So I’m folded up inside my tool chest like an origami Sasquatch with the lid closed (don’t ask), and I can hear Roy Underhill come into the “The Woodwright’s Shop” to begin the episode.

His voice is muffled through the 7/8”-thick pine, but I can hear him introduce the program.

“And… darn it,” Roy says. “Four seconds in to the show and I cut myself.”

Somehow Roy has brushed against one of my panel saws, and the blood is trickling out. He begins the program again without the aid of a bandage. So I got a souvenir: Two drops of St. Roy’s blood on the inside of my tool chest.

I will start the bidding at $50 per drop of certified Roy Underhill blood.

— Christopher Schwarz

Today Roy Underhill and I got ready to tape two episodes for the next season of PBS’s “The Woodwright’s Shop.” As the sun started to set over Pittsboro, N.C., we realized that we needed to turn down a spindle so we could thread it on camera.

No problem. Roy’s school has nice Barnes treadle lathes. Plenty of wood. And Roy.

“Hmmm. Now where are my turning tools?” Roy asked.

It turns out that his lathe tools were at home. Without skipping a beat, Roy picked up some bench chisels and started turning down the spindle.

This, of course, attracted onlookers who were wandering by the school.

Now all we have to do is rehearse. Roy’s show is taped live. No do-overs. Ugh. Time for a beer.

— Christopher Schwarz

For the next 10 days my blog posts will be erratic and fueled by barbecue, beer and fatigue. If you e-mail me during the next fortnight, my response is liable to be brief, odd or not forthcoming.

Why? I drive to North Carolina tomorrow to tape two episodes of “The Woodwright’s Shop” with Roy Underhill, then teach a five-day class on building “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” at The Woodwright’s School and then teach a two-day class at the Atlanta Woodcraft on building the essential marking and measuring tools.

Then I will take a long nap. Actually, that nap thing is a lie. When I get back from my Southern tour I’ll be unloading almost 6,000 pounds of “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree” books and then packing up all the pre-publication orders we’ve received (thank you, kind reader) and taking them to the post office.

Then a nap? No. Then I have to finish this Campaign Secretary that has to be completed by March 15 for Popular Woodworking Magazine.

So all this is my way of saying: If you try to reach me during the next month and I don’t respond, it’s not because your smell offends me.

Thanks in advance for your understanding.

— Christopher Schwarz

For your reading pleasure: A short excerpt on mortising from the forthcoming book “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree” by Jennie Alexander and Peter Follansbee.

The file is a pdf and requires Adobe Acrobat 6.0. It’s a fairly small file at 1.4 mb, so even the dial-up users should be able to nab it without too much trouble.

MAJSFAT_SAMPLE

Yes, those are real color photos in the book. And yes, the page size really is 9” x 12”. And yes, it’s a Lost Art Press book.

And a gentle reminder: If you want to order this book and not pay domestic shipping you have only two weeks left before this offer expires on Feb. 27. Read more about “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree” in our store here.

— Christopher Schwarz

“The faster a thing is created, the more fleeting its permanence.”

— Friedensreich Hundertwasser

Last July, I took a class from Peter Follansbee on making a joint stool. It was at Roy Underhill’s The Woodwright’s School in Pittsboro, N.C., where the sun beat down all week and the mercury crossed the 100° mark every day. My people are from peat bogs; I would rather it be 50° and raining than hot and sunny  – and our first two days were spent outside splitting stock from freshly felled red oak logs. But despite the constant threat of heat stroke, I had a marvelous time.

Peter has an arid sense of humor (which I adore) and he is unfailingly generous in sharing his years of woodworking experience, and his deep knowledge of 16th- and 17th-century furniture – not to mention his tools. And working with wet oak was a wholly new experience for me, and a great deal of fun. It seemed revolutionary to me – even though the technique is centuries old – to be able to split off a perfect (or perfect enough) tenon rather than saw it. (And I’m sad you can’t do that with cherry.)

In just one week, most of the 10 students in the class managed to go from a log to a finished drawbored joint stool, complete with shaped legs (some of them turned the legs on Roy’s pole lathe) and a seat with a profiled edge.

I’m chagrined to admit that I was in the minority (as you can no doubt tell from the photo at the top). On the last day, as we were doing a final dry-fit on the tenons in preparation for drawboring, I cut the angle on one of my side stretcher tenons at such a wrong angle that I removed too much material to be able to drawbore it in place. Peter calmly assessed the situation, made me laugh about my mistake, then hewed another stretcher for me from some leftover stock in less than a half-hour, while also helping the other students complete their work. (I’m a horrid hewer; I need a lot more practice and a much stronger wrist.)

By the end of the day, I managed to get the show surface planed and the angles cut on the shoulders of the new stretcher, but the tenons were still square and I didn’t have time to add a bead to match the other three. I think I was having too much fun playing with the gouge and mallet as I cut the simple design shown at right into the aprons – a technique that Peter had me doing with ease in but minutes.

With the class over, I packed all the parts into a tomato flat, tossed them in the back of my car, and drove home to Cincinnati. As soon as I got home, I borrowed from Chris Schwarz a beader to finish the last of the decoration, and I was gung-ho to get the joint stool assembled. I took it into my shop at work … then life got in the way.

As of two days ago, the pieces were languishing at work in the tomato flat, and covered with sawdust. Now, they’re dry-assembled on my bench at home, and I have a couple pins driven. I still have to fit those last two tenons, then drill the holes so I can complete the drawboring.

But I can’t for the life of me remember what Peter told us about pegging the top in place – particularly a two-board top, which is what mine will be.

So I’m delighted that “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree” is at the printer; I need it as soon as possible – because I’m not moving those joint stool pieces off my bench until the project is done.

– Megan Fitzpatrick

“Combining style, materials, and technology in a desirable product at a price the market will accept has always been the basic problem facing furniture makers. Since costs are, in part, dependent on the labor intensity of their technologies, manufacturers must design pieces with the capabilities of their tools in mind, constantly compromising between cost and style. This system of give and take is the economic interface between technology and style. It is the economics of design.”

— Michael J. Ettema, “Technological Innovation and Design Economics in Furniture Manufacture,” Winterthur Portfolio, Vol. 16, 1981. (Special thanks to Don Williams for pointing me to this article.)

Editor’s note: Jennie Alexander and Peter Follansbee have been working on “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree” for so long that it is hard to pin down the exact date when they commenced. Now that this book is in the works at the printer, I asked Peter if he would mind discussing how he and Jennie chose the joint stool as the focus of this book. Here’s the story along with some snapshots from the historical record.

If you have heard me talk or write about the joint stool book, then you know it was a work in progress for a long time. More than 20-years-long time. So long ago that I looked young. Jennie Alexander and I decided early on to focus some of our efforts on making joint stools for a couple of reasons.

One factor driving our decision was the one-week workshop format. When I first got hooked on the prospect of being a joiner in the 17th-century style, Alexander was pitching the idea of a class to Drew Langsner, director of Country Workshops. One scenario had the students building a joined chest together – one week, 10 students, one log, one chest. I was game; Drew waited. He wanted Alexander to build a chest before he would commit Country Workshops to the possible lunacy of it all. At that point, it was all conjecture and test joints on Alexander’s part.

While the joined chest is perhaps the most appealing example of joined furniture, the joint stool is an icon. It reeks of the 17th century. The size and scope of a joined chest would take longer to make in numbers than it would to make a few joint stools. Knowing that repetition was one of the keys to really getting to know how joinery works, the stool became the main project for us to pursue.

And so the joint stool project was born. We each built a couple, then got Drew to take the plunge. Our first class in this work was 1991, I think. We taught it together a couple of times at Country Workshops, also at Jennie’s workshop in Baltimore. Once I got the job at Plimoth Plantation in 1994, mostly Alexander taught it alone.

I went on to build all manner of joined works, but the stool is surely the most-attainable project in a reasonable time frame for beginners. We chose it as the ideal introduction because it requires only a small amount of timber, whether you start with the log or not. And at 16 mortise-and-tenon joints, it’s enough to get a lot of practice, but not the 26 to 40 joints – or more – that might happen in a joined chest.

Looking back through old slides while researching what we might need for the book was quite instructive. Early on we used modern workbenches, here I am mortising a stile with it caught between bench dogs in a vise, before I had any good holdfasts to secure the workpiece. In this shot, you’ll see things you’ve not seen me do before: plastic-handled chisel, rawhide mallet, maybe even pencil marks on the stock. All of these eventually got chucked as we fine-tuned the process as well as the product. It worked; it just works better now.

Using the same German bench, I am planing stock also held in the vise. Back at this point, we knew about Joseph Moxon’s bench, but hadn’t yet built something like it. Once we built period-style workbenches, things changed all for the better.

One thing did not change – the power of the drawbored joint. Here’s Alexander driving pins in a stool frame. Hasn’t move a bit in over 20 years. And it won’t over the next hundred or more…

— Peter Follansbee

If you order “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree” before the press date of Feb. 27, 2012, you will receive free domestic shipping. For more details on the book, visit our store. The book is $43 and is produced and printed entirely in United States with 128 pages and more than 200 full-color photos.

Some years ago at a Williamsburg woodworking conference, the inestimable Mack Headley stood on stage, checked the setting of his plane, addressed the workpiece and together they created the near-mystical, crisp “S-S-S-G-G-G-R-R-R-I-I-I-K-K-K” aria so familiar to experienced woodworkers. An audible baritone “Oooohhhh” swept the hall on appreciation of a finely sharpened tool in the hands of a master. It was perhaps the most identifiable moment of a tool speaking that I can recall. And to be sure, the audience of mostly middle-aged men in plaid flannel shirts was listening.

But the phenomenon of tools talking, and us listening, is much more fundamental, an almost visceral component in learning skilled craft. The relationship we have with our tools is among other things, audible and linguistic. Tools speak to us constantly, telling us how we are doing with them.

Last Friday saw the completion of an intense course for aspiring curators called “Historical Technology of Furniture Making” I taught with renowned furniture historian Oscar Fitzgerald (“Four Centuries of American Furniture”). Every day for two weeks Oscar would start us off with a brief overview lecture on a topic, I would follow with a demonstration of the relevant technique or process, and then supervise the students practicing it at the bench. It was a memorable opportunity for them to engage in multiple-sensory learning that they will retain throughout their careers. We started out with a chunk of the oak tree that became the replica Gragg Chair and ended the second week with the laying of gold leaf – with splitting, shaving, sawing, planing, joining, shaping, metal casting, steam bending, veneering and japanning in between.

As you can imagine, since most of the students had near-zero woodworking experience, frustration abounded. As it should. Skilled woodworking is not accomplished on the first try.

One of the phrases I kept repeating through the course was, ”Let the tool do its work.” A tool will tell you what it wants to do, and even more important it will tell you what it does NOT want to do. If the sound is organized and crisp, you are asking the tool to do what it is supposed to do. That’s what Mack Headley’s plane was saying to him and to us in the audience.

Conversely, in the hands of unskilled or unfamiliar practitioners a tool can moan, screech, growl and chatter. My students and interns can confirm that when we are working in the same space, I can hear faulty work from across the room even if my back is turned and my attention directed elsewhere. At first they cannot believe I can hear the tool talking, but over time they become believers, especially when someone newer and less experienced joins us. Then they recognize the mellow tones of their own work versus the often cringe-inducing caterwauling of the newcomers’.

About halfway through the second week of this course I knew we were making headway. I watched from some distance as a student was using a sharp little spokeshave on the mahogany cabriole leg we had made together as a class and she encountered the spokeshave telling her it really, really did not want to do what she was instructing it to do. Without even thinking, in a moment she changed her posture and direction of work, the sound became mellifluous and beautiful shavings spewed forth leaving a glistening, faceted surface. Alone, she sighed and smiled gently, rightfully pleased with the result. That dulcet moment and the little silent smile to herself was as great a reward any as teacher can experience. She had learned the lesson of the talking tool and incorporated it into her work without even thinking about it.

When tools speak, listen.

— Don Williams

Ohio Book finished binding up copies of the third printing of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” this morning. I picked them up a few minutes ago and will ship them out Priority Mail for all the people who ordered them.

We actually have a couple extra copies with this run. We always send some extra book blocks to Ohio Book to make sure we have 26 in the end. So if you still want one, you can order it in our store.

As always, the work from Ohio Book is gorgeous, and we are proud to support this family-run institution in Cincinnati.

— Christopher Schwarz