On Saturday, I sprayed two coats of lacquer on a small Dutch tool chest and its lower chest, then reinstalled the hardware. With that, I am done with the building and picture-taking thereof…I think.
I have a table of contents with chapters that cover the order of operations, and image folders tagged to each of those chapters. The images within each folder serve as a visual outline of what I need to cover in the text, and many of my pictures are simply visual notes – reminders of what I want to write – that won’t make it into the book.
By the end, I’ll have taught readers how to build two sizes of Dutch tools chest (with a choice of three lids), plus a lower chest on which to rest the small one (or the large one, if you’re tall), to make it easy to access the tools (as well as hold more). I’m offering several approaches to each operation when practical, so that no matter what the tool kit or skill set, readers should be able to find a method that appeals.
I’ve outfitted the interiors of both chests to hold chisels, marking knives and other pointy tools on the back wall. One has a saw till on the chest floor, the other has it behind the hanging rack. Both chests have cubbies for a jointer, jack and smooth plane (and suggestions for ways to tuck a block plane on the wall).
But as I wrote months ago, I’ve seen many clever modifications, drawers, racks, lift-out tills and more in similar chests over the years. And because I can’t possibly construct every possibility myself, I plan to feature some of those in a gallery (with credit, of course!) in the book. Many of you who’ve already built Dutch tool chests responded to my initial request for pictures, and I’ll be in touch with you soon (and thanks again!).
But I’d love to have more photos for the book. I’m looking for clever solutions to storing tools – digital images that are at least 300 dpi at 5×7. (Chris has a helpful post on photography here.) In short, I need in-focus pictures that show the relevant features without clutter or visual distractions. I realize not everyone can shoot these kinds of photos, so if quick phone snaps* are the best you can do, I’ll feature some of those in blog posts when the book comes out, which I hope is before the winter holidays. The deadline for photos is June 30, to fitz@lostartpress.com.
I’ll have this book written, designed and to my editor (that would be Chris) by July 30. So I’m signing off now to start writing far too many words, then excising as many adverbs and gerunds as possible.
— Fitz
* Note: If you have a late-model phone, it might be able to take pictures of a quality suitable for print.
As in a lot of other Shaker furniture, the distinctive features of a Shaker workbench are not always immediately obvious. As a utilitarian piece of equipment, the Shaker bench has to meet many of the same requirements as a worldly workbench. There is only so much room for variation and development before such a basic tool becomes over-specialized. Though the Shakers, like their contemporaries, distinguished between joiners or carpenters, who made architectural elements, and cabinetmakers, who made furniture and small goods, the workbenches of these craftsmen were probably quite similar. Chairmaking and boxmaking were separate industries with different workholding requirements. Shaker chairs were a production item, mainly comprised of interchangeable turned parts. Thus the lathe was the primary tool and workholding device. Chairs were clamped in a vise like the one shown below while their seats were woven. Shaker boxes were also mass-produced, and they were assembled on benches that were much smaller and less refined than the workbenches used for furnituremaking or joinery.
The Shaker workbench, like others in the world, has many standard components: a tail vise and dogholes, a front vise, and room for tool storage beneath the top. Likewise, most of the same materials, hand tools and machinery available to the Shakers for workbench making were the same as those used by their worldly counterparts. As a result, similar woods may be found in both Shaker and non-Shaker benches, joined with the same mortise-and-tenon or dovetail joints.
It is unclear exactly when the Shakers began building workbenches. Perhaps a few were brought along when woodworkers joined the fold. (Gideon Turner, an early convert, became a member of New Lebanon in 1788 with “1 Set Carpenters tools & 1 Set Joiners Tools” valued at eight pounds.) Or, more likely, makeshift arrangements may have been employed until permanent workshops could be built and proper benches installed. In any case, journal entries and a couple of dated benches indicate that Shakers were building benches by the first or second quarter of the 19th century. This coincides with the period during which most Shaker furniture was built and the stylistic features that distinguish it today were firmly entrenched. Although Shaker life and work became increasingly codified at the same time, no precise description of the ‘proper’ workbench or its appropriate usage has yet been discovered. (The idea that such a description might exist is not as farfetched as it sounds, considering that the Millennial Laws mandated: “Floors in dwelling houses, if stained at all, should be of a reddish yellow, and shop floors should be of a yellowish red.”)
Since my first introduction to those two Shaker benches, I have looked at a dozen benches in other Shaker museums – Fruitlands in Harvard, Massachusetts, and the Shaker Musemn in Old Chatham, New York – as well as a few in private collections. While these represent only a fraction of the total number of Shaker workbenches that must have been made (every Shaker family had a woodworking shop, and the large families, such as the New Lebanon Church Family, had both a joiner’s and a cabinetmaker’s shop), certain patterns begin to emerge.
I chose to focus my attention on the Shaker workbench at Hancock Shaker Village, shown on p. 32 [and on the cover, above], for several reasons. It is well made and in good condition and does not appear to have been materially altered. In its dimensions and construction, it is as fine an example of a Shaker bench as any I have seen. And it is the only such bench I am aware of that remains in everyday use in a working, Shaker-style cabinet shop, albeit in an interpretive museum. I will describe details of other Shaker benches I have seen as they differ from the Hancock bench or further an understanding of it.
As my first impression suggested, Shaker benches tend to be massive. The Hancock benchtop is 11 ft. 9 in. long and 38 in. wide. The main body of the top is 3-3/4 in. thick. The smallest Shaker bench I found (at Fruitlands) is only 8 ft. 1 in. long. The largest (at Old Chatham) is 16 ft. 7 in. Most of the others are between 12 ft. and 15 ft. long. Indeed, it would seem that a small Shaker bench would be anything under 10 ft. long-several feet longer than what would be considered a large workbench today. (This may not have been unusual at the time, given the 18th-century Dominy workbenches [p. 13] and the French workbenches described by Roubo [p. 21].)
The top of the Hancock bench is comprised of three separate sections (as shown in the drawing on the facing page), built stoutly and purposefully. The front section is 16 in. wide and laminated from four pieces of 3-3/4-in.-wide maple or birch and a 1-in. strip of pine, glued and bolted together with four handforged bolts. (The 3-3/4-in.-square laminates would have been convenient to work with.) This area houses the dogholes and vises, and functions as the primary worksurface; maple or birch was used on this part of the bench, as it was on all the others I’ve seen. (Due to the age and patina of the bench, it is often difficult to determine the exact species of wood used; the woods I describe should be considered ‘educated guesses.’)
The midsection of the top is a single chunk of 9-1/4-in.-wide chestnut or oak. Although hard and dense, the open-grained wood provides a rougher benchtop texture than that of the front portion, and was presumably acceptable for a secondary worksurface. The 12-3/4-in.-wide back section of the top is made of knotty, hard pine. Both the middle and back sections are 1-3/4 in. thick, supported by spacers that rest on the base frame. Both ends are covered by simple, bolt-on end caps with captured nuts fed from the underside of the top. No tongue-and-groove or splined joints were used to attach the end caps. They were merely intended to conceal the end grain on the benchtop and, in the case of the end cap on the right end of the bench, to serve as the nut for the tail-vise benchscrew.
The very size of the enormous top offers some interesting clues to Shaker woodworking. “It’s never big enough,” according to Joel Seaman, the cabinetmaker who has been making restoration Shaker furniture on the Hancock bench for over ten years. Seaman could lay out all the parts of a cabinet on the top and still have room to use the vises.
The order and cleanliness of the Shakers is legendary, however, and it’s unlikely that the benches were built large to accommodate such expansive work habits. (Even the woodshed and tool room of a Shaker brother in Union Village, Ohio, was impeccably organized: ” … every stick of wood was exact in its place …. His little work shop exhibited the same care.”) In part, bench size may be explained by the institutional nature of the Shaker dwellings and the size of the joinery and furnishings required for them. In every community these buildings are imposing structures, with high ceilings and wide hallways. As shown in the photo below, some of the most remarkable case pieces stand over 8 ft. tall; built-in cupboards, housing dozens of drawers and cabinets, may run floor-to-ceiling and the length of a long hallway. All this work, plus the miles of pegboard circumnavigating the rooms, would have been more easily hand-planed and joined on a long bench. While there was some specialization among Shaker woodworkers, records indicate that a typical woodworker’s week would have been spent in a wide variety of pursuits. As the communities stabilized and eventually began to shrink, there would have been less new furniture (apart from chairs for sale) to build. At the same time, fewer craftsmen would have had to perform an even more varied range of tasks.
There is also reason to believe that more than one person worked at the bench at a time. Entries from the journals of Freegift Wells, an Elder and woodworker of considerable stature from Watervliet, New Yorrk, depict what was probably a typical relationship between a cabinetmaker and his apprentice. In these notes…Wells tells us that he installed a vise at the opposite end of his own workbench for his apprentice, Thomas Almond. There are also frequent references in other Shaker letters and journals to projects undertaken by two or more craftsmen working together.
Without exception, all the Shaker benches I’ve seen have an enclosed base, which contributes substantial mass and storage space, while it restricts any clamping to the ends or the narrow overhang along the front edge of the top. One thing I have never seen on a Shaker bench, but which is common on other benches out in the world, is an open tool tray. This tray, whether built into the top or between the stretchers of the base, collects debris and allows tools to knock about, damaging their edges. To an early Shaker, an open tray would have seemed like an open sewer-seductively convenient, perhaps, but unsanitary and hazardous.
Mother Ann could have been lecturing her woodworking followers when she said: ” … take good care of what you have. Provide places for your things, so that you may know where to find them at any time, day or by night …. “,Just as the walls of the Shakers’ dormitories are lined with built-in cupboards, so their workbenches are equipped with substantial cabinets that fully occupy the area between the legs and beneath the top. They are also unique in that the drawers and cabinets are usually built into the base framework, a tedious and exacting process. It would have been much easier to support the top with a basic four-leg structure and to install an independent tool-cabinet carcase between them. … In the case of the Shaker workbenches I have seen, the members of the carcase itself-posts, drawer dividers and the frame-and-panel ends-generally function as the legs and stretchers of the workbench. This may have been preferred for aesthetic reasons, or simply to lend continuous support to such a large worksurface.
On the Hancock bench, like most of the others, the base is divided into a succession of drawers that progress in size from the smallest on the top to the largest on the bottom. A portion of the base consists of open shelves, which are reserved for storage of items that won’t fit in the drawers (large tools or specially prepared stock, perhaps). These areas are always enclosed by doors. The insides of the door panels on the Hancock bench display remnants of different-color paint, indicating that they were borrowed from some other project and reincarnated in the workbench.
The order and cleanliness provided by the enclosed base cabinet had many practical dividends for the workbench. The problems of racking and sliding, which are inherent in an open-frame base, are automatically resolved by the rigidity of the casework and the sheer weight of the structure. Loaded with tools, as it presumably was, the cabinet anchored the whole bench to the floor and to move it would have taken a small army. Workbench storage would have made it easier to keep track of tools in a large community. “No one should take tools, belonging in charge of others, without obtaining liberty for the same … ,” the Millennial Laws decreed. “The wicked borrow and never return.”
Shane Orion Wiechnik (pronounced “Wichnick” by some and “Vee-eck-nik” by others) first came to my notice through his posts on Instagram. I wasn’t sure whether he was Australian, or an American in Australia (he is both at this point, as an American who married an Australian citizen), but we cleared that up when he asked me to be a guest on “This Crafted World,” the podcast he runs with English furniture maker Harry T. Morris. From the first time we spoke, I was impressed by the breadth of his interest in artifacts and the activities of making, as well as restoration – possibly even more so than in the objects he produces — as well as the ambitious ways he has devised to further his skills and knowledge. “I’m very excited about processes and materials – how humans work and have worked,” he says, “how we experiment with materials around us to develop techniques, the innate material intelligence we develop as we work with things, and how objects and crafts tell us about history.”
In this age of “take a class, then teach it,” I was charmed by Shane’s modesty about his skills, training and pretty much everything else, especially in view of the high-caliber work he shares through Instagram. It took me a few years to feel worthy of identifying myself as a cabinetmaker, even after my first-year training in furniture making through the City & Guilds system in England, where I was living at the time, and a few years’ experience of work in others’ shops. So Shane’s humility resonated – though based on the work I’ve seen to date, he’s due for a recalibration of where he stands as a craftsman.
Latest podcast.
Shane is especially interested in how craft “enables” – how it empowers us to function more responsibly and fully – especially those of us who have grown up in cultures that take the making of things for granted, and have accustomed so many of us to call others for repair work we might otherwise do for ourselves. “It’s a grounding for me,” he says of this enabling. “When you’re a teenager, you’re being a hooligan and making a mess because the world already existed [and was there for you]. You’re not really a part of it. But learning historic craft and engaging with materials and seeing that the world came from something, through a variety of processes by people just like you, grounds me in a kind of reality and makes the world something I can care about more and understand.”
Apothecary-style box Shane made as part of Mark Elliot’s “Essence of Cloud Art” Exhibition
Early life
Shane and his father.
Shane was born in 1987 at Fort Wainwright, a military base in Alaska near where his father was posted. His dad recently retired after a career in the Army. His mother worked in administration at medical offices for much of the time he was growing up, though he adds that when he was in high school she took a position as an emergency medical technician, which he says was “probably her favorite-ever job.”
Shane (center) with his (from left) brother, Damon; spouse, Andy; mother, Liana; and father, Stan.
When Shane was a kid, his father repaired cars as had his own father, but he didn’t train Shane to do that kind of work. Shane’s introduction to tools came through his involvement in theater at high school, after which he studied film and television production at college. That introduced him to set building. “I found set building and prop work to be enthralling,” he says. “I mostly watched others work, and it seemed so creative and like there were no rules, but still you ended up with something beautiful. My interaction with tools was poor and without any respect and understanding for what they were doing. If it wasn’t working you just forced it more or blamed your strength. If I wasn’t able to screw something in, as a scrawny kid, I assumed it was because I was weak, even though I was using a power drill or driver. Always wanting to hide weakness,” he adds, in a bit of customary self-deprecation. “I was never smart enough to ask someone how to use the tool properly.”
Shane (center) with his father and Damon.
The family in Indiana. Shane is the small one.
“I was a very frustrating high school student,” he says, adding that when he asked a teacher for a letter of recommendation to submit with his college applications, she said she couldn’t. He was obviously very smart but did not apply himself. Determined to get a degree, he started at a community college in Lebanon, New Hampshire, then attended classes at Keane State in New Hampshire. His older brother, Damon, had moved to Sydney several years earlier, at the age of 18. While there on a visit, Shane met Andy, an Australian who would later become his spouse. He moved to Sydney at 21 and graduated from Edith Cowan University in Perth.
When I asked what had inspired his interest in the history and culture of making – not to mention larger questions such as whether we are making too many things, instead of repairing those that still have decades of usefulness to offer – he credited his brother, who he says is quite well-read, especially in history and geography, and their father. “Through listening to them I hear a wide variety of perspectives,” Shane says. But “traveling to Australia had a huge impact” as well. “It’s one of those things, moving to another country, when you have to question everything. I’ve had a lot of those moments and dig down in them.” For example, he continues, it’s important to recognize that the world is made; it didn’t just spring into existence. “Growing up in the States, I had no connection to food or where it came from. My first girlfriend in high school lived on an old farm. They whipped cream – it didn’t come out of a can. It was a revelation to me.”
He also credits his academic education. Studying film and television entailed immersing himself in psychological and sociological theory, which introduced him to new ways of seeing.
Getting into Woodworking
After graduating with his bachelor’s degree, Shane moved to Boston in 2010 because his study visa expired. In many ways, he says, he had a strong friend group and connection in the States that he hadn’t felt while studying in Perth. He’d moved to Boston hoping that he could return to that life and build from it. “I had been thinking about returning to the States and reconnecting with friends and colleagues there,” he says. He took a job with an event décor company that handled props and sets for events. “The business was run by an art director and his wife who’d worked in Hollywood. If you were [in charge of] some sort of corporate event and wanted to have a Christmas party in Boston, they would do the décor.” They specialized in décor that was Boston-related, with lots of set-type props. “I mostly painted things then,” he laughs, referring to hours spent with a roller. What ignited his interest in woodworking was not the work alone, but two colleagues who became his friends. Ken Decost, he says, “was very particular, with high standards.” Sam Gabrielson “was very smart; he got very excited about solving problems.” Sam, who came from a furniture family with ties to the furniture industry in the States, was also very encouraging.
He worked on setting up a film business, “but the film business plans fell through. I struggled to find new work opportunities, and I barely saw the people I’d missed. I missed Andy a great deal and felt quite lost in what I was trying to do. Financial prospects also looked better in Australia, so Andy and I decided I should move back to Perth. I left the job to move to Western Australia and be with Andy. We got married in 2011 and brought me back on another visa until I could get permanent residency.”
Shane and Andy in front of the Ehekarussel Fountain in Nuremberg, Germany.
Of the time after this, he says, “I wasted five years of my life.” He struggled to find any kind of creative work in Perth and ended up working at a company that programmed radios (walkie-talkies) for mine sites, a job he stuck with for two years, even though, he says, “I absolutely hated it.” Andy had bought a house that was in seriously compromised condition and required a lot of work, but Shane says, “I was not nearly as capable a person as I wanted to be. Andy and I are not those people you see on YouTube and Instagram who really ‘tackle’ the house. We just lived in a crappy house for years.”
By the age of 26 he’d had enough of the job he hated. In search of work that would engage his interests and capabilities, he moved to Sydney and volunteered at a nonprofit environmental charity dedicated to reducing landfill waste. One arm of the operation involved repairing furniture, to extend its useful life. “I had no training other than what I had learned from the two carpenters, Sam and Ken, at the event décor job.” The workforce included some old farmers, along with one guy, Mitch Lavender, who was a big fan of Lost Art Press; they would share what they knew with Shane. “Mitch was a fitter and turner/metalworker, who was…setting up his own forge in his backyard. He was a big influence in transferring the prop building knowledge into grounded craft knowledge.” Shane and his housemate, Robbie Karmel, “a wonderful artist,” regularly watched “The Woodwright’s Shop” in the evenings, then worked on projects in the backyard until their neighbors yelled at them for making noise.
“I’d quit my job in Perth and been unemployed for two years. That was a genuinely awful life for me. When I came to Sydney I wasn’t certain that I was capable of working. Nine to five was something I wasn’t sure I could do for the rest of my life. But to pay rent I would wander around the alleys of Newtown [in New South Wales]. In Australia there’s a lot of furniture on the side of the road. So I would go around and find stuff that needed work.” Then he took it to the place where he volunteered and sold it through them. His rent was $250 (Australian dollars) a week; he lived off about $50 of groceries per week. With his income from fixing up old furniture, he just about broke even.
Eventually the manager of the nonprofit created a bona fide job for Shane – fixing stuff for resale. This position grew into something much bigger. They had started in a tiny shed attached to a building, then expanded into offering classes in carpentry and furniture repair “based on my extremely limited knowledge,” he interjects emphatically. The furniture program moved to another building with five benches and more space; they also invested in some basic machines. Over the course of five years it became a full-time job for Shane, managing the woodworking department of the charity. He taught an introduction to woodworking four nights a week, as well as on weekends. He was working six days a week – managing volunteers, fixing furniture and making furniture with no formal training.
“When I was first starting to make a job at [the nonprofit], we were looking at products I could make and sell. I was opposed to anything that wouldn’t last and wouldn’t be used. As an example, the manager wanted to make those wine bottle holders that lean and balance. I figured no one actually uses those for any period of time and they just get thrown away so what the hell is the point and why would we spend energy making them. Our first product ended up being a basic wooden crate, like an apple crate. It allowed us to use all kinds of discarded timbers. Around that time I went back to the States and visited a friend for dinner. She and her friends were going around the table talking about these amazing developments in their respective impressive careers. Then she turns to me and says ‘so… tell me more about these crates’ and I felt so dreadfully embarrassed.” Pretty ironic, when you consider that wooden crates can be handsome and practical ways to move and store things, not to mention last for many decades, if not centuries.
By the time Shane reached age 30, he decided it was time to learn the proper ways to do what he’d been doing with no training. He applied to West Dean College to study furniture restoration/conservation and gave his employer seven months’ notice. “It was in the week before finding out [whether I’d been accepted] that I started to panic. I was already training my replacement, Luke Mitchell, by that point.” Fortunately, he got in.
Shane made his way to England and arrived at West Dean. “I did not feel like I was allowed to be in that building,” he says of the school’s august history and surroundings. “I felt very uncomfortable there for about a week, but the students are all amazing.” He showed up “reluctantly” to the welcoming party but started talking shop immediately and soon felt right at home. “Edward James, the founder of the school, was friends with Salvador Dali and had a surrealist history; it stopped feeling intimidating very quickly. The school has very high standards. I loved it.”
Practice project at West Dean. (Better Shane than me, I say. Yikes.)
He relished his time in a workshop where he worked alongside others who were equally interested in learning – not just developing new woodworking and finishing techniques, but cultivating such important skills as how to judge the age of an object, which entails understanding how finishes and other materials change over time. In Sydney, he’d become obsessed with furniture conservation but “didn’t know anyone else who was as interested as I was.”
Project at West Dean.
At West Dean, he continues, “We got to work on actual objects. We went to Vienna and got to go behind the scenes at a couple of museums to their workshops, [as well as to see a couple of schools]. We went into the conservation labs of the MAK, where we saw a guy working on a Roentgen cabinet.” The conservator who was working on it was “super excited”; he showed them everything. “It was a very cool trip. Coming from America and going to Australia” – both of which he recognizes as “young [countries] in terms of furniture work as I know it – i.e. with respect to European tastes and woodworking,” despite their ancient indigenous cultures – “going to work on stuff in England and going across Europe to see the variety of high-end pieces really was mind blowing. But also weird, because I knew that I was probably going to come back to Sydney and work at my environmental charity.”
Urushi lacquer box conservation project at West Dean.
Gilding iron work.
Shane was at West Dean for one year, as that was all he could afford. Echoing others who have had formal training, he adds, “As much as you put in, you’d get out of it.”
Another benefit of his time at West Dean is that he met fellow student Harry T. Morris, who was in the furniture making program. More on that later.
Restoration/conservation of Boulle Desk.
Repairing a broken timber thread by hand.
Duplicate for a lost finial.
In 2019, Shane returned to Sydney. He picked up some work at the charity – “a very strange experience,” he notes, especially after his time at West Dean. He also started to work with a restorer who had studied at West Dean 40 years before. Shane tried to start his own business, but as has been the case for many of us, that didn’t work out.
Intent on further expanding his skills, as well as his appreciation for aspects of craft besides making things, he contacted International Conservation Services, Australia’s largest team of private conservators. The organization’s CEO had also been trained at West Dean. Shane visited the organization’s workshop; they had one furniture conservator, Oliver Hull, who is English and had worked there alone for the four years prior. They asked Shane if he’d like to join Oliver, and he started doing three or four days a week in the furniture conservation department. Since then he has added work for conservator John Gubbings, in addition to continuing his part-time work for what is now known as The Bower Reuse and Repair Centre, the nonprofit devoted to reducing waste. He worked there for 1-1/2 years and is looking into possibilities to help them further.
Multitasking at The Bower.
The Bigger Picture
As students at West Dean, Shane and Harry “clicked early on,” even though Harry is 12 years younger. They’d discuss their respective projects and soon found themselves “on the same wavelength about so many things.” Many nights they talked until 2 a.m., “often while playing cribbage.” Harry found a lot of value in the conversations and wanted to keep them up after graduation. Hence the idea of the podcast, “This Crafted World”. They have also kept up their friendship – in 2019 they traveled to Japan, where they took a course in Japanese carpentry that Shane considers foundational to his current outlook and practice. The course began with an entire week of sharpening. To make the trip affordable, the two shared a living space. “I was sleeping on the floor,” says Shane, “because it’s Japan, and it’s expensive there.”
Harry (left) and Shane. I’m calling this “the album cover.”
Their podcasts vary broadly, depending on who’s involved. While topics range from how the two of them work in their own daily lives and what craft means to them, they also explore larger dimensions of making, such as how to deal with “making for making’s sake.” As Shane puts it, “There’s already too much stuff!” – a view too rarely heard amid the current celebration of all things making. In their podcast, they leave discussion of nuts and bolts to others and focus on ideas. “We thought if there was anything we could add to the conversation, it would be the thoughts we both had about the world. As we grow and develop, anything that pops into our heads we turn into a subject and make a podcast.” It may sound random, but it’s not; I was blown away by the caliber of questions they asked in the podcast we did together, weirdly and serendipitously based on Shane’s discovery of “Historic Preservation in Indiana: Essays from the Field,” a book I’d put together and edited for the Indiana University Press about a decade ago.
Attending a Urushi/Maki-e session in Kyoto, Japan.
Souikoushya International Craft School in Kyoto, Japan.
Final joinery project at Souikoushya International Craft School in Kyoto, Japan.The name of the joint is Kanawa Tsugi.
Next Steps
Intent on expanding and refining his skills, as well as his exposure to other cultures and their methods of making and restoring, Shane is working on a “journeyman trip” of his own design, “provided that the world opens up.” Once again, he has given a generous seven months’ notice to his present employers. “There’s so much I don’t know how to do. Because I’ve found this [work] so late, I feel I need to rapidly catch up.” Next year he hopes to spend three months in the eastern United States, then spend some time in Europe, working in conservation and craft workshops for a minimum of two weeks each. So far, he has arrangements with shops in Virginia, New York and Boston, and is trying to arrange for a month in Netherlands, then France and the United Kingdom, in addition to Italy (and ideally also elsewhere). Again, to make this investment in his education more affordable – especially as he’s aware that he may not be able to get paid for his work in other countries due to the financial constraints at many shops, not to mention certain countries’ prohibition against non-citizens being paid for work – he is planning the trip around friends and craftspeople who can put him up in their homes.
“The journeyman thing doesn’t exist in this field,” he notes, adding that he applied for a George Alexander Fellowship through the International Specialist Skills Institute, which he just learned he has been granted. “In Australia we get a lot of stuff from different places,” he said, referring especially to antiques for restoration. The journeyman trip will help familiarize him with international differences, as well as subtleties in period and style, and so help him become a better restorer. He’s also keen to see how different people work. Beyond his interest in building his own skills, he would like to help others. “Every little thing I pick up, or every little thing I get better at, is something I can share with others. If I get better at that work, it informs another engagement with the world, whether teaching or writing or an Instagram post or the podcast. That makes everything feel so much more worth it.”
Harry (left) and Shane.
You can find the podcast we did together, “Not Capital-I Important,” here.
A double-Dutch tool chest, with hand-forged hardware from Horton Brasses.
Orion Henderson at Horton Brasses was kind enough to work with me on a custom, blacksmith-forged hardware kit for the Dutch tool chest, which includes two strap hinges, two chest lifts and a hasp. And because this iron is so gorgeous, I asked him to reverse the barrel on the hinges so that they attach to the exterior – if you’re using handmade hardware, might as well show it off. (Bonus: no hinge mortises to cut.)
All the pieces feature a “bean” motif; it appears on the end of the long hinge leaf, in the shape of the lifts’ backplates and on the top leaf of the hasp on the underside of the lid.
Both leaves of the hasp.
Hasp and staple.
The lifts come with square-head bolts (and matching washers and nuts) to fit 3/4″-thick material so that you can attach them through the sides, and safely use the lifts to actually lift the chest.
One of the chest lifts.
Because the hinges are attached on the outside, when the lid is open, there’s a gap at the back. It closes up, of course, when the lid is down.
A close-up of the back leaf. The hinges come with black, slotted screws.
Front leaf.
The full kit is $491.09, which is 25 percent less than were you to buy the pieces individually. (You can also pick only the hardware pieces you want, of course, though at no discount). Are there less expensive options? Of course – and I’ll give you lots of those in my forthcoming book on the Dutch tool chest. But I don’t think you’ll find a better price on blacksmith made, hand-forged hardware. And gosh does it look nice!
James Krenov and several students mill lumber in the backyard of the Krenovs’ home in Fort Bragg. Milling lumber from logs with the Alaskan chainsaw mill, as Robert Sperber had done with Krenov a decade earlier, became a part of the school’s curriculum and is still taught each year. Photo courtesy of the Krenov family.
After these experiences at the other schools, it seems [James] Krenov’s relocation to California remained his central focus. When Krenov returned to Mendocino in 1980 for his longest engagement yet, he brought Britta, having already considered the area as a possible place to resettle and start a new life. The couple stayed in a renovated water tower in Mendocino, and used their time in the area to look for a new home. They found it just north of Fort Bragg on Forest Lane. Tina remembers her mother being thrilled at the palm tree in the front yard, an enticing embodiment of the exotic locale, far away from her native Sweden where she had lived up to that point. The Krenovs were also taken with the coastal environment – Krenov had always lived in cities and towns with an active maritime culture, and the presence of working boats in the Noyo harbor was a comfortable familiarity. During their first visits, the Krenovs began a practice of walking along the steep headlands along the coast, one they continued on a daily basis for the next 30 years.
Creighton Hoke, after returning to Richmond, Va., to pack up his tools and quit his cabinetmaking job, had moved back to Mendocino in hopes of attending the school that fall. He arrived just a few weeks after attending the workshop and was dismayed to find what he perceived to be little progress in the establishment of the school. Initially, Hoke took on a foreman position at Brian Lee’s millwork shop, hoping to use the skills he had developed as the lead in a cabinet shop in Richmond. This employment quickly fell through – Hoke was living on Lee’s land, in a tree house that had been built by Crispin Hollinshead on the rural property a few years earlier. And the workshop was, in his recollection, literally knee deep in shavings from the machines. Hoke left his position in Lee’s shop, and was looking for another opportunity, still driven by the hope that in a year’s time, he might be enrolled in the still-unrealized woodworking school under Krenov.
Under Lee’s organization and efforts, several craftspeople from the workshops and the community gathered to make a formal pitch to the College of the Redwoods administration in the fall of 1980. The administration was, by all accounts, enthusiastic about the proposition. The establishment of a woodworking school meant a boost in income for the community college system, which was paid based on student hours; a six-day intensive over nine months constituted a sizable number of credit hours. With Krenov at the helm, it would also bring national exposure to the otherwise locally focused school system. The pitch that the group made also noted that the program would be exceptionally rewarding for the local community’s craftspeople, as well. For that community, tying the program to the community college network would also drastically reduce the tuition for students – for California residents, the program would only cost $100 for the nine months.
A plan of the school, redrawn by David Welter in 1997. Image courtesy of the Krenov School.
After this proposal to the board in Fort Bragg, a second meeting was held on the main campus of the College of the Redwoods, 150 miles north in Eureka. At this second meeting, Hoke and Hollinshead, who had been central in the initial meetings, were joined by Bob Winn and Judy Brooks, members of the College of the Redwoods staff in Fort Bragg who had been on the board that heard their initial proposal. Winn and Brooks were early champions of the proposed program and central members of the community in Fort Bragg.
“The fact is that many of us were disconnected from the larger community, and had no real profile among our neighbors aside from breaking down in our pickup trucks downtown,” Hoke remembers. Winn, Michael Burns’s close friend, was an English and history teacher at the Fort Bragg campus and a persuasive voice from the school system and community in support of the school, a role he continued to play in subsequent years. Brooks, who would become a trustee in the College of the Redwoods school system, also lent her voice in support of the program, and developed a strong relationship with the woodworking program. Both advocated for the promise of the woodworking program, and all were excited to find that the administration at the college was already on board with the plan.
After this positive meeting with the administration in Eureka, the program was approved, and a part-time position to prepare and execute the plans for the school was created. Where Brian Lee had been instrumental in bringing the group together and providing the enthusiasm for the organization, the Guild took a back seat to some of the newcomers, especially Hoke and Burns, who were more driven in their specific hopes of working with Krenov. Lee would continue on as a driving force among the Guild and woodworking community, but a falling out with Krenov and disagreements with some of the newcomers led him to pull away from the school.
“Almost everyone – maybe everyone, in fact – would have gone right on doing whatever it was they were already doing, had it not been for the original, organizing energy of Brian Lee,” Hoke remembers. “There wouldn’t have been a Guild, or the workshops with Krenov. No ad in Fine Woodworking for me to see and respond to.”
Hoke took the part-time job with the college to set up the program, eager to find meaningful employment after his mismatch with Lee’s commercial business, and moved into an office at the Fort Bragg campus of the College of the Redwoods. A small piece of property was purchased at the eastern edge of town, behind the local school district’s bus barn, and construction of the facilities was underway by the end of 1980. During the next several months, Hoke worked with the school’s construction supervisors to design the school’s workshop, a daunting task that included everything from ordering materials, specifying the layout of the windows for the best natural light and ordering the machinery.
One of dozens of pages of invoices, requests and budgets that Creighton Hoke composed for the opening of the school in 1980. Image courtesy of the Krenov School.
Gary Church, a member of the Guild, was contracted to build the tool cabinets, made in the same manner as Krenov’s own tool cabinet in the workshop in Bromma. One of Krenov’s students from his first stint at RIT, Hunter Kariher, was contracted to build the 22 workbenches; it’s interesting to note that Kariher also built the workbenches for Wendell Castle’s workshop school a few years earlier. The benches were built in the same European style that Krenov himself used and were shipped from Kariher’s Rochester workshop to Fort Bragg that summer.
By his own account, Hoke was driven by the dream of attending the school, but the task laid before him was far from simple. Krenov, over the phone, was a demanding presence, and threatened Hoke that he may not make the planned resettlement if the school wasn’t properly equipped. Krenov’s demands were informed by the ill-fated arrangements he had encountered at his prior engagements with RIT and BU, where he had found the facilities inadequate or the demands on him as a teacher either unfair or ill-informed. His exacting requirements were likely motivated by a hope that this last engagement would be a good fit.
That Christmas, Hoke and Burns worked together to lay out the building plan on graph paper on the kitchen table of Burns’s family’s home. Burns, whose experience in the trades and homebuilding, complemented Hoke’s now-nuanced understanding of Krenov’s expectations, and in the course of a day, the layout was finalized. Hoke worked closely with Larry Kavanaugh, the school’s director, to put these plans into place, and the two of them ordered the machinery and supplies for the program, specifying everything from window shades to lumber racks to the particular style of fluted dowel Krenov preferred. Kavanaugh, who became a close friend and advocate of Krenov’s in subsequent years, worked closely with Hoke through the process, and the purchase lists for equipment and materials show that the school was sparing little expense in equipping the workshop.
Hoke was also tasked with outlining a curriculum for the program – while the basic understanding among those involved was to simply follow Krenov’s lead, the administration required a detailed plan for the 1,728 credit hours that constituted the nine-month program. Here again, Hoke interpolated from Krenov’s books, and consulted with their author over the phone form a structured plan for the year.
One of the last, if not the last, photos of Krenov in his basement shop in Bromma. Two of his cabinets are visible on his bench in the background of the photo, and his “Writing Table of Italian Walnut” is in the foreground. The photo illustrates Krenov’s preferred surface treatment for such a piece; the luster of the waxed tabletop illustrates his preference for satin surfaces. Many of the wall cabinets he made earlier in the 1970s and late 1960s were left completely untreated. Photo by Rolf Salomonsson.
This process was a daunting one for Hoke, and over the course of the year a tradition developed that continued into the school’s weekly rituals. Michael Burns, who was helping Hoke develop the program and work with Krenov to build out the home he had bought the prior summer, arrived at his office to pull him away for therapeutic drinks outside a local liquor store. The beverage of choice was Carlsberg Elephants, a malt-liquor from the Danish brewery, and the “Elephants” meetings continued as a ritual on Friday evenings. The meetings began as a small group of the school’s community, who circled up their cars outside the Sprouse-Reitz variety store downtown. In later years, the meetings moved to the “North O’ Town” industrial park, where a small satellite shop was set up by the school’s faculty and students, and by the late 1980s, it finally relocated to the school, becoming a weekly get-together for the students and the extended community of alumni, supporters and family members growing in the area. After its informal beginnings in the parking lot, Krenov began attending the gatherings with Britta, and it was especially Britta’s constant presence that students remember. During the next several decades, Britta would only miss a handful of “Elephants.”
