Toolemera Blog

Granfurdeus Begats

While sifting through old documents, I came upon this little bit of history that I wrote up a few years ago concerning the famous British Planemaker, John Green and the connections to one Phillipson and Thomas Granford. Herewith in full is...

Granfurdeus Begats

I was curious about the relationships between Grandpa Furdeus (at one time thought to be Thomas Grandford) and Thomas Phillipson after comparing the similarities between the planes. After a bit of investigation, herewith are my discoveries...

Granfurdeus Begats

Yeah and did Thomas Granford take unto his trade Robert Wooding in  1699.  Wooding did marry Elizabeth in 1708. Fortune refused to shine  upon his house and poore Elizabeth died in 1710. Wooding, ever the bon vivant, did take unto his marriage  bed Ann Gibbons, now Ann Wooding, in  the year 1713 (this being the year in which he did take Thomas  Granford's business of the Shoppe of the Three Planes, locke stocke and  barrele). Robert ate a bad sausage (sic) and passed away in 1728. In  that year, 1728 did Ann Wooding take unto her self an apprentice, Thomas  Phillipson. Following this did she take James Clark and Robert Fitkin as  apprentices too. Yeah and Ann Wooding was a lusty mistress!

Thomas Phillipson took unto himself nine apprentices between 1740 and  1759. Verily only four are known to have been planemakers. Thomas must  have been a difficult and demanding master! So did he put forth unto the  Planemaking World Edward Hill (1754), John Green (1756), John Day (1759)  and J. A. Wealthdale (1744). As did his wife, Susannah. Oh! Susannah!  did take five apprentices of her own of which naught is known. Verily  did the mistresses of planedom go through many an apprentice.

John Green, once attaining his fullness, made planes under many Naymes  and of many Playces... John Green of London and John Green of London,  John Green of York, John Green again of York. Then did John Green, no  not that John Green, the other John Green, did take as to an apprentice  Richard Bywater (1799), John Burton (1794) and Joseph Watson (who knows  whence he came).

Upon the Death of John Green (no not that John Green, The John Green),  did William Ferrand, known as John Green the former's Cousin and Robert  Wilkinson, who had worked for John Green the later did purchase at a  reasonable price the holdings of John Green. It doesn't matter which  John Green. Just be assured that it was one of the John Greens. In the  true fashion of Honesty in Business did Ferrand and Wilkinson make and  issue planes bearing the stamp of John Green, tho he be long mouldering  in his grave.

Of note is Thomas Phillipsons introduction of the Phillipson Pattern  chamfer termination, so unlike that of his predecessors. His chamfers  did stop abrubtly without the grace of the single or double gouge  reliefe of those who came before him. Howsoever this labour saving  fashion did catch on with his apprentices and Yeah even with  compatriots, many of whom adopted said termination in their vain efforts  to earn gold from the shirt tails of he who traced his lineage to  Granfurdeus.

Thus ends the Begats of Granfurdeus.

Till next, Gary

You say tomato...

It's peculiar how the world is changing. The digital bandwagon seems to be overtaking us faster than we can run away from it. Over at work, we are all hellbent now on digitizing a major section of our collection. Space is needed for research and the Library has to give up a whole lotta square footage. Of course, we had proposed digitizing material en mass a few years ago...

Now that researchers are used to getting their stuff in PDF, they want everything in PDF. Books, journals, old reports, new reports, cafeteria menus, you name it, it's now distributed in PDF format. Don't get me wrong, I am not knocking the whole digital library movement. There are a lot of things going for it. At the same time, some people seem to think that once in a digital format, the item is permanent. Or they simply don't care.

Meanwhile, us Librarians and Archivist types are trying to figure out how to preserve a bunch of magnetic particles for posterity. One idea is to print a master copy and store it. For the moment, it's a matter of creating three versions of a file: uncompressed TIFF images; PDF A/1a; PDF with OCR. That PDF A/1a thing is a supposedly archival quality document that contains all the data needed for reproduction, irregardless of whether or not your computer holds the correct fonts or other material to reproduce the file. We hope.

What does this have to do with tools and ephemera? Seems I am now receiving notes from people asking when and if PDF versions of books will be available, along with the much delayed Moxon reprint as a Print On Demand offering. Check out Ebay and you can see an onrush of vendors selling all kinds of stuff in PDF format on CD. My suspicion is that, much like the Stock Market, there will be a rush to cash in on the supposedly easy money, followed by a rush to close shop as people discover just how much work is involved in creating a decent PDF, followed by the creation of the new Black Hole DVD format, which will work from the heat cast off by dormitory hot-plates.

POD. PDF. And I really don't like tomatoes all that much either. After a year of upheaval and change in our lives, we at the Roberts Residence are working on getting back to what passes for normal in middle age. Not Middle Ages, middle age. The Chronicle project is nearing completion, which will allow time once again to get on the POD, or PDF bandwagon. I may run a survey and set up a bell curve to assess what people want. Hard copy or PDF. Or just sit here scratching my head for a while procrastinating...err... deciding on which way to go. Or to go both ways. Not that I am making any judgements upon gender preferences.

Till next, Gary

Chronicles of The Chronicle, 5

When last we met, The Chronicle digitization project was wending it's merry way along the path to success. With an end in sight, I solicited and drafted a merry band of volunteers to help with the work of compiling jpeg images into PDF files. Stepping up to the proverbial plate were Jim Esten, Peter Evans, Michael Miller, Bill Kasper, Kirk Eppler, Matthew Groves, Mike Darling, Michael Rogen, Paul Morin and Kari (aka The Village Carpenter).

In due course a whole mess of scanned jpeg images became a smaller mess of PDF files. According to their level of comfort and expertise with Acrobat, the files were returned to me with or without OCR. No big deal as I had already set up a Batch Process to crop, reduce file size and OCR the lot of them. By 'the lot of them' I refer to the PDF files, not the volunteers. In a previous post I referred to the new Adobe Clearscan process of OCR. It's an interesting development for Acrobat. Developed by a high end commercial imaging company in Boston, Clearscan produces itsy bitsy files, roughly a quarter of the size they would have been with standard OCR.

In 'old fashioned' OCR, a second layer is created that holds the recognized data. The data is linked back to the original, or visual scan layer. That's how you can search a document, jump to the highlighted text and find what you seek. Accuracy is dependant upon the quality of the text, the quality of the scan and the brains of the OCR engine. In other words, it's a bit of a crap shoot.

Clearscan maps out the actual texty of the scanned image, creates a new image of each character and, in a sense, replaces the character with a real bit of font. A pdf is basically a document made up of images. No text, just images. You have to turn those images into something that resembles text so that we can read it and search for it. In Clearscan, the original text character is replaced by either an exact copy, or, if the font is peculiar or degraded, with as close a character as the software can approximate. Does that all make sense?

In addition, Clearscan doesn't mess with any graphics held within the PDF. So graphics are untouched... a particular problem with regular OCR. Graphics are often degraded during the OCR process for various arcane reasons known only to the people other than myself. The end result is a small file (no bloated extra layer of text), better graphics and happy people.

Back to The Chronicle. I ran the whole mess through a variety of Batchs and now comes the fun part. Vetting each and every page. I'll be checking for clarity, orientation, messed up scans, poor originals, bad OCR, missing pages or missing issues. Whatever needs to be redone or fixed, I'll pull the orignal page, scan it and replace the offending villaine. I expect more problems with the early issues and less with the later.

Soon, very soon, The Chronicle of The Early American Industries Association will be ready for publication as a digital edition on DVD. Needless to say, I'll mention something about it here, on my website and where-ever else I can think of.

Till next, Gary

Unplugged Needs A New Socket

Folks

Luke Townsley, creator of UnpluggedShop.com, is looking for a new owner for the blog. Alas, keeping a blog organized and running is a time consuming enterprise and Luke has his hand's full. To use his words:

"These last nine months or so of running unpluggedshop.com have been interesting and profitable to me personally. I have enjoyed doing this site, and believe it fills a needed niche. I am not thinking about closing it, but I don't have the time or incentive to take it to the next level."

UnpluggedShop.com is a fine aggregator of woodworking and handtool material. Rather than taking the fully auto-feed approach, Luke has assembled a hand-picked compendium of notable woodworking sites and blogs. His blog has become a must-see stop for people who have been looking for a review of what is interesting and worthwhile. I would hate to see it fall into the abyss of worthwhile blogs that should have continued but didn't due to the forces of time, family, work and nature.

If you are interested in discussing the possibilities with Luke, please check out his blog and get in touch with him.

Till next, Gary

Woodworking Handtool Forum

Somehow, I missed this one. But, following the bread crumbs left by one Galooticus of rec.ww fame, I found my way to the Woodworking Handtool Forum. If I had to come up with a name for a forum devoted to handtools, I could not have done better than to cut to the chase and name it thusly.

So let's take a look at what happens there:

• Welcome: ok, that one is pretty self-explanatory. But a nice touch all the same.
• General Woodworking: well, still pretty self-explanatory. Direct and to the point.
• The Tool Cabinet: Now we're getting somewhere! All things Woodworking Handtools. My kinda place.
• Sharpening: Important, but not too sexy.
• Workbenches and Tool Cabinets: Now we're getting back to the good stuff.
• Gallery: Drool city.
• Off-topic: Yes, every forum has to have one of these.
• The Review Board: Talk about stuff you bought and what people think of the stuff.
• Independant Toolmakers: Yup, the title says it all.
• The Swap Meet: Sell it, trade it.

Ok, so now you have read my brief introduction. I would say more, but I am a newbie on this forum, else I would elaborate in greater detail. Suficit to say, if you like woodworking handtools, you should be checking out the Woodworking Handtool Forum.

Till next, Gary