By Dominik Lobkowicz
Working together at Lie-Nielsen Toolworks’ annual open house, Nic Westermann (left), a visiting blacksmith from Wales, and Deneb Puchalski, education coordinator for the toolworks, cut an eye in what would eventually become a carving ax. (D. Lobkowicz photo) |
Starting with its 25th anniversary nine years ago, Warren-based Lie-Nielsen Toolworks has been bringing together craftsmen, toolmakers, and others connected to the woodworking field for an annual open house focused on education.
Lie-Nielsen Toolworks manufactures a variety of planes, chisels, saws, and other tools at its Warren facility, and wooden work benches in Waldoboro. The toolworks’ open house was held in Warren on July 10 and 11.
The company’s founder, Tom Lie-Nielsen, of Waldoboro, got into the business of making hand tools after taking over making reproductions of a Stanley tool that was long discontinued but still sought after.
Now, as one of the premier fine hand-tool manufacturers in the world, the company draws in exhibitors from near and far to showcase their wares and demonstrate their skills at the annual open house.
“We work a number of different people in the business, either inviting them to shows we put on or they put on shows that we go to,” Lie-Nielsen said, “so we’ve got a network of people who are doing things that are similar; some of them are competitors, some of them are furniture builders, writers, teachers, different kinds of people.”
“I started wanting to bring them together all in one place, as much as I could, so that our customers could come and have a really great time and learn a lot – not just from us, from everybody,” he said.
Deneb Puchalski, Lie-Nielsen Toolworks’ education coordinator, said when people know they can properly use a tool when they get home, they will be more likely to buy it.
“If we can educate people in the use of tools, they’re more likely to use them,” Puchalski said. “That’s the biggest thing.”
The variety of exhibitors at the open house is broad. Along with show staff from Lie-Nielsen, close to 20 exhibitors participated, including Texas Heritage Woodworks, showing their leather tool rolls and nail aprons; wooden surfboard makers Grain Surfboards from York, and Welsh blacksmith Nic Westermann, who gave demonstrations on how to forge a bearded carving ax.
Westermann makes woodworking tools including axes and carving knives, mainly for working with green wood.
The carving axes Westermann creates are specifically shaped and customers use them primarily for carving wooden spoons, he said.
Nic Westermann demonstrates how a carving ax can be used to rough out the shape of a wooden spoon. (D. Lobkowicz photo) |
The green wood is softer and easier to work with than seasoned wood, and after a craftsman is done carving a spoon, it’s thin enough that it won’t warp or crack and will be ready for use after drying overnight, Westermann said.
The carving ax offers a quick way to rough out the spoon, but “the better someone is, the closer they’ll get to finished” with just the use of the ax, Westermann said.
“You can shape very accurately with a carving ax. The grind is quite specific; it’s got flat bevels on it,” and if a user chokes up on the handle, it can be used like a knife, he said.
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Lie-Nielsen Toolworks’ new honing guide, seen here with sets of jaws for skewed blades, was released at the company’s annual open house July 10-11. (D. Lobkowicz photo) |
The open house also serves as an opportunity for the toolworks to showcase its own products, including a new honing guide the company launched at the event this year.
The new honing guide is made of stainless steel, brass, and bronze, and unlike the third-party guide the company used to sell, it is so well-machined it can be sufficiently tightened just using one’s fingers instead of a screwdriver, Puchalski said.
The new guide also has a range of interchangeable jaws. The standard set handles 95 percent of the blades Lie-Nielsen Toolworks manufactures and comes with the guide’s base for $125, Puchalski said.
The additional jaw sets range from $25 to $35 and can handle short or oddly shaped blades, or skewed blades, he said.
“Basically, instead of making one jig that tries to do everything, we made the body and then that takes these series of jaws so you can sharpen just about any tool that we make,” Puchalski said.
As can be seen from Route 1, the toolworks is putting a 2,500-square-foot addition onto its main shop.
According to Tom Lie-Nielsen, the company has spent about the last year and a half reorganizing the shop to improve work flow, and the addition will serve as the end of that process.
“It’ll give us some more space, we can organize it better, and then it’ll free up some space for other uses, which I’m looking forward to,” such as expanding the company’s showroom and shipping area, he said.
The increased capacity in the shop will allow the company to get some new tools into production, including the honing guide and a new plow plane used for cutting grooves into boards, Lie-Nielsen said.
“It has eight to nine different width blades so you can cut different width grooves, by hand, very fast and efficiently, and do a very nice job,” he said.
“One of the reasons people like power tools is because there aren’t good alternatives for hand tools that are easy to use and do a really good job, particularly for things like joinery, cutting groves, doing rabbets, things like that,” Lie-Nielsen said. “This tool will allow you to do things you can’t do with any of our other hand tools, and will make it so you don’t need to use a table saw or router for those things.”
“A lot of customers use power tools, of course, but they also enjoy the quiet and the lack of dust that comes with using hand tools, and the pleasure of doing something with their hands, so that if we can make that easy, easy for them to do good, accurate work, that is the key,” he said.
The honing guide and plow plane are the two new tools for this season, Lie-Nielsen said, and there may be another new tool ready for the fall.
For more information on Lie-Nielsen Toolworks, visit www.lie-nielsen.com or call 800-327-2520.
