Today the headline was supposed to be: ‘The Anarchist’s Design Book’ Ready for Pre-publication Ordering.
But instead it should read: Schwartz Snuffs Six; Dies in Cocaine Brawl.
The final copperplates from Briony Morrow-Cribbs were guaranteed to arrive before noon today. At 1 p.m. I searched the house for horse sedatives and drove to the post office for some help.
“We don’t know where the package is,” said the clerk, who has honestly been very helpful during my 20 years here. “We’ll call you.”
By 5 p.m., the post office discovered that someone in Vermont had neglected to put the package on a truck. It was still in the building where Briony had dropped it off. In the meantime, Briony today made a second batch of plates (shown above) and is shipping them out via Sloth Express.
We shall see who wins the race.
If the plates arrive tomorrow, we’ll open ordering once the book is uploaded to the printer. Or it might be Friday. Or, if not then, someone will need to lure me out from under the dining table with a piece of raw meat and a net.
With the plaster complete (gosh it’s gorgeous), we are in a mad dash to get the floor ready for the new 3/4” oak floor – the material arrives on Thursday.
Plan A: Yank all the staples from the current underlayment. Level it. Put the new oak over that.
Why Plan A sucked hind warts: The linoleum tiles wouldn’t let the staples go.
Plan B: Remove the linoleum tile and its underlayment.
Why Plan B is when the matador battles the blind cobbler: Another 20 cubic yards of garbage. And two days of sawing underlayment and yanking it out.
So I hired a local carpenter/musician to help me – Mike Sadoff. And he’s a frickin’ worker bee. After two days of work we are ahead of schedule. After we pulled off all the modern layers we made it to the original yellow-pine floor. (I measured how much crap we have pulled out since September; it’s almost 3” of thickness.)
And we found that in the front room, the floorboards run diagonally. (Yes, it’s the original floor and not the subfloor. The subfloor runs vertical to the long axis of the building. This true floor is diagonal and is over that. And it has finish on it.)
The diagonal changes the feel of the whole room. It draws the eye right to the bar.
So I called the floor installers. Can you put my floor in on the slant? Yes. But it will cost an extra $900.
Yikes.
I said yes, and I think I’ll have to sell some tools to make this happen.
Two other fun events today: We removed the bar’s original side door, which is bricked over. The door is a gorgeous Victorian example. Original paint. And a cool Chesterfields cigarette sign to boot. We’re going to remove the bricks and put it back as-is. Too awesome.
Second fun event: This building is a man-eater. Mike was repairing the rotted subfloor by the bar and it swallowed him up – trying to take him to the basement. He survived unhurt.
Tomorrow, Mike, John and I are going to finish installing the underlayment. And then drink a gallon of beer each.
Several customers have asked when we are going to open our storefront in Covington, Ky. Here is the schedule for 2016.
Starting March 12, the shop at 837 Willard St. will be open for visitors and customers on every second Saturday of the month, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. We’ll carry all of our titles there, plus whatever else we might have lying around that’s odd or special.
We may or may not carry apparel. Right now all our shirts, hats and sweatshirts are being made on demand. But we might do a special small run of garments for the store. Stay tuned.
You are probably thinking: Are they nuts? Open on only one day of the month?
Yup. We don’t have employees, John lives 100 miles away and I can’t play “store” while building furniture, editing, writing, blogging, designing and dog knows what else. So if you are planning a drive through the area, here’s the schedule for 2016 if you’d like to stop by to talk, tour the shop or pick up some books.
March 12 (this is in conjunction with the Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Event down the street at Braxton brewing)
April 9
May 14
June 11
July 9
August 13
September 10
October 8
November 12
December 10
We likely will have a book-release party or two this year as well. Details to follow.
As you can see from the photo above, we still have a long way to go to make the place presentable. The plaster work is complete – both front rooms have been completely re-plastered to look as they would have in 1890. We’re installing new windows on the 9th Street side of the building that were bricked over (the city was happy to approve this restoration). This will bring some southern light into the shop area. And we’re removing the bars from the windows so we can escape in case of a fire.
Today I am headed down to start repair on the subfloor – the solid white-oak flooring arrives on Jan. 14. A section of the subfloor by the bar is rotted from an old sink leak. I also need to remove 1,239 staples from the existing subfloor, so I’m surprising Lucy today with an anniversary present of kneepads and fencing pliers.
Once you become aware of staked furniture, you will find it everywhere. Today I was finishing up a marathon 12-hour session of editing “The Woodworker: The Charles Hayward Years” and stumbled on this short article from the February 1964 issue.
It’s billed as an exercise for beginning turners. And while I’d probably add some rake and splay to the legs, it’s a pretty charming piece as-is.
The most interesting detail of its construction is that the author recommends you cut the mortises before turning the legs. That works when you have 90° angles everywhere, but is a mess when you get into compound-angle joinery.
Luckily in “The Anarchist’s Design Book,” I have a way of dealing with this sort of compound-angle joint that is embarrassingly simple. Here’s a clue: Buy a set of spade bits and an extension for your drill.
One of the benefits of not teaching this year (or the next) is that I have some extra time to visit friends and hang out in their shops. Yesterday I visited my friend and toolmaker Raney Nelson of Daed Toolworks at his shop in Greenfield, Ind., a small burg outside of Indianapolis.
Raney makes bad-ass planes, mostly miters and coffin smoothing planes, and I was one of his first customers to order a miter plane from him when he opened his doors of business after years of research and development.
The infill miter I own from him is superb. It’s so nice that it was one of the few high-end tools I didn’t sell off when I left my job at Popular Woodworking Magazine and radically reduced my tool inventory.
Raney’s shop is a freestanding structure located on the cusp of a hill that overlooks bottomland and pretty much nothing else – though his house is about 30 paces away. The structure looks small from the outside, but it actually is three floors with an incredible amount of space. As a result, Raney can keep his metalworking and benches on the main floor. In the basement (with a walkout garage door), he has a complete suite of woodworking tools. The third floor is for storage, packing materials and (for now) photography.
The main floor features four woodworking benches (and people say I have a problem) – everything from an Ace Hardware special up to a gargantuan French oak Roubo. This bench area is where he keeps his computer, his music (a turntable in a shop? Awesome) and a 6’ coffin stuffed with books and papers.
All the walls are lined with woodworking and metalworking hand tools. This area features a nice wooden floor.
Immediately adjacent to this is the metalworking area, which is filled with a milling machine, lathes, a surface grinder, metal band saw, grinders and all the other accoutrements of the toolmaker. It is all incredibly tidy – like a well-run machine shop. And yet Raney is hard at work on two infills for customers when I visited.
I took a bunch of photos while he wasn’t looking, and so below you have a tour of his shop. It’s a sweet set-up – something to study and be a little jealous of.
