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Hand Tools

Flea Market Tool Finds: Froe

By Hand Tools, Timber Framing, Strawtron
Woodworking tools: froe and maul

An old froe and mallet

Every month, I make my pilgrimage (er, it’s really just a short trip, I guess) to the local flea market, the so-called Dog and Gun. Usually I go in search of old hand tools, especially woodworking tools. The latest find was this very old froe.

A froe is a tool used for cleaving wood — very often they are associated with splitting shakes, but they can be used to pare down wood for making handles, or whatever other reason you would have to cleave wood. They are used by striking a wooden mallet on the top of the blade (seen at right in this image). They are not sharp — they are basically a glorified wedge on a stick.

They are extremely useful, however. Recently, I spent a lot of time starting to split out blanks for wood pegs for the future timber frame. The handle is shot, so I need to make a new one, but for $20, it was a nice deal. This one’s quite old, too. I like when you can tell that an old woodworking tool has a lot of history.

(New froes are at least $50 or more, by the way.)

Handmade, Hand Forged Axes: Amazing Blacksmithing Video by John Neeman

By Hand Tools, Timber Framing

John Neeman is a small outfit making stunning quality, hand forged woodworking and timber framing tools in Latvia. Their work is impressive on multiple fronts (including this gorgeous documentary). Very inspiring.

I will have more information about John Neeman tools up in the coming weeks, as they are planning to launch an online store in the near future. (I’ve got a broad axe coming from them, too.)

Yea for traditional skills and blacksmithing!

p.s. Today is the last day to save 20% off the 2012 Timber Framing course! We may even get to use that handmade John Neeman broad axe during the workshop…

Finding Used Timber Framing Hand Tools

By Timber Framing, Hand Tools
chisels

1 1/2" framing chisel & corner chisel found at flea market

I’ll admit, I do like shopping once in a while, although I dislike going to most stores. The kind of shopping that I don’t complain about, though, is the kind that happens once a month at our local flea markets.

These flea markets are brimming with tools, if you can manage picking through piles and piles of rust and assorted junk, but every once in a while you will walk away happy. I’ve spent the last year specifically looking for timber framing tools, and have had some success with procuring things on my want list. Read More

All About Hand Hewing Beams

By Hand Tools, Timber Framing, Resources, Video

I read a great post last night on the Holder Bros. industry blog about hand hewing beams with broad axes. It’s worth a mention here!

Beams that are hand hewn get a flat face treatment with nothing more than a felling axe and a broad axe. This is how beams were converted from round logs before the age of cheap fuel and portable mills and all that jazz.

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A Felling and Moving Logs By Hand Quandary

By Timber Framing, Hand Tools

This weekend, I attended an excellent firewood workshop at the Clark Conservation Area here in northeast Missouri. My primary motivator was the promised access to timber that would be granted by simply attending the workshop. I came away from the workshop quite excited by the possibility of obtaining free white and black oak logs perfect for timber framing, but very stuck as to how in the heck I could pull off getting the material actually out of the woods.

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Inspiring Video about Gränsfors Bruks Axe Company

By Hand Tools, Timber Framing, Resources, Video



Lately, I have been doing a lot of reading online about hand tools, especially those for timber framing. A couple of websites have caught my eye recently (which I’ll mention soon elsewhere), and during one of those late night reading ventures I stumbled upon this excellent video about the history and transformation of the Gränsfors Bruks axe company of Sweden, one of the top hand-forged tool manufacturers around.

I’ve been reading snippets about the company and its products elsewhere (mostly in catalogs), but this video gave me a much broader knowledge of the company than before, and I must say, it was very satisfying. Inspiring.

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Our Second BIG Timber Frame Bent Raising (With Video)

By Bent Raising, Video, Hand Tools, Wabi-sabi Kitchen, Timber Framing
bigbent-standing01

The mighty central bent in the Wabi-sabi kitchen

A bit over a week ago, we raised our mighty giant of a bent for the kitchen. It’s the bent we’ve been working on for weeks and weeks – an assembly of three posts, and a beam with a scarf joint. The beam in question is a gigantic, curving sycamore joined to a cannon of an oak, supported on the south side by a stout poplar, in the middle an oak with a coped shoulder and through tenon (that runs through the scarf), and on the south another oak post. Put together, we guessed that the bent weighed in around 1800 pounds. No joke!

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