While you can’t see the inside of Washington, D.C.’s Old Post Office building (and Calvin Cobb’s clocktower workshop) until renovations are complete, for $1.50, you can have your own model.
And in fewer than two months, you can “see” the inside of the building through the eyes of “Calvin Cobb: Radio Woodworker!”
— Megan Fitzpatrick
p.s. Check out the other postcard scale models from Wurlington Press, too – cool.
Today, we got Jode Thompson’s final cover art for “Calvin Cobb: Radio Woodworker! A Novel with Measured Drawings” (thank you Jode – it looks awesome!).
But because I’m too much of a tease to share it with you – yet – I thought perhaps you’d like to look at other bad-ass women on motorcycles in the 19teens-’30s, thanks to Suzanne Ellison, who sent me the link.
Above is Sally Halterman, the first woman to have a motorcycle license in Washington, D.C. (Impressive and all…but she’s no Verdie – try riding a bike with a wooden leg, Sally! That said, nice boots.)
Below, the heels win. (It’s a 1933 shot of a woman trying out a Douglas on display.)
And here’s a woman who really could have been Verdie in 1917 – she’s a WWI dispatch rider (note the fellow in the sidecar hitching a ride). Verdie lost her leg riding a motorcycle during that war.
For a look at a wide range of women, motorcycles and women with dogs on motorcycles (plus a bonus priest and a bathing suit shot or two), click here.
And now I must get back to writing cover copy you simply can’t resist for “Calvin Cobb: Radio Woodworker!”
— Megan Fitzpatrick
p.s. Bonus shot from 1973…about which I’ll say nothing. Because they scare me, and could very well still be alive.
p.p.s. And here’s an interesting read about Britain’s women dispatch riders in WWII (again, thank you Suzanne).
The picture above is the clock tower of the Old Post Office building at the corner of Pennsylvania Ave. and 12th Street in Washington, D.C. Calvin Cobb’s workshop is behind the clock faces – so in his shop, he says, time runs backward.
But in reality, time marches relentlessly forward, and for the Old Post Office, that means stepping into new life as a hotel. Donald Trump is in the midst of developing the former government building into a luxury hotel, slated to open in 2016. It certainly beats razing the 1899 Richardsonian Romanesque structure.
And I suppose Calvin would be pleased – presumably, there is actual woodworking going on inside the walls of his old workshop as workers ready the hotel space for visitors.
The building, designed by Willoughby J. Edbrooke, was D.C.’s main post office for only 15 years; in 1914, the postal service relocated to a larger building near Union Station. What then became known as the “old” Post office was saved during the 1920s/1930s redevelopment of Federal Triangle only because there weren’t enough funds to tear it down (or perhaps because enough people realized how politically inexpedient it would be to spend money razing a perfectly sound building in the midst of the Great Depression).
In the early 1970s, there was another attempt to tear it down, but it was quickly (in political time) squelched by an ardent group of preservationists; in 1973, the Old Post Office was added to the National Register of Historic Places. In the late ’70s and early ’80s, a multi-stage renovation project commenced that resulted in a mix of federal office space and three retail levels (and eventual addition of an annex).
But it wasn’t successful. By 2000, the vacancy rate on the retail space was 80 percent, the annex was closed and there was no income.
Since then, there have been several efforts to renovate the space, including the “Old Post Office Building Redevelopment Act of 2008” (H.R. 5001), which eventually led to movement (following a lot of maneuvering by various agencies including the General Services Administration (GSA)…which is too complicated to boil down into just a few sentences).
In early 2012, the GSA announced it has chosen the Trump Organization as the potential redeveloper for plans that included a conference center, restaurants and 250+ hotel rooms, as well as a small museum dedicated to the history of the building, and the agreement to preserve the historic integrity of the building. And the National Park Service retains control over the clock tower and observation deck.
So if all goes according to plan, you’ll be able to visit Calvin’s workshop when the space reopens – whether or not you can afford the room rates.
But you’ll be able to read “Calvin Cobb: Radio Woodworker! A Novel with Measured Drawings” well before the Old Post Office Building is once again open to the public.
We’re 99 percent there, and will have everything off to the printer within three weeks. Linda Watts is making the final corrections to the measured drawings and finishing up design work on the end papers. Illustrator Jode Thompson is putting the finishing touches on the drawing that will become the dust jacket, Roy is working on copy for the back of the dust jacket, and Chris and I are writing copy for the dust-jacket flaps.
By tomorrow evening, I should be able to export a soup-to-nuts PDF of the project for final review, then it’s off to the printer and then to you.
— Megan Fitzpatrick
We’re in the homestretch with “Calvin Cobb: Radio Woodworker! A Novel with Measured Drawings.” Whew!
Today, I’m finishing the final full text edit and talking with the designer, Linda Watts, about the layout of the interior images and measured drawings (Linda, if you’re reading this, call me).
But perhaps most exciting is that I now know what Calvin and Verdie look like…because we’re nearing the finish line on the cover art. The cover I shared a few months ago? We couldn’t get the rights to manipulate the 1930s image – so we started over with a clean slate.
In hindsight, I’m glad; that gave us the freedom to present Calvin exactly as he appeared in Roy’s head (or at least the artist’s interpretation of how Calvin appeared in Roy’s head), and add other elements from the book to truly represent the story. (After all, despite the hoary saying, people often judge a book by its cover – so why not make it as perfect as possible?!)
We’ve been working with Jode Thompson, an illustrator based in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies, whose other clients include Tylenol, Coca-Cola and Temptations Cat Treats (three things I buy regularly – how could I resist?).
While searching for an artist, I was looking for someone who could produce a 1930s noir detective novel look (think dark pin-up) with just enough of a graphic element to make it look 21st century. Jode’s work fit the bill in spades. And she nailed the treatment from the get-go, despite my crazy design brief:
So there’s this 1930s government employee who’s the supervisor of a group of women, all of whom are WWI veterans who are in some way disfigured by the war – and they’re all stronger than Calvin. They study manure. And there’s this femme fatal of sorts, Kathryn Dale Harper, with whom Calvin is kinda obsessed. She’s a radio star, and helps Calvin start his own radio show about woodworking. Oh – and Washington, D.C., is a character of sorts, as is Colonial Williamsburg. And Calvin has a shop in the clock tower of the office building where he works. It’s all sort of noir mixed with slapstick, and there’s a motorcycle. And it’s very funny. Calvin looks like Jon Cusack, Kathryn Dale Harper looks like Barbara Stanwyck and Verdie looks like Susan Sarandon (but with a prosthetic leg).
OK – it was more coherent than that.
Anyway, I thought you might like to see the short progression toward the final cover art. At the top of this post is the initial sketch.
After deciding on the first sketch, we wanted something that said “woodworking” and asked Jode to add the Washington Monument so the location was visually clear. So I asked her to add a dovetail saw in Calvin’s hand. Naturally, Jode chose a Veritas saw (she’s Canadian, after all). Nice saw … but not for the 1930s. And anyway, a dovetail saw proved too small. (Also, while I like the boots and helmet on Verdie, it was decided by the two parties involved who notice these sorts of things that high heels would be sexier.)
So Jode sent back a revision with a panel saw modeled after an early Disston model, heels and a title (we’re still mulling over the lettering style, and where to put Roy’s name).
Damn near perfect. At this point, Jode is working on the clothing for both Verdie and Calvin (to make it look a little more 1930s) and I’ll be talking with her soon about the lettering. In the meantime, she added a splash of color.
So in a few more days, we should have the cover illustration completed, the interior layout done, back cover copy written and the whole thing ready for final review. Then it’s off to the printer (casebound, smyth-sewn binding, acid-free paper, printed in the U.S.A., etc. etc.).
It should be WILL be in the Lost Art Press store before Thanksgiving (United States Thanksgiving, not Canadian Thanksgiving – sorry Jode).
— Megan Fitzpatrick
I am embarking on a project to (slowly) repopulate my deck with a better grade of furniture. First up is a pair of small folding tables. The design is adapted from one published a few years ago in Popular Woodworking. The table shown here is 20″ square by 38″…er, no…24.5″ high.
Designing furniture that can survive being left outdoors in the sun and rain without eventually degrading into a pile of sticks (or worse) is a whole ’nother enchilada compared to ordinary furniture making. There is significant overlap with campaign furniture, with the added bonus that wood that gets rained on moves. A lot. In fact, outdoor furniture has much in common with boatbuilding, and so one looks to suppliers like Jamestown Distributors for fasteners and finishes, SailRite for upholstery fabrics, etc.
The woods used must be durable (resistant to decay), of course. That limits one’s choices to the usual suspects: teak, mahogany and its relatives, white oak, etc. Some “cedars” are also suitable, though their relatively low strength means that the various components usually need to be beefier than in this table. Other North American woods that would be suitable are black locust and honey mesquite, both of which can be hard to find but are probably worth looking for. I haven’t worked with mesquite, but it’s on my to-do list, as it is supposed to have exceptional dimensional stability with changing humidity.
These tables are in sapele, an African relative of mahogany that’s rated as “moderately durable.” To give them a leg up (pun intended) in terms of surviving the elements, I’ve fitted them out with “shoes” made of UHMW polyethylene. The shoes are held in by a 1/8″-diameter oak pin, which can easily be drilled out to allow for replacement, in case they wear out or the whole experiment turns out to have been a bad idea.
There are four legs and four top supports, and no two are exactly the same. They come in each of the four combinations of inner/outer and left/right mirror-image pairs. It got to be so confusing that I made up some custom labels before I drilled all of the holes and counterbores.
Chris isn’t the only one with hardware woes. Because the joints of this table need to allow folding for storage, the fasteners have to stay put without being fully snugged up to the wood (which in any case is only going to be a temporary condition as the wood shrinks and swells). So some kind of locking fastener is called for. The standard solution is a nylon-insert locknut (leftmost in the photo below). These work well, but I didn’t want to use them, for two reasons. The main reason is that they’re thick, quite a bit thicker than an ordinary hex nut, which would mean having to reduce the thickness of wood left at the bottom of the counterbores more than I was comfortable with. The secondary reason is that nylon is not UV stable, meaning that they would degrade over time (although, to be honest, so will the wood).
Back when I was in the cyclotron business, we used some aircraft-grade locknuts that were all stainless steel, and worked by having a thinned-down collar that looked like it had been slightly squished in a vise. I wasn’t able to find that kind of locknut, but I did find some at McMaster-Carr that were superficially similar. I ordered a pack of the center-lock style (second from the left). You can see a small indent on the flat; there’s a matching one on the other side, and together they deform the thread just enough to create a locking action. Or at least that’s how they’re supposed to work. I found the nuts to be wildly inconsistent from one to the next, and most barely locked at all.
So I ordered a pack of the top-lock style (third from the left). These have three small deformations on the top of the nut, which you can just barely make out in the photo. These turned out to be a lot more consistent than the center-lock variety, although there are a still a few bad apples in the pack. These are the ones I’m using in these tables, but to hedge my bets, I also ordered a pack of low-profile nylon-insert locknuts (rightmost), in case the top-lock nuts turned out as bad as the center-lock ones.
I haven’t yet applied any finish to the table. One option would be to leave it unfinished and let it go gray (like Megan the teak chair in the photo). I have a piece of sapele that’s been sitting outdoors for about eight years, and while there’s a fair bit of surface checking, it still looks pretty good, and remains structurally sound. I will most likely go with Osmo “One Coat Only.” I’m currently field-testing another piece of sapele with that on it, and it’s holding up well after a couple of months, but I’m going to see how it survives the winter before making a final decision. I decided early on against a traditional exterior varnish finish (e.g., Sikkens Cetol); I just can’t stand the look of varnish on unfilled open-grain woods, and I wasn’t about to try to use a pore filler on an outdoor piece.
In order to facilitate the inevitability of refinishing, the only parts of the table that are glued are the components of the two halves of the top. Everything else is bolted or screwed together. The top panels and the two leg braces are attached with #6-32 screws and brass inserts. The screws (also from McMaster-Carr) have a patch of locking goop that you can see in the photo. The makeshift insert installation tool on the right, along with a drill press to keep everything square, works better than any commercial tool that I’ve tried.
If I were to build these tables again, I’d increase the thickness of the top from 1/2″ to 9/16″ and reduce the thickness of the legs and supports from 3/4″ to 11/16″. I also realized after it was way too late that bronze saw nuts like these might be just the thing for the leg/support joints.
I think the most important lesson I learned, though, is that writing a blog post using an iPad (from a hotel room) is never a good idea…
–Steve Schafer