcc.org/forum/images/old_smilies/sad.gif"%20ALT="sad[/img]

Anyway, thanks for the link to Fraught Wrought- the prices don't seem totally unreasonable if they are good, but I'm concerned that they describe their tools for use on "green" woods- I'll just have to try contacting them.

I'll see if I can dig up my contact here and forward it to you.

Erick

[amuckart]

Al,

Interesting information about the heels. I often find it quite difficult to relate to old expectations of finish on handmade objects from hundreds of years ago. I know with medieval things the level of finish was very very different to what we modern folk have come to expect from looking at machine-made objects all the time.

Thanks for sending the manual. With some luck my wife and I will be in the US in October and I'm hoping to make it up to Williamsburg.

[amuckart]

Lance, nice find! Thanks for the pictures of that bench. I'd be interested to know the following things:

- Thickness of the spine of the blade
- Thickness of the handle bar
- Length of the cutting edge
- Distance from the spine to edge of the blade

It would also be useful to know whether the blade is flat ground or hollow ground and whether it is symmetrical.

I'll pass on what I can find out about the blacksmith here once I've made contact again.

Many thanks.

[large_shoemaker_at_large]

Wow what a blast to the past.
1975 I started working as a protshteic/ orthotic tech.

They used to "pull" sockets from black willow blocks. They had an array of long handled curved blade pulling tools. I watched my mentor carve a reverse socket for a above knee amputation socket. I twas an art. a few templates and a inside dial measuring tool and chips flying.

Fiberglass took over and a lost art passed.

I digress. I have some heel "scoops" up in the shop give me a couple days to get a pic.

The wood heels I have made came off the finisher. Wood work and leather do have some similar habitual sins.

Freezing my glutes off.
Regards from the great white north
Brendan

[das]

Alasdair,

If machinery has done anything "good", it's created a certain consistency in finish, stitching, etc. One chap I used to know said, "comparing handmade shoes to machine-made is like comprising home-cooking to TV dinners". I think the notion that hand-made = exceptional quality (exclusively) came about in the 1800s when the hand-sewn men were increasingly in direct competition with factory goods, and had to create a niche so to speak in order to survive. Same era that "prize work" took off like mad.

Like today, in centuries past there's always been a range of quality and prices to suit every purse, from cheapo crap, to "average", up to mind-bendingly fine work.

Would be glad to have you visit. October is usually an insanely busy month, and the HCC AGM is in Wisconsin if you can swing that while you're here.

[lancepryor]

Alasdair:

I am going to ask Terry for some detailed drawings and specifications for his knife. As soon as I receive them, I'll let you know.

Lance

p.s. FYI, I have a detailed drawing of the bench if you're ever interested in that.

[erickgeer]

Alasdair,

I just finally read the article on rasps and found it very informative. Too bad the French rasps are so expensive- I thought I was being spendy paying $50 for a Nicholson #49!

Lance,

I'd also be interested in the drawings for the table- if only for reference. I'm in the middle of building a last making vise right now- I'll post some pictures of that when it's done.

I'm surprised by the thickness of the knife. This is what I think of as a draw knife- I guess it's similar, but for the handles:

10805.jpg

All of the draw knifes I've seen are very, very slim compared to 1/2".

This video of a clog being cut is pretty neat seeing a stock knife in action (pardon me if this has already been linked here):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPMT9SpG1SU

Erick

[amuckart]

Hi Lance,

I'd love drawings of the table too, can you post them here or do you need to email them?

Erick: Draw knives are rather different beasts to block knives. Block knives have vaguely similar blade geometry but are two to three times the size, and as you can see from the video they are handled quite differently.

Thanks.

[amuckart]

Colin, if you haven't already found a source for the Berg-style pincers http://www.minke.de sells them. They also sell tina knives, hammers and other useful-looking tools but I haven't ordered anything from them yet.

Their online store is only in German but you can download PDF catalogues in English and find the items in the store by putting the part numbers in the search box.

[lancepryor]

I will try to post a pic of the scanned in drawing of the table; I would be happy to send a (large) PDF of the drawing to anyone interested -- just let me know.

here is the scan [oriented 90 degrees off]:

10814.jpg

(Message edited by lancepryor on January 10, 2010)

[amuckart]

Thanks Lance.

I can't quite read that one. Can you email me the big PDF to:

silver at where dot else dot net dot nz

Cheers.

[erickgeer]

As mentioned a few posts above, I've been building a last vise. This one is a variation on the one in Golding- it is based on ones in use at a New England shoe company, which the head of the engineering department kindly provided photos of.

There are a couple of things I would do differently next time, but this should be very functional. In the image that Lance posted, the hinge could be manually adjusted for different sized work. I think the one in Golding didn't use a hinge, so it would self-adjust for different sized work.

Like others posted way back, this is essentially a post vise like those used by blacksmiths- but made from wood. Hopefully next week I'll be able to work on a bracket to secure the vise to the workbench:

10874.jpg

I used soft maple to build this since the hardwood supplier didn't have the dimensions I needed and I don't have the tools or machines to properly face the lumber for laminating. As it was, I had to have this wood custom ripped and faced.

10875.jpg

The screw I acquired is rather large. I had to rasp out the guide hole much more than expected so the jaws don't seize when opened wide.

10876.jpg

The spring is on the screw to release the jaws when loosened.

10877.jpg

I'm still waiting on the industrial felt to pad the jaws.

I'm looking forward to using this. Hopefully in the near future I'll be able to commission a stock knife.

Erick

[lancepryor]

Erick:

Looks good. A couple of observations/thoughts. First, are you going to mount it in this orientation relative to your bench, or turned 90 degrees from the current orientation? I would suggest the latter (as with the one I posted). I think you will find that the last ends up more or less horizontal with the ground as you are working on it, so to really get good access to the last you want it sticking out of the vise parallel to the bench. I don't think the vise will grip as well with the last sticking straight up in a vertical orientation, and aggressive rasping will cause the last to swivel down to a horizontal position; in other words, you'll want to be working on the last in a plane perpendicular to the axis of the vise, which means you want to figure out where you'll be standing to get good access to the last. Unless you want to work parallel to the front of the bench, you'll want to turn the vise 90 degrees.

Second, you may want to consider using some heavy veg tan leather -- perhaps 2 layers -- rather than felt for the pad. I think the leather will be alot 'grippier' and can also be chalked for increased grip. Maybe also easier to glue to the wood.

Lance

[erickgeer]

Lance,

Thanks for the comments. Here is how I've been planning all of those things:

Orientation- It's just that way in order to photograph it. It's pretty heavy and likes to fall over. I'm actually planning on mounting it 45 degrees to the bench. It's the way the shoe company has theirs, and I imagine it will be easier to reach for tools, while allowing access to different angles of the last.

The last is most definitely not going to be rasped in that orientation- it just doesn't obscure the vise for the picture.

I keep veg-tan on my regular bench vise. All of the last vises I've been treated to pictures of (save the one you posted) have had felt-lined jaws. The industrial felt should be plenty grippy, as well as compressible. 1/2" thick felt will contour around the last and help keep a last from swiveling. My only reservation about felt is it will fuzz when I incidentally hit it with the rasp. In looking for sources of industrial felt, I came across super-compressed felt that is described more as wood than what is commonly attributed to felt- perhaps an experiment with that later on?

Erick

[romango]

Erick:

Very nice! Where did you get the vise hardware?