You may have read a few weeks ago about what happens when Chris gets bored with watching me teach. And what happens a day later when people share “advice” after said experiments. As far as I know, the bugs have not yet eaten what is now Roy Underhill’s Dutch tool chest. (And frankly, I’m a little offended that some of y’all think my dovetail joints aren’t tight enough to keep the bugs out….)
I didn’t bring the chest home, but we did bring home the test joint Chris made with Gummy Bear Glue. On Tuesday, I tried reversing the gummy glue using the same strategies one uses to reverse hide glue; both are gelatin, after all.
But first, I hit the snot out of it…again. We first tried to reverse the joint using nothing but force (a big hammer) the day after Chris glued the two pieces together. It didn’t work then, either. But you see can above that this time, the lump hammer produced the start of a split. Under extreme force, the wood is failing before the gummy glue. Just as it does with hide glue, PVA and other wood-appropriate mastics after they’ve fully cured.
I cut the test joint into three pieces before testing the gummy glue reversal with hot water, alcohol and a chisel.
I boiled water, then as quickly as possible sucked it into a syringe with an 18-gauge needle and inserted hot water into the joint on all sides. After letting it sit for a few minutes, I was able to pop the joint apart with a sharp hammer blow. Just as I’ve done numerous times to hide glue joints treated with hot water.
As you can see, it’s an almost dead-clear reversal – no wood failure in the joint (that teensy bit of failure visible at the top of the above picture is where the split was starting from the untreated hammer blow).
Next I tried inserting 190-proof grain alcohol into the joint. This crystalizes hide glue – and it did the same here. I waited two minutes or so before smacking the joint, and you can see below that the split isn’t quite as clear as with the water, with a few thin areas of wood failure visible (again, the obvious failure at the edge is the result of before-treatment beating).
Then, I used a wide chisel to try to cleanly split the joint without water or alcohol. Same as with any wood glue, there is obvious wood failure – if not as much as I’ve seen with traditional hide glue.
Is two weeks enough set-up time – and in winter, where it’s too cold for the bugs – for a proper test of the gummy glue? Maybe not. But clearly, it has some holding power. Regardless, I am 100-percent certain that Roy’s Dutch tool chest will not fall apart; have you seen the number of nails I use on those things?*
– Fitz
* Maybe you haven’t…but soon, very soon, you’ll be able to refer to a book on the subject. Just trying to head that question off at the pass…
In the background of the stock for my next ATC class is the half-done chest I started in the last class. Mocking me.
I don’t always build a chest alongside with my Anarchist’s Tool Chest classes – after all, I already have two full-size tool chests (one at the Lost Art Press shop and one at home), and there are only so many I can sell. But during my early December class, I decided to make one…partially at least. I always end up having to cede my bench and/or tools to students. Plus once the skirts are on, I spend a lot more time walking around than cutting my own joints. I’m terrified someone is going to send a flesh-cut flush-cut saw into a hand as they trim off protruding pins on the angled bits of the skirts. (The joints are cut before the bevel, so once the skirts are glued on, the “ears” get cut off.) I’ve cut into my own thenar eminence (that fleshy mound at the base of the thumb) more than once during this very operation. (I don’t mind my own blood, but I certainly don’t want to see student blood!)
A not-great picture of an “ear,” waiting to be to trimmed.
So, I have sitting on my bench right now a glued-up carcase with the rest of the bits stacked on top. Once I finish the chest exterior (hopefully this week), we’re going to film kitting out the interior with what we consider the standard tills and racks:
• three dovetailed tills and their runners • hole-y rack for thin pointy tools (chisels, screwdrivers and the like) – both with and without a rack behind it for hanging backsaws • saw till on the floor for panel saws and longer handsaws • moulding plane cubby
We might also show installing the hardware…if time allows and if I can stomach being on screen for that much longer.
I expect we’ll have the video available sometime in February.
Yes, I need to clean out my chest bottom and tills – but yes, I know where things are, thank you very much.
Also, I’ll have a full-sized ATC for sale soon-ish – shoot me an email if you’re interested. (I’m thinking of painting it blue.)
The following is excerpted from Chapter 3 of Christopher Schwarz’s “Campaign Furniture.”
For almost 200 years, simple and sturdy pieces of campaign furniture were used by people all over the globe, yet this remarkable furniture style is now almost unknown to most woodworkers and furniture designers.
“Campaign Furniture” seeks to restore this style to its proper place by introducing woodworkers to the simple lines, robust joinery and ingenious hardware that characterize campaign pieces. With more than 400 photos and drawings to explain the foundations of the style, the book provides plans for nine pieces of classic campaign furniture, from the classic stackable chests of drawers to folding Roorkee chairs and collapsible bookcases.
Few things separate a piece of campaign furniture from ordinary furniture as much as the hardware.
In fact, antique dealers (and the clueless) will pretty much call anything that has brass corner guards a “campaign” piece. You see this especially with writing slopes, a common piece of furniture for a couple centuries that every literate citizen used – not just military officers and colonists.
I consider this a minor mistake and gladly overlook it. After all, most of these writing slopes (which some people call lap desks) were built as tough as a campaign piece, using nice woods, hardware and leather. So they were designed to be taken on “campaign,” even if that was just to the park.
What is less forgivable is when an unscrupulous dealer calls screwed-together plywood pieces “campaign furniture” because someone has tacked on some corner guards or rectangular brass pulls. The truth is that the campaign style has had some minor revivals over the years. So you can find “campaign chests” (and end tables, coffee tables and entertainment units) from the 1970s.
So while authentic campaign furniture is something that goes far beyond its hardware, the brasses are a critical part of evaluating a piece. And for a maker, the brasses are one of the major expenses when building a piece. When you shop for hardware, it’s tempting to buy pulls that look OK from 10′, but feel like tin foil in the hand.
This short chapter is designed to introduce you to the different kinds of hardware and the ways they are made – cast, extruded, bent, welded and die-cast. And to teach you a bit about the strategies for installing inset pulls, corner guards and the other inset plates common on campaign pieces.
How Hardware is Made Like your tools, the brasses for your furniture can be made in many different ways. The process affects how the hardware looks, feels in the hand and costs.
A lot of campaign brasses I’ve studied have been cast. There are several ways to cast metal; the three most common methods for making hardware are sand casting, die-casting and investment casting (and their variants).
While all these casting processes are different in their details, they are the same in their basic idea: There is a mold made in the shape of the hardware and it is filled with molten metal. When the metal cools, the casting is finished and assembled.
All three types of casting have advantages and disadvantages for you, the furniture maker, and I’ll be covering them in some detail here. Most woodworkers are woefully uneducated about the way hardware is made and as a result make bad decisions. As you are about to see, a little education about metal casting can go a long way toward improving the quality of your projects. Let’s start with sand casting.
Fig. 3.2 Rough behind. One of the sure marks of sand casting is a rough surface finish left from the sand itself. On the backside of a pull, this is not a problem.
Sand Casting Many handplane bodies (and woodworking machines) are made using sand casting. It allows a maker to produce castings in an economical way. The downside to sand casting furniture hardware is that the surface finish is never nice enough to use as-is. The manufacturer usually needs to finish the visible surfaces and touch points. This can be labor- or time-intensive.
But what is more important for a furniture maker is that the finishing process can make the parts non-interchangeable, especially if the pieces are finished by hand. The upside is that hand-finished hardware with small variations can be beautiful.
Hardware made this way is called “sand cast” because a sand that is moistened with oil or chemicals is used in the casting process The casting begins with a “pattern,” which was traditionally wood, but is now typically aluminum for pieces of hardware. Then either the pattern or a matchplate or some other representation of the finished object is used to make depressions in two boxes of sand – one is called the cope and the other is called the drag. These two bits of sand are put together and the cavity is filled with molten metal via tubes called “sprues” in casting parlance. Gates are put into the matchplate or simply cut into the sand itself to allow the metal to flow completely through the part and out the other side. This helps the metal completely fill the cavity and helps prevent shrinkage (which is a cause of surface pitting).
Fig. 3.3 Not the same. These two pulls were made by the same maker in the same year and even sold in the same box. But they require completely different recesses. None of the curves (or even the straight lines) match.
After the metal hardens, the sand is removed (and reused) and the resulting metal shape is finished – by grinding, filing, polishing, machining or some combination of these processes. After grinding and/or filing, all cast parts are put into vibratory tumblers filled with a variety of different medias to get the surface finish smooth. The tumbling is the key process that turns a very rough casting into a smooth finished part. Machining typically takes place after tumbling.
Sand casting produces hardware that typically has a substantial feel. Its components are fairly thick. The unfinished faces of the hardware will typically be a bit coarse – like sand. (Proper tumbling eliminates this rough surface.)
Fig. 3.4 You get the idea. The level of detail with sand casting isn’t as fine as with some other methods, but it has served well for thousands of years.
These qualities are the nice things about sand-cast objects, but there are some downsides with sand-cast hardware. The level of detail isn’t as good as with other casting methods. So a sand-cast lion’s face will look a bit “blurrier” than one cast by other methods.
Also, the sand-casting process can result in some variance in dimensions. This is not a big deal at all if you install your hardware piece by piece. But if you want to have one router template for all your inset sand-cast pulls, you might want to closely examine the pulls first and see how close in size they are to one another.
Believe it or not, sand casting (the oldest form of casting, by far) can be done at home or even on the beach. Peter Follansbee once showed me ring pulls that he and other researchers at Plimoth Plantation made on the beach. And Thomas Lie-Nielsen fondly recalls how his father – a boatbuilder – would cast the keels of his boats on the beach.
Investment (Lost Wax) Casting Investment casting is a more complex process than sand casting, but it is suited for small objects and short runs, and results in some fine details that might not require additional finishing.
Fig. 3.5 I can read that. Investment casting allows a much higher resolution of detail straight from the mold, such as the manufacturer’s name cast onto this pull.
The process is complex (and can be more expensive than sand casting), but it starts with a pattern that goes through several stages of production involving creating a wax mold of the object that is then covered in a ceramic material.
Investment-cast pieces of hardware have few downsides, other than the fact that they are typically more expensive than a similar sand-cast object. They allow much finer detail than a sand-cast piece, can have a much thinner cross-section and have the presence of a sand-cast piece.
Orion Henderson, the owner of Horton Brasses, says that investment casting can be pretty economical for very small parts. He says the downside to investment casting is that the metal suffers from greater “shrink” – when the metal cools it gets smaller, leaving pitting; the part gets so small that sometimes the part is not usable. The molds need to be oversized to account for this. Because of this shrinkage, Henderson says, investment casting is fine for small parts but not as suitable for big pieces – a bed wrench for tightening bed bolts, for example.
Die-cast Hardware Die-cast objects get a bad rap. And that’s because die-casting has been used with lightweight raw materials to produce lightweight (sometimes featherweight) pieces of furniture hardware. They are inexpensive and look good from across the room. But once you grab the hardware, it can feel insubstantial.
Fig. 3.6 Die-cast. These die-cast pulls are perfectly consistent and inexpensive, but lightweight. One of the advantages of die-casting is that it is easy to cast in threads and other details that might otherwise have to be machined in a sand casting or investment casting.
Like all casting processes, die-casting has a mold – in this case a two-part metal mold called a die that is machined with hollow areas. Molten metal is injected under pressure to fill the hollow areas in the die. Then the two pieces of the die are mechanically separated and the finished part is ejected.
Die-casting produces parts that require little or no finishing. The parts are remarkably consistent. You can make many of them in a minute, and the individual units are inexpensive as a result. So why do some people dislike the process?
Like all technology, die-casting isn’t the problem. It’s how it is employed.
Fig. 3.7 Ejector-pin marks. The small circles are the marks of a die-cast object. Look for them on your Hot Wheels.
You can use copper (or even lead) in die-casting to make a nice and heavy piece of hardware. (In fact, die-casting was invented in the early 19th century to make movable lead type for printing presses.) But in many instances, the manufacturer will use lightweight metals, such as aluminum, tin, zinc or Zamak, an alloy of lightweight metals.
To be honest, these lightweight metals are fine for some pieces of hardware. A drawer knob, for example, can be just fine when it is die-cast. But when you get into pieces of hardware that have movable parts that you grab, such as a drawer pull, the whole thing can feel chintzy.
You can identify die-cast pieces of hardware easily, even if its catalog description doesn’t mention the process. The finished casting is pushed out of the die by ejector pins – movable rods inside the die. These pins leave telltale round marks on the hardware. Look for them on the back of the hardware, and you’ll start to see them everywhere.
Bent Plate When it comes to the corner guards that are prevalent in campaign furniture, many modern manufacturers will use thin brass plate that is bent and sometimes welded at the corners.
Fig. 3.8 Or bend it. Bending your corner guards can be easier than casting them. So it’s a common practice with this piece of hardware. The big difference is that the corner is radiused instead of sharp.
This might sound like a cheap shortcut. It indeed is a shortcut compared to cast-brass corner guards, but it can be a good shortcut.
The plate is more consistent in thickness than any piece of sand-cast hardware. So installing it is easier because you can use one depth setting on your router plane or electric router.
The downside to using brass plate is that the corners of the hardware – both the inside corners and outside corners – are rounded because of the bending process. The cast corner guards can have sharp inside and outside corners. It’s a subtle difference, but it is noticeable once you are sensitive to it.
Fig. 3.9 Mind the gap. This corner guard isn’t welded at the corner. This makes it easy to manufacture, less expensive and wrong-looking.
If you do use hardware made from bent plate (and I do), look for welds at the corners when the hardware covers three surfaces, such as when you have a brass guard designed for the top corners of a chest. A quality guard will be bent then welded. Some of the less expensive guards are simply bent with no weld. This looks just weird and wrong to my eye.
Extruded Hardware Some of the hardware you’ll see in catalogs will indicate it is “extruded.” Extruding hardware parts is analogous to making macaroni or using the Fuzzy Pumper Barbershop with Play-Doh. Metal (cold or hot) is pushed through a die to make a finished shape that is then cut up to finished lengths.
Fig. 3.10 Pretty, standard. Most quality cabinet hinges are extruded these days, though you will still see some that are stamped out then bent. Oh, and there are still blacksmith-made hinges, too.
Many quality hinges are made with extrusion. The leaf and barrel are extruded. Then they are cut to length and machined to accept screws. The only downside to extruded hardware is its price.
Choosing Hardware So why is all this talk about hardware manufacturing important? I think that hardware can make or break a piece of campaign furniture. A zinc die-cast drawer pull on a teak chest is like a nugget ring on a millionaire’s hand.
When I am shopping for hardware for a piece of campaign furniture, I like to purchase a sample pull, hinge or corner guard to inspect the quality before dropping hundreds of dollars on a suite for a chest or trunk.
The samples also help me ensure that the color and finish on the hardware will work. And the color of the brass is another can of worms we need to open.
If you buy your hardware from several sources for one piece of furniture, the chance of them matching in color is tiny. And the last thing I want to do after spending $700 on pulls is to open a chemistry set to strip the hardware pieces and color them.
If you like dabbling in solvents and other noxious fumes, you can easily find information on how to strip the lacquer from your hardware and color it with ammonia fumes. Me, I have enough volatile organic compounds in my life. I’d rather leave that to other people.
That’s why I take one of two strategies when buying hardware: Either I buy all the pieces from one maker to ensure they have a consistent color, or I ask (nicely) if the hardware seller can color the pieces. The better hardware merchants are happy to do this for you. In fact, some will even bring in hardware from other sources and color your entire suite so everything looks the same. It might cost a little more to go this route, but the results are worth it.
One last note about buying hardware and I’ll shut up: I think slotted screws are really the only kind of screw that looks good on a campaign piece. Phillips screws are a 1930s invention that were intended for assembling cars – not fine furniture.
Once you get your hardware in hand, you can build the piece and install the pulls, knobs and corner guards. There are several strategies for creating the recesses for the hardware, ranging from a chisel and a mallet all the way up to templates for the electric router and pattern-cutting bits.
After a week of teaching at the Woodwright’s School, of course we felt compelled to post an excerpt from Roy Underhill’s “Calvin Cobb: Radio Woodworker! A Novel With Measured Drawings.” Above is one of those measured drawings: Roy’s plan for a mallet featuring a “rising dovetail,” from “Grandpa Sam’s Woodshop of the Air.” To download it, click here.
Below is an excerpt from the novel.
– Fitz
The next morning, twenty minutes after Hattersley’s telephone call, Calvin heard the honk of the car horn eight floors below. He leaned out his window and watched three slim, pale-armed girls emerge from the car, their shadows racked in zigzags up the steps. The driver was already unloading another six mail sacks from the trunk. Linda’s graying hair, centered on her white-bloused shoulders, bounced down the steps to meet them. Anne and Verdie pushed a hand cart up the sidewalk and spoke to the driver, who quickly set to stacking the sacks on the cart. The driver leaned to speak into Verdie’s ear over the traffic noise. She turned her head up and pointed up at the office. She spotted Calvin and waved just as a mocking bird flew between them at the fifth floor level. He waved back and withdrew into the office, dropping back into his chair before his Abraham Lincoln—with Mallets Towards None script.
He stared at the grungy keys on his Underwood portable and jogged the M key, threatening the paper with the lower case strike. Somehow, the right combination of keystrokes would give him the story he needed. The door opened, letting in the hard, unmuffled noise of the machines. Ellen rolled in and laid two piles of unfolded letters on his desk. One pile required his personal response to woodworking questions and the others were just nice comments. The piles of letters on his desk already nagged at him.
He had forgotten which pile was which and he thumbed through one to read a random penciled letter.
“Dear Grandpa Sam, Sinse father died we have not ben abel to mark his grave with respect. He was a wood worker and carpeter and showd us how to make things too. We have used youre blessings to have a stone cut…”
He pulled the typewriter ribbon shift lever up and down, then lifted the cover and stared at the ribbon. His script was still nothing more than a title. Maybe Lincoln made this puzzle mallet when working as a lawyer and gave it to judges where his cases might be heard. He stuffed the letters into his top desk drawer. Another knock at the door and a Western Union boy entered with a telegram.
Calvin signed for it, tipped the boy fifteen cents and withdrew into that tight dread of wondering who had died. “TO CALVIN COBB STOP THANK YOU STOP BLESS YOU STOP FROM THE HOYDEN FAMILY SPRINGFIELD IILINOIS STOP.” He turned it over. Blank. He read the message again. Nice, but he wished all these folks would just send a sentence of a story. Does he have to telegraph back? “YOU ARE KIND TO THANK ME BUT DON’T STOP” Another quiet knocking at the door.
“Yes?”
Linda stuck her head around the door with her finger held to her lips, she glanced back out and then wiggled her finger, motioning for him to follow her. He rose quietly and joined her behind a column in the hall. “Fifth floor,” she whispered, “the far corner.”
Calvin lowered his head enough to see under the railing. Across the huge atrium, in the corner of a floor of empty offices, two men stood quietly talking and referring casually to a clipboard of papers. Often enough, though, one or the other of them would sneak a glance up in their direction. Calvin leaned slowly back towards Linda. “Burroughs?” he whispered.
She shook her head. “Their hats aren’t right for Burroughs,” she whispered. “Too small.”
He leaned out again; the two men were walking down the steps toward the south doors. “GAO?”
Linda smiled. “GAO’s covered.” The creaking of doors echoed up to them and she resumed a normal voice. “Probably just IRS stiffs from next door checking out the new girls. Anyway, I just thought it was funny.”
“Well, let me know if they come back.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll chase ’em off plenty fast.” She followed Calvin back into his office, unable to see the hangdog look on his face.
The paper in his typewriter was totally blank, but Calvin pulled it out as if it were covered with errors. “What were you saying about the GAO not being a problem?”
She nodded slyly at him. “Guardian angels take the most unexpected forms.” She pointed back out the door. “And those two stiffs down there? Probably just more fans of your show.”
He bounced his pencil on its eraser, shaking his head at her efforts to cheer him.
She pondered him for a moment. “Have you been following the ratings of your show? The Hoopers?”
“Nah, just dealing with these letters,” he said flatly. “I guess we’re doing pretty good.”
A breeze fluttered papers on his windowsill. Linda seemed to suddenly inflate with the summer air. “Why don’t you get out of here? Go work outside for the afternoon! It’s a beautiful day out there.”
He sighed. “Maybe I will. I need to drop off the stamps anyway, we’ve got to keep ahead on the Treasury refunds.”
She stuffed blank paper onto a clipboard and thrust it into his hands. “You just go work on your script. I don’t want to see you back here ’til five o’clock. Alright?”
“Alright, sure.”
“But whatever you write today, I’ll need to type into the punch cards tonight. So you be sure to come back before you go home. Alright?”
“Alright.” He stood to attention and saluted. “Yes m’am.” She scurried him out the door.
He dropped the stamps off at the new Post Office, picked up a ham sandwich for lunch at the commissary and found a bench on the Mall under an elm tree. He sat facing the Capitol, its ivory dome merging into the hazy sky. Between bites of his sandwich, he scribbled notes and dialogue lines. Tourists walked by—bicyclists, dog-walking couples, groups of foreign tourists—all kicking up trails of dust. He wiped the nib of his pen on a fuzzy elm leaf and settled back against the splintering rails of the bench. Workmen drove stakes into the ground, setting creosote-stained snow fences around a cluster of small wooden huts. He pondered this for a moment and then realized that they were preparations for next week’s Fourth of July crowds.
He stared at his paper. Wind stirred the tree and sent puzzle pieces of light dancing across the page. The dovetailed mallet was obviously a mistake. A rising dovetail joint was hard enough to understand when you could hold one in your hands and look at it—there was simply no way to describe it on radio. He looked up as a blue LaSalle pulling a streamlined travel trailer made slow passage down Constitution Avenue. Kathryn would love that. They could ride to the beach. She could take photographs of dune grasses while he typed his stories at a little table inside. Then she would come back in and he would brush all the sand from her feet.
“Mr. Cobb?”
Calvin turned with a start at the woman’s voice and slid half off the bench.
“Mr. Cobb? Excuse me, are you Mr. Cobb? We’re sorry to bother you, but the lady at your office said you might be out here.” The voice came from a small but strikingly proportioned woman in her thirties who was standing next to a tall young man who was uncomfortable with his own height.
Calvin staggered to his feet and belched throat-burning acid. “Calvin Cobb? No.” He glanced around to see who else might be watching. He looked back at them to see that, instead of disappointment, they were nodding and smiling to one another.
“Oh it is you! My son and I listen to you together. I’d recognize your voice anywhere! I know you’re trying to keep…discreet…but we both wanted to tell you how much we appreciate what you have done for us!” The young man grinned dumbly at Calvin until his mother prompted him. “Tell Mr. Cobb what you are going to do, Tad.”
“I’m going to Iowa State. I’m going to study to be a veterinarian, but I’m going to keep on working wood too.”
“That’s good,” said Calvin, too weakly to be heard above the traffic. “Woodworking is good.”
“We were able to come to visit his grandparents in Baltimore because of you. We drove all the way from Moline. I had no idea we would find you here. Oh, and I want you to know, Alan makes everything, he doesn’t just send for the plans like you know some people must do.”
“I’m glad,” said Calvin, now desperately thirsty.
“Well, I can see you were trying to get some rest, but it wouldn’t have been right for us not to thank you.”
“Well.” Calvin thought hard, breathed deep. “My pleasure. I’m glad you enjoy the show,” he said finally.
“Ohhh, you sound just like you do on the radio!” She smiled, tilted her head and flashed her eyebrows at him. She offered her hand. “T’ain’t there nuthin’ ah ken do? I love that!”
Her son, beaming, reached out his hand. “Thank you, sir, and I want you to know that I work hard to do good work.”
“That’s good!” said Calvin. “Keep it up!”
The mother turned away, tilting her head back over her shoulder. “We’ll let you work now. Bye. We’ll let you… ‘tend to your whittlin’!”
This had to be a dream. This attractive woman was flirting with him! She was now beside a taxi. She smiled again when she saw him looking. A friendly sunbeam defined her legs through her skirt for an instant. He glanced at his page with the sketches of the useless puzzle mallet.
In today’s glimpse at the Covington Mechanical Library (CML), let’s have a look at some books compiled from magazine articles and by magazine authors, an old “must have,” woodworking humor and the first of our fiction books.
I remember seeing a few volumes from the Fine Woodworking Techniques series (above on the left) on the hard-to-reach shelves in my grandfather’s tiny workshop, tucked behind his Shopsmith Mark V. The series began in 1978, with articles pulled from the first seven issues of Fine Woodworking magazine, and ran through 1987’s Volume 9, featuring articles from issues 50-55. Tucked in among them is Fine Woodworking magazine’s 1970 “Design Book Two,” which, according to the cover features “1,150 photographs of the best work in wood by 1,000 craftsmen.”
I ought to swap the positions of Michael Pekovich’s “The Why & How of Woodworking” (Taunton, 2018) and Glen Huey’s “Building Fine Furniture” (Popular Woodworking, 2003) – and move Garrett Hack’s “The Handplane Book” (Taunton, 1997), Dennis Zongker’s “Wooden Boxes (Taunton 2013) and Thomas J. MacDonald’s “Rough Cut Woodworking with Tommy Mac” (Taunton, 2011) to the far left. Oh – and move John L. Feirer’s “Furniture & Cabinet Making” (Scribner’s, 1983 – a must-have at one time, but now perhaps a bit musty in its technique instruction…but not so old-school as to qualify as a classic) to the far right. That would pull together all the Fine Woodworking Magazine-related titles, and collect the Popular WoodworkingMagazine-related books in a row (well – all the ones on this shelf, anyway).
The following, until otherwise noted, are from Popular Woodworking – and we have them because – as you may know – Chris and I both spent some time on that magazine’s staff. As noted above, we start with Huey’s “Building Fine Furniture,” followed by his “Building 18th-century American Furniture” (2009) and “Fine Furniture for a Lifetime” (2002). (If you want to know what Huey is up to these days, click here.)
Then we have Jeff Miller’s “The Foundations of Better Woodworking” (2012), Jim Tolpin’s “The New Traditional Woodworker” (2011), and a reprint of two vintage books in one volume: “The Art of Mitring” and “Carpentry and Joinery for Amateurs” – and gosh does that one simultaneously raise my hackles and sadden me. (The short story: It was supposed to be a Smythe-sewn binding with a cloth cover, such as Lost Art Press produces. When it came in, the cover was “cloth-like” and the binding was glued. Someone above me at PW’s parent company had decided, without even the courtesy of telling me, to “save money.” I’m still mad as heck about it. But I digress…)
I’ve already mentioned Feirer, so we’ll skip to Tolpin’s “Table Saw Magic” (1999) – a long-time woodworking hot seller (and a title that, in light of his current work in hand tools and artisan geometry, never fails to surprise me anew when I see it.) And I see now a Sterling book that needs to move to the far right: “Great Folk Instruments to Make & Play” by Dennis Waring (1999) – I’m not sure why we have that one; perhaps Chris went through an instrument-making phase that I don’t know about?
It’s back to Popular Woodworking books with “Build Your Own Contemporary Furniture” (2002) – a title lead-in that I’ve always found a bit silly…as if you might otherwise inadvertently build your neighbor’s contemporary furniture. Alongside those now-not-contemporary designs, we have “Building Beautiful Boxes With Your Band Saw” (2015) by Lois Keener Ventura – and with one book between is her “Sculpted Band Saw Boxes” (2008) – I’ll have to put those together on Monday.
Separating Ventura’s Books is another not-PW book, “Nomadic Furniture 2” by James Hennessey and Victor Papenak (moving that to the right, too!). It’s a 1974 delight from Pantheon Books, featuring hand-drawn plans for simple furniture made from inexpensive and recycled materials – stuff that folds flat or breaks down for easy moving. Then we have “Mid-century Modern Furniture” by Michael Crow (PW 2015) followed by “Nick Engler’s Woodworking Wisdom” (Rodale, 1999). Though it’s not published by PW, I feel it’s in the right place; Engler wrote for PW for years.
Tom Fidgen’s “Made by Hand” (PW 2009) is next; I liked his clever traveling toolbox therein. And for some reason, we then have a second copy of Tolpin’s “New Traditional Woodworker” (it might make its way to the blems/used shelf – it’s a good book, but we don’t need two copies). Then I’ll ignore the interloper in favor of “Building Traditional Country Furniture” (2001), which was compiled from PW.
And that completes – until we get to the fiction title – the PW books in this bay. That “interloper” above is Rick Mastelli and John Kelsey’s “Tradition in Contemporary Furniture” from the Furniture Society (2001). We also have our friend Vic Tesolin’s “The Minimalist Woodworker” (Spring House Press, 2015) and “Projects from The Minimalist Woodworker” (Blue Hills Press, 2021). Those are followed by a Sterling edition (2000) of David Finck’s “Making & Mastering Wood Planes” (we offer the revised edition).
At the end of the non-fiction section is Nick Offerman’s delightful “Good Clean Fun” (Dutton, 2016) – a book that I think likely got more formerly non-woodworkers interested in the craft than any other, because of Offerman’s massive fan base. And it’s a hilarious read (seriously – I’ve never laughed so much while reading a woodworking book – highly recommended).
And finally, that fiction title: Sal Maccarone’s “How to Make $40,000 a Year with Your Woodworking” (PW 1998). In today’s dollar’s, that title would be “How to Make $73,000 a Year with Your Woodworking.” More hilarity!
– Fitz
p.s. This is the seventh post in the Covington Mechanical Library tour. To see the earlier ones, click on “Categories” on the right rail, and drop down to “Mechanical Library.” Or click here.
