Register now for GreenWood Wrights’Fest in Pittsboro, N.C., April 22-24, 2022 – a weekend of green woodworking fun, camping and family friendly entertainment. Revel in greenwood camaraderie as you learn traditional hand-tool skills, carving spoons and bowls, timber framing, basket making, steam bending, post-and-rung stool making and much more. Roy Underhill and other talented green woodworkers from around the country will be leading hands-on workshops, lectures and free demonstrations.
In addition to 26 workshops, there will be special events including a marketplace, and music and dance. Weekend tickets include one workshop, demos, nature walks, free camping, music, dancing and special events. Additional tickets for workshops will be available once admission tickets have been purchased. Food will be available on site, and beer will be available – in the evening, after knives and axes have been stowed – by the Red Moose Brewing Company.
“What I wouldn’t give to be there! Shaving away at a Slöjd-infused spoon while listening to Master Underhill weave his yarns sounds like a dream vacation to this wandering mule. Please give him my best affection, cheer, and a moderate serving of the Devil’s Biscuits™.” — Nick Offerman
Join us Saturday, April 16, 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. (837 Willard St., Covington, KY, 41011), for a release party for Kara Gebhart Uhl and Elin Manon’s “Cadi & the Cursed Oak.” Kara will read an excerpt from the book, give a short talk and answer questions. You’ll get to view Elin’s beautiful illustrations on large screens, as well as some pictures of real-life objects from the Nannau oak, and scenes from the book.
“Cadi & the Cursed Oak” will be for sale, as well as the entire line of Lost Art Press tools and books. You can also check out some stick chairs, similar to the ones Cadi’s dad builds in the book. Kara’s generous friend (and excellent cook) will also be serving homemade Welsh cakes with preserves and lemon curd, Welsh rarebit, and drinks. Kids are welcome!
The latest issue of Quercus Magazine is an important one. In the March/April 2022 issue, Editor Nick Gibbs pays tribute to chairmaker John Brown. It’s a heartfelt, first-person account of his work and friendship with JB, and it fills in a lot of interesting details about their working relationship.
Most importantly, it is an unromantic account, much like Chris Williams’s outstanding book, “Good Work.” As JB’s life recedes into the past, I have watched a lot of mythology get built up around his name, his words and his work.
I never met John Brown, but the people whose stories I trust come from his family, his close friends and his working associates, such as Gibbs and Williams.
As Gibbs writes, JB was a complex character. Occasionally contradictory at times in words and deeds. So Gibbs’s account is very much worth reading. As a bonus, it is beautifully written and is accompanied by essays from Williams, myself and Kenneth Kortemeier.
I won’t spoil it for you. If you are interested, please do pick up a copy.
In addition to the John Brown tribute, the issue is filled with a lot of practical hand-tool information. Some of it quirky, some of it fun. One of the things I like about Quercus is the variety of points of view, both geographically and skill-wise. Oh, and Gibbs likes the written word, so the balance between images and words is my speed.
No, Gibbs didn’t pay me to write this. Nor did he ask. In fact, I’m a little salty with him right now because he is putting me on a future cover. As many of you know, I would rather do naked somersaults down the middle of Main Strasse in Covington with lit sparklers in my butt than have my face appear in print. But I don’t want to be all like “Stop. Don’t. Come Back.”
One of our lump hammers that was engraved by Jen Bower for the fifth anniversary of Crucible Tools.
(Note: This piece is more about writing than it is about woodworking. So if you’re in a “chisel and mallet” mood, I’d move along. — CS)
When I come up with an idea for a book, it is so fragile that I’m afraid to speak it out loud.
Several years ago I decided to explain one of the core ideas behind “The Stick Chair Book” to friends to see if they could help me flesh out a couple things.
I explained my idea in five minutes. Then, for the next 45 minutes, I couldn’t get a word in edgewise as my idea was mutilated, and my reasoning behind it was slashed to pieces.
I walked away from the conversation a bit shaken – ashamed I had even brought up the idea. I put the book’s outline away for almost two years before I could bear to examine it again.
This is why I’m leery to talk about future book ideas. I have dozens. And whenever I’m interviewed for a podcast or have woodworking visitors, I get asked – with genuine curiosity – about the unwritten books ahead.
My answers are terrible, and so I usually pull a Bob Dylan. “I don’t know.” “A book about a snail who finds love in unlikely places.” “Another workbench book.”
The truth is, the only good answer to that question seems to be a completed manuscript. “Here, this is what I’m working on – fully fleshed out. Read it, then you can tell me if it’s a good idea or not.”
Book ideas are funny things. When they are just ideas, they can seem profoundly stupid or awesome. If I expose an idea to others too soon, it will almost certainly die, whither or change entirely. And that’s not a good thing. Diluting a crazy idea with someone else’s sanity might sound like a positive step. For me, it’s not. I’d rather a crazy idea remain purely bonkers, untouched, so that it can either take root or self-immolate.
Sometimes that means that I have to create a “urinal pitch” for my books as I write them. The urinal pitch is a couple of harmless sentences about the project that I can tell to friends and neighbors until the book comes out. The real idea remains subtext. How does that work? Here are some examples:
Urinal pitch: Here’s a furniture style that hasn’t been explored much. There are lots of interesting forms to build.
Subtext: Here’s the missing link between the 18th and 20th century furniture styles. Campaign furniture set the stage for Danish Modern, Mid-Century Modern and even Bauhaus. It’s a crime that this style is unacknowledged.
Urinal pitch: Roman workbenches are easy to build and surprisingly effective.
Subtext: There is an entire world of workholding out there if you are willing to sit down and use your body instead of vise screws. Speed comes from less workholding.
Today we started work on the workbench for the Cincinnati Museum Center’s new permanent exhibit, “Made in Cincinnati.” Our workbench is supposed to represent what woodworker Henry Boyd (1802-1886) might have used at his furniture business.
I decided to design a British-style joiner’s bench for the exhibit. It was tempting to build a German-style workbench, but Cincinnati’s German population was just beginning to blossom when Boyd was a young man. (In 1830, only 5 percent of the city’s population had German blood.)
So a British bench seemed more likely, based on the population at the time and the fact that this simple bench style was ubiquitous in 19th-century America. Also, Cincinnati was still a new city when Boyd was alive, so a bench that could be made quickly without a lot of material (or machinery, which entered Cincinnati in a big way circa 1850) made sense.
I know the bench above looks small. That’s because the floor space allotted to the workbench exhibit is only 20” x 60”. So I had to design the bench to fit the space and make it look realistic.
We’re building this bench with yellow pine, which was widely available in Cincinnati in the 19th century – it’s in all our old houses. We are building the bench using hide glue and cut nails – plus a linseed oil finish. In addition to the planing stop and holdfast holes, I’ll add a face vise powered by a wooden screw.
After we finish the bench, the museum’s staff will antique the piece so it looks shop-worn.
You can download my SketchUp drawing of the bench here. It requires five 10′-long 2x12s.
If you’d like to help us build Boyd’s bench, get in your car next Saturday (March 26) and join us at our Open Day in Covington, Ky. We’ll have the storefront open to the public from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., selling Lost Art Press books, Crucible tools and apparel. We’ll also assemble Boyd’s bench in the storefront. We welcome any and all gawkers and helpers.
P.S. Donating my time and money to this important exhibit is possible only because we hired Megan Fitzpatrick on full time. Without her help carrying our editorial load, I would have had to pass on this opportunity. And the reason we could hire Megan is because of your support. I’m not asking you to buy more stuff. I’m just saying thanks and letting you know that your support makes a difference.
